Written for the Epic Tales from Beautiful Minds Anthology by Ooorah/ LayethTheSmackDown

1. WHEN THE SPACECRAFT split apart, no one from Earth knew. From afar it was a handful of glitter and white rain, turning orange in the atmosphere, burning like candle flames on its way down to a new ground. And when the bulk of it collided in the sand, geysers fanning on either side as it plowed a few hundred feet before rocking to a stop, no one on Earth cared.

Twigs ignited. Dry bushes caught fire. The burnt casing of the spacecraft smoked in a dirt cradle, forming a cloud on the horizon. Scales fell off its heaving sides—scorched white tiles that couldn't hold their grip—and under the shadow of the remaining, black-tipped wing, someone stirred.

2. LIEUTENANT DELA LEWIS opened her eyes.

"Where's the ocean?" she said, staring at a flatland that didn't make sense. The warm sand pressed beneath her cheek reminded her of summer seasides at age seven: the waves eating her toes, her chubby fingers swishing through seafoam for shells. The mystery of the ocean was gray to Lewis, never blue. The world she saw now was pink. From the blush-sky blended softly on the edges, to a desert speckled in coral rocks—the world spilled endlessly in all directions, the way Mexico did on a bad day.

Lewis lifted her head. Sand lodged inside her helmet, cradling her neck before slipping inside of her pressure suit. The visor had shattered, letting the air in too. Fumbling with the neck ring, Lewis unsnapped her helmet and took it off, discarding it beside her like a shiny lampshade.

"Nel! Tony!"

She found her feet and hobbled a step, then another. She didn't feel pain. She didn't even know if she was bleeding. Her thoughts pinged off a satellite of jumbled memories. Fire. That was what she remembered the most. Loose tubes trailed after her; she hadn't had the time to affix her suit properly. On the nose of the orbiter, the word Oasis disappeared into the burnt tiles. Slowly, Lewis climbed the sand that was pitched against the hull and reached the access hatch. The door hung open like a broken jaw.

"Virgil?"

"Freddie?"

"Adam?"

The wind was hollow in her ears, sweeping pink sand crystals into any crevice it could. Grasping a melted handle, Lewis hauled herself up into the spacecraft. The darkness was absolute, and she tripped once on an overturned cargo crate, ascending the ladder by touch to poke her head and shoulders into the flight deck.

The shuttle smelled of burnt hair.

"Virgil?"

Here, the darkness graduated to the gray Lewis knew so well, and in the soft light peeking in from a hole in the ceiling, she could see: the cold dashboard, the seats, the burst wires that scratched at her shoulders like wild, alien, vines. Captain John Virgil remained strapped into his pilot's seat. Lewis could see his arm from where she stood, sprawled, knuckles resting on the floor, the mission patch visible against the dingy white suit.

"Johnny!" Lewis threw her body against another seat that had dislodged in the crash. It moved enough to squeeze by, and she did, her foot colliding with a helmet on the floor.

The helmet rocked in place, and she caught it in her hands, lifting it up to a crack in the toasted front window. The weight of it surprised her. She held it a second longer, unsure, and then something fell out of the bottom, striking off her knee.

"Shit!" Lewis kicked with her foot, batting Captain John Virgil's head into a corner. His face rolled over on one cheek, staring blankly into the cockpit shadows. She turned. Her elbow caught the rest of his body, trapped, in the restraints, blood sticky on the buckle. Lewis stumbled through the wreckage and fell backward down the ladder, landing with an oomph on the inside of the two broken hatch doors.

Lewis coughed. The air was thin, and the fall had evicted what little she could breathe from her body without warning. Her heart slapped about in her chest; her mouth moved fishlike. Slowly, her wits returned. Her arms and legs unfroze. And the air that went into her lungs didn't hurt her anymore, swirling around once before escaping through her nose.

Peeling off her back, Lewis crawled out of the orbiter.

FREDDIE HURT LOST her balance and landed hard on her backside. The rocks were small and porous as was her first observation, but they still bruised, even as they crushed beneath her, and despite the security against the vacuum of space, her pressure suit wasn't made for football tackles. Lieutenant Dela Lewis had done the tackling, scrambling out of Oasis's open hatch on all fours and slamming into her. Lewis's complexion was pale-brown. There was blood on her right cheek and a brilliant red swipe along her left leg. Something in her movements disquieted Freddie.

