Moon Dust (Alien Disaster Trilogy, Book 2)

by Rob May

  COLD STORAGE

  ‘Oh … okay,’ he said. ‘That sort of makes sense.’

  At the giant bulkhead door that formed the entrance to Cold Storage 3, they found Liam and Jason. The pair of them were kitted out in ski jackets, waders, hats and gloves. They both carried an arsenal of tools and wrenches. Liam had a rifle strapped to his back.

  ‘Oh, hey, you guys,’ he said cautiously. ‘What are you doing down here? Are you lost?’

  Gem turned the question on the boys: ‘What are you two doing down here? Checking up on the prisoners?’

  ‘What? No,’ Jason said. ‘Just routine maintenance. You should go, it’s dangerous down here, er, without the proper equipment.’

  Liam and her brother were doing the Captain’s dirty work, Kat had no doubt. She tried to make sense of their get-up. Wrenches and waders? ‘Have we sprung a leak?’ she asked them.

  ‘It’s just the bilges,’ Liam said. ‘Steam, condensation, rain—it all finds its way to the lowest part of the—’

  He was cut of mid-sentence by a squealing, grinding sound. Brandon was using the bionoids to swarm around the wheel of the bulkhead door and try and turn it. But just like back at the dock at Dieppe, the physical effectiveness of the bionoids was limited, and Brandon soon sank to his knees, out of breath.

  Gem stepped up and finished the job. She spun the wheel and pulled the door. A river of freezing cold water slopped out over the lower lip of the bulkhead and soaked them all up to the knees, before draining away.

  ‘Gem, you don’t want to go in there!’ Jason warned, but it was too late. Gem grabbed a coat from a row of pegs outside the door, then stepped into the flooded freezer.

  Jason and Liam followed on her heels. ‘We have to find where this water’s coming from and fix it fast,’ Liam said. ‘We’re not supposed to work in here for more than thirty minutes at a time. Gem, stay close to us!’

  Brandon took another couple of coats and threw one to Kat. It was padded with insulation and had a fur-lined hood. ‘The temperature in there could be lower than minus ten degrees,’ Brandon told her. ‘If they threw that guy Steve in there this morning, he might still be alive, or he might have died of hypothermia … depending on how smart he is!’

  They stepped into the freezer after the others. It was shiveringly cold, and ice crystals glittered under the fluorescent strip lighting. The water was ankle-deep everywhere, but there were raised gantries they could walk on safely. ‘I guessed that you wouldn’t be able to sense any life in here,’ Kat said to Brandon, as they passed by rows of frozen animal carcasses hanging from S-shaped hooks.

  ‘You were half-right,’ he said. ‘Life signs will slow right down in here, but damn it—I just didn’t think to look! Why on earth would the Captain be throwing people into the freezer?’

  In the next chamber they got their answer. Steve, the only survivor of the wreck of the Amphitrite, was lying on his back, covered in blankets of plastic sheeting. Gem kicked at his lifeless body. ‘Well, he had the right idea, layering up,’ she said. ‘But his bum seems to have frozen to the cold metal floor, poor bloke.’

  Kat stared at the sorry sight: a short, middle-aged man with frosted-over glasses and ice in his hair. ‘Out of the frying pan and into the freezer,’ she remarked. ‘Well at least we know now that he wasn’t infected by the thanamorphs.’

  ‘How do you figure that?’ Jason asked.

  ‘Because,’ she said, pointing to the dark entrance the next chamber of the freezer, ‘if he was, he’d still be walking … like those guys!’

  A big crowd of people were shuffling out of the shadows. Their skin, where it was exposed by their ripped clothes, was an icy, pale blue. Their expressions were vacant, their heads lolling at lazy angles. Some of them were moaning; the man in front was staggering with his arms outstretched.

  Kat noticed that he was wearing a gold-buttoned jacket and a peaked cap. The original captain and all the crew and passengers! They had all been attacked and bitten when the ship last docked … and they had been brought back on board!

  14—ALBATROSS

  Kat, Brandon and Gem all backed away from the oncoming rabble of zombified passengers. They found refuge on a raised gangway, behind a steel barrier. Only Jason and Liam didn’t seem bothered. They splashed about in the flooded lower levels of the freezer, seemingly oblivious to the encroaching horde.

