by Lucas Cole
My first shot takes the second guard through the upper arm—what Dr. Kimbrough would call the humerus. The hand holding the guard’s gun spasms wildly, the gunshots firing off to the side, the whoosh of the pellets passing by my right ear. I shoot him again in the same site and his entire right arm detaches and falls to the floor, the hand still holding the pistol. There is no blood—just brown grainy dust pouring from his torso where the thin arm had been attached.
The guard grits his foul teeth and his yellow eyes roll wildly from side to side in the manner of a trapped animal desperately seeking an escape route. He glances at the exit and back to my gun.
I advance on him cautiously. I am quite aware that his remaining hand could rip my head from my neck. “Does it hurt?” I ask him. “Your shoulder. Do you feel pain?”
He stares at me dumbly.
“Does it hurt?”
“Nargh,” is his answer. Meaning, I assume: no.
I move my aim to his chest and squeeze the trigger. The pellet punches a hole through the creature’s sternum with a brittle cracking sound. The concussion knocks him back against the wall, where he stands, stupidly fingering the hole in his chest with his remaining hand.
“Interesting,” I comment. “Still alive. Still functional.”
“Stop it,” Dr. Kimbrough shouts. “This is unnecessary. Inhumane.”
“After what they’ve done to you?” I ask, taking my attention off the creature for a moment.
The deadhead lunges for me and I snap a shot off, the impact striking him in the chest again, pushing him back. I fire another shot, blasting his head into tissue fragments and red-brown dust.
His body totters back against the wall and then slides to the floor.
“The nice thing about these compressed air guns is that they’re virtually silent. There may be more reds outside.”
“That was not needed,” Kimbrough says.
“You’re breaking my heart, doc.” I reach down and unbuckle the holster from the guard. I wrap the gun belt around my waist and retrieve the pistol from the severed arm on the floor. “But tell me. Do you want to stay here and face the Red King when he finds his troops lying about—or do you want to come with me?”
I don’t wait for his answer, but start unwrapping the tattered uniform from the first guard. “Have to make a backpack to carry you in. Fortunately, you don’t look like you weigh a whole lot.”
“You’ll carry me out of here? To what purpose?”
“We’ll get you back to civilization where they can give you new limbs. You’ll be as good as new. Better, maybe.”
“I prefer my own legs. Titaneurom. Neurosynchronized. They transmit nerve impulses. I can even wiggle my toes. The artificial toes. Help me find my legs. Please.”
“Can’t doc. Who knows where they stashed them. We can come back later. We’ve got to go.”
“Please.”
I ignore him. I examine the shirt, testing the fabric. “I think it’ll hold.” I glance down at the dead—really dead—guard. “Funny how they make an effort to wear clothes. Modest zombies? What do you think?” I smile, but Kimbrough stares at me.
“What is the cost? The price for rescuing me?” I can see repressed hope in his eyes battling with his newfound distaste for me.
My smile is gone. Perhaps it is best if he stays somewhat leery of me. To let him believe that I could leave him…or even dispatch him myself. “Your support, doc. Your life for medical—and research—support. I want control of this planet; so do Spangler and Todd. You’ll have to throw your support to one camp or another.”
“What about Elemental?”
“They get the mineral rights. The ore. I get the planet.”
“You want to own your own planet? This godforsaken place?”
“It’s got potential. And I like my privacy.” I hear scraping at the entrance. I hurry to the wall and yank my little throwing knife free, then slip it back into the buckle sheath. I pull my gun and the other weapon I confiscated from the guard. I move to the side of the door. “Decide now, doc. I’m leaving with or without you.”
“Don’t leave me here.”
The hatch pushes open and the first guard steps inside. My shot explodes his head into a reddish puff of debris.
“Just give me a moment, doc,” I say, as I step through the door with both pistols raised.
I count five of them—more than I expected. Two to the right, one straight ahead, two coming up from the left. The one straight ahead is quick and fairly limber. He draws his weapon and fires and I feel a sharp pain in my ribs. The pain scares me and my adrenaline pumps through my veins—my heart rate energizing me but throwing my aim off. I fire back and see it impact on the creature’s chest. One of the deadheads on my right grabs me and flings me back against the research center wall, the back of my head slamming into the structure. I fire at him and see his head disappear in a brown haze. They are not all armed, I tell myself! Move, fire, or die.