Lewis was scared.

"Is it safe to breathe?" Freddie said into her microphone. The feedback shriveled in her ear, and she winced.

Freddie disconnected her helmet and pulled the soft cap off her head. The air squeezed her chest and smelled like dead roses. She managed to draw a short breath as Lewis descended on her again, this time throwing an arm around her neck for a rough hug. Caught off guard, Freddie waited for the hug to end, and when it didn't, she patted Lewis's shoulder and pried herself free.

"Are you alright, Lieutenant? You've got glass in your face."

Lewis sat back, one leg cocked beneath her. "I should be asking you, Freddie. Thank God you're okay." She worked at her wrist cuffs until a glove came off and touched her wounded cheek with shaky fingers.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Freddie said.

A few bruises and a sore tailbone.

"But you aren't," she added.

"My helmet shattered."

"I can see that, I'll get the medkit."

Freddie stood, dusting herself off out of habit. She didn't get two steps toward the Oasis when Lewis grabbed her pants leg.

"Don't go up to the flight deck."

"I have to. The kit is in there."

"Captain Virgil is dead."

Freddie swallowed, "Adam...?"

"He's not inside, and I don't know where Nel is. Or Tony."

Freddie didn't know where they were, either. She'd woken not too long ago, half-cocooned in a parachute with a mile of strange desert between her and the column of smoke standing like a signpost in the distance. Finding Lewis alive had given her hope. But now, as she pushed her head up into the flight deck, and her eyes met Virgil's glossy stare, that hope snuffed out like a spent match. She located the medkit on the wall and stopped. Something made her walk the few steps to Virgil's decapitated body. Setting the medkit down, she approached the stump of his grizzled neck and carefully peeled his dog tags out of hiding.

Outside, Freddie offered them to Lewis.

"What do I want these for?" Lewis asked, holding the ball chain in her fist as the tags dangled in the breeze. Congealed blood clung to the stamped letters like strawberry jam.

"I figured his family back in Ohio might want them."

"We're not going back," Lewis tossed the tags.

Freddie bit her lower lip and concentrated on tweezing the plastic shards from Lewis's face. "Don't say that."

"It's true. We're classified as an unmanned mission. No one's looking for us. No one's coming to get us."

"Stop, or I'll poke your eye out."

They sat in silence under the wing, listening to the sand rattle on the shuttle's hard skin. Lewis cupped a protective hand around her eye as Freddie sprayed antiseptic on Lewis's wounded cheek.

"You don't need stitches, that's a miracle," Freddie said, moving a tray inside the red medical kit box. Underneath, a handgun lay tucked in bed, blanketed in gauze. Freddie touched the chunky handle and glanced at Lewis.

"Where the hell are we?" Lewis sighed looking everywhere but at Freddie. Freddie hid the handgun behind her and snapped the medkit closed.

"Mars," she said.

Lewis wrinkled her nose, "This doesn't look like Mars."

"It sure the fuck ain't Kansas."

"It's not Mexico, either."

"Why would it be Mexico?"

"Did you hear that?"

"What?"

"Shhhh, listen."

Freddie paused. She was about to say no when the wind lulled.

"That's one of our boys," Lewis said, standing and resting a hand on the inclined wing.

"Where's it coming from?" Freddie followed Lewis toward the nose of the Oasis; an arm tucked behind her back.

They waited by the nose and listened. The faint "help" ghosted again across a sea of stoic sediment in the shades of a cosmetic counter. Freddie's skin prickled. Someone else had survived, and it had to be Adam. Dying wasn't in his wheelhouse.

"That way," Lewis pointed at a spine of pinkish rocks settled into the ground like the bones of a long-dead animal. "Grab the medkit, we might need it," she said and ran.

Freddie stepped after her, tethered to Lewis and pulled by the cry on the wind, but training forced her to reconsider, and she ducked under the wing again, opening the medkit to replace the handgun she'd kept shielded behind her back. Snatching up the medkit by the handle, Freddie sprinted toward the rocks.

