Serial Sunday: The Renaissance Man and the Strange New World, Part XII
- 9 hours ago
- 7 min read
By Ryan Fleming.
The Renaissance had at last made it to the strange new world that had seemingly appeared from thin air in the South Pacific several days before – shipwrecked, exhausted, and having narrowly escaped death by both armed freebooters and tentacled monstrosities.
Their situation had not improved upon landfall, where a momentary distraction had allowed the form of some piscine abomination of a man to attack their meagre camp.
It let out a guttural roar as it towered over Alastair Eliott, clawed and webbed hand raised to strike the youngest member of the Renaissance.
His comrades stood nearby, helpless to intervene from that distance. Charles Chance and Benjamin Williams bore submachine guns, which would just as easily hit Alastair as hit his attacker. The same was true of Eileen Wong, who was much closer, but whose shotgun would definitely result in friendly fire. Annie Thomas took aim with her pistol, and as close as Eileen she might have hit the attacker, but the bullet could just as easily pass through it and strike Alastair, or even the radio.
That was a consideration too. Without the radio they would likely be stuck on the island for a long time.
There was one more armed member of the Renaissance ready to step in, however.
Alastair pointed his pistol upwards at his attacker and pulled the trigger.
The bullet passed through its chest and out through its shoulder. The dark green liquid that passed for its blood splattered on Alastair’s face.
The roar of the creature was at a far higher pitch when in pain than when on the attack. It lost its balance and fell backwards. Alastair scrambled away from it.
More creatures were emerging from the thicket of impossibly tall mangroves that marked the end of the beach. Williams and Chance fired their machine guns high over their heads. Wood and strands of kelp rained down upon the fiends, which combined with the noise seemed to make them think twice.
The one that had led the attack was rising back to its feet, but Eileen was soon upon it and using the shotgun as a blunt weapon she had pushed it from the perimeter of their meagre camp. It fell backwards again, and as it rose Eileen fired once at its side. Again, the noise and the spray of black sand that covered it seemed to act as a deterrent.
The lead attacker let out a low, guttural growl, and retreated back into the mangrove thicket. The cry seemed to convey some instruction to his fellow creatures, since those that hesitated in the face of the machine gun fire from Chance and Williams also retreated.
The Renaissance themselves retreated inside the perimeter of their meagre camp. They relaxed a little, but none holstered or lay down their weapon.
“I think we just met the natives,” Chance remarked.
“And we behaved as well as we usually do,” Annie added.
A silence hung over them for a moment, allowing another sound to regain their attention.
There was still gunfire coming from the interior, but with much less ferocity as before.
***
Maximilian Macmillan ran ahead of the men that he paid to do his bidding. An ivory handled, gold-plated automatic was clutched in his hand. It was the only gun in the vicinity that had not been fired.
It was not out of cowardice that he ran, but that he was too important to be allowed to die. He had not informed any of his men about this logic but was sure they would understand.
After his expedition had dealt with and disposed of that trespasser, he had received word from offshore that the Renaissance had not only survived their trip but had also made landfall. They could wait, ‘let them shiver at the beach for a few hours,’ was Macmillan’s response. He had bigger things on his mind. He had come here to plant a flag, so plant a flag was what he would do.
It was a flag of his own design, inspired in part by the flag of his adopted homeland. He would not allow any red on the flag and felt that thirteen was far too many stripes. Instead, it was a simple bicolour of blue over white, with a single gold star on the blue on the hoist side. The blue represented the Pacific, where Pacifica had emerged, the white the Antarctic, which Macmillan also might claim after securing this continent. The gold star was for Macmillan himself, and the riches he would bring to those lands.
His entire contingent set out, dressed smartly in their uniforms, which were soon caked in mud up to the knees as they trudged over the soft ground that seemed to exist everywhere. The men knew better than to grumble, but Macmillan could sense a darkening mood even from the officers. Captain Sidney himself was soon sweating. Macmillan did not allow himself to sweat, despite being bundled in the same uniform as the others. The same uniform with added embellishments worthy of the rank he gave himself in his own merchant air corps, of course.
Macmillan wanted the highest spot to plant the flag of Pacifica, which led to he and his men trudging up a hill that was practically a mudslide. It was on that hill that the first problems began.
