by T. S. Smith
To Holland, the corridors kept stretching on for miles and miles and the stench that filled the halls was wretched. It overwhelmed all of his senses. Dettman groaned, “What is that?”
“Rotten eggs,” Holland said. “It smells like rotten eggs, a lot of ‘em, coming from up ahead. Up near Jax.” Holland looked at Dettman who dry-heaved.
“I can’t get this shit out of my suit,” Dettman said as he fingered with the release switch. “This smell is DIS-GUS-TING.”
“Just keep it moving, it doesn’t smell so different from your pooch back at home,” Holland said with a grunt but he smelled it too and the stench became worse as they walked on down the corridor. The hallways were stretching and the awful stench was growing horrible. The sounds of their boots rang out against the metal and echoed through his thoughts one after another. It was the never-ending, empty, soulless sound of a walk through loneliness. His loneliness. Holland fingered at the release of his own suit, imagining the sudden burst of relief that would come as fresh air flooded his lungs. Relief, sudden, beautiful relief from the putrid smell. Isn’t that what they all sought? The smell out here was rotten, the ship a dead husk filled with murder. Michaels was gone. How nice would it be to feel the air, how cool would it feel against the inner sides of his lungs? His fingers danced against the toggle. Yes, he would do it. He would find relief.
Suddenly, Boyer slammed him against the corridor wall, shaking him from his thoughts. “What do you think you’re doing, Roy? You want to get yourself killed in here? Get your fucking finger away from your suit’s control system. God dammit Dettman, you too, you fucking idiots.”
Boyer pushed off from Holland and shoved Dettman.
Holland looked down and saw how close he was to releasing his suit and he pulled his fingers back and brought his hands to his sides. What was he thinking? “But the smell? The smell, where is it?”
“What are you talking about?” Boyer said.
“The rotten eggs, the corridor smelled like rotten eggs. I don’t know, I mean I just had to get away from it. It smelled so bad.”
“Is everyone on this ship crazy? What eggs? Get it together,” Boyer said. “We need to get back to Jax and find Michaels or this whole thing’s gone to shit. We’ll pull back to the Poseidon if we have to. We need a Captain.” He looked at Holland who stared back at him with empty eyes.
***
These strange thoughts have invaded my mind, permeated my soul. They say that I can still change my life, I can still set its course and be a happy person, can’t I? Yes, I think so, I can help these people because there’s always a choice. But with every face I see on this ship that looks up to me with those eyes, I can’t help but to be reminded of my wife. I’ve had a lot of time to think about things over the course of the past years and my thoughts always bring me back to this. Even as I walk this ship with Yola, the faces haunt me. It was my fault and I can’t help but to feel responsibility for Mears. He often comes to me in my dreams and talks to me. He tells me things that he wants me to do. I think Yola would understand but I can’t tell her. She won’t trust me if I tell her. Mears says I need to have a drink to forget.
8
Dettman, Boyer, and Suk had gone ahead of them and were headed in the direction of Engine Room 4. How long had they been separated now? Hours? Days? Holland wasn’t quite sure as his very idea of time was so distorted within the walls of the Athena II that to him it felt as if the future and the past had come together at one singular point. It was like he could see all that had transpired on this horrible ship and all that would ever be. The images unfolded in his thoughts and fanned out across his mind like millions of layers of a slideshow and what he saw was death, over and over again. The emotion was raw and powerful and it unsettled him. He could see his own crew’s future, or lack thereof, and he could also see Mears. He watched his friend walk down the passageway of the ship, a tunnel through the great beast of deep space. Holland’s physical body was removed from the present and he saw with terror that the predator had consumed them all with its own voracious desire. They were all dead and Mears was about to die, it had been a trap. The arteries of the beast pulsed slowly in and out and living tissue sided the walls and were lit with a deep crimson red from the emergency lighting system. Blood poured forth down the corridor and the red river raged beneath his friend’s feet, he was going to drown! Holland closed his eyes and opened them. Mears turned around and stood before him as the blood surrounded his body and enveloped his being, he was dying. His friend was silent for a moment and his eyes bored into the darkness of Holland’s thoughts. This was your fault, Roy. You let me die. Holland was sweating hard and he heard the salty liquid from his forehead being sucked away by the conical tubes of his face shield to recover the moisture. What the hell is happening,? he wondered. Mears and the blood vanished and left Holland back in the hallway alone where the slideshow had returned Holland to the present. The vision was gone. He looked down the hall and saw that Yola was going through the rooms that sided the corridor searching for any evidence of the missing crew just as he had instructed her to do. She called to him to come closer.
There was another corpse.
Holland approached the body with caution, moving slowly and keeping his senses alert. The air was tinged with death and the mere glimpse of a second bloody corpse continued to alter his own certainty of the situation at hand. Maybe Jax was right, maybe there was something here, some kind of hostile life-form that had been hacking these men up. But he didn’t think so, his gut said otherwise. No, those monsters weren’t real, they were only visions, this was something else. He inched forward, moving closer to the body now, while Yolanda stayed behind. Holland was still sweating profusely.
