Scrappers Angie and Ruggy have been sent by their operator to a location deep within The Lost. This is no ordinary Scrapper mission. The two came across a crashed starship. Is it one of the deadly Harvesters or something else entirely?
Scrappers Part II continues August’s flash fiction that brings readers into a continuation of a sci-fi horror universe. Enjoy the story in written word, audio, artwork and soundscape.
Into the Macrocosm
Short Stories of the Dark Cosmic, Bizarre, and the Fantastic
This story is found within the collection.
Enter the expanding universe through the lives of 22 souls, as the Nameless One and their ghoulish companion attempt to unlock the mysterious past of how they died.
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Dual Freaks
Flames crackled. Our boots pushed the loose gravel aside with each step. My heart pounded as sweat beaded on my face. I kept my eyes on my partner, Ruggy, who moved closer to the flickering orange heat, the only light in the night. The goggles tried to balance out the contrast of light and dark, but were of little use. One thing was clear in our view: the silhouette of that muscular arm reaching for the skies.
The small UI chat message window at the bottom corner of the goggles lit up as Ruggy typed out a new message.
LET’S CIRCLE AROUND. WE’RE HEADING STRAIGHT FOR IT, he typed.
My eyelids twitched, navigating the chat program’s keyboard, typing.
GOT IT, I replied.
The two of us circled the target as a haunting groan came from the silhouette’s location. The arm moved down to the ground. The being was trying to push itself up. It was wounded—how injured, we didn’t know. Ruggy and I had to be cautious. This thing was looking more and more like a Harvester.
As bold as Ruggy was for investigating the fire, I was not. I wanted to get the hell out of here as quickly as we could. The lack of sight, the unusual stinging smell, and this massive being were enough to send me heading for the cruiser. But Ruggy needed me. Scrappers stuck together; there was no other option. Scrapper’s code always came first.
Another sound screeched through the fire. This one was more distant. Violent. Ruggy and I turned to the origin, trying to spot anything. Large torn scraps of metal pierced the ground—the remnants of some sort of spacecraft.
THERE’S TWO, Ruggy typed out.
THAT DIDN’T SOUND THE SAME, I replied.
NO SHIT. STAY ON GUARD.
Rustling came from the original silhouette as it attempted to stand upright, limping. A second screech erupted—the target reached for an object on the ground, a large spear.
SEE? HARVESTER, Ruggy typed.
The spear was a clear indicator of a Harvester; all humans knew it. They used those damned electrically charged weapons to numb us. Harvesters needed us in good shape, ideally. But that didn’t mean they weren’t afraid of brutal force.
WHAT’S THE PLAN? I asked.
The Harvester leaned heavily onto its spear, holding the rod tightly. Okay, it was critically wounded.
KILL IT, Ruggy typed.
A howling shriek boomed before I could type anything—a new bulky humanoid burst from the flames, naked. Caws, spikes—all were colliding with the Harvester. The two humanoids tumbled onto the ground towards us, skidding to a stop. We leaped back as they came into view, rifles aimed.
Pareidolia
The entangled, burnt lump of bloody limbs wrestled, each being trying to get on top of the other. I froze, staring at the Harvester, who landed with its back to the ground. The helmet was half-complete. Hardened foam caked around the damaged edges, revealing the face of the Harvester. It had blond patches of hair, most of which had scorched off the scalp. It scowled, blue eyes staring vigorously at its opponent. The Harvester’s large arms shook violently, holding onto the primitive being’s wrists. The second humanoid, slightly shorter, drooled with sharp jaws open. Spikes pointed upright all along the back and outer limbs. The clawed feet hooked into the thighs of the Harvester, puncturing the flesh. Reddish-green blood poured out of the wounds.
SHOOT, Ruggy ordered.
I didn’t reply. I could only stare at the Harvester’s eyes as it wrestled with the naked beast. Harvesters were taller than us. More perfect, you could say—more muscular, and relentless. Yet, they were once us.
An ear-shattering clack erupted from Ruggy’s rifle. CLACK CLACK CLACK. He kept firing as the automatic weapon projected the bullets into the Harvester and beast. The Harvester yelped in pain, a human cry. The creature howled like a dog. It ripped its claws free from the Harvester and landed on all fours, dashing away from the scene, blood drizzling on the ground behind it.
I lifted my rifle and pulled the trigger, firing as the creature disappeared from the crash site, vanishing into The Lost.
Shit, I thought.
