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

As the boat pounded down into the trough of the next wave, Conal felt his pocket rip away. Lee’s white face disappeared under the waves for a moment, then reappeared a little way from the boat. Conal reached out for him, but the boat changed direction, passing straight over the top of the boy. Conal heard the sickening crunch and saw the fountain of blood - black in the moonlight - as the top of Lee’s head was torn to pieces by the propeller.

Troy mouthed a soft, “Shit,” and was sick over the side of the boat.

Before Conal could work his way back to the controls, the helicopter came in low over the water at them again.

***

King was really enjoying himself picking off the people in the boat one at a time. He’d leave Conal to last, maybe shoot him in the arms and legs before killing him. But if he was going to do that, he’d need to disable the outboard motor.

Coming in fast, King swung the helicopter towards the stern of the boat, steadying his gun against the helicopter’s doorframe. Taking the shot, he smiled when the boat’s engine exploded.

The boat almost upended, throwing the occupants into the water. King laughed. Now they were easy targets, ready to be taken down at his leisure. He took the helicopter higher to get a better overall view.

King never saw the small engine bolt flying through the air towards him - it was far too small. Smashing through the perspex canopy, it hit him in the temple, ripping a chunk of bone from his eye-socket. King’s world went dim and grey, and it felt as though he was spinning on an axis. He knew he was dying, he could see his brain matter splattered across the cockpit controls.

Hang on man, just a few seconds longer.

As his last deed, King positioned the helicopter, just so, over the people in the sea below him. Then tilting the nose of the machine downwards, he throttled it up to full speed.

Hearing the scream of the engine, Conal looked up, and for a moment couldn’t make any sense of what he was seeing.

The helicopter was heading straight for them! Surely the pilot would pull it up in a moment. But then Conal saw the pilot’s face flattened against the canopy and knew that he wasn’t about to do any such thing.

“Dive!” he screamed to the others. “Get under the water.”

Conal swam as deep as he could, but even so, the pressure of the helicopter slamming into the sea above tumbled him about so much that he didn’t know which way was up or down. A shadow passed close beside him and he reached out, pulling Lyra to his side. Kicking out, he swam upwards, dragging Lyra with him, coughing water from his lungs when his head broke the surface.

A few seconds later, Piers and Troy bobbed into view. He swam across to them, pulling Lyra behind him, supporting her chin in his hand. She seemed to be unconscious and had a long cut down the side of her face. He could see that Piers had a bad burn on his head and a large patch of hair was missing, but he didn’t seem aware of it.

Piers gulped a deep breath. “We need to get back to the island,” he said.

“No, we can’t take the chance,” Conal answered. “There might have been more than one of them.”

“Then we’ll have to swim to the mainland,” Troy said.

Conal turned to look at the faint lights shed by the houses along the distant shore, knowing that there was no way they could make such a perilous swim with an unconscious girl in tow.

***

The Sycler hesitated when it reached the edge of the hole, its tentacles flicking back and forth across the rope. It could smell its nest somewhere below, but also a strong scent of prey. The Sycler was hungry - hunger was all it knew - all it had ever known.

Moving onto the rope, the Sycler twisted its body around the fibres, but not to eat them as it was driven to do, but to descend, because for the moment a higher drive was motivating it - the drive to reach the nesting site far below and lay more eggs.

A cloud passed in front of the moon, casting a long, thin shadow that raced across the concrete. As the Sycler made its way into the chute and down the rope, the passing shadow darkened its body from orange to black.

***

Watts stood up and eased his back. He’d been setting charges for at least thirty-five minutes and had just one area left - the Electrical Intake Room. Once that had been taken care of, he could set the detonator timer and get the hell out of there.

Backing out of the toilet, Watts paid out the detonator wire, heading towards the last room. He stopped, turning his head to the left, his eyes narrowing. Something had moved down at the end of the building, he was sure of it. Listening hard, he heard no sounds and shrugged. Giving a quiet laugh he got back to work.

He was getting jittery and imagining things. Too much time on my own in this creepy bloody place.

Watts soon had everything connected up and ready. After taking the time to give his work one last check, he set the timer to seven minutes. That would give him plenty of time to get back up top and make his way down the pick-up point.

Jumping up onto the wall surrounding the pit, Watts grabbed the rope, then flinched, looking at his hands. Something slimy covered his palms. Wiping his hands on his trousers, he examined the rope. The whole thing was covered in the slime. It would make climbing it difficult, but not impossible. Raising his hands, he grabbed the rope and started for the surface.

