Half Way Home

by Hugh Howey

  We dug the fire pit out by hand and stone, then lined it with the latter. Fiber from the inside of the bombfruit was laid out to dry and several of us took turns with the machete to perform the arduous task of carving out strips of firewood from the trunk. We quickly learned the best method entailed holding the handle with one hand and gripping the dull side of the blade with a handful of moss in the other. Then the machete could be pulled down the outcropping, peeling back a layer of wood with each pass. It proved laborious work, but we all tried to shoulder our fair share of it. We also agreed that the fire wasn’t to be wasted. We would light it when it got dark and enjoy its warmth before going to sleep.

  The afternoon went by quickly, thanks to the work. We passed the time and toil by chatting and getting to know one another better. I found myself talking pre-birthday stuff for the first time, and several others did as well. So much of our lives had been spent in a virtual world that the others knew nothing about. The professional training we took for granted—that which the colony had ended up with little use for—finally came out.

  Sadly, not much of what our small group had been taught seemed useful for starting an agrarian culture on a remote planet, but all of it fascinated the others and helped explain quite a bit of our personality differences and our philosophies on life. Teachers just don’t see the world the same way tailors do, and vice versa.

  As the sun set and the fire was finally lit, we reclined in the moss, our heads on each other’s bellies in a tangle of repose. It reminded me of the manner in which we’d passed out the night before. As we lay, touching, we swapped guesses on what the boys were encountering. We also talked about who—if such a thing were possible—we wished we could teleport out of the camp. We even debated what the current timetable for the rocket must look like, the habit of our shared project not leaving us nearly as easily as we’d left it.

  That evening seemed simple enough. A small group of us spent it stretched out on the moss, just listening to each other’s voices and tossing out our own. And yet, of all my time on our unnamed planet thus far, it was one of the best, most normal nights of my entire waking life.

  I wish there could’ve been more of them.

  • 18 • Meat

  What began as a pleasant evening soon turned into a miserable night’s sleep. We tried to make ourselves comfortable in the chewed-out tunnel, but it proved nearly impossible. We had to lie directly on the rough wood—the tarps were too slick, causing us to slide toward our feet as we tried to drift off. Eventually, we moved back to the soft moss by the fire, enjoying the warmth from the glowing embers.

  But then it started raining. Heavy, like the day we were born. We returned to the tree and spent the rest of the night trying to get comfortable without ever truly succeeding. There was a lot of talk about how the boys must be faring and how it made no sense to be out exploring the unknown when we should be working to sustain ourselves for the future.

  Despite the discomfort and a night of tossing, turning, whispering, and complaining—I found myself waking up the next morning, the light of day making the leftover rain sparkle in the moss. The waking meant I must have slept. And the rain meant we had fresh water to go with our breakfast.

  I exited the tunnel and stretched my aching back. Britny was already up and filling water pouches from the collection tarps we’d left out, their centers in shallow depressions we’d dug by hand, the edges raised with piles of moss.

  “Morning,” I said, grabbing my tarp thermos with its melted-together edges and filling it up with a single scoop.

  “Did you sleep?” Britny asked.

  “For the last hour or so. You?”

  She shook her head. I turned around and looked up the wall of corrugated bark, wondering how far the boys had gotten up and if they were already on their way back down.

  “Did you hear the horn go off last night?” Britny asked.

  “The klaxon? From the base?”

  She nodded. “Just before sunup. Only sounded for fifteen minutes or so.”

  “I must’ve been asleep,” I said. I took a sip of the water and held it in my mouth while I allowed it to be absorbed. Swallowing what remained, I wiped my mouth with my sleeve and looked toward the distant and fuzzy line of black, the tall perimeter fence barely discernable. “Should we sneak closer and investigate?” I asked.

  Britny shrugged. “Been wondering the same thing.” She pouted her lower lip and wrinkled her forehead. With her olive skin and jet-black hair, it made her look lovely and menacing at the same time. I found myself liking her even though I didn’t know her as well as some of the others.

