by Rok Chillah
"Stop that!" Tomson and Ridge both hollered. Ridge said: "Don't run down your charge. Whatever killed her may be back for the rest of us any minute."
"Come on!" Yu hollered, waving his gun. "I'm ready for you." Mahaffey clambered and pulled him by the wrist, trying to calm him.
Brenna came running into the area, saw the body, and blanched. She kept her composure, raising both hands to her mouth, but observing: "There was another scream. Whom are we missing?"
Ridge and Tomson looked at each other. Tomson said: "Lantz and Jerez." They turned and ran. Ridge tossed his gun to Brenna, who caught it deftly. "Watch that doorway and shoot anything that comes through." Brenna nodded, and Ridge ran after Tomson.
They encountered the two women running toward them in the corridors. Both had spatters of blood and grayish gore on them. The two men nearly collided with them, and the women clawed past them with panic-stricken eyes. They carried bloodied tools-Jerez a wrench, Lantz a hammer-and their mouths were open but they were too breathless to scream. Looking past them, Ridge spotted a pair of moving red eyes glowing in the darkness. He made out clay-like gray figures with clawed hands drawn up ready to strike. "Mudmen," Tomson whispered, raising his gun. Ridge fired first. The first strike was on target, and a pair of red eyes winked out. It was dark, but Ridge thought he saw spattering body fluids. He and Tomson fired repeatedly until the air smelled like a mix of burned plastic and ozone.
"They've stopped coming," Tomson said, lowering his depleted gun.
"For now," Ridge said.
"We're in trouble," Tomson said.
"You got that right," Ridge said. "Come on, let's get the others together. We're leaving right now." His eyes were still flashing from the after-effects of the gunfire in close quarters, and he knew his own gun had weakened considerably. Unless they found a specially designed power source and adapter, they would not be able to recharge the weapons. Ridge burst into the small hall with Tomson behind him. Lantz and Jerez stood in the middle, breathlessly still waving their crude weapons about, while Mahaffey, Yu, and Brenna surrounded them.
"Nobody is watching the entrance," Ridge shouted as he ran toward the mound with his gun up. He half expected mudmen to come pouring over the top any minute. All he saw was darkness in the tunnels. He heard a regular, calm plashing as water dripped someplace.
"They came out of nowhere," Lantz said breathlessly. Her face was spattered ruby-red in the slightly off-light, as were her muscular bare arms.
"Out of the walls," Jerez said. Her face had streaks on it, as did her bare neck and shoulders. Sweat and streaks of blackish oil added a surreal sheen to the women's skin.
"Be real," Mahaffey said.
"Okay, it was like out of the walls," Jerez amended.
"She means they just popped up out of the shadows," Lantz said.
"Silently," Jerez said, gulping for air. "Stealthy."
Lantz nodded and gasped also. "We didn't know what hit us at first. They aren't real fast, but they just keep plodding along. They're stupid, like moths. You can kill them if you're fast enough."
Jerez said: "They know those tunnels backwards and forwards. We don't have a chance hiding in here. It's a wonder Caulfield survived as long as he did."
Ridge nodded. "That does it. We're heading back to WorkPod01. Everybody make sure you have some kind of weapon. Stick close together and watch each other's backs."
"Listen," Mahaffey said. His normally dark skin seemed pale, and his eyes were wide. Everyone grew still, and they listened. Ridge's skin crawled as he heard the mudmen singing their hunt-song for the first time: flute-like, at various low timbres, so soft you had to strain to hear them, as these enigmatic dwellers of the darkness sang to one another of their next meal.
Chapter 7
The seven surviving techs and engineers of WorkPod01 formed up on the ledge outside the work area where Mughali lay dead, stored with minimal dignity, posthaste, in a food locker. "Keep an eye on each other's backs," Ridge repeated. "Those of us with guns, don't fire unless you have to because we're running low and we won't be able to recharge until we're in WorkPod01 with the door locked."
They started for home. Single-file, they walked on the high catwalk above seemingly bottomless darkness. The light around them was darkly brassy, muted but hard, a sheen of copper like at the bottom of a deadly well. Ridge took the lead, with Tomson trailing. In the middle, Yu carried a gun, while Brenna, Lantz, Mahaffey, and Jerez carried improvised tools like hammers and crowbars.
