Pitch Dark

by Courtney Alameda

  Ironically, the aft tram station was my original destination with Holly. Standing here now, without her, feels like a cruel cosmic joke.

  Laura glances over her shoulder. “What now?” she mouths to me.

  Our big problem? I don’t see any of the curators’ armored trams docked here. We’ll have to call one from elsewhere in the ship. The trams aren’t quick, so after I reboot the station’s systems, we’ll have to wait for an armored tram to arrive.

  We don’t have time to wait, but we can’t take a regular tram car, either.

  Laura and I enter the maglev traffic control room—an enclosed, pressurized section of the station. I shut the door behind us, sealing in any sounds we might make.

  The entire space isn’t more than fifteen meters by five. Huge, cloudy windows look out over the darkened rail lines. Four-hundred-year-old dust frosts everything in here. It slides off the instruments. Two large, dingy glass screens hover over the control panel. Ice crystals form on the glass edges. The aged buttons on the control panel stick so badly, I have to smash them with my fist to depress them.

  It takes me a few seconds, but I manage to get the system rebooted. Outside, the rails snap and hum with electricity. The trams clank, their G-shaped runners lifting off the tracks.

  A rail map glimmers up on the glass screens in front of me, showing the three tiers of rail lines running through the deepdowns. The lines stack up like layers of a cake. I use the side of my fist to clean a circle on the screen.

  Toward the aft section of the map, the t-One and t-Two tracks burn red around the crash site. It looks like Jaws took a giant, bleeding bite out of the ship. The damaged tracks and tunnels are offline. Gone. Crashed into the ship’s deepdown sea. The t-Two tracks—our floor—aren’t fully glitched, and tracks four and five may still be operational. Stella. One point for Team Human.

  “There’s not a tram close,” I say, bracing myself against the control panel. “We’ll have company before we’ve got a ride back to the park.”

  Laura hugs herself and looks around the room, shivering from fear or cold or both. Not that I blame her—our big bastard’s going to be here in minutes.

  The closest tram’s parked at the R-3 station, fourth track. I tap the screen to call the tram. My pulse thuds in my ears. ETA? “Six minutes, thirty seconds till the tram arrives.” My brain scrambles for a plan.

  Thing is, I’ve never been very good at plans.

  “No manches,” Laura says.

  Moving fast, I lock down the tram’s commands so nobody will interfere with our trip once we’re onboard. Until we reach the park’s ingress door some fifteen klicks away, the only command the tram car will listen to is GO. “You’ll need to hide,” I tell Laura, pointing to a bunch of gutted, multi-car trains sitting on the far edge of the tracks. “Our tram will be big, spiky. The minute I give the signal, make a run for it.”

  “I don’t think we should split up,” she says, shifting her weight and crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Look, splitting up might get people killed in B horror flicks,” I say, straightening. “But you’ll have a better chance of survival if you’re close to the tram when it gets here.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “Stay in the station and release a bunch of dummy trams into the tunnels. Hopefully, that will draw the attention of most of the mourners—”

  “Hopefully?” she says, but startles when a loud shriek echoes through the halls. “I’m not just going to leave you behind. That’s not what my people do, and it’s a stupid plan.”

  “Please, Laura,” I say, not sure how to help her understand that I can’t watch another person die on me. Holly’s death is still so fresh it burns. Rusty crescent moons of her blood still rise over the pink skies of my nails.

  It should’ve been me under that rock, not her. Never her.

  “Do I have to beg?” I ask Laura. “Because I will.”

  “Don’t patronize me. Let me help you.”

  “I’ll concentrate better if I know you’re safe.” Or at least safe-ish.

  “Don’t feel like you have to protect me,” she says. “I don’t need a white knight.”

  Blinking hard, I squeeze the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. I wish you could see, Laura, that I’ve already lost one good person today. But I can’t say those words out loud. They embody the kind of sentiment that shows too much of what’s inside on the outside, and I’ve never been good at that sort of thing.

  “Don’t fight me on this,” I say, adding a quick “Please” to soften the request.

  “Don’t think I can’t take care of myself, vato,” she snaps, placing her fists on her hips and lifting her chin. I’ve only known her for a few hours, but that reaction is just so. Laura. Cruz.

