Sickness Is in Season

by Aiden Merchant

Genres: Occult & Supernatural; Horror

Synopsis

It is spreading, consuming, and destroying us all. Can you see it? Hear it? Feel it? There is a sickness here.

In Aiden Merchant’s latest collection, you’ll attest to obsession, hunger, domination, and other terrible things that will leave you without a happy ending.

In “Last Meal,” an astronaut must flee an assault of his scientific station, accompanied by the small alien specimen he’s been tasked to bring home. But when his escape capsule loses all power and communication, and his oxygen reserves begin depleting, survival looks bleak.

In “Just A Baby,” a diving instructor captures a small, unknown eel from the reef, only to learn it’s something far more dangerous. Not only can it multiply on its own, it grows much larger than the palm of your hand.

In “Camping Isn’t for Everyone,” a boy and his stepfather stumble upon a new species of beetle in the wilderness, hungry and quick. They’ll burrow under your skin before you know it, and feed upon your blood, muscle, and bone. Eventually, you’ll be nothing but a sack of skin.

You’ll be presented danger in all forms, as well questions of bravery and foolishness. What if a doorway to another dimension were to open before you? Would you step through and see what awaits on the other side? If you came in possession of a necklace that controls a powerful demon, would you make yourself a god and conquer? If you could bring back your dead child through the sacrifice of your partner, would you commit murder?

There is sickness all around us.

***

"Gruesome, funny, Sickness is in Season brims with a variety of unimaginable horrors you won't be able to turn away from." - Micah Castle (author of The Abyss Beyond the Reflection)

 

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Release date: May 31, 2022

Publisher: Crossroad Press

Print pages: 232

Sample

LAST MEAL

The emergency capsule had been traveling aimlessly through space for ten hours now, if his watch was to be trusted. Shortly after the capsule’s release from the station—in the midst of a full-scale evacuation of its remaining crew—the small craft had been knocked off course by debris. In its sustained damages, the navigation system had collapsed, along with the back-up thrusters. The pod wasn’t carrying much fuel or battery life, so there was little to fall back onto as the hours waned and the power drained. Officer Shiloh figured he’d be dead in the water, so to speak, within another twenty hours, unless rescued. That seemed unlikely.

Fuck, I’m hungry.

Shiloh hadn’t brought anything into the pod with him, save for the specimen. Without it, their whole mission would have been deemed a colossal failure. The station was compromised, maybe blown to hell by now. Most of Shiloh’s mates had been killed in the attack, as he’d seen firsthand during his escape. Was the specimen to blame? Was that why they’d been targeted, treaties be damned?

“I guess I’ll starve out here,” he groaned, knocking the back of his head against the seat repeatedly.

Prior to the attack, Shiloh hadn’t eaten in several hours. That meant half a day had passed since his last meal. He felt drained, as a result. Between the lack of calorie intake and his excitement while under fire, Shiloh was beginning to feel a lot like death. Space was hard on the body, and he wasn’t doing it any favors. Worse than his growling stomach was the headache that plagued him; it continued to scour his skull and reach down the back of his neck, commanding his muscles and spine to rebel.

For the hundredth time in the past hour, Shiloh looked toward the transfer case he’d used to rescue the specimen from the station. It wasn’t transparent, so he couldn’t see what the little bugger was doing inside. Perhaps it was hungry as well, twisting and groaning with the discomfort of an empty belly.

“What do you think? Should we start placing our bets?” Shiloh laughed and shook his head. “Goddamn it, man, speak up!”

Something beeped and flashed from his left side. Shiloh checked the gauge in question and couldn’t help but grin; they were now running low on oxygen, as well. Without a switch of the reserve tanks—which was impossible because the pod hadn’t been properly stocked by Simmons, the dumb bastard—they’d be out of air even before the fuel ran dry.

“It gets better!”

Shiloh searched the capsule in hope that something of use would catch his eye, but nothing had changed in the last ten hours. There were no tanks, no batteries, no food, no water…it was just him and the fucking specimen until the end of time.

The astronaut turned to the case and grunted. “I’m not like the doctor. If it comes to it, I’ll be eating you, not the other way around. The scientists back home will just have to study my shit if they want to know what you’re all about you. Assuming, we ever reach Earth.”

The case remained silent. Shiloh gave it a light tap, then actively shook the container. Inside, he could feel movement responding to his aggression. The specimen began to crawl up and down the walls, the tap tap tap of its spindly legs reminiscent of a bored man repeatedly clicking his pen.

“Yeah, ya little bastard. Yeah.”

