The difference between you and me, finale

                                                        By: Ian Clements





Drinking until the most obvious truth becomes something to be handled with hushed awe, fighting and bleeding to prove that you can do it just as well as your unevolved ancestors did, bedding so many women that your eyeballs drown in lust and the taste of their sweat is embedded on your tongue.

I was always led to believe that these were the things which made you a man, basic requirements and needs, but such rules were written by people who had never really become adults at all; seeing themselves in adult skins and with adult voices was enough.

For a long time I thought there must be a point at which my brain would mature, new attitudes and considerations would be loaded like software onto a computer, it would be a natural evolution. Far too frightening to consider that these people around me with adult skins and adult voices might feel the same way as when they were sixteen, that underneath the long words and the rationalizations they were just as lost and afraid as the smallest child.

To exist in a world where no-one ever really grows up is supposed to be the realm of fairy tales, bright places and happy faces, but when you realise that your father is as frightened of death as you used to be of the monsters in your dreams then there is no hiding from the truth.

Becoming a man was nothing more than hiding, surrounding your fear with smoke and mirrors, forgetting how it works, what it tries to tell you.

That there are things you cannot control.

That monsters do exist.

The cool yet stale air of the above floor was replaced with an overpowering stench, the smell of things long since dead yet unwilling to be buried. Glass glittered in the flashlight beams, crunching beneath our boots, and my maglite played across shattered windows which for one horrible moment snarled like huge, fanged mouths.

I looked to Abram who was studying the motion detector intently, he glanced up long enough to shake his head.

Raising the shotgun, I entered the nearest room.

It was some kind of medical bay; pools of liquid shone across the floor, leaking from smashed bottles and vials, giant dents had been punched into the stainless steel units, still intact cabinets filled with medicines lined the farthest wall. My flashlight beam caught a dull splash of red, so dried it almost looked like the floor was beginning to rust, I held onto that notion as the splash became a slick, and the slick became another pool.

The centre of the room was dominated by a steel operating table, the sheer size and weight of it turned my stomach, it would have been more at home in an abbatoir than a hospital. I was no stranger to corpses, yet those that I had seen were inevitably covered to spare others the trauma, this one was displayed in the fashion of a biology specimen sliced and pinned open.

Details crowded into my mind, unwanted details from idly reading too many medical books when I was younger, when I had actually intended to follow in my father’s footsteps. The dead man’s chest was opened by a typical ‘Y’ incision, two deep seams crossing his breasts and joining to form a single line ending just below the stomach. Skin was drawn back like envelope flaps, exposing a ribcage which rose from the gore in sharp, broken arches, the gaping cavity beneath was all but empty.

‘S-saints preserve us’ Abram whispered in horror, his light catching on the kidney shaped bowls which surrounded the operating table, crammed atop wheeled platforms.

The organs stuffed inside them now resembled rotten fruit, crusted into hard, decomposing shells.

One platform was covered with bloody tools, many of them I didn’t recognize, but others were all too clear; scissors, forceps, sutures, and a bone saw brimming with blood plastered serrated teeth.

We found the last tool, a scalpel, gripped in the corpse’s palsied hand.

‘W-….what is this?’ Abram murmured, his eyes locked onto the instrument.

‘Revenge’ I replied flatly.

Staring in silence, I knew that the images which flooded my mind were shared by Abram, I could see it in the way that he wasn’t really looking at the corpse anymore, but rather at some far point behind it. Pity for the victim, outrage at this obscenity, wrestled with what I could not ignore. Barely visible beneath the man’s body was a drainage grill, designed to accept gallons of spilt blood, the number of workers here would not have justified that kind of medical equipment.

‘Search these cabinets’ I said eventually, ‘perhaps there was a diabetic among the staff’.

Following that lingering smell, I passed into an ajoining room, finding it filled with a number of steel-grilled cabinets. The weapons locked inside were either cumbersome and ugly or so frail it seemed a firm grip could snap them, several held large circular bottles which reminded me of water guns.

