The Last Exodus

by Paul Tassi

  “Prolonged exposure to the [garbled] has indeed induced deep psychosis,” he said matter-of-factly, like he was looking at an unconscious lab rat.

  “Can you bring her back?” Lucas asked. He winced while the gel hissed closed the claw wounds across his throat. His ears were still ringing from the close proximity gunshots.

  “She will require an extended period of treatment and observation. I will keep her here until progress is made.”

  He attached two nodes to the side of her head. A large bruise was beginning to form on her cheek where it had met Lucas’s forehead. Alpha flipped a switch and the hologram of the brain showed certain sections lighting up colorfully.

  “Good response,” Alpha said.

  “I didn’t mess her up too badly, did I?” Lucas asked. She had lost so much weight and he’d gained so much muscle, when he’d thrown her through the tank she felt like she barely had any substance to her at all. But still, she’d put up quite a fight in her primal state, and he’d be seeing some bruises of his own soon enough, which would join his bloody scratches and possibly dislocated kneecap.

  “She is injured and unconscious, but stable, and I will keep her sedated until I can repair the brain damage from the [garbled].”

  “And you’re sure you can do that?”

  “Better equipment would help, as this is not a medical vessel. Hopefully I can build a few of the tools I am missing. Even our most rudimentary medicine is leagues beyond your homeworld’s capabilities.”

  Lucas didn’t think Alpha was being purposefully condescending, but if it meant Asha could be saved, it didn’t matter. He was . . . frightened to lose her. A level of attachment to her existed that he wasn’t even aware of until she lay mentally and physically broken before him.

  Lucas didn’t sleep much at all the next few nights, and his days were full of distraction. He routinely checked in on Asha in the lab, each time greeted by Alpha who maintained treatment was in progress as he attempted to try and rewire her brain with an unfamiliar electronic device. She was still sedated, and would be until the procedure was complete. Soon after she was deemed stable, the pair of them searched the armory footage to find that she’d stacked storage cubes up to the ceiling, pried open a loose panel with a blade, and dropped down into the hallway, Magnum in hand. Even impenetrable alien locks couldn’t contain a crafty, determined, psychotic human.

  Lucas kept his mind off of Asha by spending more time than ever in the chair. In between Asha’s treatments, Alpha had programmed the chips Lucas had asked for. Learning Xalan symbols was straightforward enough, and the intricacies of the controls all around the ship began to reveal themselves to him. Their written language was much easier to comprehend than Soran, and their fifty-one-character alphabet was ingrained into his mind in only a few days. Words and phrases began to follow soon after, though his learning was limited to written word, as audible speech was beyond his biological grasp.

  He also spent a bit of time with Norwegian, and found it much easier to learn than Xalan or Soran. The letters were ones he was familiar with already, and neural stimulation made retention a breeze. Unfortunately, the reason he was learning the now-deceased tongue had taken a bit of a beating during his and Asha’s brawl. The cannibal chief’s journal that he had taken from the mansion surely contained all sorts of intriguing insights into the mind of the man he’d killed, but water had soaked it to a degree where the vast majority of the ink had bled into illegibility. That night, Lucas tried to read a section that had been preserved.

  It’s been a week since we cut up the last creature in town. There is no more food, and scouting parties have turned up nothing but water in a month. The creatures were all the sustenance we had left, and now they too are gone. Another large raiding brigade flung themselves at the wall today, thinking we had supplies they could pillage. The men gunned them down quickly. There was talk of hanging their carcasses outside to ward off other invaders. Such ideas repulse me. We are not barbarians like them; why should we behave as such? With the world torn asunder, we still have a functioning village, a town of friends and allies. Though now that the food is gone, I wonder how long we will remain that way.

