Marcus Slidwell's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

The crate held, but not for long. Marcus knelt beside it and watched the slug push against the mesh lid. Its spines caught the lamp light and flared pink, green, and blue, a small crown of color on a body the length of his forearm. He counted the spikes it had already fired into the panel. Four. That meant it still had a full back of them, and the mesh would not stop a spike from a body length away. He needed a real container before it worked itself free. He crawled to the back of his shelter and dragged out the hard case he had salvaged from the cargo hold after the crash. Inside sat three thick-walled jars with clamped lids. He had never opened one. He picked the largest, unclipped the lid, and set it mouth-down on the dirt beside the crate. Then he cut a strip from the punched panel and slid it under the crate as a floor. The slug hissed. A spike struck the inside of the crate and rattled. Marcus worked the panel and crate together across the dirt until the crate's open edge met the jar's mouth. He tipped the whole stack. The slug slid down the panel and dropped into the jar. He clamped the lid before it could right itself. Two spikes hit the glass from inside and skated off without cracking it. He held the jar up to the lamp. The slug uncurled against the wall, spines flaring, eyestalks tracking him. He set the jar on the flat top of a supply box and got out his book. He drew the crown of spines first, then the eyestalks, then the pale stripe along the belly. He wrote the spike count from memory. Entry forty-eight was already sketched, but this specimen was alive and lit and turning under his pencil, and he corrected three details he had gotten wrong the night before. Something cracked in the brush past the treeline. Marcus stopped drawing. The sound came again, closer, heavier than any slug. He looked at the open wall where he had cut the panel free. The gap was wide enough for a man to walk through, and whatever was moving out there was bigger than a man. He capped his pencil and pushed the jar to the back of the shelter. The slug was contained. He was not.