Darwinia

Expeditionary madness, perhaps? Dr. Sullivan also reports odd dreams, even Tom Compton grudgingly admits that his sleep is troubled.

But how could I sleep comfortably without you next to me? In any case, daylight chases away the dreams. By day our only dream is of the mountains, their blue-white peaks our new horizon.

Tom Compton was standing watch at dawn, when the Partisans attacked.

He sat at the embers of a fire with Ed Betts, a rotund man whose chin kept drifting toward his chest. Betts didn’t know how to keep himself awake. Tom did. The frontiersman had stood these watches before, usually alone, wary of robbers or claim jumpers, especially when he hunted the coal country. It was a trick of the mind, to put away sleep until later. It was a skill. Betts didn’t have it.

Still, there was no warning when the first shots came from the dim woods to the east. There was barely enough light to turn the sky an India-ink blue. Four or five rifles barked in rough unison. “What the hell,” Betts said, then slumped forward with a hole in his neck, dousing the fire with blood.

The frontiersman rolled into the dirt. He fired his own rifle at the margin of the woods, more to wake the camp than defend it. He couldn’t see the enemy.

The fur snakes squealed their fear and then began to die in a second volley of bullets.

Guilford was asleep when the attack began — dreaming again of the Army picket, his twin in khaki, who was trying to deliver some vital but unintelligible message.

Yesterday’s march had been exhausting. The expedition had followed a series of lightly wooded ridgetops and ravines, prodding the reluctant fur snakes under the arches of the mosque trees, climbing and descending. The snakes disliked the close confinement of the woods and expressed their discontent by mewling, belching, and farting. The stink was cloying in the still air and was not abated by a steady drizzle, which only added the sour-milk stench of wet fur to the mix.

Eventually the land leveled. These high alpine meadows had blossomed in the rain, the false clover opening white star petals like summer snowflakes. Pitching tents in the drizzle was a tedious chore, and di

The eastern horizon was faintly blue when the first shots were fired. Guilford came awake to the sound of cries and percussion. He fumbled for his pistol, heart hammering. He had been carrying the pistol fully loaded since Keck recovered the monster skull, but he wasn’t a marksman. He knew how to fire the pistol but had never killed anything with it.

He rolled out of his tent into chaos.

The attack had come from the tree line to the east, a black silhouette against the dawn. Keck, Sullivan, Diggs, and Tom Compton had set up a sort of skirmish line behind the heaped bodies of three dead fur snakes. They were firing into the woods sporadically, starved for targets. The remaining fur snakes shrieked and yanked at their tethers in futile panic. One of the animals fell as Guilford watched.

The rest of the expeditionaries were tumbling out of their tents in terrified confusion. Ed Betts lay dead beside the campfire, his shirt scarlet with blood. Chuck Hemphill and Ray Burke were on their hands and knees, shouting, “Get down! Keep your heads down!”

Guilford crawled through the circle of tattered canvas to join Sullivan and company. They didn’t acknowledge his presence until he had ducked up and fired a pistol shot into the dark of the woods. Tom Compton put a hand on his arm. “You can’t shoot what you can’t see. And we’re outnumbered.”

“How can you tell?”

“See the muzzle flash.”

A fresh volley of bullets answered Guilford’s single shot. The snake carcasses shook with thudding impacts.

“Christ!” Diggs said. “What do we do?”

Guilford glanced back at the tents. Preston Finch had just emerged, hatless and bootless, adjusting his bottle-glass lenses and firing his ivoried pistol into the air.

“We run,” Tom Compton said.

“Our food,” Sullivan said, “the specimens, the samples—”

The close whine of a bullet interrupted him.

“Fuck all that!” Diggs said.

“Get the attention of the others,” Tom said. “Follow me.”

The Partisans — if they were Partisans — had encircled the camp, but they were sparse on the unwooded western slope of the hill and easier to shoot. Guilford counted at least two enemy dead, though Chuck Hemphill and Emil Swensen were killed and Sullivan winged, a bloody puncture in the meat of his arm. The rest followed Tom Compton into the mist of the ravine where the sunlight had not begun to penetrate. It was a slow and agonizing route, with only the frontiersman’s shouted commands to keep the expeditionaries in any sort of order. Guilford could not seem to draw breath enough to satisfy his body; the air burned in his lungs. Shadows and fog made uneasy cover, and he heard, or imagined he heard, the sound of pursuit only paces behind him. And where was there to run? A glacial creek bisected this valley; the ridge wall beyond it was rocky and steep.

“This way,” Tom insisted. South, parallel to the water. The soil underfoot grew marshy and perilous. Guilford could see Keck ahead of him in the swirling cloud, but nothing farther. Keep up, he told himself.

Then Keck stopped short, peering down at his feet. “God help us,” he whispered. The texture of the ground had changed. Guilford closed in on the surveyor. Something crackled under his boots.

Twigs. Hundreds of dried twigs.

No: bones.

An insect midden.

Keck shouted at the frontiersman ahead of him. “You brought us here deliberately!”

“Shut up.” Tom Compton was a bulky shade in the mist, someone else beside him, maybe Sullivan. “Keep quiet. Step where I step. Everybody follow the man in front of him, single file.”

Guilford felt Diggs push him from behind. “They’re still coming, get a fuckin’ move on!”

Never mind what might be ahead. Follow Keck, follow Tom. Diggs was right. A bullet screamed out of the fog.

More small bones crunched underfoot. Tom was following the midden-line, Guilford guessed, circling the insect nest, one step away from oblivion.

Keck had brought one of these bugs to the campfire a few days ago. Body about the size of a big man’s thumb, ten long and powerful legs, mandibles like steel surgical tools. Best not think about that.

Diggs cried out as his foot slipped of fan unseen skull, sending him reeling toward the soft turf of the insect nest. Guilford grabbed one flailing arm and pulled him back.

The sky was lighter when they reached the opposite side of the midden. Not to our advantage, Guilford thought. The Partisans might see the nest for what it was. Even then, they would be forced to follow the narrow defile of the midden-edge, either along the ravine wall as the expeditionaries had or close to the creek — either way, they might make easier targets.

“Form a line just past these trees,” the frontiersman said. “Reload or hoard your ammunition. Shoot anyone who tries to circle around, but wait for a clean shot.”

But the Partisans were too intent on their quarry to watch the ground. Guilford looked carefully at these men as they stepped out of the low mist and into what they must have mistaken for a rocky ledge or patch of moss. He counted seven of them, armed with military rifles but without uniforms save for high boots and slouch hats. They were gri

And their boots protected them — at least briefly. The lead man was perhaps three-quarters of the distance across the soft open ground before he looked down and saw the insects swarming his legs. His tight smile disappeared; his eyes widened with comprehension. He turned but couldn’t flee; the insects clung tenaciously to one another, making strands of faintly furry rope to bind his legs and drag him down.