Impact

by Rob Boffard

  He tries to keep track of where they’re going. But exhaustion and cold prick at his mind, dulling his thoughts as they descend deeper into the ship.

  He’s furious at himself. He should have seen this coming. If it hadn’t been for the storm and the need to get to safety, he would have. He’s even more furious at the Earthers. How could they have thought things were OK down here? How could they have been so unprepared?

  Without wanting to, he thinks of Outer Earth, of Riley and his parents, of his hab and his office in the Air Lab. We should have stayed there, he thinks. We should have tried harder to stop the Earthers from leaving.

  Carver is still reeling from the blow to his stomach, and has to stop more than once. The second time, it’s to throw up. He hunches over, hands on his knees, vomiting a thin, watery gruel.

  The corridor explodes with cruel laughter. “First time anybody’s ever thrown up before they start serving the Engine,” one of the men says. He’s younger than the rest, with a chin almost clear of stubble.

  Another, a giant with a hooked nose, says something in a language Prakesh can’t understand.

  The first one laughs again. “Keep walking.”

  Carver puts a hand on Prakesh’s shoulder, uses it to pull himself upright. He wipes his mouth, tracking thin strands of slime across his skin. It reminds Prakesh of Resin, and that reminds him of his part in creating it. He closes his eyes, tells himself to breathe. If they can just stay alive…

  “Hey! I said, keep walking.”

  A few minutes later, the corridor opens up. The room they duck into is as big as the entrance platform, with a low ceiling that gives it an oddly squashed look. It’s a mess hall–there’s the kitchen off to the right, separated from the room by a large window. The sinks and countertops are rusted, pitted with disuse.

  There are no tables or chairs in the main area. Just a group of people, around thirty of them, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Carver sucks in a breath behind him, and Prakesh can understand why. The men and women on the floor are skeletons, thin skin stretched over collarbones and hollow cheeks. They’re all sitting in silence, spooning gruel into their mouths from battered bowls. Their overalls–rags, really–hang off their bodies in shreds of brown and black.

  They aren’t alone. Four people in camo, two men and two women, lean against the walls. One of them looks over at Prakesh, appraising him, and the expression on her face turns his stomach to lead. She has a rifle, as do the others, and wears a thick brown jacket over her overalls, its furry hood pulled up.

  Prakesh and Carver are shoved forward, hands on their shoulders pushing them to the floor. No one looks at them. The captives just keep eating, moving like robots, spoon to mouth to bowl to mouth.

  The woman smiles, icy and sharp. “New recruits,” she says, sarcasm edging her voice. “Engine be praised.”

  She stalks off to the kitchen, returning with two battered tin bowls. Spoons stick out of them, held in place by the thick contents. She shoves the bowls into their hands. “Eat,” she says. “You’ve got five minutes.”

  Prakesh wants to throw it back in her face. The meal is nothing more than disgusting slop: warm and slimy, with a thick skin on its surface. But he hasn’t eaten in a day, maybe more, and his hunger overwhelms him.

  He takes a mouthful and wishes he hadn’t. The liquid coats his tongue, tasting and smelling of nothing at all. He chokes it down, aware that he needs to keep his strength up. Carver is doing the same next to him, breaking off occasionally to breathe in hard through his nose, trying to keep it down.

  As they eat, Prakesh looks around surreptitiously at the others. None of them are speaking–they’re just slurping back the soup, even tilting their bowls to catch the last drops. Heads stay down, eyes locked to the floor.

  They’re workers.

  Whatever this ship is, whatever the Engine is, these people (and us, he realises with a shudder) are the ones who work to keep it going. Prophet and his followers take whatever supplies are brought in, then put their previous owners to work.

  He screws up his eyes, driving the heel of a hand into his face. Then he takes a deep breath, and swallows another mouthful. What else is there to do?

  The guards who brought them in have left, and the ones that remain in the room look bored, their rifles held at ease. Prakesh is looking around, chewing as fast as he can to get the sludge down his throat, when one of the other workers catches his eye. He’s young, barely out of his teens. His face is freckled, and he’s just beginning to get some fuzzy stubble on his upper lip.

