by Geoff North
The sun was gone. In its place was a dull orange-brown glow. He looked to the right. The sandy plain was littered with boulders and slivers of rock that stretched on forever. It was much the same to the left—except there was something different out that way. Logan narrowed his eyes in an attempt to see better in the gathering gloom. Among the rocks he saw half a dozen trails of dust rising into the air. They became larger as he watched—no, not larger—closer.
He grinned from ear to ear when he recognized what they were. Even though he found it difficult to make out their faces, he knew the four-legged runners approaching were animals.
He ran towards them, his arms open wide and welcoming.
Logan loved dogs.
Chapter 13
Marshal Lowe tended to the fire.
Gunnarson sat next to him with a toolbox open at his feet. There were machinery parts and tools spread out on a piece of sheet metal resting on his lap. “You’ll set the whole place to flames if you add another piece of wood,” he pointed out, not looking up from the tiny circuit board and micro-screwdriver in his hands.
“Nothin’ beats a good fire.” He stuck another branch end in until there was enough orange glow to light his cigarette. “Besides, this old asteroid’s only got a few more spins left in it. May as well enjoy what time we have.”
“You and the others will be gone before that happens.”
“You’re not coming with us?”
Gunnarson sighed and placed his work to one side. “My world has always been here. My life lies buried up beyond those rocks.”
Lowe took a long drag and exhaled the blue smoke out through his nostrils. “I had myself a gal once.” There was something about the place that made the marshal think of Sally again. He was so far from home—so far from what he’d once had—it almost felt safe enough to let the memories resurface.
“What happened to her?”
“She started to change into wannasee so I put her out of her misery.”
“You murdered your own wife?”
“It ain’t murder if you love someone enough...it’s mercy.” He flicked the butt into the fire and it sparked purple. The light danced in his dead gray eyes and the lids narrowed. “And now all I have is the satisfaction of sendin’ as many of those faceless bastards to hell as I can.”
“It won’t bring her back. You can murder every wannasee from here to kingdom come, but she will still be gone.”
“We’ll all be gone sooner or later. I’m just goin’ to make sure the job’s done right. Ain’t nobody in this world deserves to turn like that… It ain’t decent.”
Gunnarson tried to imagine how it must have been for the lawman. Could he have done the same for Amy? He shuddered at the thought of his beloved wife changing into one of those things, and for the first time since her death, was actually grateful the spaceship accident had made that terrible choice for him. Lowe was right. They would all change sooner or later. It was just a matter of time. But did that give him the right to murder every last tortured soul left in Neal’s world? Would the marshal blow his own brains out when he was the last one standing? Gunnarson knew the answer, and it chilled him.
Brinn was lying a few feet away next to Selma, pretending to sleep but listening to every word the two men were saying. The world of imaginary characters her uncle had created over three decades ago was dying. And as they sat there and talked of their losses, this universe quickly coming to an end became more real to her than ever before.
My boyfriend.
Esme’s words echoed through her mind. What other secrets had they kept from her? Was their world in as much trouble as this one?
She wished her father was here to tell her everything would be alright. Brinn longed to see her little brother and she felt remorse at the years wasted not visiting her grandmother.
She had to be stronger.
She had to push aside the grief and her selfishness to make things right. Oscar and the others had enough faith in her to come this far.
Why shouldn’t Paris and Esme fall in love? What did I offer them or Bertha after I felt too old to play with them anymore?
And there was her mother to consider. It was the main reason she’d entered this world in the first place. If Selma had spoken to her, Brinn could find her as well. In a universe where cowboys and robots coexisted on floating asteroids, anything was possible.
Brinn sat up and the two men looked at her.
“You need to get some more sleep,” Gunnarson said. “We’ll let you know when everything’s ready and you can travel back to Earth.”
“It’s hard getting to sleep considering where I am…besides, I want to help.”
She wandered up the path towards the Gateway Junction. Bertha was helping Reginald clear the pad of rocks and dirt where one end of it had dropped beneath the asteroid’s surface during the last quake. Oscar was holding that end up in one mechanical hand and shoveling larger stones beneath for extra support.
“Is that thing going to be safe to travel on?” she asked.
Reginald answered, “So long as it remains level, the terminal should be able to transport us anywhere.”
Oscar rapped his knuckles lightly against the robot’s platform head. “You should go over and check with the commander to see how your recharge is coming along.”
Reginald rolled away, humming the Brady Bunch theme song as he went.
Brinn watched as Oscar returned to his work. He scooped hundred-pound rocks under the pad as though they weighed nothing at all. There was no strain on his face, no sweat lining his brow. How could there be? The only thing human about him was the brain encased beneath the titanium skull and synthetic hair.
“What was my uncle like?”
“Pardon me?”
“Neal—what kind of little boy was he?”
His blue android eyes met her questioning brown ones and he smiled. “He was…pure. Everything about him was pure and good. He was kind-natured. He loved a great adventure. His mind was filled with curiosity and he was constantly asking questions.” The human part of Oscar reached up to see if there were tears in his eyes. There were none, of course. He stared at the back of his hand. The torn artificial skin had pulled back even more, reminding him once again. “Silly habit I’ve never been able to shake. Even after all this time I still forget sometimes what I really am.”
