by Jack Vantage
“You’re not too bad yourself.” She placed her hand behind his head and forced another brief kiss. “Together we’ll make it. We need to hurry.”
Dylan scanned the area. It looked empty as the lights flickered. Leon was nowhere in sight. Something wasn’t right. He could feel someone moving, like shadows were closing in on them, surrounding them.
A man appeared from behind a pillar ten metres ahead, then another from a different pillar ten metres to the right, then another ten metres to the left. Then another, and another.
“Keep moving,” he said quietly.
The five men closed in on them. Each wore dirty denim and held a weapon in the shape of broken pipes and bars.
The leader, a modestly built guy, stepped in front of them. His gruff, unshaven face gave him an unwashed look across his angular jaw. He looked like he’d lived a hard life and experienced harder times. His nose was crooked and his head shaven, like his supporting crew. They fanned out and moved in front of Dylan and Lecodia. Slowly they cornered in from all sides.
“What have we here?” he said in a course European accent. “Lost souls.” His eyes were sunken, vulture like and dark.
Dylan placed a hand across Lecodia’s body, a feeble shield he knew, but still it was one. He moved in front of her. He’d lay his life down for her. Like a bodyguard, Dylan felt responsible for her, like everything depended on it.
“Is there something we can do for you?” Dylan said. He carefully eyed each one.
“Oh sure. You could fuck off and leave the princess with us. We don’t have long left, and we have needs,” the leader said. The group grinned and chuckled a mad evil. They swung their bars like it was choreographed.
“I’m afraid we’ve already had a run in with sleaze, and it didn’t bode well for them,” Dylan said. He reached behind carefully, feeling for the blaster he’d taken from Nexus.
“Oh, I’m no loser Mr. We don’t want anything sleazy. Just murder, starting with you. We’ll get around to the princess later.”
As the group moved forward, the hum of a sky-mobile flew close. A stunning, chrome-bodied animal drove into the right three of the group. Leon blurred buy in a flash. The hard nut jobs bounced over the bonnet and roof of the mobile, which hurled them ten meters into the air. They cracked the ground one by one.
Dylan ran for the leader while he winced and flinched. He landed a hard punch to his head, knocking him to the ground, Dylan then spun to retrieve Lecodia.
The remaining man had come around behind her. He grabbed her viscously by the hair, yanked her backward, and slammed her to the ground. She screamed as her legs and arms scrambled for a hold. Her bum and legs scraped the ground as the hard guy pulled her unmercifully across the concrete.
She clutched at the man’s hands and screamed louder. She kicked her legs hysterically.
He yelled, “You fucking bitch!” His face distorted with hatred.
Dylan pulled the blaster from the hem of his trousers, lifted it, and fired.
The laser hit the man in the face and burnt a tube through his nose. Dylan could view through the laser burn like he was hollow.
The man’s hands had stopped midway to his face as stunned realisation hit him. His eyes were frozen open. He dropped dead.
Lecodia lay shaken and disturbed.
Leon ran to her aid.
Dylan turned and glared at the fallen leader, who began begging for his life. His hands cowered his face as he lay curled on the floor.
“Please don’t kill me! I don’t know what was wrong with me. I didn’t mean anything. I just wanted to scare you.”
“Lower your hands,” Dylan said, as he nudged them with the blasters barrel. “You sick little prick!”
“Okay, okay.” His hard look was gone, a frightened kid begged before Dylan.
“Dylan let him go,” Leon said. “Make him walk.”
But Dylan pressed the blaster’s barrel to the man’s head. “What is wrong with you? You think you’re worse off than everyone else? Huh?” Dylan pressed the blasters barrel to his head with forceful anger. “What gives you the right to overpower anyone, threaten anyone? You think you can control and terrorise my life?”
The blaster sounded. The laser burned its way through the man’s head, killing him.
The realisation of what he’d done dawned him. It was predatory, his will to live. His life had been threatened, and he didn’t like it. Nature had trapped people and the world in a jar of madness, no one was the same. “Why did I? Why did I?” Dylan said. But there was no answer, no explanation.
Leon said, “Dylan, get in the sky-mobile. We need to hightail to the exit for Hammed. It was either them or us. Don’t think about it.”
Dylan looked at his love. “You all right?
As Lecodia nodded, he noticed a man standing with Leon.
“Dylan, this is Bobby. He just helped us. He got the mobile.”
Bobby’s physique was toned. He was aged but healthy. His white hair was expertly lined around his ears and brow, his skin was tanned, and his features were sharp.
He spoke with a Texas accent. “They killed a fella over in the far corner an hour ago. I been hiding. Feel no sympathy for them, Mister. Come on, y’all. We need to get moving.”
“His wife is stuck in the same building as Hammed,” Leon said. “Maybe he could get word to Hammed and we can get Lecodia home and ourselves to the ships.”
Dylan nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”
Dylan held his hand out to Lecodia.
Lecodia’s hand slipped into Dylan’s and he lifted her up.
“That was a mighty fine shot mister. Got the vermin right in the sweet spot.” Bobby said.
Dylan just wanted to get to safety.