One of the cabinets hung open, and I traced the stench to a smashed container of yellow fluid which lay beside a broken rifle. Grenades were mounted on steel clips, each one had a large colour band stamped with black writing; Pheromone NG-42, Pheromone TH-12, Pheromone SY-19.

Footsteps sounded out behind me, I looked over my shoulder to see Abram enter the room, ‘some kind of armoury’ I informed him, ‘all non-lethal’.

He said nothing, standing still as a statue.

Frowning, I clicked on my flashlight just as he began to move, and in that beam saw the glint of the bone-saw in his right hand.

I had never seen anyone move so fast.

 

***







I levelled my shotgun, intending to fire, but Abram was on me before I could pull the trigger.

The saw whished through the air, aimed at my jugular, there was the shriek of metal on metal as I swept the shotgun up to meet it. I staggered back, trying to gather my senses, when the blade found my fingers and tore a path across them. Crying aloud, my grip sprang open, sending the TOZ clattering to the floor.

As it hit, the impact extinguished the maglite mounted underneath the barrel, plunging the room into darkness.

I retreated until my back hit the wall, unable to hear anything above the pounding of blood in my ears, bleeding hands fumbling for a support, a weapon, anything.

Desperatly, I called up an earlier image of the room in my mind, trying to remember any other exits, but the memory of stark white walls boxing me in was all I could think of.

Call out! David, Iakov, Tarn, anyone!

The words never made it into my throat, they died in the mad thrash of nonsense which was assaulting my brain. Adrenaline buzzed through my blood, granting me strength, speed, yet not allowing me to think, all I could do was stand there and tremble as though an electric current was running through me.

There was the snap of broken glass underfoot as Abram searched the room, striking out at innocent items in the darkness, hurling one blindly through the air where it crashed against the wall and fell to my feet. I wanted to creep into the corner, sink to my knees and curl into a ball, hope and pray that the saw couldn’t find me.

I resolved I would never fear death, never let it control me, but only when the threat of it appeared did I realise that doing so was an impossible goal. Every nerve in my body could feel the teeth of that saw tearing through them, my blood pumped so fast because it was prepared to shoot from my veins when they were sliced in half, my body was ready to die.

That single thought, more than anything, drove the anger up inside me.

Gritting my teeth, I squeezed my hands into fists.

When the next sound came, I lunged forward.

The punch was clumsy, but it was powerful and caught Abram by surprise, buying me valuable seconds. I shot out a hand in the darkness and grabbed hold of his right arm, slamming it into the wall as hard as I could. There was an enraged shout, agony exploded through my scalp as he grabbed a fistful of hair and tugged violently, but I refused to let go.

We tumbled to the floor, wrestling for control of the saw, when he managed to throw me off and the blade whipped round again, slicing a hot trail across my left cheek. He was too strong, the Controller numbed his pain, manipulated his body to squeeze every last ounce of power from it.

You won’t win this with your fists!

I searched with my free hand, looking for the broken rifle to use as a club, when my fingers closed around an intact cylinder.

Wrapping a fist around his neck, I wrenched Abram’s head back and smashed the bottle against the side of his skull.

The result was sudden and overwhelming, the noxious stench from earlier returned a hundred times more potent, my entire body creased at the smell of it and I vomitted uncontrollably. Abram staggered from me, gagging and retching, his stomach cramps triggering a coughing fit which drove him to his knees. All I wanted was to be away from that stench, it was like a physical creature, one so revolting and evil that the very presence of it burned a hole in you.

Holding my breath, I searched the floor for the shotgun, finally laying a hand on the stock. I forced myself to a stand, eyes filled with water and chest heaving, just as Abram came at me again. The blast lit up the room, and I saw my partner hurled backwards as the beanbag pellets slammed into him, his expression like that of a mad dog.

I found him in the darkness and, as he went to rise, brought the butt of the TOZ down on his head. There was a sickening crunch and the fight dropped out of Abram, he crumpled to the floor like a bundle of rags. I had little doubt that the Controller was still trying to make him rise, frustration growing as it’s broken toy refused to respond.

