by Andrew Gates
“What?” Iris asked.
“I said Dan saved you. You had severe hypothermia. We all did.” the voice repeated, louder this time. “We dressed you while you were unconscious. We’re all clothed now, except for Misha.”
“Vomit,” Iris said, pointing to where she recalled hurling.
“Don’t worry, she’s fine!” the voice said. “We cleaned it up and she’s sleeping now!”
Iris smiled. She was glad to know whoever received her puke was okay.
The cabin was heavily lit by the next time Iris awoke. She blinked a few times to adjust to the bright light. She could see silhouettes of bodies around her, but her vision was blurry. Some people seemed to be moving around, while others sat still, almost like they were asleep.
She turned towards the window to face the light and froze when she saw the beauty before her. A red inferno hung above the border between both seas like a dangling bulb fading out of sight. The air around the ball burst out in vivid reds and oranges, streaking across the sea above like fresh paint.
“Sunset,” she said aloud. The word came to her before she could even process the image. She thought about that word for a moment, trying to remember what it meant.
Sunset. The sun. Great ball of fire in the sky. She watched as it moved, slowly fading from view. She smiled as she placed meaning to the sight. The sun rises in the east and sets… sets in the west. We’re going west!
“We’re going west!” she said aloud, this time turning around to see if anyone else was listening.
She could not make out any faces, but someone shushed her, as if she were speaking too loudly.
Iris turned back again, hoping to stay quiet this time. She tried to prop her body up to get a better view out the window, but realized that her legs were too tired to move.
She looked down at her legs. They seemed fine from the look of them, but when she tried to flex them, it was as if they were asleep. That’s when it occurred to her that she had not moved from her chair in hours, maybe even days.
The last thing she remembered was vomiting on someone. But who was it? And how long ago did that happen?
She tried to think of the last things she could remember, but had trouble. It was hard for her to remember much, but this was the most energetic she had felt in a long time. She tried to recollect, but was quickly distracted as someone handed her a red colored bar wrapped in foil.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Keep your voice down!” a male voice replied.
Iris quieted down and took the package. It was hard to make out, but she recognized the smell.
Where do I know this from?
She held it closer to her face, hoping to get a better view of whatever she was carrying. As it neared her nose, the scent drew her in. She felt her stomach rumble as if she had not eaten in days.
Food. It’s food!
She placed it in her mouth and took a big bite. Before she knew it, the entire bar was gone.
“Another!” she said.
“Sshh!”
The same hand reached out with another bar. She grabbed it and ate it just as fast. It felt good, better than she ever imagined.
At least we have food, she thought as she turned to stare out the window once more.
Two days passed.
Iris recovered, but the process was slow.
The faces came back first. She recognized the adults: her boyfriend, Dan; his brother, Greyson; and Greyson’s wife, Selena. And then there were the kids: Jallah, Ophelia, Margery, Kaitlyn and Misha. They were all family now. She would never be able to forget these faces again. Possibly the last human faces alive.
Her memories came back next. She remembered the attack that ripped their station apart and destroyed everything she ever knew. She remembered the mantises, the dark hulking creatures with claws that could cut through bone and plasma cannons that could turn metal into craters. The memories made her shiver.
The last thing to come back was her ability to think. At first it was difficult for her to concentrate on anything for longer than a few minutes. Thoughts simply became boring or confusing. But after two days, Iris was busily helping her companions try to fix the damaged radio and take inventory of their emergency supplies.
Life went by at a crawling pace. All nine of them were still recovering from near-fatal hypothermia and would usually sleep for hours at a time, even during daylight. They were prone to spontaneous fits of coughing or dizziness. Despite spending most of the time asleep, those two days felt like a week.
It was not until the third day that things changed.
Iris awoke to a tap on her shoulder. The drowsy, battered teacher opened her eyes and looked around. The metal cabin of the escape pod they called home glistened in the window’s light and her new companions were piled on top of one another in their uniforms like children at a sleepover. Misha, the youngest in their group, seemed to be the only one awake. The naked girl was the only one too small to fit in the jumpsuits. She smiled at Iris and declared something in excitement.
“What?” the disheveled teacher asked. Ever since the day they left the station, she found it difficult to hear.
“Wake up!” the girl repeated, louder.
A few bodies started moving as the toddler yelled. Iris nodded, hoping she would not get poked again.
“What is it?”
The young girl pointed out the window.
Iris let her eyes adjust to the light and stared out through the glass in front of her. She saw the sun, of course, and the vast sky. This had been their view for the past few days. But on the horizon line as the two seas met, the teacher saw something she did not expect.
“Land,” she said aloud.
The image was like she always dreamed it would be. Rolling hills dotted the horizon, creating a silhouette with the bright sun behind it. She could make out patches of pointed green trees shooting up from the sandy ground. Wherever they were, it looked empty and uninhabited.
She frantically turned back towards her companions. Many of them were just now waking up.
“Land!” she repeated, louder this time.
