"Time to go," Stellan said with renewed vigor, and for a moment, the fear vanished, replaced by hope and good cheer. Somewhere along the line, they forgot that, even if they were successful in stopping Pierce, their problems went far beyond him and the dying Atlas, but it was sensibility that made them take one step at a time. It was also perhaps sensibility that kept them from losing control and giving up.
Four
Pierce sat at Evans' workstation. Like a spent match, his aged face was pale and wrinkled as if years had passed in mere hours. His mind, as sharp as ever, cut through emotion and doubt. He saw clearly what needed to be done, and he knew he was the only one who could do it.
He glanced back at the body of the young boy lying on the floor. Evans was dead. The guilt weighed almost as heavily as the responsibility to his duty, and again, the remorse he felt proved he was not evil. It hurt, so he must have still been human.
He had to do what was necessary because only he could stomach the guilt. He owned the burden because only he could carry it, the fate of an entire world on his shoulders.
A window expanded from the workstation, and it reflected his face like a mirror. He removed his glasses and placed them gently on his armrest, intending to never pick them up again. Massaging his forehead, Pierce pressed the record command.
"I have failed," he said, his voice low and rough. "We have failed. The only course is to ensure our cargo never reaches New Earth. That cargo is no longer inanimate material. It's people, the crew of this ship. The stakes are too high. It is a scourge.
"The material from Apophis two five nine, it changed us. Initially, we just thought it was the black madness. Being out here, so far away from the planet we were meant to live on, moving faster than we were ever meant to go, we broke the rules, so it seemed fair it would break our minds. We expected it, but we never expected what happened here.
"I would advise whoever remains of my crew to find a weapon, put it to their head, and pull the trigger because this thing feeds on our minds, our thoughts, and uses our bodies to spread that sickness. We must destroy its food, or it threatens any chance we have left as a people to remember what we were and the freedoms that made us great.
"I still hope we can get there. That is why it is not a coward's way out to take our lives. It has become necessary, a necessary evil for the greater good, and I hope, if there is a God, he forgives us. We had the best of intentions.
"I cannot take that path. My burden is too great. I must see the Atlas is properly disposed of, and I pray I am strong enough to follow through."
Pierce glanced at a picture of Commander Ashland he'd isolated on his link and took a deep breath.
"This is Captain Gordon Pierce of the Titan class carrier Atlas. Beware this place. Burn it. Remember the sacrifice of this crew. Forgive us. Save yourself."
Pierce stopped the recording, and the window retreated back into the workstation with the Atlas' chirp of acknowledgement.
"I'll see you soon, Emra."
Moments later, a beacon, much like the one the Shiva had left, launched from the hull of the Atlas. A red light blinked at the tip of its antenna. Small thrusters pushed it a safe distance away from the Atlas and then stabilized it in a fixed location, where it would remain until the red giant Apophis expanded and consumed whatever remained of their mistakes. The warning wouldn't be necessary after that. The cosmic balance would right itself, and the universe would continue as it always had.
Life would go on.
The Atlas turned lazily, lurching toward the rocky debris, the Apophis planet, and the remains of the fallen Shiva, which still burned trace oxygen and atmosphere like dying embers of a once great bonfire.
Five
Working against the clock with a definite objective, Stellan moved quickly. The question of what waited around each corner and in the dark shadows and unseen places was no longer the sole plague of his mind. Survival was no longer contingent on remaining undetected. They had to stop Pierce before it was too late.
The balance was delicate. They couldn't be careless, but they had to keep moving. While Stellan's own life did not concern him anymore, Daelen and Wendy tempered his pace. He couldn't leave them, and he couldn't lead them to peril.
In that regard, not much had changed.
Outside medical, Stellan, Daelen, and Wendy found quiet corridors and trails of blood leading toward the command deck. Stellan knew the pasty blood couldn't belong to Pierce. Rather, the dead had left them breadcrumbs. He could follow the trail to Pierce because they would follow him until something else caught their attention. The dead had become an asset.
