Adrift

by W. Michael Gear

  “Thanks.” Michaela stared down at the swelling. Shit on a stick, couldn’t the little guy get a break? What the hell was this going to turn out to be?

  “If it’s a tumor, can we surgically remove it?”

  Anna crossed her arms. “I can’t. I don’t have the implants or the experience. We’re going to have to fly Toni to PA. Turnienko’s the only person on the planet who can deal with this. Especially if it turns out to be malignant.”

  “Malignant?”

  “Hey, Michaela, we’re way off the map here. Whatever these things growing down the side of the kid’s neck are, it’s like nothing recorded so far on Donovan. It’s something new. And I don’t have a clue about how to reverse this, let alone get this kid out of his coma.”

  “What about an antihistamine? Something to reduce inflammation? A steroid or something that would make the swelling go down?”

  “You’re assuming it’s glandular, maybe—”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I’m grasping at straws here. But, screw me with an ion, it’s worth a try.”

  “Okay, you got it.” A pause. “Call Yosh and Mikoru?”

  “They just put Breez to bed. Given Kevina and Felix’s problems, they took her. The little girl still hasn’t realized that her moms are gone forever. Let the kid sleep. Hell, maybe by morning the swelling will be down, and we’ll have all caught a lucky break.”

  “Yeah . . . maybe.” But Gabarron didn’t look like she believed it for a minute.

  57

  Felix came awake. Or it seemed like he did. He should have been asleep. In his bed. That was the last thing he remembered: Mother, that sad look in her eyes, the quivering of her lips, as she tucked him in.

  She had undressed, laying her clothes out on the chest of drawers as she always did, pants and shirt folded neatly. She had pinned her golden hair up. On the ship, where most shaved their heads, she’d kept her hair long. Said it was an “affectation.” Whatever that was. She used to leave it down when she and Yee were going to do the sex thing.

  Felix had watched as she pulled her blanket back and folded her long legs into the bedding. Her face working, she’d turned off the light. For a while it was quiet and dark. Then Felix had heard Mother crying softly.

  He had thought about slipping out of bed, of climbing in with her, holding her. That maybe that would have made things all right. But he missed Father, too. Wondered if crawling in where Father had slept would be wrong. Like he was trying to take Father’s place. And doing so might hurt Mother even worse than she was.

  He’d been thinking that when he fell asleep. And he should have been in his bed. That was the last thing he remembered.

  But now, as his mind began to work, he was standing in the Pod’s kitchen. And he could hear things. Things he’d never heard before, like the waves washing against the pilings down below. And deep thrumming, an almost musical sound. Then he realized the slight whisper was the wind around the landing pad two floors up.

  Weird. He’d never heard those things before.

  “You will hear a great many things, even more than you can now.”

  The Voice was right.

  The kitchen’s refrigeration unit was really loud with its fan and pumps. He had no idea how he had gotten to be here. He’d been asleep. That’s all he remembered.

  Now, here he was. The lights were on. He was standing by the door, his back to the cafeteria. Something wasn’t right with his hands, and when he looked down, it was to see them covered with sticky blood. Lots and lots of sticky blood. So much that it was thick on his fingers, clotted on his nails, and rolled like little balls when he rubbed his hands to try and get it off.

  For a moment he was terrified, a thrill of fear making him cry out.

  “It’s all right,” the Voice told him.

  As it did, the fear faded, and to Felix’s surprise, it was all right. Like being afraid just drained out of him.

  Next he looked to see if he was hurt. But there was no cut anywhere. He was standing in his underwear, his legs, arms, and chest naked, but blood smeared.

  So if he wasn’t hurt, who was?

  Felix turned around, followed his bloody footprints back around the kitchen island. He should have been afraid. That’s what he told himself. But he wasn’t. The way Bill Martin was laid out on the floor was just wrong. Instead of running like good sense said he should, Felix stepped closer, heedless of the pooled and drying blood that tried to stick his feet to the floor.

