by Lucas Cole
We all, except Kimbrough, turn to find a group of blues in the kitchen. At their head is Peter.
I stand, Carly noting my deference. She and Gershom also stand. “This is Peter Chan, chief of the blue brigade and our host.” I introduce Gershom and Carly and I am happy to see her keeping her hands in plain view and away from her weapon.
Peter nods, then approaches Kimbrough and, with some difficulty, bends a knee to bring the blue chief down to Kimbrough’s level. Peter motions toward Kimbrough’s canteen and then, canteen in hand, stands once more. He takes a small swallow and we watch as the skin of his face softens and glows with health and the cataract-like haze fades from his dark eyes. In his unexpected baritone, Peter speaks. “Argh…I…am pleased to meet you. Welcome to Station C.”
Good for you, Peter, I think, relishing the flush creeping along Carly’s startled face. But give her some credit, for she politely nods. “Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chan.”
Gershom stands and offers a small bow. “I hope to learn much from you, Peter. And to help where I can.”
“I, as well,” Carly says, practically giving allegiance to a deadhead chieftain. Miracle upon miracle.
Peter smiles and bows, ever so slightly, in return. “Yurghh…excuse me. You…are most gracious.”
Peter is a born leader, I now realize. Not just a station manager, but a diplomat when it is appropriate. He must have been quite a character in life. Perhaps he will be again. I must not underestimate him—either as friend or foe. As with everything on Sybaris, I must deal with him carefully.
Fully gorged on the food paste and the refreshing water, I decide another basic function takes precedence. It’s time for a trip to the nearest lavatory. When Kimbrough insists he must make the same trip and begs me to transport him there, I decide that getting Kimbrough his own transportation is a must.
“Where are you going?” Carly asks as I strap Kimbrough to my back. The hated straps are once again digging into my sore shoulder and back muscles. “Don’t you think we should stick together?”
“Yes. I do. But where I go, you cannot follow.” I’m beginning to sound like Gershom. I explain my destination and she acquiesces. “After that, I am going to the medical clinic to scrounge for some much-needed supplies. I’ll meet you and Gershom in the cafeteria. Okay?”
She nods, but doesn’t say anything. She fears the blues. The deadheads. And with reason, I realize. How far can a human really trust them?
“Gershom, do you need to relieve yourself?”
“Not at this time.”
“Will you escort Carly to the women’s latrine and back to the cafeteria?”
“I’ve been her constant companion since we escaped Station A,” he says. “I will not desert her now.”
I nod brusquely and head out, wondering if Gershom meant to be sarcastic. Was he implying I deserted her? Or him? No matter.
After taking care of business in the lavatory—a procedure involving assisting Kimbrough that I will not detail here—I strap him back on and head for the medical clinic. Since the dimensions of the stations are basically identical, I believe I know the location. A shuffled sound behind me causes me to pause.
“Someone following,” I whisper.
“Or something.”
“Thanks, doc. I’m not nervous enough.” I pull my weapon, then remember it’s empty. I put it back into the holster. The shuffling stops, then resumes. Whoever—whatever—it is, is coming around the bend in the corridor.
From the shadows, emerges Mary.
She stops a foot away, her proximity unseemingly intimate, her bizarre facial tension and contortion repulsive. It is all I can do to not step back, but I do not wish to offend her.
“Kimbrough. Give me your canteen.”
I feel him fumbling around. “It has tea in it, you know. The weed-drink.”
“Yes, yes, I know. I’m not an idiot.”
He stretches his arm around and I grab the canteen. “Needn’t be so touchy,” he murmurs.
I uncap the canteen and take a slight sip. The warmth courses down my throat and into my chest. If we can market this stuff, it will rival the price of ore. I hand the canteen to Mary. “Drink.”
She hesitates, then reaches out and accepts. She takes a small sip.
“More.”
“Careful, Ron. You don’t want to kill one of them, now that we’ve gotten this far.”
But I am focused on the creature a foot from my face. “Drink.”
