by Rob Boffard
But isn’t there an artery in the leg? Doesn’t it curve around the area the shrapnel’s in? I think back, trying to recall everything I know about how the human body works. Prakesh, where are you when I need you?
I take three quick breaths, grasping the ragged edge of the metal. I’m on the verge of stalling when my fingers act on their own, ripping out the fragment.
12
Riley
I don’t hear myself scream. But I do see all the colour in the world drain away. Everything goes grey, the pain so sharp that I almost pass out.
Somehow I stay awake, looking down at the piece of metal. It’s long and thin, no more than half an inch wide. It was embedded lengthwise in my thigh, the wound a shallow cut. My fingers stray to my skin–there’s blood, but nothing like the amount an artery would pump out. I hang my head, sucking in deep breaths through my nose.
The wound still hurts like hell, but it’s a manageable pain. I rip a length out of the bottom of my shirt, binding the wound tight. That makes everything go grey again, but only for an instant. You can deal with this. You have to.
That’s when I hear it.
At first, I mistake it for the noise of the fire. But that faded long ago. This is different: a distant rushing sound, so quiet that I think I’ve imagined it at first. But then I get a fix on it.
That’s water. There’s water near here.
Syria is awake again, groaning. I crouch down, resisting the temptation to put a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey,” I say. “Can you hear me?”
His voice, when it comes, sounds as blistered as the skin on his back. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to get you some water, OK? I think there’s some of it close by.”
“Hurts,” he says. “Hurts bad.”
“I know. Just… hang in there. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”
I walk a few steps, picking my way up the edge of the depression, and stop.
How am I going to find my way back here? It’s all very well heading for the water, but I don’t know how far away it is. I could get lost on the return journey–there are no landmarks here, nothing but rocks and dirt. Syria would…
Syria. That’s it.
I turn back, kneeling next to him. Then I snag the undamaged part of his jacket, working it loose as carefully as I can. It would be better to use my own clothing, but the bright red cloth will be easier to see in the fading light–and since I used a strip of my shirt to bind my thigh wound, I might not have enough.
I’m a little worried about hurting him, but the piece comes away easily. I start tearing it into strips. They don’t need to be that big, and soon I have a dozen or so in my hands.
“Just hang in there,” I say again. It’s all I can think of.
I climb over the top of the depression, clambering over the rocks. One of the plants is there, its branches trembling in the frigid wind. I take a strip of fabric, and tie it on. It’s caught by the wind, a bright red flag, easy to pick out even in the gathering dusk.
There are other plants dotted here and there. I make my way down the slope, skidding every so often as I lose my footing on the rocks. Just when I’m about to lose sight of the first strip I take another and tie it onto a second plant.
I don’t know what’ll happen if I run out of strips before I reach the water.
But the sound is louder now, somewhere ahead and to the left. My legs are shaky and uneven, and I’m conscious of how hungry I am. Cold, too, with every breath showing itself in a puff of white vapour at my lips.
My dad’s ship crashed in eastern Russia. I don’t how close that is to where we are right now. He spent seven years trying to stay alive, desperately trying to get back to us. I had to destroy his ship to save the station, and, in the few minutes I had to talk to him, he told me about where they landed. Kamchatka, it was called. Cold, barren, hostile to life, the air a toxic soup, the environment battered by deadly dust storms. The craziness of this entire situation crowds in on me again–how am I able to walk around out here, without freezing solid or suffocating? How am I even here?
I take a deep breath, pushing back the panicky thoughts. I don’t know where I am, or what I’m dealing with. I can only focus on what’s in front of me.
The slope steepens slightly. I have to place my steps carefully, stopping every so often to tie a strip of fabric to a branch.
Soon I’m down to three pieces of the fabric. A few more steps. The slope is getting even steeper now. Two strips.
I stop, listening hard. I’ve been heading towards the water for the longest time, but now I can’t place the source of the sound. It’s coming from everywhere, as if the boulders themselves are picking up on it, twisting its direction.
