by A. R. Daun
Annika had burst into the bridge just as the feasting had began. Five of the creatures had looked up as she entered then stopped at the far side of the corridor. She had screamed then, more in distress and anguish than real terror when she realized what was in front of her, and she had screamed even louder when she glimpsed the prostrate form of Gani lying next to the center command console. There were no thoughts about danger in her mind, no regrets at that moment about her failure to come earlier and try to prevent this tragedy. In fact, there had been nothing but an overpowering grief that drew her to Gani's body, one that wrapped her in a quicksand of despair and pulled her down onto the floor next to his body. She neither knew nor cared that the creatures had fled the carnage as she had run into the room.
She had known loss before, but never one so immediate and so horrific. The pain of close family being taken from her; that she had known. Her husband and young daughter had been coming home from a visit to her in-laws when their car had been side-swiped by a veering semi-truck before smashing into a tree. The driver of the truck had not slept for more than 12 hours and had been nodding at the wheel. Her ten-year old daughter had died instantly, but her husband had lingered on in intensive care for the next two weeks. Annika had fled her country and her former life after the end had finally come.
And now here she was again. Alone. Standing vigil over the death of the first person in a long while who had loved her unconditionally, though he had never dared show it. Annika wondered at the depths of her feelings for someone who she had known only formally, and perhaps only at the edges of a budding friendship. She chuckled softly to herself, then sniffed.
“I know why,” she said to him in a conversational tone, and she bent down and kissed his forehead softly. “You were going to take me someplace far from here, weren't you darling? We were going to be together. We were going to be married, and live in a house far far away from Skid Row, to a place that's always green...a place....”
She trailed off, then giggled madly.
When she was young she had once watched a movie called The Little Shop of Horrors with some friends. It was a funny little production with good songs and special effects. The highlight for her companions had been a jive-talking alien plant that looked like a cross between a Venus Flytrap and one of those aromatic Corpse Flowers which bloomed sporadically in some hothouse. But the clearest thing she remembered about it was the female lead daydreaming about escaping the drudgery and despair of her urban existence for the seeming paradise of suburban life.
Annika heard a noise behind her and turned her head to look. There were people crowded in the corridor leading away from the bridge. Perhaps a dozen of them, with their wide disbelieving eyes and ghastly faces all turned towards her, although not one single person uttered a sound or made any movement at all. They were like frozen statues, dwellers of some stilled time, but Annika had eyes for only one of them.
“You!” She said accusingly, her green eyes blazing like emerald fire. She carefully and gently laid Gani's head back down on the bridge floor, then slowly got up. For one terrible moment she felt a wave of dizziness wash over her, and was afraid she might simply collapse back onto the floor. But the feeling passed and she turned to the crowd.
“What have you done?” She yelled at the stowaway. “What in God's name have you done?”
She pointed behind her.
“Look...look...” She said. “They're dead. They're all dead because of you. Because of these things that you've brought along with you. Why did you have to come? Why did you have to take away Gani?”
“Lady Annika...” Richard began, but Annika stepped closer and slapped him hard enough to jerk his head to the side.
“Tell...me...why,” she screamed at him, slapping his face with each word.
“Stop that!” Another woman's voice rang out, and Annika turned and saw a beautiful dark-skinned woman coming forward.
Annika bared her teeth at the intruder, and the black woman stopped and eyed her warily.
“Please,” the woman tried again, holding her hands palm up. “He didn't cause this. All he's doing is trying to help. You must see that! He has nothing to do with these...things...”
A large man stepped forward beside the black woman. Annika realized it was the restaurant manager, a sleazy member of the cruise staff who had once made the mistake of coming onto her. She vaguely recalled his name as Papakis or Pappadakis or some other tongue-twisting moniker.
“It's true, Ms. Hendriksen,” the man said in a deep gravelly voice. “Without Mr...ah....Richard's help we probably would not have made it this far.”
“All I know,” Annika told them, glancing back and forth between the two who had confronted her. “All I know is that they appeared after he did. And why should we believe him anyway? Who is he? Where did he come from?”
She turned back to face the stowaway, who lifted his own palms up placatingly.
“Lady Annika,” he said for the second time, and again she slapped him before he could get anything else out. But this time something was different, and he was lifted bodily and thrown backwards by the force of the blow, bowling over several of the people behind, who screamed and scrambled to get out of the way. Two people grabbed her arm, and she swatted them aside like she would mosquitoes, not even glancing to see who they were.
Annika stepped forward and stood over the stowaway. The crowd parted and formed a fearful circle around the two. In her peripheral vision she could see the woman and the restaurant manager staring at her with wide eyes, not sure what to do.
“You,” she said, and her voice was cold as ice, bereft of all intonation. She could feel some power surging within her, and coming to the fore. The lights on the bridge flickered, then shut down, as did all the consoles. Everything slowed to a crawl.
Annika could see the black woman...Ammara, that was her name....she could see Ammara move protectively towards the stowaway, her lips crying out his name at a register too low and slow for Annika to fully hear.
