by Allen Ivers
Chapter 13
The Beast
As far as Locklear was concerned, Manifest was officially a lost cause. He chewed on his chapped lower lip, tearing a chunk of scratchy skin off like a spent bandage. If he bled, he didn’t really care.
Dr. Raines had nearly everything in common with a wet piece of paper: she was thin, fragile, and fundamentally falling apart. Locklear didn’t really know if he trusted the crusty, hemorrhaging survivor, but her accusation of Amelia was full of conviction, and if true, it wouldn’t even be the strangest thing he’d seen in the last few minutes. Getting the hell out of here was the only priority and he wasn’t even sure how to do that.
The team was up and moving again, bare bones that they were. Jazmin pulled rear guard as Jericho carried the wounded civilian. Amelia walked in front, Locklear’s gun in her back. He would’ve taken point himself, but leaving Amelia in Jazmin’s vicious hands was just fuel looking for a fire.
They backtracked up the hall they came, hoping to stumble upon whatever ‘door’ Raines had been muttering about. Her condition had now reduced her to nonverbal, so it wasn’t as though he could turn to her for direction.
He wasn’t even that certain it was the same hallway, the featureless pale walls giving precious little to go off of. He suspected he was marching deeper into the gullet of the whale, and would discover his error far beyond the point of no return.
Amelia cracked her neck inside her helmet, feeling out each individual pop and every taut sinew. It wasn’t like her to be tense, but the entire team wasn’t behaving in character right now. She had been accused of alien possession and now had a gun at her back while they power-walked through a tunnel whose every surface might snag them by the ankles to gnaw them away piece by little piece.
It was not entirely clear why it was even tolerating their presence at this point. He couldn’t shake the notion of this curious metal substance ebbing and flowing like some kind of monster hid just below the surface of the pond, a creature awoken from a thousand year slumber to pluck the livestock from the banks of the lagoon.
Locklear quietly resolved to never stop moving, lest the floor slacken about his boots and draw him in for a nightmarish marathon of torture and mutilation.
And just like that, the ground bounced under his feet. Locklear’s heart stopped, clinging to his ribs like a frightened child, as he felt the metal roll under his feet – not the intelligent snare of teeth or grip of quick sand, but the plucked strings of an earthquake tremor.
Everyone wavered and stumbled, trying to maintain their balance. Jericho had to drop to one knee, the hard jerk causing the delirious Doctor to cry out in pain, the first real sign of injury she’d given in ten minutes.
“Does Mars even have earthquakes?” Jazmin wondered aloud, not wanting the horrible answer to her query.
“No,” Amelia said, picking herself up. “Not like that.”
Locklear pressed up against Amelia, gun still trained on her but careful not to shove her. It was more akin to a bodyguard moving his employer than a cop with his suspect, one arm swooped up onto the shoulder pulling them alongside.
Every bone in his body urged him to leave this place, just a mouse in an open field waiting for the hawk’s talons to snap shut around him. This was a gut feeling older than human writing -- leave.
They marched ahead with renewed vigor, waiting for the next tremor to hit. All at once, he was more worried about the tunnel closing in on him in a claustrophobic exercise akin to being swallowed.
He could just picture those featureless walls tightening around him until he could feel it pressed against his skin, pushing and working against his flesh until his frail form snapped under the pressure.
He didn’t close his eyes this time, so he witnessed the bizarre phenomenon. His peripheral vision seemed to pull back away, like stretched rubber before slipping into darkness. In half a second, he might’ve sworn he saw a rainbow before his vision narrowed to a slit. He didn’t even have time to scan about in a panic before the effect broke.
And suddenly he was on dirt. They stepped through no portal, no pad, hit no button. They had pressed through an invisible curtain to land precisely where they left, but through no obvious act of their own, as though they had been forcefully ejected from that alien domain.
Regardless of how, the four Mars cops and their rescue were now back at the dig site. It was the dead of night, with a proper kaleidoscope of stars twinkling overhead, the pale band of the Milky Way a stark reminder of friendlier skies.