  “You want to help?” I take a step toward her, my frustration racing neck and neck with my fear. “Take a position inside the trams on the far right side and fire arrows at the walls to distract the griefer. Keep your ass out of sight. I don’t want to have to come rescue you.”

  But I will if I need to.

  “Don’t worry,” she says, “you won’t have to.”

  USS JOHN MUIR NPS-3500

  LOWER DECK TRAM STATION

  LAURA

  I don’t need rescuing, but I do need Tuck on my side, especially since by some miracle, my bioware’s operational again.

  I jog up to the last row of train cars with an arrow nocked, cursing myself for being so stubborn. I’m not certain how restoring power to the John Muir affected the Conquistador, or why my bioware’s working again. Both bioware nodes powered on a few moments after the John Muir came online, though I haven’t had a moment’s breath to run a diagnostic check on either of them. On the positive side, I’ll be able to contact my family as soon as I’m safe. But active bioware means an active subjugator—if any of the Smithsons survived, I’ll be running from the clutches of one monster into the claws of another.

  ¡Estúpida! I tell myself. You need Tuck to vouch for you if the Smithsons try to blame you for the crash! My stomach bucks at the thought. The Smithsons could be behind all this, somehow; they’ve concocted a perfect trap for me, one that will wrest the most important find of the twenty-fifth century—even the John Muir and Yosemite National Park—out of my family’s hands.

  But even I have to admit, crashing the Conquistador under Pitch Dark’s banner is too extreme for them.

  A loud shriek shreds the silence behind me, the distance between us diluting the sound. My abdominal muscles cramp. I pivot, scanning the bulkhead area. The tram platforms are an ugly, utilitarian part of the ship. Black-and-gray metal braces the floor, the tracks racing into the tunnels’ maws on the far side of the station. Giant procrete buffer-stops stand at the end of each track, meant to halt runaway trains. Paint flakes off the tubes overhead like diseased skin. Lights wink at me from the walls and ceiling.

  Nothing moves. Keeping my bow pointed at the ground, I move sideways until I slide behind a large train car. Slipping inside, I find myself inside a midmodern-styled car with lots of passenger seating. Much of the maroon upholstery’s rotted away, leaving behind moldy mounds of stuffing. Rust maps the metal ceiling, drawing strange continents in the metal. I hold back a sneeze, pinching my nostrils tight, to keep the dust from swirling up my nose. The pressure throbs through my head.

  Outside, the tracks click as Tuck tests the trams. The whistle of depressurizing hydraulics and the screech of rusted metal echo through the cavernous station.

  The windows don’t open automagically, but I manage to figure out the analog latch. The glass hisses as I prop it open, dust flowing over the edge. The particles glitter in the station’s low lights. Taking cover behind the wide sill, I brace my bow against the window, waiting. From this vantage point, I’ve got a good view of the station’s bulkhead and control room.

  I’m exhausted, aching, and famished. My hands tremble, nerves shot with an overdose of adrenaline combined with a nearly empty stomach.
So much depends on the next few minutes.

  You can do this, Laura, I hear my mother’s words echo in my heart. You’re a Cruz.

  Something moves on the station’s threshold. A lone mourner crawls into view, backlit by the tunnel’s light. Long spikes jut off his back. He sniffs the floor, then arches and howls like all the lonely things in the world.

  In seconds, he’s overtaken by a mob that moves like a plague of maggots. Their calls thump through the tunnel, bouncing off the sides of trams and boxing my ears. These pitches are different from the shrieks I heard before—these are rounder, fuller in their harmonic range. Rather than a targeted blow, these cries spread out, filling the entire station with wave after wave of pummeling sound.

  They’re looking for us. If I step out into that maelstrom, every one of those monsters will see me. I sink deeper into my cloak. With my shoulder pressed to the train car’s wall, I wait, watching the station.

  In the control room, Tuck drops out of sight as a mourner crawls across the room’s large windows, gecko-like. A mass of writhing, shrieking white bodies froths between us. Some convulse so much—their heads shaking like old bobbleheads—they wheel about drunkenly, banging their heads on the train rails and stumbling off the platform ledges.