  ‘Jase!’ Kat called, the cold making her voice rasp.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Liam said. ‘They’re harmless. The cold keeps them docile. Look, they like to play!’ And with that he went up to the ex-captain and high-fived the zombie on its outstretched palm. ‘We put them all down here immediately after they got bit. So far they haven’t changed into monsters yet, so hopefully we can get them medical attention when we get to the rendezvous point.’

  Kat was doubtful. She remembered the sad sight of the shambling cats walking on their hind legs in Royale; the vacant, silent sheep in the French fields; the awkward, unkempt horses in Dieppe; they had all seemed lifeless—just fleshy hosts for the aliens growing inside them.

  She looked at Brandon, and he shook his head in reply to the unspoken question. ‘They’re dead,’ he confirmed. ‘I can’t sense any life-signs. We can’t save them. They’re just walking cocoons for the thanamorphs now.’

  Gem had overheard, and before they could stop her she had gone down to the edge of the water. ‘Liam,’ she snapped. ‘Come here.’

  Liam and Jason were busy sloshing around the floor of the freezer looking for whatever was leaking. The zombies just wandered around at random. Liam waded over to Gem when he heard her request. ‘Everything alright?’ he asked.

  In a split-second movement, Gem grabbed Liam by the wrist, twisting his arm and forcing him to drop his wrench into the water. As he doubled over in surprise, Gem slipped the rifle off his shoulder, spun it in her hands and put the stock against her shoulder and her finger on the trigger. Liam looked up to find himself staring into the barrel.

  ‘What the—’ he began.

  ‘Just back off, Liam,’ Gem ordered. After he had walked far enough away, Gem relaxed her grip on the rifle, She held it at arm’s length for a moment, a look of distaste on her face, then lobbed the weapon at Kat.

  Kat caught it. She knew that, since the accident where Kat had got shot, Gem had vowed never to fire a gun ever again. Kat also guessed what Gem expected her to do, so she aimed the gun at the crowd of zombies.

  ‘Don’t!’ Liam warned. ‘The Captain gave orders for them not to be harmed!’

  ‘The Captain thinks they can be saved,’ Gem said, ‘They can’t! Shoot them, Kat.’

  Kat turned to Brandon. ‘It’s the right thing to do,’ she assured him. ‘The thanamorphs are at their weakest right now. They’re probably not even conscious. It’s a humane way to … cull them, right?’

  Brandon nodded. That was enough for Kat—most of the gang agreed it had to be done—so she fired.

  The nearest zombie’s head exploded like a watermelon. The noise of the shot echoed around the white-tiled walls of the freezer. The rest of the zombies didn’t even react; they just kept on shuffling randomly about.

  ‘Oh boy,’ Liam groaned. ‘The Captain is going to freak over this.’

  ‘Don’t worry about what he thinks,’ Jason said, putting a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘You’re with us now. You’re gonna make sure that he doesn’t come down here to look, and we’ll be off this ship before he notices. Okay?’

  Liam nodded glumly. Jason came over to help Kat with her new weapon. It was a wooden-stocked, bolt-action sporting rifle. He quickly showed her how to slide the bolt to check the magazine. There were only two cartridges left. And there were six more zombies.

  ‘Anyone else got a gun?’ Kat asked.

  Jason hefted his heavy wrench. ‘Nope, but we can always just bash their brains in instead!’

  Ugh! Kat looked to Gem for her reaction, but the older girl’s face was grim. ‘We have to do it, Kat,’ she said. ‘
No matter how messy it gets, we can’t leave these things creeping around down here.’

  Gem picked up a length of metal piping and skirted the walkways until she was within striking distance of a zombie, but she looked hesitant. Kat turned to Brandon for a second opinion; his eyes were closed, as if he was seeing through the bionoids. ‘What you doing?’ Kat asked.

  ‘Looking for where this water is coming from. I’m sending the bionoids out around the freezer … this place is huge, it goes right back—oh no!’

  Kat dispatched another ex-passenger with the rifle. Her fingers were numb with cold on the trigger. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘There are more of them,’ Brandon said. ‘Liam,’ he called, without opening his eyes. ‘How many people did you lock down here?’