Dan was the first to pop up. He turned to Iris and asked a question, though it was too faint for her to understand.
“What?” the teacher asked.
“Did you say you see land?” he repeated, louder.
Iris nodded her head excitedly and leaned back so he could see. In a few seconds, everyone in the escape pod was awake and eagerly staring out the window.
The teacher felt a strange feeling of both excitement and dread as she looked out onto the shore. She knew they could not live in this escape pod forever with limited food, oxygen and physical space, but the surface was unknown and likely poisonous. Part of her wondered which fate was better.
She thought about the last several days and how this cramped space had provided little comfort. At first they were all just glad to reach the second sea alive, but after days of eating the same food packets and wearing their unwashed grey jumpsuits, it became clear that this was a home they could not endure for much longer. Despite her hesitations, she knew they needed to land ashore.
Iris heard Greyson say something amidst the excitement, but could hardly make out the words. She twisted her body to face him but turned too quickly and felt the skin on her back sting from the burns she endured only a few days ago. She reached back and pressed her hand against the injury as she looked towards her companions.
“I agree! I want to get out of here as soon as we can!” Ophelia loudly said, though Iris was unable to hear what she was responding to.
Greyson held his hands in the air and said something back, but once again, Iris was unable to make out the words. Unfortunately, this had been happening a lot lately. My hearing is probably going to stay like this forever, she thought.
“We can use the pod’s air to pressurize the HPE.” Dan suggested, facing Iris. Then he turned his head in the other direction and said something to his brother that she coul
d not hear. Despite only getting pieces of the conversation, Iris understood well enough.
The Habitable Pressurized Enclosure, or HPE, was an inflatable tarp that they discovered in the large crate of emergency supplies. After reading the lengthy writing on the HPE’s container, Dan and Greyson discovered that the transparent tarp could expand to 30 square meters, providing them with breathable air from the escape pod’s oxygen filtration system. It would give everyone on board enough space to spread out outside the pod, yet remain safe from the atmosphere’s dangerous gases and radiation.
In addition to the HPE, they also found four atmosphere suits, similar to the space suits used by surface era astronauts. These suits would allow them to travel outside of the HPE to gather supplies, hunt and make repairs to the HPE’s outer membrane in case any problems arose.
“- to fill with air,” she heard Selena say, only catching the end of her sentence.
“Plus, we don’t know what the temperatures outside will be,” Dan added, facing Iris this time.
The half-deaf woman turned to face the window again as her companions planned out their next steps. Iris knew she could not contribute a lot to the conversation with her damaged hearing. She hated to admit it, but she had grown a lot less useful in the past few days.
The shore before her seemed so much closer now than it had only a few seconds ago. She could now make out large rocks surrounding the sandy beach and even small birds flying across the sky. The sight brought a smile to her face.
For years she studied this world from behind a screen, but in mere minutes, she would experience it for herself. The feeling was surreal. She felt like Alpheus, Explorer of the Depths, or Captain Kirk from the surface era tales of Star Trek.
Kaitlyn and Misha scooted over to Iris and sat next to her, sharing her fascination with the world outside. The teacher looked at them both and then back out to the beach. She wondered what this adventure must have felt like at such a young age.
Iris closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Pretty soon their lives were all about to change.
“We’re picking up speed!” she heard Greyson shout.
Iris opened her eyes and looked out the window again. He was right. They must have been caught in some sort of current.
The next 20 minutes felt like an eternity. The land grew closer and closer with each passing second. The nearer they got, the more the rolling hills towered over them like an omnipotent deity. Before they knew it, the rocky beach was upon them.
Iris’s heart thumped like the sound of an engine. Misha climbed into her arms and closed her eyes.
“Here it comes!” she heard someone yell, though she could not tell who.
The escape pod rumbled and screeched as it collided with the rocks. Iris tightened her grip on Misha as the toddler squirmed and shouted in fear. The lights flickered and the already uncomfortable chair painfully banged against the burns on her back. Iris felt the momentum carry her forward. Her head almost collided against the front window, but she was able to steady herself at the last second.
Then in an instant, everything stopped.
“Are we okay?” Kaitlyn shouted as the metal vessel came to a halt.
“That was scary!” Jallah added, picking himself up from Selena’s lap.
Misha continued to shout the entire time.
“Calm down, Misha!” her father ordered. Greyson looked stressed. In fact, everyone did.
The naked girl could not be contained. She pulled herself out of Iris’s arms and crawled over to her mother.
“Let’s get that tarp in place!” Dan said, ignoring the screaming child.
Iris turned back to the window again and looked out as Dan adhered the tarp to the doorway. Somehow the escape pod had spun during the collision with the shore. The front window now faced the Atlantic, with the back door facing inland.
The two brothers worked carefully to fasten the canvas to the escape pod’s large door. After applying it, they went over the written instructions one more time and carefully inspected the tarp for any holes. The process took almost 30 minutes. By the time they were finished, Iris was almost ready to knock the door down.
But then, the moment happened.