One of them fires at me and misses, the pellet clunking into the wall beside. I am backpedaling, lunging away from them, both my weapons more deliberately aimed and firing at the grotesquely grimacing faces of the guards trying to get at me. Three brown explosions—three headless guards are down. A pellet slams into my left shoulder, the horrific pain paralyzing my arm and bringing me to my knees.
Even in shock, I notice the look of triumph on the two remaining guard faces. Surprisingly human emotions, I think, as I raise my weapon and shoot the nearest guard in the head. No explosion…just blood running down his contorted face. A recent convert. He drops to his knees and then collapses onto the sand.
The remaining deadhead points his weapon but the hammer clicks on an empty chamber. He throws the gun at me and turns to run. His shambling gait is slow but he is making my aim difficult. I shoot him in the back knocking him to the ground. He starts crawling on all fours, glancing back at me in fear and it is his fear that makes me hesitate. He fears! He feels! My thoughts clamor at me, weakening my resolve.
But fear is not a lofty emotion; it does not elevate an animal to the status of man.
I struggle to my feet, my head light and dizzy, blood streaming from my ribcage and my left arm. I aim and fire once more and the last guard lies still and lifeless, his skull shattered and oozing brown stuff. Really lifeless, this time.
Two things I noticed about these creatures. One, they all wore red fabric somewhere on their uniforms. Two, they were marines I had served with. Spangler’s elite. I wonder if they recognized me before I put them out of their misery.
Kimbrough doesn’t have the use of his legs, so he is not much help to me at present. I will have to take the time to patch myself up or bleed to death. I pick my way through the clump of inert, headless zombies and back to where Kimbrough waits. I see his ashen face as I walk in. He sighs with relief, no doubt expecting an angry deadhead to come finish him off.
“Is there a first aid kit in here?” I ask Kimbrough and then I faint.
Go to Beginning
CHAPTER XI
Backpack
I awake to find Kimbrough, a new bruise on his forehead, lying beside me. “What are you doing down here? What happened?” My bleeding has stopped and sterile compression bandages cover my shoulder wound.
“I came down to help you. I had to throw myself off the gurney and drag myself to the first aid kit. It was very difficult.” He has several abrasions on his cheeks and signs of a recent nosebleed.
“Sorry, doc. That’s…pretty amazing.”
“If you don’t survive, I don’t survive.”
“Yeah. I see.” I am able to stand, though I feel about substantial as a leaf in the wind. Of course, there are no leafs on Sybaris. But, I digress…put it down to blood loss.
I start picking up the clothes I had stripped from the guard’s body.
“What are you doing?”
“Making a backpack. More like a papoose, actually.” It will have to hold about fifty pounds of half-man, I figure. I help
Kimbrough into the papoose. It’s like dressing a rather large, malformed doll.
“I don’t see how you can manage this,” Kimbrough says as I lift him and turn him around, slipping my arms though loops of clothing, so that we are back-to-back.
“Ugh.” The straps from the backpack—or papoose—pull against my rib and shoulder wounds. I adjust the straps and hope the motion doesn’t start me bleeding again. I also hope the dry Sybaris climate, with its low bacteria count, will keep infection from setting in. “I’m ready, doc. Here we go.” And we exit Station B.
The wind has come up from the south, creating the weird rust-colored sandy mist of Sybaris, but that’s okay. It offers us cover from Red Guard sentries. I start a fast-paced march, slogging through the sand toward what I think is a westerly direction.
“There are ravines, an entire network of them to the west,” Kimbrough says. “You can follow them to the Solemn Hills, a mountain range.”
It’s pretty weird to hear him talking directly behind me, to feel the vibration of his voice through my back. It’s closer to my fellow man than I like to be.
I come to a small ravine snaking its way in the general direction I need to go. The winding channel it creates through the desert is no more than four feet deep, but sand dunes rise along the sides. I slide down into the ravine and note the firm gravel basin that forms its floor. Good. No more shuffling through the sand.
