by Mark Lukens
But Cromartie began to wonder if the damage was more severe than that.
FOURTEEN
Abraham had been asleep when a noise out in the corridor woke him up. It was a soft noise, a sly noise, like someone trying to be quiet. He lay there and listened for another moment and then he recognized the sound of someone shutting a door out there.
He got up and crept to his door. He opened it just a crack and peeked out.
Ward was walking down the corridor towards the bridge. He didn’t seem to be hurrying, but there was something strange about the way he was walking. He stayed close to the corridor wall, staring straight ahead and not looking back as he moved on down the hall.
Abraham opened the door wider and watched Ward.
Ward never looked back at Abraham even though he was fairly sure Ward had to have heard him step out of his room.
Before Ward reached the doorway that led to the next hall where the dining hall, kitchen, and eventually the bridge were, he turned to the archway in the right side of the hall which opened up to the metal stairway that led up to the upper level where the cryo-room was located.
Abraham slipped all the way out of his room and closed his door softly. He hurried down the corridor, trying to be quiet as he followed Ward.
He hurried up the metal steps and reached the top of them, waiting there for a moment, looking around. He didn’t see Ward anywhere.
He walked over to the circular archway that led into the cryo-room. For a moment he was sure that he would see the snarling face of Ward as he jumped in front of his path in the archway, demanding to know why he was being followed.
After a deep breath Abraham stepped inside the cryo-room. Maybe Ward had gone into the cryo-room to inspect the cryochambers, trying to find a way to get them to work again, trying to figure out a way to get back inside, back to the blissfully black sleep of suspended animation
Ward wasn’t in the cryo-room. He was somewhere up here on this level, but he wasn’t here in the cryo-room.
Abraham peeked back out through the archway of the cryo-room at the part of the hallway that he could see. The hallway up here wasn’t a straight line like the one on the level below them; this corridor had two sharp jogs in it where more storage rooms and machines were built into the walls.
There was a sound from somewhere farther down the hall; it was a very soft sound, just a slight scrape, like a shoe scuffing against the metal floor.
Ward was somewhere down that hall.
Abraham left the archway of the cryo-room and slinked down the hall, staying close to the metal wall. When he came to the first of those jogs in the corridor, he hid behind the wall for a moment and then peeked around the corner.
Ward stood very still in front of the airlock door. His face was slack and emotionless, his hands hung loosely down by his sides.
Was he going to try to open the door?
Ward still hadn’t moved a muscle; he wasn’t reaching for the large green button protected by the clear plastic shell mounted on the wall beside the door.
Abraham didn’t know what to do. Should he call out to Ward and stop him from opening that door? Should he go back down below and get the others?
Suddenly, Ward seemed to come alive. He glanced around like he knew someone was watching him, and then he turned around like he was going to walk back down the hall.
Abraham ducked out of the way just in time before Ward spotted him. He hurried down the corridor a few feet and then he slipped inside a small supply closet. The closet was nearly empty but it was still a tight squeeze. He closed the door almost all the way, but he left it open just a crack so he could watch Ward.
He braced himself, expecting the closet door to fly open. He expected Ward to be standing there, staring down at him, screaming at him, demanding to know why he was being stalked.
But Ward just walked on by.
This time Abraham got a closer look at Ward as he walked by, even if it was only for a brief moment. Ward’s face still showed no emotion and he stared straight ahead as he continued his purposeful walk. It seemed almost like he was in a trance, or maybe sleepwalking.
Was he sleepwalking?
Maybe it was some kind of side effect from the suspended animation, like the short-term memory loss. He would have to ask MAC about it later.
Abraham made himself wait a few more moments before he left the small closet, just in case Ward might be waiting for him down the hall or at the top of the stairwell.
But Abraham made it all the way back to his room without seeing Ward again.
FIFTEEN
Cromartie asked everyone to gather in the dining area so they could eat together and talk more about what was going on. They all seemed open to the idea except Ward, but even he grudgingly agreed.
They sat at the built-in table with plates of freeze-dried food and cans of prepared meals in front of them. They had heated some of the food in the microwave ovens. Ward called these containers of food MREs (meals ready to eat). He said they were similar to what he had stocked at his bunker in Georgia.
Cromartie didn’t think he wanted to eat, but once the food was prepared he found that he was very hungry. He wolfed down half of his food as he stood at the counter. He turned and watched the others.
Butler sat at the table with an untouched container of food in front of her. Abraham tried to coax her into eating, but eventually he had to feed her with a spoon. She accepted the food and chewed methodically before swallowing.
Rolle cut his food into tiny pieces with a determined slowness.
Ward stabbed at a piece of meat (Cromartie was sure that it was some kind of fake food designed to look and taste like meat) and popped it into his mouth. Like he did everything else, he chewed quickly and forcefully.
