Wayfarer: AV494

by Matthew S. Cox

  He started to sigh, but wound up grunting in pain. “Sorry. You know how I get when under stress. I’m under stress right now… as well as a few hundred pounds of metal. Will you please go to the storage pod?”

  I should put a bullet in your damned face for what you’ve done. Kerys sighed. “Fine, but if this is some kind of trick….”

  “No bullshit. Promise.”

  “Where’s the storage pod anyway? I haven’t been there before.”

  “Check the map,” said Will. “It’s southwest, between the dome and the reactor. Take tube four.”

  “Okay, fine. Be there as soon as I can.”

  He grunted. “Great. Take your time. Not like I’m bleeding or anything.”

  Asshole. She hung up.

  “Well, I’m not alone…” She stared at the lump the gun made in her jumpsuit pocket. “That figures. He would be the last person left alive with me here. Of all the people on this god damned place….”

  She flicked open a browser client on her e-pad and accessed the Avasar information site, which had a link to a facility map. A square about two-thirds the size of the vehicle garage, located due west of the lab pods southeast of the outpost, bore the label ‘storage – authorized personnel only.’ The map showed a length of tube linking the storage building to the dome, as well as a second tube connecting its far corner to the reactor.

  “Guess they don’t wanna move radioactive fuel through the main building.” She chuckled for a second and frowned. “Shit. I hope that damn thing can run itself for six months.”

  As much as it galled her to think of being stuck here with Will, having another person around did make her feel a little better. Grumbling, she clenched her fists at her sides and headed down the corridor to the south. The walk reminded her of following Gensch to the labs, and agitated her emotions into a swirling storm of anger and guilt. Everyone that had died in this place ultimately came back to Will. She had no way to know if anyone could’ve stopped it if he had admitted his error rather than pretending it never happened. In typical Will fashion, mistakes that no one caught him committing never happened.

  But Annapurna had caught him… too late.

  She reached the link ring where the hamster tube connected the dome to the storage pod. The sight of the round door being closed caught her off guard. All the other tunnels (except for the lab that Gensch sealed due to the air leak) had been locked open. The narrow strip of window on the left half of the circular door offered a view of a tunnel strewn with bodies. At least eleven corpses lay about as if an out-of-control brawl had come to a sudden stop. One man gripped another by the throat, frozen in the act of choking him. A woman still clutched the handle of a knife rammed into a man’s ribs. Another man in a camouflage jumpsuit lay on his side, the butt of his assault rifle smeared with blood. Close to where he’d fallen, a woman with a bashed-in face sprawled on the floor.

  Kerys recoiled in horror. “Shit….”

  Red drew her attention to a tiny two-by-two-inch screen at the center of the door showing a flashing red dot with a white X on it. The tube between the dome and the pod had no air in it. Her gaze shot back and forth from the screen to the window a few times.

  Someone blew the air while they were rioting…

  A touchscreen panel on the wall to the right of the link collar displayed a series of controls above a metal box with a few valve wheels and two large levers―likely a manual backup in case the power failed. She approached the screen, which confirmed that the air had been removed. Buttons offered her the options of re-pressurizing the tube, disengaging the locks that held it to the side of the pod, and turning the lights off.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she pushed the large green rectangle for re-pressurization.

  The floor vibrated along with a mechanical whirr. Loud hissing came from beyond the sealed hatch, and hair on several corpses fluttered. Less than a minute later, the red X on the door’s screen went black. The button she’d pressed changed label to depressurize. Above it appeared a new button labeled ‘open.’

  She pushed it and the round door split down the center. Two halves with interlocking trapezoidal ‘teeth’ slid apart, vanishing into the walls. Kerys braced for stink, but a breeze of stale air carried only the smell of metal.

  Huh… oh, I guess they wouldn’t rot in a vacuum.

  Cringing, she fast-stepped around the bodies down the tube to a westward bend. Four more corpses lay on the ground past the corner, all apparently shot to death. She crept up to the door, hesitating before her fingers touched the button to open it.

