by Justin Sloan
“Hell no, I don’t,” she replied, exhaling, trying to stop her hands from shaking.
The color drained from Fincher’s face. Haskell gestured to a man chained near a cluster of the torpedo-like munitions and said, with her most authoritative voice: “Open that thing up.”
The man looked first to Blaine who reluctantly nodded. Quickly and efficiently, the men opened a side panel on the missile to reveal its inner workings: an exploder, a fist-sized explosive charge, air tank, fuel tank, gyroscope, propeller, and engine. Haskell had seen similar munitions at the Baltimore outpost. She’d helped pull them apart and put them back together and this, coupled with her engineering background, gave her an idea, a theory, for why they’d been unable to destroy the alien craft outside.
“That’s our problem,” she said, gesturing at the torpedo-like device. “We’ve only got one projectile inside each missile.”
“So what?” Blaine asked.
“So the only thing that matters is mass. You get a hundred and fifty pound projectile traveling outside at eight-thousand meters per second, it would have the same energy on impact as a half ton of dynamite.”
“How the fuck do you know that?” Blaine sneered.
“It’s called math, asshole.”
Blaine’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Fuck you, Haskell.”
“Not even with his dick,” she replied, pointing to one of the alien prisoners, a green-splotched one with two heads. “And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have one.”
Blaine snarled and Haskell pointed to the other munitions. “Open them up and remove the projectiles and put them into that,” she continued, gesturing at the initial missile that was still lying open.
“But we can’t fit them all inside,” Fincher said.
“Take out the gyroscope on the first one,” she said. “We won’t need it.”
“What the hell good is a bomb with no ‘scope?” Blaine asked.
“We don’t need a bullet,” Haskell answered. “We need buckshot.”
Under the watch of the Syndicate soldiers, the other men packed the first munition with a half-dozen charges and then sealed it back up and slotted it onto the launching tube. Haskell wiped sweat from her brow and moved back, cognizant of the two Syndicate soldiers shadowing her. She stepped over and peered out the translucent window as the missile was fired outside.
Heart in her throat, Haskell watched with Fincher and the others as the munition spiraled outside, boosted by a rocket on its tail. It curled through the inky blackness and there were gasps, because it was obvious it wasn’t going to hit the enemy craft directly. But Haskell reckoned that didn’t matter. She held her breath and watched it detonate, scattering the projectiles like grapeshot, tearing a number of holes in the enemy ship’s outer hull. Haskell cried out in joy, getting a hug from Fincher.
“How did you know how to do that?!” he said.
“I’ve got game,” she replied, watching the enemy craft swerve off toward a nearby moon, breaking apart, eventually vanishing into a fireball that disappeared from view.
Haskell stood back, smiling hugely. Deep down inside she knew she’d done something important. The defeat of the enemy ship hadn’t happened before, she was sure of it. Her pulse quickened at the thought that she’d found a way to change the future! Turning back, she faced the Syndicate soldiers and grinned. “You guys owe me big time.”
Without hesitation, one of the soldiers whipped out what looked like an old school Taser gun. Haskell hadn’t expected that at all. The alien shot her in the stomach, tiny electrodes from the gun causing her body to seize up as she collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
HASKELL WOKE at the back of the prison cell in the middle of the Syndicate ship, spikes of pain still shooting through her body from the alien electrodes. Her chain had been removed and so she rolled over and saw Fincher kneeling by her side, wiping the sweat-slicked hair back from her face.
“You’re not the only one that’s happened to,” he whispered. “They shot me when I was first brought onboard. Hurt like a sonofabitch. Guess you could say we’re members of the same club now.”
“Awesome. Let’s get tattoos to commemorate it,” Haskell replied, groaning.
She tried to push herself up, but collapsed again. Rolling over, she peered up at Fincher. “Do you ever think you’ve relived the same moment in your life over and over?”
“Like … what moment?”
“Like being in this ship.”