Ruggy shouted, “Eat it, gene freak!” as he continued to fire at the Harvester. The bullets pinged off of the remaining armour. The exposed skin was defenceless, letting the bullets pierce into the flesh. Blood splattered all around. Its eyes squinted in agony as red and green liquid oozed out of its mouth.
I turned my weapon to the Harvester and paused. No human had been this close to a Harvester before, especially in such a defenceless state. A part of me wanted to try and help the Harvester. Reason with it. Show the being that we weren’t that different after all. We could create a paradigm shift between the two species. No. It had been tried before. It was a foolish idea.
No Traces
“He’s going to spray!” Ruggy shouted.
Ruggy’s words shot me out of my internal dilemma. The Harvester managed to reach for his inner bicep, fingers pressing a touch screen that lit up red.
“Go!” Ruggy said, snagging my arm.
A loud beep came from the Harvester’s torn-up suit as small black holes opened all over the armour. Translucent liquid sprayed out of the suit in all directions and over the Harvester with sizzling sounds. The acid liquid came into contact with the Harvester and the ground, fizzing loudly.
We barely made it out of the vicinity. The liquid had wholly covered the Harvester, causing a chemical reaction, transforming it to foam and expanding in size. The Harvester clenched its teeth in pain as the foam ate away its armour and flesh. The foam’s colour shifted into a light green as the rest of the Harvester’s form was shrouded in the foam substance.
“Dammit!” Ruggy said.
I looked over at him to see that some of the liquid had gotten onto his shoulder. He tried to brush it off as it frothed.
“I think it ate through my coat. It’s compressing,” he said.
The foam had stopped expanding, turning a slight red—proof that it had eaten some of his flesh. “It’s toughening,” I said, looking at it.
“Don’t get too close, kid,” Ruggy said, stepping back. “Shit, it stings.”
“We gotta get back to the cruiser and take care of it.”
“It’s not that bad. It hardened. It doesn’t matter if we slice it off now or later,” Ruggy said, his gaze locking onto the Harvester’s consumed form.
The froth engulfed the being. Snapping sounds rose—bones being crushed by the hardened fizz that had begun to compress. Only a blob remained, in a rough humanoid pose. The surrounding ground had speckles of the foam in a light grey. Every droplet of fizz continued to compress inward, crushing the rocks—and Harvester—underneath.
“Anti-sapiens piece of shit,” Ruggy said while walking towards it. “They always manage to pull off that stunt just when we get them.”
“I’ve never seen that before. I mean, I’ve seen videos of it in training,” I replied while walking up to Ruggy.
“Not the same, is it?”
“Not at all. We really can’t cut the foam open?”
“No point. The acid eats away the surface, and the foam crushes everything else. Plus, this shit is harder than diamond once it shrinks,” Ruggy said, kicking the foam on the ground. “If we could ever get our hands on even a fraction of their tech, it could change everything.”
“Or understand their biology better,” I replied. “They look so human.”
Ruggy sighed. “Don’t let their appearance fool you next time. When I say fire, fire, understand?”
“Yeah, sorry. It just threw me off. I’ve never seen one without their suit.”
“Most don’t, because they pull off that stupid self-destruct system. Remember, just because they look like a perfect us doesn’t mean they are us. Their minds are all fucked up with a superiority complex and gene editing.”
“Right,” I said, turning to look at the fire and nearby torn metal. “What do you think happened here?” I asked.
Ruggy shrugged. “The Harvester crashed. The question is, what the hell was it doing with that other thing?”
“I don’t know. It ran away before I could do anything about it,” I replied.
Ruggy walked away from the foam-caked Harvester and towards the ship’s remains. “It was fast. Now it’s wandering The Lost. That’s something we gotta report.”
“We should go back,” I said.
“Not yet. Let’s scope out the rest of this mess. The operator sent us here. Let’s see what was going on,” Ruggy said, approaching the flames.
I followed Ruggy, taking one last look at the deceased Harvester. The fizz had compressed to a solid state, roughly outlining the shape of the giant humanoid, like some sort of dried-acid statue. Never before had I been so close to a Harvester. Most people that were didn’t survive. The Harvesters were too fast, too strong, and too cunning. If that thing hadn’t been wounded and attacked, we would be dead. That was a guarantee. In an odd turn of events, that hostile beast was our saviour.
Review
Ruggy and I walked cautiously through the rubble of the Harvester’s spacecraft. There were remnants of cables and hardware on the ground, too burnt to try and sample. We continued deeper into the mess. Most of the ship had been wrecked in the crash. Plus, Harvesters had a pretty clean method of destroying their technology, like they do with themselves. Anything valuable on board, or that was part of their ship, was disintegrated.