  After a moment of seemingly intense concentration, she shook her head and reached for another water pouch to fill.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Hm?”

  “What were you thinking just now?”

  “Oh, just whether or not we should go back. See if someone else left. Then I was wondering why someone would make their break early in the morning. And would they find us here? Will Hickson send people out to look for us? Then I…”

  I walked around the collection tarp and took the water sack from her, folding the flap over and tying off the neck. “You what?” I asked.

  “I wonder if it was wrong to leave,” she said. “If maybe I was being impulsive. Maybe I just needed a day off, and then I would’ve been fine. It—I know it sounds weird, but I did enjoy the work at times. And I wanted to see the rocket go up, you know? I just didn’t want to live in fear, and now I wonder if we’ll be living in a different kind of fear. What will it be like if we do set up something permanent, and then the people at the base manage to do well? How long before there’s some sort of conflict?”

  I put my arm around her. We remained on our knees in front of the collection tarp, her head leaning to the side and resting on my shoulder.

  “When you have doubts, remember the things that made you want to flee,” I told her. “That’s what I do. There were good times, but they were only good because everything to either side was absolute shit.”

  Britny laughed and wiped at her cheeks. “You’re right,” she said. “Maybe we need some really bad stuff to happen out here so we can appreciate the less crappy stuff.”

  “Don’t jinx us,” I said, looking over the tarp and back at the tree. Through a gap in the bark, I could see a few sleeping forms stirring. And Tarsi—I could see her sitting up—she was looking out at the two of us and smiling.

  ••••

  Of all the brutal days endured thus far on our strange planet—the cleanup following our birth, the eighteen-hour work shifts for the rocket project, the restless nights of exhaustion—none was ever so long as that day of waiting for the boys to return. And waiting. And doing nothing.

  Several times, we lamented the fact that a scouting party, just two or three of us, could have gone to the breach in the fence and returned already, determining the reason for the horn sounding. After lunch—during which there was another round of distant target practice—the concern was raised that the boys wouldn’t be back before nightfall. By dinner, it was all we spoke of. As it grew dark, we stretched out by the fire, lying across the sumptuous moss, resting on one another, and sleeping as poorly as we had the night before, but for different reasons.

  Tarsi and I lay with our heads together—hers on my arm—as we tried to convince one another Kelvin was okay. Most of the night was like that, whispers and fidgeting and people sneaking off to pee. Even the faint glimmer of stars through the new clearing in the distance did nothing to soothe my mind. Once again, I feared I would never sleep only to wake up to another missed dawn.

  ••••

  Gruff voices and laughter wormed their way into my dreams. I snapped up, waking Tarsi, who had fallen asleep on my stomach. We both turned to the sounds. Some small part of me feared it was a group from base coming to force us home, but the voices seemed to be leaking out of the tree.

  Leaning forward, I smoothed Tarsi’s hair, kissed her f
orehead, and told her I’d be right back. I ran for the tree. Several of the girls stirred as I left the group, the voices from the tree becoming clearer. I jumped into the sloping tunnel and hurried up, my feet gripping the rough, exposed wood—the soreness in my hamstring forgotten.

  Because of the slope of the tunnel and the wide tree’s nearly nonexistent curvature, I saw their feet and generic pants first, so I couldn’t tell each owner’s identity. I thought I heard Kelvin’s voice in the crowd and tried my best to tease his tenor out from the rest as I hurried along.

  I came to Vincent first. When he saw me running to greet them, he smiled and shook his head from side to side as if to chastise me for all the fun I’d missed. I squeezed past him, patted him on the back warmly, and came next to Kelvin, who beamed at seeing me.

  “What took so long?” I asked. I turned and walked down alongside him, the round tunnel plenty wide enough as long as we each walked up the curving floor a little.

  “We got so close to the top on that first day,” Kelvin said. “In the morning we decided to keep heading up instead of going down. Wait ’til you see what we found.”