She raises the canteen to her parched pale lips and drinks. One swallow, two…I grab her wrist.
“Enough. That’s good.”
I retrieve the canteen and cap it. “Here, doc.” I hand it back over my shoulder.
The blue female’s face is flushing, softening, her lips gaining color, almost red. The white haze in her eyes vanishes, replaced with the lustrous blue. Amazing to watch, her hair lightens in color to a lustrous flaxen gold, seems to thicken, the patches of scalp gone. She breathes deeply, her nostrils dilated, her thorax filling with air. She totters a moment, leaning against me and I reflexively put my arms around her. Her body is soft in all the right places and I feel a response to her that I am ashamed of, yet find pleasure in. She’s a woman, after all. Isn’t she?
“Mershh…Muh…my word!” she says and her voice is surprisingly low, throaty, but very feminine. “What…what a rush!”
“A rush?” I laugh and she smiles in return. “Tell me—while you can talk. Tell me about you.” I realizing I am still clutching her and I reluctantly release her.
She makes such a typically female gesture—this person who, a minute ago, was a hideous zombie—as she moves aside a stray hair from her forehead. “My full name is…I’d almost forgotten. My name is Lucietta Venetia Mary Louden. I am…was a scientist. I worked with the reactors. Now, I’m a…”
“Never mind. I’m Ronald Crisp. The fellow behind me is—.”
“Just call me Kimbrough. Or doc. I was the physician assigned to this fiasco.” He extends his hand and I turn slightly, allowing them to shake.
Can’t let Kimbrough get started. “Lucietta. This tea made from the plateau weed. It’s a wonderful remedy, but short-lived. The woman you saw back there. She is a soil scientist and a botanist. She might be able to formulate a permanent cure.”
“That…that would be a miracle.” She looks into my eyes. “Please. Call me Mary.”
“Okay. And I’m Ron.” I take her hand in mine. The skin is still dry, the nails cracked and jagged. Some things the tea did not reach. The process needed work. “Be patient, Mary. There are some things that need to be accomplished before we can concentrate on a cure for…your condition.”
“I understand. Where are you going?”
“Can you direct me the shortest route to the med lab? I’ve got to get something off my back.”
“Very funny, Ron,” Kimbrough says. “I’d forgotten your dry sense of humor. At my expense.”
She points the way. “We better hurry before it is totally dark.” She starts forward, then hesitates, turns back to me.
“What is it?”
“I—I want to tell you, while I can speak. The pit, the behavior of some of my people, the killing and other things…not all of us participate in such things. You understand, Major?”
“Ron. Call me Ron. And yes, I understand what you’re telling me, Mary.”
“Good.” She leads us unerringly to the med lab and I am happy to see that the place has not been ransacked. The metal cabinet doors are in place. A gurney lies to one side. But the prize I seek is parked in a corner: a motorized wheelchair unit. Complete with treaded wheels that will even travel across flat sand, though I doubt they can make it up a dune.
I turn my back. “Look over there, doc. In the corner. What do you see?”
“Freedom!”
“Relief is what I call it, doc. You’re not getting any lighter. Let’s see if the thing works.”
We make it back while there is a faint light coming thr
ough the cafeteria window frames. All the glass is shattered, probably from the concussion of the explosion. The roof in this section of the station is intact, however.
Kimbrough’s wheelchair whirrs across the cafeteria floor and stops inches from the table where Gershom and Carly wait. I see a sudden tenseness on Carly’s face at the arrival of Mary by my side.
“Ah, a beautiful woman approaches…but we have met before?” Gershom says, rising like a gentleman.
“Yes, I’m Mary. I…have been transformed into my prior persona. For a time.”
“Indeed you have, ma’am. Nice to meet you, Mary. This young lady to my side is…”
“Carly,” Carly says. “You’ve made an amazing recovery.”
I pull out a chair—a gesture that Carly notices—for Mary and we join them.
“It’s the tea,” I say.
