Apeshit Read online

  I shook my head in confusion. The dead men had their Enfields, they sustained wounds from what appeared to be close range weapons, but there was no sign of casualties from their attackers.

  I jumped to my feet, startled by a loud series of shouts, hooting like nothing I’ve ever heard. The men aimed their rifles.

  “Don’t shoot,” Andrews, our naturalist said. “It’s just an ape.”

  It stood on nearby rock, light brown hair hanging from its lengthy limbs.

  “Christ. It scared me.” The Warrant Officer lowered his rifle.

  The ape gestured in every direction, frantically, hooting at us, seemingly growing annoyed that we couldn’t understand its crude language. Eventually it fell silent, looked around, and waved at us as if to follow.

  “Jensen,” I said, remembering the Warrant Officer’s name at last. “Have the men do what they can to salvage any of the unspoilt fuel. I suspect it will take the better part of the day. Report back to the captain that we are going into the jungle to find further evidence of the station’s attackers.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  The hairless ones from the flotation understood me no better than the shore dwellers had. I knew that if I didn’t make them understand, they would share the same fate. My mission would fail. Finally I convinced them to follow.

  There seemed to be a small argument first between their king and his firstservant. The king’s wisdom was apparent in the skins he wore. His servants’ dress didn’t suit the sticky work ahead. The subservants set about other tasks, and the king, his firstservant, and two subservants with bangsticks followed me into the green.

  I’d have to go slow. Stubby arms not good for branches. The hairless ones would have to follow as groundlings.

  Halfway to the great temple, I stopped to give them rest. The king seemed to understand my motions, holding my chest and pretending to breathe as hard as they were. I hoped that the king didn’t feel that I was mocking him or his people. I couldn’t understand their mouth sounds any better than they seemed to understand mine, but I sensed that the king was dispersing his wisdom, pointing to the canopy and telling his servants how they might better travel if they had longer arms and greater strength.

  I let them recover their breath and take food. Like the shore dwellers, they took food at set times, instead of when they were hungry, and took too long to feed and recover. After much time at this, I led on, but they didn’t follow at first. The king’s firstservant seemed to disrespect the king. I expected the king to react by dominating the first servant in front of the others, but instead he spoke some of their strange words, and the firstservant complied, commanding the others to obey the king’s commands and follow.

  The subservants appeared unhappy as the canopy thickened and a water storm broke open overhead. They complained about the dark and the wet. The end-of-day dark came early, brought soon by the water storm. Winged rodents fluttered beneath the branches, and the hairless ones dropped to the forest floor like their legs had been taken off.

  Their king seemed suitably embarrassed and scolded the others for their mistake. Fortunately, the first of the flat rocks wasn’t far, and we began the climb into our ancient temple.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  The jungle had claimed this stone structure well before Her Majesty’s rule over these territories. The stonework began as flat rocks, smoothed into a series of steps that led to walls covered in ivy and branches of trees. Inside, if it would be deemed as being inside when the walls are more hole than stone, there was a faded mural between the cracks on the walls that I could barely discern.

  Our hairy guide had taken a clear liking to our naturalist, taking him by the hand towards a great statue at the end of what I suppose was once a great hall or temple. The naturalist reached up to the statue, pulling moss off of its massive face, revealing a stone statue of a large monkey, sitting on a throne like a great king.

  “What is this place?” I asked. Frankly it was too much. I, who had been most happy in the toil at sea, longed suddenly for England. I couldn’t imagine what the other men felt. Perhaps they pondered jumping ship when we reached at Australia, assigning themselves to a penal colony rather than be ordered into a similar situation again. Put miles of arid land between themselves and such places in the dark jungles of the world.

  “I believe this is a statue of Hanuman. This must be the ruins of a Hindu Temple. Probably abandoned after the Muslim conquests.” The naturalist looked down at his hairy friend. The ape held something in both hands, offering it to the naturalist. The offering resembled a massive leaf, rolled into a cylinder. The naturalist bowed his head and accepted the object. He unrolled it carefully.