  The ship looms ever present, cleaving the town, and the mansion, in two. I’ve been petitioning Aleksander that our best hope of survival is opening that ship. Who knows what untold supplies and edible creatures linger within? But after forced entry failed, they now just laugh at my attempts to unlock the vessel with reason. They believe, because of my size, that I am a brute, but they are mistaken. It seems only yesterday I was at university, extolling the virtues of space travel to a sea of eager young faces. How quickly things change.

  Conscription forced me to fight, for whatever good it did. I remember watching the ship fall in our final stand, but what did it matter? The entire region was decimated. I declared my forced tour of duty over and decided to stay.

  But now I hunger. Deeply. It’s all I think about. It consumes my every waking moment. A week ago we caught Harvald chewing on meat. Red meat. A dead raider. We expelled him from camp immediately, but I fear that such behavior will only increase in frequency. What happens then? What do we become?

  The rest of the entry became illegible, as did many pages after that. Lucas had to flip far forward to find a section where the Norwegian words were still visible.

  I killed Aleksander today. He gave me no choice. I watched him sacrifice one of the older women, one without “purpose,” so we may eat. Murdering our own for food? I couldn’t allow it. Raiders and wanderers are one thing, a reality I was forced to accept despite it seeming to spring from my darkest nightmares, but our own citizens? Those we’ve been protecting all this time? Where does it end?

  The only thing anyone in this town respects now is pure force. I shoved a spear through his eye in the middle of the town square, and no one said a word. Whether they are now with me out of belief in my cause, or out of fear, I do not know, but I suppose either purpose will suffice. My first order was to send a larger party to head back to the mainland. They found a creature a month ago. Perhaps there is still hope further savagery can be avoided.

  The taste. It is mentally sickening, but physically . . . pleasant. This is what causes me the most anxiety. This was a line I swore I would not cross. What will we do next, in the name of survival? Is this life even worth living?

  The heat is growing unbearable. The endless clouds look angrier by the day. The ship’s door stands there mocking me. I suppose with Aleksander gone, the mansion is mine. More time to spend with the door. It is our salvation, I am sure of it!

  More ruined pages, and Lucas flipped to near the end of the tome where he could read once more. The handwriting was harder to decipher, and it looked like it was written in a panic with shaking hands.

  There’s a conspiracy to kill me, I know it. I see it in Veigar’s eyes. Well, his eye. He’s the most educated, the most devious. He pretends to be my advisor, but I know the truth. The armor is almost complete. Once it’s assembled and active, I will be invincible, and immune to treachery. I tested the gun on one of the women yesterday. It cooked her almost instantly, a useful tool. But now the weak are starting to thin out. Their sacrifice serves to keep the rest of us alive.

  The remaining women grow nervous. After the runaways this week, Olaf suggests we keep them in the church under lock and key. They deserve it. They don’t understand the world now. The weak must make way for the strong. If this world is to survive, they must do their part to repopulate, though it seems few will do so willingly. How can they be so blind? So selfish?

  My son was born today. The ship speaks to me. It tells me he will be a legend. He is strong, healthy. I killed his mother, the pretty one from Oslo. Now she may not produce a rival with another. This angered Henrik, and so I killed him as well. We ate like kings that night.

  As I look into my child’s eyes, I know the world will return to its former glory on the backs of men like him. He is the first of a new generation, a new Ea
rth. We will rule the world as gods.

  The entry was marked eight months ago; Lucas’s mouth hung open as he understood the implication. Noah. Though he did not know how many other children perished in the fire, the probability certainly seemed likely, and the child was big for his age. The mad chief’s heir, playing with alien toys in the barracks upstairs. He would never know these things. His life needn’t be burdened with a wretched history such as this.

  The rest of the pages were a jumble of stained words and nonsense phrases as the chief lost his mind at an increasingly rapid pace. Lucas had seen prolonged flesh eating lead to similar conditions many times. He was shocked at how dramatic the transformation was in this case, however. A reasonable man, even a good one, turned into a monster in such a short stretch of time. Perhaps it was good Earth was dead, if men like that were all that remained.

