SNAP

The broad leaves of the gaboa tree shielded Ja’an, and the fragrant mix of conifer and gaboa blossom filled his head.

The sun was rapidly sinking behind the soot and snow crowned peaks of the unnamed mountains in the distance. Orange islands of wildflowers lit the open meadows ahead of him ablaze in the setting glow.

He pulled his attention back into the moment. though embedded with a scientific survey crew, he was here not to bring back rock and plant samples. His mission was to gain intel on a rebel band located in the sector. This was his third recon location on this planet alone.

As the last glimmers dipped behind the bruised horizon, night claimed the world. He moved swiftly through the open expanse of razor grass and thistle baum, the blades and thorns slapped harmlessly aside as he ran. His equipment was state of the art.

The thin polymer plates had been treated against energy based weapons using micro structures imperceptible to eye or touch, then layered like paper thin scales. Nearly weightless, the form fitting attire seemed to shimmer with reflected light granting him a blurred effect that could be attenuated to nearly invisible.

The snap crickets began their evening percussive symphony as he ran. Their sporadic report had been a constant since his landing, like a living metronome counting down to some unseen crescendo. It was an isolated crack or pop as the rusty orange creatures first began to wake, but soon became a throaty purr that rolled in waves across the open prairie like clouds of starlings twisting and churning in his ears, a thousand onlookers snapping their fingers to a well directed symphony. They glowed with a faint orange fire that appeared to be sparked somewhere within their bulbous abdomens every time they reported.

There were more of these glowing dots by the minute it seemed. The meadow glittered with their soft, fiery glow, beautiful but unsettling.

The razor and thorn of the meadow suddenly gave way to coarse porous gravel cast upon by broken and charred bones. To the left and right, the desolation reached as far as he could see. A defined line between life and waste ravaged land. A federation strike a decade earlier had wiped the stripe clean from orbit using a radiation multiplier, leaving only laced bones and rusting mangled tech. It had been a resin plantation and distribution hub for the zeta region of the rim. The resin trade had been funding the merchant revolution, and the destruction of this hub had been a serious blow.

Grasses and fire sage had taken hold of the barren ground in several areas, creating small oases of flammable, nearly explosive flora. He had read up on many of these strange plants in his field guide. There was an obvious lack of any fauna save the snap crickets in the flat sterile expanse. What a place.

He moved swiftly across the open expanse. He glanced left and right repeatedly as he moved, unhappy with the lack of cover. The drone of the snap crickets was growing in annoyance again. He couldn’t tell, but it seemed louder, like a drill slowly turning, patiently boring through his skull, slowly drawing him into its rhythm. He could now anticipate the swells, as if a familiar song stuck in his head. The buzz was penetrating and constant. An unreachable itch.

As he closed on the last few yards of open space, he stopped dead. Something shook the treetops in a small grove ahead of him, the lone feature in the barren gravel field. It had been violent and pronounced. He took cover behind the ancient remains of a destroyed hover cycle. His heart throbbed in his chest, spreading across his body as waves of heat.. He thought at first that it was out of fear, but as the shock settled, he found that courage held him, not fear.

He hunkered behind the wrecked vehicle and scanned the grove ahead of him.   The splash of green was a cluster of trees no more than a hundred feet across and, aside from the surrounding shrub, looked relatively clear. There was nothing visible in the tangle of undergrowth, nor perceivable in its branches.

He waited several more minutes, observing the stand of trees. Nothing. Had this constant drone caused him to hallucinate? It would not have surprised him. It made his head feel light and dulled his reaction time at a minimum. He felt as if he was moving through some invisible pool of water, dragging at his limbs, pulling him in an invisible current.

Slowly, he crept from cover and moved toward the grove. The buzz grew urgent, dragging him toward an invisible gravity he couldn’t resist. He felt watched, as if by some concealed spy, or as if some predator stalked him. Courage waned, and he began to feel the frantic imperative to get to the grove and the cover it provided. The closer he drew, the more urgent his need.

“Need to get out of this clearing,” he numbly muttered.

