Phagocytosis

Calgary internation airport, March 2038

Lucas Hudson is the head of security for the night shift. Between 5 and 6 a.m., once he's been relieved by the morning shift, he invites me for coffee.

The terminal is empty, no surprise, since the airport is operating at a loss. Add to that the current troubles across the North American continent, Lucas is swamped with work, even though international and regional flights are becoming increasingly rare.

"There's that pit in your stomach, from the moment you leave the assembly area, through the endless convoys of logistical and support vehicles, driving past supply depots, field hospital, field repair units where damaged vehicles were being welded back into being operational. That awful feeling in your stomach that wouldn't leave. Don't know if it was always there, or if it got more intense the more you saw the light at the end of the tunnel. We'd drive past abandoned villages and farms, human and crab alike. Be it those pre soviet era farm houses, the abandoned hatcheries, we'd look out of the LAV as we drove past to see the flamethrower units burn them to a crisp. Just huge towers of meat and bone like material as those men that looked out of a Zdzisław Beksińsk painting stood in hazmat and fire retardant suits. The whole sky was grey in a good day, most of the time it was black. Filled with crap. You wouldn't know if it was 4am or 4pm. Just endless dark clouds, fires in the distance, the odd explosion lighting up the sky. Near the end we were a mess. Barely able to stand. Our faces filled with so much shit you rarely knew if someone was sleeping or awake in the dark, interior of the armoured vehicles.

Do I envied those who could sleep. From the port in Poland, we had set off for a place in Latvia I couldn't name. We were running on fumes. Even when we weren't fighting, we were exhausted—exhausted from the guards, from the maintenance work, from the mud.

Have you tried changing the wheel of a 15-ton vehicle, knee-deep in mud, after five hours of sleep in a week? I don't know what kept us going. A guy would take a knee against a tree and immediately succumb to sleep. Everyone was running on fumes. Crab powder and Adderall only got you so far. Even the government-issued "Alerton" tablets, pure methamphetamine, only worked up to a point.

And when I knew trouble was brewing, I couldn't close my eyes. "Just two more days of hard fighting and you will be relieved by another battalion" we heard that joke for three weeks on end at that point. We could kill just for eight hours of shut eye in some assembly area, and god we did.

Our objective was simple, the northern sector of a map grid. One highway running through it laterally, south of it part of a forest. Four or five square kilometres. We were to take the highway and the few odd building south of it.

Simple enough, queu one of our two LAV's getting stuck in that mud almost immediately. The engine whined, the wheels spinning uselessly while the vehicle sank deeper. We tried pulling with the other LAV. Nearly lost the second one to the mud thanks to it.

Squad leader spotted something on the highway, thanks to that we were off on a "tactical march" to the high way. Whatever it was spooked him, and caused me to call him every name in the books. Why the fuck did he want us to run one group at a time down south as if we were in a live shooting exercise. War could wait one more hour until the recovery vehicle arrived. But orders were orders.

We ran to the highway through the shittiest field known to man in a staggered, frog-leap way, one group at a time, careful not to bunch together. The mud sucked at our boots, each leap leaving a puddle behind. Every step was a battle against exhaustion, every breath a fuck you as you felt like you'd break your ankle in a small hole, or that you would collapse in the mud from exhaustion.

Cursed my sergeant, cursed the armament board for giving me gear that was this heavy, cursed every galactic being for getting me in that mess. Felt like I was going to vomit my lungs out every time I took a knee and waited for the other half of the squad to catch up to us and bound further. The bastards never ran as long as we did. At one moment when it was our turn to run and we passed the squad we heard an ordered being yelled and repeated.

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"Hold fire!" No one had fired a shot yet. They must have told us five times from the time we disembarked from the LAV not to shoot. Even whatever my mates had spotted on the highway hadn't fired at us. It was one of those twenty different things that pissed me off in that moment. I only understood later why the order had come from as high as divisional headquarters.

