Adrift

by W. Michael Gear

  “Sheena and Felix are downstairs in the tube,” Michaela insisted. “Felix has a hatchet. Why aren’t you listening to me?”

  “In the tube?” Yosh asked, something stunned and broken behind his eyes. “What are they doing there?”

  “Looking at the slime.” Michaela grabbed him by his coat to get his attention. “Listen to me, damn it. Someone smashed the com to disable the safeties and opened the UB hatch.”

  “But where’s my son?” Mikoru had a crazed look in her eyes.

  “And where’s Felicity?” Odinga couldn’t tear his eyes from the smashed com. “We haven’t even told her that her father’s dead yet.”

  A wail started in Michaela’s throat, only to be drowned by a flutter in her chest that turned into a sob.

  “What are we going to do?” Iso asked as she came wandering down the hall. “Where’s my daughter?” She fixed on Michaela’s stricken face. “You’re the pus-fucking Director. Do something!”

  Michaela tried to answer, tried to think, but her chest felt like it was being squeezed. Try as she might, she couldn’t catch her breath. All she could do was gasp for air that didn’t come.

  82

  The Pod was no longer a sanctuary. The once-familiar halls, rooms, and ceiling had become a version of an impossible hell. Her people—the team she’d kept safe for all those years aboard Ashanti—were screaming at each other as if they’d gone insane. And maybe, with the slime cells in their brains, they had. And through the madness scampered the barefoot children, fleeing, giggling in joy as they skipped away from their parents. Chasing down the stairs after a naked and green-skinned Breez, Michaela had been horrified to see the little girl dart through the tube hatch. When Michaela pulled up at the top of the stairs, it was to see Breez dive headfirst into the slime and vanish without so much as a ripple.

  At the point of despair, Michaela had fled to the safety of her personal quarters. Thankful to have the locked door between herself and whatever mayhem was breaking loose beyond, she lay in a fetal position on her bed, curled protectively around her aching left arm. Her bedside light shone on the white duraplast walls.

  Duraplast. Not even that would save her.

  The slime could denature it, dissolve it, and in the end it would seep through holes, pool around her bed, and inexorably ooze up to engulf her the way it had Tobi and Bryan. She could picture how the viscous blue-green mass would creep across the floor, deeper and deeper as it rose up the walls in tendrils. When it finally topped her bed, fingers of it would flow across the sheets to her skin. Cold, thick, like runny jelly it would trickle around her, soaking through her clothes, the chill of it slipping across her skin, sucking away her warmth.

  Heavy, it would roll over her thighs, permeate the folds of her vulva and spill over her pubis onto her abdomen. At the same time the slippery mass would engulf her arms, ease along her biceps and into her armpits, chilling, and inevitable. As it rose around her head, she’d feel the cold running into her ears, around her chin and across her lips. In those final moments, as the slime pressed down around her, it would creep over her eyes and into her nostrils.

  Sucking for breath, Michaela would draw it into her mouth, into her throat. Choking and coughing, panic would make her insane as she sucked more and more into her lungs.

  I pray I am dead before it begins to eat me.

  What did that feel like?

  Did it hurt to be digested? Maybe burn like acid? Or was it nothing more than a gradual dissolution of proteins? Something numbing as the body disappeared molecule by molecule?

  In the hallway beyond her door, someone shouted in anger, ranting.

  A child’s voice sang in a mocking tone, “Now the Pod is falling down, falling down . . .”

  Michaela rolled over in her bed, used her good arm to jam her pillow down around her ears. Anything to shut out the sounds of her abject failure. She couldn’t think, couldn’t conceive. In the chaos, she’d staggered away, leaving Yosh and Mikoru face-to-face, each shouting and clawing at the other.

  Kevina had been standing protectively in front of Felix, the boy’s eyes having turned into weird black orbs, the swelling on the side of his neck pulsing with each breath.

  Michaela had no idea where Casey Stoner was. The last she’d seen, the woman had infant Saleen in her arms, was hurrying down the hall. Jym Odinga had been following, gesturing frantically, demanding to know where Tomaya had vanished to.

