The Gastropoda Imperative by Peter Barns (parable of the sower read online txt) 📕

“How is he?” Lyra asked as soon as Troy and Lee walked into the room.

“Yeah, he’s okay I think. We locked him in the Intake Room.”

“What did you do that for? That’s a horrid thing to do.” Lyra got to her feet and rushed to the door.

“No wait Lyra,” Troy called. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here. Who knows how that thing might effect him until he comes round. Best leave him there for the present.”

Lyra walked back to the table. She didn’t seem convinced but sat down, her gaze flicking back and forth between Troy and the door.

King brought the helicopter down lower over the sea. He was taking a risk doing so but it was important he wasn’t spotted on the coastguard’s radar. He’d flown out to sea, waiting for confirmation that Payne had secured the house. If that part of the operation had gone wrong, he wouldn’t have had time to carry out phase two before the authorities arrived. Checking his position, King saw that it would take about fifteen minutes to get to the island. Looping around the headland, he headed along the coast.

Watts, his second in command, had moved from the back of the helicopter, and now sat beside him, staring stoically through the windscreen into the night. His 2IC hadn’t spoken a word since Payne had jumped into the drop zone an hour ago, and King wondered if the man had any feelings at all. He’d seen Watts kill many men when they’d been out in Iraq, and knew he did it without a thought for the consequences it might have on the young men’s families.

Pushing such memories from his mind, King trimmed the helicopter and brought it nearer to the coast. The island should be somewhere dead ahead.

***

Conal finished his coffee and pushed the cup across the table.

Lyra smiled at him. “Feeling better?”

“Much,” he said, sitting back and wiping his face with his hands. “Jesus, I’m so so sorry about Kirsti. There was nothing I could do. They got to her before I could pull her away.”

Conal looked at the girl sitting opposite him. She seemed composed, considering what they’d all been through. But then perhaps she was just feeling dead inside, like he was. Troy and Lee came into the room carrying some stuff in their arms. Dropping it on the table, they sat down.

“What’s all this?” Conal asked, picking up a can and looking at the label. “Hair spray?”

“Thought we’d better see if there was anything that might be useful, but its just a load of junk really. Makeup stuff mainly. Found it in a small office off the big lab down the corridor. Everything else seems to have been removed or destroyed. There’re bits of metal and pieces of equipment laying about everywhere, but nothing that would help us, I reckon.” Troy picked up a nail-file, then dropped it back on the table, his face showing the tension he was under.

“Hmm.” Conal frowned. “Yes, I was afraid of that.” The others looked at him but he didn’t elaborate.

Betts came into the room and shook her head. “Nothing. There’s not even any toilet paper left in the place.”

Lyra got up and ran to the cupboard above the stainless steel sink unit, opening the door with a flourish. “There you go,” she said, tossing a roll of toilet paper at Betts. “Found them earlier when I was looking around.”

“Was there a First Aid pack in there by any chance?” Troy asked.

“Nope. Not much else really. Just some loo rolls, a couple of jars of coffee, three bars of yucky gone-off chocolate, fives tins of beans and two tins of spaghetti rings.”

“What about the fridge?”

Lyra shook her head. “What with the electricity being turned off, every thing in there has gone bad. It stunk the place out when I opened it. I was nearly sick.”

“What did you mean, that you were afraid of that, when Troy said about the bit’s of metal lying about,” Lyra asked Conal.

Conal realised the mistake he’d made and backpedalled as fast as he could. “I don’t know exactly what was going on down here,” he said, “but I do know it had something to do with breeding animals to produce protein for food, and feeding those same animals on waste material. The perfect recycling machines. A neat trick if you can pull it off.”

“How do you know that?” Troy’s tone was hard and they all turned to look at him.

Conal pulled a face, slightly raising his shoulders in a shrug. “Because I work for the company that was funding the project.”

“And did they succeed?” Troy asked, leaning forward, arms crossed on the table.

Conal raised his eyebrows, pursing his lips as if considering whether to answer or not. “I didn’t think so, no. But now, I have to admit that I’m not so sure.” Picking up a leather case from the table, he slid out a pair of women’s glasses. Sighing he quickly pushed them back again. “You said that you found this stuff in a small office?” he asked, wagging the glasses case at Troy. “Was there a computer in there?”

“Yes there was. The office had a metal fire door. Funnily enough, unlike all the others, it was closed. Every other one in the place seems to have been left open.”

“Fire doors close automatically,” Conal said.

Troy sat back, tapping his fingers on the table, studying Conal. “So what was all that crap five years ago about then? When they said there’d been a dangerous chemical spill over here?”