Just five meters from the "hill" where the highway ran, my squad, in their infinite wisdom, had stopped just below it. Either out of exhaustion or because they didn't want to see what was up there. Me, all out of fucks to give, despite how tired I was, I just bit the bullet and raised my legs high to climb on top. About ten meters up a muddy cliff, C7 rifle in hand, sweat on my face threatening to make my glasses slip off. Even as my squad protested for me to get down, I wasn't going to stop at a hill with God knows what waiting right above us.

I just trudged up that hill, trying to plant my boots on the grass without slipping. Right on top, I took a knee on the grass, just before the asphalt. That's when I saw it.

A burned-out VW, Golf or Polo, I think. The driver, what was left of him, was just charred clothes and bones slumped in the seat. On the passenger side, a crab. Sitting there. Akwardly because of his size if I may add.

It stood up the moment it saw me and rotated its head. Its blaster rested on the front hood, like it hadn't even bothered bringing it inside with him. It just looked at me, then got out.

I froze, C7 raised but trembling in my hands. Every instinct screamed to fire, to end the threat before it could act, but something about the way it stood there, just watching me, made me hesitate.

The crab tilted its head again, claws twitching slightly, like it was studying me as much as I was studying it. I could feel sweat running into my eyes, my glasses threatening to slide off again.

"Don't shoot," I muttered to myself, remembering the briefing, the orders drilled into us: do not engage unless absolutely necessary. My squad, still below, didn't know what to do either. Some were crouched, some were frozen, eyes darting between me and the alien.

Before I could think much further, my lieutenant clambered up the slope, mud squelching under his boots. He froze when he saw the crab, eyes wide.

"Move back, move back," he whispered sharply to me, then, louder, as if addressing some wild animal, "Hey! Shoo! Get out of here!"

He stomped a foot on the ground, waved his arms, and let out a series of loud claps, trying to look bigger, more threatening, like you would with a black bear wandering into a campsite. The crab didn't flinch. It tilted its head again, claws raised slightly, watching him carefully.

I could feel my pulse racing. The lieutenant's bravado didn't help. If anything, it made the scene more surreal, man versus alien, some 5'8 Chinese guy from Toronto waving and stomping while I stood behind him, rifle lowered but ready.

The crab blinked, or at least I thought it blinked, and then, slowly, deliberately, it started getting away from the car. Not in a rush, not aggressive, just deliberate.

And I swear to God, it looked at me. Not like before. This time, it met my gaze as I tore my eyes away from my lieutenant and looked directly at it.

It was in a "Are you seeing this, bro?" kind of way.

The lieutenant, clearly running out of options, bent down and grabbed a couple of rocks from the muddy ground. He tossed one toward the crab, not hard enough to hit, just enough to make a noise.

The crab flinched, arms snapping, then took a hesitant step back. Another rock, a bit louder this time, and it scuttled a few meters away, finally giving us some breathing room before it tried to save face.

Blaster in hand, not in a way that suggested hostile intent, more like it was carrying it for safekeeping. But it tried to look bigger, hissing softly and moving toward us, like it wanted to assert some sort of authority over this tiny patch of cement, mud, grass and burned out steel.

I could feel the absurdity of it weighing on all of us. After years of fighting, grenades, machine guns, mortars, nukes, you name it, you'd think nothing could surprise a soldier. Yet here we were, hesitating, uncertain, hearts still pounding, because the solution to this "threat" was rocks and yelling.

"Hey hey!" I yelled, raising my rifle, keeping it pointed but careful not to make sudden movements. My lieutenant continued his odd campaign, tossing rocks one after another. One struck the crab squarely on its forehead. It froze, then finally scuttled down the opposite slope, as if it were begrudgingly retreating from what it clearly considered its own territory.

I swear, it looked like it was complaining, like we had just kicked it out of its part of the swamp. And for a moment, none of us moved. We just stared at each other, exhausted, mud-slicked, and utterly confused by the fact that after years of vicious warfare, fighting for every inch of soils, committing things that would have brought us to the Hague if we did it against humans, we were now negotiating with a single crab armed with a blaster.

We looked at it moving south to the tree line of the forest. One, two three, seven, eight, twelve and eighteen crabs I counted waiting there, an odd 500 meters away. Rest of the squad got up there with us.

"I owe you guys an explanation" Our lieutenant let out when he saw how confused everyone was.