Exceptions to Reality_ Stories - Alan Dean Foster [11]
LeCleur nodded reluctantly. “Who’s first?”
“I’ll do it.” Bowman took a deep breath, the soft wheeze of inbound air echoing abnormally loud in the darkness. “Cover me as best you can.”
His partner nodded and raised the rifle. Positioning himself at the most efficacious angle to the door, he waited silently. In the darkness, he could hear his own heart pounding.
Holding his weapon tightly in his left hand, Bowman undid the seals. They clicked like the final ticks of his internal clock counting down the remainder of his life. Light and fresher air entered the room as the door swung inward. Exhaling softly, Bowman opened it farther. No minuscule brown demons flew at his face, no nipping tiny teeth assailed his ankles. Taking a deep breath, he wrenched sharply on the door and leaped back, raising the muzzle of his weapon as the badly dented barrier pivoted inward. Light from the interior of the station made him blink repeatedly.
It was silent inside the outpost. A ridge of dead muffins nearly a meter high was piled up against the door. None of the little horrors moved. Rifles held at the ready, the two men emerged from the storeroom.
Light poured down from the overheads. They still had power. The interior of the outpost was rancid with tiny cadavers. There were dead muffins everywhere: on the dining table, in opened storage cabinets, under benches, beneath exposed supplies, and all over the kitchen area. They were crammed impossibly tightly together in corners, in the living quarters, on shelves. Their flattened, furry, motionless bodies had clogged the food prep area and the toilets, filled the showers and every empty container and tube.
Bright daylight poured in through the still-open front door. Scavengers, or wind, or marauding muffins had reduced the avalanche of dead creatures on the porch to the same height of a meter that had accumulated against the storeroom portal. The exhausted agents could go outside, if they wished. After weeks of unending peep-peeping, the ensuing silence was loud enough to hurt Bowman’s ears.
“It’s over.” LeCleur was scraping dead muffins off the kitchen table. “How about some tea and coffee? If I can get any of the appliances to work, that is.”
Setting his rifle aside, Bowman slumped into a chair and dropped his head onto his crossed forearms. “I don’t give a damn what it is or if it’s ice cold. Right now my throat will take anything.”
Nodding, LeCleur waded through dunes of dead muffins and began a struggle to coax the beverage maker to life. Every so often he would pause to shove or throw dead muffins out of his way, not caring where they landed. The awful smell was little better, but by now the agents’ stressed systems had come to tolerate it without comment.
A large, mobile shape came gliding through the gaping front door.
Forgetting the beverage maker, LeCleur threw himself toward where he had left his rifle standing against a counter. Bowman reached for his own weapon, caught one leg against the chair on which he was sitting, and crashed to the floor with the chair tangled up in his legs.
Gripping his staff, Old Malakotee paused to stare at them both. “You alive. I surprised.” His alien gaze swept the room, taking in the thousands of deceased muffins, the destruction of property, and the stench. “Very surprised. But glad.”
“So are we.” Untangling himself from the chair, a chagrined Bowman rose to greet their visitor. “Both of those things: surprised and glad. What are you doing back here?”
“I know!” A wide smile broke out on the jubilant LeCleur’s face: the first smile of any kind he had shown for days. “It’s over. The migration’s over, and the Akoe have come back!”
Old Malakotee regarded the exultant human somberly. “The migration not over, skyman Le’leur. It still continue.” He turned to regard the confused Bowman. “But we like you people. I tell my tribe: We must try to help.” He gestured outside. Leaning to look, both men could see a small knot of Akoe males standing and waiting