Men began to scream and be pulled into the mud. Some seemingly dragged beneath the ground by tentacles, others held by massive pincers and either dragged under or cut into pieces. Panic set in almost immediately, and the men began firing indiscriminately.
They hit more of their comrades than they did the attackers.
The officers gathered around Macmillan, who had been in the middle of the procession, and ushered him back down the hell. Two of the half dozen officers were dead before they reached the bottom of the hill. One, the one that had proved his loyalty so readily by executing the trespasser, caught a stray bullet in the head. The other just disappeared whilst the others were looking elsewhere.
When they reached the bottom, they set a path back towards the airship camp, covered by three men that had chosen loyalty over safety.
On their way back through the mud, they were beset by man-shaped creatures whose clawed hands could fell a man in a single swipe if they got close enough, which was how another of the officers and one of the men met their end.
A wrong turn brought them through a mangrove thicket where the remaining loyal men and another officer were snatched up by impossibly large spiders that waited atop the trees and rappelled down on rope-thick thread to snatch their prey.
At the centre of the thicket, the mangroves disappeared. In the centre was a creature larger, more terrifying, and more beautiful that Macmillan would have ever considered possible. One of the remaining officers, the one who had reached the clearing first, walked towards the titanic arachnid-like entity. The instant he was close enough, a gargantuan leg pushed him towards a pair of undulating chelicerae and into the mass of fangs beneath.
It was there that Macmillan finally decided to run and forget what remained of his men, by then just Captain Sidney, trying to protect him. Sidney followed behind, trying to keep pace, begging his employer to allow him to offer protection, but really just wanting to be close to another human being in this blighted place.
Barely escaping the thicket, with his mud-streaked uniform now torn to shreds by what he assumed were the brood of the spider-queen at the centre of the thicket, he recognised the route they should have taken and sprinted as best he could through the bog.
Sidney still followed behind him, bloodied, both blue from the spiders that he had managed to shoot and red from the wounds their siblings had inflicted upon him. It was Sidney that saw a tentacle arising from a stretch of bog that Macmillan ran alongside.
“Duck, sir!” he yelled.
Macmillan stooped but did not stop running. Sidney took aim anyway.
With impeccable accuracy, he managed to hit the tentacle which retreated beneath the bog.
Running past that spot, Sidney spared a glance over his shoulder and saw multiple tentacles now arising from the bog. He was nearly safe, they were on the edge of the airship camp.
Macmillan reached the airship, climbed the gangway, closed the door, locked it, and raised the gangway.
“Sir,” Sidney pleaded as he reached the spot.
Macmillan merely watched as tentacles wrapped themselves around Captain Sidney’s legs and dragged the airship captain back to whatever waited at their other end.
Despite being inside the airship, Macmillan was concerned for his own safety. He now had no crew to pilot the airship. He could get more men to Pacifica but he would have to wait for them, and he did not relish returning to his continent until they could bring an entire regiment armed with flamethrowers.
If only some of the men had survived. The airship could be flown by as few as five—
Macmillan knew where there he could find five people. Five people who could probably already fly an airship too. How would he convince them to help him?
His eyes wandered around the camp, finally settling upon the blanket in which the body of the trespasser was wrapped.
***
Back at the beach, the Renaissance were hard at work. Eileen continued to try the radio for any ships in the vicinity. Chance and Williams watched the perimeter of the beach. Annie and Alastair did what surveying and gathered what specimens they could on the beach. The latter including samples of blood from the creature that had attacked Alastair and whose blood had splattered on his face.
They would continue in these activities until rescue, which they knew would come sooner or later as other ships would be arriving to stake a claim before long. They just had to hope they could convince the newcomers of the folly of attempting a landing.
“Ahoy!”
All of the Renaissance looked towards the source of a voice. A young man was climbing over the rocky outcropping that marked one end of the beach. He wore a tattered and filthy merchant navy uniform. He sprinted across the beach towards the Renaissance.
Surprise was the first thought from all members of the Renaissance at this new arrival, who collapsed inside their camp.
“’Cor blimey,” the stranger. “Am I glad to see you. I’ve been stuck here for days. Me name’s ‘Arry, ‘Arry Bell.”
Ryan Fleming is the author of SLP's Reid in Braid and various short stories for the anthologies, as well as editing The Scottish Anthology.
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