He made out the details of the human remains glowing under the red light. This body was different from the last one, it wasn’t torn or fatally burnt, no, this man’s death was very clear. The back of his skull had been completely blown out by a gunshot wound, most likely from the small weapon still cradled in the corpse’s mouth. The body was slumped against the wall of the data room. Yolanda neared the body and struck it with the heal of her boot, feeling the flesh melt and break away underneath the pressure.
“Looks to me like this one didn’t enter the rigor mortis stage either just like Suk said. Out here in deep space there are no bacteria to decompose the bodies, the Athena II served as one giant clean room. This ship is cold as hell too, Roy, and as long as the air on this ship is under negative 38 degrees Celsius, these bodies won’t fall apart like they do on Earth.
There wasn’t much to see around the body except for the deep stain of dried-out human blood that had painted the floor and wall red. To the corpse’s left side was a pad of paper with a message written on it. The paper was bloodstained and the writing was nearly illegible but still possible to read:
They’re all dead, our crew is dead and you’ve wasted your time, I’m sorry you’re here. I’m the last one alive on the ship. I know what I need to do but I just can’t do it. I’VE TRIED! I took all the bodies and jettisoned them out, they’ll freeze, it’s better that way. I think I’ve got them all now and got them out. They’ll never make it back, now it’s my turn. To whomever you are that is reading this, anyone who the Confederacy has sent to investigate this, you’re infected and you’re already dead. There’s no going back, they made a huge mistake by sending you here. You can never go back. There is something out here and it’s alive, it can’t be killed or destroyed. It infected our thoughts, played with our fears, and consumed us. I can feel it eating away at my soul bit by bit. My nails and fingers have gone black and I’ve been thinking these terrible things. I’m sure you feel it already too if you’ve found me here, its evil nature. I’m sorry but you can never go back home. If you allow yourself to go back to the Confederacy, you’ll infect them all. You’ll need to take this gun and end it yourself. End it all. Oh God, I’m so scared. I’m so so scared. Please give me the strength to die honorably. Please. I’m sorry.
> Holland turned the pad over and saw the other side of the sheet was blank except for the blood. The room was encased in the red luminescence emitted by the emergency lighting system. He stayed quiet.
“What does it say?” Yola asked.
He handed her the pad.
You are now infected, the message had said. Infected, the word repeated itself over and over in Holland’s mind. Infected, they were infected with some sort of disease that would tear and eat away at their souls and would whittle their being down to a shredded carcass. Then they would kill. Yes, he had begun to feel it happening already, the way they had looked at him, the hatred edging forth through their venomous words. They would hurt each other. Wasn’t it happening already? Holland thought that it was. The contents of the log would need to be kept from the rest of the team. If the idea was exposed and the team learned to accept this idea as truth, their descent into madness would be unstoppable.
“We can’t tell the others about it.”
Yola nodded and threw the paper notebook to the side. “I’m sorry about Mears, Roy. And your wife,” Yola said.
How does she know about them? Who gave her the right to talk about them? Mears said. Kill her, Roy.
No.
The radios inside their snakeskins crackled to life, it was Jax.
“Found Michaels, he ain’t fucking movin’. You happy with yourself now boss?”
INTERVIEW: PART VI
/declassified
/operation/action/event_horizon
/interrogations
end
Interviewer: They never came back then? If you never saw them again, did you have radio communication with them? How did you know their ship went critical?
2nd Officer S. Roberts: I saw the ship go critical myself. The hole distorted communications on my end. I received bits and pieces of what they were saying, like I said it was patchy. But we were this close to the horizon, radio waves don’t act like waves anymore. They break up. There are gaps in what I could get from the Athena.
Interviewer: So what did you hear between the gaps?
2nd Officer S. Roberts: The mission was going as planned. They were searching the ship, performing evaluation and analysis and there was nothing out of the ordinary from what I could tell. Then the ship went critical and the Poseidon went soon after that. We were too close, I’m lucky I made it out when I did.
9
They were infected, all of them. Holland looked at Michaels on the floor and felt his corpse crawl deep into his soul. He looked at the world through the man’s eyes and what he witnessed was telling. In his heart, Holland knew that Michaels would only be the first in a line that would fall to the infection, and it was his responsibility to put a stop to it. How could he stop it without doing the unspeakable? He didn’t know, perhaps there was no way around it.
“Something killed Michaels,” Jax said. “I can’t even look at his body. Pull us off this thing, Roy. Get us back on the Poseidon and let’s get the hell out of here. This ship is fucked, it’s not worth it being out here any longer. They’re all dead. I don’t want to end up being in front of whatever did this to him.”
“Not something, someone. Someone killed him,” Dettman said, eyeing Jax who stood next to the body of Michaels. Dettman didn’t trust Jax either and hadn’t since they boarded the ship to begin their preparations, Holland knew it. Jax had been a problem and it was always the same with the military guys from the Confederacy, Boyer was the exception. Jax didn’t think things through, all he understood was action. When had the man ever stopped and looked at himself through his own insulting lense? Never. And when things didn’t go his way, well, he didn’t like that too much either.