The swaying, rocking metal grid was in many places a ribbon so narrow one had to put one foot carefully before the other while holding to the railing on one side, and not look down into the abyss on the other. Tomson joked: "At least they can't fly, so far anyway, so we're safe as long as we have the bottomless pit beside us." A few chuckles rose up in the flat air.
At first the going was slow and quiet. Ridge could hear everyone's breathing. Then there was a sudden creak, a screech of metal, a clatter of dropping steel, and Brenna screamed loudly enough to waken the dead. Or the mudmen. Ridge whirled, full of concern at losing her. "Grab her!" But someone already had grabbed her, even as the section of catwalk under her feet broke off and fell twirling down into the darkness in a long curve. A minute later, they heard a faint crash. "That's a long way down," Mahaffey whispered.
"You got that right," Jerez said softly behind Ridge. "At least this artificial gravity still works."
Yu walked behind Jerez, and he helped Brenna onto safe territory. Brenna reached behind her to tow Lantz along.
"Keep going," Tomson urged as he clambered after Lantz. "Must have been old. Or else it was a trap set up by the mudmen."
"They aren't bright enough," Jerez said.
"Don't be too sure," Tomson said. "Never underestimate the enemy."
"Probably just old and rusty," Mahaffey said. "How can that be?"
"Let's talk about ourselves," Ridge said. "Everyone has at least one good story to tell about home. Let's think about home, okay? I'll go first. Back in San Diego, I like to get up early in the morning and take my coffee and stand on the back patio. It's still foggy because the marine layer hasn't burned off, but it's not really cold. I can see dew drops on the oranges that are clustered on several little trees on the back lawn. A neighbor's big fat orange cat slinks by, stalking a mouse. It's the only time of day I really have any peace because my wife and kids are asleep and the family dog is in the kitchen eating the kibble I just poured for him."
"What kind of story is that?" Jerez said behind him. "What's the punch line?"
"There isn't a punch line," Ridge said. "That's the beauty of it. Unlike this paradise in which we find ourselves walking, it's safe and quiet and uneventful at home. About all that ever happens is that a check bounces and I have to call the bank to straighten things out."
"There are no checks anymore," Mahaffey said. "Nobody uses checks anymore."
"Just keep talking and we'll be home soon," Ridge said with a wary grin, glancing over his shoulder. His strategy seemed to be working. Keep them talking, and it would take their minds off their fears. He had to remember to keep his hand on his gun and keep an eye out for mudmen, since he was walking point.
Jerez said: "I spent my childhood in Singapore but married a Norwegian man whom I met in Belgium while I was studying engineering at Louvain. I have cute little blond children and a husband who looks like one of those college students who does puppet shows at kindergartens for spending money." Several people laughed-a nervous, low laugh that told they were relieved to dump some of their anxiety, even for a few seconds. "We have a low spot in the backyard of our home in Ostende. We call it the Low Country. When it rains, which is often, the low spot fills with water and becomes a little pond. It has slimy black salamanders in it, some of them with orange zigzags on their backs. They are harmless, and the children like to put them in a glass aquarium to watch them eat insects. We always make the kids put them back because we tell them the salamander mommies are lookin
g for their kids."
"What are your kids' names?" Mahaffey asked, and Jerez looked at him uncomprehendingly.
Yu told his little story. "I grew up in a small apartment where the older men all smoked and played board games. They didn't like a little boy around, so I spent a lot of time on the fire escape. My mother was afraid I would fall off, but I was agile as a mountain goat. As I got older, I started climbing on the rooftops and pretty soon I could see the city around for miles."
"What city?" Mahaffey asked.
"Shanghai. Pudong," Yu said. He was silent a few moments. "It was gray and smoggy a lot because the city is so huge. There are parks, but they sit under gray rain clouds. Sometimes the sun breaks through. I saw a really lovely rainbow once, a perfect semicircle with red and blue and green like neon lighting in it. I met a girl on the rooftop too, when I was 18."
"Did you screw her?" Mahaffey asked.
