Wayfarer: AV494

by Matthew S. Cox

  I can do this. Just keep walking. Don’t make eye contact.

  She put her finger on the slider to unlock her room, for a second feeling as if the button could kill her. Forehead against steel, she listened at the door for a while. Distant voices continued to shout here and there from people arguing. A surge of pain in her stomach doubled her over with a loud groan.

  “Ugh. Right. I can do this.”

  Click.

  Kerys stepped into a hallway devoid of people, but littered with bits of clothing, small appliances, and one teddy bear. It looked as though her neighbors had gotten into a war of throwing things at one another. After locking her quarters behind her with a badge scan, she clutched the dumbbell tight to her chest and hurried to the right.

  An unconscious man lay face down at the bottom of the ladder between floors. She gripped the side rails and slid down, careful to avoid stepping on him. A little blood leaked from his nose and mouth, but not so much she worried for his life. She started to stoop to check on him, but the sudden fear he’d attack her if he woke made her back off.

  Fear worsened the sour feeling in her stomach. She pressed her left hand to her belly and jogged down the hall to the hamster tube linking Residence Pod 2 to the dome. Angry screaming emanated from the closed door to Residence Pod 1. Without looking, she ran past it. Three men loitering in the open area between the tube connection and the cafeteria shifted to face her and started walking over, muttering.

  She didn’t even look at them, picking her pace up from jog to run, and flew into the stairwell some forty feet away. More shouting echoed out from the second floor, someone arguing about a misplaced e-pad, convinced his friend stole it. Kerys swung around the landing and took steps two at a time to the third floor. Hurrying to the infirmary, she peered left and right in the windows of offices and the command room, finding all the desks empty. Most of the chairs in the control center lay askew. She pictured Sergeant Gensch and other soldiers storming in like cops breaking up a bar fight.

  This is seriously getting freaky now.

  It didn’t occur to her until she set foot in the infirmary corridor that with so many people getting sick, she might’ve been heading into a crowd―but much to her surprise, the medical area looked abandoned. Large windows revealed no one in any of the beds in the recovery room. Where’s Marco? She crept forward a few steps, enough for Doctor Sekhar’s desk to slide into view on the left.

  Kerys stared through her reflection on the giant window at the empty chair, glowing in flickering colors from the unattended video game on the monitor. Her heart sank. She started to turn back, but hesitated when a shadow moved on the wall.

  “Doctor Sekhar?” whispered Kerys.

  She advanced to the door, eyed the two empty auto-surgeons, and looked to her left.

  The doctor, in a white jumpsuit, stood in the corner, facing the wall like a misbehaving boy sent to time out. His hands hovered at his sides in a posture reminiscent of an Old West gunslinger having a staredown. Even his trigger finger twitched.

  “Doctor?” asked Kerys. “Is something wrong?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Dr. Sekhar, eerily calm. “What are you doing in here?”

  She hid the dumbbell behind her back and took another step in. “It’s the infirmary, and I wasn’t feeling well.”

  He spun around. Aside from an irritated glower and a layer of sweat on his brow, Doctor Sekhar seemed relatively normal. The intensity in his eyes tightened her fingers on the steel weight, but his expression softened after the span of a few breaths. “Oh. Yes. Not feeling well. How so?”

  She scratched at her jumpsuit over her stomach. “Nausea. I keep going from feeling like I’m about to throw up to like I swallowed a ball of nails.”

  “There seems to be an influenza outbreak on the station.” He smiled an unsettling smile, as if the suffering somehow amused him. “It’s rather cutting into my game time. Please, hop up on the machine and I’ll check things out.”

  Kerys slid the dumbbell into her jumpsuit’s thigh pocket. The doctor didn’t move, forcing her to squeeze sideways between him and the desk. His presence behind her scooted her up to a jog. The doctor didn’t take a step until after she’d climbed up on the machine and reclined. She picked at the cushions, shivering from nerves as he approached the console on the left. After a couple of beeps from the screen, the egg-shaped dome in the ceiling split open. A trio of robotic arms descended, positioning a boxy device over her stomach. It slid back and forth in a diagonal several times, as if measuring the area between the base of her ribs and crown of her hip.