  The young engineer shrugged. ‘About a hundred?’

  Gem paused on the brink of smashing a zombie’s skull in with a length of piping. ‘A hundred?!’ she exclaimed. She lowered the pipe. ‘I can’t do this!’

  A handful of new zombies were entering the chamber. They looked spaced-out, but perhaps somewhere in their nascent alien brains they had sensed the noise. ‘Come on,’ Kat said. ‘Let’s get out of here and leave this for now!’

  ‘We need to find the leak first,’ Liam said. ‘Repairs are my responsibility. And if you don’t want the Captain coming down here while we put down these guys, then we’d better fix it before it gets any worse—’

  A horrible tearing sound echoed through the freezer. With a gloopy splosh, a new wave of ice-cold water sloshed into the chamber, raising the water-level to Jason and Liam’s knees, and slopping over the raised areas, soaking Kat’s boots.

  Brandon’s eyes flicked open. ‘The hull is breached,’ he announced. ‘In several places! The alien whale must have ripped the keel open.’

  Kat tried to process this new information ‘Of course! That’s why it didn’t destroy the ship! It must have sensed the other thanamorphs growing on board and tried to turn away at the last minute! So … if the freezer floods, will they all drown? Or will they be able to swim away out to sea?’

  Liam was shaking his head. ‘That’s not our biggest concern,’ he said. ‘If lots of compartments flood … when they flood, we’re going to lose buoyancy …’

  Kat figured what that meant almost immediately. The freezer suddenly felt a lot, lot colder.

  ———

  The service elevator rose slowly. It was cramped with the five of them inside. Puddles formed at their feet, and Kat had discovered that Doc Martens, despite being comfy and hard-wearing, were not one-hundred-percent waterproof. She wriggled her toes to keep the chill at bay.

  ‘How long have we got?’ Jason asked Liam.

  ‘Dunno, mate,’ Liam said. ‘Two days? Maybe less?’

  ‘No point in waiting around,’ Gem decided. ‘We gather our things, and as many supplies as we can pinch, and then we take one of the lifeboats. Tonight!’

  Kat’s heart sank. She gripped Brandon’s hand tight. ‘I don’t know what’s worse,’ she said to him. ‘Taking to sea in a lifeboat, or staying on a sinking ship full of thanamorphs.’

  Brandon tried to give her an encouraging smile, but then his brow furrowed. ‘There are people waiting for us at the top of the lift,’ he said.

  Kat hit the button to take them back down, but it made no difference; the lift kept moving upwards. There was no escape; the doors opened and they were confronted by the Captain and a squad of his guards: eight mean-looking young men armed with a variety of rifles and automatic weaponry. One of them even held a crossbow.

  Saoirse was with them: the Captain held her in a choke-hold, a pistol pressed against her temple. His towering bulk almost smothered her small frame.

  Kat and the others stepped out of the elevator. She resisted the temptation to raise her arms in surrender. They were in the grand lobby, where glass lifts rose on either side of the statue of Proteus. After the gloomy service corridors, this was certainly a glamorous location for an armed showdown.

  ‘So … where have you kids been playing?’ the Captain growled. ‘The rota shows that that three of you should be out swabbing the decks right now.’

  ‘They, um, needed new hi-vis jackets,’ Liam explained. ‘We were down in stores—’

  ‘Oh, give it a rest, Liam,’ the Captain barked. ‘We have CCTV everywhere … including in the freezer. So what’s your story now? That you decided to do some target practice down in cold storage, and then this little squirt with the bog-brush hair’—he glared at Kat—‘accidentally murdered some of our passengers?’

  Kat was incensed, and not just at being likened to a toilet-cleaning utensil. ‘I didn’t murder them,’ she shouted back at the Captain. ‘They were already dead. It’s just aliens growing inside them that’s making them walk about!’

  The Captain grunted. ‘Forgive me if I don’t take the opinion of a child over the facts given to me by a qualified physician. Doctor Chow assured me that with treatment they can be saved. Care of the crew is her speciality.’

  Saoirse tried to speak up ‘Doctor Chow is a vet!’ she blurted out, but the Captain wasn’t listening. He was looking up at the glass ceiling of the lobby, where the dust swirled thick and heavy beyond.