MAJOR TONY BIGGS knew the mission was a wash when the first booster caught fire. By the time he opened his eyes to darkness, he'd thought he was dead.

But he could feel too much to be dead: the oppressing weight surrounding him, the gritty ground beneath his chest, the condensation of breath on his face. He could move every part of his body except for his right leg. Something had him pinned, below the knee, and it didn't pain, but it worried.

"Don't taunt the fear demon," he said aloud and made himself stop pulling.

A grayish light fuzzed the darkness and Biggs hunted for its source. Here, what rubble cowed him and kept him trapped, didn't fully touch the ground, and a sliver of light slipped in through the crack. He scraped his fingers along it, widening the hole like a dog, digging until he could see outside.

"Christ! Lane," his raspy voice echoed in his helmet. Captain Lionel Lane lay on his belly within Biggs's reach. He was unconscious, blood leaking from a slice hidden somewhere in his crew cut hair. He was without a helmet, but dust stirred under his mouth every time he exhaled through his nose, the off-color alkaline stark on his black skin.

"Time to get up, buddy," Biggs started to wiggle his hand through the gap, but a muffled thump from beyond his shell made him wait.

Voices he couldn't recognize spoke above him. He drew back, keeping his eyes on the captain. Each word he heard, put him in a fouler mood, his brain trying to unscramble a language he couldn't understand. The sound of it was harsh and raised the hair on his sweaty neck. It was all he could do not to pull at his leg again, flushed with the sudden need to run.

Three sets of heavy footsteps and a swish, swish like a dog's tail on the hardwood floor. Biggs held his breath as a set of cracked, gummy, boots appeared beside Lane. A hand like the alligator-man Biggs had witnessed at the circus, grabbed Lane by a foot. Biggs fumbled for the velcro holster on his leg, watching Lane's limp body drag backward through the sand. The gun seemed to shrink in his palms, and Biggs gripped it tight so as not to drop it, pointing the business end at the gap he'd dug. It was foolish. There was nothing to aim at unless he planned to put a bullet in Adam's head. With Lane out of view, Biggs could see the boy sprawled there, skin ash-colored, asleep or dead, his arm twisted at an angle that didn't look good.

Another pair of boots.

Another giant hand.

Adam disappeared.

There was a tail this time. Not a dog's tail, but a fat, spiny, lizard one that combed the ground beneath the hem of a long duster coat. The tail was orange too, same as the hand, and streaked all over in thick, flaky clay.

Biggs leaned on his elbows, gun at the ready. He expected to be discovered at any second and dragged off like a full feed sack. Sweat beaded on his brow. Blinking pushed his lids together and tore them apart like glued paper. It was getting harder and harder to breathe inside his helmet.

Thinking of Lane, Biggs unsnapped his helmet and inhaled fresh air.

There was a shy wind blowing, and it stripped his nerves into flayed wires. He listened under the whisper for signs of whatever it was that had picked up Lane and Adam like roadkill. But he was alone. And he could feel it. The same way he felt the pain begin to encapsulate his ankle, slow at first, radiating upward in rays, warming his bones in an unfriendly manner.

Lewis and Virgil had to be somewhere. Not everyone could be dead. Not the company archeologist, Freddie. Biggs had spent one too many hours in the velvet nothing of space, cradled in a webbed hammock, contemplating her everything from top to bottom. Christ, he hoped she hadn't died, not before he had the chance to hit a home run.

Flicking the safety on, Biggs used the grip of his gun to inspect what caged him. From the hollow clunk when he tapped, it was metal. Maybe a piece of a payload door on account of the curve. Digging out from under it would be a waste of energy with no one to help him free his leg.

Biggs called for help.

It only took an hour.

He'd almost given up but then a pair of white knees collided with the sand, and Lieutenant Dela Lewis appeared, bending down to see inside.

"Biggs! Are you okay?"

"Did you see Lane?"

"What? No."

More knees.

"Fuck, Tony. How'd you get in there?"

"Freddie, did you see Adam?"

"No. Did you?"

Biggs exhaled, "I wish I hadn't."

"Are you injured?" Lewis asked. "Answer me that first."