  Lucas closed the book and rubbed his jaw. One of his back molars was loose after Asha’s kick, and Alpha had nothing for that onboard. He was the smartest being Lucas had ever encountered, but human dentistry was not in his skill set.

  Dimming the lights with a specific wave of his hand, he fell into bed. Days later, he was still jumping at shadows after Asha’s nocturnal assault. With Natalie cold and still, he was now sleeping with his sawed-off shotgun under his pillow. He had scoured the armory and found a few stray shells of rubber pellets. Should he have to forcefully deal with another Asha escape and murder attempt, he didn’t want to have to blow an actual hole through her chest to stop her, even if she did have it coming at this point.

  He dreamed in Norwegian.

  When he saw Noah the next morning, he searched him for signs that might tie him to the chief. Resemblance was hard to gauge. The man had been so hairy he resembled a grizzly bear more than a human. And there was no telling what the mother looked like, and she might explain the fact that he wasn’t a full-blown giant, content with being perhaps slightly larger than your average infant. But his eyes, they were the same rich blue as the chief’s, which Lucas had seen in the man’s final moments. It was true then. A truth that would stay buried forever.

  Noah had been taking to his chair sessions with great enthusiasm, and the way his face lit up, it was clear the colorful symbols paired with Asha’s narration were the highlight of his day. Lucas had taken him to see her the day before. Pawing at her face, he looked forlorn when she didn’t respond. Today he was in a much better mood however, though no magic breakthroughs came when the lesson ended. The invented words he babbled still weren’t any from Earth, nor any other planet they knew of.

  After Lucas put him back in his storage cube–lined playpen, he headed down to the lab for one of his many daily visits. This time, he was stunned to enter and see her eyes open, staring straight up at the ceiling.

  “She’s . . . she’s awake?” Lucas asked cautiously.

  “No,” Alpha replied. “She remains unconscious for the moment.”

  “But her eyes . . .”

  “A necessary condition of this phase of the procedure.”

  The effect was unnerving, and Lucas waved his hand over her face. She blinked, but her gaze remained unbroken, looking past him to the lights of the ceiling. She was still wearing the bloodied clothes from the night of their fight and was starting to smell.

  “She’s filthy.”

  “It is not of importance.”

  “Maybe not to you, but she shouldn’t wake up like this.”

  “Do what you will,” Alpha said as he adjusted some controls near the device fixed to her head.

  Lucas returned with a fresh pair of clothes he found in the armory and was relieved to find her eyes closed. He wasn’t entirely sure the navy shirt matched the black pants, but they’d recently been steamed (the closest they could get to washing), and were leagues more sanitary than what she had on now. He swung by his own quarters to grab a worn shirt and a container of water.

  Back at the lab, he soaked the shirt and started wiping away the crusted blood that coated parts of her body. Alpha had healed her wounds, which included many small cuts from the shattered water reservoir, but the blood remained behind. Lucas undid her restraints and peeled away her odorous clothes, leaving her sports bra and underwear in place as he already felt strange enough changing her in this state. He quickly wiped down the rest of her body, and could now see how much it had truly atrophied. Muscle gave way to skin and bone, and he could count every rib she had. He quickly dressed her in the new shirt and pants he had acquired. Tossing the clothes away, the stench was already dissipating. She looked gaunt, but less like a car accident victim after having been cleaned up. Alpha hadn’t even noticed the process and shooed Lucas away to reattach the device to her head. The hologram of her brain reappeared, and began pulsating with light. Lucas could decipher a few of the Xalan symbols for a change. He could make out “cortex,” “synapse,” and “improvement.” It sounded promising.

  16

  A day later, as he was sitting in the captain’s chair, Lucas tore the neural cords from his head when he received a simple message from Alpha over the monitor.

  “She is awake.”

  When Lucas arrived out of breath at the lab, he saw Asha still strapped to the table, cursing loudly. As she saw him, she broke her stream of profanities to release a more coherent thought.

  “Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?”

