Unicorns, chapter 1

Science-fiction horror story.

I dreamed of wood and fire. Then I was woken by Nate calmly flinging the ship in the opposite direction, throwing me against my seatbelt. The moment my eyes opened, a blur of sounds and lights hit my senses.

“What the hell…?”

Nate kept his eyes straight ahead. “Morning, Hank. Cops caught us up just past Flor Cerrar. They’ve been on our tail since.”

“How long ago?”

“‘Bout three hours.”

“What? Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“You don’t need two people to fly. And if I were to be blown apart, I wouldn’t want to be conscious for it.”

Nate steered the ship at a small asteroid, and wheeled away from point-blank range. He flew about in his seat. I looked at the rearview display and saw the cops’ two ships easily swing around it. It was a pursuer-class Barco: 47% lightspeed, as fast as our Flucht, but with a smaller fuel tank. Which would be great if Flucht hadn’t used up most of her fuel escaping Auria-�™. The gauge was flashing red and beeping insistently. Nate either hadn't noticed it in the maelstrom of alerts or was ignoring it: he gunned the engine, just keeping his lead on the cops’ ship, but not giving them the slip.

It had been a simple heist, in theory: with Flucht disguised as a transport ship, I simply had to waltz into the International Museum of Auria-�™ as Jerome Irreal, diamond expert and curator of the National Geology Museum of LaCruz, Betel-λ, pick up the Laqueum sapphire, and then fly off back to the fence on Cerise. Nate knew somebody on Cerise who knew how to fake over 7,000 kinds of ID, from basic ID cards to bank inspectors, to official librarianships. I’d never been entirely sure about Nate’s flying license. The guy had made two museum official IDs and a van license for Nate

It had started off fine; Nate dropped me off a little way from the front doors at about 14:00 local time. I had barely stepped inside before a flustered, sweaty woman in a  garish gold tie was at my side. “We weren’t expecting you so early, Mr. Irreal.” - She flashed a scanner on my ID. A green light blinked on, and I started breathing again. - “Was your journey from Betel-Lambda comfortable? Would you like a tea? Coffee? No? Okay.”

We got straight down to business. The woman - Katherine or something - led me to a box-filled back room where the sapphire was hurriedly being crated ready for transport. On the way, there was a fingerprint scanner. My chest tightened until Katherine opened it and held it open for me. We hadn’t expected for another museum’s curator to need to pass a fingerprint scan, but the momentary panic had nearly given me a heart attack. We were joined by the curator, Gerald Herring, a man whose facial features were all trying to replace his nose.

“Strange them only only sending one of you for it,” he said, squinting at me, though I couldn’t tell if he was suspicious or if his heavy brow naturally rested on his jowly hamster cheeks.

“Not really,” I said. “A ton of uniformed guards would draw attention. Plainclothes mean we can fill the museum with security with nobody noticing. And if nobody notices, nobody knows we’re moving the sapphire.”

“I don’t really see, but if it works-” he shrugged.

A couple of museum heavies had heaved the sapphire’s metal crate onto a trolley and pushed it up to the three of us.

“Ready to go, boss,” said one.

Herring led us to a garage door, which one of the heavies lifted, while the other pushed the trolley through into a small yard. Nate had parked the ship about twenty feet away. The heavies set about loading the sapphire into her side.

Done. It was done. It had been less than half an hour, and we were getting away with it. No mistakes, nothing forgotten, not a hair out of place.

“Good doing business with you.” I shook Herring’s and Katherine’s hands and climbed into the seat beside Nate. Nate started Flucht up.

A harried young man burst out of the museum, tailed by an older man with elbow patches and a face that was mostly angry eyebrows. It took a moment for me to recognise the actual Irreal. Then:

“Nate, punch it! We’re busted!”

Nate kicked the accelerator to the floor and yanked back on the wheel. Flucht’s sudden burst of propellant blew most of the yard over. Herring actually rolled.

Within minutes, we were supersonic and leaving Auria’s atmosphere. Within a few more minutes, we were being tailed by two police shuttles. Nate gunned the engine and they gradually shrank into the distance. Confident in losing them, I had leaned back in my seat and shut my eyes.

