📗Larval Haze | 3: Norczek
Following the events of Strange Harvest, the honey must flow as life grinds on beneath the jungle's alien canopy...
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📗Part III: Norczek
“So who is this guy?” I asked. “The one that got stung, I want to talk to him.”
“Oh, Norczek? He’s been dead a couple months now.” Barkland looked at me like I was stupid. “I mean, he was out there for days. No suit, nothing. I don’t even know how he survived that long. It was some kinda jungle rot he picked up—imagine, like, gangrene, but way more aggressive. And in your lungs. But don’t worry, we incinerated the body instead of putting it in the grow pit, and we were super careful not to spread it.”
My heart skipped a beat.
Rotplague. It could be anywhere. With these idiots, it was probably everywhere. Time seemed to slow as I hyper-focused on the fact that I had just shaken Barkland’s hand and he could have touched Norczek, who may have been infected. The rotplague could be on me right now, if that’s what it was.
The eggs—they could be infected already.
“Tell me what it looked like—Norczek, the rot,” I demanded. I had to know. My hand tingled and stung where I’d touched him. “What did it look like!”
Before I could say anything else, Leguro barged in.
“Tell me about Norzcek!” I shouted, but Barkland ignored me.
I didn’t have his attention because the bulldog was already at his throat.
“Norczek?” Snarling, Leguro suddenly had both hands wrapped around the skinny Duster’s neck. “You told him about Norczek’s plan! Cutting deals, are you?”
From my perspective it looked like the fight was already over, that Leguro could just twist and end Barkland’s life… or choke it out of him bit by bit. And then I’d be alone with him.
But I underestimated the true strength of the nullsuit. In reality, the only thing Leguro had on his side was surprise and maybe Barkland’s inexperience using the suit—a sloppy, reflexive punch from one armored gauntlet moved in a blur and connected with Leguro’s left temple.
It was so fast, like watching an industrial accident. Crumpling instantly, the big man fell forward and Barkland grabbed him under the armpits.
There was a distinct dent in the side of Leguro’s meaty head.
“Barkland, the rot—” I said weakly, my abdominal stitches lancing with pain.
“Moron!” The armored Duster flung Leguro’s limp form to the ground and I heard the back of his skull crack in a way skulls shouldn’t. Wheezing, Barkland struggled to catch his breath. “Try to… kill me?”
I needed to know about Norczek. Was it rotplague? Panic rose inside me as I held my contaminated hand out away from myself like it was on fire. “Barkland, tell me about the rot!”
Enraged, Barkland strode forward and aimed a kick at Leguro’s ribs. “Fucker!”
“Fat pig!” Savagely, Barkland struck and stomped on the prone body with his armored boot, spittle flying from his mouth as he shouted, “Think you can kill me? I make the rules now!”
“Answer me! Tell me about Norczek!” I screamed at the limit of my voice. My wounds lit up. I could feel warm blood on my skin.
Heaving deep breaths, Barkland straightened, nursing his reddened throat and tilting his head gingerly from side to side. “What about Norczek?”
“The rot! The disease from the jungle. Describe it,” I stressed, practically begging him. “The color. Consistency. Progression.”
“I already told you, it was like gangrene—”
“What color!”
“Fuck, man, it was green and crusty looking! I’m not a doctor!” Incredulous, he glared at me. “Did you see what just happened!”
“It wasn’t black.” Relief surged through me and I sagged back against the bed. “Wasn’t black.”
“Look at this!” Barkland ran his hands back through his hair as he looked down at Leguro, groaned and repeated, “Look at this! You see this! And you want to know about… about colors!”
“Get me the lotus nectar,” I whispered, seeing spots in my vision. “They’ll hatch soon. Wasps are no good without it. They’d just be feral.”
Barkland glared at me and stepped away from Leguro.
Edges started dimming out. I lifted my blanket and saw blood soaked into the bandages around my stomach. “My stitches—”
The armored Duster ignored me. By this point, several others had woken up and gathered outside the open door to see what was going on.
Barkland jerked a thumb at Leguro’s limp body. His voice shook with anger. “He tried to kill me! You see this? You see what happens when you fuck with me now? Throw him in a grow pit. And somebody set up the SurgeonBot again for the new guy, he popped some stitches.”
The four other Dusters standing in the hall were a ragged bunch of grim statues. None of them moved or acknowledged Barkland’s command.
Barkland took a step forward in Warren’s old nullsteel armor and pulled down his thick protective collar to show the reddish-purple bruising already forming on his neck. “This fat fuck attacked me, I didn’t put him down for no reason. He didn’t like it when I told Jackson here about Norczek. ‘Cause Jackson is part of our operation now: he can raise those baby wasps into lotus honey thieves for us. Just like Norczek was gonna do.”
A clean-cut younger man and two similar-looking women—twins?—with short black hair, silently left the situation without reply. One had an arm in a shoulder cast, the other an ankle in a medical boot. It seemed like this was all that was left of them after tangling with the Royal Lotus harvesters.
I wondered how many of them died. Or maybe the rest had packed up and left. There were at least a dozen icons I’d seen marked during the firefight at the base of the steeloak hive.
Barkland pointed at a tall, haggard man with dark brown skin, thick stubble, and a long, angular face. “Gaultmann knows. You saw, you remember, don’t you? He knows we can do it. He saw Norczek call the wasps over to his window. They were leaving him fruit and stuff outside, right? Fucking things kept trying to get inside, too.”