  Kel and Vik had locked themselves in the lab and barricaded the door. Supposedly, while Vik worked desperately to find some sort of poison or repellent that would force the slime back and let them take control of the Pod again.

  Iso Suzuki was last seen locking herself, her three-month-old son Vetch, and some of the other children in her personal quarters. Tears had been streaking down the woman’s face, and she’d been crying, “Why is my baby green? Where’s my daughter? Where’s Felicity?”

  Michaela had no clue what had happened to Varina Tam’s son, Kayle. For all she knew the little boy lay abandoned up in the infirmary room, forgotten in the small bed they’d made for him.

  Up in the clinic—to Michaela’s complete dismay—Anna Gabarron’s body still lay sprawled in its own blood. No one had thought to try and do anything with it.

  Madness. It’s all gone insane.

  She blinked at the hot tears that slipped past her eyelids.

  Screams sounded from down the hallway, the terror barely muffled by the walls and door. Sounded like someone was being hacked to death. That kind of frantic screaming. Filled with disbelief and fear.

  We were all one. Like some incredible family. This can’t be us. Not the same people who survived Ashanti. Not the people who endured all those years of deprivation. The ones who buoyed each other in the desperate moments. The ones who clung to hope of a better world.

  Outside her door, she heard the pounding of feet. Bare, small feet. And from the other side of the duraplast door, she heard Felix’s voice say, “I think she’s in here.”

  “Open it.” That was Sheena.

  Michaela began to quake as she heard the handle rattle. Stared from under the corner of her pillow as the latch trembled against its lock.

  “Can’t get in,” Felix said.

  Michaela closed her eyes, sucking deep breaths. Her entire body was fear-electric, her muscles trembling.

  Felix? He was only eight years old. How could that eight-year-old boy they’d all fawned over become this . . . this . . . ? The words weren’t there. The child whose birth they had celebrated as their own had murdered Bill Martin. That . . . child. Taken over, become some alien horror that had used Felix’s little body to cut a man down and flay his body open.

  Probably drove that ax into Anna’s back. Brought her down, and then cut her throat.

  That skinny bit of a boy and his . . .

  “Use the ax,” Sheena cried with childish glee.

  Michaela trembled as the first impact shivered the door. Each whack of the hatchet’s blade might have sent a spear through her heart and soul. Her body tensed, quivered as the ax smacked again and again into the duraplast.

  She cried out, whimpered in desperation as the outside latch broke and clattered away across the floor.

  “Dear God! Dear God!” Then she stuffed the corner of the pillow into her mouth. Paralyzed, heart bursting in her chest, she waited.

  Scratching. Then something pried at her door.

  “Won’t open,” she heard Felix complain. “Locked.”

  “Maybe she’s not in there.” Sheena sounded disappointed. Then, “Look! There’s Dik! He’s trying to get to the cafeteria!”

  The pounding of bare feet faded as they charged down the hall.

  Michaela sobbed in relief.

  They will be back. You know they will. And they won’t stop next time.

  So, what to do? In here she’d be
trapped like a rat in a jar.

  If only I had a weapon!

  Wait. That was it. The only chance she—or any of them—had. But could she do it? Did she have the courage to open that door and make one last desperate attempt at survival?

  Carefully, every muscle trembling, sobs in her throat, Michaela climbed out of bed, tiptoed to the door, and listened. The hallway was silent for once.

  Shivering in fear, her broken arm cradled tight, she reached for the latch, felt it cold on her fingers, and turned it.

  83

  Yosh shouldn’t have fought. It was his fault. That’s all there was to it. Grownups had to understand. But they didn’t. Yosh had tried to take the ax away, and that was unacceptable. Felix stood in the cafeteria, Sheena behind him. Each drop of blood falling from the ax blade spattered in a starburst on the sialon floor. That same bright red as the blood pooling around Yosh’s sprawled body.

  Sheena appeared after checking the kitchen and stopped beside Dik’s bleeding body. She carefully scanned the cafeteria for any other grownups. Her eyes, like his, had been aching, changing. Now they reminded Felix of black lenses, like a camera’s. Deep and bottomless. He wanted her to come hold his hand. Listen to the Song that now filled the Pod. Then they’d both get that bursting tingle of delight that made them gasp and stiffen. Instead of being Felix and Sheena, they came together, like fading into each other. He could feel her, like he was inside her, and she was inside him. Hands clasped like that, it took a couple of minutes, but he knew what she was thinking. And she said it was the same for her.