  Bill Martin was flat on his back. His clothes had been cut off and spread out like a sheet under him. Felix stared in fascination at the way the man’s skin had been slit up the front of his thighs to a place at the root of his penis, and then up through the man’s chest, up his throat, and through his head. Then the skin had been peeled back to expose the guts.

  There they all were. Looking shiny. Mother had shown him pictures of human guts on her pad. Felix couldn’t remember what went where, but Bill Martin’s guts looked like they’d been moved around, and one, a dark-red oblong organ, had even been left out.

  So, who had opened Bill Martin up like this? And why?

  “Now we know how humans work.”

  Again, the fear started down in Felix’s stomach. Started to make him panic. He wanted to cry, afraid like he’d never been.

  But the Voice brought reassurance, and the icy-scared feeling went away.

  For that, Felix was ever so thankful. He hated being afraid. This other feeling of being reassured, calm, was so much better. He understood that he should be sad for Bill Martin. Bill Martin had always been good to him. Smiled and winked. And since they’d come to the Pod, Bill Martin had slipped Felix and the rest of the children special treats when the other grownups weren’t looking.

  Funny how he wasn’t sad. Wasn’t tempted to cry. He was just normal. And what had happened to Bill Martin was normal.

  Felix looked down at the blood on his skin. Then up at the clock. People would be getting up soon. Martin always came to the kitchen to start breakfast at 4:00. The time now was 5:35.

  “I should go take a shower now,” he told himself. If Mother saw him all covered with blood, it would scare her. And Felix didn’t want to scare her. She was already sad enough about Father being taken by the thing in the night.

  If he hurried, he could be back in bed before Mother even woke up.

  58

  The sheer brassy ingenuity of it had to be admired. Dek would have marveled over it had he not been so busy huffing and puffing as he blew into the sleeve of his overalls. It was a constant battle, and he was getting light-headed. But the fact was, he and Talina were out of the water. Mostly.

  Talina’s plan was simple: Build a frame out of the chabacho log and the smaller aquajade poles that had beached on the gravel bar. By themselves they were nowhere near buoyant enough to float two people. But with the overalls placed beneath an ad hoc netting made of knotted cord, the contraption made a sort of inflatable raft. The inflatable part being the variable as the once-close-knit fabric over their overalls wasn’t nearly airtight. The more egregious leaks—like where the tube things had chewed—had been sealed with Talina’s adhesive. The rest had been smeared on places like elbows, knees, and the seats where wear had loosened the weave. After that, the wrists and ankles had been double knotted, the fasteners closed, and they’d blow the things up, then cast out, adrift.

  And blow. And blow. And continued to blow. The overalls deflated as fast as Talina and Dek could huff and puff in a frantic effort to keep the things afloat.

  But they were almost to the alluvial fan as the current wheeled them around and seemed to play with them. When Dek looked down through the clear water, he could see things moving down there. Nothing he could discern, just shapes. And periodically invertebrates would break from the surface to fly a short distance before hitting the water again and disappearing. Like they were
being chased from below.

  He barely had time to marvel at the canyon’s beauty. Let alone fantasize about the woman beside him, her thick hair pulled back as she lay partially submerged, head up, blowing into a sleeve for all she was worth.

  They had to make that shore, but a quirk of the current wheeled them around and tried to dance them closer to the river’s thread where it curled away from the alluvial fan.

  “Legs over the side. Kick!” Dek called from breathless lungs. “We’ve got to get to that beach!”

  Talina, sharp as ever, shifted, half supported by the chabacho log as she slipped her muscular legs into water and began kicking. Dek—almost capsizing them—did the same. Kicking like mad as he propelled their sinking raft toward the beach.

  And all the while, he expected to feel that sudden sharp pain as some riverine leviathan rose from below and sank its teeth into his pumping calves or feet.

  They were making it.

  Closer.

  Just another thirty meters. Twenty.

  The sinking raft was more a hindrance to progress, the deflating coveralls acting like sea anchors. But the contraption was keeping their chests and stomachs above water.