  “Mica and Peter?”

  “Not exactly,” he said, reaching over and squeezing my shoulder. “They definitely came this way, though.”

  “So what is it?” I asked.

  “The critters that made this.” He slapped the tunnel with his hand.

  We heard screaming ahead of us as the girls encountered Vincent. Kelvin and I hurried forward, jumping out when the gap in the spiral became low enough off the ground. Tarsi leaped up and hugged Kelvin’s neck, her feet swinging away from him as he spun her around. As soon as he let her go, she slapped him on the arm for worrying us, and Kelvin laughed out of habit.

  “We need to get a fire going,” he said.

  I noticed—now that we were out of the tunnel and in the wan light of dawn—that his face had turned bright pink, especially his nose. Behind him, Samson jumped down from the tree, and hugs were exchanged in every permutation possible.

  I set to work on the fire, building a nice vertical pyramid of fruit husk and shaved wood. While I flicked the back of the machete against the magnesium block, I listened to snippets of three different conversations at once, each boy trying to answer a half-dozen simultaneous queries.

  I heard the word “excruciating” more than once when asked about the hike up. “Glorious” regarding what they’d found. And they wouldn’t stop teasing the big surprise that was coming—and why it was taking Jorge and Karl a bit longer.

  Once the fire was sparked, I leaned down and blew on it to catch the husk, then closed my little pyramid by leaning a few thin strips of bark across the opening. Tarsi had already made a trip to the base of the tunnel to bring me the firewood we’d stored there in case of rain. I sorted through the pieces and leaned a few smaller ones around the growing flames. I wasn’t sure what Kelvin wanted with the fire, seeing that the morning was quite warm already, but they were the ones that had just scaled to the treetops, so the least I could do was chop some more wood.

  I cut a few fat logs out of the tree by hacking the top of one outcrop’s corner, then the bottom, before finally prying out the loosened piece with the edge of the blade. Kelvin pulled himself away from the chatter around the fire and came over; Tarsi followed along.

  “You need help?” he asked.

  “Are you kidding? After what you just went through?” I took another swing with the machete, concentrating on doing it well now that I had an audience.

  “Coming down was easy,” he said. “We were joking around the entire time, pausing to take in the view.”

  “What was it like?”

  “The other night was miserable, with the rain and all. But yesterday was unreal. The clouds blew off and the entire sky was as blue as the hole we made in the canopy. Only, it was as far as you could see. Just bright blue all around. And you can move around up there, the canopy is so tight on top. And—well, I want you both to see it for yourself.”

  I laughed and shook my head before taking another swipe at the base of the tree. “I’ll take your word for it. I don’t think I’d enjoy the hike or the height.”

  Kelvin stepped up and helped me pry loose a hunk of wood the size of my arm. “Nonsense,” he said. “The hike isn’t that bad.”

  “You used the word excruciating.”

  “That was because I didn’t know it would be worth it at the time. Damn, Porter, just say you’ll go.”

  “Maybe after the harvest,” I said, kicking a few splinters on the ground out of my way and readying the machete for another hack.

  “The harvest? We have a long way to go before we even clear some land and plant some seeds.”

  “Exactly.” I took a swipe at the tree, the blade singing with a poor blow. “What were you saying about Mica and Peter?”

  “We found another carving at the top, so they were definitely there. It pointed across the canopy, away from base, but we could see in all directions without any sign of them.”

  “How far did the canopy spread?” Tarsi asked.

  “There’s a ridge of mountains west of here. Steep and snow-capped. Our heavy rains must be caused by them.”

  I set the machete down and tried to recall what Kelvin had taught us about rain clouds—but I couldn’t remember. While prying another hunk of wood loose, I saw Samson casually drop two more small logs on the fire and realized I was falling behind.

  “West is away from base,” I said, thinking out loud. “That’s where the arrow was pointing?”

