Chapter 6 – It All Makes for Good Television
“Open up, Clyde! I know you’re in there, and I know you stole my seeds! Open up your rig before I hammer my way in!”
John Evans squeezed upon the wooden handle of his sledge until he ground his teeth. His patience ran empty, and he fumed as he swatted the butterfly-like creatures out of his face, flashing so madly through their colors that his eyes ached at the end of his first day on Wildberry. He was in no mood to suffer those wings. The ride down from the starliner had been a rough one, and John only desired the chance to close his eyes long enough for a short nap.
But those creatures of light kept blinking right in front of his face.
“You hear me, Clyde! I’m going to burst down your door if you don’t come out here and return the seeds you stole from my kit!”
The sound of rustling came from within the rig. “Let it be, John! I lost mine in the descent, and you got plenty of seeds of your own!”
“I’m telling you I’m going to hammer down your door!”
“Let it be! Or it’ll be the last thing you do!”
John took a breath and gathered his strength to lift the sledge. Clyde Stevens had a lot of nerve to steal from his settler’s kit, especially considering how John had escorted his smoking rig down to the ground. John should’ve known that no good deed would go unpunished upon Wildberry. He should’ve known that Clyde would feel no obligation towards him, not during the heated contest of the planet-grab. Yet John knew he had to make a statement, that he had to put his foot down lest every settler still surviving on the new world sought to steal from him.
So John lifted his sledge and smashed it against Clyde’s rig, smiling to see how the door dented near its hinges.
“This is my last warning, John! You better not pound my door again!”
“I’m not going to stop until I get my seeds back!”
The winged creatures flapped frantically in John’s face as the settler raised his sledge for a second strike. They flashed in bright, blinding colors of reds, oranges and yellows, as if silently screaming what alarm they might at a man who refused to pause to consider that the swarm of alien butterflies might’ve been trying to tell him something.
John’s sledge struck Clyde’s metal door a second time. Yet before John could lift his weapon for a third pounding, Clyde kicked his door open and nearly cut John Evans in half with a full load of shot from the giant shotgun he had salvaged from those ruins surrounding the New Trenton housing stack. John was dead before his body folded so unnaturally onto a pile of blood and gore onto his boots. The buckshot that roared from Clyde’s weapon also tore into half a dozen of the winged creatures so unfortunate as to be hovering near the murdered settler when that barrel discharged its blast. The remaining swam immediately turned black as the bodies of their companions thumped upon the ground. The swarm contracted into a dark funnel and fled from the carnage that dripped across the barren, gray rock.