“Tea?”
I explain the brew we concocted and this draws Carly’s full attention.
“Fascinating. But the effects are brief?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. First, we have to understand the effects before we can hope to augment them. I need the lab to be functioning.”
“First, we should get some light working,” Kimbrough says, “so we are not bumping against each other in the dark.”
“I do not think Peter will allow this,” Mary says. “Light will draw attention from the ones you call the reds.”
“I see. Do they come this far? I hate to think about a night attack from those monsters.” Kimbrough glances at the darkening corridors.
“Sometimes. But they are murrh…uh, more…interested in…Station A.” Her voice was failing. So soon.
The light fades and then we are plunged into total darkness.
“So we wait in the dark,” Carly says. “For what?”
“For the dawn. And for a meeting with Peter. To discuss plans.”
“What plans?”
“That would be telling. Be patient.”
“That’s just like you,” Carly hisses. “Be patient, after what I’ve been through. Following your orders.”
“My orders?”
“Yes. I know. I learned.”
“Peace,” Gershom says. “We have time. Tell Ron what we have learned. He needs to know everything before he meets with Peter.”
“I’ll trade,” Carly says. “Information for information. Tell us your plans—once and for all—and I’ll fill you in. And I’ll even work on your precious tea. I’m sure you’re interested in that, Ronny.”
Tread carefully, Carly, I think. I need you, but there are limits.
“Did you hear me, Ron?”
Sitting there in the dark I relive flashes of the brutal but necessary violence I have enacted against my opposition, all the conniving, the betrayals, the Machiavellian complexities that got me this far. The time spent in the Imperial Forces, the training in logistics, taking orders from the likes of Spangler and Roman politicians. All to get to this point. This point…as dismal as it might seem to the others…carries as much potential for success as for failure. They just lack the vision to see it. If Gershom could see the color of my soul, he would kick the dust off his sandal—or his boots rather—against me in contempt and horror.
I make my voice as agreeable as I can. “I’m sorry. Certainly. We should be transparent as much as we can. But I would like you to go first. How did you end up here? What happened to you and Gershom? And to Navarro?”
“Navarro.” Carly’s voice, no longer defiant or angry, carries sadness and grief. “Poor Navarro.”
“The reds got him?”
“Yes. Gershom decided to join Navarro on the survey. One of the soil surveys you assigned me.” She waits for me to object or deny, but I see no point in feeding her anger. I wait and she continues. “Right after we landed and Todd shot that deadhead—.”
“Abe.”
“Abe. After Todd shot him, I wanted to be reassigned. I sent a message to EMC, directly to Rome. I received a reply after you left the station. The message told me that you were the officer in charge. You were the one who selected Navarro and me in the first place. It was you who would have to approve my termination without prejudice.”
“Without prejudice would mean full pay for no work. I don’t think so.”
She presses on. “You picked me out from all the Rome files. Why?”
I wonder what kind of impression this is making upon Mary and Kimbrough. Gershom, somehow is not a concern; he seems the least judgmental person I’ve ever met. To a fault. “Usefulness, availability, compatibility. You ranked high on all three.”
“Yeah. Anyway…Todd meant to keep us on station. I believe he meant to control me as well, though I clearly refuted his advances.”
“Oh? Even after you moved out on me? I thought—.”
“I know what you thought. In any case, I decided that, deadheads or no deadheads, I would go ahead with the soil surveys and complete my task. Navarro said he would accompany me and Gershom decided it was time to come with us; it was the only way he could get out of the brig. He feared that Todd might have him…disposed of.
“You believe he would have eliminated you, Gershom?” I ask.
“Eliminated? Let us not mince words.” Gershom’s voice is uncharacteristically harsh. “He would have killed me and attributed my death to the reds. Or perhaps to you, if you had not left so unexpectedly. Todd is a very disturbed man. He desires to wipe out every opponent, human or otherwise, and gain complete control of this planet. He will abuse his own people if necessary. Out of allegiance to Rome. A true citizen. I have heard tales…”
“Yeah, I heard them, too.” For a moment, I thought Gershom was describing me. Disturbing. Todd and I are a world apart.