  He holds Prakesh’s eye for a second, then looks away. It’s the first time any of the prisoners has even acknowledged their presence.

  “All right!” the woman with the hood shouts, snapping Prakesh out his thoughts. “Chow time’s over.”

  Prakesh and Carver don’t react fast enough. The prisoners spring to their feet. As one, they march to the window leading to the kitchen and deposit their bowls on the surface. One of them stays behind, stacking the bowls, while the others line up along the wall. None of them raise their eyes from the floor.

  “You!”

  It comes from the guard, the one who’d joked about Carver throwing up. He’s pointing a stubby finger at Carver. It’s only then that Prakesh realises they’re standing alone in the middle of the room, still holding their bowls. The boy with the freckles glances up at him from his place by the wall, then looks back down.

  “We’re going,” Carver says, and starts to walk towards the kitchen.

  He’s stopped by a shout from the guard. “Did I say you could move?” The man’s voice is contemptuous, almost teasing.

  We shouldn’t be here, Prakesh thinks, and at that moment real panic crashes over him. He should be with Riley right now. The thought of living here, of dying here, without ever knowing what happened to her, is almost too much to take.

  Carver doesn’t turn around, doesn’t look at the guard until the man puts a hand on his shoulder. Then, in one movement, he spins around and throws the bowl into the man’s face.

  The slime splatters the wall, blobs of it sliding down the paint. The other guards react instantly. Prakesh is shoved out of the way and Carver is pushed to the floor, held there, a boot on the back of his head.

  It’s as if Prakesh is watching something unfold on a tab screen. No–it’s worse. You can shut off a tab screen, put it away. This is like he’s in a bad dream, hurtling along at full speed, powerless to stop it. He tries to form words, but his throat is locked up tight.

  Carver disappears in a storm of bodies, roaring in pain. Some of the guards are using fists and feet, while others are swinging their rifles like clubs.

  Prakesh makes himself move. He grabs the guard’s shoulders, tries to pull him off, but it’s like trying to shift a mountain. The guard shoves him backwards, and Prakesh crashes to the ground.

  He gets one last look at Carver, curled up on the ground as kicks and punches rain down on him. They’re going to kill him, he thinks. The thought is clear as a bell, perfectly formed.

  Then someone is pulling him upright. He tries to shove them off, but it’s the boy, the one with the freckles, and he holds on tight.

  “D-d-don’t,” the boy says, so softly it’s almost inaudible.

  He pulls Prakesh out of the room, Carver’s cries growing fainter behind him.

  34

  Riley

  Harlan’s torch barely makes a dent in the darkness. It’s nothing more than a rag on a stick, soaked in oil and set alight. The chill wind threatens to snuff it out at any moment.

  We’ve been out of the forest for an hour now, walking on what Harlan calls the Old Alaskan Highway. The surface is black and hard, unusually smooth. Some sections of it are split, plants pushing up through the cracks. It reminds me of the cliff we just climbed down.

  My thigh has got worse. Not just a little worse. A lot. The pain is constant now, radiating upwards in long, sluggish waves. It’s hard to pinpoint its exact location. I don�
�t know how fast infection spreads, but the shards of metal still buried inside me are almost certainly speeding things along. My fingers keep straying to the cut. Even under a layer of bandage, touching it raises the pain another notch. The flesh is swollen, tight under the fabric of my pants, and the burning itch is almost unbearable.

  And it’s not just my leg. My head has started to ache, pain pulsing slowly but insistently at the base of my skull. Despite the cold, I can feel myself starting to sweat. Fever. Even I know it’s the sign of a growing infection. If these people aren’t where Harlan says they are, or if they’re not willing to help…

  Several times I catch myself breaking into a jog, and have to tell myself to drop back. I don’t know the way, and Harlan won’t be able to keep up with me. He’s limping, his ankle swollen from the wolf bite. My own, from the night before, seems to be OK–a couple of tiny cuts, nothing more. Compared to my thigh, it’s barely worth noticing.