"My damn leg is pinned under this turtle shell. Get me out. I'd rather not be here if they come back."

"They? Who's they?" Lewis said.

"I don't know, but they took Adam and Lane."

"You're making no sense, Biggs. Freddie—" Lewis stopped.

Freddie was on her feet. Biggs watched her boots punch ribs into the sand as she planted her legs apart. There was a clink he recognized.

"Dela," he said, "what's going on? Dela?"

LEWIS LOOKED UP at Freddie, squinting against the backlight that set Freddie's hair on fire.

"What are you doing?"

Where did you get a gun?

Freddie didn't move; her arms locked at the elbows, the weapon extended in front of her. "We've got company."

"Dela—"

Lewis shushed Biggs and stood up. "Where's your anthropology training? Put the gun away."

"I study dead people," Freddie said. "And they're not even people."

What crossed the desert toward them wasn't people. Not in the definition Lewis had learned in grade school. They looked humanoid, two arms, two legs, and one head as far as she could see —but their skin was pearl and mercury and their hair gossamer, floating around and behind them alive and curious. Lewis counted seven beings on horseback of all things. The horses were barrel-bellied and shaggy despite the warm weather—hardy, unlike their slight riders. Between the last two, secured with ropes, walked an altogether different sort of creature. A monstrosity of abject parts, lizard and man, dressed in a coat and vest and boots four times the size Lewis was sure even Biggs wore.

Its face was covered by a gouged metal plate.

None of the natives carried anything more imposing than a sword.

"Lower your weapon, Hurt," Lewis said to Freddie, moving a careful hand to rest it on Freddie's arm. "That's an order."

"You can't give me orders."

"I just did. Do it, or I will take you down myself."

Freddie's mouth pinched, her brow bunched together. "Fuck," she said at last and passed the gun into Lewis's asking hand. "You better be fucking right about this, Lieutenant."

Lewis flipped the safety, "I am."

Nothing in life is to be feared...That was what Abuela had told her when she was a little girl of six or seven. Tiny fingers sifting through the sea. Examining the unusual with concerned, wide eyes. "Remember," her grandmother had said, "nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

Lewis felt she owed the old lady a drink. "Don't lose your head, Hurt."

"A bit too soon for that joke, isn't it?" Freddie said.

Lewis faced forward, "Cool your jets. We can't afford to anger the natives."

"Don't call me Hurt."

"What's happening?" Biggs muffled voice asked.

"Natives are coming," Lewis said.

The line of riders came to a halt. One detached from the rest and walked a few strides further to linger, waiting, just beyond the wreckage that trapped Biggs. Strands of the Oasis were scattered in a half-moon radius. Sooty boulders that didn't belong. The wind tussled the horse's mane and tail, beckoning.

"Is it those things that took Lane and Adam?" Biggs said.

"Let me have a weapon," Freddie said.

Lewis said, "Looks like the leader wants a talk," and held the gun in the air to be seen, before laying it atop the torn payload door. "No one touches that."

Each step brought further detail to the rider that had dismounted and now crouched to the side of a brown horse, holding a loose rein, watching. At a close distance, Lewis noted the rider was female. Her breasts tucked into an ebony corset, her silvery arms draped over trousered knees. Her white hair blanketed her bared shoulders, the ends turning up in the breeze.

"As-salaam alaikum," the female said. Her fine-boned face was speckled in something tar-like and crusty. Tiny incisors peeked out from behind her bottom lip, set against her upper like tusks.

Lewis raised her hand in greeting, "You speak Arabic?"

"Eng-lish," she said. At her full height, she was no more than five feet, the top of her head even with Lewis's shoulder. "I am Siva'n Fee. Captain Deeb teach me your words. Are you here for him?"

"Captain Deeb? No—"

"He is dead."

Lewis sucked in a breath and let it out. She knew Captain Deeb was dead. He had already died seven years ago on Earth, an accident with a fighter jet during a training exercise over the Gulf. So who was this Siva'n Fee talking about?

Lewis put her hand on her chest. "My name is Dela Lewis."

"You are a captain too, yes?" Siva'n Fee asked. Her thin fingers grazed her bottom lip, thoughtful. Her eyes fixed on Lewis's arm.