The sudden cold cracked Locklear like a hammer to the chest; his suit was a portable air pocket, not a secure environment. It transferred temperature just fine and the brutal shift was enough to stop him in his tracks. One of several sudden changes that would have done so. The dull red stone had painted an ashen gray, the star-scape a surprisingly bright light source.
Or maybe his eyes had adjusted to the pitch black tunnels, and this gloomy setting simply couldn’t compare to the proper darkness.
“Somebody click their heels?” Jazmin asked, skeptical of their good luck.
The Rover sat exactly where they left it. Good boy.
Their march back stumbled as another tremor shook the canyon. Locklear could feel the vibrations under his feet, the creaking of the rocks cracking around him. He tried not to look up, as the sight of it all might freeze him in place.
His imagination did plenty of that work for him, picturing the cleft walls of the canyon swooping down around them like the jaws of an ancient predator that might consume them with all of the effort required for the simple act of breathing.
He would not be conquered by a monster rolling over in its sleep. No, he would keep moving.
Jazmin cracked the hatch on the rover, windmilling her arm in the air. Like they needed to be told to hurry. Locklear pushed Amelia into the back with the Doctor like so much luggage, while the more able bodied clambered up into the front. Jericho slapped the hatch down behind them and tabbed open the oxygen reserves, flooding the cabin with stale air.
No time to wait, another quake knocking boulders off the canyon heights. A chunk of red sandstone the size of a shipping container dropped onto a prefab, shearing steel like paper with its geologic guillotine.
Now, this was taunting them, explaining with pictures what it could not with words, what fate awaited them should they remain.
Another tremor. The planet itself objected to their presence.
Locklear put the Rover in gear, firing up its endearing little engine. As expensive as that little piece of hardware was, the amount of torque required to move a vehicle this massive would break an aircraft cable. And there was no time to turn this thing around. He shifted into reverse and plied the throttle.
The tires whined and scraped for traction against the loose dirt and gravel as the rover pulled backwards out of the ravine. Locklear was blind, with no rear view mirror or camera, but nobody was going to argue right now. They were tense, cold, bloody, and frightened.
Only Amelia’s stone cold expression caught his eye, as she stared out the wind screen. He followed her gaze and understood her fixation – as the very canyon seemed to collapse in on itself, a breaching wave against the shore, an avalanche of rock and dust, a towering wall of red mist that threatened to consume them.
The Rover lurched, grinding metal. It took the entire cabin half a breath to realize what had happened: they were wedged on something. Locklear looked forward at that oncoming storm, a sense of dread burning his lungs.
“Arms, now!” Locklear ordered, almost kicking the hatch open. It made an angry hiss, spewing air into the canyon with the violent decompression.
Amelia and Jericho jumped out at his side, inspecting the damage. Sure enough, the Rover had rolled over a fallen boulder that was now pinching against the underbelly, lifting it up like a jack.
The wheel itself had been warped by the sudden impact, twisted up on its axle. But healthy or not, it was their only escape route. They had to shove
the Rover off the boulder -- a 4 ton bundle of metal hardware.
Nothing fancy. Didn’t have to lift it. Just shove it clear.
“No time, just got to heave ho!” Locklear ordered, bracing against the side of the rover. “Jazmin! All hands!”
Jazmin hopped out at the call, joining the gang pressed up against the bulkhead. It would take all of them, and they just had to move it a few inches. Gravity would do the rest.
Another tremor shook Locklear at the knees, strong and rhythmic. The first ones had been vertical, up and down motions. This one rolled, an ocean wave battering against a cliff face.
It was changing.
“Three, two…” Locklear gave a silent count for the last, needing every ounce of breath he could muster before pushing against the steel giant. Everyone grunted and wheezed, feet slipping against the dirt. No leverage.
Another count and another push was more fruitful, the grind of metal on rock highlighting some kind of success. But the splintering of rocks somewhere out of Locklear’s sight made certain he didn’t forget about the precariousness of his situation.