I look back. The third-to-last strip of fabric is just visible, flickering in the dusk.
I head to my right, where I think the water is. But the sound doesn’t change. If anything, it gets even harder to figure out its location.
With a shaky breath, I tie the last strip of fabric onto a plant. I can go a short distance from here, but not too far. If I get lost, I’m finished.
A few more steps. A few more. The sound is really loud now. I have to be close. But where is it?
Come on.
And then I step through a gap in two boulders, and see the stream.
It’s barely worth the name. It’s a trickle of water, a foot wide, narrowing to inches in places. The noise is coming from a waterfall, maybe five feet high, spattering onto the rocks from a hollow in the slope. The rocky surroundings amplified it, made the noise sound as if it was a gushing torrent.
I stare at it, feeling absurdly cheated. And yet, as I do so, the oddest thought occurs. It’s still more water than I’ve ever seen in one place.
Thirst claws its way up my throat. I scramble across the rocks, dropping to my knees at the edge of the water, ignoring the pain in my thigh. The water is so cold it stings my lips. It isn’t like the water on Outer Earth–it’s sweeter, somehow. More full. I almost laugh when I realise that, for the first time, I’m drinking water without a single chemical in it.
None that you can taste, anyway.
The thought makes me lift my mouth from the water, but only for a second. I have to use the water–and not just for my thirst. I need to clean the wound in my thigh. I debate leaving it, but decide that it’s more important to flush out the dirt from the wound than worry about chemicals that might not even exist.
I unbind my wound, wincing as I splash ice-cold water on it. The cut itself looks deep, despite the tiny size of the fragment that hit me. I have no idea if the water will help keep infection away, but it’s all I’ve got.
I pat it dry and bind it up again, then sit back. Syria’s still out there. I have to get this water back before it gets too dark to see.
But how? I don’t have a canteen, like I would on Outer Earth. I’d give anything for my tracer pack right now, with its water compartment.
Inspiration hits. Working quickly, I strip off my jacket and the shirt beneath it. The cold is harsh enough to make me gasp. I put the jacket back on, zipping it up all the way. It’s not nearly as warm as it was before, but it’ll have to do.
I make my way back to one of the plants. Their leaves are small and waxy, sickly green in colour, but it looks like there are enough of them. I strip them off the bush, grazing my hands in the process. My fingers, I notice, are getting slightly numb at the tips. Not good.
I head back to the stream, carrying my bundle of leaves. The shirt itself is long-sleeved, made of stretchy nylon. I turn it upside down, and tie the sleeves tightly around the front below the neck, as if the shirt is wrapping its arms around itself. I stuff the inside of the shirt with the waxy leaves, pushing them down, trying to cover as much space as I can. There. A vessel, with the shirt’s hem as the lip.
But will it hold water?
Only one way to find out. I crouch by the pool again, and drag the shirt through the water, open end fi
rst. A bunch of leaves float out, and when I lift the shirt up water cascades through.
I force myself to stay calm, retrieving the leaves, packing the shirt again. When I lift the container out of the pool, my hands all but frozen, there’s nothing but a few steady drips leaking out of the bottom.
I breathe a shaky sigh of relief. OK. Now I just have to get it back to Syria. It’s grown even darker while I’ve been working, and for a second I forget my rule about not looking up. The sky is turning black, with a thin band of grey on the horizon as the day fades away. Then my vision goes wonky, like it did before, and I have to look down.
It’s hard to carry the water. The vessel is heavy, and I have to hold the fabric on the shirt hem tight in both hands. The fabric of my jacket is waterproof, near enough, but the shirt is still soaked through, and before long the top of my pants is dripping wet.
I can barely see the ground. The slope is steeper than I remember, and my legs are already aching. I have to concentrate hard to spot my tags. The water swings back and forth in my hands, pattering on the dirt. Apart from the slowly fading sound of the waterfall, it’s the only sound.