Although, if nothing diverted them, they would inevitably be an obstacle for Stellan and his two followers.
One step at a time.
They mostly found drops and trickles. Occasionally, crimson handprints stained the walls where one of the dead had lost balance and caught itself. They also found the odd, unidentifiable lump of flesh, gray and sitting as a mound in a shallow, sanguine pool.
They found signs of other survivors. Barricades, trashcans, and desks piled in front of doorways, blockades that didn't hold. At security checkpoints, vacant chairs taunted them, relics of another time when it was acceptable to rest. A message on the wall scrawled in blood read, "They're not dead." Stellan, Daelen, and Wendy knew, and the cryptic lack of bodies delivered that message better than words. Everywhere were signs of struggle, blood pools with red boot prints leading away like ghost steps, smashed vending machines and computer equipment, smoke billowing from terminals as plastic circuit boards still smoldered. But there were no bodies, and they knew it was because they'd all gotten up and walked away.
Daelen and Wendy followed Stellan's lead, hugging the walls, darting between shadows. Wendy trembled, her breath shaking in her chest, but Daelen was calm. She was a strong woman. She would be okay.
"The quiet is unnerving," Daelen said. "I know they're out there, but it's even quieter than the height of sleep cycle on the residence deck."
"All we need to know is they're out there," Stellan said.
A distant boom echoed through the ship. The deck shook, and the lights shimmered. It reminded Stellan of the pound of mortar shells above a bunker. They were safe, but it was impossible to ever come to terms with the thought of being bombed.
"What was that!?" Wendy whispered.
Instinct controlled Stellan. Without a thought, he checked their immediate area, ensuring their safety. His sidearm automatically followed his darting eyes. Nothing moved.
"We hit something," Daelen said. "Or something hit us."
"There is a lot of debris floating around out there," Wendy said.
Stellan crouched and pressed his palm to the floor, closing his eyes and opening his ears. The sounds of the ship flooded his mind, and he let them run so deep he could feel them in his chest. The remaining active systems washed over him like waves. He reached out to other decks and found the stillness and quiet. Through the silence, he found the subtle whisper of the thrusters, which, until then, he'd thought was the air circulation system. He opened his eyes, and there it was, the slight pull of inertia.
"We're moving," Stellan said.
"Why would Pierce move the ship if he's going to do a purge?" Daelen asked.
"He wouldn't."
They tried to blend in with the quiet, and Stellan continued to listen. Like a rising buzz in his mind, he thought he could hear the light drive spinning up.
"Hear that?" Stellan said.
"The light drive," Wendy said. "We heading back to Earth?"
Stellan gravely shook his head.
Light drives were one of the most destructive forces man had ever created. They bent space with almost no limitations but their area of effect, meaning they could tear any solid matter apart. When the technology was created, the Council banned its use anywhere in New Earth's solar system so as not to disturb the orbits of its planets. The light drive's pull was as powerful as a black hole.
"How long does it take the li
ght drive to spin up?" Stellan asked
"It depends how cold it is," Wendy said. "The only reason it has to spin up is to maintain an equilibrium of temperature. If the core got out of sync one way or the other, either it would tear us apart or it would get hotter than the surface of the sun."
"I know talking through this stuff calms you down, but give me the short version."
Wendy calculated, her eyes rolling up into her furrowed brow. "As long as it's been down? About twenty minutes. I think."
Another impact shook the Atlas, and Stellan wondered if they could make it to the command deck before the debris of the dead planet tore a hole in the hull so deep that they'd be purged as Pierce originally had planned.
Six
As the impacts increased in frequency and intensity, they knew for sure they were heading toward the dead planet, not away from it.
With every step they took, they raced the clock. Even as they tried to push forward faster, fear and the inevitable threat of meeting the dead or madmen slowed their pace.
And then they stopped.