The cops’ disabler beams burned into the rear of Flucht, pushing the engine-temperature gauge into the red, adding another klaxon to the mix.

“Nate, we should really give up before we explode,” I said, trying to keep my voice level.

He didn’t answer, instead throwing the ship at another asteroid. He pulled up. The ship didn’t. Behind, the cops’ ship stopped short of the asteroid’s pull, firing off tractor beams, all missing.

Flucht fell through the asteroid’s atmosphere, flames scorching the cockpit windscreen. Nate pushed buttons, snapped levers across, his hands blurring across the controls. I clutched the dashboard and tensed for impact. The wings extended, and were torn apart by the rushing air, but their brief tenure had managed to flatten Flucht’s entry angle.

Rainclouds rushed up to meet us, followed by thick, dark forest.

I shut my eyes just before the crash.

*

I woke up in a fit of coughing. When I stopped, I became aware of the pervasive silence filled with rain, and broken only by an infrequent buzzing and my own breathing. My chest ached. It was dark. I tried to lean forward to inspect the dashboard, but my seatbelt was locked in place. I wrestled with the twisted buckle until it broke away from the side of my seat. The controls were all dead, the footwell buckled. I flicked a switch back and forth a couple of times. Nothing. One of the warning lights was holding onto life, blinking irregularly, but as I watched, it blinked out and didn’t turn back on.

“Nate, you okay?”

I turned to him.

“Nate?”

Nate was slumped over the controls, the wheel punched into his chest. He faced away from me. I pushed his shoulder. His head slipped just enough so I could see the half-dried blood on the dashboard mixing with the rain leaking through the fractured windscreen. I pressed my finger to Nate’s wrist. Nothing. He was dead. My heart stopped.

Nathaniel Wash was dead.

I was dully surprised that I didn’t cry. I gently shook Nate by the shoulders, as if I could wake him up. He just slipped further away from me. I pulled his body upright and cradled his head.

He would’ve hated that: overt emotion. He didn’t - hadn’t - really cared for feelings, his or anyone else’s. I know that doesn’t paint a pretty picture, but he was a good man. Apart from the violence and stealing, of course. But he was - had been - loyal at least.

I remember a time when I’d been cornered; I’d locked myself in a room to evade a squad of cops, in hopes that there was a suitably large air duct or something. There wasn’t. I’d already given the painting we were stealing to Nate, and he was waiting in Flucht - he had both the goods and the getaway.

It had only been our third or fourth heist, and we hadn’t known each other very long, so I’d expected Nate to just vanish and leave me to my fate.

After ten minutes, in which I’d tried to focus my mind enough to figure out something the cops would believe - perhaps Nate had forced me to steal the painting, or he’d brainwashed me - I’d heard the buzzing sound of electric gunfire. My first thought had been that the cops were burning through the door. Then there was silence.

“Hey, Hank! Get out here already!”

Nate’s voice had been such a surprise, I’d just frozen in place.

“Hank!”

I’d jumped to my feet, burst out the door. Together we’d ran to Flucht and sped away, narrowly escaping the cops’ backup. I’d had to stop myself from actually hugging Nate, out of relief, or gratitude, or just being Nate Wash.

And now he was dead. I felt cold. Because the ship was at an angle, the rain trickling through the broken windscreen was running along the dashboard and into my lap. It had flecks of blood in it.

I yanked on the door-locks until the door broke open and forced my left leg out from under the twisted metal occupying the footwell. I had to go. My foot sank into the mud piled up against Flucht’s side. I slipped sideways, twisting my other leg, which was still trapped in the collapsed footwell. Screaming pain crackled through my leg. I cried out and jolted in shock, slipping further out of the door and twisting my leg further. The world turned grey for a second.

I pushed against the metal surrounding my leg. My other foot found something solid under the mud. Slowly, agonisingly, the metal shifted. I cried out as pain flooded through my leg. Holding the metal up with one hand, I gingerly pulled my leg out from underneath it. I swung it round, biting my lip trying to ignore the pain. 