  “Yeah, why? Wait—are you thinking that’s where Mica and Peter were going? Why would they head to the mountains?”

  I shrugged. “Why would they climb the tree?”

  A surge of noise erupted from the girls, a cacophony of squeals, shrieks, and outright screams. I turned, expecting to find at least three of them on fire, and nearly fell over at the sight of the creature coming out of the tree next to me.

  It looked like a furry snake, but was bigger than a man lying on his belly. Three times as big and four times as long. Its body was covered in bristles that waved along its length, seeming to propel it forward. I reached for the machete and backed away, my heart thudding in my chest. Kelvin laughed at me and took a step forward; he grabbed a loop of rope tied around the creature’s forward end.

  The hysterics from the girls continued as a second creature came out after the first, its head almost touching the other’s rear.

  “Come on!” Kelvin yelled at me. He pulled on the rope, steering the first creature away from the tree and across the moss. I ran after him but kept my distance.

  “What the hell are those?” I asked.

  “We call ’em vinnies,” Kelvin said. “In honor of Vincent, who nearly jumped to his death when he discovered them. Or, rather, when they discovered him.”

  I backed away from the thing as Kelvin swung it my way, bringing its face into view. The stiff hairs ended a foot from the tip, the brown and black follicles leading to a light green head with two large, moist, charcoal eyes. A stick extended out from the thing’s back, tied there by loops of rope.

  “Their faces are kinda cute,” I said.

  “They look like giant Earth caterpillars,” Kelvin told me. “Nearest thing I know of, anyway.”

  “I don’t know what those look like, so I’ll take your word for it. I immediately thought ‘snake’ when it came out.”

  Kelvin laughed. “Yeah, I suppose not many people have phobias of caterpillars.”

  “What’s the stick for?” I asked.

  “Propulsion. They eat these leaf-like chips from the tree. We hung one ahead of it to get it started down. Must’ve fallen off.”

  “I let him eat it once we got to the bottom,” Vincent said. He ran up to help Kelvin steer the creature. “Figured he deserved it.” I looked back at the tree and saw a third vinnie had exited the tunnel, the nose of the fourth right behind.

  “How many did you guys bring down?” />
  “Seven, if they all stayed together.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What’re we gonna do with them?”

  Kelvin and Vincent both looked up at me as they continued to guide the lead vinnie.

  “Are you kidding?” Jorge asked, walking up behind me. I turned and saw him slapping his hand with the side of his machete.

  “We’re gonna eat them.”

  • 19 • The Slaughter

  Jorge and Karl led one of the vinnies aside. The remaining six marched in a circle, the lead vinnie having been guided around until his nose met the last one’s rump. The entire column writhed, their brown and black thistles waving over and over down the length of each body. I was as hungry as the rest, but for some reason I didn’t like the idea of eating something alive. I could find nothing in my training so different from the other colonists to justify my lone revolt, but nobody else seemed to be bothered by the idea.

  I tried talking to Kelvin about it, but Jorge and Karl began mocking me, and I could see confusion on Kelvin’s face as well. After being called a “sissy” several times, I gave up my protests. Jorge guided the chosen creature away, patting it on the rump with his machete as he walked beside it. I grabbed the other blade and went back to chopping wood, which allowed me to keep my back turned to the ordeal.

  My eyes may have been averted, but nothing shielded me from the cries of the animal as it was slaughtered.

  I froze, and over the shrieking and squeals—eerily humanlike—I heard some of the others in our group expressing their own disgust. Several of the boys began yelling at Jorge to finish the job and I heard him yell, “I’m trying!”

  Someone—I didn’t see who—ran over and snatched my machete out of my hand and presumably used it to help out.

  I cupped my hands over my ears and knelt in the moss wondering—and not for the first time—what was wrong with me. Why I felt like throwing up.

  Tarsi came over and joined me; she wrapped an arm around my waist as we both knelt amid the scattered chips and splinters of wood. She held me until the sounds stopped, stroking my head and kissing my cheek.