No matter. She grasped the young woman's wrist and suddenly she had full control over the susuwatari that swarmed over the other's body in their trillions. Her awareness dropped down to the microscopic level, seeing the girl as nothing but a vast conglomeration of interacting cells lumped into tissues and sculpted into pulsating organs; then farther down into the molecular realm, where multitudes of myosin protein filaments formed and broke cross-bridges with their actin counterparts in an an endless dance that caused the muscles of the young girl to propel her forward in the world of the macroscopic. Annika grimaced, and suddenly Ammara's leg muscles locked painfully and she dropped with a grunt to the hard floor. There would be no more interruptions tonight.
She turned back to see the stowaway looking up at her with his bright blue eyes, and she could sense no hate in them, nor fear, nor even regret. They were as calm as the clear blue waters of a reef-sheltered Caribbean bay, and just as deep. A smile lifted the corner of one aristocratically-thin lip.
“You don't need to strike me anymore, Lady Annika,” he said. “I was wondering how it would play out, and I'm glad to see that we might have a chance for a happy ending this time. Unfortunately, sometimes the knowledge of what I have to do bubbles up too slowly from the depths of my lost memories, and I can't prevent the tragic chain of events that result in the total annihilation of the First Ark.”
“But this time I'm ready. This time I give my life for yours.” He said softly, and reached out with one hand to her. He turned his head slightly and his eyes met those of the stricken Ammara, who was still vainly trying to get up.
“Goodbye...” He started to say, but at that moment his finger tip touched Annika's hand, and an electric sizzle seemed to leap up from one to the other. He arched his back, his feet drumming spasmodically on the floor, his mouth wide open in a soundless scream.
“Noooooooooo!!!!!” Ammara cried, and although her legs were still locked she dragged herself painfully towards them with her bare arms.
/> He glowed. For one brief second he became as bright as the noontime sun, and as the crowd averted their eyes and his body disintegrated into its component particles, he generated an extremely high-powered radio frequency pulse that instantly fried all vital electronics within a few hundred meters radius.
Annika felt a sudden cold emptiness flare up within herself, and she staggered slightly in surprise. When she regained her balance, she realized that the things inside her, the susuwatari, were suddenly gone, or at least inactive. She felt an overpowering sensation of relief wash over her, and it was all she could do to steady herself and look around.
The stowaway Richard was gone, and not a single trace of his presence was left. There was neither charring on the floor, nor any visible remnants of his body scattered around. It was as if he had never existed, though in that last few milliseconds of his life he had managed to transfer several megabytes of data to Annika's networked susuwatari, the gist of which had trickled into her conscious mind just before the nanites were inactivated by the EMP burst.
The main lights had gone out of the bridge, but green emergency photoluminescent light suddenly bathed the room in a soft glow, and she could see that the girl Ammara was slowly getting to her feet, helped by the restaurant manager. Her eyes were glazed and shocked. Behind them Annika spotted the other susuwatari-infested woman named Diwata, who was holding the hand of what looked to be a teenage boy to one side, and flanked by an grizzled old man on the other side.
“Listen to me,” she said, and fixed each one of them in turn with eyes that burned like cold green fire. “The creatures are gone, but only for a short while. You have maybe an hour, probably not more than two, to find as many survivors as you can and get them and yourselves away from this ship.”
She licked her lips, thinking quickly, trying to glean the last tidbits of information from the packet of information thrown desperately at her by the stowaway before he sacrificed himself.
“You need to get as many people as you can together, start a new community and protect it from these creatures. I don't think there's anyone else left, but if you do meet other people, take them in. Civilization as we know it is gone, and all the old machinery will slowly rust away to nothing. You need to get the basics of food production and other essential services running by then.”
Annika stopped. She had seen a glimpse of a familiar face in the crowd.
“Edmund,” she called impatiently, and he came forward obediently from the crowd and stood attentively before her. She took his face in both hands and leaned forward.
“Yes, Ma'am?” He said, his dark eyes fixed on her.
“You will be my eyes and ears from now on my friend. Work with them.” She gestured vaguely at Pappadakis and the Lewis woman. “I trust you more than anyone else here. There will come a time when they will need your help. Your efficiency, your professionalism. Give it to them.”
“Yes Ma'am. I will.” Edmund said, the respect and even worship in his eyes plainly evident to everyone nearby.
“You aren't coming with us, Ms. Hendriksen?” Pappadakis asked. The woman named Lewis by his side merely glared at her, and Annika could almost feel the palpable waves of hatred that radiated out of the woman like heat from a furnace.
Annika turned away from them, suddenly indifferent to it all.
“No,” she said as she crouched down and sat and once again took Gani back in her arms. “My place is here.”
She turned her face back to them one last time, and her green eyes blazed.
“Go!” She commanded. “Go now before it's too late.”
The restaurant manager looked at her then nodded . He turned to the gathered crowd.
“Let's go people,” he ordered, his voice deepening. “Let's head on over to the midship stairs, and be constantly aware of the people around you.”
Annika heard them shuffling out, the sounds of their footfalls slowly dwindling in the distance. She never looked back, never once acknowledged their departure, but continued to cradle Gani in her arms and rock back and forth slowly. She crooned to him, then bent down to kiss him gently on the lips.