Even through the torn suit trousers, I could see my leg was broken. I peeled back the shreds of fabric and tried not to faint or throw up. The skin was purple and red, and bleeding from several deep gashes. My shin bent forwards in the middle. I gasped, my breath fogging, as the pain subsided to slightly more tolerable levels. There was no way I was going anywhere like that.

I unlocked my seat’s axle and gently turned round, stopping to allow the pain in my leg to subside several times. In the back, our supplies were scattered and smashed around the cabin. Dented tins and broken jars were strewn about everywhere. The sapphire lay in the twisted fragments of its metal box. I wanted to throw it out into the rain and let it just sink into the mud. I would’ve, if I’d had two working legs.

Instead, I sifted through the closest of the debris with my working leg, searching for some kind of bandage and a crutch. A broken length of piping seemed my best bet. I hooked my foot under it and flicked it up to my hand. And dropped it. It rolled just out of reach. I shifted in my seat to extend my leg further. The pain from my right leg made me kick out, narrowly missing the pipe. I rolled the pipe towards me and flicked it up again, properly catching it this time. I repeated this process using the pipe, collecting the closest intact cans and a torch, putting them on the flattest bit of dashboard behind me. Now for the bandage.

I stabbed the pipe into the mud, deep enough that it stayed upright, and straightened my broken leg. Fire shot through it. I screamed. The only thing I had to hand to use as a makeshift bandage was my shirt, so I tore the sleeves off and wrapped them around my leg as tightly as I could with fingers that didn’t want to do what I wanted them to. Figuring that the sleeves would stop the broken ends of bone grating against each other, I turned my chair and finally slid all the way out of Flucht.

I pocketed the torch and cans I had rescued - two tins of meat and one of peaches - and grabbed the pipe, pushing the smoother end of it under my arm. Although it was far too long, its end sank further into the mud, so I was only slightly lopsided. Aside from the trees, I couldn’t see any signs of life. However, I thought I could see a faintly different shade of night sky on the horizon uphill. I decided it was as good a direction as any and started off. As I hopped a step, the pipe stuck in the ground and I almost fell. My right foot swung and hit the ground, sending crackling shockwaves up my leg. My left knee buckled and I went down. Tightening my grip on my crutch, I forced my good leg straight. I twisted the pipe out of the ground and stabbed it back in ahead of myself.

Like this, I inched my way up the hill, leaving behind Flucht and Nate. The rain plastered my hair to my head and dribbled into my eyes. I didn’t know how much power the torch had in it, so I left it off, and in the darkness, it was hard to see where I was going, so I began using my crutch to feel out slippery rocks and dips in the ground. I glanced behind me every now and then. I could just make out one of the unbroken rear lights. It which grew fainter every time I looked, but didn’t seem to get  any smaller.

I had no idea of how long I’d been hobbling up the slope - my watch was broken - but the ship’s light had disappeared when I wondered if the sun was going to rise. The trees and grass and rain meant that some serious terraforming must have occurred to make the asteroid hospitable, and unless it was made entirely of lead or gold or something even denser, it must have gravity generators. That was why Flucht hadn’t been able to pull up, and crashed. Somebody must have put some serious time and effort into it, so surely they must’ve come up with a fake sun. If one existed, it didn’t rise.

Some light would’ve helped me deal with the noises.

I wasn’t even sure if I was actually hearing them or my mind was making them up. It had started as a barely audible murmur that wasn’t the rain, the trees or me, but had grown to faint garbled grunts and staggered breathing. Thoughts of wolves filled my head; whoever had remade this place had gone to so much trouble, they would’t leave it without some kind of wildlife. Maybe it was an animal reserve, an isolated ecosystem away from humans and pollution, where creatures ruled. And maybe those creatures had fangs and claws, and would jump at an easy, limping kill. But the sounds never came close enough to be distinguishable. They faded in and out, so that whenever I thought I might be able to make out what they were, they disappeared. I tried to speed up, but I nearly slipped and fell again. And besides, what predator couldn’t outrun somebody so tired and pained as me?