“Are you ready?” Dan asked, facing the inside of the cabin. He and Greyson positioned themselves around the door.
Iris nodded and nervously clenched the fabric of her jumpsuit pants. Selena held onto her daughters, who both looked away. Jallah covered his ears, but kept his eyes fixed on the door. Ophelia and Margery eagerly sat up with gleaming eyes.
“Here we go!” Greyson shouted as he operated the door controls.
Unlike the escape pod’s radio, the doors seemed to work just fine. They opened in an instant, flooding the cabin with bright sunlight. Iris had to shield her eyes. Part of her wondered if this was just another hypothermia-induced dream. But when she heard the sound of birds and splashing water, she knew it had to be real.
The tarp started to inflate immediately. Dan said it had to do something with pressure. The air inside the escape pod had higher pressure than the air outside, or something like that. Iris was not quite sure. She was no scientist, but it looked like it was working.
“Put this on the end!” Dan said, handing Greyson one end of the tarp with a metallic rectangular frame attached to it.
Greyson received it and pushed his way through the transparent tarp as it continued to inflate. He stepped outside of the escape pod and onto the land, opening up the canvass and spreading it out as he walked. When he stretched the canvas across the beach as far as it could go, he dropped the metal frame into the ground. The frame was small, only about a meter tall. But it stood erect with feet jutting out at the bottom, acting as a base. At once, Iris realized this metal frame was meant to be a doorway.
“Is that the airlock?” Iris asked.
“No, that’s the door leading to the airlock!” Dan explained as his brother continued to spread out the tarp. “We have to build the rest of the airlock! The pieces should be in here!”
Iris nodded her head. At least we can spread out in the tarp, she thought, surprised by how far Greyson was able to walk in the HPE. Her legs were so cramped. She had not stood up in days. Part of her wondered if she could even spread her legs out ever again.
One by one, the group started filing out of the escape pod and into the balloon. Since Iris was seated against the window, she was the last to leave. When it was finally her turn, the teacher was so excited, she nearly stepped on the bags of urine, vomit and feces positioned by the exit door. Almost made another mess, she thought as she extended her legs for the first time in days.
She pressed into the tarp and moved through the pod’s exit hatch, feeling a rush of excitement pour over her. The ground was sloped and soft. It reminded her of the strange feeling beneath her feet in the agricultural sector.
Her tired legs did not make walking through the balloon very easy. She tripped a few times and found herself holding others for balance. But walking came back to her quicker than she expected.
In just a few minutes, the group had erected corners and a ceiling out of extendable rods that were stored in the pod. The HPE was now fully formed into its shape as a large rectangular room. Dan rushed back inside the pod once the walls tightened, presumably to do something with the air pressure inside.
Iris spun around, taking in the view beyond the thin transparent walls. The shore spanned as far as she could see. The beach itself was dotted with trees and rocks, so many that she could hardly experience it all in one look. For the first time in her life, Iris really felt like she was outside.
Her chin dropped. Iris was astonished by the world around her. She did not even see Jallah as she walked right into him and nearly knocked him over.
“Sorry,” she said as he glared at her.
The boy said something in response, though Iris was unable to hear it.
She suddenly felt a hand on hers. Iris spun around to see Dan standing there with a smile on his face.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.
Iris nodded and smiled.
“Yes. It’s more than I ever imagined.”
He let go of her hand and embraced her. She felt his strong body against hers for the first time in days. It was a comforting feeling, one she did not realize how much she missed.
Iris closed her eyes and leaned into him as his lips met hers. His moist mouth hugged against hers like a perfect fit. They held that position for a few seconds, though Iris wished it could last much longer. Dan eventually pulled away and Iris opened her eyes once more.
Wow, she thought, what have I been missing?
The two of them locked eyes. He smiled. Iris could not help but blush.
Crack!
Despite her bad hearing, Iris clearly heard the echoing sound of something snapping. She spun around to face the tree line as a branch descended and smashed onto the sandy ground, less than a meter from their new enclosure.
Iris turned back toward Dan again, hoping to fall right back into that beautiful moment. But by the time she faced his way, he was frantically running toward the fallen branch.
No, no, no! Bring me back to that moment!
It amazed her how such a simple thing could pull their attention so easily. And with the distraction came strange realizations. Iris suddenly realized that she was cold. In fact, she was shivering. She also felt hungry, which was not a surprise considering how long it had been since any of them had eaten a real meal. Why hadn’t I noticed that earlier?
“That was close!” Dan yelled as he inspected the branch through the tarp.
“It could’ve torn a hole in this thing,” Greyson added.
Suddenly Iris realized why they were so concerned. The tarp was fragile and they were standing out in the open. In this enclosure, a slight touch could prove deadly.
Dan looked away from the branch. For a moment Iris hoped he would walk right back to her, hold her in his arms and pick up where they had left off. But instead, he walked to the escape pod. She could not blame him. There were more important things going on right now, though she missed the comfort of his arms and the warmth of his body.