  A roar shakes the tram station, the sound powerful enough to make my train car shudder, even at a distance. In the control room, Tuck reaches up and hits a few keys. The tram cars stowed on the first and third tracks clank. The first tram rolls forward. Half the mourners leap after it, some landing too close and getting hit by the tram and crushed. Others lope alongside as it disappears into the tunnel.

  On a second roar, the griefer stalks through the station bulkhead, moving with murderous grace. My mind fills in the blanks left by the darkness: The towering physique. The mandibles. The spikes along the spine and shoulders.

  The tentacles.

  Still shrouded in the bulkhead’s shadows, the griefer pauses to scent the air. Panic flares in my fingertips as it starts toward the control room. I scan the station, looking for something—anything—to buy Tuck a few extra seconds. Bracing my knee on an old seat, I take aim at one of the big, egg-shaped chandeliers hanging over the platform closest to the station, then fire.

  My arrow slams into the light fixture. Sparks explode like fireworks. Glass glitters down to the ground, and the mourners wheel toward the sound as I shoot out a second light, then a third.

  Tuck launches the tram off the third track while the griefer turns toward the shattered, sparking lights. The monster leaps off the platform, eyes narrowed, following the loose tram down the tracks.

  That’s it, I say, my stomach in such knots I think I’m going to vomit. That’s right. You just follow that tram right down into the tunnel, you big, stupid chupacabra.…

  As the griefer goes to grab the tram’s side ladder, my bioware pings. The bright ding! of a new notification resounds like cannon fire in the train station.

  The griefer halts on the tracks. He releases the tram ladder, turning his head toward my position. Not his body, just the head. It turns too far for a human head, bones shifting and adjusting in the spine to allow the creature to look almost 180 degrees behind him. Straight at the train car I’m hiding in.

  For a horrible moment, I feel stripped naked, as if the train’s metal walls have withered away.

  A ping message screen inflates from my wrist: Hi, Laura, the Noh Mask hacker writes. So glad to see you survived the crash. This mission would’ve been dull without you.

  Stomach plummeting, I scramble through my ioScreen’s menus, trying to turn the sound for my notifications off. Another ping! echoes through the station, a message appearing in the upper right-hand corner of my screen: You’ll be glad to know I just figured out how to link the crew’s bioware to the John Muir’s systems. I’m uploading all your missed pings to your system now. Enjoy!

  He adds a smiley face to the end of the message. My heart feels like it’s been shoved off the top of a building, and now plunges through my chest.

  Ping! from Mami: Where are you, m’ija?! Gracias a dios, you’re alive! Are you okay?

  Ping! from Dad: Laura, where are you?

  Ping! from Faye: Omigod are you okay? Laura! What’s happened to you?

  Ping! from Alex: Chiquita, for real, everyone can see you’re online. Where are you?

  Ping! from my brother Gael: Flaca, you’d better answer us …

  Pings! from the tías.

  Pings! from my friends.

  Ping!

  Ping!

  Ping!

  Shut up, shut up, shut up! I beg my bioware, but my hands shake so much, I can’t shut the notification off. As my wrist shakes, my ioScreen bobs and weaves, and I resort to punching it with a thumb until the pinging stops.

  The silence settles around me.

  A chill threads my spine as the mourners outside begin to keen, long and low. The sound crawls into the train and rattles around. At that moment, all the mourners’ heads lift together in a strange, awful synchronicity, turning to look at my hiding place.

  The griefer starts for my train, punting the other mourners out of his way. He stomps on their necks, snapping the bones or breaking rib cages. All the creatures around him growl and arch, ready to scream.

  I drop to one knee as the screeching hits the train’s flank, blowing out the train’s windows and rocking it on its rails. I cover my head with my hands as glass glitters around me. A mourner bursts through the train car at the back, its neck sac swelling. I roll on my back and skewer its throat with an arrow. My chest constricts with fear.

  Pushing to my feet, I scramble through the train cars, looking for somewhere, anywhere, to hide on this train. The cars are empty, with no restrooms, no trapdoors, and no places to hide.