Cromartie couldn’t get the dream he’d had out of his mind. He was sure parts of the dream were his memories, flashes from his past that were all jumbled up together: his wife, his kids, his construction business, even the two shadowy men talking while he lay on a table while most likely being prepped for suspended animation. But there was something else in the dream, the voice of MAC. There were answers on the ship: that’s what MAC had told him in the dream. Maybe it was his own mind in the dream trying to tell him that there were clues here on this ship that he wasn’t seeing because his mind was still somewhat scrambled from the shock of waking up here. Maybe there were clues to their salvation, clues that led to a hope of survival … he just needed to see them.
But what were the clues? The more he tried to focus on that part of the dream, the more it slipped away.
Yet he still couldn’t help feeling a sense of hope inside of him, like there might be some kind of chance at surviving this. It was the first positive feeling he’d had since waking up inside of that Plexiglas chamber.
“I’m telling you,” Ward said as he chewed his food, “that computer’s fucked up.” Ward glanced up at the ceiling as if MAC might be listening to him, but he really didn’t seem to care. He looked at Butler, pointing at her with his steak knife. “That computer could’ve fried us all. Who knows how close we came to ending up like her. Could you imagine the six of us stumbling around the ship in a stupor like that?”
Ward barked out a laugh and stabbed another piece of the meat into his mouth and chewed.
Sanders stared at him with disgust.
“Hell,” Ward said as he continued talking around a mouthful of food. “Maybe it would be better to be like Butler. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.”
Sanders was about to respond to Ward, but she snapped her mouth shut like she didn’t want to talk to him.
Cromartie could tell Sanders was steeling herself, doing her best to control her temper. He was sure it was something she’d had to do often as a cop in the streets of Los Angeles. He looked from Sanders to Ward. “What good is it doing us for you to be so angry?”
Ward chuckled as he sucked at his teeth. He pushed his metal container of food away and locked eyes with Cromartie. “What
good is it doing us to sit around here waiting to waste away and die? What good are your little meetings doing us?”
“We could think,” Cromartie said. “We could come up with some ideas.”
“Ideas about what?” Ward asked, still chuckling. “About a way out of this? There is no way out of this. We’re in the middle of space. Too far from our destination. Too far away from Earth, an Earth that’s been destroyed by nuclear war.” Ward looked up at the ceiling. “If that stupid computer’s even telling us the truth.”
“Maybe MAC is malfunctioning,” Cromartie said. “But maybe there’s some kind of way around MAC so we can get back into cryosleep, some kind of override or something.”
Ward sighed like he was trying to discuss something with a child. He looked up at the ceiling again. “MAC! Good morning!”
“Good morning, Ward.”
“MAC, can I ask you a question?”
“Certainly, Ward.”
“How do we get back into cryosleep?”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. This ship is not equipped to reinstate cryosleep.”
Ward looked at Cromartie with a smug smile, satisfied with himself. “MAC controls this ship. There’s no way around him, and none of us are going to get back into cryosleep without his help.”
Abraham exhaled an annoyed sigh. He sipped his coffee and then tried to coax Butler into eating another bite of food. “Cromartie’s right … you’re not helping.”
Ward ignored Abraham and looked right at Cromartie. “There’s a question we haven’t asked MAC yet.” Ward sat back in his chair and looked at the rest of them one at a time. “A very important question.”
“What’s that?” Cromartie asked as he tried to control his anger, much like Sanders was doing.
Ward looked back up at the ceiling. “MAC, it’s Ward again.”
“Yes, Ward.”
“I have another question for you. Do you think you can answer it?”
“I will do my best, Ward.”
“How much food do we have on board for us to survive? The six of us.”
“Ward, what are you doing?” Cromartie asked.
“We need to know,” Ward snapped at Cromartie, and then he glanced at the others as they waited for MAC to answer.
“Based on the average two thousand five hundred calorie diet, my calculations for survival for six humans comes up to seven months, two weeks, and five days.”
Ward looked at Cromartie with a victorious grin on his face. He raised his arms out in a “told ya” gesture. “Look at the food in the freezer and the storage cabinets. It doesn’t take a genius to see that there’s less than a year’s supply of food on this ship. That’s because we were never meant to be awake during this flight, only right at the very end.”
Sanders stood up and pushed her metal container of food away. She stared at Ward. “You’re an asshole,” she said and stomped out of the room.
“That computer fucked up and woke us up early, and I’m the asshole?” he called after her.
Ward looked at everyone else in the dining area. “I’m just trying to face the reality of the situation here, that’s all.”
Rolle got up and took his empty food container to the counter. “I’m going to check on Sanders,” he said and left the room.
SIXTEEN
Sanders was in her room sitting cross-legged on her bed with her back against the wall.
She heard a knock at her open doorway and saw Rolle standing there with a lopsided grin on his face. He seemed to be waiting politely for an invitation. She didn’t feel like having company right now and she suddenly wished that she would’ve shut her door all the way.
“Mind if I come in?” Rolle asked her from the doorway.
She shrugged. “Be my guest.”
Rolle entered her room and closed the door softly. He walked over to the built-in desk across from Sanders’ bed and leaned against it.
“Sorry about Ward,” he said.