Gaultmann, wearing loose black comfort clothes and leaning against a wall with his arms crossed, begrudgingly made eye contact with Barkland and nodded. “The lotus fruit. They were trying to feed Norczek. To help him recover.” With a sigh, Gaultmann pushed away from the wall with his shoulder. “I will set up the bot.”
He weaved around Barkland, stepped over Leguro’s bulky remains, and began to set up the SurgeonBot.
Barkland seemed to consider going after the three who had left, clenching and unclenching his fists. Then he grabbed his helmet and dragged the body away himself, fuming and cursing as it smeared a bloody trail along the floor.
My fear of rotplague infection was fading—not gone entirely, because I couldn’t fully trust anything Barkland said or did—but I felt a spike of anxiety as Gaultmann prepped the SurgeonBot module. It could be anywhere.
I didn’t even know if this plague these alien wasps were afraid of could affect me. It was probably just residuals from the overwhelming intensity of the vision I’d brought on while trying to find answers for my little larvae.
They were the real vulnerability.
I had to protect them. If I lost them, I would have nothing. I’d be useless to the Dusters, and then we’d all be thrown into the pits.
At best, I would be able to grow them, teach them what I could, and hope that this half-baked plan to train them to steal lotus honey would actually work. But if nothing else, I could probably get them out of here, back into the jungle at least. As long as I could keep them alive. Then they could escape.
Thinking I’d come in contact with this rotplague stuff had put me in such a panic that I didn’t even question why Leguro attacked the way he did. Norczek’s plan was what Leguro had called it, but Barkland presented it as his own. He kept saying how things were different now, he made the rules, they couldn’t mess with him—Barkland was on this crew’s shitlist.
Had he used Warren’s stolen armored nullsuit to seize leadership?
I thought about the crunching, squishing noises Leguro’s body had made while being crushed under mechanically-assisted armor boots and very much wanted my own nullsuit back.
I was weak. Exposed. Anyone could smash me like a brittle egg.
“Barkland hasn’t always been in charge, has he?” I asked Gaultmann quietly, trying not to raise my voice more than necessary. “He took over after Norczek?”
The lanky Duster glanced at me over his shoulder and methodically continued his work without answering. He grabbed the SurgeonBot’s handles and wheeled the sturdy white metal crate over along with a tray of other medical supplies and surgical instruments.
I pointed out the puddle of puke I’d left on the floor and he graciously avoided it.
“Hmm, took over. Yes, you could say that. Hold still.” Gaultmann hefted the crate over top of me and four metal legs deployed from the module’s sides, clamping on securely to the metal bed frame. “Barkland was supposed to bring that armored nullsuit back here, not put it on himself. Once he did, he realized no one could stop him. Least of all Chef Norczek. Not the state he was in.”
“Chef? What, was he the cook here?”
Gaultmann smiled sheepishly and shook his head. “More like a nickname. Like a kitchen, Head Chef—he knew how to cultivate the fungal spores. He was in charge of this whole process.”
The two multi-jointed robotic arms on top of the SurgeonBot module each had an unsettlingly human-like, three-fingered, gray artificial hand attached to the end. Various cameras and lights on its underbelly began to whir, click, and flash. I lay back on the bed, trying to stay still and trust the thing as its slender “hands” delicately pulled the sheet back to reveal my blood-stained bandages.
I knew it had already operated on me before, but I was blissfully unconscious then. My mouth went dry. I licked my lips as I eased back against the thin cot and tried to relax.
“Will you… is it going to use anesthetic?” I asked, unsure if I should direct my question at the bot or Gaultmann. He was watching over the bot, probably monitoring a data panel that fed into his display contact lenses. I could see the faint movement of light on his coppery brown eyes.
“Hmm, not likely,” he replied. “Between what we used on you and Norczek already, there’s not much left. Emergencies only. You can grit through. Try to keep your food down next time, yeah?”
There would be antiseptic… removing the torn stitches… more antiseptic… restitching… I tried to keep very steady and still as it began its work, and sucked in a sharp breath when it nimbly snatched up a pair of scissors from the nearby tray to slice off the bandages I’d bled through.
I longed for my old simple painless life.
***
“You are supposed to strip him first.”
Barkland whirled around to see a stern young clean-shaven man approaching. “Fasma. Don’t sneak up on me. Since you don’t listen to orders, I don’t know whose side you’re on.”
“Didn’t sneak.” Fasma pointed at Leguro’s body in front of the grow pit door. “His clothing, anything non-organic. You don’t strip him first, it slows the growth.”
“I don’t care about that.” Barkland picked up his nullsuit helmet and slid it over his head, then locked it in place. He crouched and opened the floor hatch that led to the angled dump tube into the grow pit.
Echoing Fasma’s gesture, Barkland pointed at the trail of blood he’d left behind them, speaking this time through the suit’s external speakers. “Clean that up while I finish with this. I’m in charge now, so that’s an order.”
Spreading his arms in exasperation, Fasma sighed. “You really don’t know how any of this works, do you? We can’t just completely shift to honey. There is a reason we make this stuff, and they aren’t going to be happy about Chef—”
Barkland shot to his feet and stomped over to Fasma, who flinched at first but resolved to cross his arms and raise his head defiantly.
Towering over Fasma in the armor, Barkland stood aggressively close and projected his voice even louder. “I know exactly how this works! Since you’re such a fuckin’ expert, you can do it all. Strip his body and throw him in the pit. And clean up the rest of this mess too! Move!”
Fasma winced involuntarily at the blasting volume as he glared into the black visor, but wilted after a moment and complied.
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