A quick peek outside—Roy lay there on his side, unconscious. His legs and body twitched like he was having a nightmare.
Figure about fourteen minutes to launch. Enough time to go out there and get Roy. If he wanted to. Jensen wasn’t too sure. The creatures had obviously affected Roy. He said they talked to him, which meant they might have found a way to connect with the dog’s mind.
In the end, though, Jensen looked out there and saw his partner. The partner who had kept him out of ambushes, saved his life by putting his own body in harm’s way, shared body heat with him in that frozen fighting hole during his first combat assignment. Keeping sharp eyes on the jungle, Jensen sprinted out to where Roy lay. When he reached the dog, Roy immediately opened his eyes.
He’d been had.
The rustle from the jungle made Jensen’s body break out in gooseflesh. Hundreds. No, thousands. They lined the launch pad. Most were the size of the ones that attacked him and Roy. Some were bigger, maybe half the size of Roy.
Jensen looked down at his dog. At least his teeth weren’t bared. The look in Roy’s eyes was unlike anything Jensen had ever seen before. A certain... intelligence.
“Roy. We need to go back to the ship.”
“No,” Roy growled/said.
“Why not?”
The creatures advanced across the pad and Jensen tried to figure his odds of beating them in a race back to the door. He wouldn’t have bet half a credit on himself to win.
“They not hurt you. I say,” Roy said.
The creatures parted like a living wave as they reached Roy and Jensen. They went around them and started scampering up the ramp. They were entering the ship.
Jensen stared at Roy.
“Roy. What is this?”
“They say ‘Green is food.’”
Roy nodded his head toward the jungle, an almost human gesture.
“Yeah. I see that. They’re eating it. So?” Jensen said.
Roy stood and walked toward the ship. He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “But you. Good food.”
Jensen watched in horror as the little creatures climbed into the ship. They poured over each other like water, cramming through the hatch at a terrifying speed.
“No.” Jensen moved toward the ship.
One of the creatures wheeled and let out those little shrieks that reverberated inside Jensen’s skull. They advanced on him, their sharp beaks snapping.
Rapid-fire barking brought it all to a stop. Roy stood between Jensen and the creatures. Those closest to him actually balled up into little rocks again.
These creatures still went by the law of the jungle. The animal with the biggest teeth is king. They went back to boarding the drop ship. Roy stood on the ramp and wagged his tail at Jensen.
“Me go. You stay.”
Roy turned and went inside. The door slid shut and the ramp retracted. The rumble of prelaunch warm-up snapped Jensen out of his stupor and he ran for the jungle. He dove into the heavy brush just before the bellowing rockets shook this world for the second time.
The entire jungle trembled at the drop-ship’s furious power.
A million insects and one lonely primate watched that ship scream into the sky, headed back to Earth.
Where the good food lived.
Q&A with Michael Ezell
Why a K9 team in space?
I was a K9 handler in the United States Marine Corps, and I’d always wanted to write a story about a dog handler. I figured bureaucrats of the future would love the cost-effectiveness of a single Marine with a dog sent to tackle a problem an entire team of scientists should be handling.
Where else can we find your work?
“The Sharks of Market Street” - Appeared in Girl at the End of the World, Vol. 2 - Fox Spirit UK
(I love the girl in this story with all my heart. She’s a badass.)
“Bones of a Righteous Man” - Fantasy for Good - Nightscape Press
(I was honored to be in the same book as Piers Anthony, a guy I started reading in Junior High! I’m listed in the “Weird Fantasy” section. Don’t hold that against me.)
“The Clockwork Hooker and the Mysterious Bearded Girl” - On Spec Magazine Summer 2015 Issue.
(No... Not that kind of hooker. I oughta wash your mind out with soap.)
Please support these and other hardworking publishers who keep short form Sci-Fi and Fantasy alive!
Do you do any other forms of writing?
I’ve optioned a Sci-Fi screenplay, and won a couple of screenwriting contests. Alas, I still haven’t cracked the screenplay market with a sale... yet.
Who are some of your favorite writers?
I love reading stuff that makes me incredibly angry that I didn’t write it. Know what I mean?
So in that regard, Stephen King’s “The Stand” and William Gibson’s “Neuromancer” piss me off quite a bit. Every time I read them. Again.
Do humans write like that? I’m not entirely certain Gibson isn’t a Replicant. And King survived being run over by a van, so he’s for sure a Terminator.
What’s the hardest part of writing for you?
Really, it’s not the actual writing. It’s the marketing. I suck at it. Big time. My wife says I should have a bigger web presence. I told her that didn’t help the spider in the bathroom she made me squash. She was not amused.
I reluctantly started a blog:
www.sinisterwriter.com
The Epsilon Directive
by David Bruns
THE PROTESTERS CALLED us ‘genocide squads.’ The military designated us as Epsilon Units. But inside the Corps we called ourselves ‘Erasers.’
Names aside, everyone agreed that we existed for only one purpose: to kill Scythians. Every last one of them.
And we were good at our job.
By the time I was drafted, the war was in the mop-up stages. I’d grown up hearing about the great fleet battles and how my siblings fought with honor. I’ll never really know since none of them came back. Still, war was the family business, a proud tradition of military service that went back generations. The day I turned eighteen, the admiral—my father—made me pancakes for breakfast then took me to the local armory to enlist.
The proudest day of my life—his words, not mine.
I can still recall my feelings as I filled out the draft form. Dread, fear... and ultimately, shame. My finger hovered over the check box labeled CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR, while my father joked with the Marine recruiter about the new uniform regs. I tried to force my finger to touch the screen, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I signed the dotted line and shoved my fists into my pockets instead.
My father wore his uniform that day so he could administer the oath. He shook my hand afterward. “Your brothers would be so proud of what you’re about to do.”
I put my fists back in my pockets and made a noise that I suppose he took as agreement.
That’s the short version of how I came to be riding in the back of Fury, a Revenge-class assault craft, as a member of Eraser Seven. Normally, a ship of this size would carry six armored and battle-loaded Marines, but it’d been modified for Epsilon sweep missions. We carried three Marines plus a pilot and provisions for two weeks in space.
Our mission was pretty simple—just the way Marines like it. After the fleet battles broke the back of the Scythian forces, the enemy scattered like rats all over the known galaxy. We were there to find the survivors and kill them. Simple.