  I don’t know that he’s still sane. Am I even still sane? Maybe I died in my sleep and all of this is some nightmare taking place in three seconds of real time. Maybe I’m still in stasis dreaming, and we haven’t even reached the planet yet. She rubbed her arm where Gina had cut her. Still tender. “Ow.” No… at least they always say pain proves you’re not dreaming.

  Kerys slid her hand into her pocket, squeezing her fingers around the rubberized grip of Gensch’s sidearm. A moment of doubt came and went. She pulled it out, wondering if she had any bullets left. A thumbnail-sized screen on the left side above the trigger displayed: 09.

  Reassured, she slid the weapon back in her pocket, but didn’t let go.

  Okay… time to deal with the asshole.

  She reached across with her left hand and hit the button, causing the door to open with a pneumatic whoosh. Beyond it lay a warehouse-like room full of floor-to-ceiling metal shelves packed with metal cargo boxes of varying size. Some could’ve held bathtubs while the smallest were perhaps a foot cubic.

  Leaning in, she looked side to side down aisles between shelves.

  “Babe? That you?” said Will, his voice echoing over the silence.

  She squeezed the gun. “Yeah. And I’m not your babe.”

  “Awesome. I’m near the northeast corner. It’s safe. No one left in here but me, or I’d be dead.”

  The array of boxes on four levels of shelving held hundreds of shadowy spots between them. She drew the gun, not trusting anything about this place.

  “I don’t hear you walking,” said Will.

  “Because I’m not,” she said, raising her voice. “I’m beyond bullshit, Will. I don’t trust this at all.”

  He remained quiet for a moment. “Okay, I can accept that. I’m not trying to trick you, babe. Remember that little cat keychain I gave you on our second date? Had LEDs for eyes that lit up when you squeezed it? You named it ‘Bill.’”

  A lump started to block off her throat, but she swallowed it. “Okay, so maybe you’re not as crazy as everyone else.”

  “You don’t sound crazy either, hon.”

  “Don’t call me that, either. Outside of your own private little world, we’re not a thing anymore.”

  He sighed. “I know. Just hoping you’ll give me the chance to make up for screwing that up. I never got over you.”

  Kerys advanced, wary eyes searching the shadows with each step. “I got that feeling from you calling me twenty times a day for months.”

  “Sorry. Look, can you please move a little faster? My leg’s gone numb.”

  She kept the same cautious pace down the aisle up to an opening on the right where black skid marks on the steel floor swerved. Staying mostly hidden behind the corner of a shelf, she peered around a box labeled ‘Dehydrated meals – 1000 CT.’

  Will lay on the floor facing away from her, pinned up to the chest under a section of shelf that had collapsed. A pistol sat on the ground near his hand, the slide locked back. He’s out of bullets. To his right a short distance, a dead man had slumped over the controls of a forklift crashed into the shelf. Another dead man sat on the floor, his back propped up against a still-intact shelf some fifteen or so feet away from Will. He appeared to have been shot five or six times, all over his chest, one in the shoulder, and one in his hip.

  “Okay, so maybe you’re not full of shit.” Kerys slipped the gun in her pocket to keep it out of sight, a
gain leaving her hand on it.

  Will sat up enough to bend his head backward, staring at her upside-down. His face had a few bruises, and dried blood clung to his lip. He looked like he’d gotten into a fight and hadn’t exactly walked away the winner. “Hey. Wow. You’re so damn beautiful. Like an angel.”

  “How’d you wind up there?” She walked closer, stopping a good five paces away.

  “Shithead in the lift tried to impale me. He swerved when I started shooting at him, but he hit the damn shelf and… well, here I am.”

  “How long have you been stuck like that?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Not sure. Couple hours.”

  Kerys walked to the left, keeping enough distance in case he faked being stuck.

  “Hon, relax. I’m still me.”

  She smirked. “That’s what I’m afraid of. And if you don’t stop calling me ‘hon,’ I may leave you there.”

  He squirmed, tugging at his legs. “I’m really stuck here.”