Watts had climbed about a metre when he caught a movement from the corner of his eye again. This time when he swung his head and looked over his shoulder, his heart froze.

What looked like a giant slug was standing upright behind him, swaying back and forth, as though trying to hypnotise him. Not taking his eyes from the horrendous sight, Watts powered himself up the rope, slipping on the slime a couple of times in his haste, but he gritted his teeth and kept going.

Watts almost made it, but at the last second the Sycler stretched to its full extent and grabbed his foot. Watts screamed as the creature’s tongue started rasping its way into the interior of his foot through his boot. Gasping, face creased in agony, the adrenaline pumping through his veins, he pulled himself upwards hand over hand, the muscles on his forearms standing out like cords.

How long had it been? How long did he have left before the explosives blew?

He had no way of knowing, all sense of time had stretch away into an unending nightmare. He kept climbing, grunting loudly as he pulled himself nearer to the top. Keep going. Keep going.

Then Watts squeezed his eyes tight shut and screamed so loudly it hurt his ears. The weight hanging from his foot had suddenly gone, just disappeared. He looked down at the remains of his mangled leg for a moment, not really believing what he saw. His whole foot had gone, all that was left was a mess of tendons, veins and shredded skin flapping about. The creature lay far below him, eye-stalks pointed in his direction.

Watts went back to his task, hands bleeding and raw as he slowly moved higher up the rope. He could see the lighter patch of the circular opening above him now, and it gave him the energy to keep going.

Watts was almost at the top of the rope when the explosion hit him. The raging flames crisped his skin and the percussive force stripped the muscles from his body. He fell back down into the inferno below, hands outstretched to the moon above him, as though beseeching it for help.

***

The explosion sent a spout of flames and debris high into the air above the island, and as chunks of rock splashed into the sea all around them, Conal realised how lucky they were that none of them had been hit.

Lyra opened her eyes and moaned. Conal held her head above the water, wiping her face with his hand.

“What the hell just happened? Troy said.

“Someone blew up the lab,” Conal said.

“Why?”

“To cover up what’s been going on there. And it’s my guess there were after—” Conal felt for his pocket, his stomach contracting when he realised that it had been torn off, gone, along with the hard drive. “Now we definitely can’t go back to the island,” he said, pushing the loss of the hard drive from his mind. “Whoever did that will be waiting to get picked up by the helicopter.”

Lyra began sobbing quietly. “I can’t take any more of this,” she said. “I really can’t.”

“Lyra. Lyra, listen to me,” Conal said. “You’ve done really well so far. But we have to swim to the mainland. Do you think you can do that?” Lyra shook her head. “How about you Piers? Could you swim that far while Troy and I stay here with Lyra?”

“No need,” Troy said. “Hang on here. Won’t be long.”

As Troy took off with powerful strokes towards the island, Conal shouted after him, but either the boy didn’t hear, or chose to ignore him.

Conal watched Troy swim to the stern of the sunken dingy and pull himself over. He reappeared a moment later with something in his hand and dived into the sea. Five minutes later he was back at their side, bobbing in the sea with a big smile on his face.

“A double lilo,” Troy said, unrolling it. Fishing in his pocket, he pulled out a small rubber ball-pump and attached it to the valve. “Hold it out straight while I pump it up.”

They were soon arranged around the lilo, hands grasping the edges of their make-shift life-raft.

“I reckon if one of us takes a rest on it while the others kick-swim, we should get across to the mainland with no problem,” Troy said.

“Tell you what Troy. Lyra’s all in. Why don’t you and her get on the lilo? Piers and me’ll take the first shift.”

“You sure?”

When Conal nodded, they helped Lyra onto the lilo. It took a couple of attempts but eventually she was aboard, laying in Troy’s arms, cuddled into his warmth.

Conal and Piers had been swimming for perhaps half-an-hour when Piers looked at Conal. “There’s been something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” he said.

Piers settled his chin on his crossed arms, feet splashing the sea, rubbing the tips of his fingers on the material of the lilo, thinking back to the time he’d seen his first alien.

“It was five years ago,” he said to Conal, “when I went over to the island on my own.”

Piers told Conal how he had run the boat up onto the beach on Flat Rock Island and sat listening. The last thing he wanted was to get caught by the scientists and be taken into the laboratory so they could experiment on him.

Running across the sand, he made for the steps leading