  “What is it?” I couldn’t contain my excitement nor my confusion.

  “It’s a scroll. It’s written on some sort of reed, not unlike the Egyptian papyrus scrolls. Actually, written is an incorrect choice of words. It’s all told in pictures. Here. Hanuman towering over an island. Fighting with some great monster. An octopus perhaps. Much of the island sinking below the waves in the fight. Further down we see the same fight again. Now there are smaller fighters alongside, what look like apes fighting these white shapes.” He pointed at the scroll for me to see. It was hard to tell one shape from the next at first, I guessed that the scroll must be as old as the temple, and that’s when it struck me.

  “That picture. I’ve seen it elsewhere.”

  “Where?” He peered at me through his eyeglasses.

  “All around us. It’s painted in the faded stone of the temple.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  The hairless creatures’ laziness made them hard to save. Despite their fear, they began to make camp in the temple ruins. I had to shout to get them back on the path back toward their flotation. We went a short way before they convinced their king to convey their need to sleep to me, him making motions closing his eyes, pretending to rest his head on his hands.

  I tried to make him know the danger, mimicking attacks, and pointing at the scroll. He didn’t understand. They took their rest on the forest floor, not even taking to the trees even at night when their eyes would be shut and even normal world predators could bite them.

  I took to the low branches. I could at least maintain a watch and alert them to attack. I didn’t have to wait long. The white flame came, and in force, probably sensing the disturbance of the temple.

  I waited, hoping the first glow would pass overhead, looking much like a shooting-night-skyflame. But one of the hairless ones cried out. The flame stopped, emitting a shrieking sound, and darted towards us. I started shouting to wake everyone that wasn’t already jumping to their feet and grabbing their bangsticks.

  The first bang popped. The servant firing it fell backwards, knocked to the ground by a fast moving flame hurtling along the path. The light-being dimmed, looking much the same as a hairless one, smiling over the prone servant. A crooked grin spread across the servant’s face, and he began to hoot, sounding more like a poor impersonation of my tribe than the hairless speech. The monster plunged a blade through the servant’s eye hole.

  A second bangstick servant dodged a fastlight-being. The fastlight skidded to a stop on the path, tearing up the ground growth. Stopped, it looked exactly the same as the other. It grinned before shining into a bright smear back towards the servant, who fired his bangstick wide, tearing leaves from the tree to my right.

  The attacker above us came plummeting through the canopy towards the king’s firstservant. The servant shrieked and pulled out a one-hand bangstick. This fired six small bangs, up into the creature, which dissolved into white fleshy bits raining down onto the firstservant.

  I leapt to help the servant who nearly hit me by mistake. He was now wielding his bangstick like a club in front of him, which I judged to be a better idea. With the attacker distracted guessing the timing on the club, I jumped onto the monster’s back, grabbing its wrist and forcing its own blade into its chest. The light being melted into white light the w
ay they do when they’re destroyed, but it was too much for the servant with the bangstick club who started grinning and laughing, his mind destroyed. He fell to his knees.

  The last of the light creatures fled, a fast white smear leaving my vision blurred. The king and his first servant seemed as stunned as the laughing man. I had to grab the hand of the king to get them moving again.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  It pains me to recall the encounter in the island’s jungle. My mind recoils and does its best to protect me from the memory of our monstrous attackers. On our run through the dark I might have convinced myself that I had dreamt it, were it not for our missing comrade and the terrible laughter and stare on the young seaman we had to help carry back to the ship. And that our guide, the ape, now carried one of the monster’s knives in its hand.

  This last fact troubled me greatly, until we arrived at the beach in front of the lagoon where the HMS Kestrel was anchored. The reports of rifle fire told me before I could see that our ship was under attack by the same creatures that fell upon us in the forest. The brave beast, our guide, was first into the landing boat to return to the ship and fight off our attackers.