In a long stretch of corridor, Pierce had apparently turned to take down some of the dead that followed him. Bullet holes marred wall and ceiling panel lights, some still flickering. Red smears drew erratic cone shapes from the back blasts of exit wounds. And in all the chaos of the hallway, bodies littered the floor. Most of them lay face down, thick, soupy blood still seeping from their wounds. The corridor had all the appeal of an uncovered mass grave, and they had no choice but to walk through it.
"Don't look at them," Stellan said. Wendy caught a whimper before it turned into a scream. Daelen moaned and turned away. Even Stellan's stomach desired to retch.
They stepped nimbly but quickly, arching their legs over the bodies like bridges over toxic waters, spanning the distance between safe zones. They avoided the pools of blood that gathered, afraid that they could cause them to slip into the death beneath their feet.
It became easier by the time they made it halfway through. The sight, the smell, the very presence of the lingering, tainted corpses became somewhat normal, as if their bodies adjusted to a temperature change or their eyes to darkness.
Ahead, Stellan thought he saw movement, and he raised his sidearm. He wanted to scan ahead, but he couldn't do that to Wendy and Daelen. He had to keep them moving, and even though he wanted to look down to be sure he wasn't stepping on or in anything, he had to keep his eyes trained ahead.
Fingers crunched underfoot, and Daelen and Wendy gasped. Still, they had to keep moving. A few steps later, Stellan caught the edge of a torso and almost fell.
Stellan had to look down. When he did, he found the movement he thought he'd detected. Several of the corpses writhed and wiggled like worms.
Pierce hadn't killed them all. Some of them lay asleep or somehow dormant. Perhaps the force of Pierce's weapon dropped them to the deck but hadn't stopped their malice. It lingered, if somewhat paralyzed.
A surprisingly powerful hand seized his ankle. He tried to pull away, but the fingers would not release.
"Go," Stellan said. "Go!"
Daelen and Wendy jumped around him and ran as fast as they could through the corridor of bodies. The sounds of their hurried footfalls awakened more.
The hand grasping Stellan's ankle pulled.
With his other foot, Stellan rolled over the thing that clutched him. A gaping hole adorned its face under one of its eyes, and its teeth chomped. Its raspy throat gurgled.
Stellan drove his foot down into its neck, stopping the rasp. His boot connected with the jaw and broke its front teeth. Still, it chomped with no regard for his boot.
Stellan twisted and felt the snap of the spine from the base of its skull. The grip on his ankle loosened, yet the mouth continued to chomp feebly.
Ahead, the dead began to stir, waking from a slumber. Soon they could be up and between him and Daelen and Wendy.
He moved deftly, finding no trouble in watching ahead as well as below, and when he reached the last of them, the terror in Daelen and Wendy's faces caused Stellan to turn and look behind him.
The writhing bodies were rising to their feet.
Stellan's sidearm would be no use against them. They had one shot and needed to save it. He offered it to Daelen.
"Take this, and keep moving," Stellan said.
"No!" Daelen said. "We can outrun them!"
"They'll be on us until we get to the lifts, and we don't know what's there. We could be boxed in. You have to go now."
He recognized the look in her eyes. She feared she would never see him again.
"There's no time," Stellan said. "I'm right behind you. Just go."
Wendy pulled Daelen's shoulders with fingers that dug insensitively into her skin. "Come on!"
As they ran, Daelen's gaze lingered over her shoulder, but Wendy didn't look back.
Stellan turned to face the dead, armed only with his fists and the hard rubber soles of his boots.
Seven
Stellan was right. They were boxed in.
Daelen and Wendy found a crowd of the dead huddled around one of the entrances to a working lift, pounding on the metal and squealing their bloody hands down the siding.
Pierce hadn't killed all of his pursuers. He'd only slowed them down and thinned them out. The crowd he left still posed an impossible obstacle. Whether it was five, fifty, or five hundred, Daelen and Wendy found an impenetrable wall of the dead.
"We're going to die," Wendy said, crumpling into a ball on the floor.
"We're not going to die," Daelen said, peering around the corner at the dead. "We'll figure something out."