“You’re not like Marshal Lowe and Commander Gunnarson.”
“That’s obvious.”
“No… That’s not what I mean.” She covered the tear in his hand gently with her fingers. “You haven’t changed over the years. Lowe is bitter and filled with quiet rage. Gunnarson is…well, I think he’s gone a bit nuts if you want to know the truth. They were probably more like you when Uncle Neal was still alive.”
Oscar nodded slowly. “It’s been…difficult for them. They’ve lost a lot and that can change a man.”
“But not you.”
“I’m not a man.”
“You’re not flesh and blood, but you’re one of the most human people I’ve ever met. I have a feeling—had he lived—my uncle would’ve been a lot like you when he grew up.”
Oscar looked away. He pulled his hand from hers and went back to shoveling rocks. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
Brinn was still scared deep down inside. She was far from home, and their odds didn’t appear hopeful. But she would do her best for this man. She would draw from the same power that brought Bertha, Paris, and Esme along with her. She would do it for all of them. Brinn struggled with a rock at her feet and handed it to Oscar. “Let’s get this transport-pad thing ready. We have a world that needs saving.”
“Thanks, Brinn. I can handle this heavy work.”
Esme was with Paris in the tent. Bertha seemed too wrapped up in her own thoughts to pay Brinn any attention. Or she was mad because Brinn was paying her even less attention since Paris and Esme had joined them?
That left Brinn with only Selma to worry about. She
wandered back down into the camp, keeping her eyes fixed on the path and away from the revolving vista of yellow moon and spiral galaxy above her. It was hard enough keeping her balance with the increasing tremors from below.
Selma was by herself, lying a few feet away from the fire. Gunnarson and the others were busy at the work table. It would give Brinn time to be alone with her friend for a few minutes. She shook the sleeping girl’s shoulder. “Hey…wake up. We have to talk.”
Selma sat up. She wasn’t as asleep as Brinn had believed. “Is it time to go?”
Brinn shook her head. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For being a lousy friend. For dragging you along on this stupid adventure.”
“You didn’t have any choice. I had—I wanted to come.” Selma could see tears forming in her friend’s eyes. “Why do you think you’re a lousy friend?”
It had obviously been bothering Brinn for some time. She wrapped one end of the drawstring of her hoodie around her finger. “I’ve used you. Whenever I wanted to forget all the pain I was going through after losing my mom, I came to you to get drunk, or high, or whatever.”
“I didn’t mind. It’s not like I had any other friends to hang out with.”
“It was fun in the beginning,” Brinn continued to explain, “but when you started…communicating with my mom, I took full advantage of our friendship. I only wanted to know where she was and what she was going through.”
“That’s understandable. If you could communicate the same way with my dad, I’d want to know where he was too.”
“Your dad didn’t die.”
“No, he ran out on us. I’d like to know where he is so I could kick his ass.”
They both laughed.
Brinn continued, “I’ve been a train wreck since she died. Maybe it’s because I never had the chance to say goodbye. The night she passed away I stayed at home to study for a history test. I should’ve been there.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“Yeah, but I had a good idea…I knew it was getting close. I was just too scared to go to the hospital with Dad.”
Selma reached out and Brinn held her hand. “You were fifteen. What kid wouldn’t be afraid to lose a parent?”
Brinn wept. “And I’ve been such a selfish jerk ever since. I’ve never thought about Dad…how my behavior was affecting him on top of losing her.”
Selma hugged her. “It isn’t too late. You guys can fix things.”
Brinn wiped the tears away from her face. “When we get back home…when this world is all behind us and we’re back in Hamden and school, I want to start over again. No more bad stuff.”
Selma was smiling now. “I never needed pot to talk to your mom. It was just an excuse to keep you close. I didn’t want to lose you.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Come on, Brinn—if we weren’t both stoned at the time, how would it have looked if I said your dead mother was talking to me every time I fell asleep?”
Brinn sensed more in what her friend wasn’t saying. “Every time you fall asleep? Have you been in contact since we entered Neal’s world?”
Selma nodded reluctantly. “Just a few minutes ago.”
“What did she say?”
The girl hesitated.
“Please, Selma… You aren’t going to lose me.”
“She warned me…warned us. Gunnarson and the others—all of your uncle’s creations—they can’t be trusted.”
“She said that?”
Selma shook her head. “Not directly. It was more a feeling.”
The girls looked away from each other and watched the group of three gathered around in front of the work table. Wonderful, Brinn thought. Just one more thing to worry about.
Commander Gunnarson had removed four of the squares from Reginald’s lower half and was working away at a control panel deep within. The robot continued to hum old theme songs.
“Can’t you make him shut up?” Lowe asked.
“I get nervous when people poke away inside me,” Reginald answered defensively. “And his fingers are cold.”