“Don’t be sorry,” Sanders said. “It’s not your fault he’s an asshole.”
Rolle smiled and nodded.
“I just needed to get out of there before I lost my cool,” she said.
“Totally understood. We’re all under a lot of stress right now. Including Ward. We need to remember that Ward is just as scared as we are, but he’s showing it in a different way … his own way.”
“You sound just like a shrink, all right.”
Rolle stared at Sanders, and she could feel him studying her.
“You’ve seen shrinks before?” he asked.
“Of course,” Sanders admitted. “After a shooting, it’s required.”
Rolle seemed to perk up a little at the mention of a shooting, and Sanders wished she hadn’t said anything about it. “Shooting?” he asked. “You’ve shot a person in the line of duty?”
“A few times. It’s not something I really want to talk about right now, if you don’t mind.”
Rolle nodded, backing off even though she could sense that he was very curious about finding out more about her past.
“I guess what bothers me the most is that Ward is right,” she said, trying to change the subject. “I should’ve realized that we don’t have enough food to survive. I should’ve figured that out when Cromartie and I explored the ship the first time.”
“It’s okay to overlook things like that. None of us is perfect.”
Sounds like a shrink again, Sanders thought. “But Ward is right,” she admitted again. “We needed to know how much food we have here. We needed to assess the situation we were in right away.”
Rolle nodded, his eyes scrunched in a practiced expression of concern.
“But please don’t tell him I said that,” Sanders added quickly. “I don’t want to see Ward gloating.”
Rolle smiled. “Of course not. You know, Ward told us that he’s a survivalist. It’s probably just in his nature to observe things like the amount of food and water around him, anything that pertains to his survival. It’s probably second-nature to him.”
“Yeah, that sounds right, but it doesn’t make me feel any better about not seeing it before he did.” Sanders thought about Abraham talking earlier about all of the skills each one of them had. And already Ward’s skills had come in handy. But to what end? The end was always the same every time she thought about it.
Rolle still leaned against the built-in desk as he watched Sanders. He didn’t seem like he was planning on leaving any time soon and his expression seemed neutral like he was thinking something over. “We could all eat less food. A thousand calories a day, maybe. Less than that, even. I know a person can survive on that.”
Sanders sighed and shook her head in defeat. “We would just be delaying the inevitable for a few months.”
Rolle didn’t say anything—he didn’t seem to have an answer to that.
“Can I tell you something in confidence?” Sanders asked as she locked eyes with him. “It’s about Ward.”
Rolle seemed to perk up again. He sat down in the swivel chair that was bolted to the floor in front of the desk. He hunched forward towards Sanders, eager to hear what she had to say. “Yes, please.”
“I just have this feeling that there’s something … off about Ward,” Sanders told him. “Something he’s hiding.”
Rolle just nodded like he was indicating her to continue.
But Sanders didn’t have anything else to add—that was it. She sighed. “Sorry, I know it sounds like I’m suspicious of him. I can’t explain why. It’s like a cop’s intuition. When you’ve been around bad people long enough, you just get a sense about them.”
“And you think Ward’s a bad person?” he asked, sounding even more like a shrink than ever.
Sanders was starting to get a little uncomfortable and she wished now that she hadn’t brought it up.
“I’m not saying that,” she said. “I just get a weird feeling around him. That’s all I’m saying.”
They were quiet for a long moment. Sander
s wanted to be alone, and she was hoping that Rolle’s perceptive skills would pick up on that soon.
Rolle stood up and showed Sanders a tight smile. It seemed like he had finally caught on that he was wearing out his welcome and beginning to irritate her. “I should let you get some rest. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Sanders watched him as he walked towards her door. “Since you’re a shrink, maybe you can answer a question for me.”
He stopped at the door and looked at her, waiting for her question.
“How long do we have before we’re at each other’s throats?”
SEVENTEEN
Cromartie sat by himself on the bridge. He had walked around the captain’s chair a little earlier and checked out some of the instruments lining the arms of the chair. He had touched the display panels, the buttons, and the levers. And then he had walked over to the rows of keyboards in front of the bank of computer screens at the bottom of the windows in the front of the bridge and run his fingers across the keys. None of the buttons or screens seemed to be affected by his touch. Data continued to stream by on computer screens, and the few beeps that emitted every so often from the displays carried on.
He had asked MAC about the buttons and displays, but the computer informed Cromartie that he was not authorized to use any of those functions and they were all automated right now.
It made sense … it probably wouldn’t be a good idea if any of them were in here fiddling with buttons and computer screens.
That got Cromartie thinking again about why they were on this ship and not pilots, navigators, and other space-trained personnel. Even if they had been woken up at the end of this mission like they were supposed to be, which one of them was supposed to fly this ship? Which one of them was supposed to land it?
It just didn’t make any sense. Maybe MAC was going to land the ship. Maybe MAC controlled everything on this ship.
Maybe MAC was the answer, his mind whispered.
Where had that thought come from? It felt like a sticky remnant of his dream lodged inside his mind somewhere.