Beau Landry's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Beau Landry crossed an ocean of stars to build a home no government could touch, and now something in the swamp wanted to eat his family. The colony brochure had promised free land and clean water. It never mentioned the tracks. Beau crouched by the muddy bank and pressed his fingers into one. It was longer than his boot. Behind him sat the metal pod that had dropped his family here three days ago. His wife and two kids were still inside it. They hadn't stepped out since the second morning, when the thing first showed itself. He had hunted since he was six years old. Gators back home, deer, hogs in the dark. But nothing back in Louisiana grew like this. He'd seen the beast twice at the water's edge. Green armor down its back. A tail thick as a fallen log. It moved slow, then not slow at all. It was circling. Learning them. Waiting for someone small to wander out. Beau couldn't build anything while it lived. He couldn't clear brush or dig a well with his kids trapped in a box. So he made a plan. He drove a sharpened stake into the mud near the shore. He tied a slab of ration meat to it. Then he climbed the low ridge above the bank and lay flat with his rifle. He'd only brought forty rounds across the stars. He counted them once more. Then he waited. The beast came at dusk. The water split open without a sound. It hauled itself up the bank toward the meat, and Beau saw its true size for the first time. It was bigger than the landing pod. His hands went cold on the rifle. He aimed behind the eye, where the skull would be thinnest, and fired. The shot cracked. The beast roared and thrashed. It didn't fall. It spun toward the ridge and charged, faster than anything that big had a right to move. Beau fired again. And again. Mud and blood flew. The ground shook under him. He kept the trigger moving even as the jaws closed the distance. On the sixth shot the huge head dropped. The body slid sideways and stopped, one clawed foot still twitching in the shallows. Beau lay still a long moment. His ears rang. Then he stood on shaking legs and walked down to it. The thing was dead. He'd used six of his forty rounds. He turned toward the pod and shouted that it was safe. The hatch cracked open. His youngest ran out first and threw both arms around his leg. They were free to walk their land at last. But Beau looked at the carcass cooling in the mud and knew the truth. Where one this size had hunted, others fed. And now the smell of blood was spreading across the water.