  Doctor Sekhar walked back to his desk, sat, and resumed his video game.

  Seriously?

  The armature moved to hover over her right hip, and proceeded to perform a series of side-to-side passes, ticking toward her feet by half an inch each time. She lifted her head enough to peer at his screen, unable to believe he seemed to care more about a ‘space marine’ cleansing a starship corridor of monsters than a live patient.

  Two minutes later, the arms retreated up into the egg, which closed. She lay still for another five, but the doctor made no move to peel himself away from the computer. Kerys tapped her fingers on the soft cushions. Is he going to flip out on me if I say something?

  A digitized explosion accompanied his screen flashing red. Somber music started seconds later.

  “Dammit!” yelled the doctor, while pounding his fist on the desk. “I hate this level. Why can’t they design games to be challenging without having to make them cheat?”

  She stared at him. Maybe he won’t notice me if I just get up and walk out.

  The auto-surgeon creaked when she sat up.

  Doctor Sekhar whirled around, sneered at her, and approached the console, grumbling.

  Kerys stuffed her left hand in her pocket, grasping the tissue with the spore-laden snot. “There’s something else you should see.”

  “You’ve likely got a garden-variety cold. The scan results are perfectly normal. Nothing seems wrong with you.”

  She swung her feet over the edge. “I’ve been having stomach cramps all morning.”

  He snapped his head toward her. “Are you telling me that I don’t know what I’m talking about?” His voice rose to a near yell. “That you know more than I do? Which one of us spent nine years in medical school and four years in residence at a shithole hospital in Detroit?”

  A fleck of spittle flew from his lip and landed on her cheek. She cringed away from the outburst, hands up, and slid to her feet, half-yelling, “Sorry!” before lowering her voice. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.”

  He squared his shoulders at her; again, his trigger finger twitched.

  She pulled the tissue out of her pocket. “Doctor, can you please take a look at this?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’re determined to waste more of my time, aren’t you?”

  “I think I was exposed to something… an indigenous plant with spores. I blew my nose a little while ago and it’s purple.”

  Doctor Sekhar’s expression softened. He crossed to a counter full of diagnostic equipment, opened a drawer, and snapped on blue exam gloves. She stood there, holding out the tissue, waiting as he tugged the gloves in place and put on a paper mask. He used tongs to take the tissue from her hand, carried it back to the counter, and examined it.

  She opened her mouth to say it looked like spores suspended in mucous, but bit her tongue, not wanting him to go off on her for insinuating he couldn’t figure that out.

  “Oh, I’ve seen this before. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  Kerys blinked. “You have?”

  “One of the botanists came in with something similar a year ago. The spores didn’t exhibit any interaction with human tissue; they were merely trapped in the mucous membranes. A small amount passed out via normal excretory processes.” He laughed. “Mr. Braxton had a lavender bowel movement.” He kept snickering for a long, uncomfortable minute, before going stone-faced in an insta
nt. “It’s harmless.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” She took a step back.

  His expression darkened.

  Kerys offered a polite, but forced, smile, and ran for the door.

  She sprinted the length of the corridor to the stairs, rushed down, and skidded to a stop in the atrium between the cafeteria and the access tunnel to the residence pods. The outpost hung in pregnant silence, not a trace of humanity visible. She turned in place, feeling completely alone on an alien world. The instant her brain registered the meaning of ‘cafeteria,’ the painful nausea in her stomach shifted to hunger.

  A few steps brought her close enough to peer into the empty cafeteria. Meal trays, cups, and plastic utensils littered the tables as though thirty people in mid-meal simply vanished. A repetitious whirring emanated from one of the machines behind the counter, the only sound competing with her breathing.

  I want to go home… She looked around again, feeling like a thief about to break into a house. Seeing no one, she swiped a plastic-wrapped sandwich and two bottles of water from a cooler cabinet before scurrying out.