  Kerys squatted, examining the warped metal. The right leg of his green botanical jumpsuit had gone dark red from the knee down. Enough metal pressed into him that she opened her mind to the idea he might really be trapped. “I should leave you there anyway.”

  “What?” He blinked at her in disbelief. “How could you say that?”

  “I’ve had to kill two people who I considered close friends. I almost died both times because I couldn’t bring myself to do it without hesitating. I don’t think I’d have the same problem if you crack.”

  He let out a nervous chuckle. “Well, good thing for me I’m not nuts.”

  “I ought to leave you there.” She lunged to her feet, shouting, “How could you be so damn careless! You dropped that shit and you didn’t warn anyone!”

  Will cringed, making a face like a boy who’d been caught doing something he’d been told not to. “Uhh… look, I had no idea how dangerous the stuff was. Anna was being all secretive about it. You know me… I guess I couldn’t live without being the one who made the breakthrough discovery. I just wanted to examine the stuff to see if I could―”

  “Steal her work.” Kerys tapped her foot. “And take all the credit.”

  He let his head fall on the steel with a soft thump. “Yeah. I’d spent years in this place, studying all these plants and molds and fungi, but none of it turned out to be useful to Avasar. They’d been hoping for something with medical applications or maybe a way to improve the CBPs for the e-suits. Alien life, even if it had only been plants, had so much promise… but it had no value.”

  “What about scientific value, a better understanding of the universe beyond Earth?”

  He rolled his eyes. “There’s no money in that. Avasar came out here to make a profit.”

  Kerys frowned. “And so did you.”

  “Yeah.” He looked away in shame.

  “You should have told someone you dropped it.”

  “I panicked. Thought it was just some crummy little algae or something.” He rolled his head left to stare up at her. “Look, if I could go back in time, I’d never touch the stuff. I’ve lost everyone I’ve worked with for the past four years. It’s not just you who’s had to deal with that. Think about how I feel, knowing they’re all dead because I’m a careless idiot.”

  She looked away as his lip started to quiver. Just like Will. Always about him. Of course, I’m the selfish one for not caring about how he feels.

  “I’m sorry. My leg’s kinda messed up. Please get this shit off me? You don’t want to spend the next six months alone, do you?”

  “How do I know you’re not going to snap in a day or a week? I’m tired of finding people I think are okay only to have to kill them hours later.” She shed a tear for Gina and Sergeant Gensch. After she wiped it, another fell for MacLeod, even though she hardly knew him. “I get you out of there and you try to kill me tomorrow.”

  Will reached toward her. That irritating smile he always had on his face regardless of whatever happened around him flattened to the most serious expression she’d ever seen him make. “I would never hurt you.”

  “Hurt has more than one definition, Will.” She let her hand slip from the pistol and folded her arms.

  “I’m not perfect. I’m far from it. You know what my dad was like. Kinda like your mother actually now that I think about it. All business. Be confident, go after what you want, and take it.”

  “I’m not an ‘it’ to be taken. You never could accept me as a person, and I am not some bit of swag to decorate your home with.”

  “I got caught up in the job. Think about that first year we had together. That was me. I promise you when we get back to Earth, if you’ll give me a chance, I can be that guy again. I’ll quit Avasar. I’ll find the most stress-free job I can think of. Maybe I’ll teach yoga.”

  She blurted an unexpected laugh. Am I starting to believe this bullshit or am I just that desperate not to be alone in this place? “I’m so damn angry with you for dropping that phial. All these deaths are on you.”

  He looked at the ceiling. “I know. I have that to deal with for the rest of my life.”

  “The way things are going, that might not be long.” She crept closer and stooped to grab the shelf.

  Will put a hand on her back. “Hey, don’t talk like that. Envision what you want to happen and hold that in your heart, and you’ll get it.”

  “This isn’t a corporate goal, Will. Blowing sunshine up my ass isn’t going to help. That motivational shit…” She grunted, straining against the shelf, but couldn’t budge the warped steel.