  As the mourners pile into the train, it breaks open at a sagging accordion connector. The doors between two cars yawn wide open. I leap from one car to the next, crossing the breach and landing with a clunk. The toes of my right foot jam into a fallen seat. I hear the crack of bone with my body, not my ears. Pain stabs from my soles to the crown of my head, electrifying my bones. I clap a hand over my mouth to muffle any noise, launching myself forward. My biggest toe bones feel like they’re grinding together with each step. Hot tears leak from my eyes.

  I stumble into the last car, bracing myself against one of the seats. It looks utilitarian, with corrugated metal floors and gear racks running over the tops of the seats. I’m boxed in. Mourners spill onto train cars behind me, coming through the windows. Chasing me. Out on the tracks, the monsters seethe like maggots on a corpse, their flesh yellowed and thin. They will overtake this train car in seconds.

  With nowhere to run, I hoist myself up onto one of the gear racks and hunker down among giant, overstuffed duffel bags, cracked crates spilling dusty electrical equipment, and rolls of insulation. Wrapping myself up in my cloak, I press as much of my body behind a massive, dusty roll of insulation as I can and squeeze my eyes closed.

  The griefer roars. The train shudders and keens on its rails. I don’t move, taking slow, shallow breaths, just enough air to keep myself conscious, but not enough to make any sound. The monster pounds its body against the car. Once, twice, three times. Violent fast. As if trying to frighten me from my hiding place. Metal screeches as one of the cars behind me crashes to the ground.

  I wonder if the monsters can hear the bang and pound of my heart. Tuck never mentioned anything about that, but my heart slams so hard in my ears, it sounds like a drum.

  With a snort, the griefer steps onto the train at least one car back. The aged floors groan, shuddering under his weight. While I can’t see the monster from my hiding spot, his footsteps make the train cars quake. Mourners swarm my car, drawing closer as they tumble through the windows and clamber up on the luggage rack. My gorge rises, fear threatening to seal my airway off. They’re going to find me, I think, drawing my arms so tight to my chest, my muscles ache. They’re going to kill me.

  Wh
en the griefer roars for real, it’s the sound of a lion in a barbed-wire collar remixed with a hawk’s sharp cry, layered over a track of shattering glass. The rack on the other side of the train shifts, squeals, and snaps off the wall.

  The roar seems to last forever, denting metal, ripping the seats apart. The air pressure spikes. I duck my head into my arms, pressing my knees into my torso, and shake.

  Nothing moves in the silence that follows. All I hear are the clicking sounds of wheels on tracks, and a big, depressurizing sigh. Like a train coming into the station. I strain for another sound, but all that’s left is a high whine, like I have flies trapped inside my head.

  When I peek out from under my cloak, the inside of the tram is splattered with mourner gore.

  “Laura!” Tuck’s shout rips through the tunnel space. The griefer growls, glass crackling underfoot. He sounds like he’s at least one train car back still. “That bastard’s shriek takes a minute to recharge! Get out!”

  No-no-no-no, my gut says. Don’t reveal yourself. He might not find you—

  “Laura! Now or never!” Tuck shouts again. He sounds panicked, and must be, if he’s dared to give away his position to help me.

  He just risked himself for you.

  You can do this, Laura.

  Go!

  Gritting my teeth, I throw back my cape and drop into the train’s aisle, wincing at the pain in my foot. I look up. The griefer looms half a car down, its tentacles writhing. Huge claws extend from the creature’s hands and wrists in a medieval, macelike weapon. Glass, twisted metal, fractured bone, and other nasty-looking detritus litters the car’s floor. The dismembered limbs and viscera of dead mourners covers everything. A long strand of intestines decorates the tops of the seats. A broken leg hangs through one of the windows.

  I see these things through the filter of panic. As a series of snapshots stretched out over high-pressure heartbeats.

  It’s a nightmare.

  The griefer leaps toward me. I don’t even think. I lunge across the aisle and vault through the window. A piece of sharp glass still embedded in the frames claws into my shoulder. Thanks to adrenaline, I hardly feel the pain. Tumbling down to the ground below, I land on my hip in a bed of glass.