.
Chapter 29
Ushering-In Society
“Come on, come on, come on!” David Bell shouted. His arms waved with direction.
A large huddle of people stood before him, revealed by elevator doors that had parted quickly. He’d been assigned to the galactic ship Colony, to assist and aid the thousands upon thousands of lucky citizens who were brought via the station’s large space elevators. His job was to usher them, in as orderly fashion as possible, through a few corridors. Then he was required to move them through the last security check, which stood before a fifty-metre docking tube. That was their last few steps to freedom.
Hundreds of fearful eyes looked at him. Families, men, women, and parentless children were all trembling, bewildered and shocked. David understood how bad the situation must be getting on the ground. The people were traumatised. The enormity of the situation was breaking them down. His direct order snapped them from their worry.
“Now! Let’s go!” he said.
They moved from the lift and into the clinically clean corridors. Children cried. Adults too, and they moved like a herd that were being shepherded.
The smooth, grey, glossy carbon walls led the way. Each corner of the square corridor curved in a few feet. It offered no clean angle. Many corridors led off the route ahead, but they were sealed by cumbersome safety-compression doors that were designed to hold scientists in should something go wrong. They also provided protection in case of a breach and the vacuum got in. The doors were a heavy metal look and scribed with ‘Emergency pressure door. Use other route.’ The only accessible path led the masses towards their sanctuary.
“Everyone move quickly and safely, you are the last to board this vessel,” he said. “Follow the station personnel. They are wearing the blue shirts that show a boomerang yellow emblem. Just keep moving and you’ll be safe soon.”
A final father and son left the elevator, and David moved with them. He felt like he was rescuing humanity. He felt like a hero as he saved and saved.
As they moved forward, some turned their heads and looked back at him. Their eyes spoke a terrible fear. Despondent hope filled the air.
He was keen to help, but one thing kept winding him. Every time he opened the elevator, he wanted
to see his wife. It was like a blow to the gut every time she wasn’t there. He was ill with worry; his heart was slowly crushing. Only her smile would heal his damaged soul. His head said continue to save, but his heart said go find her. He prayed and prayed she had arrived safely.
The crowd slowed and condensed as they reached the last security check.
David moved through to the front and stood before the two monochromatic glossy guards. Their uniforms angled with menace, and their digital voices sounded from their helmet’s tinted visors. They waved chips over the people in an orderly fashion, then let the citizens start their walk of freedom down the extendable docking station tube.
Feet tapped its gridded meshed floor, and the thin tube was constructed by a silver retractable material. It was designed to fold in like linen when pulled back into the station. It stretched forward with a crumpled appearance, like metal foil. It held in the air pressure and held out the radiation. It was a fifty-metre walk of joy for the people who’d made it.
Neil Heming waved his hand and beckoned from a hundred metres down the tube, then shouted, “David can you help me down here? Someone’s got a back problem. We need to help her in. I need another pair of hands.”.
David could just make out his dark, brooding looks and thin styled black hair.
Neil was a young scientist, a biologist who’d been put on this assignment with David. Helena was assigned to another ship.
“We’re okay here, David,” one of the guards said.
David nodded and entered the tubed walkway. Its length held hundreds of citizens, all breathing relief.
Something popped, and the tube rippled in all directions.
David thought he’d seen something shoot straight through the tube. But it couldn’t have, could it? A group of ten people curiously gathered where he assumed he’d witnessed the UFO appear. It was like a stone had pierced through with lightning speed, tiny trail and all. The tube’s silver fabric continued to ripple towards David from the impact. It also rippled away from the group that had gathered centre dock-walk.
He began pushing past people as the sound of leakage grew, like something was sucking with never ending lungs from outside.
“Oh shit!” David shouted. “Get to the ship! Get to the ship! We have a breach.”
For a second no one moved or registered the imminent danger. Then it was too late. The tubes fabric tore open beside the group of curious citizens, who were inspecting. A large segment collapsed and scrunched outward like a discarded piece of paper.
The immense sound of pressure loss blew through the tunnel as those citizens screamed, then vanished into silence through the suddenly gaping hole that sucked at the tube.
The suction deafened the screams of panic that disordered the tube.
David felt his legs pulled towards the deathly void. He gripped the floor mesh and held on for dear life. He turned his head and watched as body after body screamed through the gap into silence. The hole grew and split around the tubes’ circumference. Finally, the tube split in two. David clung onto the gridded walkway of the segment still attached to the space station.
The gridded walkway snapped at the station’s connection point and pivoted vertically downward. Stars moved at the broken tubes end, where people uncontrollably tumbled and spun to their silent deaths. A few bodies flew over David as he held tight. The walkway bumped to a stop and was now a vertical drop, like a cliff face. All that held it was the fabric that attached to the station above.
Several people held on for their life to the gridded floor that swayed a nauseating sway, including a girl above David. He looked down just as a man lost his grip. The man was dragged like a limp ragdoll, bumping along the floor in fits of screams. Then he was silenced as he violently spiralled from the tube and into the cold hand of the universe. The man’s body froze with rigidity as it twisted through the void.