  Myself and the naturalist had to do the rowing. True to his function in the jungle, our guide stood at the bow, whereas the poor, mad seaman remained seated in the aft.

  By the time we reached the ship the rifle fire had died down to sporadic shots. All hopes that this was due to the attack having been repelled faded as we climbed the ratlines and were met by a sound as unworldly and malevolent as the horrible visage of the monsters themselves. Though I understood none of their foul language, I did discern that it must have been some sort of chant, given the repetition and rhythm of the terrible droning.

  We made the deck to find five of the light creatures standing in a ring. Light shone from their gaze, shining up towards the stars. Something moved beneath the water behind the Kestrel. Something vast and huge, displacing greater volume than Her Majesty’s ship. The ape pointed towards the water and then pointed back to the chanting creatures of light on the deck. Without speaking, I understood at once, and moved forward with my revolver, firing into the back of the closest star-man demon. It took all six shots, but the fiend fell into pieces on the deck.

  The remaining four creatures backed into a line at the aft of the ship. They stood shoulder to shoulder. A hissing sound came over the sounds of their chants and the creatures melded into one vast light, two dimensional, flat. To the sides of the amalgam, it was night. Within, the lagoon was lit as if by the sun. To the left or right, the sea was calm. In the bright center the sea bubbled. Six enormous tentacles, each as large as the trunk of tall oak, leapt from the lagoon, protruding through the vision the light creature amalgam created, as if escaping the canvas of a mad man’s painting, and thrashing about on our deck.

  I dropped to my knees fumbling with the bullets for my revolver. The creature’s enormous head broke the top of the waves from the center of the vision brought to us by the amalgamated light creature.

  Ashamed of my own inaction I looked to our naturalist, but he merely dropped to the deck beside me, babbling, crying out for his mother. Only our guide maintained his deportment, moving past me to my left. I caught but a flash of it out of the corner of my eye, through my own tears of fear and lament. The ape reared back and flung the monster’s knife into the flat amalgamated creature, ripping open a tear as if a sheet of canvas. What happened next I am unable to say. It was as though two realities existed before me and as the one tore open and destroyed itself, some portion of my memory, or perhaps my imagined memory, was destroyed with it.

  I do know that when my memory began anew, I felt numb, like a patient suffering shock. With the help of several survivors we managed to get the ship underway and headed towards Thursday Island.

  On the way we dropped anchor once. Our guide pointed at a nearby island. Having grown accustomed to following his directions, we pulled the ship towards the small peninsula at the southern end. Seeing several apes of the same hair color and size as our friend, I guessed his purpose. The naturalist and I took him in the rowboat to the beach. We watched him, reunited with what I assumed to be his family. I wished that I could convey the gratitude I felt towards the beast. I wondered about the horrors he had saved us from. Were we truly safe? It was then that I at last understood our guide’s purpose. Saving us was just the first half. The other was that we would bring the knowledge we’d gained, back to the world of man, that our guide was passing the torch as protector, and that protecting the world from the monsters we’d witnessed would be our responsibility from here on out.

  ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

  Ian Welke (The Coaling Station) is a genre writer living in Long Beach, California. An affiliate member of the HWA, his short stories have appeared in Big Pulp: Interrogate My Heart Instead, KZine, and the Alt-Hist anthology Zombie Jesus and Other True Stories. His first novella, The Whisperer in Dissonance, is coming soon from Omnium Gatherum Media.

  (back to table of contents)

  ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

  UNABASHEDLY, EDUARDO.

  by Julie Mark Cohen

  Should Dates Be Left in History?

  A Terran creature trotted out of the transporter-like pod. “¿Dónde estoy?” He clutched his tin cup and hastily clenched his other hand. “¿Es esto me va a matar? Lea las palmas!”

  “Here.” Lucinda-Lucretia-Louise dropped a universal translator into his cup and waved her wing, attempting to waft words from his mouth. “Say again, please.”