“I am sorry to slow you down,” Kimbrough says.
“That’s okay, doc. You can watch for the enemy. After all, you’ve got my back, right?”
A short, dry laugh emanates from my passenger. “You have the strangest sense of humor.”
“That’s right. I’m a real card. A wild card.” For a long while after this, we do not speak, aware of the danger around us, the only sounds in this world the soft whistle of Sybaris’s wind and the grinding of my boots against the pebbles of the ravine bed. I try to maintain a slow jog and put miles between us and the Red Guard. One other prominent sound becomes more noticeable: the ragged breathing noise I make.
How likely is it that I can safely find my way to the Solemn Hills? No water—two canteens I found were empty and the water supply was not functioning—little ammunition, and weighed down by the peculiar passenger on my back. Already my back is hurting from the straps digging into my skin and my wounds are aching, but I am thankful for the reddish-gold sand dunes forming the walls to either side, concealing us from our enemies. Again, Sybaris reaches out to me with her caressing breezes. The pain seems less, my anxieties fading.
I do not feel any more urge to jump into a heap of ore, so perhaps I am not becoming zombified, after all.
As for Sybaris, there was nowhere else I wanted to be. Really, with what was going on back on Old Earth, there was nowhere else I could be. A ruthless dictator who pronounced himself Emperor rules a nation of self-indulgent, corrupt people on Old Rome. And just possibly, if Gerhsom is right, the Messiah rules Old Earth. If judgment is awaiting me in either place—awaiting a former Imperial officer and sworn enemy of the Christian movement and now a rogue facilitator attempting a coup—I would find no mercy anywhere.
Here, then, at the end of the universe, on the most distant colony of New Rome, the risk is high, but so are the stakes. I just have to stay alive, deal with armies of deadheads, and outwit a couple of megalomaniac station managers. “You enjoying the ride? Doc?” Then I hear him snoring, no doubt exhausted and lulled to sleep by the jouncing produced by my jogging. “So much for watching my back.”
My pace slows to a brisk walk as I follow the weaving gravelly ravine, hopefully westward, though I have no clear idea about direction. The walls of the ravine are hard now, formed by levels of shale and what look like fossils. A fossil record, paleontologists on Old Earth would call it. There were no dinosaurs on Sybaris, as far as initial EMC studies showed. But there are bones. Despite the possibility of pursuit on my heels, I can’t help but stop for a closer look.
Bleached imprints of an ancient Sybaris life form lie impregnated within the ravine wall. My fingers trace the bony outline: what look like wings here, a beak there, even—on closer inspection—what seem to be petrified feathers. A bird.
Looking at the cloudless sky, I see no sign of life. And around me, just sand. Very sparse vegetation, certainly no trees on Sybaris. How could a bird—?
The skull of the bird fossil explodes, a fragment smacking me in the face and just missing my eye. Another small impact pocks a hole in the fossil’s wing.
“Crisp!” It’s Spangler’s voice. “You’re beginning to annoy me!”
Dr. Kimbrough is awake. “Red guards,” he shouts. “On the rim behind us. They’re shooting at us!”
“No kidding!” I run, weaving from side to side, making it harder for them to aim.
“Run! Run!” the doctor shouts.
“What the hell do you think I’m doing?” I waste precious moments to look back. About ten of them are spread out, lumbering down the dunes after us. Spangler is on the crest of the dune and is sighting at me with a rifle. Two of them are firing pistols, the rest armed with wicked-looking bars of metal gleaming in the sun. One even wields what looks like a butcher knife probably taken from the station’s kitchen.
I need to shut up, look where I’m going, and conserve my strength. The ravine turns sharply to the right and the shots stop, their view of us impeded for a moment. I maintain the pace, hoping that Spangler hasn’t sent guards to outflank us. My breath burns in my chest like acid and my brain doesn’t seem to be getting enough blood, but I keep it up. My legs are weak and I’ve started my arm wound bleeding again, the blood trickling down onto the sand.
Soon, I will be exhausted. Then, I will pull my weapons and take some of the zombies down. But I’ll save two pellets—one for the doc and one for me. I’ll die a whole man, at least, and not a sawed-off remnant like Kimbrough.
