Excerpt

From a Story by Robert Jeschonek: "What Happened Between Go-Days 15 and 16"

For a species that never communicates with humans, the gleepers sure are good at scaring the hell out of us.

It's times like this when I think they understand us better than they pretend to. My people and I—the Time-Screwed, I call us—are sitting around a beach campfire under the two-mooned sky. It's cold out, winter's upon us, but we have to mark the vigil; we have to be right here on this exact spot to celebrate our holiday, Go-Day Eve. We have to be ready to receive her when she arrives…if she arrives.

But instead of her, we get a half-dozen gleepers bursting out of the jungle behind us, each one at least six feet tall with crimson neck frills flared and every fang in their mouths bared and dripping with ooze. They charge us with rainbow fur-feathers flying and flames shooting out of their asses, every voice joined in the same terrible war cry.

Guh-leep! Guh-leep! Guh-leep!

"Incoming!" Springing to my feet, I grab a hardwood club near the fire. Other members of the tribe grab weapons, too, while the very oldest and youngest scatter for their bolt-holes in the red sand.

Guh-leep! Guh-leep! Guh-leep!

One of the creatures dashes toward me, and I send the club crashing into its skull like a baseball bat. The beast spins to the ground, squawking, but I don't press my advantage further. There's just one rule we all know not to break when it comes to gleepers.

Never kill one. If you do, you're a dead man walking.

Most of what they do is toy with us, but they aren't afraid to kill. And dear God is it a terrible way to go. Once you've seen it happen, you never forget.

The good news is, the bastards get bored fast. They scare the shit out of us, chase us around some, and then they make themselves scarce.

But they aren't afraid to do some damage along the way. Tonight, for instance, one of them bumps me from behind with its snout, knocking the club out of my grip. Another gallops in on its three bony legs and snaps me up with its furry black tentacles—then hurls me over the fire, sending me crashing to the sand on the other side.

I feel my old back injury flare to life the second I hit. I'm in pretty good shape overall for a 67-year-old, but I've lived rough for a long time and have my share of weak spots.

As I curse the creature, I see its single cyclopean eye sizing me up. I swear it's about to make another run at me.

Guh-leep! Guh-leep! Guh-leep!

But then, my fellow tribesmen rally with clubs and spears and drive off the gleepers, howling like maniacs.

Gritting my teeth at the pain in my back, I lie on the ground a moment more, gazing up as snow flurries flutter down from above. They almost seem to fall from the twin moons glowing white in the sky above us, the moons of this shitty world where we're stuck.

Though the when is as important as the where when you're trapped on the planet of misery we know as Mars.

#

"I feel like she's coming this time," says old man Potter as he gazes into the campfire. Back in the day, he fought gleepers with the best of them, also tamed and rode the flying beasts we call Jabberwocks (apologies to Lewis Carroll)…but he's been here for decades, and those adventurous days are long gone. "I feel like this will be Go-Day Bye-Bye for me."

"I'll drink to that." Big Sur Sue, the bald, brawny leader of our band, raises a hollowed-out gourd full of spider-berry wine. "Here's to this being Go-Day Twenty-Three!"

As one, the tribe members cheer and sip whatever home-brewed drink they have in hand. Reconvened around the fire in the wake of the gleeper attack, we mark the holiday as always, with camaraderie and intoxication.

Also with the hope that this will be the one the tribe has been waiting for. Otherwise, it will only be half a holiday, Go-Day Eve. Go-Day itself is a conditional holiday, only celebrated in full when she shows up. And when was the last time that happened?

I know the answer all too well, as does every last one of us...but we'd rather not say. Let's keep it to ourselves and listen to the ocean waves crashing on the shore instead.

"The signs are good, at least," says Sue. "The gleepers barely laid a finger on us…ain't that right, Rice?" Grinning, she scrubs a thick-fingered hand over the salt-and-pepper shag on my scalp.

My back is killing me, but I smile and offer a thumbs-up. "Better believe it, Sue." Far be it from me to piss on everyone's party. We have so few of them on this godforsaken world.

"You tell 'em, kid." Potter salutes me from across the fire. Once upon a time, I rode Jabberwocks with him, flying through the Martian skies on the long-necked, bat-winged beasts. The Jabberwocks are long gone, but the friendship I share with Potter persists.

"Once again, our hearts are filled with hope!" proclaims Sue. "The youngest hearts among us, most of all! Which brings me to my favorite part of the night." She steps aside, gesturing for Lucy Canberra to take her place.

"Everyone?" Lucy—one of our latest arrivals, a slender, twentysomething redhead with a frequent, bright smile—claps her hands for attention. "It's time for the Go-Day Eve pageant!" She calls over her shoulder. "Children?"

There are three of them, conceived from our number and born here, poor things. This crazy shithole is the only home they've ever known.

Though, honestly, I think it's probably worse if, like the rest of us, you know what you left behind on Earth in whatever century you're from, and you know you might never get to revisit it.

"It all began on Go-Day One." Joe Bolger, a ten-year-old with short brown hair, kicks things off. Like the rest of us, he's clad in the feather-furred skins of native beasts, sewn into garments with needles of death-bunny bone to fit the human form. "On that magical day, a glittering doorway opened up, right here…" He gestures awkwardly at a spot a few feet away where a wooden marker stands, carved with the inscription G-D 1. "Then she stepped out, her golden hair flowing in the breeze like the angel she was."

I smile as seven-year-old Luke Kendall holds up a makeshift rectangular frame, and little Gina Bradley—a blonde cutie all of four years old—stumbles through it.

"I have come to save you," she says in her little girl voice, then corrects herself. "I mean, I have come to save some of you."

I nod in spite of the pain in my back because Gina has gotten it exactly right.