A Cold Black Wave

by Scott, Timothy H.

  Josh eagerly left the confines of the shuttle and emerged into the cool morning air with his rifle in hand, consuming his densely sweet energy bar and water as he sat on the edge of the shuttle. As he ate his breakfast he again admired the stunning beauty of the world. There was nobody to tell him what to do now, no forced routines, no study classes, no watchful eyes, always watching, examining, and judging his every move against that of his peers, or that against himself.

  Yes, very familiar. The trees, the grass, the mountains and sun before him were like living pages from the historical records he read at the Academy. But they had only been images back then, two dimensional representations of a world that no longer existed. To be standing in its natural presence, to feel the clean breeze and the fresh smell of pine and hemlock, it was as if he had been borne of the shuttle, his constructed mother’s womb.

  His body buzzed with a light and agile energy as he breathed in deeply the pure air. His body and mind were invigorated with a strength and energy that defied the effects of cryostasis. Josh briefly considered that it was possible they had died and this was some sort of afterlife, if he was one to believe in such a thing. If so, he had no objection to it, whatever it was.

  He stopped eating and gazed at a floating object in the distance. He jumped off his seat to give chase until it was right over him. It was a red-tailed hawk, except it wasn’t red, but shimmering yellow. It cruised in the sky as it looked for prey until it disappeared over the forest.

  As he watched it disappear, something caught his eye, and he instinctively raised his rifle and spun. Someone was standing near the shuttle. Leah ducked in anticipation of an incoming bullet, but he lowered his weapon just as fast as he had raised it. She looked like some strange animal with the big coat and blankets wrapped all around her. As he approached, she shifted back and forth uncomfortably.

  “Sorry about that,” he said, squinting at her as he slung his rifle. He looked to her feet and remarked, “You found some boots.” He found his voice again but it came out thin and raspy. She nodded.

  “Where are we?” Leah asked hoarsely. She took a drink from her water bottle.

  Josh sat a few feet from her. “I don’t know. We’re alive so I guess that’s a start.” He drank some water.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  They sat listening to the ambient world around them, enjoying the natural silence before Leah spoke again. “We’re on earth, aren’t we?”

  “No. No, this isn’t earth. I don’t know what this is, but it’s definitely not earth.”

  “How long were we ...?”

  Josh drank the last of his water and tossed the bottle through the shuttle door. He wasn’t sure how to answer because it was still unbelievable, even to him. What mattered was that they were alive. Finally he said, “Too long. We got lucky.”

  Leah nodded in convincing fashion saying, “God is watching over us. He’s taking care of us now.”

  “God? Sure. Easy to say when you’re alive. God has nothing to do with this. Human engineering, luck, karma maybe, but that could go either way with me ... in that case I hope you’ve lived a better life than I have.”

  “Look at this! It’s a miracle that we made it this far and came here, of all places!” She said excitedly, “Just look at it!”

  “No miracle built this shuttle. No miracle sacrificed its life getting us on this ship either. You aren’t from the academy. I can literally smell the naiveté on you.”

  “I don’t have a smell,” she furtively raised an arm and sniffed.

  “Every kid that grew up on the Westbound had to attend the academy. What makes you so special?” Before she could answer, Josh’s eyes bored into her with a callous disregard. “Yea. You must be special. Maybe back home you could get away with that, but out here you’re going to get us both killed.”

  “I won’t.”

  “What can you do? What do you know that could possibly help us out here?”

  “Why are you so angry?”

  “Look around you. Do you see anyone? This isn’t the Westbound. We have to survive on our own now. Do you know what that means? One mistake, one false move and we’re dead. Eat the wrong food, take the wrong step and that’s it. There’s nobody to help us out here. No second chances. Scared now? You should be. Everything you do, or don’t do, could be your last moment alive.”

  Josh backed off, it wasn’t worth the fight. He didn’t want to be here any more than she did, but now that they were, she had no business being on the shuttle. This mission wasn’t meant for her. She was useless and now he’d have to do everything and take care of her at the same time. Death would have been so much simpler had he stayed behind.

  He went to say something to her again but disappeared into the shuttle instead. The confines of the shuttle would have to be their shelter until he could assess their surroundings and see where they were located, and what they were up against. The supplies would not last them more than a month, they’d need to set up a more permanent camp and find a steady supply of food either by fishing, hunting, or foraging. The task was difficult even for two trained students, but nearly impossible when one mouth that needs feeding is incapable of doing so herself.

  Josh rubbed his head to fight against a pounding headache while he assembled a pack full of gear in the supply room. This must be some kind of joke, being here with her. What a clusterfuck. A coarse thought ran through his mind that maybe she could be useful.

  There wasn’t anyone here to stop him. He could do with her as he pleased. He had to focus on the mission though. Survive. Turning her into a fearful slave to pleasure his base desires would serve no purpose and would likely put his own life at risk as he slept. Besides, the Academy had nearly burned that desire out of him years ago.

  He shook his head and laughed to himself as he packed, amused over the irony of his being here. There were literally hundreds of students more capable than he and far more able in their abilities that should be here right now. No wonder Marshall was rankled over the fact Josh was one of the select few capable of going on this mission. Josh was certain that if Marshall had any say in this matter at all, he’d still be locked away in the suicide room while some other Academy student was here packing a bag.

  Josh finished shoving some food and water into his backpack before leaving. Leah was lost in her own thoughts as he walked past her.

  She called after him with a mouth full of energy bar, “Where are you going?”

  He turned around and walked backwards as he spoke, “Just stay there. I mean it. You walk away from the shuttle and you put our lives at risk.”

  Josh spent the rest of daylight surveying the edges of the forest that ringed the grassy valley they were in. Josh fired small Terras into the air a few hundred feet to take snapshots of the area, and he collected the images before moving on. The serenity of this new world lured him into a sense of peace, and more than a couple of times Josh felt like resting and simply listening to it and doing nothing, reflecting on the emptiness of such beauty, how it was here before they arrived, and would be here after them, just props for two wayward travelers.

  He didn’t, however, and trudged forward like an automaton. Being raised within the Academy for so many years was impossible to unlearn, he found, no matter how much he had rebelled against it in his later years. Every step he took filled him with a sense of remorse as if someone else was controlling his actions, like a switch had been turned on once they landed here that he could not shut off. The only life he had known was being prepared for a day such as this, and his purpose for existing lay in the very steps he took.

  When he returned to the shuttle his body was limp with exhaustion and his stomach gnawed at him. The sun disappeared behind the mountains again as he climbed back into the shuttle and collapsed to the ground. Leah was sitting on the other side of the room reading a book under artificial sodium lights.

  “Where’d you get that?” He asked as he drank water.

  “It’s mine. I brought it wi
th me,” she glared at him.

  “Figures.”

  “There’s some food over there if you want some. Ham or something.”

  “I know where it is,” he said as he took his gloves off and put aside his gear. “So how old are you anyway?”

  “Older than you.”

  He scoffed with an air of superiority, “No you’re not. You look like you’re fourteen.”

  “Twenty one.”

  “Okay, sure, whatever you say.”

  “Fine. I’m seventeen. Still older than you.”

  “Doesn’t matter anyway,” Josh said, trailing off. He walked over and tossed around some of the packaged food until he found what he liked and ripped it open, scooping out the contents with his fingers and eating the brown substance as it sludged down his hand. Leah looked at him with disgust. He licked his fingers before wiping them dry on his pants.

  “I can tell the gravity of the situation has not hit you yet,” he said as he went deeper into the supply room in search for equipment. He talked louder so she could hear, but he could have just as easily been speaking to himself. “But we got less than thirty days before we run out of food and slowly starve to death. Best I can tell we may be entering winter here. If we’re lucky, it’s ending, but I can tell you right now the only luck we’ve had has been the bad kind, so I wouldn’t count on it. The energy core is shot, so we have no way of recharging anything and you’re incapable of wilderness survival.” He walked back out with a handful of various tools and noticed she was still reading her book. “I can tell you’re really interested in all this.”

  “Well, you know everything apparently, so just tell me what to do captain.”

  He coolly walked over to her and kneeled, his face very near hers and spoke softly but direct, his eyes wandering over the contours of her face. “I don’t know how you escaped serving in the academy, but it’s obvious you wasted your time doing something else. You know nothing about anything, so you listen to me, and we survive. You sit here and read your Bible all day” he said, flicking the cover, “and we die. Simple enough for you?”

  She stood to get away from him and her eyes attacked him as he spoke, “I know I didn’t go the academy but they should have given you a course in manners, or was that not practical enough?”

  Josh grabbed the book out of her hand and threw it against the wall. Josh’s condescending attitude suddenly turned fierce and cold. He leaned closer to her and spoke in a whisper that slowly turned louder, his eyes locked onto hers. “Do you have any fucking clue as to why we are here? Everyone is dead. Everyone! Who brought you here, how’d you get on the shuttle? Huh?”

  “Stop it!” She slid away from him as he had gotten so close he was nearly pressing against her. When she was far enough away she turned around and shot back, “My father!” When she saw him waiting for more of an answer she pulled her hair back and continued meekly, “He brought me to the shuttle to save my life.”

  “Your dad? Who the hell is he? Are you even immune?”

  “Immune?”

  “You don’t know, do you?” He derided. He stepped towards her slowly as he spoke, calm and measured in his tone. “You will know. Soon. You’ll get a fever. Then your lungs will start filling with fluid and you’ll gasp for air but you’ll never get enough. You’ll be bed ridden and won’t be able to keep anything down. You’ll waste away to nothing until you suffocate on your own mucus. Then I’ll be left here alone because your father, a piece of shit who thought nothing of the human race and only himself, decided to toss your sorry ass in a shuttle. You shouldn’t be here.” The words hung in the air as he stood only a foot from her.

  She spoke, but the words came out shaking and unsure. “Why not? Why can’t I be here? Huh? I have a right to be here and besides, I’m here now so there’s nothing we can change about that.” She said, convincing herself towards the end that her father did the right thing, what any father would do, right?

  He was about to walk back into the supply closet when the question stabbed into him, and he pounced on the opportunity to put her in her place. He turned and addressed her with a tone of authority, evoking the name of the president as if to kill any doubt as to why she shouldn’t be here. “President Koung specifically used Executive Order 13 to get Academy students onto the shuttles. Only students who were immune could go. Can you imagine why they wouldn’t want someone here that was going to get sick and die as soon as they landed?”

  Disgusted, he disappeared into the supply closet to busy himself. She picked her book off the floor and retired into the stasis chamber, bundling herself as best she could to fight the chill in the air until she fell asleep.

  Josh was fatigued from the long day, but he wanted to take quick inventory of the entire supply room before going to bed. They had everything they needed to survive for a couple months, maybe three if they were lucky. He exaggerated to Leah the extent of their supply problem by telling her they only had a months worth, hoping it would scare some sense into her. More importantly he had tools. A lot of tools. It was clear the supplies were a temporary solution to a long term problem. They’d have to learn to survive entirely on what the planet offered, and their own abilities. Leah would only exacerbate this challenge to an incredible degree.

  They spent the rest of the evening separated, with Josh fiddling in the supply room and Leah reading and praying before they both fell asleep in their respective rooms.

  The next morning Leah awoke to gunshots. They were single shots paced evenly apart and the reports echoed back and forth within the enclosed valley. She poked her head out of the shuttle and saw Josh, bundled up and resting the rifle on a boulder and firing at a distant object. She could see the off-color white of the target against the brown bark of a lone tree about one hundred yards distant. He fired again. She watched him reload.

  Josh felt her presence but only offered a dismissive glance at her before turning his attention back to the rifle. He tweaked the gun sight and resumed his target practice. Leah refused to be intimidated by him, however, and considering their circumstances, she also felt it foolish to be so.

  “What are you doing?” She asked right as Josh was about to fire again. He stopped short and threw an irritated look over his shoulder before aiming again. Josh fired three more paced shots. There was plenty of ammo stockpiled in the shuttle and ensuring his sights were dialed in correctly was important enough to spend time with target practice.

  “Making sure I don’t miss.”

  “Oh. Eat any breakfast?”

  Two more shots. He didn’t answer. Leah disappeared back into the shuttle. Josh, satisfied the rifle was balanced and sighted, placed it inside a leather case and rested it on the rock before sitting down to examine the photos he had taken yesterday. He wanted to get a good idea of their surroundings, but now that they appeared to be elbow deep in the mountains, he hoped one of the photos would give up some minor detail that would lead them to a river or a lake, or an easier path to the foothills.

  The tablet that held the photos was powered with energy that would soon be in short supply, and then gone forever. The engine core of the shuttle was damaged beyond repair from the landing, and without it no extra power would be generated. Finding out any details in those photos was worth burning up what energy that was left in the tablet. He slid a gloved finger over the screen and moved the images around, zooming in and out, and examining every trace detail.

  Every image came up empty. There was nothing but a sea of trees encircled by mountains. Surely there would be water somewhere, but it was too risky to strike out blindly. He couldn’t take Leah with him, and if he became injured or lost, he held no illusion that she wouldn’t be able to help him. The thought of death didn’t bother him as much as all the excruciating pain that would lead up to it as he lay alone in the middle of nowhere. Broken leg, hypothermia, followed by getting eaten alive by some night bound alien creature and ending with eyes pecked out by ravenous birds. He figured the last part was kind of cool, consider
ing he wouldn’t be alive to feel it anyway, and flashed a dark smile at the thought of Leah finding him like that just a day too late. Good luck without me!

  Then something caught his eye in image CA887. He zoomed in to the spot. It wasn’t water, but there was something unnatural about its contour compared to the rest of the tree line. The object jutted out from the thick of trees like an antenna. It could be an oddly shaped part of a tree growing upwards or an optical illusion based on the angle of the Terra when it snapped the photo.

  Josh nearly jumped out of his skin when Leah approached, “Christ, don’t creep up on me like that. What’d you do, levitate over here?” She was standing nearly on top of him when he noticed her. He squinted as he looked up, the sun situated behind her back. From his spot she appeared even taller and lankier than usual.