“Where were you?” Dettman asked of Jax.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he responded.
“Just a question.”
“Fuck you, Dettman,” Jax said. Michaels body lay between the two men, the others had crowded around.
“Don’t worry, Dettman, he only fucks you if you’re a beautiful lady, which you kind of are,” Romavich said.
“We gotta keep moving,” Holland said trying to back the two off one another.
“What? For another twenty-two hours?” Boyer asked. “So another one of us can end up like Michaels here? No way, I’m hungry, I’m freezing my ass off out here, I’m fucking tired, and I’m getting out of this box. Jax is right.”
“Quit being such a bitch, Boyer,” Suk said. The ship groaned from deep within the bowels of its hull. “Something is messing with my head out here.”
You’re infected, Holland thought.
“I agree with him, let’s get off this thing,” Jax said. “It’s just like you science assholes to ignore the real problems and invest yourselves into these little boxes while guys like me and Boyer take the hits. Screw this. Look at Michael’s fucking body, Roy, it’s right there in front of you. Something is out here and we need to leave.” He pointed to Michaels whose body was on the floor.
“We’re all taking the hits, Jax,” Holland said. “We all trained to come out here, you and Boyer have your job, just like the rest of us, so let’s get back to it. Let’s get Michaels back on the Transport Vehicle and when we ship off, we’ll get him back on the Poseidon with us.”
***
These endless thoughts act like spears that stab into the depths of my being. Where have they come from? Have I always felt this way? I peer into the darkness and as long as I stand here I wonder and fear and doubt and dream. And all the while my thoughts return to my lovely wife and to my friend Mears who speaks to me through mortal dreams that I’ve dared never dream before. And their voices sing and comfort me out here in the darkness, a lullaby that tempts me to let go, to forgive myself for my life. Come to the edge they say, leave it behind they say, you let us down they tell me, and now Michaels is dead just like us they say. How could you let this happen? they ask. And for them I have no answer that would suffice. It’s because of me, they say, that they are all dead. It is because of me and because of him. When he is gone, they will live.
10
The sorrow crept upon the skin of his soul as the blood still ran deep within his veins. Roy Holland had wandered the ship searching for that which now escaped him, lamenting the loss of his friend. Michaels was dead. They had tried moving his body back to the storage room to load onto the transport ship but things had turned sour between the crew. They had fought and eventually had separated. It was true and he knew it, they were infected. Acknowledging that fact was hard and he knew what he had to do. But how could he do it? The note spoke to him through Mears. He knew it was the truth.
Just finish it, Roy, Mears said. It will be easier that way. You've already killed Michaels and now it's time for the others to go.
I didn't do that.
Yes, you did. Just finish the rest.
I can't.
As Holland wandered, the minutes blended into hours and then to days, time had gone astray and the assignment amiss, and the thoughts, yes, the dulled knives of memories cut with an acute ferocity. It all felt like too much weighed upon his shoulders, like he was pulling a dead weight from behind his soul. He began to understand that he was never going to make it back to the Confederacy, there was never going to be an arrival party for their return. It was just so heavy and hurt too much. And while the knives pierced and the sorrow chopped at him like a spiritual butcher’s knife aboard the Athena II, Roy Holland began to lose control.
The vessel was doomed to be a deliverance from the life lived unclean of bloodied hands poured from his own selfish ambitions. His only love now was for space, it had been for space to keep his thoughts from the death of his wife, and it was his love that would be the vessel from which the infection poured and eroded his being. Indeed, it was this definitive vulnerability, this Achilles’ Heal of a man completely enthralled with the allusion that he held a certain degree of control over his own life. How many times had he denied a women’s desire to steal his independence and usher
forth a life of servitude and compromise? Roberts? Was she any different than his wife? No, she was just the same as the rest, hah! He scorned the thought. And now that piercing love for enterprise had unseated his own sanity and while the first of his friends were dead and another two had gone missing, he began to understand. The hostile presence which they had simply come to deduce was not of a physical nature, nor of the mechanical, but of the supernatural and it was eating away at him just as the dead man’s message had said it would. What was a man, such as he, supposed to do when faced with a thing that existed beyond his very reason? Beyond his own understanding?
He felt it, felt his very soul melting away into the bland obscurity of subversive hell, the symptom of the invisible infection whose fingers gently seduced his mind. It was like the gears in a clock tower that pressed and turned and meshed and pulled, so did the tainted thoughts of his mutinous friends. These thoughts were the fingers that spread through his being from within. He knew the minds of his former friends held absolute insidious and destructive intent and it was this idea that would at last press his own beast to turn. Yes, he could see it all laid out now in front of him as his nails grew dark and served as a somber and never-ending remembrance that he was losing control.
INTERVIEW: PART VII