The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine (12 page)

At the bottom of the ramp, he
fell, knees mashing through the moss to the rocks beneath. The wind filled his
hearing and he strained for some hint of Cody. To his right, a faint creak of
leather skipped through the space in the breeze. Penn got to his feet and
staggered toward it. He cursed every time his weight came down on his right
foot. It threatened to fold under him.

“Cody?”

She huffed, not a bark, but a
warning. She was more to his left. He followed the sound, sniffing.

“What’s the matter, lady?” He
inhaled deeply, trying to catch a whiff of where she was. The stench of the
thing burned his nostrils. His bowels contracted as slow understanding seeped
down. She was afraid of him. He smelled like the thing and he had hit her.
Kicked her even. No wonder she wouldn’t come. He’d told her to stay away from
him.

The ground gave way. His ankle
exploded with fresh pain and Penn pitched forward. The land rolled him over,
carrying him down a shallow slope. He stopped on his back. For a moment, the
wind did not fill his ears with its rush.

Beyond the shelter of the small
hollow, Penn heard a hissing like a thousand fingers scraping across steel.
Another one. Why had he thought that there would only be one on the planet? His
heart kicked wildly at his ribs. He had to get back to the airlock. He could
hide in there until help came.

Except—the fall. He’d gotten
turned around. He didn’t know where the ship was.

Penn sat up carefully, and the
hissing disappeared into the rush of wind. The thing could be anywhere.

Sinking back down so he could
hear again, Penn shivered. The hissing was louder. Penn sniffed the air,
searching for the scent of dog. He whispered, “Cody? On duty. On duty...”

The Limb Knitter

Steven Francis Murphy

With a spade in one hand and a
burlap sack in the other, the Limb Knitter dug for trench tubers in the Beaten
Zone as the early morning rain gave way to a foggy Western dawn. Down on her
belly in the mud between the Invaders to her South and Forces Velaysia to her
North, she found the pickings pretty slim. She gave up poking at the mud for a
moment and looked toward her lines.

Spring filled the lower
elevations on the southern face of the Canarus Ranges, sowing the valleys and
slopes behind the trenches in emerald foliage. From the gates of the mountain
redoubts of Forces Velaysia, the Limb Knitter caught sight of the Brigades
Invalid, on the march with their machines to stiffen the mere flesh and bone
Frontists of the Brigades Defender along the Southern Front. Mixed in amid the
rusty, black bipeds were the Invalid Harvesters, their bodies whitewashed to
prevent friendly fire and their backs burdened with empty harvest drums.

No more trench tubers
for a while
,
the Knitter told herself. Her two stomachs rumbled in agreement. She was sick
of digging for the tasteless, decayed bits anyway.

The Knitter could see all of
this through the morning fog, but her true prey, Frontist Delauchen Severis was
only human. Shivering under his poncho, he could see no further than the insectile,
maggot-blown corpses of crucified Invaders on the reserve slope of the
trenches.

You look miserable,
Delauchen,
the
Limb Knitter thought.

He was jittery too. The Limb
Knitter’s prey jumped every time he heard her spade bite into the soil.

She watched him collect his
weapon and begin the long crawl out of the Beaten Zone toward the forward
trenches of the Southern Front. The Knitter put her spade away, still hungry,
and crawled behind him, slow and steady.

Only when he was safe in the
flooded trenches did he remove his rusty brain bucket and scratch madly at his
greasy, matted hair. The Limb Knitter eased up to the trench with envy deep in
her chest. She could just hear their conversation.

“Morning, grouch,” his conflict
spouse, Thalia Vetraslev said. She gave him a peck on the lips. “See anything
out there?”

“No,” he said, avoiding her
eyes, as was his nature. “Not a damned thing. Just thought I heard some
Knitters digging about.”

“I’ll get chow,” the Knitter
heard Thalia say.

Delauchen started to snore
while still on his feet.

