by James Stubbs
I won’t pretend to myself to know anything about the science behind it but it is in some curious way a vital pat of a hyper drive engine. Microwave energy. It’s deadly and poisonous in most forms and it filled the corridor ahead. And that was the only way to go to get to the escape pods. Fate was cruel. A cruel and bitter temptress that had hand fed us this far only to run us clean into a brick wall. No way out. Lucy must have seen through my anger, frustration and hopelessness.
‘What is it?’ She places a single hand on my shoulder to look at the same screen. But she mustn’t have understood. She casts me another pleading look. I point to the glyph on the screen and I can almost see her heart sink. The symbol consisted of three lines in a wave pattern across a red triangle.
‘There must have been an accident. One of the hyper drive engines on one of the escape pods must have blown. This room is shielded. The corridor beyond isn’t.’ I ran my finger along a map upon the screen. It flashes red in the areas that it was unsafe to go to.
‘The chamber that holds the escape pods is flooded with it too. So I’m assuming the shut off valve is on the other side of the airlock.’ I sigh but only once. I already know what I need to do. There really is no other way. No turning back and no point regretting it. I know who I have to be now.
I watched my buddies get beaten and did nothing. I watched the guards and the company beat guys to death and did nothing. I was always a coward. But not today.
‘What do we do?’ She was deflated and beaten. This was going to hurt. Me and her too.
‘Lucy.’ I stood to face her, bravely kissed her across the lips, and ran my hands over her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry.’ I raise a balled fist and slam it as hard as I can into her cheekbone. I hear the crunch, the sickening clash of sinew upon sinew, and caught her before her limp body slammed off the floor.
No way would she have let me go. And to be honest, as honest as I might as well be at the end, I don’t care for an argument. I promised to save her. Time to do it.
I press the button that opens the door to the air lock and look back to see Lucy gradually come to. Without a shred of anger about her face she runs to the door, full of tears, and starts banging at the console controls. I know they won’t work. Not while I’m in here. She gives up and looks longings into my eyes as the door behind me finally opens. Exposing me to the deadly microwave energy beyond.
‘Don’t do this!’ I can just make out her tearful plea over my own heartbeat. I mime the words “I can save you” back to her but this upsets her more. She bangs harder and harder, becoming more and more upset each time, against the glass of the door.
‘You can’t die for me!’ I can just a say make her out as I turn to face my own fate head on. ‘It should have been me.’ She says it over and over again but I have to ignore her. I can’t face her at all. Unless I get upset too and I don’t want her to see that. I want her to remember me as a hero. And I have to be glad that I’m getting the chance to be one right here at the end.
Nothing prepared me for what hit me. I knew walking into a microwave was going to hurt but I had no idea how much. I can feel my blood start to warm in my cheeks and around my face. In my head too. There really is no time to waste here. I start to run. Uneasy at first given the agony my back is already in, but it slowly evolves into a mindless stagger. Until the power of the microwave energy starts to sap my strength and power. What was left of it at least.
After a few steps my eyes begin the blur and I can barely see anything at all. My visions reddens and I can almost feel the pulse of my blood gush through the arteries that line the iris of my eye. Before I am out of sight of the door, and Lucy who I left behind, I fall to my knees coughing unstoppably. Blood starts pulsating out of my mouth and my chest tightens with each spasm.
I have to keep going. Dig as deep as I can, I grind my heels in and push with everything I have left against them. I lift my right arm first, punch it into the floor ahead of me, and scrape my knuckles along the polished surface for traction. And I drag my boiling body ever slowly to the opening not more than a hundred yards ahead of me.
I want to stop. Everything in my mind is screaming to me to stop. To give in to death and let this place finally have it’s way with me. But I can’t. I made a promise to save Lucy and I’m going to make sure I do it. That feeling drives me. Another fist slammed into the floor and more scraping from my feet powers me through the doorway and into full view of the escape pods.
They stand tall at three storey’s high. Sleek, highly polished with an earthy design. Tantalizing yet for me at least completely unattainable. My eyes burn red and I need to find a way to shut off whatever part of whatever of the three ships had been damaged.
I run my limp hand against the doorway and use whatever corner I can grip against to pull myself to my feet one last time. I stand with all the will I have left and stumble on into the expansive room beyond. Looking up I can see the launch chamber and can only hope they aren’t blocked. If they are, they’re her problem, because I’ll be dead before I have any chance to fix it.
The ship to the left, and the one to the far right, look intact and perfectly preserved. It has to be the one in the middle. The one with a door shaped and sized panel missing from the mid section must have been causing the problems. It’s surrounded by a metal walkway. The same sort that spiraled up the main engine at the other side of the ship.
I need to climb it and find a way to close the panel. A stray thought suggested to me that someone must have been working on it, perhaps even trying to escape themselves, as the Kraken slammed into the deadly world at our feet. But it ultimately doesn’t matter.
It’s what it is to me right now. Momentum pushes me on but my feet can’t keep up with my urgency and I fall to the floor again. Right in front of the cold stairs. I reach out with my right hand and wrap it around part of the hollow metal frame before pulling as hard as I can. Even though I can hear my own failing heartbeat, and that sound consumes all around me, I can make out the creaking sound of the metal bowing under my weight.