  Alpha looked to Lucas.

  “Attempt to speak with her. She will not listen to me.”

  Lucas went to her side.

  “Calm down, Asha,” he said forcefully.

  “Why am I strapped to this thing and why do I feel like I’ve been beaten with a sledgehammer?”

  She paused as she saw Lucas.

  “And what happened to your face?”

  Lucas touched his still-bruised jaw.

  “This is your handiwork, and the reason you’re strapped to the chair. Have you seen yourself lately?”

  Asha looked down at her chest, which was peppered with small white scars that were still healing. No mirrors were present, so she couldn’t see the giant bruise covering half her face. Lucas turned to Alpha.

  “Memory loss?”

  “None other than the escape and assault.”

  “What are you two idiots talking about? Let me out of this thing.”

  Lucas went over to Alpha’s workstation and began typing on the virtual Xalan keyboard. Alpha seemed taken aback that Lucas knew what he was doing with the complex interface. A holographic monitor appeared and Lucas dragged it with his hand and placed it over Asha’s head. A video began to play.

  “You thought you could hide in Alaska? You thought I wouldn’t find you here?”

  Asha looked stunned.

  “When did . . .”

  “You killed him in cold blood . . .”

  “I don’t remember . . .”

  “He trusted you.”

  The fight began, and Asha looked horrified as she watched herself attempt to blow Lucas’s brains out with her Magnum onscreen. After she was thrown through the tank, Lucas stopped playback.

  “What’s the last thing you can remember?”

  Asha was no longer heated, and responded quietly.

  “The last few days have been . . . blurry.”

  “The last eight days you’ve been on this table. Alpha’s been repairing the damage the pod did to your brain.”

  “God, I had no idea. It all just blended together. And I don’t remember any of that,” she said, motioning to the monitor by raising her chin, her only free body part.

  “But everything else, your past, the ship, me, Alpha, Noah. You can recall all of it?”

  “Yeah, where is the little guy anyway?”

  “Probably chewing on a very important piece of machinery,” Alpha said in a huff.

  “He’s been by to visit. He should be happy to see you.”

  Asha looked down at her body.

  “What the hell am I wearing?”

  It took about six mor
e hours of tests before Alpha finally agreed to let Asha out of the restraints. It would be even longer until she was allowed back in the armory, and Lucas was relocating her personal effects to a detention cell on the lower level. She wouldn’t be imprisoned there, but the door to the armory would no longer respond to her biological signature (the ceiling panels had been sealed as well), nor would the pods in the barracks. All had been deactivated completely, save Noah’s, as the boy had been thriving in the device. Asha put up a fight about not having access to her beloved, well-polished arsenal, but when shown the assault video once more, she reluctantly conceded the point.

  Lucas hunted through the armory for any scraps of her belongings he had missed. He discovered a few books lodged in the cracks of some ammo boxes, and then found himself staring at the locked container once more. He thumbed through the display and found that he could now read some of the words. “Danger” and “contaminant” were two that stood out. As he attempted to open it, the word for “NO” appeared in bright flashing red. Well, that’s straight to the point. But now he thought better of opening it at all, with all those descriptors attached.

  When Alpha finally cleared Asha to move freely about the cabin, she came down to see her new quarters where Lucas was still attempting to arrange her belongings throughout the small room. To avoid further anger, he’d even brought down her treasured Magnum, which rested on the center of the round table where she usually sat to read. Bullets, of course, were nowhere to be found.

  “So this is what I’ve bought myself, huh?” she said as she glanced quickly around her new tiny living space, once originally meant to house Noah before he took to the barracks instead.

  “Hey, this is generous. If our roles were reversed I’m pretty sure you’d have me living on the outside of the ship.”

  Asha paused. “That’s probably true.” She sunk down against the wall and came to a rest on her mattress.

  “How do you feel?” Lucas asked.

  “Fine. Really. Not insane, though I suppose that’s what an insane person would say.”