  “Yosh shouldn’t have tried to take the ax,” he told Sheena as she stepped across Dik’s bloody corpse and came trotting between the tables. She barely gave Yosh a glance and took Felix’s hand. That warm, wet, and slick feeling started as soon as they locked fingers.

  “Grownups don’t understand. I should feel sad for Yosh.”

  “It’s his fault. Just like it was Dik’s. You heard the Voice. Yosh was going to stop us.” Felix stared down at the man’s body, at the gaping bloody wounds in his forearms and hands where he’d tried to ward off the ax blows. In the end, Yosh had been crying, tears running down his face as he’d held up bleeding hands and demanded, “Felix? Why are you doing this?” And, “It’s me! Yosh! Don’t you remember?”

  Felix did. He remembered perfectly. Yosh had always been there. Like all those times the man had held him on his lap back in Crew Deck. And the stories Yosh told. The jokes, the clever puns. Too bad that Yosh couldn’t have been a child, too. There was room to grow as a child. They still had time. Not like Toni and the infants who could grow a lot, but Felix and the older girls would still be worthwhile. Grownups just didn’t have any future in the Pod.

  Yosh had been like another father after Kim. All the men had been like other fathers.

  Back in that world.

  Before coming here. Before the Voice and the Song had taken over Felix’s mind. And Sheena’s. And all of the other children.

  Down inside, some part of him was sad, even frightened, at the sight of Yosh’s slashed corpse. Felix could feel it, but that old part of him was so remote. Sort of like knowing he had a right foot. But he didn’t constantly have to think about his right foot. He could choose to ignore his foot any time he wanted. So, if he wanted, he could let himself hurt, be scared. But why would he want to do that?

  “You wouldn’t,” Sheena told him. “Grownups don’t matter anymore. They don’t have a purpose. Given what’s coming, killing them is a kindness.”

  “Guess so.”

  He gave the gaping cuts in Yosh’s still-bleeding body one last look. Yosh had always been nice, had always had that laugh, that special twinkle in the eyes. Felix would miss that. “We should get back to the Director. Figure out a way to get that door open.”

  “Can’t leave her loose.” Sheena agreed, her large and darkening eyes fixed on Yosh. “He told good stories.”

  “He did.”

  Felix turned, hefting the ax. When he tensed his arm, he was still amazed at the knotting muscle that bulged there. Some distant part of him wondered about the green splotches on his skin. Weird. The tops of his arms were darker green than the bottoms, which had been turning from flesh-colored to a solid white.

  And he was so fast! Quick. Like the ax was a living thing. Big as Yosh was, he’d been slow. Even when the man used a broomstick, Felix had been able to duck it, dodge, and streak his way inside to slash at Yosh’s leg. Right above the kneecap. That’s where the tendons were. Cut them, and a grownup fell in a pile. Couldn’t get up again.

  “If only they didn’t plead so,” Felix said as he headed for the hall. As strong as he was, he should be able to chop Michaela’s door open.

  He kept his grip on Sheena’s hand, rubbing his fingers around on her hers, feeling the slick warmth in her palms. She understood that getting Michaela next was important. And being together like this kept that tingle pulsing through their bodies.

  They made it past Mikoru’s corpse where the algae now flowed out of the tube hatch from the Underwater Bay. It was Singing loudly now, humming, thrumming, and melodic. Strands of slowly moving blue-green tentacles were winding around Mikoru, slipping into rents in her clothing to run along her skin. One particularly thick one had wound its way across her chest and worked its way into Mikoru’s mouth. Funny how it could push her jaw way back and how it enlarged the woman’s throat as it grew down into her chest.

  Felix stopped long enough to let Sheena squat and place her hand atop the thick green tentacle. For a second Sheena’s slender fingers rested on the surface and then sank in. Her eyes went vacant, her slack mouth opening enough that Felix could see her tongue. Then Sheena blinked, seemed to come back to herself.