Twisting the maglite, I sighed in relief as the beam powered into life again, reluctantly training it on the body at my feet. Blood was leaking down Abram’s face from a ragged split on his scalp, his eyes were frozen half-open and strands of saliva and phglem covered his jaw.

He still had a pulse.

I heard the soft patter of footsteps from the medical bay, bare feet slapping against tile, and edged closer to the wall. The steps halted, as though somehow aware of my listening, before I swung round the corner with the TOZ levelled.

There was the blur of a hunched figure, their deathly pale flesh briefly illuminated in the flashlight, I squeezed the trigger.

Click.

Swearing, I cocked the shotgun and went to fire again but the Controller had already dissapeared.

You will never control me, the way you control my father.

I gave chase.

 

***









‘Understand, must…..understand’.

I skidded to a halt, sweeping the shotgun in a wide arc as the hackles rose all across my body, but there was no-one nearby. The voice was a cautious whisper, it had entered my mind as easily as a stray thought and left just as quickly, I felt almost naked at being communicated with in such a way.

Channeling the confusion into anger, I pressed on.

There were a number of rooms filled with unidentifiable machinery, brightly coloured cables ran across the walls, over and under each other like a web woven by robotic spiders. I passed corpses who were similarly mutilated to those on the top floor, their white smocks splattered with crimson, one wore an identity tag which I trained the flashlight beam on.

Project Snowmaiden
Alferei Nikitin

Snowmaiden?

The name was familiar, it chewed at the back of my mind hungrily awaiting recognition, yet my thoughts were scattered in too many different directions.

‘Can see…..different. Harm, no harm. Must…understand’.

Sucking air in through my teeth, I put my back to the wall and scanned the room with the maglite, nothing.

On one of the few occasions my father discussed the Zone, he stated that the creatures which lived within it were ‘displaced, out of time’. He went on to explain that the abilities they posessed; telepathy, telekinesis, alteration of form, were future evolutions forced into our time by the unnatural scourge of radiation.

‘This is why the Zone fascinates people, Lukin. It is the future, creatures boasting fantastic abilities seemingly not of our world, yet it is also the past, a testiment to the mistakes we made. It is the mistakes we made that forced the future to come early, to threaten our present’.

I clung to his words now like a lifebelt, using them to try and rationalize the whispers in my mind. Telepathy was not an ability meant for this time, I was not ready to have some stranger, some thing, leafing through my thoughts, my memories, as casually as paging through a catalogued file.

These creatures did threaten our present, to show us parts of ourselves we must not see.

I entered the next room, it opened out into a large space, the farthest wall of which was lined with roughly twenty alcoves. Two of the steel-grilled cabinets containing those odd weapons stood near the door, both were empty, a dead body lay in the middle of the floor with a rifle still gripped in her hands. As I drew closer, I realised the alcoves were actually cells, a steel toilet lay bolted into the corner of each one, some contained beds whereas others were totally bare.

Seven, thick metallic rings lay at the bottom of each entrance, above them on the ceiling were an identical number of holes, fully extended these rings must have formed the bars of each cell.

Why were they ever retracted? What happened here?

The last cell was set apart from the others, which had obviously not been occupied for some time. Several empty food cans were dotted across this one, there was a mouldering smell of sweat and body odour, as I watched a pile of blankets in the corner shifted slightly.

‘No harm…..need speak…no harm’.

I raised the flashlight, grimacing at the hand which lifted to block out the harshness of the beam; it was more like a bird’s claw, three fingers which stretched out like gouging talons, the skin a mottled pink-white. The head beneath was equally as repulsive, a huge, domed forehead stretching back from two protruding black eyes. Greasy hair hung from the back of the skull, like some token attempt at normality, while a distended neck propelled the face out and away from a seemingly enfeebled body.

Slinging the shotgun strap over my head, I drew the tranquilizer pistol from it’s holster.