Thalia thumped him in the
shoulder. “Hey, did you hear me, Delauchen? I’m going for chow.”

He jerked awake, “Yes, sorry. I
think I need sleep more than food.”

“You’ll want your tea,” she
said. “I know how you are.”

It must be nice to have
someone,
the
Knitter thought. She watched Thalia head eastward to join a line of male and
female Frontists headed for the bombproof kitchens. Thalia was big-boned and
had wide hips which formed her short, pear-shaped frame. When the Frontist waved
back at Delauchen, it was possible to see the vanilla-scented ointment that
covered the albino patches of skin on the right side of her face.

The Knitter’s Mark.

Delauchen
waved back to Thalia and plopped himself down on a pinewood ammo box. Her peers
avoided her and others with the same albino patches as if they might catch
something. It was just a lack of melanin that caused the discoloration. The
Master Knitter still hadn’t solved that problem. But it didn’t matter if they
stayed away from the likes of her.

Thing is, Knitter’s Mark or
not, Delauchen didn’t let anyone get too close to him either.

When he was sure she was out of
sight, Delauchen reached for a tar canvas satchel and pulled out a worn spiral
pad of rice paper. He settled into his spot, kicking loose a few rocks, which
rolled down into a brackish shell hole.

Draw something
beautiful
,
the Knitter thought, sliding forward a bit closer.

Here is why the Knitter waited
all night: she enjoyed this part the most, the mornings when Delauchen would
draw something. Maybe he would sketch a collection of empty ration canisters or
barring that, he might do his dirty left hand again. Sometimes, as a joke, he
liked to hold his thumb out and sketch that. And every so often, on good
mornings when both were in high spirits, Thalia would let Delauchen sketch her
face in the hopes that perhaps she could finally catch those evasive brown eyes
of his.

The Limb Knitter eased up
closer still, almost to the point where the top of her slouch hat was visible.
But Delauchen didn’t pick up a charcoal stick or turn to a smooth, crème sheet
of nude paper. Instead, he turned to an old sketch and stared at it.

No,
she thought.
Draw
something. You don’t have much time.
The rank, randy scent of the Invaders
grew in the hours before an attack. It was enough to make the Knitter gag.
Humans were spared due to their own limited senses, perhaps for the better, or
maybe for the worse.

The Knitter moved closer,
shifting loose a few bits of dirt and rock.

Charcoal rubbings and lines
gave the woman in the sketch a pudgy nose. Dark curls brushed against her bare
shoulders, pulled back to show off her ears. Sharp dimples flanked her
close-lipped smile. Her eyebrows were feather-fine yet overemphasized above a
pair of flat, almond-shaped eyes.

One look at those imperfect
eyes was all it took for the sobs to come in shoulder racking bursts. If the
other Frontists noticed his pain, they left him be, busied with the tasks of
getting on in the trenches for another day.

The Knitter brought out a gold
plated oval locket and opened it. Inside, Delauchen looked back at her from the
small heliotype image. He appeared startled, frightened, but it was the only
time he had ever made eye contact with her, through the heliotype maker.

The Knitter sighed.
You
never change, Delauchen.

The soil beneath her heavy
frame shifted and dumped the Limb Knitter down into the puddle next to
Delauchen’s boot.

Whoever threw something into
the shell hole managed to do so in such a way that it splattered urine-fouled water
all over Delauchen. A white haze fell over him when he saw his sketch of Yvette
Mobori, preserved for two years since her death, was soaked with mud and feces.
He threw the pad down and stood up, looking for the jackass that had thrown the
rock into the puddle.

“Who did it this time?” The
telltale smirk always gave someone away, or at least a cluster of Frontists,
but there were only pale, fearful faces instead. Delauchen’s peers skittered,
cowered and backed away, staring at something behind him.

Maybe I’ve finally
beaten enough sense into them
,
he thought.

Water sloshed around in the
shell hole behind Delauchen. He turned to see.