“Jesus, I hope not,” he replied.
“Well, I think I have and that’s why the scuds shot me. Somehow, some way, they knew that I was able to … manipulate the future.”
Before Fincher could respond, gales of laughter echoed across the cells. Haskell elbowed herself up to see Blaine and several of his roughnecks watching her. They’d overheard everything and were chuckling.
“So not only can the engineer show us how to do our jobs, boys, but now she can change the goddamn future,” Blaine said.
With much effort, Haskell staggered to her feet. “What’s your problem, Blaine?”
“I don’t fucking like you.”
“Gimme one good reason why.”
“You belittle me in front of my guys and you made me look like a fool in front of the scuds.”
“That’s two reasons,” she replied.
Anger flashed in Blaine’s face. He rolled up the sleeves on his shirt. “I’m done putting up with your bullshit, Haskell,” he said, marching forward.
Haskell gulped and looked to Fincher. “You ready to fight?”
“I can’t fight at all,” Fincher replied.
“You could’ve told me that earlier.”
Fincher shrugged. “You never asked.”
Blaine bulled forward and grabbed Haskell by the scruff of her neck when a scream echoed, then a cluster of shouts. There was a commotion out in the middle of the cells, near the area where the only possible exit out was located.
“IT’S OPEN!” someone screamed. “THEY OPENED THE CELL!”
Blaine glanced back and in his moment of hesitation, Haskell punted him as hard as she could in the groin. He doubled over and she whistled to Fincher and the two took off on a mad dash through the cells, shoving past the other prisoners, struggling forward. She looked up and spotted a man, a man named Nate who purported to be a Marine. He was standing by a muscular woman who’d called herself Riot, the pair gesturing to the others, telling them that their chance at freedom was at hand.
Barreling through the semi-darkness of the cells, Haskell and Fincher slalomed past a menagerie of co-prisoners, everyone from fellow resistance fighters to multi-limbed aliens. Everyone was screaming and shouting and fighting toward the opening in the deck which was in sight now, maybe twenty feet away.
Haskell blitzed forward into a crush of prisoners and that’s when she felt it.
An energy coursing through the ship’s frame.
She’d felt the pulse of the vessel’s engines many times before, but the power she was feeling at that moment was something completely different. It was the same kind of energy that came with the crash of waves on a beach or the first crack of lightning during a summer storm. It was elemental, primordial.
Particles began drifting through the air, orange sparks.
What the fuck was happening?
Fincher was nearby and he reached out to her and his hand dematerialized for a moment.
Standing, spinning, she could see now that the others had noticed it. Even Blaine was standing, mouth adroop, terrified about what was to come next.
Something was indeed wrong.
Something was very fucking wrong.
She took a step and the entirety of the ship, all of the solid matter around her seemed to liquefy, to turn into some kind of quantum wash that rolled right over her like a tsunami. Darkness swallowed her up and Haskell felt herself being pulled down into a hole. Reaching out a hand, Haskell screamed, feeling the sickening pull of the swirling vortex as she was yanked down in
to the oblivion.
HASKELL SHRIEKED and fell to the ground.
She rolled over and wiped a line of fever sweat from her face, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Her eyes searched her surroundings and she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Holy shit! She’d returned! She was back, lying under a ledge at the bottom of the old Alex Brown building in downtown Baltimore. All the old memories came back: the sights and sounds and smells of the building, the terrible days when the Syndicate had bombed the city to smithereens, the small delegation of women who were out in front of her, preparing food. She stood and held their hollow-eyed looks and conjured up a faint smile.
“I’m fine,” she said, raising a hand, shaking off memories of the time ship. “I … just zoned out there for a sec. I’m good now.”
The other women went back to work and Haskell just stood there, trying to process everything. Her mind continued to be besieged by rapidly fading memories of the ship, the prison riot, and Fincher. When she was younger, she’d watched a video of a man who’d taken a selfie every day for twelve years and posted the shots as a video so that his face flickered, aging as the years whipped past. At that moment, that’s what she was experiencing. All of the scenes from the ship were flashing past and vanishing so she closed her eyes and that’s when she heard it.