Carly continues. “Navarro and I left before sunrise, both of us packing full gear. We left a message for Todd that we would be conducting surveys in the North and Northeast sectors and that we would be back by dusk. I nearly died of fright when we saw Gershom tracking us.”
“I was not going back,” Gershom says. “I did my work at the station. I felt I had to reach the mutated men and women in the desert regions. These so-called deadheads. No offense to you, Mary. But I needed to learn the truth about them, about this supposed return from death and—.”
“That bugs you, Gershom. This notion that they’ve come back from the other side.”
A pause. Gershom says, “Yes. It bugs me, as you say. The Bible says that it is given for man to die but once, and then to be judged. Men cannot die twice.”
“Look around, Gershom. I believe you’re wrong.”
Another pause, this one in deference to Gershom.
“You are so rude,” Carly says. “I’m sorry, Gershom.”
But the prophet is not so easily offended or put off. “That is what I have come to see.”
“Besides whatever is going on here, the Bible itself tells of several people brought back by prophets and apostles and of course by Jesus of Nazareth. These people were raised from the dead. I assume they eventually died a second death.”
“Ah, you’ve read the Bible.”
“Yes. And I’ve studied history books. Imperial officers are taught history and important religions if they are to be successful in managing people…governing or controlling them.”
“Then, you may know that the Apostle Paul was the one who wrote the scripture I quoted. Paul was well aware of the relatively few people raised from the dead. Those people were raised by God through his agents. They were the exceptions. But as to the judgment…there will be no exceptions.”
“When comes this judgment?”
“After the millennial reign. The reign of our Messiah began ten years ago—following the cataclysms and world war that destroyed much of Old Earth. So, the final judgment will take place in approximately nine hundred and ninety years from now. There is peace on Earth these days and the world has been healed, though a new Earth and a new universe will come about after the judgment. It will reach even this far planet
. No one will escape it.”
“I will be dust long before that.”
“There will be a second resurrection,” he replies, his voice somber and warning. “Some to rewards, others to everlasting contempt and damnation. You will be there, Ron, in one of those two groups. We will all be there.”
I decide to shift the conversation and turn my face to where I think Carly is. “I’m sorry I hijacked the conversation. You were saying that Navarro died on the survey?”
“He and I were taking soil samples. Gershom was helping us collect small rocks and crystals. Todd and several of his men caught up with us, just before the reds showed up. Todd threatened to shoot me if I didn’t immediately come back with him. Navarro and I refused, saying we had an important mission to accomplish and that he could leave some of the men to guard us. At that point, I had no doubt as to my fate if I went back with Todd. Todd was furious that we would disobey his commands. Just then, Spangler and his red brigade appeared on the crest of a dune. Spangler called for a parlay—.”
“A parlay? Spangler?”
“Yes. He wanted to discuss the ore. He wanted to cut a deal. Todd screamed insults at him and then fired at one of Spangler’s deadheads with a rifle, killing him. Todd was insane, laughing, taunting the reds as they started down the dune. Then Todd turned his rifle on Navarro and shot him in the leg. ‘Let’s see you outrun the reds, now,’ Todd said. And then Todd and his men fled back to the Station, leaving us to the reds. Gershom and I tried to help Navarro run. In this direction. Navarro fell and told us to keep running. He pulled his weapon and shot at the reds as they came. I don’t think he hit any of them, he was so scared. They fell upon him like animals. They tore him to pieces and…and they ate him. They changed as they did it.” She pauses.
“You okay?”
Her voice is trembling as she continues. “They became even more horrible, because they began to resemble men, humans, even as they continued to devour what was left of Navarro. Their mindless feast gave Gershom and me the time to escape. We stumbled into a ravine and followed it here, hidden from view. We’ve been hiding here since then. Three days.”