The screens flickered around them. Shiloh released the case and took a closer look. Was someone trying to hail the pod? It looked as if a visual was trying to load or play, but interference was keeping the data from appearing more than a second. Shiloh searched his available command keys and tried to decide which (if any) could help. Then the screens returned to black, absolute.

“Fuckin’ hell!”

Shiloh checked his watch once more. Five minutes had passed. His stomach growled again, louder now. He looked toward the case and wondered how he could even prepare the specimen. It was a spider-like creature wrapped in a shell. He reminded himself of childhood, back when there were still crabs and lobsters to put on his family’s table. He supposed he could eat this creature much the same way, assuming it had any meat within its armor. Surely, there was something in there.

“Not yet,” he told himself. “You can still wait a little longer.”

Several hours passed and Shiloh could hardly keep his eyes open. The pod’s oxygen was running low, and his stomach was empty. The screens had not flickered, nor had the speakers screeched. He was all alone out here. Nobody was coming. If only he could see outside the pod and judge his location, but there were no windows. Had the computers not been damaged in his escape, he could have switched on his security feed to see outside, but alas…

How far were they from Earth? The station had been in orbit with its moon prior to the attack. Seeing as Shiloh was still adrift, his pod must have been knocked away from the planet. Otherwise, he’d be rescued on land by now. The fact that he had traveled for so long without anything of resistance was of some concern. If his pod ever did reach a planet, he’d probably be long dead by the time of landing.

The case vibrated with movement. The creature was getting antsy.

“I bet you’re hungry, as well,” Shiloh said weakly. “But unless I give myself to you, I’d say you’re shit out of luck.”

The interior lighting suddenly shut off. Darkness swallowed Shiloh and the specimen whole. As the captain cursed loudly, the case began to shuffle in the adjoining seat, rubbing against the buckles along the side of the carriage.

Shiloh angrily grabbed the case and punched the unlock code into its panel. As soon as the lid’s seal popped, he reached in with his gloved hand and snatched the creature hopping around inside. Though he could not see it in the darkness, he held the thing to his face and screamed at it as loud as he could. Spit showered the specimen. Then he took a desperate bite into it, chipping his teeth painfully on the creature’s shell. A sharp leg responded by piercing his cheek repeatedly. Then another, on the other side. Shiloh continued to gnaw on the shell like a dog with a bone. Blood ran down his cheeks and chin. The specimen became more frantic and fought back harder. Something clipped Shiloh’s tongue clean off. He howled and tossed the specimen aside. He regretted the action instantly—in the pitch black, he could no longer find the creature.

Upon spitting out a chunk of his severed tongue, Shiloh licked his bloody lips and savored the metallic taste.

Better than nothing, he told himself, laughing a little out on the outside. He was losing it. Their oxygen was just about gone and soon he would suffocate.

Tap tap tap tap tap.

The creature was on the move. Shiloh followed the sound and snatched his gloved hand through the darkness. He stumbled at first, but then got ahold of the specimen as it tried to run. Again, sharp legs stabbed at him, this time around his uncovered wrist and forearm. Shiloh responded by slamming the creature’s shell against the computer repeatedly until he heard it crack. Then he did it again, three more times, for good measure. Though the specimen continued to twitch, it was no longer fighting for its life.

“Got ya, you little bastard.”

Picking at the fleshy insides now revealed, Shiloh ate the creature hungrily. But there was so little! He was finished a minute later, having only left behind the broken shell and the specimen’s thick, crunchy legs. He picked up one of the limbs and used it a toothpick. Then he tried gnawing on it with his cracked teeth. The pain was incredible. He howled and dropped the leg as he covered his bloody mouth. Everything inside his head hurt. It was as if biting the leg had sent a vibration so powerful through his skull that it made every inch of bone and muscle throb.

With tears in his eyes, the officer rested back into his seat and awaited eventual death. He didn’t need the computer to tell him he was minutes away from finishing his stored oxygen; he could taste the difference in the air. He tried swallowing the blood in his mouth and nearly choked. It felt like his throat was beginning to swell. Shiloh shifted in his seat to spit, but his head spun. Without meaning to, he swung it sideways into a computer screen hard enough to draw blood.

“It’s…happening…”

He could barely catch his breath. This was it. This was the end.

Shiloh was suffocating.

The capsule drifted into the salvage bay and dropped as soon as the hanger doors shut and gravity was restored. A few minutes later, Weston and Pearl entered the bay from the observation deck, curious to see what was inside their latest capture.

“It’s without power,” Weston said on approach.