Lewis glanced down and pointed to the mission patch on her sleeve. "Did Captain Deeb wear one of these?"

Siva'n Fee approached, her horse trudging behind. She swept a hand toward the sky and brought it back again, "From the stars," she said and touched the patch.

A loud pop startled Lewis. Sand spat up from the ground. The horse reared.

Lewis spun around. Freddie Hurt held the gun in both hands. The freckles on her face popped, her white skin had gone even paler. "Goddamnit, Freddie!" Lewis turned back just as quick to see Siva'n Fee draw a sword from the sheath on her back.

The other riders started forward, spears and swords scavenged from metal parts, bristled.

"Stop, stop, stop!" Lewis cried, arms braced between two parties. "We're friends. Friends. Friends! Freddie for god sakes put the gun DOWN."

Siva'n Fee raised her sword, and the riders halted. The horses stomped their stocky legs. "You from the stars. You come with me."

"Not without my crew."

3. "I'VE GOT A bad feeling about this." Biggs growled. "That thing is eyeballing me. I don't like it."

"Where?" Freddie asked pushing in beside him at the window. They'd removed their spacesuits, the black spandex long-johns underneath stank of musty ice from the cooling tubes. She brushed his side, ducking to look out the crude plaster opening.

"You can't even see its eyes," she said. "Is that a mask? Did that thing take Adam? What's all over its coat?"

Biggs thudded off a wood bench and hobbled to sit on the dirt floor, his back supported by the wall. His calf stung. No cut, a bruise. The outer lining of his EVA had saved him. Crumbling like an eggshell but blocking the full force of the metal that had pinned his leg in the forgiving sand.

"It looked like him."

Biggs had only seen the feet, but the creature chained up outside of the hut next door was indeed one of THEM. Dusty and scaly and four times the size of a normal human; the ropes that had held him between the horses had been replaced by manacles.

"Glad your fine ass survived, Freds." Biggs changed the subject. Waiting for Lewis to return from wherever the little gray bastards had lured her, put his teeth on edge.

"Couldn't disappoint the Martians," Freddie kicked at the pink dirt.

The hut they were in was guarded.

"Did you notice the Hab when we came in?" she said, crouching to play with the gritty pebbles.

"I'da been blind not to."

The NASA habitat mushroomed at the center of the village. Mud huts dotted around it like children looking for sweet taffy. It was voluminous, glaring white in the setting sun. Domes connected by plastic tunnels, air locked and safe.

Freddie said, "Where are we?"

"Virgil knew," Biggs replied. "He headed the mission. HQ had meetings with him. He had to know."

"Just before we crashed, Adam told me something was wrong."

"Yeah, we were crashing."

"No. He said it wasn't possible."

The door opened. A slice of red sunlight stabbed at Biggs on the floor.

Lewis stood in silhouette for a moment, and then she was inside, and a short guard shut the door again.

"We're in trouble," she said.

"You needed an intergalactic meeting to figure that?" Biggs said.

"What about the Hab?" Freddie asked.

Lewis's brown forehead creased, she bit her lip once before saying, "We're not the first unmanned mission. NASA's sent at least two other teams before us. Siva'n Fee took me inside the habitat. Astronauts have been colonizing for at least six years. James Deeb. The one who died in the plane crash. He headed the first expedition. And the horses? That was them, too."

"NASA'S been breeding horses in space, and no one knew?" Freddie said.

"Not breeding—" Lewis said.

"Clones." Biggs finished. "They all have the same goddamn face markings, didn't you see?"

Freddie glared at him, "No, Tony. I wasn't raised in a barn," she turned to Lewis, "where the hell are we, and what happened to the other teams?"

There was something in the way Lewis was holding her left arm that Biggs noticed. Her palm clenched, a dark liquid leaked between her curled fingers, dripping monotonous into the dust.

"Lewis. You're bleeding."

Lewis pulled up her sleeve. The soft part of her forearm was cut.

Biggs used the wall to stand. "Did those gray bastards do that?"

"No."

Freddie took Lewis's wrist and compressed the wound with the heel of her hand. "Why'd you cut your tracker out?"