  Ten meters.

  That’s when he glanced sideways, saw the shape headed toward them. Something big and coming fast enough that the water flowed smoothly up and over its back. Dek watched with growing unease. Whatever this was, fast as it was, it came to attack. Drawn to their kicking as they pushed the raft.

  Do I stop? Ask Talina for her pistol?

  Too late. It was on them. Through the clear water Dek had a momentary glimpse of eyes, a greenish-brown shark-like head. He could see the mouth, three jaws, lined with teeth as they parted. He braced for the . . .

  Something big caught the predator from beneath, bursting up from below. Water erupted, showered Dek with spray as the two creatures battled. Dek got a fast glimpse of the shark-like attacker, its three-jawed mouth open in agony as it thrashed back and forth. Whatever had it from beneath had sunk long teeth into the thing’s sides. Blood streaked and smeared on a silver-shiny hide beneath a speckled and green-brown back. Thick muscle bulged, as the creature tried to tear free of those hideous jaws.

  And with a massive flip of its body, whatever had the shark wrenched its victim down into the depths. Another fountain of spray cascaded down, and the wave it left behind came within a whisker of capsizing Dek and Talina’s sinking raft.

  “What the hell?” Talina asked, having missed the entire show.

  “Just get us to shore!”

  Dek kicked for all he was worth, heart in his throat. He could feel the stress in his lungs, the chafing in his throat, and the burn in his legs as he gave all to the effort.

  Five meters to go, and the current was carrying them past, rushing them.

  Come on! Dek willed everything he had into making that fast-vanishing beach.

  Which was when Talina rolled off the raft, dove, and appeared on the shoreward side. She was standing, having obviously found bottom. Head and shoulders out of the water, she pulled, dragging them against the current. The image of her straining face, the passion in her eyes, would stick with him.

  Then it hit him, and he, too, rolled into the water, thrashed for footing, and struggled to pull their unwieldy vessel to the shore. Barely beached, Talina shouted, “Back on the raft. We’re barefoot. Get your boots on first thing. I don’t want to dig a slug out of your foot.”

  Dek didn’t think, just tumbled onto the wet mat of their half-submerged raft. He reached for his quetzal-hide boots—stopped long enough to painfully rip one to the tube things from his left calf and sling it into the river. As it hit, something broke the surface, snapping it between tooth-filled jaws and vanishing beneath the roiling waters.

  “So help me, if I never see another river . . .” A shiver ran down his spine. Looking back, the sucking and welling currents showed no trace of the shark-thing or its bigger and much scarier killer.

  Heedless of the blood streaming from the wound, Dek pulled on his boots, and in his underwear, helped Talina drag the craft higher on the beach.

  Dek bent at the waist, hands propped on his knees as he sucked for breath. “God, that was close. You have no idea. That big splash? That was a predator killing a predator that was going to kill us. And the beach. It never looked so far away. We’d have missed it . . . but for you.”

  She shot him a weary grin, her own lungs heaving.

  Dek decided he liked the view; he’d keep that image of her: half naked, her toned body at the river’s edge, the fantastic beauty of the sheer-walled canyon and vegetation for background. She exuded something primal—the essence of a healthy female in a state of nature, untamed, incredibly competent, and reeking of sensuality.

  “My God, I love you,” he told her. “Promise me you’ll stay at my side for the rest of my life.”

  The way she laughed and slung her wet hair back, sent a tingle through him. “Dek, gotta tell you, that’s the best offer I’ve had since . . . Well, for years.” She looked around, took in the narrow beach of mixed sand, gravel, and small rocks. Then she turned her attention to the narrow fissure in the gorge wall. Vegetation choked the narrow cleft. “But, looking up at where we have to go, the rest of your life might be a matter of minutes. No telling what’s waiting for us up in that crack.”

  He pulled himself straight, letting his gaze roam the dark recesses in the cleft. The crack was bare meters across, packed with trees, vines, and brush. “No way past if there’s a chokepoint full of predatory vines, brown caps, or a tangle of fast roots, huh?”