The faraway echo of a Syndicate bomb.
She was certain she was back because somehow she knew the next alien bomb would land exactly five seconds later. When the aliens, the scuds, had invaded two years earlier, the blasts were more frequent. Having become desensitized to the thud of the extraterrestrial ordnance, Haskell recalled making a game of it. She treated the explosions like lightning strikes, guestimating how close the bombs were by the number of dishes that rattled down on the mess hall’s metal shelves. Presently, only two dishes were clattering which meant the explosions were likely ten miles or more off, probably out near what was left of the old Harbor Tunnel. The fact that she knew when the bombs would fall was evidence that perhaps she’d never left the outpost.
“Hey, Haskell!” somebody shouted.
Haskell looked up. One of the food preparers, an older white woman with a witch’s broom of hair, wiped away a line of grime from her face and pointed at her.
“The honor of your presence is requested,” the older woman said, miming a bow.
Haskell smiled and nodded. She remembered being one of the few people of color in the building, which functioned as a resistance supply vault and safe house, and therefore she had felt the need to prove herself. She rolled up her sleeves and, without a word of protest, moved toward the older lady.
“You ever have a nightmare during the day?” Haskell asked.
The older woman nodded. “Sure. Yeah. I’m hoping this whole goddamn thing is a nightmare and I’m gonna wake up.”
Sensing that it was no use discussing anything about the time ship, Haskell transitioned to the Syndicate bombing. “I think they’re out near the tunnel again,” she said.
“How’s that?” the older woman replied without looking up.
“The scuds. By my calculations they’re operating probably within nine to eleven miles of us.”
“Yeah, that’s nice, hon,” the older woman replied in a thick blue-collar, Baltimorese accent. She tossed Haskell a pair of latex gloves.
“I was thinking that maybe after we’re done with this, we could start working on our tunnel,” Haskell replied, tugging the gloves on.
The older woman looked up. “You mean the one that ain’t been started that you think’ll help us defeat the aliens?”
Haskell nodded. “Well, it could connect us to some of the other resistance outposts. I mean, if we start working on it now, maybe in a year or two we’ll have a whole city underground.”
“Why would we do that if we don’t know if it’ll work?” the older woman asked.
Haskell’s brow furrowed. “Isn’t it better to do something than just … sit here, waiting to be bombed?”
The other women stopped and glanced at Haskell. She took in their looks and thought they had the dead-eyed stares of people who’d just emerged into the light from a cave in. All the destruction, all the devastation and death they’d witnessed? It was stamped on their faces. They were bent and broken and likely would never be able to muster up the strength or courage to do anything other than what they were doing. The women went back to their work. Haskell paused, then joined them, helping to mash a multitude of soon-to-be-rotten root vegetables for lunch and dinner, making sure to pocket a few of the better carrots and parsnips when nobody was looking.
LATER, after the food was prepared and there were no more vegetables to mash, Haskell exited the mess hall, following a path that seemed programmed in her head. She took a rear stairwell and passed a bevy of other workers, men, women, all sporting the same sad-sack expressions. How many people were in the outpost? The number ninety-two came to mind and she remembered all of them working in the outpost without ever actually fighting, essentially waiting to die. She had a vague recollection of arguing with some of them, trying to convince them it was a mistake to bide their time. But as she passed some of them, she realized how foolish it was to continue to ask them to do anything more than their daily routines. They were survivors after all, little more than scavengers hiding out in a hole under a city that had been blasted apart by an alien empire.