  ‘My speciality is discipline and punishment,’ he said. ‘Let’s all go outside!’

  ———

  Out on deck it was impossible to see further than a metre in any direction. Kat and her friends stumbled blindly forward, pushed along by the gun barrels of the guards following them. ‘Shoot them in the back if they try to run!’ the Captain called cheerfully from somewhere behind.

  The guards all had goggles on. Kat had to keep her head down and eyes squinted to keep the dust out. ‘Can you pull any tricks?’ she asked Brandon as they huddled together. ‘With the bionoids, I mean?’

  ‘I’ll try and think of something,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t want to hurt anyone though, and it’s too dangerous to pull a trick when they’re all waving guns around. If only I could get into their minds instead! I’m sure it’s possible, Kat—our thoughts are only biology after all!—but it’s hard.’

  ‘Let’s just see what the Captain’s got planned,’ Gem said. ‘I’m sure he didn’t bring us out here just to shoot us.’

  It turned out that what the Captain had planned was worse than that. Much worse. The side of the ship materialised out of the dust, and Kat gasped: a stretch of railing had been removed and a plank had been fastened to the deck, extending a couple of metres out over the sea.

  The Captain was roaring with laughter. He shoved Saoirse forward to join the others at the edge. ‘Maybe the rest of you will fall into line a little easier if you get to see what happens to those who cause trouble. So, come on, Shorty!’ he said, looking at Kat. ‘Take a walk!’

  Walk the plank?! Was he serious? Kat peeked over the edge. There was nothing to see except swirling dust. She could barely see the end of the plank itself. She glanced at her friends. They were all looking shell-shocked. All except Brandon, whose eyes were closed in concentration.

  Well, whatever he was planning, it had better be good. Kat decided that all she could do was try and give him as much time as he needed. Slowly and carefully, she went down on her hands and knees and crawled onto the plank.

  ‘Go on!’ the Captain urged. ‘All the way to the end!’

  The only small mercy was that Kat had no view of the drop below her. As she neared the end of the plank and looked back, she could hardly see the others watching from the deck. She turned around like a crab rotating on the spot. The dust was rough against her skin, and it hurt to blink; and the sea air was almost as cold as the freezer. ‘Alright, very funny!’ she shouted back at the ship. ‘I’m sorry I shot your zombie friends, okay?’

  ‘Stand up!’ the Captain called back. The guards laughed. Kat could hear Gem and Jason remonstrating with her tormentors, but their words were lost in the dust.

  Kat stood up, very carefully, stretching out her arms
for balance. She had never felt so scared or alone.

  ‘Good girl!’ the Captain said. ‘Now jump!’

  Jump?! He really did want rid of her! Kat shook her head in despair. So this was what the world had come to? Civilisation and justice had been knocked back several hundred years. No, it was worse that that: civilisation had been completely destroyed, just like the Moon!

  Then she heard a voice in her ear. Brandon’s voice, as if he was standing right next to her: Jump, Kat! It’s okay!

  Was she going mad and hearing things now? ‘What?’ she sobbed.

  Then the voice came again. I did it Kat! I read his mind! And now I’m talking in yours!

  Kat framed her response in her own head: Well that’s just freaking great, Bran, but it doesn’t really help me now!

  It’s okay, Brandon insisted. And then he told her what he had gleaned from the Captain’s mind.

  Kat laughed out loud. Well, now she knew exactly how to turn the tables on the Captain. To show him she wasn’t scared, she bounced up and down on the plank and did a backwards somersault as she sprung off into the dust.

  Less than a second later she splashed into the cold water of the ship’s outdoor swimming pool. It had all been a big practical joke: the Captain had rigged up the side of the pool to look like the side of the ship, and in the thick dust it had been impossible to tell the difference. The pool was only half-full, so Kat had to swim to a ladder to get out. When she made it back to the others, most of the Captain’s guards were clapping and laughing. Brandon had told most of the others about the prank, and it was only Liam who was staring at her in disbelief. Then even he twigged and cracked a smile.

  The Captain was laughing too, and the tension between the two groups was dissolving fast. Kat could easily have gone up to the big man and punched him in the privates for such a cruel joke, although if she did, she wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he really did throw her over the side. ‘I’ll get you back later!’ she promised him, only half in jest.