"Mahaffey," Brenna said in a warning tone.
"Must you be so crude?" Jerez said.
"I never did," Yu said. "However, there was an older woman. Well, she must have been about 25 and she was a little bit stocky. Her family owned a skin theater over in Fengjiang, and she sold tickets there. She used to come home for lunch every day and sit in the sun on the roof, with her top off. She had these heavy breasts, and one day she caught me staring at them. So she looked left and right and smiled at me. I was 18 and what did I know? I went over and for one dollar she let me feel them both."
"That's a crock of crap," Mahaffey said.
Ridge turned and said to Mahaffey: "Are you trying to make trouble?"
Mahaffey's dark skin looked darker, and his eyes were wild and angry. "You know what I'm getting at, Ridge. Quit dicking around with us."
"I'm not dicking around," Ridge said softly. "I'm as confused as you are, but I'm keeping my mouth shut. In a second or two, I'm going to slap your mouth shut for you if you don't zip a lip."
"I'm ready for you," Mahaffey said. He rose in a threatening pose and pursed his lips as he walked. His eyes blazed. Ridge noticed a tear in each outer corner of Mahaffey's eyes.
Tomson growled from the rear: "I want to hear some more stories, man. Keep your tongue in your head and your eyes on the road before we all drop down the drain."
"Did you squeeze her tits?" Jerez asked.
Lantz giggled. "He probably gave her another dollar and sucked one."
"Maybe," Ridge said, "we can come back to this story later. Mahaffey, since you are such a pain in the ass, has anything ever happened to you?"
"Yeah. I'm here. Isn't that enough?"
Yu turned and smashed Mahaffey across the mouth. Yu's face was contorted with rage, and his head trembled so that his black hair shook. "You bastard. You needle me again and I'll throw you down into that shit below. I'll throw you so hard you go splat. I hope those little gray men eat you alive."
Mahaffey stopped and felt his chin, then his jaw. "Ouch." Blood ran between his fingers. Ridge was afraid the two men were going to go at it, but Mahaffey grinned sheepishly. "Okay, I had that coming. Try it again, Yu, and next time my foot is going through your head. Understand, geeko?"
Yu's eyes still blazed, and his lips quivered with revulsion. "You damned lowlife. Let's make a deal, worm. You don't talk to me and I won't talk to you. Better yet, let's not even look at each other."
"Whoa," Ridge said. "Guys, we all have to live together."
Brenna started singing in a high, thin voice. It wasn't words but a sweet keening sound. Everyone was so shocked that all further conversation fell silent. The group stopped in mid-air, in just that sphere of dim light from their collective head lamps, with no view backward or forward. "Keep moving," Ridge said, and Tomson in the back said "Go! Go!" The group obediently started moving again, but Brenna did not falter in her song.
Somewhere in the darkness, a fluting noise sounded. Chills ran up and down Ridge's spine again. What on earth (or not on Earth) was going on here? More fluting voices joined in. Ridge found he had to listen very carefully or he would miss the low sound of air hitting air as those deadly mouths in the darkness communicated with one another. It was scary in one way, and yet nothing new in another way, since they knew they were being shadowed by these deadly terrors that had torn Mughali to pieces. Ridge found that if he shut out the childlike singing of Brenna, he could triangulate somewhat. His hearing told him, as he turned his head in various directions like a radar dish, that there were mudmen all around on the inner cylindrical surfaces of the ship. Mudmen padded silently along shadowy girders in midair. Mudmen moved in groups along ledges. There were a lot of them, for he could see the occasional flash of a pair of ruby eyes-the backs of their eyeballs, to be more specific, where light gathered and reflected in the tapetum, a reflective structure coating the rear surfaces of a typical nocturnal animal's eyeballs to gather, reflect, and amplify meager light sources. Most earth animals tended to reflect in the greenish wavelengths of light; whatever the mudmen were, they went lower yet, into the red at the edge of visible light. There was an explanation for everything, Ridge thought, and there would be an explanation for all this too. He told the group so, adding, "Soon we'll all have a good laugh about this."
"How about Mughali," Mahaffey said. "She isn't laughing."