He stumbled through the branches and scrub surrounding the stand with reckless urgency, drawn to the core of the grove. He felt thorns tear at his face, hands, and neck as he fought to the center. The wounds felt warm, and that warmth spread. At first, comforting, but slowly, his vision blurred, and his balance waned.

He could feel panic grab him in the pit of his very being. His kit was suffocating. He clawed at the straps and buttons, his fingers feeling like drunken sausages. He hurled his pack to the side, ripped the communication brooch from his lapel, and dropped it with his tunic to the ground from limp fingers.         The night air coursed across his rash peppered and feverish skin. Soon, his pants, as well, lay cast aside.

The snap crickets reached crescendo, and the waves of their crackling lovesong fell over him, washing across his naked body like lavender bathwater, their glow like a ring of fire around him. Within moments, he stumbled into the clearing at the center of the grove. The ground was of red clay unlike anything he’d ever seen in nature, hard as pottery and concave like a large shallow bowl.

Could his ears take any more of this droning tide? The vibratory pleas had grown to fill his head like a freshly stirred hornet’s nest, his skull vibrating in chorus with the song of the snappers. He grasped his head tightly for fear it would burst and stumbled forward, trying to find a tree or stone upon which to lean. His head was swimming, his skin so warm, his bones like warming butter. The thorns.. Poison..

He fell to the ground. The clay felt cold beneath him. It wicked at the feverish skin in a soothing moment of respite. He rolled his head clumsily to the side and looked to the trees. Again, they shook, and again. Was he hallucinating?

Suddenly, the drone stopped. The glow of the snap crickets extinguished as if the world itself held its breath. Dark silence, absolute, gripped the grove. For a moment, he considered that he might be dead, overcome by venomous thorn scratches that covered his face and neck and fevered his mind. The mist of galaxy glowed in the sky above, and the green streak of a meteor burning up assured him that he yet lived, even if only in this fever dream.

The fog in his mind began to lift slightly, but the embrace the poison had on his body did not. The branches trembled again, but this time, there came a thunderous roar as an explosion of gold burst from the foliage.

A hundred thousand female snap crickets burst forth and swirled in waves and vortexes, ebbing and rippling against the sack cloth sky. With a deafening pop, the storm of gold was joined with one of orange, as the males took to flight. Golden waves crashed into orange waves, swirling in and out of each other in graceful elegance. This place was beautiful. Its life was truly magical. A shimmering cloud of golden fire, crackling in the darkness of the predawn sky.

Slowly, the crackle of snaps turned to screeching whistles and horrifying squeals. This screech was punctuated with the plops and thumps of males dropping from the air dead. Their half consumed and twitching bodies mounding about him on the ground like a carpet of orange gore threaded with veins of green ichor. He could feel every hair on his naked body rise and fall with each screeching pulse..

As the screams of the dead subsided, the females slowly descended, becoming a golden blanket over him.. Their beating wings slowing, and gently touching his skin. The gentle cooling hum was like a blanket of love. Every inch of him cloaked in their warmth. Their gently pulse ebbed across his body like ripples on a pond.. He could feel each pulse begin from a new spot and radiate outwards across his skin and directly through him into the hardened ground, then back through him as if a child bouncing a ball against the ground. It was calming.. He felt at ease.. Pain drifted away, and only warmth existed.

Soon, he felt the first one enter. Then hundreds more, then thousands. Slicing through skin and sliding in. They crawled inside him, depositing their eggs as they burrowed. They writhed in his chest, a squirming tide filling his lungs, weaving between muscle and bone. Their entry wounds did not bleed, nor did they kill him with their excavations. He felt no pain, just a sickly squirm.

Once they were done, they emerged from him and began to die, withering in the first rays of the morning sun.. He lay there.. The eggs had already begun to hatch.. He could feel the larvae begin to move.. The poison had begun wearing off.. The pain was coming in waves, gentle, but intensifying with each ebb. In moments, it became a white hot light.

His hand twitched.. Had he done that, or was it the larvae feasting on nerve and muscle?. He could feel them crawling up his throat and into his sinuses.. Into his brain.. He opened his mouth to scream, but only a dry, ragged wheeze escaped, followed by pulsating dark. A single tear fell down his undulating cheek.. And never another.