He could hear the encroaching storm closing in and a quick glance showed those mystical Arches gone from sight, breathed in by the vengeful god of stone that hurtled toward them.
Something cracked right behind Locklear. He could feel the sudden release right through his feet, like a rubber band snapped or a rope holding a bridge slackened under his grip.
“Heads!” Jericho called out.
Locklear glanced over his shoulder, to see a fusillade of falling rocks cascading down the cliff face, like someone had kicked a car off the cliff overhead.
Jericho and Amelia dove aside, but Jazmin was too centered, caught right in the crosshair of the landslide. Locklear snagged her collar and pulled her down under him, bracing against the Rover. She blinked through the foggy mask, a mixture of terror and confusion one gives an executioner before the surprise blow.
Instead, Locklear flicked out his wrist-mounted riot shield to cover their bodies. He braced it against the Rover and the ground, tenting them under the plates. It was rated for bullets, small high velocity impacts. These rocks were slow, but much heavier. He did that math as he peered down at Jaz, returning a similar panicked expression, like he’d just jumped out of a burning airplane without a parachute.
This was the best available of the horrible options.
Perhaps he should learn to pray, because the shield took the cascade of stones like a champion, well-braced against the ground and Rover. Jarring impacts that scuffed and cracked the surface, but nothing more.
Jazmin glowered up at Locklear, almost upset that of anybody saving her ass, it was this prick. He didn’t need her thanks; he needed her strength.
Because the canyon was collapsing all around them. They had to go now.
“Push!” The team assembled at their posts, hopping over the rocks, with Jericho getting the running start of a bull. Their final labor finally slid the Rover off its mooring, bouncing onto its suspension like a boat into water.
“Everybody in! Go! Go!”
They were lucky they weren’t climbing over each other to get inside, their training overriding basic survival panic. Locklear dropped back into the driver seat, and cranked the wheel over. The wheels spun before finding a grip on the loosened ground, the damaged one thumping with each uneven rotation.
Rocks tinkled against the hull as they pulled out of the canyon, with only the far off rumble to remind them of the door closing behind them.
They were so fucking screwed. Locklear had been so worried about unpinning the Rover, he’d disregarded the oxygen systems that Jericho had been furiously setting up.
When he opened the hatch, the midnight Martian air had instantaneously frozen the canisters. They had no way of generating fresh O2, and the Rover itself was badly damaged. Beyond just a dented wheel, the actual transaxle had twisted under the stress.
It had gotten them out of the canyon, but would only move fueled by wishes now. It made for decent shelter, and still had power, but without a way to make fresh air, their time was very limited.
They were miles from Manifest, in difficult terrain, with few supplies and an injured colonist. Their sole supply of air was whatever they had brought with them into their dungeon delving. Opening their suits allowed the Rover’s recycler to refresh their meager allowance and add on precious hours, but Locklear didn’t like their math.
The only way this could get worse was if the colonist’s vague accusations were even remotely true. The one person he could count on to watch his back and now he couldn’t even have that.
No, Amelia was a rock standing tall against the ocean’s fruitless tides. She was fine. She had to be.
With no way to continue forward in the dark, Locklear’s team had to bunker in at the wreck of their Rover and use the last of its power to warm them through the frigid night. They had climbed back into their EVA kits for the added warmth. Fat lot of a good it was doing.
Locklear had weathered intense winter postings before, but this was a cold he couldn’t compare to. The tingling at his forearms and thighs made him imagine the frost bite that might be chewing through his skin right now.
Jericho’s face was an uncharacteristic pallid gray, as the freezing temperatures tinted even his dark skin. Jazmin had curled up with him in the corner to share body heat, hiding her face between her knees. The occasional spasm said her sleep was not restful.
Amelia was propped against her chair, hands folded across her lap, frozen in place, like she’d knocked off mid-thought.
Apparently, Locklear was the only one who couldn’t sleep. Maybe that was for the best, given Jazmin’s thrashing. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see what was behind his eyelids tonight.
