SOMETHING TO BE TAMED
Written by KJ Kabza
Four Allarchians locomoted slowly across the neighboring backyard, dragging a tarp between them. I watched them through the biggest crack in the fence. A naked man lay in the center of their tarp, on his back and unconscious. The lines of his ribs were clear beneath his old scars and soldier’s tattoos, and I guessed that he had been holding out alone somehow all this time.
Poor bastard. He wasn’t going to like this.
The Allarchians kept at it. They’re not so good at dragging things, since they don’t have skeletons. Landsquids, we had called them, when they’d been nothing but one of the curious alien creatures seen from a distance, watching at the edges of our freshly-established colony. How funny, we had said, as we dug wells and planted crops. Not so funny when they showed up one day with technology in their tentacles, ready to dismantle everything.