  He extended an arm, testing his jacket’s seams. “Is this gonna kill me? Read my palms!” He hesitated, then thrust his hand forward, unfurling his fingers, revealing shreds from a Terran newspaper.

  Lucinda-Lucretia-Louise quickly scanned them in her multi-function translator. “Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 1898. Valentine’s Day? Meaningless, I’m sure.” She smirked. “But, I did it! I’m the first one!!” She peered over his shoulder at a chart of Terran mammals. “Are you a Terran monkey?”

  “Terran? Not sure. I’m a white-faced capuchin, species Cebus capucinus. My parents named me ‘Eduardo,’ but the man with the hand organ calls me ‘Nico’.” Alternating between propping himself against a desk leg to balance on his legs and scratching himself, he said, “Where am I?”

  “Well, Eduardo, you’re on MoxAT-TAxoM, a planet far away from Earth in a future time.” She puffed out her frilly-frock-clad chest. “I brought you here.”

  “Doesn’t make sense. Three years ago, I read H.G. Wells’ book, The Time Machine. Pure unadulterated fiction. Skimble-skamble!”

  “I read it, too. Amusing tale,” she said, glancing at the computer hardware she had modified. “You’re my Time Traveler.”

  “I can’t be.” He tentatively tip-toed around her, ogling. “What are you? What’s your name?”

  “Anthropologists know little about my species, but we’re intelligent and uniquely beautiful.” She swiveled her six iridescent eyes under the room light and displayed her hard mandibles. “I’m Dr. Lucinda-Lucretia-Louise, laboratory technician in the Saturnalia Laboratory in the Et Alia Research Complex.”

  “You’re an educated woman? I long for such companionship.” Eduardo tipped his cap and bowed. “May I call you L-3?”

  “Yes.” L-3 flitted her half dozen eyelids, flirting, her feathers fluffing.

  “I’d guess we’re about the same age, seasoned, but not old. Will you be my date, my Valentine? My sweetheart?”

  L-3 thought, What do I do? I don’t want to send him back. But, should I?

  Ascent in a Scratch of Time

  Eduardo drew a long green feather along his nostrils. That Lucinda-Lucretia-Louise is gorgeous, intelligent, and smells sooo good. He stabbed the quill into the blanket draped over a desk chair.

  “Ouch!” The blanket pushed aside a small computing device, re-folded itself, settling at the edge of the seat.

  “What—Who are you?” He squinted, removed his red and black pillbox cap, and pick
ed two lice off his greying head.

  “Felicia Feinseam, sentient blankette and mathematician.” She moved away from him, tightening her folds.

  “Another educated woman?”

  “I assume you’ve met Lucinda-Lucretia-Louise?”

  Eduardo salivated, then wiped the drool with the back of his hand.

  “How crude. Who are—What are you?”

  “A white-faced capuchin monkey.”

  “A what?” She fanned four of her mitts in front of her noses. “You stink.”

  “I’m sorry.” Eduardo unbuttoned the brass fasteners on his red jacket, removed his arms from its long sleeves, and tossed it across the room. “Wool. Must’ve gotten wet travelling here.”

  Bunched against the back of the chair, reviewing capuchin monkey data on her computer monitor, Felicia said, “From where do you hail?”

  “Brooklyn.”

  She re-engaged her computer and tapped several keys. “I can’t find that planet.”

  “Planet Earth.”

  “South America?”

  “No.”

  “I found Brooklyn. It’s north of New Orleans.”

  “I guess,” he said, flicking several more lice off of his matted chest fur.

  “Watch what you’re doing,” she said, brushing herself off. “Our Dr. Seyfert loves New Orleans. It’s our Terran reference point. You still stink.” She glanced at his black woolen knickers and yellow suspenders.

  “I’m not taking my pants off in front of you.”

  “Well, go take a shower.” She extended herself so that one of her mitts reached the counter and removed a small rectangular prism. “Here, take this. It’s sodium hydroxide and vegetable fat.”

  “Soap?”