“Why am I alive?” The quiet rasp of Dr. Raines drew Locklear’s attention. Her shivering form was eyeballing the rather obnoxious lack of leg.
Locklear picked his words carefully, “We pulled you out of there.”
“Femoral artery torn,” Raines whispered. “Bleed out in minutes.”
Shit. She was right. He hadn’t tended to major hemorrhaging beyond the tourniquet, which wouldn’t have stopped any internal bleeding. She really should be dead from any number of her critical injuries.
“Something… slowing or stopping up the blood loss. Some treatment. Powerful coagulant or a physical block.” She wasn’t talking to him, not really. This was her working out the problem out loud. The impossible had occurred, therefore something had made it possible.
Locklear looked her up and down. Her body quivered, as pain pulsed along the hard-wiring of her body. He clambered over to her, and she almost immediately lurched away. He paused, allowing her the space, before reaching into his aid kit for the hypo, “Bit of painkiller. Help you sleep.”
“Would you want to sleep right now? Much less with narcotics swimming around your skull?”
Locklear couldn’t help but smirk, her astute prediction as humorous as it was bone-chilling. Drugs or not, her nights were going to be a parade of nightmares for the rest of her life. He lifted up the hypo syringe, its ergonomic pistol-grip somehow torturous to his eyes. “This ain’t a narcotic, if that helps.”
“That’s hardly my point,” she grunted, her hard edge making a fresh entrance. God, that was almost refreshing. He drank in that confidence, hoping to top-up his own empty reserve.
He smiled, propping the hypojet on his knee, “I haven’t slept in about twenty hours. If you don’t want this, you mind if I shoot up?”
She huffed at that, what little breath her lungs could hold onto. With the adrenaline faded from her system and shock peeling away, the full agony of her injury was in effect, and just as likely to restart the shock. He had to get her sedated, or at the very least medicated.
“You have nightmares as a kid?” He asked.
“Spare me the sympathetic tactics and give me the shot,” Raines grumbled, clearly bracing herself for whatever came next.
Rather than wait for her to change her mind, Locklear reached for the IV port in her kit. The suits were hermetically sealed, and the nylon too fine for the jet spray to push through, but engineers had years to come up with a proper solution.
Their proposal was a valve on the arm that could allow the spray nozzle to pass through without breaching the suit’s integrity. This allowed for the needle-free application of basic medicines, generally so a patient could be stabilized enough to remove the suit.
In this case, he was going to be rocking her off to sleep with as heavy dose of cannabinoid and a generic coagulant -- standard first-response general analgesic. The risk of a blood clot was the least of his worries at that moment.
“We’ll get you up to the Murci, they’ll tend to you there,” Locklear whispered, as he withdrew the hypojet from her arm.
“I didn’t have my suit.”
Locklear paused, having to verify what she meant. When they found her, she was open skin. “You keep sayin’ that.”
She finally locked eyes with him, bloodshot and distant. “The Beast was testing on me for months. Didn’t remove the suit. But when you found me, no suit.”
She waited for a moment, either collecting her breath or waiting for him to make the all-important connection. When he didn’t -- “Why did it remove my suit? What purpose would it have? Why would it need the suit? What changed?”
Locklear couldn’t wrap his head around her question, let alone her implication. She would’ve been wearing a pretty stock EVA kit. Nothing special about it. There were a half a dozen of them in various states of disrepair back inside that not-cave. There wouldn’t have been anything of specific interest to her’s.
“How did you find me?” Despite the injection’s high speed of dispersal, she was still quite alert. What a waste.
“We found the Arches and…”
“And you woke in the tunnels.” She had personal experience with that, did she? “It let you in, and then it let you go.”
“Why?” Locklear interjected, halfway pleading for the answer he didn’t want to hear. He wasn’t certain how much stock he wanted to place in this survivor’s recounting of events. But something about her stern presence, her ‘rip the bandage off’ approach, he trusted.