The creature seemed to recognise the weapon and recoiled even further, triggering a growing revulsion in me. I could barely believe all those hours I had spent lying awake, fearing come face to face with this pitiful thing, terrified of retaining control of my mind with the threat of it’s superior powers.
‘Need….show…..different you…different’.

‘Different, that’s right’ I said, the words coming unstuck, voice tremoring ‘I am someone you cannot control, and it terrifies you’.

Tilting it’s head, the Controller regarded me curiously, as though trying to decipher what I had just said. ‘Need…show’.

Without warning, an arm looped around my neck from behind, I was forced to the ground and my hands pinned behind my back. I looked back to see Abram, his head still leaking blood, staring down at me with a blank expression. I struggled and swore, trying to throw him off, but the grip was like iron, all I could do was watch.

Discarding it’s blankets, the Controller started towards me.

The body of the thing was like that of a famine victim, unnaturally bloated in places with bone almost threatening to burst through the skin in others. It reached out one of those taloned claws, the arm supporting it stick-thin, and encompassed my skull.
‘Need…..show….Snowmaiden’.

The best way I can think to describe what happened next is this; it was as though someone had drilled a hole in my head, and through that hole they inserted new memories which flashed brightly and vividly for a split second before residing among my current ones.

I saw the cells, filled with Controllers, felt the network of thoughts and feelings between them twist into something dark and bitter. I felt their pain as yet another of their kin was dissected on the operating table, felt their lonliness as that link was then forever severed. I saw the experiments, punishing them when they resisted, rewarding them when they used their psychic abilities. These grew more and more elaborate, training the Controllers to possess a mouse or a rat and use it to run a maze and solve a puzzle to release their food, a puzzle which was beyond rodent intelligence and so could not be solved any other way.

I saw the incident, the short-circuiting of machinery as an E.M.P blast ripped through the complex, following the second nuclear explosion. The cages were opened, and using the skills they had learned the Controllers set the workers on each other in a nightmarish massacre, then forced the Doctor to eviscerate himself on the very table that had claimed so many of their kind.

I felt the hesitation of the new Controller, the one who came here two days before the break-out, the one who knew little of the humans and even less of their atrocities. I watched as the others left when all workers were dead, vowing to make this alien world their own, to bring as much pain and suffering to the humans with the very skills that they had been taught.

I saw the new Controller watch them go, felt his yearning to follow but also the all-encompassing fear of leaving all he had ever known. He remained, living in the same cell, scavenging for food, until a girl found her way into the complex some years later.

She was afraid, miserable, he reached out and touched her thoughts, comforting and reassuring, until she finally began to trust the invisible voice. They never laid eyes on each other, but both decided to remain in the complex, each gaining a strength from the other. The Military Stalkers came soon after, intending to drain the complex of it’s secrets then destroy it in any way possible, they tried to take the girl and she begged him to help.

Concentrating, he used the swell of will he had felt in the others when they controlled the humans, and forced the Stalkers into a gun-battle from which none escaped alive.


There was more, but it trailed off into scattered fragments, the link was severed and reality restored so violently it took me long seconds to place what was happening.

The Controller struggled to a stand in front of me, I wondered how I could see it so clearly now, why the room had become so bright. There was a snap of air and a second dart lodged in the creature’s chest, it swayed from side to side then crashed limply to the floor.

I felt hands helping me to my feet, the world was still resolving itself, I leant against a wall and blinked rapidly to try and bring things into focus. David was standing over the body of the Controller, securing it’s arms and legs with cable-ties, while Iakov studied the room and Tarn tended to Abram’s wounds. None of it seemed real, like some disconnected dream, as I sifted through the new memories which had been given to me.

Someone laid a hand on my shoulder, I looked up, puzzled, and saw Iakov smiling at me ‘so you could not resist them after all’ he chuckled, ‘ah, it does not matter, we have what we came here for’.

‘N-no’ I slurred, ‘you…..you don't understand’.

Frowning, he brushed off my objections, ‘be still, you have suffered a severe shock. It is normal that things may not seem right’.