With every step, the memories of the time ship became more distant until they were little more than the faraway clanging of a bell. Her mind was humming now, her disordered thoughts replaced by the time she’d spent in the outpost and the events that had occurred in the recent past. As if guided by an invisible hand, she stopped one floor up and moved down a corridor that led to the room where the outpost’s tools were kept in a storage room of bare cinderblock illuminated by a single bulb. Electricity was still available for ten, sometimes twelve hours a day thanks to a collection of solar panels and four wind turbines that were concealed on the outside in piles of debris.
Haskell stepped into the room’s meager light and surveyed a motley assortment of cordless drills, saws, and impact drivers, along with collections of wrenches, fasteners, and a portable set of welding equipment. Everything was stored inside because nobody really built anything in the outpost. It was, for the most part, a way station for the other groups that were actually fighting the aliens on the outside.
She recalled coming up with some sort of plan to fight back. She instinctively knew that she already had most of what she needed, but there were a few items she’d likely have to gather up very shortly that were lying before her in the storage room. Satisfied with the stash, Haskell retraced her steps, threading down another corridor and past the interior greenhouses where the outpost grew most its food. There were other resistance safe houses and weapons stashes, but every group operated independently to protect the whereabouts of the others. If you were kidnapped by the scuds, for instance, there was simply no way you’d be able to rat out your comrades.
She shuttled past the greenhouses and moved beyond the rooms housing the air and water purification systems, and finally she crept past the tankage area where the outpost’s waste was haphazardly repurposed.
Eventually, she pulled herself up to the command post where the outpost’s de-facto leader, a fifty-year old humorless wisp of a man named Edward Stringer, was pouring over grainy footage of what looked like Syndicate sweeping operations in other parts of the city. Baltimore had been obliterated more than a year ago, but the aliens continued to sporadically bomb and send down small strike teams armed with a whole host of drones to track and hunt the resistance. Haskell knew this because she remembered venturing outside a number of times in the recent past. None of her jaunts outside the wire had been approved by Stringer, but she’d seen the scud drones loitering in the air and picking their way across the corpse of the old city. She’d watched the bastards locate and snuff out pockets of resistance who were too poorly armed to even fight back. She’d never say it to anyone, lea
st of all Stringer, but something had to change. Haskell simply couldn’t believe that she was the only one who realized they were all sitting ducks.
Stringer heard her footfalls and looked back. A smile splashed his lips, but it was the same kind of forced expression she remembered him displaying when they first allowed her into the outpost. Back then, at some point in the past, she’d just been another refugee, an engineering student from Drexel University in Philadelphia who’d been trapped in the middle of the Millard E. Tydings bridge when the world unraveled.
“What can I help you with?” Stringer asked.
“I was finished with my shift in the mess hall and noticed the tools down on 1B.”
“And?” Stringer asked wearily.
“Can I borrow some of them, sir?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “You want … to borrow them?”
“Yes.”
“The … tools.”
“Yessir,” Haskell replied, standing ramrod straight just as she imagined a real soldier or
someone of high station might do.
“What could you possibly want with those?” Stringer queried. “I mean … you’re a woman.”
“That’s what they tell me,” Haskell replied without expression.
Stringer’s face reddened. “What I meant,” he said in a low tone, “is that each of us has a very important, very specific duty here in the bunker. Don’t you feel more comfortable down with the other gals?”
Haskell’s stomach knotted at the word “gals.” “But that’s where the food’s made,” she said, looking up.
“That’s generally what happens in a mess hall, Haskell.”
“But I just don’t think pots and pans are my highest and best use,” she answered.
Stringer sighed. He waved a hand dismissively. “You want some of those tools, take ‘em. Just don’t come crying to me when you cut your fingers off.”
Haskell beamed. “Thank you, sir.”
WITH A SPRING IN HER STEP, Haskell trekked back down to 1B, which was a portion of the lower level of the outpost, the middle floor on a former parking garage that had been set aside as sleeping quarters. Each of the community’s residents was given an old mattress or a section of carpet and a pillow and three sections of four-by-four foot fiberboard repurposed from a corporate bullpen that could, if used creatively, provide some semblance of privacy.