Gunnarson ignored them as he placed the squares back into place. “You have a half charge remaining. You’ll be back to full transport capacity in four hours—possibly three.”
As if on cue, the ground shook violently beneath them. Gunnarson reached out and pulled Reginald back onto his treads before the robot could fall over. The shaking continued. It intensified.
“Get us the hell out of here!” Bertha was running, stumbling as she went, down from the transport pad.
Reginald swiveled around. The yellow moon rose on the horizon again. It was much larger now. Much closer. “The gravitational forces have increased exponentially. It has become impossible for me to calculate the rate of pull.”
Brinn and Selma joined up with them as a deafening explosion ripped through the air. A piece of space rock—a second asteroid the size of a city—passed in front of the ringed moon. It toppled end over end above their heads and vanished over the far horizon within seconds.
“It’s started,” Gunnarson said. “That was a piece of this asteroid. We’re breaking apart.”
Lowe pointed at Reginald. “Will he have enough juice stored up yet to make the trip?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Gunnarson answered grimly. “Go wake your friends, Brinn. You’re all shipping out now. The rest of you—get on that pad.”
Brinn was about to set off for the tent when the flap opened. Paris and Esme stepped out. The vampire had one arm wrapped about the boy’s waist but he was standing on his own. “What’s all the commotion out here?” he asked. “Who’s setting off fireworks?”
His skin was deathly pale—as pale as Esme’s. Brinn approached slowly and marveled at his face. “Your eye…it’s grown back!”
Gunnarson herded them along the trail towards the transport terminal. “Keep moving!”
Paris reached up and felt his face. “I…I still can’t see out of it.” He looked at Esme. “Did you do this?”
“I did this.” She ran a fingernail along the twin punctures on his neck. “It was the only way I could think of from stopping the changes in your body.”
Brinn and Selma stood in front of him for a closer look. His eye had definitely grown back, but there was no color to it—no pupil or iris. It was just a milky gray ball set in the socket. He blinked, but only his right eyelid moved. Brinn grimaced at the sight of his neck. There were still traces of dried blood around the bite marks.
“You turned him into a vampire?”
“It’s better than what he was becoming.”
“That’s fricking sick,” Selma added.
Brinn stepped back, trying to comprehend what had happened to the teenaged heartthrob she had created. “He was a wizard! You were the vampire! What gives you the right to change what I made?”
Esme placed a hand on her abdomen. “I have the right because I’m pregnant, and Paris is the father!”
Oscar, Lowe, and Bertha stood around Reginald on the transport pad, watching in stunned silence. The robot blinked white. “I didn’t see that coming.”
The ground shook harder. There was a shuddering noise that reminded Brinn of thick sheets of ice cracking in winter on the Braedon River back home.
Gunnarson pushed Brinn and Selma to the transport pad. “Get on there, all of you!” Paris stumbled and Esme helped him along the way.
Reginald’s rubber arms shot out and clicked into the rings at the pad’s sides. Commander Gunnarson stood in front of them, separated now by a ten-foot-wide crack in the asteroid’s surface.
The cement pad started to glow green along its outer edges and Brinn felt the familiar vibration running up through her feet. Esme held Paris in her arms. He took one step back and his boot heel landed on the line of green light. Bertha reached over and pulled him back in.
“Jump, Commander!” Oscar shouted. “Get on the pad! There’s
still room!”
He grinned wildly at them and shook his head. Commander Gunnarson wasn’t going anywhere. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no—”
“Cut the shit, Robert!” Lowe yelled. “You don’t have to do this.”
Gunnarson backed away calmly and determinedly. “I do, Angus…I do.”
The transport pad and its eight occupants vanished. A green shaft of light shot out from the asteroid towards an outer arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. It flickered halfway there and split into two.
Robert Gunnarson reached into his breast pocket for a small square device. There were two buttons on its surface: one white, the other red. He had known it might come to this. He’d planned for it. The asteroid had taken everything he ever loved away from him. It would be the death of him. But he would be the one to control his fate in the end.
His thumb hovered above the red button.
“I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”
He shut his eyes and saw Amy.
He heard the words Marshal Lowe had whispered to him at the fire.
It’s mercy.
The explosion was massive—even by intergalactic standards. It would be witnessed by astronomers on Earth in twenty-five thousand years if they happened to be looking that way. The asteroid blinked out of existence in a great ball of white fire and cosmic energy. Seconds later all that remained was dust. Big Red and its ringed yellow moon were now alone in their little section of the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy.
Chapter 14
They traveled safely over one hundred and fifty quadrillion miles—that’s a one and a five followed by sixteen zeroes—in the blink of an eye. It was the final three-foot drop that almost broke Brinn’s ankle.
She fell forward off the cement pad and rolled ungracefully onto her backside. “Ow!”
“Please forgive the rocky landing, everyone,” Reginald said. Oscar had already grabbed a hold of him and was tipping him back onto his treads before he could land on Brinn.
Marshal Lowe checked his side holster to be sure the rifle was still there. Bertha was no longer standing beside him. “Something went wrong… Where are the others?”