Leaving me, Iakov went to assist with the Controller, he and David looped a long steel strut through the cable-ties, intendng to carry the creature supported from it.

I finally found my voice, ‘stop! We can’t take this one, he’s not like the others’.

They looked at me with disbelief, Abram stepped forward, a gauze taped to his scalp, ‘controlled me….made me…*kaff kaff* try to..kill you, this one…just like the others’.

‘No’ I said firmly, ‘he showed me things, showed me how this happened, he’s not like the others. They….they trained them, tortured them, he doesn’t hate us the way that they do’.

Considering this, David set the pole down and closed the distance between us, ‘so, what you are saying, is that we have discovered a…..benign Controller?’.

I was drawn into his trap, of course. He was testing my state of mind, laying out my argument in front of me and hoping I would see how absurd it was before things went any further. For a moment I wanted to agree, to put all this aside and just forget. Yet the memories would always be with me, and I knew they would return to torment me after we handed over this creature to be peverted like it’s brothers.

‘Yes. He only killed the Military Stalkers because he had no choice’.

‘Lukin’ David said quietly, almost confidentally, ‘think about what you are saying. This creature could not manipulate you, so it implanted a fantastic story in your mind, making itself into some kind of martyr, trying to turn you against us just as it has done with countless innocent victims’.

‘I don't believe that!’ I snapped, ‘I saw it’s memories, I know they were real!’.

‘Very well’ Iakov spoke up, ‘let us say, for the sake of argument, that you are correct. It changes nothing. The zone is still at the mercy of Controllers, they remain the biggest threat to the developed world. This Controller may be benign, but he is still an identical creature, they can learn from him as well as the others, they can use him to help stop this epidemic before it is too late’.

‘You can’t just give him back to them!’ I said incredulously, ‘you’d be granting them licence to do this all over again! He doesn’t deserve that kind of fate, sliced apart on some laboratory table, tested in a cage, we need to expose what they created!’.

Iakov regarded me with something nearing sympathy, ‘I am a Patriot, Lukin. I valued the U.S.S.R just as my father did, the Soviet States have now dissolved but the Ukraine remains, and I value it. If we wish for our country to survive the zone then we must fix the problem, not the blame. It is not a pleasant solution, but it is a realistic one, and that is all that matters’.

‘Tarn!’ I said quickly, ‘you have lived here longer than any of us, you know all too well what the Zone has become, do you want to give licence for that abomination to be created again? For the same mistakes to be made?’.

The veteran Stalker cast his eyes down, ashamed, ‘I…..I am sorry, Lukin. One of the reasons I have survived this long is because I am wise enough not to question such things. They give birth to a spiral of obsession, soon you only live to find an answer, to bring justice, and I am too old to live for an ideal’.

‘Abram’ I said softly, even though I already knew his answer, ‘are we the same? Can you not see what is happening here?’.
He looked across at the unconscious body of the Controller, then reluctantly up into my eyes, ‘I am…sorry Lukin. I will not die here, not…for you, not for that…thing, not for an ideal. Live…as a Stalker long enough, you…realise what you can change…lucky enough to…to change self. The world around you…carries on, always has…always will’.

‘I will not allow you to leave’ I said flatly, ‘any of you’.

‘I know’ David replied sadly, ‘that is why I must do this’.

The huge black revolver I had seen earlier boomed three times, I refused to look down, staring instead at the expressions of the men in front of me. Abram turned away, intent on leaving the room before his last memories were formed. Tarn’s face creased with pain, and he tilted his head to look down at his feet, closing his eyes.

David holstered his pistol and took up one end of the steel pole, waiting for Iakov to do the same. Iakov, the Patriot, looked at me with a quiet respect, I was going to die for my ideals, they couldn’t be stored in an old trunk and passed on like some dusty uniform, and so, inevitably, they would die here as well.

I allowed myself to slide to the floor, absently wondering that David must have used armour-piercing bullets to rip through my vest, that one detail was comforting somehow.

 

GSC contest details

Name: Ian Clements

Nickname: Ian_C

Email: Clemofski@hotmail.com