The path straightens again—and in the distance, rise the purple peaks of the Solemn Hills. Miles away. Too far. Too far. I keep running, but the breath whistles from my throat and through my mouth. Too far: the words form a cadence to help me force my weakening legs to keep time.
Too-far. Too-far. Right-left. Right-left. Too far. The situation is hopeless, ludicrous, and I would laugh at myself, but it would use up what strength I had left.
A female deadhead guard, this one missing her left hand, but carrying a knife in her right, slides down the ravine wall in front of us. She lands in a heap on the ravine bed floor and struggles to regain her footing.
She looks familiar; yes—I served with her in the Aqua Sulis campaign. “Julie? Lieutenant Phelps?”
She actually smiles at me with yellow broken teeth as she rises, blocking my path and raising her knife. She still wears her rank insignia on her lapels, unmistakable silver 1st Lieutenant bars.
Without slowing my pace, I pull my pistol and shoot her in the head.
Hit an artery, I think, as blood sprays from Julie’s head wound, splattering me. Her blood is hot on my face; she was a relatively fresh specimen. A shame…but I have just taken down one of the Red King’s officers. That aspect of it is good. And I keep running, the cadence beating in my temples: too-far, too-far, too-far…Kimbrough weighs a ton and the world is graying around me. We’re not going to make it.
The ravine floor descends rapidly, the ground under my pounding feet becoming rock hard. Ahead is a sinkhole, a black hole several feet in diameter, its opening lined with plant roots and weeds, giving the hole a whiskered look, like the open maw of a monstrous beast. It offers refuge, the only refuge Kimbrough and I are going to get and I take it.
“Doc…hang on…we’re gonna take a tumble.” I plunge head first into the hole and total darkness.
Go to Beginning
CHAPTER XII
Subterranean
We tumble over rock and gravel, Kimbrough’s unprotected head taking the impact as I roll over and over, Kimbrough screaming in pain—then suddenly silent. Dead. He must be dea
d. We are still sliding. My head slams against something hard and I’m out for a moment, but the pain revives me.
Still sliding. Now, I’m screaming, loud enough for both of us—the wound in my left arm scraping open beneath me, my fractured kneecap smashing into rock as hard and unyielding as steel. I slide farther, always downward, until a boulder stops me with a crushing impact to my ribs. I cannot breathe. I am suffocating…and then I can breathe but wish I couldn’t, each breath wracking my chest. Let me die. Let me die before they get to me down here.
The pain lessens from excruciating to terrible, then finally to a blessed numbness. Shock, maybe. My cheek lies against the cold stone cavern floor, my mouth full of dirt and blood. I clear my throat and spit. “Doc. Kimbrough. You still with me?”
No answer. Finally, a moan.
“Kimbrough?” And then there are sounds from above. My intestines grip me in fear—a type of primordial dread—as here in the dark I wait for the ripping, tearing grasp of a deadhead.
More sounds: gravel being dislodged, shuffling footsteps, the sliding noise of one of Spangler’s freaks as it tumbles down the shaft directly toward us. I try to get up, but can’t. “I’m done for, doc. Can’t go any further.”
“Get up,” Kimbrough murmurs. “Please. Don’t let them get us. Not again. Not again.” He starts whimpering.
“Doc. Get the gun. Reach down to my holster. Get it. Finish it for both of us.”
The scrabbling sounds are getting closer, louder.
Spangler’s voice calls out from above. “Crisp. Sound off, man. We’ll find you, bring you out. You don’t want to die like a stinking animal in a hole.”
Another spasm of pain in my left arm, then the pain eases. Great ending, I think. In a pit with zombies. Hell must be like this.
I whisper to Kimbrough, “You figure they can see in the dark, doc? Huh?” I start laughing, then stop. It causes too much pain in my ribs and the still-sane part of me tells me to shut up.
Kimbrough groans and then starts babbling, sounding hysterical. “First my legs. Now my arms. I can’t move my arms. My neck—it must be broken. And I can’t see. Am I blind now? Blind and crippled? Am I being punished? Is there no mercy? None on this miserable planet?”