"I didn't get to see much of the Hab," Lewis said. "These...aliens...they didn't want me inside too long. But NASA calls this planet, the Red Z, but from the charts it's Mars."

"Mars isn't habitable," Freddie said, swearing softly at the state of Lewis's arm.

"And our shuttle was unmanned," Biggs stated and surveyed his arm. Only a small scar marked the spot where his tracker had been surgically implanted. Somewhere, there was an orbiting satellite mapping his every move. Somewhere, in a computer room back on Earth, a geek with glasses played Etch A Sketch with the information on paper.

"Freds? What did Adam say wasn't possible?"

"The way we lost the engine. He said it wasn't possible."

"They crashed us on purpose," Lewis said. "That beast outside, the ones you saw Biggs, they killed the previous teams. Deeb called them the Bogeymen. The locals won't go near them."

Biggs couldn't blame them.

"NASA needs boots on the ground," Lewis continued.

"What about the thing outside?" Freddie said.

"That Siva'n Fee and her party caught him. They went out to check on a village, and it was razed. They found that one rooting through the remains. The head honchos here seem pissed she brought it back."

"What are they?" Biggs said, remembering the drag marks left by Adam's limp body.

"They hunt people, as near as I can tell. The locals—us—we're their food."

"And clothes," Biggs said. He'd seen what the coat was made out of: shriveled faces, peeled and stitched together like Granny's patchwork quilt.

"Christ." Freddie exhaled. "They've got Adam and Nel."

Lewis nodded, "I know. Siva'n Fee helped me remove the tracker. She's putting it on the Bogey as we speak. We're going to set it loose tonight and follow it home."

"How do we know it belongs to the same ones that took our crew?" Biggs asked.

"It's our only gamble."

"The trackers are useless without the shuttle to triangulate," Freddie said. "And even if it wasn't spread from here to China, it's useless without Adam. Otherwise, we could just ping them."

"True. For long range. But if we use our remote receivers on our suits, we have a better shot at tailing my signal than we do finding the others on a whole planet."

Biggs clapped his hands together once, "It's a plan. I like it."

4. WITH THE SUN gone, the twin moons lit the desert violet. Lewis followed the screen on her spacesuit sleeve. A blue pulse on a black background. Their quarry came to a halt, and she crouched behind a line of pumice boulders.

"He's down there."

Siva'n Fee huddled beside her, a wary hand on the pommel of her sword. "Vill-age," she said.

And it was, of a kind. Beyond the rocks, in a valley, clay buildings with brush roofs, lived half in shadow in between the bonfires that dotted the landscape. Lewis peered through foldable binoculars. The night vision was groggy. Figures moved about, departing from one dark corner to morph with the next. One she noticed, returned again and again to a structure nearest them on the edge of the village. The door was open; light fell out.

"Ten bucks our boys are in there."

"Hand it over," Biggs gestured to see.

"Why there?" Freddie asked.

Biggs lowered the binoculars. "Because that's not a ham hock he's hauling."

Freddie snatched at the binoculars.

Lewis didn't want to look again. Colored vile green, the memory of a humanoid torso divested of arms and legs meat-hooked and slung over a shoulder would be in her mind's eye forever.

"We need to be careful," Lewis said.

"Fuck careful," Freddie hissed. "Adam is in there. We need to go NOW."

"We don't know what we'll find."

"There's nothing here to be understood, Lieutenant," Freddie said. "We need to get them out! I'll fucking do it myself."

"Hurt!"

"Freds!"

Lewis reached over Biggs as he reached out too. Both of their hands closed on empty air—

FREDDIE RAN. Her breaths pinched her heart with tiny fingers as she swished down the sandy hill and dashed across the open ground in a hunch toward the nearest hut. The clay was still warm when she touched it.

Following the curve of the wall, Freddie crept around to the front. Bonfires whipped about like caged dancers, far enough away that she could hide from the flare, but close enough she could hear them cry. On one knee, she peeked in the door.

Table legs. That's what she saw, and fingertips trailing in the dirt. Someone hung upside down.

On all fours, Freddie took a chance and crawled inside the building. Her fingers scrunched the packed dirt, and she tried to breathe shallow on account of an iron stink that twisted her stomach. She crawled toward the large table at the center of the dank room. Something wet dampened her kneecaps.