SOME GOOD METAL HERE, Ruggy typed out.
YEAH, I’LL GET THE ROVER, I replied while navigating through the goggles’ interface. My eyelids made slight movements to get to the rover’s retrieval command. The interface confirmed the rover’s signal. It’d be here in no time to carry the scraps. It was always wise for Scrappers to wait till they found something of value before calling the rover. Rovers were expensive, and the one good piece of tech Scrappers got. They saved Scrappers’ asses from having to haul heavy scraps. The last thing they needed was for a Harvester to destroy it.
WE MIGHT NEED THE WHOLE CRUISER AT THIS POINT, Ruggy typed out while walking around a large curved exterior section of the craft. He carefully avoided nearby flames and sharp pieces of metal that stuck out of the ground.
YEAH. LET’S JUST SEE WHAT ELSE IS HERE AND THEN WE CAN CALL THIS IN, I replied.
We stopped several times, looking to see if there was anything useful on the ground. Most of it was just strips, the type of things we’d usually gather. Regardless of the danger, we both knew that this was going to be a good scrapping session. The operator would be pleased.
CHECK THIS OUT, Ruggy typed.
I hurried up to my partner to see a human-sized glass-like pod shattered on the ground. It was probably not glass, but some Harvester equivalent. The broken pod was half-melted away and a third missing. Tubes were at the base of the cylinder shape.
“Think that beast came out of here?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Ruggy said in a low tone. “Look,” he added.
Several smaller pods were beside the large one. These were a little cracked but intact. Inside the pods were flesh-sacks floating in a transparent substance. The sacks were a light pink colour, but semi-transparent. Inside, small baby-like beings floated. Their eyes were closed, sleeping peacefully, undisturbed by the chaos that had just occurred.
“What are these?” I asked, leaning down.
Ruggy extended his arm out, stopping me from tilting any further. “Stay up,” he ordered.
One of the small creatures wiggled, moving its tiny, undeveloped hands around in the sack. An umbilical cord was attached to the belly and connected to the top of the sack.
“These are infants,” I said, standing upright.
“No, they’re not, Angie,” Ruggy said, pointing his rifle at the baby.
“Are you dense?” I asked. “I know what a damn baby looks like.”
“Yeah, but this was a Harvester’s craft,” Ruggy replied.
I shook my head. “Harvesters capture people. They take us to mess with genetics. This is a damn baby!”
“They also grow their people in incubators.”
“So even if it is a Harvester baby, it’s a life,” I argued.
“A Harvester life. Or maybe that beast we saw,” Ruggy replied. “Either way, it isn’t one of us.”
“Ruggy, are you listening to yourself? You want to shoot these infants?”
Ruggy let go of his rifle and threw a swift hand across my face, striking me, probably turning my cheek pink. My eyes widened, feeling my flesh hum from the aftermath.
“Angie! Wake up. These are not humans!” Ruggy shouted. “They’re genetic freaks. They forced their DNA away from us. They look similar, but so did the great apes, and look at how we treated them when they were around.”
I swallowed a thick lump of saliva. Ruggy was trying to be a good person, but I knew he was getting frustrated. That slap was ‘nice Ruggy.’ ‘Mean Ruggy’ would have decked my ass and just done what he wanted. He was only trying to educate me.
“I know it’s tough to grasp,” Ruggy said. “We’re living in a fucked-up world where the lines of being human are blurred. This is why we stick to the code. It’s us against them. Harvesters broke all morals centuries ago when they edited their first DNA strand. Even if we saved these offspring and tried to raise them, they don’t grow like us, and they don’t think like us. They’ll question themselves, and that is a can of worms we don’t need. Now raise your damn rifle.” Ruggy lifted his weapon, pointing at one of the pods.
I stared down at the second pod, looking right into the small being’s soft face. It wiggled around gently in the sack, stopping until it was facing me. Its eyes flicked open. White. Nothing but a white ball inside of the eye socket. Inhuman.
We fired at the pods. The bullets shattered through the glass, ripping through the embryo sacks and shredding into the small beings. The translucent liquid poured out of the broken glass, followed by streams of reddish-green fluids.
Into the Macrocosm
Short Stories of the Dark Cosmic, Bizarre, and the Fantastic
This story is found within the collection.
Enter the expanding universe through the lives of 22 souls, as the Nameless One and their ghoulish companion attempt to unlock the mysterious past of how they died.
Order Today
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