  The junk in the tube leading to the residence pods had thickened with more random debris scattered about: a chair, a lamp, someone’s collection of plastic action figures, and a plate… but no people. She ran to Pod 2, grabbed the side of the door to corner without falling over, and hurried to the ladder. The unconscious man was gone, only a few drops of blood remained on the floor where his face had been. She pulled herself up at an excruciating pace, terrified of causing even the slightest sound. Total silence in the upstairs hall made her wonder if everyone decided all at once to ignore Captain Chen’s order and rush outside.

  Navigating storage cartons, a broken chair or two, clothes, and burst-open boxes that had been hurled against the wall, Kerys crept back to her quarters at the northwest corner. Locking the door behind her brought a small measure of security. She set the sandwich and water bottles on the desk, the dumbbell next to them, and collapsed in her chair, cradling her head in both hands.

  “Everyone’s losing their minds.” Kerys peered between her fingers at the terminal screen showing the alien head model, which seemed to be gloating at her. “How long before I crack too?”

  13

  Disintegrating

  For hours, Kerys lay in bed, staring at the ceiling of the cubby containing her mattress. Her gaze traced the seams in the plastic over and over again, imagining tiny racecars going around a track. The malaise in her gut spread out to everywhere, leaving her achy and uninterested in moving. She slowed her breaths, searching the air for traces of lavender/peach, but it had either dissipated or she’d grown so accustomed, her nose refused to detect it.

  A daydream of taking Jaden to the aquarium, two days before she boarded the ship that brought her here, filled the corners of her eyes with tears. She’d been too excited about becoming famous to see the sorrow in his face. He’d acted happy for her, but he didn’t want her to go.

  Kerys wiped her cheeks. “I’m imagining things now. He was more excited than me.” His voice spoke in her mind, going on and on about how he’d tell all his friends about his sister the big important space-archaeologist.

  Guess fame is contagious.

  A growl came from her stomach. She rubbed it, grimacing. As soon as she’d eaten that sandwich, hunger slam-shifted back to nausea. Hours later, a dull ache settled in her gut that could’ve been either. The heaviness in her sinuses didn’t feel as pronounced either, though the feverish ache in her bones remained.

  “I’m not really hungry.”

  Another few minutes passed, the room quiet except for burbles emanating from her stomach.

  “Okay, okay, fine.”

  She got up, put her shoes on, and grabbed the dumbbell. Walking around with a weapon out might provoke, so she concealed it in her pocket, keeping a hand on it. The hall outside held the soft din of recorded audio. A few familiar lines told her someone watched a movie. If not for the random junk thrown about, the relative quiet made it feel like an ordinary afternoon. A glance at her arm showed the time at 6:02 p.m.

  Damn. Where’d the day go? Did I fall asleep? No wonder I’m so hungry.

  Kerys emerged from the ladder alcove on the ground floor, and almost walked into two men wearing camouflage jumpsuits. She backpedaled with a gasp.

  “Where are you going?” asked the one on the left, ‘Santiago, M’ over his breast pocket.

  “Cafeteria,” said Kerys. “Why, is something wrong?”

  The other man, ‘Edwards, R’ according to his uniform, shook his head. “There’ve been some incidents. Make sure you return directly to your quarters after eating.”

  A trickle of sweat ran down Santiago’s face. His eye twitched.

  Kerys shied away from the ‘I could kill you if I wanted to’ stare emanating from him and looked down. “All right. I understand.”

  They brushed past her, walking astride and peering at any open door.

  This keeps getting stranger and stranger.

  Santiago twisted to look at her, his brows knitting together. “You’re still standing there.”

  “Sorry.” She rushed to the tube, eager to put a wall between herself and the soldiers.

  A small woman in a grey jumpsuit knelt by an open panel on the left side of the tunnel, mumbling to herself in Spanish while poking at the electronics inside. Kerys slowed, curious.

  “Fuse went.” The woman pointed up and left at a section of LED tubes that didn’t glow. “Trying to find the one that needs replacing.”

  “Oh.” Kerys smiled. “Sorry for staring.”