  He started to say something, but kept quiet.

  “I… dammit.” Kerys looked down at him. “Not strong enough to―” Blurry orange at the top of her vision caught her eye. She looked up at the forklift. Damn it. Why do I always go scatterbrained around him? “Duh.”

  He smiled.

  Kerys stepped over him and approached the dead man. Blood spattered on the console to the right, indicating Will had shot him after the crash. She gritted her teeth, pulling the body out of the seat and guiding him to the floor. The instant she disturbed him, a powerful stench rose into the air, making her gag and spit bile to the side.

  Eyes blurry from the stink, she climbed into the lift and fumbled with the controls. When she located the ‘on’ button, a labored mechanical whine came from the forklift. Her attempt to move the loader caused a howl of pain from Will. She let go of the control stick as if it burned her.

  “Sorry.”

  He grunted. “Forgiven. I probably deserved that.”

  No probably about it… and you deserve worse. “Will?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Why are we still sane? How did the things not eat your brain since you got the first dose?”

  He raised his hands and lowered them in the best approximation of a shrug a man could accomplish while pinned under a shelf. “Best I can figure is it’s probably luck. Something about our physiology that the little bastards didn’t like. Or maybe it was the massive dose of antibiotics I took when I felt a flu coming on. I didn’t want to lose any time working.”

  She tugged on a different stick. The forklift crept backward with an ear-splitting screech of metal on metal. Once the tines came free from the shelf, she played with the controls enough to get a feel for how to raise and lower it, as well as steer. “I didn’t take anything.”

  “Okay, so maybe for me it was the meds, for you… biological luck?”

  Kerys shimmied the forklift back and forth, lining up the left tine within a few inches of his leg. She drove forward, puncturing a box of grey jumpsuits. Raising the lift pushed the shelf up, away from Will’s leg, with a groaning shudder of stressed metal. Heavy thuds and slams came from the other side as boxes fell off the top. Kerys looked around at the echoes.

  “Well, if there’s anyone left alive out there, they heard that….”

  He moaned, feebly attempting to drag himself backward.

  Kerys slid down from the seat, grabbed his arm,
and pulled him free of the shelf. Once clear, she frowned at his bloody right leg. “I honestly don’t know why I didn’t let you stay there.”

  His smile returned. “Because you are an angel, and I hope I can prove to you that I’m serious about The New Will.”

  I’m not holding my breath. Some tiny scrap of her grasped for a chance to ‘get him back,’ but she stuffed it back down in a box. Her mother warned her ‘men like that’ always say things to get the woman to trust them, then go right back to their same old ways. Times she agreed with that woman she could count on one hand. Of course, the idea of being stuck here alone scared her more than what Will might do.

  “Come on. I’ve been working on my medical certification.” She threaded his arm around her shoulders and helped him stand.

  “Huh?” He put all his weight on his left leg, hopping for balance.

  “I can probably get the auto-surgeon in the infirmary to fix that leg… at least stop the bleeding.”

  She helped him across the storage pod to the tunnel, and past the bodies.

  He blinked as if the idea hadn’t even occurred to him. “Oh. Yeah, good idea. Guess the doctor is out.”

  Kerys cringed. “Yeah… way out. He’s dead.”

  Will glanced at her. “You saw him?”

  Her gaze fell to the floor. “I had to kill him.”

  He let out a soft whistle. “Sorry.”

  Kerys supported most of his weight up the stairs to the third floor, all the while he groaned and grunted in pain.

  “Heh… This hurts like hell, but it’s so good to have my arm around you again.”

  “Will?”

  “Hmm?” He hopped to a halt beside her, hope on his face.

  “Shut up.”

  26

  What Ifs

  When they reached the infirmary, Will winced at the sight of the walls smeared with blood, and muffled a cry of shock when MacLeod and Hellerman came into view. He shifted his weight off her shoulder and grabbed his face in both hands. Gina’s body induced an apprehensive look, but nowhere near the revulsion that the enormous stitching down the center of MacLeod’s chest had elicited.