The Forgotten and the Damned

F3 cycle 13 submission
Prompt: FIRST SENTENCE – It’s just the natural order of things.
Genre: Open
Word Count: Under 1500 words
(Story word count: 1244)

It's just the natural order of things. This is something we told ourselves, late at night, surrounded by unimaginable darkness, as we waited in fear. Night after endless night they came and picked us off. Day after uncountable day we would gather together, an ever-shrinking assembly of the damned, to try and determine a way to save each other. To save ourselves.

Because that's what it really came down to. We were each desperately trying to find a way to not be the next to disappear into the night. And repeated, morning after hellish morning, was the act of taking inventory and marking the names of the missing in the battered log book, presuming them dead but never really knowing their true fate. I know, now, but what good does it do when I’m the only one left?

I'd been so grateful to be chosen in the lottery. A new life, a commuted sentence and the chance for a fresh start. Who wouldn't want that, considering the alternative of being sentenced to years in a labor camp? And I had skills that the commission expected to put to good use on the surveying and staging crew of the precolonization project for the planet Haphestian II. Or so the lottery committee had told me. After everything that's happened, I have my doubts.

The journey from the galactic moon where I'd been shipped after my initial sentencing, to the planet I was to help ready for humanity's new pilgrims, was projected to take two years but took much longer. Quite a few onboard had suffered through severe sickness, and there were several unanticipated deaths among the engineers, who seemed to have weaker immunity. The water filtration system failed, causing an outbreak of cholera that forced the commission to order a quarantine that would prevent us from making our descent to the surface as scheduled.

We spent several agonizing weeks orbiting the planet. All any of us could do was wait. There was a fringe element that insisted that the cholera outbreak was the result of intentional sabotage. A large number of the party were, like me, convicts sent out on the survey crew as part of the lottery. There was open suspicion, and emotions were running dangerously high. Everyone was grateful when we were finally cleared to dock for offload.

The designated colonization site on Haphestian II was located in the caldera of a long-dormant volcano. As we’d filtered out of the ship and began to be assigned to our official work groups, some of the crewmembers marveled at the lush grasslands stretched across the bowl that was once the volcano's mouth, ringed by the jagged peaks of the crater. Isolated stands of wind-bent trees dotted the plain.

For those on the crew who had grown up on the barren settlements founded on the moon and the sterile environments of colony ships it was a paradise. They gaped at what they saw as abundant fertility. I was one of the few surveyors who had come from a verdant territory, so this new planet's landscape made less of an immediate impression. Our ship had been intended as crew transport only, and had been assigned another run immediately after landing. We'd hurried to get the equipment and supplies offloaded, and then everyone got down to the business to setting camp and confirming assignments.

I was assigned to the first wave surveyor squad, slated to start on the day after our arrival. The days are short on this planet, and as that first night descended, there had been little time for any of us to do anything except stake out a place to sleep. My surveyor squad spent a week mapping a grid across the caldera, with the engineers using their scanning equipment to search for everything the potential colonists would need or the commission could make a profit from, like arable land, potable water and mineral deposits. The scientists took samples for analysis, filling their field comms with notes that would be uplinked to the commission later on.

We'd returned at the end of that week to the rest of the crew in chaos, and in the confusion not much of the collective story made sense. We were told that several people had turned up missing, beginning on the second night. No one noticed the first disappearance initially. But it happened again the next night, and the night after. By the time the surveying crew had returned, eight people had inexplicably gone missing. There may have been more, but we were still strangers to each other, mostly. That’s when we started the roll, using the log book.

We spent the nights unsheltered on the open plain and huddled together in small groups. No one ever saw anything, at least at first – someone was there, and then they just weren’t. A decision was made to post guards, and the sentries were armed. It made no difference. Something on this planet was preying on us. It was the most obvious conclusion to draw; we didn’t know how wrong we were. Our early reports to the commission went unanswered, then electronics began to come up missing. Others were found destroyed, scattered throughout the camp. As the days went on, our hope of rescue diminished.

Our supplies began to run low, so we were forced to forage for fresh water far out into the caldera beyond the camp. That's when the reports came back of bodies, out on the plain. We didn't figure out the mutations until it was too late, and every night, the afflicted wandered off into the darkness under Hephestian II's double moons. I watched them retreat into the night like animals, joining the others already claimed by the change, shedding their humanity with each step, until finally, I was the only one left.

That's how I know what happened. How I can write it all down in this book. Like it matters at all. No one will ever read this. It would be easier to forget, to give in and let them take me. I can feel them out there, just waiting, and I can feel the grip I have on my sanity weakening the longer this goes on. I've tried to get the comm system working again, to contact the transport ship. But I'm not an engineer, and I'm afraid I've just done more damage to the electronics. What would a landing party find, anyway? There's no trace of our crew left. Except for me.

I understand it all now…we were the invasive species, unprepared for this environment. There's a quote I read once, a very long time ago, "Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.” That’s what this feels like, as if my body is ripping itself apart, and trying to reassemble the pieces. I’ve convinced myself that this is what they all experienced, as they changed, became something other than they were, or died in the process.

I’m becoming too tired to write. I'm not what I used to be, and I can feel the changes taking place in my body even as I sit here. I don't know whether to give in to the transformation or to end my life. I'm sure I won't have the capacity to make the choice for myself soon enough. Just thinking of the words is difficult. It's night once again. I can hear the others. They’re waiting for me to join them. It won't be long.