  “Not unless we can climb around them. You any better at climbing than you were outside of Tyson Station?”

  “Thankfully, for once I can say that I am.” He allowed himself a triumphant smile. “A couple of months on Donovan, not to mention the quetzal in my blood, has worked wonders.”

  She studied the angle of light on the canyon walls, the packed tufts of cloud rolling in from the east. “We’ve got maybe three or four hours before dark. And you know what happens at dark.”

  “Welcome to Donovan?”

  “Correct. Let’s get dressed and get the hell up and out of here.”

  After all, Talina only had ten rounds in that pistol of hers. If there was any bright lining to their situation, it was that whatever they came face-to-face with in that narrow slit in the rock, it would be up close and personal.

  Made him wonder. What was the point of being madly in love with a woman if he was going to be dead in a matter of hours?

  Seemed universally unfair.

  59

  The way Bill Martin was positioned on the kitchen floor, skin peeled back, guts exposed, blood everywhere, the single kidney left outside his body in the puddled gore . . . could it be real? Michaela stumbled sideways against the kitchen island to brace herself. Tried to understand what she was seeing: blood—smeared and pooled—the colors of the exposed organs, the dark red-brown of the liver, the pink lungs, intestines tan-gray, the stomach rose-pink. And then there was the head, split in two like a . . . a . . .

  She turned away, the image of the brain sagging and bloody in that transected skull nightmarish. Beyond belief. The kitchen seemed to reel, spin, and she clutched the counter to steady herself. This couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.

  Iso Suzuki’s frantic call had brought Michaela at a run, her bathrobe wrapped around her, her skin still dripping from her shower. Now she wished she’d taken the time to at least put on shoes.

  Iso stood back by the door, her round face slack with disbelief, her eyes large and stunned. The woman was shivering, her entire body wracked. “This is how I found him,” Iso kept protesting. “I was going to get a cup of tea for Bryan. So when he got out of the shower, he’d have it. I . . . I . . .”

  Michaela stepped back, still unable to process what she was seeing. B
ill Martin’s clothes had been sliced up the front, laid flat like some macabre sheet before whoever or whatever had cut him open. The whole scene was so bizarre, so unbelievable, she was having trouble finding her thoughts. Part of her insisted this was some creepy joke, perhaps a dummy placed there for shock value.

  This couldn’t be Bill Martin. Kind, suffering Bill Martin, who’d loved Shinwua, dealt with his lover’s peccadillos, and always took him back.

  Yosh burst through the kitchen door, pulling to a stop as he got his first look at the gruesome corpse behind the island.

  “What the fuck?”

  “This is . . .” Michaela fought for words. “What the hell happened here, Yosh? Who did this?”

  People were calling, steps pounding outside in the cafeteria.

  Michaela turned, ordering, “Stay back! Everyone. Stay back! Keep your asses out of the kitchen.”

  At the door, Anna, Kevina, Odinga, and Ruto all crowded together, expressions anxious.

  “Yosh. This is insane,” Michaela managed as she forced her brain to work. “Who’d do this?”

  “No one!” Yosh cried. “This is Bill, for God’s sake!”

  Yosh started forward, Michaela grabbing the fabric on his shoulder. “Wait. Think. We’ve got to use our heads. Look around. What do you see?”

  “Blood. Bill’s body. It’s like it was dissected. The organs are jumbled. Not put back in anatomical order. I mean, the skin’s like it was flayed open. The way his clothes were cut up the front . . . autopsy style”

  “Vibraknife there,” Michaela pointed. “That’s what cut through his pubis and sternum, then up through the jaw and laid the skull open.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s covered with blood.” Yosh bent down, staring at the floor. “Shit on a shoe, Michaela, these tracks? Look! Barefoot. It’s a fucking kid. One of the children was here.”

  Michaela vaguely heard the uttered speculation running from lip to lip among the people clogging the doorway. Iso was telling them exactly what was hidden by the kitchen island.