My thoughts turn back to Prakesh, to Carver. Are they safe? Did they land close to us? I have a sudden image of them being drawn to the stream, looking for water, just like I did. I half turn, but the thought of abandoning Syria is horrifying. I stride forward again, furious with myself. I can’t leave him. I won’t.
That’s when I realise I can’t see the next tag.
I swing round, looking for the last one I passed. There. Just visible in the fading light, wrapped around one of the thin plants. That means the next one should be visible from here.
But it isn’t.
I backtrack. Panic is sparking in my chest, tightening around my lungs, but I push it away. I look left, then right, then turn a slow circle.
Nothing. I can’t see it. Did it come loose? Did the wind take it? I look downhill, but I may as well be staring into a black hole. There are nothing but shadows down there.
All I have to do is head uphill.
I keep walking, still looking for the tag, checking back over my shoulder for the previous one. And just at the point where I can’t spot it any more, the slope changes. It’s as if I’ve walked over the crest of a small hill, because the ground drops downwards again. I didn’t see that on my way to the stream.
I keep going–and walk right into a wall of soil. Part of the slope is exposed, with roots poking through it, scratching my face.
“Syria!” I shout. My voice echoes into the distance.
13
Prakesh
There’s a fire.
It’s not big, and it won’t last the night, but it’s burning well enough for now. There are trees surrounding the lake; most of them are stunted and dead, their dry branches and leaves simple to collect. It was easy for Prakesh to pull in some of the burning fuel on the water’s surface, lighting a dry branch while the others build a small pile behind him.
The Furor escape pod has long since vanished below the surface of the lake–and it is a lake, long and thin, stretching further than the eye can see. The forest around them is dense and dark, the wind rattling through the dry wood. The sun has slipped below the horizon, and the sky is fading to a dark blue above their heads.
The survivors huddle around the fire. Like everyone else, Prakesh is soaked to the skin, and he can’t stop shivering. Every part of him, from his ears to the toes in his squelching, sodden shoes, is numb.
And yet, despite everything that’s happened, he feels excitement. These trees didn’t grow in a lab: they’re entirely natural, sprouting from soil that might not have been touched by humans in a hundred years. He can’t wait for dawn, can’t wait to see what the forest actually looks like in the daylight.
Of course, that assumes they make it to daylight. Prakesh is painfully aware of how poor a fire is at transferring heat. They should find something to put behind them, something to reflect the warmth back. But he can barely move, doesn’t even want to try it. They’re lucky they’ve got a fire going in the first place–without it, they wouldn’t last long.
“Rub your chests,” says Janice Okwembu. She’s kneeling close to the flames, and her eyes land on each survivor in turn. There are six of them: Prakesh, Carver, Mikhail, Okwembu, the pilot, plus the man who was sitting opposite him on the Furor, the one praying to every god he could think of. Prakesh struggles to remember his name. Clay. That was it. He’s young, slightly plump, with long brown hair tied back in a ponytail. He’s rubbing the chest of the sixth survivor: the pilot, one of the Shinso’s original crew. The man is barely conscious, a thick trail of drool snaking down his chin. Kahlil, Prakesh thinks. His name’s Kahlil.
No one else in the escape pod made it to shore.
Carver gets up. He has to do it in stages, going first to both knees, then to just one, then to his feet, tottering like an infant taking his first steps. He’s breathing hard–his jacket is gone, lost in the lake, and his shirt is a sodden, steaming mass.
“So now what?” he says.
Mikhail seems to be less affected by the cold than the others. He clears his throat, but Okwembu gets there first. “Well,” she says. “We—”
Carver lurches forward, moving on legs that look as stiff as the dead branches on the trees. He’s heading right for Okwembu, his fists balled up.
Prakesh forces himself to his feet, his own limbs aching with the effort, and gets in front of Carver. “Not a good idea,” he says.
Carver bumps up against him, tries to push past, but Prakesh moves with him. Mikhail is up, too, reaching past Prakesh, his hands on Carver’s chest.