  But it does occur to me that Harlan needs to get his own wound treated. We haven’t spoken much since we left the forest, and I still can’t shake the guilt of having put him in danger. But he volunteered to take me, and we can’t be too far now.

  A building looms up out of the gloom: a squat, single-storey box, lurking on the edge of the highway.

  “Edge of town,” says Harlan. They’re the first words he’s spoken in an hour.

  “How far?” I say, doing the best I can to keep the fear out of my voice.

  Harlan shrugs. “Judging by the house we passed? Maybe one or two miles. Could be wrong, though–this damn fog confuses me, you know? There was this one time, I was up by the Black Rapids, tracking that deer, and got lost for—”

  I interrupt him. “Tell me about these people. The ones we’re going to see.”

  “They’re just people, like me.”

  I take a deep breath. No point in snapping at him. “How do you know them?”

  “Ran with ’em for a time. Folks tend to stick together. Gives you a better chance out here. We came up from—”

  He stops.

  “From?” I say

  He shakes his head, a black figure cut out of the darkness by the torchlight. “Doesn’t matter. Just remember what you gotta tell ’em. Then we’ll be even, you and me.”

  I’m about to press it, ask him why he left these people, why he wants me to tell them that he kept me safe. But then I hear the voice in my head, the one that whispered to me to leave Harlan to die. It’s been silent since the wolves attacked, but now it’s strident, angry, as if there’s an actual person behind the words. He’s not telling you because he’s going to hurt you. There’s something he doesn’t want you to know about. What is it, Riley? What’s in the dark?

  “No,” I say to myself, shaking my head, like I’m trying to dislodge something.

  “You say something?” Harlan says.

  In answer, I stride past him, moving on ahead, aware that I don’t know the way but needing the movement, needing the rhythm to calm my mind. Whatever he’s done, whatever his relationship is with these people, it doesn’t matter. I don’t have a choice. I find these people, or I die. I try to ignore my headache, which feels like it’s getting worse with every step.

  More buildings appear, most of them set back from the road. Like the first, they’re only one storey. Some of them have dishes and antennas on their roofs. They look like alien artefacts.

  At one point, we cross under a structure, built over the road’s surface, fifteen feet off the ground. It’s only when Harlan plays his light over it that I see it’s an old sign. There are three slabs of dark green metal, each with writing on them. HAMILTON BLVD. ALASKA HWY. WHITEHORSE CITY CENTER. There’s a gap between ALASKA HWY and WHITEHORSE CITY CENTER, like a missing tooth.

  Underneath the sign, there’s the oddest thing. It’s a big machine of some kind, right in the middle of the road. It’s only when I get closer and spot the wheels that I realise it’s a vehicle.

  It’s like Carver’s Boneshaker, only much bigger, with a closed-in cockpit and a box-shaped back end. The metal surface is rusted, the tyres long since rotted away. Harlan pays it no attention, but as he passes its front end he runs a hand along the metal, tracing the curve, a small smile on his face. It’s a strange gesture, but before I can ask him about it he’s walking off into the darkness.

  The road begins to slope downwards, off to the left. The buildings get bigger, with larger windows and double doors. The glass in the windows is mostly gone, smashed to pieces, and some of the buildings are in ruins–missing a wall, missing a roof, sometimes no more than a few broken pillars. There are more vehicles on the road, hulking and silent.

  As we walk, I hear a very soft sound, a tiny clunk. Off to our right, behind one of the buildings. I stop, listening hard. The sound doesn’t come again.

  “Harlan,” I say. “You hear that?”

  “What?”

  The town is completely still. I shake my head. “Nothing.”

  Whatever it was, we don’t have time to investigate. We keep walking, heading further into town, but with each step I feel like someone is watching me. Several times I look round, thinking I’ll catch a shadow moving between the buildings. But there’s nothing.

  I feel like it’s just my imagination, but then I realise that I’m getting used to the darkness–either that or the buildings are reflecting a little light, amplifying it. I can see further down the road, and I can even make out another sign alongside it. The sign reads TWO MILE ROAD.