Hefty footsteps alerted her, and she shimmied underneath the tabletop and lied still.

Big black boots stamped in from outside. Freddie layered her hands over her mouth to silence her breaths. A fat tail, like a gator, swung slowly from side to side. She tried to be small. Tried to go unnoticed. There was whomp whomp sound and a crack like a branch separating. Blood, because she knew it was blood, black in the frazzled light, drizzled in a steady stream over the table's edge.

A cleaved arm dropped, landing in front of her. Freddie clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. The skin as dark and there was a tiny, white, scar on the forearm where a tracker had been implanted.

Captain Lionel Lane.

Freddie shifted and rolled out from under the table. Her shoulder struck the limp hand she'd seen from the door, and she kept going, silent, until she'd wedged herself beneath a second table—this one set against the wall, half-covered in a shredded tarp.

Freddie watched from a distance as the Bogey bent to retrieve the arm. From this side of the room, she could see the rest of Lane's body laid out in his army green boxers, his head was turned toward her. His eyes open. There was a rag in his mouth and ropes on his ankles, but Freddie knew he was alive.

He stared at her.

She shivered. The Bogey exited the room, and she slid out of hiding.

Standing up brought her to face the body hanging from the ceiling. From the back, the ribs and spine looked like a Jurassic butterfly. The skin had been peeled away to reveal the maroons and pinks beneath.

Slowly, the body turned by the chain around its ankles.

Freddie stumbled backward. Her hip struck the side table, the crude knives scattered across the tarp, jostled.

"Adam," Freddie choked.

Her brother's face had purpled. The remaining blood collecting in his cheeks from his upside down position. His organs were gone. From the front, his ribs and belly were a burst chrysalis. A human shell.

Grabbing a knife from behind her, Freddie forced her feet to uproot.

"I'm gonna get you out of here Captain," she said.

Lane followed her with his eyes as she sawed through the ropes that held him. His cut stump drowned in a pool of blood, and she was careful not to bump it.

Freddie had Lane on his feet when the Bogey came through the door.

5. "WHAT DO WE do? What do we do?!"

Biggs leaned over Lewis. Panic smothered his good sense.

Siva'n Fee pulled her sword free and pointed it at Biggs's chest. "Stay," she said.

"It's okay," Lewis motioned for her to go easy. Her own chest felt tight. She turned the dial on the binoculars.

Someone stumbled out of the butcher's building.

Her pulse raced, "Biggs it's Lane."

"What?" Biggs yanked the binoculars from her hand.

"I'm going in."

"No. Your leg will slow us down. Use your gun and lay me some cover fire. Siva'n, you come with me."

Lewis held the gun she'd taken from Freddie and ran down the hill.

Flames roared as she passed between the bonfires. There was a Bogey at her twelve o'clock. She raised the gun to shoot, but Siva'n Fee charged the last yard ahead and threw herself on its broad back. Gripping with her knees, she slit its throat quietly and rode the body to the ground like a wave.

One down.

"Lane, Freddie?" Lewis asked when they reached him. His right arm was missing. The stump a grotesque silhouette.

Dazed, Lane shook his head. "No..."

Lewis's insides crushed together. She slung his good arm over her shoulder and dragged him along.

One monster.

Two.

Each Bogey materialized in the smoke. And once Lewis gun fired, a double tap—a slug in the chest, a wing on a bizarre face mask—more came.

Siva'n cut her way through most of them, a small, double-edged spark.

"Where's Biggs?" Lewis screamed to no one, half dragging Lane up the hill. When they fell through the rock line, they found him: a giant spear in the heart, blood at his mouth.

Lewis grabbed Lane's waist and kept running.

A/N: I had an amazing crew for the #TeamSFHorror. With an overarching meta-story written by the incredible krazydiamond. Seriously, it's one of my favorite pieces that she's written. I encourage you to click through to LayethTheSmackDown and read all the stories for my team in the Epic Tales from Beautiful Minds Anthology, they're worth it.

P.s. Talk about trouble. This short story caused me no end of sleepless nights. And I still hate it, haha.