  “What did it say?” Felix asked.

  “Felicity is coming.” Sheena told him as she pulled her hand from the algae.

  A second later, through the warmth in Sheena’s hand, Felix could hear the Song, knew it was true.

  What a wonderful thing, to just know stuff by touching someone. It was a lot better way to be smart than just telling each other things. Being part of the Voice meant that Felix would never be alone again. Glancing at Sheena, he shared her feelings of comfort. She studied him thoughtfully, stepped close, and hugged him. That electric tingle shot through him, through her. In unison, they gasped. You and me will be together like this forever.

  His hand pulsed warmly against hers.

  Her gaze remained locked with his, as she said, “We never have to be apart again. Ever. It’s just us. We’re the Song.”

  Felicity appeared from the open hatch where the thick ropes of algae were pumping like pressurized hoses and expanding down the hallway toward the personal quarters. Water beaded on her face and trickled down her naked body. Felicity looked so different, like, totally green. The dark hair hung down, slicked back and wet; her eyes might have been large black orbs in her now much-too-narrow face. Felicity’s mouth looked wider, too. Water streamed out of the gill slits above her collarbones. She stepped forward on longer legs, and Felix realized she was now a whole head taller than him.

  She reached out, placed her right hand against his cheek; with her left, she took Sheena’s other hand. The warmth came through her fingers, damp, reassuring. Like Sheena, he felt himself tense, his vision going dim. Then he, Sheena, and Felicity gasped and cried out in unison as their bodies merged.

  Thoughts formed in Felix’s head. We don’t have much time. The supports for the Pod will be gone. Maybe another day. How many of the grownups are left?

  “Michaela, Kel, Vik, Iso, Jym, and Mother.” Did Felix speak or just think that?

  Kel’s gone. Tried to close the hatch on us. We’re absorbing him now. Jym tried to take Tomaya and drive the launch through us. He was faced the other way when she hit him with a wrench. She’s with Toni in the Underwater Bay. That leaves the rest. Where?

/>   “Michaela and Iso are locked in personal quarters. We’ll have to rescue Saleen after we kill Iso.”

  Mikoru had Saleen, so he’s safe. But Iso still has Vetch and Kayle. She’s our next priority. Once we’ve recovered the youngest, we can hunt the others.

  “Come on, then, let’s break Iso’s door down. We can use your strength.”

  He turned, severing the reassuring contact of Felicity’s touch on his cheek. His vision began to sharpen, his thoughts shared with Sheena’s as she held his hand and they started down the hall. To Felix’s surprise, Michaela’s battered door was open, the room empty.

  No matter. They’d find her. The Pod was only so big.

  Nor did Iso’s door prove much of an obstacle. With Felicity’s added strength and the ax, they pried it open in less than five minutes, advancing into the room as Iso screamed.

  84

  Kalico leaned against the gate that opened to the aircar field on Port Authority’s west side. Capella’s bright light burned down, illuminating the lines of aircars—some functional, others just abandoned hulks that had been scavenged for parts. The latter had been moved out to the perimeter, next to where Terry Mishka’s field of beans, corn, okra, squash, and garlic stretched out to the verdant bush. There, silvered by mirage, the scrub aquajade and chabacho wavered and seemed to flow.

  Been too long since it’s rained, Kalico noted as she squinted up at the brassy sky.

  Donovan’s axis wasn’t as inclined as Earth’s. Seasons weren’t as pronounced here.

  In Kalico’s ear bud, Talina’s voice informed, “We’re coming in from the south. Be on the ground in five minutes.”

  “Roger that,” Two Spot replied.

  Kalico shaded her eyes with a flat palm, stared south, and picked up the dot as Talina’s aircar appeared over the distant bush.

  A nervous tension began to wind itself through her gut. Anxious for them to land, unsettled at the changes in their relationship. She’d caught it, the change of inflection, as Talina had been talking to Two Spot on the way in. Something intimate in the way she said, “we.” And lying just below the surface the words hid a familiarity, the kind shared by two people who had passed beyond the boundaries of “just friends.”