  “Not long now,” Harlan says. “Almost at the river.”

  A few minutes later, we hit the river itself. I’m expecting a massive body of water, but what I’m not expecting is that it’s choked with objects. Barrels, pieces of wood, floating structures that looked like waterborne versions of the buildings we’ve been passing. And there are things in the river that look a little like the vehicles on the road, only without wheels.

  Boats. That’s what they are. For the first time in what feels like forever, I actually smile. Back when I ran with the Devil Dancers on Outer Earth, we had one book: Treasure Island. We’d all read it a dozen times, burying ourselves in stories about giant ships crossing the Spanish Main, on the hunt for—

  The smile drops off my face. That book is long gone. So are the Devil Dancers. There’s just me, and if I don’t focus, I’ll be gone, too.

  We cross a bridge over the river. Parts of it are gone, gaping holes in the surface, and we have to be careful as we walk around them. I manage better than Harlan, moving on the balls of my feet.

  As I make my way across, I see a particularly strange boat, one I didn’t notice before. It’s a white, enclosed cylinder, with a cockpit up front. The cylinder is supported by two smaller ones, bobbing on the surface of the water. Along the sides of the cylinder, near the top, the metal is torn, as if something was ripped off it.

  There’s a light reflected in the cylinder’s surface.

  It’s there and then it’s gone–one second, no more. At first, I think it’s Harlan’s torch, but it was too steady, nothing like the flickering flames. What I saw is the reflection of an electric light.

  Harlan saw it, too. When he turns to me, his eyes are bright. “They’re still there. They didn’t leave!”

  I don’t get a chance to answer. Harlan starts jogging, heading up the road towards the light. “Come on,” he shouts over his shoulder.

  The road curves sharply, and there’s more forest on my right–we must be at the other edge of town. And then I see the building, bigger than any we’ve come across before, fat and boxy. There’s a sign on the side of the road: WHITEHORSE CITY HOSPITAL.

  Our path opens up onto a wider apron in front of the building, strewn with abandoned cars. My eyes have adjusted to the dark now, and I can see the double doors set into the front of the building.

  Harlan slows down as we reach the doors. He’s bent over, wheezing, but as I come to a stop alongside him he flashes me a huge smile.

  “They’re really here,
” he says. His accent has grown thicker, spurred on by his excitement. He pushes open the door. “We’ll get inside, we’ll sit down with ’em, and then they can take those things out of your leg. Then you tell ’em–tell ’em how Harlan saw you right. Tell ’em how—”

  His words are cut off as a bullet blows a chunk of concrete out of the floor.

  35

  Okwembu

  “Leave us,” says Prophet.

  The two guards glance at each other, then obey, quietly slipping out of the door and closing it behind them.

  Okwembu doesn’t know where they are in the ship. Every corridor looks the same, every stairway identical. She thinks they’re somewhere high up, possibly near the deck, but there’s no way to tell for sure.

  The room they’re in is a hab–or what passes for one here, anyway. There’s a single cot, the creases in its bedding razor-sharp. A folding chair. A table, clear of everything except a battered plastic bottle of water. There are no windows, no decoration of any kind. The only light comes from a bulb in the ceiling, hidden behind a wire grill.

  Prophet perches on the edge of the table, arms folded, looking at her expectantly. Okwembu says nothing. She knows that one wrong word will get her sent to wherever Prakesh Kumar and Aaron Carver have gone, so she waits for him to make the first move.

  Eventually, Prophet does. “So who are you?” he says.

  “My name is Janice Okwembu. I was, until quite recently, head of the council on Outer Earth.”

  If he’s surprised, he gives no sign. “And how, exactly, did you come into the service of the Engine?”

  “That’s not what you’re really interested in.”

  Okwembu looks around her. “This ship,” she says, “was probably built at the same time as my station. They both run off the same type of power source: a fusion reactor, yes? Devices like that were saved for the biggest structures and military units.”