Pearl nodded. In his hands was a tablet searching for any signals and signatures coming from the emergency capsule. Nothing appeared. Not at first. “Looks dead.”

Weston reached the capsule first. He found the hatch and slammed his first against it several times, as hard as he could. Both men waited a moment, but nothing sounded from the inside. Weston removed a cylinder-shaped gadget from his back pocket and used it to cut the seal around the hatch. As he finished the outline, he told Pearl to step back a pace.

“This isn’t my first time,” his co-worker replied without removing his eyes from the tablet. The screen flashed as soon as Weston began pulling open the hatch. “Wait!”

Weston paused and looked over his shoulder. The hatch was open several inches. “What is it?”

Pearl swiped his screen and punched in several commands. Then he said, “Shit.”

“What’s shit? Spill it, man!”

“Someone’s inside.”

Weston eyed the slight opening. He could only see darkness. He moved his ears closer and listened. There was nothing.

“You sure?” he asked.

Pearl nodded. “There’s a heat signature inside. Smaller than you’d expect, though. Maybe a child?”

“Wouldn’t that be something?” Weston said with a grunt. He moved away from the door and approached a nearby table. He unlatched a spike from the board and held it tightly by his side. It had been months and months since he last used the weapon.

Pearl watched his partner return to the door slowly. “Should I get the net?”

“For a child? I shouldn’t even need this spike.”

Weston pulled the hatch open completely and stood before it like a guard approaching a prison cell. “Whoever’s in there, step on out. We don’t mean to hurt you, but I am armed should you attack me.”

For a long minute, there was only silence. As soon as Weston turned to ask Pearl if his tablet was working properly, something shifted from within the darkness.

“Come on out, now,” he repeated.

Pearl said, “We should have brought a goddamn light. The kid’s playing hide and seek.”

“Not much of a space to hide in,” Weston grunted, reaching his thick arm into the darkness and feeling around. “You bite me, kid, and I’ll hit you fuckin’ good.”

He felt something, but it wasn’t a child. It was the head of an adult if he had to guess. Weston took a step into the capsule and found the scruff of a uniformed man. He pulled the guy to his feet and yanked him out of the capsule, growling all the while: “Move them legs, damn it!”

Pearl cursed and stumbled back several feet. The man his partner had just tossed onto the floor of the salvage bay was…changed.

“Fuckin’ hell, what happened to him?” Weston shouted, throwing his arm over his nose to mask the smell.

The man at their feet was swollen from head to toe. His suit had torn in several places, around the pits and waist. Pearl searched for his face, but it was toward the floor, hidden from view. “Jesus Christ,” he said, catching a whiff of the smell as well.

Weston stepped around the spaceman and shoved his partner’s shoulder angrily. “Well? What is this shit? You said the heat signature was small!”

Pearl shrugged and showed Weston the screen of his tablet. “It is. See!”

Weston slapped away the tablet and nudged the spaceman with his boot. “Eh, you! Get the fuck up!”

“I think he needs the doctor.”

“Once we know who he is, I’ll consider it.”

The spaceman on the floor stood himself up slowly, with obvious difficulty. When the salvage men saw his face, they moved farther away. The spaceman’s face had ruptured in several places. Blood and pus leaked down his skin and dripped to the floor. Thin, pointy limbs of black and brown had grown out of his cheeks and forehead. They looked like exaggerated spider legs. His eyes were completely red, the vessels having blown at some point.

“Holy shit.” Pearl turned away and vomited onto the floor.

Weston scrunched his face in disgust but stood his ground. “Jesus, man, what happened to you?” he demanded.

The spaceman opened his mouth to reveal a severed tongue and chipped teeth. Some sort of white sludge ran out of his lips and splashed to the floor. Again, Pearl vomited. The spaceman groaned, but the sound didn’t come from his throat.

“Was that his stomach?” Pearl asked, wiping a sleeve across his dirtied mouth.

Weston ignored him. “Are you contagious with something?” he asked the spaceman, gripping the spike tightly before him. If the bastard tried making any move on them, Weston would strike.

The spaceman responded by shivering violently, as if he were suffering from a high fever. His exposed skin began to pulse with a million different heart beats. The flesh looked spongy and fit to burst.

“He’s fucking sick,” Pearl said, smacking the side of his partner’s arm. “We need to get the doctor, Wes.”

The limbs protruding from the spaceman’s face suddenly grew erect and produced little beads of silver. They dropped to the floor and made the sound of falling pebbles. Weston was tempted to pick one up for inspection but resisted the urge. Behind him, he could hear Pearl distancing himself from the spaceman and his capsule.