"What if they got by Stellan, and they're coming after us? We don't have anywhere to go."
"They didn't get by Stellan," Daelen said. "He's right behind us."
"There were so many of them."
"I said he'll come!"
Daelen's voice caught the attention of a few of the dead surrounding the lift door, and they turned around. She ducked back around the corner.
"Shit! Shit!" Wendy said.
"They didn't see us," Daelen whispered. "Just be quiet, and stay calm."
Like any infectious disease, doubt is contagious. Faced with their situation and Wendy's despair, Daelen found it more difficult to believe Stellan would save them, and they had to do something. For the first time, while she felt naked without him, she thought that, if she could survive this, she might be okay without him. For the first time, she faced Stellan's possible death without feeling lost. The loss would be great, but she would not lose herself.
A symphony of moans and growls rose behind them, pressing her harder to do something. With only one bullet, she couldn't possibly take them all down. Again, she needed more time. She needed more time to think.
"Shit!" Wendy said. "They got past him!"
As she despaired and resigned to search for a place to hide, she detected hurried footsteps accompanying their pursuers' moans.
"No," Daelen said. "Wait."
She tried to separate the sounds. In all the disorder, there was a rhythm, a constant voice in the chaos. A steady beat prevailed.
Stellan sprinted around the corner, breathing heavily, his eyes wide and alert.
"Take them all?" Daelen said.
"Not quite," Stellan said looking over his shoulder. "More at the lift?"
"Yes."
"How many?"
"Loads," Daelen said.
Stellan peered around the corner, counted thirteen, and then looked back at the rising voices.
"Give me the weapon," Stellan said, and Daelen complied.
It was worthless in this fight, too, but he would need it for the fight that lay ahead, if they could get there.
"We have to force our way through," he said. "Stay close."
"No!" Wendy said. "I can't! I can't!" She hugged her knees and rocked.
"I know you're scared," Stellan said. "But you have to move. If you trust me, I'll get you through this. I promise."<
br />
She wouldn't budge. Terror froze her muscles and joints into a self-clutching position. Stellan looked to Daelen, and she knew she would have to get through to Wendy. Daelen nodded in understanding and bent to speak to Wendy.
Stellan didn't hear what she said because his attention had already turned. He rounded the corner out of cover and approached the crowd of dead at the lift, his breathing coming under arrest one breath at a time. Time slowed, and he felt somehow lighter, as if there was a freedom in this. With the fear of infection gone, he could be ruthless. There was nothing they could do to him anymore. His time was short, but he felt like a god, sending the damned to the underworld.
Even so, he couldn't hope to take them all with his bare hands. He moved for the metal pipe one of the madmen had brought to the fight earlier. It lay at the feet of a dead man who turned, a searing intent to kill in its eyes, and it wandered toward him on unsteady limbs.
Stellan flipped it and crushed its skull under his boot. One down.
He did not hear its final chomp and gasp or its moan. He only heard his slow and steady breathing, a metronomic beat for the kill.
One at a time, the rest of them turned, and in that moment, Stellan realized he no longer recognized them as human. Whether it was their mutilated bodies or the way the blood painted their faces, the tattered, blood-soaked clothing that more or less draped over their bodies was the only thing that tied them to humanity anymore.
He no longer pitied them. He hated them. Without the link of humanity, killing flowed easier, more naturally. He was born and raised to do this. The kill was the reason he lived, and he'd forgotten that.
One of the dead shuffled and kicked the pipe in his direction. It rolled to him, and he grabbed it and swung it up into the head of his closest target.
Moving his hands with mechanical precision, he took them down methodically, removing the closest threats first and shoving others back so he could break spinal cords and crush skulls.
Each target was the same. The look, the movement, it became a regimen. They each looked at him with no regard other than predatory, and they must have recognized a similarity in him because he could have sworn they looked at him differently. They looked at him with a familiarity, as if they knew him, and he thought they were afraid.
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