“The ship’s here,” says the medic-man. “We’re getting out of here.”
“That’s it?” says Emily, looking at the new metal-box. It’s not a lot bigger than the one we just left. “But what about everyone else?” She looks around. “Where are the other cars?”
Everyone is suddenly tense.
“Emily,” said the medic-man, “There are no other cars. They didn’t make it. It’s just us.”
“But what about Mum?” Her voice becomes stressed. “Wh-What about Dad?”
“It’s just us,” says the medic-man. “Come on. We have to go. The ship won’t wait forever.”
Emily begins to kick. “No!” she screams. “I want my Mum!”
No, this is not good. I growl at the medic-man. He’s hurting Emily.
“Emily, wait, listen to me. Listen! This ship is your way off-world, and you’ve got to take it. These things—the things that killed your parents? They’re coming. We can’t go back for your folks, Emily. They’re gone. They’re dead. Listen to me! Fleet is going to blast this whole continent. They’re going to nuke it, Emily. Everything.”
She isn’t listening. Emily is kicking and shouting. “Let me go!” she says. “Let me go! I’m going back!”
“Emily, stop it!”
“Let me go!”
He drops her. Emily lands with a plop, and then jumps up and runs to me. I put myself between her and the medic-man, growling.
“The Interdictor’s preparing to leave,” says the medic-man. “Emily, come on. We have to get onboard.”
The ship begins to whine, a loud noise that shakes the ground.
Medic-man comes close. I snap my teeth at him. I won’t let them take Emily.
“Stay back,” says Emily. “Demon will get you!”
I will, too. I growl some more at him.
Suddenly the woman, the one with the tube who saved us before, is behind me, her arms around Emily. “Come on, you brat!” she shouts. “Get in the fucking ship!”
No! I leap. I bite the woman. She falls over. I jump on top of her, biting and snarling, going for her throat.
BOOM.
Pain.
Now I’m lying on the ground. There’s blood everywhere. My blood. I can smell it. The medic-man has Emily’s boom-maker. He boomed me with it. Smoke rises from both ends.
“Demon!” Emily grabs my neck, holding up my head. She’s screaming and crying, but it all seems really far away. “Demon! Demon!”
I’m so sleepy. I kick a bit as the medic-man grabs Emily and picks her up, carrying her towards the metal-box. She screams and cries and fights, but she’s so little. The medic-man carries her up the ramp and onto the metal-box.
The woman looks at me. She, too, is crying. She’s upset even though I tried to bite her neck. “Fuck!” she yells at medic-man. “You didn’t have to fucking shoot him!”
Medic-man says nothing.
He too is crying.
Emily fights. She’s trying to get to me. I can see her through a tiny window, her face filling it up. She thumps her fists on the metal. I want to get to her, although I also want to nap; to go to sleep and let the pain go away. But I can’t get up. My rear legs don’t work.
I have to be with Emily.
The door to the metal-box seals. It hums loudly as though it might explode at any moment. Then the ship begins to rise. Soon they’re gone. All I can smell is the fresh grass and the blood. Then the wind changes. With it, comes the distant scent of bugs.
The humans will make sure Emily is safe. I hope. I don’t know if I did the right thing, but I know one thing.
I’m a good boy.
I know I am because Emily told me so.
A Word from David Adams
When I was planning my novel series Symphony of War, I wanted to do something at once different and familiar. I wanted to borrow from every science fiction world I’d known and use what I liked the most: the result is the Universe at War. It’s like someone took Warhammer 40,000, Starcraft, Pitch Black, and Ghost in the Shell and threw them all in a blender.
This part of it, though, is something different. When we see Polema in “Demon and Emily,” it’s through the eyes of a dog. Getting this right was a real challenge for me; this story is the first time I’ve used first-person present to write, something I swore I’d never do. But it suits the mind of a dog so much better than past-tense forms, which tend to imply a narrator. A dog has a more limited mindset than a person; the only things that Demon thinks about are happening in the moment.
One thing that stumped me in the writing of this, though, is just how old Emily is. How would Demon’s mind process this? She’s largely unchanged since he was a puppy; as far as Demon’s concerned, Emily and her family are unchanging. It’s a bit of a mystery, but if you pressed me, I’m inclined to say thirteen.
Astute readers might note that the Polema of my novel, Symphony of War: The Polema Campaign, is very different from the Polema shown here. That world is a barren desert. This one is rich and green.
War changes a place, even in as short as four years, the span of time between this story and my novel.
You can see more of the old Polema in The Immortals: Kronis Valley, more of the Myriad arachnid invaders in the novel-length Symphony of War, and I’m sure we haven’t seen the end of Emily, either. Watch for her in a future installment of The Immortals.
I’ve attached a picture of me and my cat, Fall. Fall is totally adora-Fall, and she was sitting on my lap for, like, ninety-nine percent of the writing of this story. So there’s that.
I hope you enjoyed reading “Demon and Emily” as much as I enjoyed writing it.
For more of my writing, see my website at http://www.lacunaverse.com/. To join my new-releases newsletter, go to http://eepurl.com/toBf9. You can email me at dave@lacunaverse.com and you can find my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/lacunaverse.
Keena’s Lament
(a Weston Files short story)
by Hank Garner
One
The world is rarely as it seems. You look to the stars and think you know all there is to know. You look to the depths of the sea and assume that by cataloging the variations of life, you are the master of your domain.
But what about the war that rages beyond your ken? What about the legends of old that occupy the collective unconscious of your people, the truths that dare to escape the dark recesses of your dream-self? You think you know yourself, but your dream-self knows you better. Your vanity could be your downfall on that day when the Final Stand is made—as it was once before.
I know this, because I have watched you for eons. That is what I do, and for years beyond counting.
Time immemorial.
And rarely have I seen one of your kind that stands above the rest, that accomplishes something worth remembering. Most of your race merely disappear into the dust of endless days, but on occasion, one among you will glean a useful insight into the universe.
One of your poets said it best.