  A few steps into the dome, a high-pitched wail arose from the right. Kerys pulled the dumbbell out of her pocket and dropped into a jiu-jitsu stance, but relaxed when she recognized Annapurna running toward her with a terrified expression.

  The woman grabbed her shoulders, shaking her and ranting in Hindi at such a pace one word blurred into another.

  “What? I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”

  Annapurna jabbed her finger at the stairway, shouting more unrecognizable words. Her eyes seemed ready to burst from their sockets.

  “You’re trembling. What happened? Anna? I don’t understand that language.” Kerys reached to take her hand, but the woman jumped back.

  She paced in a figure eight, gesturing with both hands while rambling and muttering. Her body language would’ve fit witnessing a murder. Annapurna kept pointing in the direction of the elevators.

  “Something upstairs? Okay… let’s go.”

  The woman backed up, shaking her head so hard her long, black hair flew into a tangled mass. “Nahin! Nahin! Baahar jao! Yah surakshit nahin hai! Hum marchuke hain!” She took two more steps away, staring wild-eyed.

  “What are you saying?” Kerys offered a hand. “Anna? What’s happened?”

  Annapurna whirled on her heel and sprinted off, screaming in a beckoning tone like someone shouting for the police. She stopped at the stairs, waved at Kerys while shaking her head, and raced out of sight.

  The stunned fog in Kerys’s brain faded, allowing her to process the sound of people in the cafeteria. She took a step toward the stairs, but stopped. Anna didn’t seem to want me to follow her. Her stomach clenched with a bizarre cramp, and a wave of lightheadedness came on, strong enough to weaken her knees. Kerys swallowed the saliva gathering in her mouth.

  “I’ll eat quick and check on her.”

  A handful of people sat scattered among the tables, no two close enough to converse. The automats all displayed empty messages. Whoever had the job of reloading them appeared to have taken the day off. She trudged to the Hydra and popped in a tray of Salisbury steak. Forty seconds later, the freeze-dried hockey puck in the octagonal tray came out hot and juicy. The smell of buttery mashed potatoes overwhelmed her, and she grabbed a stale muffin that had been sitting since morning as well.

  She took a seat at a small, round table near the outer window that allowed her to put her back t
o a brace in the wall and keep most of the room in sight. Outside, the dust storm continued to swirl, obscuring the view of the mountain ridge. Flickering lights and indistinct boxy shapes hinted at the shuttle pad in the distance.

  Abandoning decorum, she tore open the thin plastic covering and attacked her food. After three forkfuls, she slowed a little, her gaze alternating between watching the other people in the cafeteria and staring out the window. Everyone slouched over their meals, quiet and somber. One man shivered between body-wracking coughs.

  My head’s a little foggy, but I’m not that sick. Am I the one who brought the flu here? Is that why everyone’s staring at me like they wanna kill me?

  She savaged the rehydrated meal then began nibbling on the muffin. Motion outside grabbed her attention. Two figures to the east by the top of the hill emerged from the swirling silt and grabbed at each other while stumbling in circles. At first, they seemed to be struggling to keep each other upright while making their way to an airlock, but after a few spins, the one on the left took a swing at the other, who staggered away.

  Kerys gasped. The half-eaten muffin fell from her hands and plopped into the empty tray between her elbows. What are they doing? Idiots!

  The figures grappled in the shifting black sand, twisting around and around. One fell, the other pouncing on his back. She leapt to her feet and pressed against the window. Watching the top figure twisting at the helmet of the other man got her legs shaking. She couldn’t bear to watch, but couldn’t turn away.

  He went flying to the left as the man on the ground elbowed him in the side, sending him rolling. Both men got to their feet in seconds. The helmet-grabber charged again, but the other man raised a metal rod.

  Kerys yelped as the armed man swung the rod at the other man’s head. Helmet-grabber ducked, backpedaling. The crystalline regolith tripped him up after a few steps; he fell on his ass, arms raised in a feeble defense against the four-foot metal rod bearing down on him. His attacker pounced, bashing him in the helmet again and again before they both tumbled out of sight down the hill, vanishing into the dust storm.