“Aaron, not now,” Prakesh says, somehow managing to push the words past his frozen lips. Okwembu’s payback can come later. If they’re going to survive this, they’re going to need every pair of hands they can get.
Carver roars in anger. He tries to push past again, but Mikhail grabs his shoulders, not letting him. Okwembu watches, her face impassive.
After a moment, Carver turns to Prakesh, his face incredulous. “Are you kidding me?” he says. “After what she did to Riley? We should drown her in the fucking lake.”
“That’s enough,” Mikhail says. He tries to make the words forceful, but they come out slurred together.
Carver sags, then points a trembling finger at Mikhail. “Your plan sucked,” he says. “How many people did you lose? How many of your Earthers actually made it down? If you can call this making it.” He gestures to the lake, where isolated puddles of fuel are still burning.
“They knew what their chances were,” Mikhail says. “But don’t you see? We did make it. We’re back home. We can make a new life here.” His tone is pleading, as if he’s trying to convince himself along with them.
“We were home,” Carver says.
“Outer Earth is gone,” Okwembu says calmly. She glances at Prakesh. “Resin saw to that.”
Carver stands stock still, then tries to make a rush for Okwembu again. It takes all the strength Prakesh has to stop him, but somehow he and Mikhail manage it. Carver rocks on his heels, breathing hard through his nose.
“Actually, you know what?” he says. “I’m done.”
He stalks off, muttering, heading down the shore. He’s shivering, clutching himself, nearly falling twice in the space of ten yards, but he keeps going.
Before Prakesh knows what’s he’s doing, he’s following. By the time he reaches Carver, he’s feeling a little better.
“Wait,” he says. Carver ignores him, only stopping when Prakesh slips around him and puts both hands on his shoulders. Aaron’s face is shrouded in shadow, but his shoulders are trembling, hitching up and down, vibrating under Prakesh’s hands.
“Think about this for a sec,” Prakesh starts, and then Carver punches him.
He’s completely unprepared for it. Carver’s strength has been sapped by the cold, but he still knows how to throw a punch. His fist takes Prakesh in the side of the hea
d, and for a moment that side of his vision is gone, nothing but black. When it comes back, he’s lying on the ground, and explosions are going off in his head.
Carver is yelling at him. “Where were you? She pulled Riley out of the pod, and you were asleep! You just passed out!”
Prakesh tries to speak, can’t. It’s not just that he can’t find the words–it’s as if the thoughts going through his head are too big to comprehend. One of his teeth is loose, jiggling in its socket.
“I’m going to find her,” says Carver, staring out across the lake. “You can come with me, or not. I don’t care.”
Prakesh knows Carver has feelings for Riley. It was hard to miss, locked in that medical bay. He wanted to bring it up, wanted to confront him, but he could never quite figure out how. Carver danced around the subject, too, radiating undirected anger. His usual upbeat, sarcastic personality had drained away. They settled for oblique remarks, snapping at each other, circling but never attacking.
And Riley’s absence is like a physical pain, deep in his gut. But it’s not just her. It’s everyone on Outer Earth. His team in the Air Lab. His parents. And every single person who died after being infected with Resin, the virus which sprung from a genetically modified superfood that he created. They’re all lined up behind Riley, and all of them are staring at him.
Carver might hate Okwembu and Mikhail. Prakesh does, too. But he has far more blood on his hands than they do. Not just ten more, or twenty, but hundreds and hundreds of thousands, dead because of him. He thinks back to his parents–he doesn’t even know if they’re alive or not, if they survived Resin. Even if they did, he knows there’s a good chance that the decompression in the station dock will have wiped out everybody in Gardens. Probably everybody on the station. That thought, too, is an almost physical pain.
The tiny group clustered around the fire is all he has left. He has to keep them alive. It’s the only way he can make it right–or start making it right. He can’t do that if he’s hunting for Riley.