The void of space stared David from the flailing tube’s edges, twenty metres down. He made his first move upward with his right hand and held a firm grip. He sharply dodged left as a limp female crashed past screaming. The void silenced her like it had reached down her throat and yanked the air from her lungs.
He didn’t have long before the automatic safety seals would close on the station, and leave him to die in the void he’d spent his life exploring. He moved upward quickly and looked up where the first survivor was pulled over and into the station by the guards that had supported themselves inside the corridor. Hands reached over the edge and lifted people in.
He reached the child. She was glued flat to the floor, and he pulled himself up beside her. She was no older than eight. He always cursed himself for lack of physical activity, but it felt like he was the strongest man alive as the will to live overcame all internal systems.
“Grab onto me, kid! Grab onto me!” David yelled above the noise of pressurised air.
The girl turned her head and the look of death was scribed across her innocence. Her long black hair pulled towards the void, and her big watery eyes pleaded for rescue as she nodded. The girl climbed onto David’s back. He held her as she done so. Then her arms locked around his neck, holding tight.
David began moving upward again. Another scream sounded. David looked down between his legs as another man was out matched. He crashed down the walkway and clipped a woman who held on in hysterics by a single arm. Both scream hard as the woman’s head bashed against the meshed grid. Her bones broke with crunching force as the suction bent her body into a mangled roll. They hit the void. Silenced screams rang as the female was pulled leftward and the man rightward from view.
David dug deep and climbed, hand after hand, pulling himself and the girl closer to the waiting hands of rescue. He looked up and watched another man reach for the multitude of arms, momentarily tasting life. Then his grip gave way and he fell backward screaming. He desperately attempted to get some kind of a hold, but his snatches missed, and he descended towards David kicking and screaming.
“Hold on kid!” David yelled.
David leant left. The kicking man’s body flew past. The man's body hit the silver tubes fabric and rolled downward. As the body reached the fabrics end it was flicked into a limp spiral that spun him like a crash test dummy into the void. The body solidified and distanced away from the tubes view.
David gripped with two hands again. He and the girl were the last survivors. He climbed. Then hands were in front of him, reaching. “Grab the hands,” said a rescuer.
David felt the girl lifted from his back. Then someone’s hands locked under his armpits and lift him upward. He was dragged inside and along the floor as the doors sealed and returned the air pressure to normal.
He lay out of breath and panted hard.
The girl’s father screamed with joyous sobs.
David turned his head and watched the man hug her, check her body, and kiss her face in uncontrollable love.
David lifted himself.
“No!” someone screamed as they hit with both hands at a window.
David quickly joined, as did the other survivors, and watched the enormous galactic vessel slowly turning away from the station. Its six large thrust heads blasted indigo flames with drive and strength. David spotted a smoking area midway down the cigar shaped monster. It was a large darkened area compared to the highly lit speckled windowed body.
The galactic ship turned close enough to the station for David to see the main bridge, a large lookout that sat above the ship’s nose. The alloy and materials used in its design glossed a black moonstone, and it was bigger up close than David imagined. The bulky galactic transport’s front end moved past his view, from right to left, and its hard angles carved an industrial giant.
David and the others watched in horror as a shower of asteroids, tiny compared to the ship, salted its body with harsh, fast impacts. Explosions erupted all over the ship. The shower continued its pin pricking and bulleting. Then a larger asteroid struck the window of the bridge. It obliterated with explosive energy
. The ship bled fire over its damaged body, and its nose dipped and dropped. The ship only filtered a few of the space pebbles. The majority travelled through the vessel like a bullet would a head and continued their plight towards the planet of Quazar.
Another larger asteroid slammed into the ship’s gut and split it in half like it was a lead pencil. Electrical arcs and explosions zapped from the ship. When the explosions subsided David viewed into its many levels. Thousands of unfortunate bodies were dragged from various floors of the ship. It looked like a doll’s house that had opened to reveal its intricate internal levels. The ship threw debris into the void which was cluttering into a frozen junk yard. The halved smoking ship dropped further from his view and the trail of debris clouded space.
A steward called, “David Bell? David Bell?”
David stepped away from the window. “Yes, here.” He looked for the source of the voice over the panicked crowd.
A short young boy, nineteen at the most, spoke to him fast. His shifty fresh face was as fast as his voice. “Sir, Michael has sent me to get you. He needs you over at Migration. More are arriving. But also, we don’t have long. The asteroid showers are coming thick and fast. We will orbit into the path of a nasty batch in approximately four hours. That’s how long we have to get out of here. He told me to tell you to get everyone here over to the ship.”
“How does he know?”
“The station was armed with tracking devices to protect it from attack when built. He didn’t see it coming until it was too late. There are thousands on the way to Quazar right now. He needs to talk to you.”
“Okay, okay. Let's go everyone. You heard him.”
David rushed onward to the next ship, where he could offer further help in the rescuing of humanity. The universe had not won yet.
Chapter 30
High-Rise Hell
“That's it we're screwed,” Lecodia said. She stood and spoke with hands on knees depleted and frustrated. “I’m going to miss my parents,” she said. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes.