“We will become legends,” Artie suggested nervously.
Maya clicked on her gun and watched as it glowed blue. “Screw all that ra ra stuff,” she said. “I’m fighting for Eli.”
“Me too,” Max said and stepped beside Maya and Eli.
“We need to find the others,” Adam said. “We’ll travel in the walls. Artie knows a place.”
One by one they followed Artie down the corridor. Leo stopped to turn on Nadia’s gun before they hurried to catch up to the others.
* * *
TRINH STOOD UP ON her own two feet. She took a step. When Gen tried to help, Trinh pushed her away. Gen slid her gun into Trinh’s hand.
Trinh stopped to look at the gun and nodded sadly. “The explosions, were they real?” Trinh asked weakly.
Gen nodded. Trinh glanced around the transport dock. She spotted huge painted letters on the hangar walls. ES3.
“Our ship?” Trinh said as she lifted her gun arm painfully.
“Gone,” Gen said. “Our ship is gone.”
“Jax?” Trinh said.
Gen hung her head.
“He’s gone too,” Trinh said. “I remember.”
Gen had hoped she would not remember.
“I remember Zeke,” Trinh said defiantly.
“That wasn’t Zeke,” Gen said.
“I know,” Trinh said. “So you won’t mind when I kill him.”
Trinh started walking. She grunted at first, but then her body began to warm. She found her stride and became fluid as they moved together across the hangar of the transport dock on their way to the ship.
They quietly left the transport dock and entered a narrow corridor. They counted the abandoned jet packs one after the other as they stepped over them in the corridor. There were fourteen packs.
“Fourteen beasts,” Gen said shuddering at the thought.
The last pack was on top of something at the end of the corridor. Trinh slowly lifted the pack which was dripping with a sticky substance. Blood and tissue. On the ground, the bones of a child.
Gen covered her eyes. Trinh did not.
“One of the 117,” Trinh said stepping around the gooey mess. Gen quickly followed trying not to glance at the floor.
The next corridor was wider and better lit. They followed the bloody footsteps of the beasts until they faded away at the elevator. They considered the doors of the elevator and then each other.
“We should go to the walls,” Gen said.
“You should,” Trinh said. “I’m done with the damned walls.” Trinh hit the button for the elevator.
Gen’s heartbeat accelerated. The elevator was a deadly gamble on a ship full of the infected under any circumstances, but with only a single gun between them it verged on suicidal.
Trinh stepped into the elevator and Gen followed. The buttons were covered with bloody fingerprints. There would be no more plotting and waiting and worrying for them. Their friends were at risk above and they would hurry to warn them or aid them or maybe just slow the beasts down.
* * *
THE SWEET SMELL OF spilling blood made his gums tingle so much, he immediately sneezed. His hand came to his nose too late, only managing to get sprayed with dark, bloody mucus.
“No more totem,” Tuna said quietly. He decided to eat the girl. He had cured her, but he might as well eat her now. He had cooked her infected blood after all and made it a honey ham. She was his feast. He would not lose her to the other beasts.
They heard the screams as they moved carefully to the commissary doors. Tuna’s eyes opened wide at what he saw. He pushed Lexi back from the doors so the infected would not see his little meal-for-one.
Inside the commissary seven beasts feasted casually on ten mostly dead kids that were hanging upside down, tied by their ankles. A small pile of the discarded remains of the dead lay against a wall. Two living kids sat on the ground crying. Their hands were tied. They held their heads down refusing to watch friends being stripped of their flesh.
A third kid, a girl, watched on in horror screaming whenever she could as her severe hyperventilation made it nearly impossible to sustain her scream. It made Tuna even hungrier, but something about the scene seemed in poor taste to him.
He stepped away from the door and hurried down the hall with Lexi in another direction. He would find a quiet spot somewhere on the ship to taste her delicious offerings in a more dignified setting. There were all manners of beasts, he thought. Some were simply too vulgar to sit down with and share a civilized meal.
The doors of the elevator slid open. Tuna stopped in his tracks and stared at two girls in protective suits. One girl lifted her hand to show him her gun. So sad to die before eating my girl, he thought.
The other girl jumped in front of the girl with the gun.
“Tuna!” Gen yelled at him. “Are you still in there?”
This girl thinks he is a fish, too, Tuna thought, just like the annoying girl. She shielded the smaller girl’s gun. It will be easy to eat all three of them now. Before Tuna could quickly snap their necks, a tiny girl ran right between them with her hands tied behind her back. He knew this girl. The screaming girl from the commissary.
A beast ran from the commissary in pursuit. Tuna grabbed Lexi and hid her in a doorway behind him. The girl with the gun stepped out of the elevator to face the beast from the commissary.
The other girl chased after the little screaming girl.
The coast was clear. He didn’t know what those words meant, but he felt like moving. Tuna ran across and into the elevator dragging his own girl behind him. He quickly hit the button and disappeared from that wondrous deck of sweet-smelling blood orgies and hot-blooded girls running in every direction.
* * *
GEN GRABBED HANNA BY her wrists which were tied together behind her back. She spun the girl around to look into her eyes which were stunned to see Gen’s face behind the face shield.
Hanna smiled at the sight of Gen. “Is it a dream?” Hanna said. “All the blood in the commissary?” Hanna’s eyes darted around as Gen untied her hands. “You are a trillion miles from us. I’m dreaming. The blood must just be your tomatoes.”
Gen nodded to Hanna before turning back to watch Trinh blast a hole in the beast’s belly. Trinh left the beast on the floor and started walking back to Gen. She lifted her gun in the air and waived it to let Hanna know the beast was dead. Trinh the Savior.
Two beasts burst out of the commissary before Trinh could drop her hand. By the time Trinh saw the concern on Gen’s face and spun back around, the beasts were on her. They shredded her suit in seconds. Gen could not move until both beasts bit viciously into Trinh’s pale body.
Gen reached for Hanna, but she was already gone.
-24-
The day before the Dome exploded when they had no idea of the horrors that awaited them, Artie and Ethan decided to do a walk through engineering together.
They had been best friends since Artie helped Ethan beat Tuna at the science fair a few years before. Ethan felt he never adequately repaid Artie for modifying his presentation to capture the doctors’ attention and was always looking for an opportunity to aid Artie.
When they launched, it seemed Ethan would never repay the debt, but as it turned out he already had. Artie wished he could let Ethan know that he had more than repaid his debt.
That day on the engineering walk through, the last day they would ever be together, Ethan surprised Artie with a fact about the ships Artie did not know. The antimatter positron reactor #2 was not a backup at all, but an empty vessel never completed.
The entrance to the reactor core was nearly impossible to find and then you had to process through a cleansing chamber to enter. It had been a trivial shocker when Ethan told him that day, but now the knowledge was much more than that. It was an absolute life saver.
Maya and Eli would stay with Sylvia, Max, Leo and Nadia inside the reactor. Artie insisted on going to look for Hanna and Adam would aid him in one final check for ot
her survivors and also to find water. The reactor was unbearably hot. Fluids would be the key to survival.
Artie knew the paths through the walls as well as he did the corridors. He spent the past year wandering through them like a phantom trying to remember every nut and bolt on the ship.
There were times when he laid in his bed that he would close his eyes and try to move through the walls in his mind.
“Hanna worked in the gardens,” Adam said. “She might try to hide there.” His voice came across as a whisper within Artie’s helmet.
“There are better places to hide,” Artie said. “Her size would be an advantage. She can get in places no beast could follow.”
“The service deck is full of such places,” Adam suggested.
“And we can stop by water filtration,” Artie said.
The emergency siren suddenly stopped. The silence was deafening. Artie and Adam stared into each other’s helmet. They knew without speaking that the beasts were now in control of the ship.
Artie continued on ten more feet until he found a large vent. He slid out a small tool kit and unfastened the grill. Adam leaned down to glance through the vent and see carts stacked high with linen.
They removed the grill quietly and stepped into the laundry room. They examined every machine and cupboard. Adam glanced up into every laundry chute that stretched out to every deck on the ship.
Adam raised two of his gloved fingers and made a motion they had both seen in many classic war movies. They stopped at the door and peeked through the small window into a corridor. Adam waived his hand next to the door sensor. The door slid open.
They checked a nearby supply closet on their way to the water filtration systems room. As Artie reached for the door sensor, they heard the elevator ding quietly. They hurried into the dark of water filtration systems. The door shut behind them.
They held their guns ready and listened as the beasts passed the door croaking excitedly.
Artie stared curiously into the soft glow of Adam’s helmet. “They’re headed to the laundry room,” Artie said.
“No one’s there,” Adam reassured.
“They’re better hunters than we are,” Artie said. “They took the elevator to this floor and headed straight to laundry.”
Adam considered Artie’s concern. “If it makes you feel better, we’ll check it out, but be ready for a fight.”
Adam led them to the laundry room door. They leaned in to watch the beasts searching. The male beast seemed to be calculating something to do with all the laundry chutes while the female beast checked the machines.
When the male beast settled on one of the chutes, he put his gun back in his holster and reached into the cart of linen beneath that chute. He searched the linen manically and then stopped.
He found something.
The male beast pulled out a sheet and examined it. The female beast joined him. They both croaked wildly when they found a fresh blood stain on the sheet.
They moved to opposite sides of the cart and readied to tip it over.
Artie’s heartbeat pounded through his chest. His eyes widened. Adam grabbed his friend’s shoulder to make him wait one moment longer until they knew for sure about the cart.
The linen spilled softly from the cart onto the floor. The beasts stepped back to watch as Hanna fell out last, tangled within soft white and pale yellow bed sheets.
The male beast pounced on the small girl who was filthy with a mixture of dried and fresh blood on her arms and face. The beast’s sharp fingernails cut into Hanna’s arms as he picked her up.
Artie burst through the door blasting a pulse of blue energy at the beast and missing wildly. “Let her go,” Artie yelled.
Hanna smiled. She loved seeing Artie even if in a dream.
Adam moved past Artie and blasted a shot through the left edge of the big beast’s throat. The beast gurgled a moment and fell down onto his knees before crumbling back onto the pile of linen.
In the same moment, Adam’s long blade hurtled through the air and cut clean through the female beast’s small belly. He raced forward to grab the female beast by the hair as she fell so he could plant his knife quickly in the side of her skull.
Artie approached the dead male beast who bled out all over the white and yellow bedding. “That’s my woman, asshole,” Artie said. He aimed his gun and obliterated the face of the already dead beast.
Hanna giggled unnervingly.
The boys stepped quickly to her but she barely considered them.
“Hanna,” Adam said, “we’re here.”
Artie’s heart sank as he examined her arms and found bloody scratches from the beast’s sharp fingernails.
“The dance is over and I am dreaming,” Hanna said as she spun away gracefully pirouetting.
The boys watched her as she moved about muttering and giggling.
“We can clean out her wounds,” Artie sadly suggested.
“Artie,” Adam said softly inside their helmets. “She’s been infected. She can’t come with us.”
Artie snapped his head around to stare at Adam defiantly. “We won’t kill her,” he stated.
Adam nodded, then walked up to Hanna. He grabbed her gently to examine her wrists. The skin was badly scraped and burned.
“They had her tied up,” Adam said.
Artie examined the wrists too. “Hanna, how did you get away?”
“Where are the others?” Adam asked.
Her smile faded. It all seemed too real again.
“Hanna, this is important,” Adam said. “Were the others with you?”
The boys squatted down to face her eye-to-eye.
“Everyone was in the dream, but you,” she said tilting her head. “Everyone was in the dream but a few.”
“Tell us about your dream, sweetheart,” Artie said tenderly.
“Am I your sweetheart, Artie?”
“You are,” Artie said. “What happened in the dream?”
She shook her arms free from the boys. “They were tomatoes,” she said. “All of them.”
“There were tomatoes?” Adam asked, trying to correct her words.
“No, silly. THEY were tomatoes. All the stinky cooks were making tomato sauce and everyone pretended to be tomatoes.”
Artie and Adam eyed each other concerned.
“Where was this happening?” Artie asked.
“Where do you think, my prince?” Hanna teased. “The commissary. Where else? They tied them all upside down.”
“How did you get free, Hanna?” Adam asked.
“I just ran away and that’s when the tomato girl untied me and told me about the dream.”
“The tomato girl?” Adam said.
Hanna giggled. “She’s so pretty and she comes from so far away.”
“Who is she?” Adam felt his heartbeat quickening.
“How can you forget the tomato girl?” Hanna said grabbing both of Artie’s hands. She turned back to Adam. “Genevieve Fifthborn.”
The words hit Adam’s ears and poured ice through his whole body. The ice took over and turned to fire. He staggered back to try to comprehend her words.
Artie bent his face and shook his head. “Can it be true?”
“Artie never ever kissed me, never once after the dance,” Hanna said pulling away angrily. She sulked with her back to them.
“They’ll be coming, Artie,” Adam said. “We have to go.”
“I can’t leave her. When they come, they will—”
“They will smell her wherever she goes,” Adam whispered.
Hanna turned around and stepped between them. Her face had changed. “Enough whispering,” she said. “I will fight for the uninfected.”
“Hanna?” Artie said.
“I’m here,” she said. “Give me a gun and go. I’ll kill at least one.”
Adam handed his gun to her.
“Are you mad at us?” Artie said.
“No, but you never kissed me after the dance and now I will never kiss a
nyone,” she said.
“Artie,” Adam urged. “We have to go.”
“I wanted to kiss you, but you’re only nine.”
“I’ll be ten in two months,” she said softly.
Artie lifted her chin and looked into his intended’s eyes.
“Go, Artie,” she whispered.
He smiled for her.
“Come on, Artie,” Adam said.
“I’m staying here, Commander,” Artie said.
Hanna and Adam both grabbed Artie.
“You’re coming with me, Artie,” Adam said. “Hanna, tell him.”
She reached out to touch his face shield, “ I love you, Artie. You have to live. They need your mind.”
“I am more than a mind,” Artie said. “Commander, you need to get the others and get off this ship.”
“What are you talking about?” Adam said.
“Get to the Terra Rover,” Artie said. “It has everything you need. Let me know when you’re gone.”
Artie unsnapped his helmet and lifted it from his head.
Hanna collapsed to the ground. “Artie, no!”
“My God, Artie, what are you doing?” Adam said.
Artie lifted his sweet girl off the ground. “They’re coming, Commander,” Artie said with watery eyes. He wiped tears from Hanna’s tiny cheeks.
“Not like this,” Hanna said crying and falling into Artie’s arms.
“Get in the walls now, Commander!” Artie demanded. “But don’t worry. They won’t follow you.”
Artie took Hanna into his arms and kissed her right on the lips. A long, simple kiss. When he was done, Hanna smiled from ear-to-ear.
“Show the Commander your gun,” Artie whispered to Hanna.
Artie and Hanna showed their guns to the Commander.
“We will make sure they do not follow you,” Artie said lifting his gun higher. “We fight for the uninfected.”
Adam still could not move. Artie pushed him twice roughly until his Commander would finally climb back up into the wall and leave him alone with Hanna.
Artie replaced the vent grill and enclosed Adam into a small crawl space. The emotion of Artie’s choice overwhelmed Adam. It took a few minutes to remember something else, something incredible. Hanna had been freed by Gen.
The Eden Project (Books One & Two) Page 28