An overcoat patched in places
with tar canvas and burlap rose from the muck, first to its knees, then one leg
at a time, until it stood at a full two meters. It bent over to retrieve its
slouch hat, floating on the surface, and replaced it upon its
burlap-bag-covered head. Through two ragged holes, its yellow eyes watched
Delauchen Severis with great care.

“Look at this!” Delauchen
pointed at his ruined pad and forgot that he was supposed to be afraid of the
Limb Knitter. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

The Limb Knitter held its
jointed, ceramic hands out, palms up, cowering ever so slightly.

He retrieved the pad, stepped
forward and held it up. When he did, he noticed a tarnished, gold-plated oval
locket around the Knitter’s neck. It was still open and in it, he saw a
heliotype of himself staring back.

Delauchen knew who it belonged
to and she was supposed to be dead.

He pointed at the locket.
“Where did you get that, you freak?”

The Knitter took another step
back. It stumbled on something in the hole, almost falling back into the muck.
Its robe quivered and rippled along the torso, which made the patched fabric
flap back and forth.

He thrust the sketchpad at the
Knitter. “You recognize her, don’t you? Where is she?”

The Knitter’s shoulders heaved
and shook. It made a high pitched
scraping
sound akin to nails being dragged down a slate board in a le
cture hall.
Other Frontists scrambled into their bomb-proofs, not sure what would come next
when the Knitter fell to its knees, wringing its hands. The ceramic fingers
tinkled like a china tea set, the scraping sound grew louder and began to
warble.

“Take a good look!” He threw
his pad at the Knitter. It landed on the ground at the edge of the puddle. “Why
don’t you answer me? Where is she?”

“Step back from that thing!”
Out of breath, Thalia took Delauchen by the shoulders and made eye contact with
him. “Look at me. No, at me, Delauchen. Sit down over there and take a deep
breath. Okay?”

He nodded numbly, his anger
spent, and did as he was told.

Thalia murmured words to the
effect that the Limb Knitter had best leave and rejoined Delauchen on her own
ammo crate. A whining sound in the background made it hard to hear her. She
dropped the ruined sketch pad at Delauchen’s muddy brogans and sighed.

“I’m not sure,” she said, “but
I think you made it cry.”

Microturbines heralded the
arrival of a pair of Invalid machines, their two-meter tall bodies slid down
into the trenches, bringing one of the crucified Invader’s corpses down with
them. Thalia and Delauchen watched the machines watch them before they turned
and made their way down the trench to the West. Silver buzz saws on the
whitewashed machine caught the sunlight with a flash before they rounded a turn
in the trench and moved out of sight.

Delauchen pulled Thalia’s hand,
her Knitter hand, to his lips and kissed the albino skin. She squeezed back,
but her right wasn’t as strong as her left. He tried to look into Thalia’s
eyes. It was hard, not because one was red and the other was blue. It was hard
to open himself up, to get his head up and look at her, really look at her.

Once the whining turbines faded
away, he let go of her hand.

Thalia kicked Delauchen’s foot.
“Two years we’ve been together and you still keep things from me.”

“Sorry,” Delauchen said. He put
the pad aside, out of Thalia’s sight. He hoped the sun would dry out the pages
enough for him to salvage something.

“Why? I’ve got a fairly thick
skin. I think I can face her.”

“She’s dead, Thalia.” He
shrugged. Now that he had seen the locket, he wasn’t quite so sure. He
remembered buying that locket at a sutler wagon for Yvette on their first visit
to Kalentine Orchards on the northern slopes three years ago.

“I know that,” Thalia said.

“Then why worry about it?”

Thalia fixed him with a stare.
“Because you still love her.”

He nudged a bit of mud next to
his brogans; the heel was coming loose again. It was not an accusation, he realized,
looking at his brogans. It was a fact.

“Can’t you say that about your
last battle spouse?” Delauchen asked. “Don’t you get angry that the Knitters
didn’t save him? It would be far better than ending up in one of those
machines.”