"Neither are any of us," Ridge said. "Now shut up."
Brenna stopped singing. "That was a lullaby. I sang it to my babies when they were real small so they would be quiet. I will sing it to you some more if it will make you quiet."
"Thank you," Lantz said sincerely. "Well, you know I grew up near Tacoma. It rains all the time there, but it's very lovely. When I was small, my dad used to pack us in a minivan and drive us around the Olympic Peninsula. That is one of the largest non-tropical rainforests in the world."
"Is that where you learned to lift weights?" Mahaffey asked.
"Yeah. Shut the fuck up, okay? I'm sick of your crap. Now listen. So we used to pull over in these dark, beautiful tunnels and get out of the van. We'd walk on tiptoes right into the edges of the forest. There was moss so rich and dark and green that it muffled your footfalls. The moss hung down in ropes and beards and sheets from all the trees. You had to climb carefully, but it took you down into these little valleys where fresh water flowed. There were these little waterfalls, and sometimes you could see a tiny little rainbow right in the waterfall, glistening over these slippery looking slimy rocks. These rocks were cold and slimy and wet. They had this green coating on them in little ropes like seaweed and you could see butterflies flapping up around where the sunlight penetrated way down into the deep parts in the forest."
"That's a beautiful story," Brenna said. "I just want to tell you that I loved walking my stroller up and down the boulevard."
"What boulevard?" Mahaffey asked.
She said with sweet patience: "All of them. Ricardo would be off flying to Rome or Cairo, and I'd be alone with the little ones. We had a sort of beat up little green hatchback, and I would take the double stroller. I'd drive down to the beach along the Rio de la Plata. I would find a nice spot to park where the airplane noise wasn't too loud from the Aeroparque Jorge Newbery, and then we would walk along the little concrete sidewalks. The sun would shine, and the bees and butterflies were out in force, the wind was balmy and the flowers were in bloom, and I would sing my lullaby to the little babies in the stroller." She raised her voice sweetly in a humming sound that Ridge found incredibly sweet. As soon as she started, echoes came from the mudmen, chilling imitations, haunting inversions of evil where Brenna shed goodness. Then again, perhaps even mudmen had some sort of soul and life. Maybe they believed in something. Certainly they yearned to eat and drink, and they had a taste for human blood and meat, so maybe they were capable of higher yearnings. Or baser yearnings, Ridge corrected himself. Brenna's lullaby from Buenos Aires trickled away. For a few minutes the mudmen continued their faint puffing and lowing, and then that stopped. Only the sound of water trickling randomly from high places to low places was a
udible now.
"We are getting closer," Ridge said. "Faith, y'all. We're almost home." A cheer arose. "Yeah!" Tomson cried. "Plug me in to my music and hand me a stick of stimulay. I'm good for it." Laughter followed his declaration.
They came into an area of increasing light, though still faint. The catwalk on which they trod became more visible, showing its worn metal surfaces and floor gratings.
"Eyes open wide," Ridge said. "We're coming to the end of the catwalk and up the ledge on the home side now. We've made it so far. Anybody got the key to our home?"
Tomson said: "I think we'll find it when we get there. Anybody tried reaching the CP recently?"
"I'll give it another shot," Ridge said. He cranked up his collar mike and spoke into it: "Hello, Bridge. Captain Venable? CP, this is WorkPod01. Do you read? Over." He waited. "This is Ridge speaking. Bridge, this is WorkPod01 calling. Do you read me? Over." No reply came, just a faint crackle of static.
"You all think I'm just a poor kid from Sandtown," Tomson said, "but listen. My dad was an Air Force colonel. He used to fly the most advanced jets and saucers in our arsenal. He'd bring back photographs, when it was allowed, of clouds way up on the edge of space. They were these wonderful photographs in which you'd see a green mass below, and then a sort of a haze, kind of blue streaked with white, or white streaked with blue, and above that the black edge of eternity. That always got me, particularly when my old man managed to get some stars in the shot. That always worked magic for me. We lived in a great big old house on a quiet shady street. There were these huge weeping willows all around on the lawn. Elms lined the streets as far as you could see. I had a real happy childhood there."