After hours? days? I reached the top of the hill. The sun, if there was one, still hadn’t risen, and it was still raining, though I think it had let up a bit. Far in the distance, I could just make out the source of the faint light: and old-fashioned, dark-brick mansion about a half-mile away. The light came from the large windows high in the left wing.  The thoughts of hungry animals were pushed to the back of my mind by ones of sanctuary.

Then I got closer, and in the dim bulb-light I saw the broken ground-floor windows, the holes in the roof. One wing was missing its top floor, as well as most of its second. The mansion’s bricks weren’t actually dark themselves: they had once been white, but were covered in moss and grime and ivy. I pushed through a pair of bent wrought iron gates attached to ruins of a wall and crossed the overgrown drive, stepping between chunks of shattered statues. Without the thick mud to support my crutch, it was much harder going. About halfway across, a fallen roof tile slipped out from under my foot and I went sprawling face-first into the mossy gravel. I reached for my crutch, but it had skittered away into a muddy clump of stone and moss. My hand found a fountain, and I climbed up to sit on the chipped base wall and rest. The spout sat loose in the centre, and was broken off before the second tier. I could it in at least two pieces a few feet away. The dregs of water that hadn’t seeped out through the fountain’s many holes was green and murky, and, despite the rain, it refused to clear up.

I broke the base of the spout out of its hole and put it under my arm in place of the pipe. It was far too short, so I had to bend right over and hobble the last few yards to the front doors. I knocked.

There was no answer.

I knocked again, louder. Still nothing. I didn’t want to shout. I couldn’t hear the weird animal noises any more, but that didn’t mean they weren’t nearby, or at least near enough to hear me yell. The doors were huge, but they were made of wood, and however long of rain and climbing ivy and no maintenance had left them dark and rotting. I pushed against the right door. It bowed. Making sure my crutch and left foot were dug into the gravel, I heaved my shoulder into the door. It gave a bit, with a great cracking sound. I pushed harder and it splintered open, dropping me onto the cracked tiles and broken glass of the empty front hall.

Panting, I stood up unsteadily. The door was so soaked through, it had twisted on its hinges and hung limply off its frame, letting in the cold and rain that wasn’t already let in through the broken windows. I switched on my torch, illuminating the ruined stairs and fallen balconies. The glass covering the floor had exploded from the great chandelier when it had fallen from the ceiling and shattered on the ground. Paintings lay rotting on the floor, and what was left of the wallpaper hung in damp strips from the walls.

I hobbled across the floor, ignoring the glass and marble cracking under me, and inched my way up the stairs, one hand clutching my crutch and the other the bannister. It seemed to take hours, and every time I hopped my foot onto the next step, it creaked and groaned as though it would break under my weight. I stopped at the half-landing for a rest before tackling the last set of stairs. The light coming from my torch wasn’t extremely bright, so I hit my bad leg on uneven steps and unseen chunks of plaster a few times.

Then I reached the top.

I opened the door. On the other side was a corridor, lit dimly by the flickering light coming from the cracks between the door and its frame at the end of the hall. With no broken windows to let in the weather, the wallpaper was, while not in perfect or even good condition, largely intact. I switched my torch off. A couple of other doors led out of the corridor. I stepped inside. The floorboards creaked. I froze. For some reason, although I was hoping to find anyone with, say, a phone, or at least some actual bandages, I didn’t want to be found. I guess anyone living in a place like this wasn’t going to be exactly well-adjusted. If I’d had use of both of my legs, I’d have flattened my body against the wall, so the floorboards wouldn’t creak when stepped on. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t, so I creaked along the hall, trying to ignore my brain screaming at me to be quiet.

When I reached the door, I pressed my ear against it. I could hear crackling. A fire. Warmth. I couldn’t hear any movement on the other side, but that didn’t mean there was nobody there. I had come this far; I twisted the doorknob and collapsed through the door. The last thing I saw before I blacked out was a silhouetted figure.

Author's Note

This is the first draft; I haven't edited it yet.