“Something ain’t right,” Pearl was saying. “I’m getting the hell out of here.”

Weston continued to ignore him. With his spike, he poked at the spaceman’s torso and growled, “This is your last chance, bub.”

Within seconds, the floor was littered with silver beads. They continued to fall from the erect limbs in the man’s face, like a shower of hail. Weston took a step back and crushed several beneath his boots. They surrounded him now. He lifted his boot and took a hesitant look at the mess beneath him. The beads had splattered with organic material.

I should have followed Pearl, he decided.

The beads began to bounce themselves several inches from the floor, surrounding him excitedly. The spaceman continued to shiver in place.

Weston thrust his spike into the spaceman’s ribs and shouted, “What is this? Tell me!”

At the hilt, sludge and blood spilled out of the wound and onto Weston’s hand. Disgusted, he released the weapon and searched the spaceman’s face for pain. The eyes were lifeless. This man wasn’t sick—he was fucking dead.

One by one, the beads began to pop around Weston’s feet. He looked down and saw hundreds of tiny hybrid creatures emerge from their eggs and tap tap tap their way around him. Though they had spider-like legs, their bodies were rounded with armor. Packed tightly together, they swarmed in a circle around Weston’s feet like ants.

“PEARL!”

Pearl was way ahead of his partner, but his plan no longer involved the doctor. From the observation deck, he’d witnessed the hatching and the spiraling predators. They were preparing to feast; he was sure of it. The spaceman was shaking violently now, with arms outstretched, and his head cocked backwards. Pearl switched off the gravity in the bay as his eyes burned with tears. He’d never killed a man before, let alone a friend. But whatever was inside that spaceman below could never be allowed inside their ship.

In the salvage bay, Weston lifted from the ground, but not before the swarm covered his body. His screams were quickly drowned by the volume of creatures entering his mouth and charging his throat. The spaceman was drifting away from him, convulsing and bulging. His suite continued to split, revealing more of the spongy flesh beneath its fabric. As the corpse bounced lightly off the floating capsule in the center of the bay, its skin began to tear. Seconds later, the entire body popped open like a water balloon. Thousands of the little hybrid creatures scattered through the air.

“Fuck! No, no, no!”

Pearl’s eyes were wide with horror. The small monsters were everywhere in the salvage bay now, searching desperately for purchase. If any of them were to reach ventilation…

I can’t let that happen, he told himself. Quickly, he set the hanger doors to open.

Everything that wasn’t strapped down was sucked outside of the ship within seconds. Pearl waited some time before closing the gate, just to be certain he’d gotten them all. Once gravity was restored, he ventured out of the observation deck and headed below. As he approached the automatic doors to the bay, his tablet began to beep. He held it out before him and saw that he was receiving a transmission from Command. He accepted the call as he stepped into the bay and looked around himself.

Captain Ito appeared on the tablet’s screen. “What the hell is with all the activity down there? Do we have a problem?”

Pearl stepped toward the center of the bay before pausing to look down at the tablet. “There was, but I’ve handled it.”

Captain Ito studied him. “Are your eyes red?”

Pearl looked away and sniffled. “Sorry, sir. We lost Weston a minute ago.”

“What do you mean we lost him?”

“The ship was compromised. We took in an emergency capsule drifting outside, and it contained a contaminated officer.”

“Contaminated how?”

“I don’t know, sir…he was full of some sort of spidery crabs I’ve never seen before.”

Captain Ito didn’t speak for several long seconds. Pearl continued to walk along the bay as he waited, all the while scanning the walls and surfaces for any of the little bastards.

“Is the threat neutralized?”

“I’m making sure,” Pearl explained. “I’ve sucked the bay dry and am now searching it from top to bottom.”

“With what?”

Pearl stopped and viewed the tablet. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not armed? What if there are some still inside?”

Pearl began to stutter. “I’m pretty sure they’re all gone, sir, but if I find one, I’ll step on it.”

The captain growled and slammed his fist against something. “God damn it, you fool. I’m sending some men to assist you.” Almost immediately, the tablet went dark.

From the command tower, Ito turned away from the computer and gave his command to Baxter and Starling. As they exited the room, Ito returned to his chair and took a seat. He was about to retrieve the unfinished sandwich he’d left balanced on his armrest when something caught his eye. Slipping itself under the top layer of bread was a small creature with long, sharp legs and a bulbous, shell-like body. Then it was gone, snug as a bug within the captain’s sandwich.

Ito clenched his jaw tightly and balled his fists together.

“Fuckin’ hell, I was going to eat that.”