“Yes I’d like to know about that too,” Betts said.

“Me as well,” Lee joined in.

Conal knew they were waiting for an answer, but he couldn’t tell them the truth. “Was the computer working?” he asked instead.

Troy shrugged. “Didn’t try it.”

Conal got to his feet and strode towards the door.

“Hey wait a minute. Where are you going?” Troy shouted after him.

Conal stopped, turning back to the table. “Didn’t it occur to you that if the computer is working and plugged into the Internet, we could get a message out to somebody?”

Chairs scraped back as they all jumped to their feet, following Conal down the corridor towards the lab.

The equipment in the lab was covered with dust and Conal could see that a lot of it had been partly destroyed. He stopped, wondering what had happened. It had all been in working order when he’d been here last. Picking up a section of blue plastic that had obviously been a piece of cover for something or other, he examined it. Small rasp like marks dotted the edge. He’d seen such marks before - five years ago - on a femur in The Pit.

Dropping the plastic back down amongst the other mess on the counter, Conal walked through to the office at the back of the laboratory and sat at the desk.

Examining the computer, he felt a surge of hope when he spotted a small yellow indicator LED glowing on the bottom corner of the screen’s frame. Reaching underneath the desk, he pushed the button on the front of the PC tower, breathing a sigh of relief when the yellow LED turned green. “Here we go,” he muttered.

The others had crowded into the small office behind him and he could hear their clothes rustling as they all held their breaths, waiting for the machine to boot up.

After a couple of messages, a dark blue background appeared on the screen, causing Conal a moment of panic, until he realised that it wasn’t the dreaded, ‘Blue Screen Of Death’, so hated by Windows users. It blinked out, then back again, but this time there was a white box displayed in its centre.

Conal sat back in dismay as the big white words blinked at him. Enter Password:

“Damn,” he said softly.

“Guess that’s it then. We’re all well and truly screwed,” Lee said, expressing what they were all thinking.

Behind the cottage, a large hole on the bank of the shallow brook widened, the earth falling aside as an enormous Sycler pushed her way out of the chamber that had been her nest for the last five years. Two metres in length, and as fat as a large truck’s tyre, she worked her way free from the soil, driven by a hunger that she could not assuage; a hunger that had been her constant companion since she had grown from an egg dropped from the heel of a man’s shoe on the quayside.

Her scaly skin was a dull orange, rippling with muscles as she moved across the ground. She stopped now and then, inspecting the twisted bodies of her offspring, but her tentacles sprang back from the poison she could taste in them.

Gliding up the bank, her eye-stalks moved independently, searching, searching. She felt tremors in the soil and turned towards them, sensitive tentacles picking up the fine particles in the air.

Prey.

***

Macey Harrison stared at the back of the man who had invaded their life with hatred and fear.

Why was he just sitting there like that? What was he waiting for? Did it have something to do with the man who had shown up earlier asking about some computer file?

She looked over at her sister again, checking that she was okay. Freda looked a little pale and Macey could tell that having her hands tied behind her back the way they were was causing her a lot of pain.

“I need to go to the toilet,” Macey said, surprised at how weak her own voice sounded. Wetting her lips, she tried again. “I really need to use the toilet.” Louder this time. The man didn’t move. He just continued staring out of the window. “I’ll go on the floor if you don’t let me go upstairs right now,” she said.

The man sat silently, unmoving. He could easily have been dead for all the notice her was taking of her. But Macey could see that his shoulders were moving as he breathed.

Perhaps he was asleep then?

She pushed her feet on the floor and her chair moved backwards across the tiles a few millimetres, making a noise.

“Be still. There’s a good woman. I will hurt you, you know that.”

Not asleep then.

Look,” Macey said, “my sister has just come out of hospital after having a double mastectomy. She can’t take having her arms stretched behind her back the way they are. Haven’t you any heart at all, you selfish bastard. Can’t you just retie her hands in front of her.” The man sat quietly, but Macey could see that he had turned his head slightly towards Freda as she talked. “I just hope nobody treats your sister or mother the way you’re treating us,” she said, putting as much emotion into her voice as she could. “Do you have a sister? A daughter perhaps? How would you like it if she was treated the way you’re treating my sister after her operation. Trussing her up like some chicken, ready for the oven. Shame on you.”

The man breathed out a long sigh and stood up. Macey held her breath, terrified that she might have gone too far. He turned, pulling a wicked looking knife from a sheath on his belt. Crossing over the room in a couple of long strides, he passed so closely to Macey that she flinched, already feeling the cold blade sinking into her