CHAPTER 25
Year 1 A.R.
Extract from the journals of Ammara Lewis
Our caravan of cars stretches for half a mile along interstate 95. It is rough going as we slowly weave our way between the stalled cars and trucks that are strewn like broken and empty toys in the wide highway. We travel on the edges of a wasteland, a vast and quiet world that for the first time in perhaps centuries is devoid of the harsh mechanical noises of human civilization. We go mostly in silence, our minds wandering like skittish birds on thoughts about the seemingly long ago past and the empty present, but never on what the future may hold.
I'm in an old battered yellow school bus with Board of Education, Bayonne, NJ emblazoned on its sides, along with fifty other tired, dispirited people. We are about midway in the line of vehicles, with Marco in a late model blood-colored Land Cruiser leading the way and Diwata, who I've started to call “Diwi” as we have slowly gotten to know one another, at the tail end. It's the best we could come up with to protect the entire group when only three of us seem to have the ability to deter those things that attacked the ship.
The days after the death of the lawyer Mr. Lambert was an abject demonstration of what happens when society breaks down. I think that if Marco had not been there to channel our energies with an iron fist the mob would have dispersed and scattered into dozens of smaller groups. As it was, he ordered Diwata and me to remain with the bulk of the people while he led several patrols into the surrounding area to scout for supplies and transportation. For those first few days we subsisted on canned food and bottled water brought in from a nearby deserted Walmart. If I never see another plate of limp Vienna sausages I'll die a happy girl, and that goes double for such haute cuisine as Chef Boyardee's mini-pasta and ravioli.
I've also lost my husband. It was days after the loss of the Odyssey before I finally came to terms with that fact. When the tears came, when the realization that I would never again see Steve suddenly hit me like a blow to the gut, I quickly excused myself from an impromptu meeting with Diwata and made my way towards the back of the warehouse, where I sheltered under the bright blue racks of useless toy products and other relics of a now-dead consumer society. I curled up into a tight ball on the floor and let the feelings of loss overwhelm me. All the melodrama with Steve felt like it happened a million years ago, and was just as relevant. I felt nothing about it now, except for an icy coldness that had burrowed its way deep into me, the emptiness mixing with despair and fear to create a natural anesthetic that numbed me to life before everything went to hell.
“We're going to have to bring in transportation,” Marco told us on the third day, his low basso profondo voice a deep rumble. The three of us had gone off to one side of the warehouse and away from the rest of the survivors in order to plan our next move. It was pretty obvious we couldn't hole up in the warehouse forever. A cursory check of the surrounding area had netted several generators, so we now had lights during the night, but the accommodations and sanitary facilities in the place were minimal, to say the least, and our fuel supplies would not last for long.
It was also pretty clear to everybody that democracy had been neatly canceled from reality, at least for the near term. If decisions were to be made, then they would come from on high; and in this case, this meant from the mouth of Marco, with some supplementary and rather token advice from Diwata and me. Although Diwi hated Marco with a passion, I had the feeling she was bidding her time, waiting and watching and weighing his actions in preparation for some future confrontation, and that she was content to remain in the background for now. I was a mere passenger, in addition to being young, female, and black to boot.
“We need to make our way south,” Marco continued, and he gestured vaguely with one massive arm. “And we need to do it soon.”
“Why south?” I asked, then bit my lip. It was another duh
moment from the lone black woman.
Marco shook his large shaggy head, then leaned closer. If he remembered how I had slapped him that first day, he didn't show it. For my part, I was too tired and depressed the past few days, and my hatred had been watered down to a dull smoldering mixture of disgust and suspicion.
“We can't be here when the winter cold sets in,” he said, and to his credit he did not in the least bit sound condescending. “And we have something else to worry about.”
Diwi and I stared at him, waiting like expectant school children. In fact, I felt like I was in grade school again and being quizzed by Mrs. Robinson, who had made the 5th grade year of little Mara a living hell.
“Have you by any chance happened upon one of those disaster movies where years into the disaster the heroes keep driving around in cars?” He arched one bushy eyebrow at us. “Ms. Lewis? Ms. Vega?”
We nodded mutely. I had been a big fan of an old movie called Mad Max and the sequels that followed it. When men were men, and cars always needed a quick trip to the car wash. Except there were no modern conveniences like that in a post-apocalyptic world, and the survivors were only one car chase away from being road kill.
“Well, a major problem with that scenario is that it forgets one thing,” Marco explained. “Gasoline, and especially ones with ethanol and other additives in it, have a specific shelf life. In fact, it has a very short shelf life because of the added ethanol, which is hygroscopic and attracts water into the mix. Diesel is slightly better, but it will also degrade over time. Give it a few months and most of the cars around here will only be valuable as scrap metal.”
I gaped, and he looked at me almost sheepishly, which was somewhat surreal on his broad ursine face.
“I had a life before my time on the Coral Odyssey Ms. Lewis,” he explained with a small grin. “My major in college was Chemistry. Is that so hard to believe?”