I push on, one step at a time, and gradually ascend the weak and swaying walkway. I climb, breathing hard and audibly through closing lungs, up the side of the walkway and force myself to stand. Though limp and resting entirely against the stairway. I can see through my bloodshot eyes a large red button. It is cased in a plastic housing that I must flip open in order to even think of pressing the button. Around it is painted a mesh pattern of black, yellow and red. It lines one side of the sliding panel and I am out of energy to assume it is anything but the solution to the problem at hand. I, gasping for breath through my closing and bleeding throat, slam my closed fist against the button.
That’s all I have. I slump lifeless over the walkway and fall to the deck. I can just about hear my bones crunch for one last time before passing out. As my eyes close into darkness, I just about see in the distance, the sliding panel of the escape ship slide back to closed. And breathe just a shade easier in the calm knowledge that I did it. That I brought it together right here at the end.
Chapter 23
To The Bitter End
I did it. I saved her. I can die in peace now and always be safe in the eternal knowledge that my life meant something. In that I gave it for someone else. But I wasn’t dead. Not just yet.
I’m awoken from my deathly slumber by Lucy’s boots pounding along the floor beside me. She wastes no time in slumping to the floor and holding what must have seemed to her to be my limp and lifeless body in her arms. She lifts my torso clean off the floor and holds me tight as she cries bitter and desperate tears over my shoulder.
‘I did it.’ I whisper when I finally find the strength to say anything at all. ‘I ended it.’ I mumble behind a blood clot lodged in my throat. ‘I saved you.’ It just makes her cry harder. It makes her worse and I don’t know why. She is wailing beyond consoling so I just shut my eyes again and enjoy the rest against her shoulder.
‘I was supposed to save you.’ She wails once bu
t finally stops crying. She slides my body back to the floor and lays down beside me. It’s cold. Cold like the world I had fought through. Maybe I would get to see Kolt again when this was over. When I finally die.
‘I should have told you.’ She whispers sweetly in my ear and takes hold of my hand. I have nothing but time to listen to her. There’s nothing more I can do. I’m okay to die. I’m almost, just almost, looking forward to it. What a way to go? I got to be a hero. But it’s meaningless. In the end.
‘I should have told you about my nightmare.’ She takes hold of my hand and clasps it firmly. ‘When I said imagine swapping the memory of a day with the memory of a nightmare?’ My tired and battered heart flutters one last time. Beating out it’s last beats as a drum solo to the horror I knew she was about to tell me.
But I knew it. Another truth I had hidden away from my own mind. One she just had to confirm. That she was just like Kolt. That she was dead and had been for some time. Since before I met her in that desolate snowfield. I nod my head but shed my last tear with the motion.
‘I knew as soon as that flying dinosaur dragged at me, what was real and what was not.’ I can’t speak. For the pain, for the encroaching death and for the deep aching sadness inside of me. I’d give anything to change it. I’d give anything to see her climb into one of those ships and fly away. I’d kill again, I’d die again, to see her safe. But I should have known. I did know. I just didn’t want to.
‘When I broke off from my landing party, I was attacked,’ she sobs into her final thought. ‘…and eaten.’ She cries softly into my hair.
‘I… I tried so hard to save you.’ I complain to her softly. And I’d do it again. Dead or alive.
‘But now I’m just a ghost. Just like your friend. Forced to stay here and relive my death again and again, just like everyone else who dies here.’ I cry with her. Stroked her copper red hair and comforted her the best I could.
This is better. Death is better. In life I was alone, scared and trodden on by everyone. In death, in the here and now, I’m a hero. I got the girl. That’s how it’s supposed to be isn’t it? The hero gets the girl right at the end.
But this is better. Because now I get to be with her forever. And she with me. It doesn’t matter that we died. It doesn’t matter that this cruel world will reanimate us again and again to relive those deaths. Because at least we get to do it together, forever.
This is better. I get to see Kolt again. As soon as I make it there. I’ll find him. I’m glad I didn’t stay in the mine. I’m glad and I’m happy that I came here. I got to see the lines between life and death blur. I got to see there was a happy ending waiting for me, just on the wrong side of life. And I have no regrets. This is my happy ending.
I turn to kiss her. To say it’s okay, that I’m not mad. I knew she blamed herself for letting me “save” her and dying myself instead. And that I didn’t have to die as well as her. But I’m okay with it. Like Kolt was. Lost but in no way seeking rescue. But the Lucy I knew was gone. Replaced with a skeletal frame of tooth splintered bones. I smile. Even though it hurts me to see her as she was. Dead like me. Because this is better. I close my eyes. And wait to see them again.
I don’t even remember hitting the ground. I remember the hyper drive cutting out and I remember the jet engines failing as I tried to land this old crate. But I don’t remember the damn thing hitting the surface of the planet. I suppose that’s what I get for stealing it in the first place. But I just couldn’t work for those jerks for another second.
Thanks from the Author. If you enjoyed reading my book, please take the time to submit a small review at https://www.smashwords.com. Also, if you enjoyed this title, please also see my other titles: “Reggie”, a post apocalyptical tale set around the zombie outbreak, and “The First Zombie”, a short story about the first zombie who had not noticed his own death. Both available for free download at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/420373 and https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/452802.
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