Unearthly Neighbors by Chad Oliver

hymn books and they popped us in the stewpot. We should have been more careful.”
    “They seemed so shy, so frightened. Was all that an act? How could we have known, Monte? How could we have known?”
    “It won’t help them to blame ourselves.”
    “But I do. God, I just went off and left her sitting here—”
    “Cut it out, Charlie,” he said harshly. “I can’t take that.”
    The silence came between them again, and this time they did not disturb it. They let the heat of the fire bake into their backs and waited for the sphere to return from the orbiting ship. The night around them was vast and filled with strangeness; it was more lonely than the stars that burned in the sky above them, and more filled with mystery…
    They both sensed his presence at the same time.
    “Monte?”
    “Yes. Over there.”
    They got to their feet, their rifles in their hands. The light was not good, and at first they didn’t see anything. But they both knew with absolute certainty that there was a native somewhere in the trees, watching them. They knew that there was just one native, and they knew approximately where he was.
    Monte was as calm as ice. He squinted his eyes, waiting.
    “There he is,” Charlie whispered hoarsely.
    Monte saw him now. He was up high, up where the branches began to thin out, up where he was outlined against the stars. A tall man, facing them, his long arms reaching up above his head…
    The man seemed detached somehow, aloof and unworried. He was not trying to conceal himself. He was just standing there watching them, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to be doing…
    Something in Monte snapped—literally snapped. It was as though a taut wire had been suddenly cut. The hate boiled up in him like searing lava; his lips curled back in a snarl.
    He did not think, did not want to think. He let himself go. He was surprised at how easy it was, how steady his hands were, how clearly he could see. He even remembered not to hold his breath.
    He lifted the rifle; it was as light as a feather. He got the motionless native in his sights. Sitting duck. He squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked against his shoulder and a tongue of fire licked into the night. He was not aware of any sound. The slug caught the native in the belly. Monte smiled. He had wanted a gut shot.
    The man doubled up in the tree, grabbing at himself. Then he fell. It took him a long time. He bounced off one branch, screaming, and hit the ground with a soft thud.
    Monte and Charlie ran over to him. He was lying on his back, his long arms wrapped around his belly. His sunken eyes were wide with shock and fear. He tried to say something and a gush of blood bubbled out of his mouth.
    Monte started for him, but Charlie pushed him aside.
    “He’s mine,” he whispered.
    Charlie Jenike finished the man off with his rifle butt, and he took his time doing it.
    They left the native where he was and went back to their fire. It was blazing brightly. Neither of them spoke.
    When the gray sphere drifted down out of the sky, Ace helped them load die bodies of their dead. It didn’t take long.
    The sphere lifted again toward the invisible ship high above them in the starlit night. Monte looked down and watched the fire in the clearing until it was lost from view.
    Then there was only the great night all around them, the great hollow night and the far cold stars. He closed his eyes. There was a terrible emptiness inside of him, an icy ache that cried out to him of something vanished, something lost…
    Something that he had been and something that he could never be again.

8
    The funeral was mercifully brief, and even had a certain dignity, but it was still a barbaric thing. Monte sat through it in a daze, his mind wandering. How Louise would have hated it all…
    “When I die,” she had told him once, back in those sunlit days when death was only a word and they had both known that they would live forever, “I don’t want any gloomy