Abel

by Zack Metcalfe

  Chapter – 3

   

  I was peeling a metal sheet away from the wall with my crowbar. I'd welded it into place years ago, so clumsily I could peel it off in this fashion.

  The hallway was dark, and empty. I worked quickly, looking around every few seconds like a thief terrified of being caught. As always, it was cold. I was high in the ship, a few levels away from my family. Those few levels made all the difference, however. They couldn't hear me if I wanted them to.

  The atmosphere up here was stifling. Oxygen from the garden took its time getting this far out, making the air here stale and unpleasant. There was dust everywhere. If I weren’t fighting with this metal sheet, I would have been shivering. My breath lingered so long here, hovering in the air as mist.

  When I decided the sheet was pried back far enough, I set my crowbar down. Gripping the bent metal with both hands, I began tugging at it, putting with all my strength. Taking yet another look around, I pulled harder. With sudden ease, the panel flew off the wall, clambering noisily to the floor. The sound echoed through the halls, sending the most awful sensation through me. I had fallen onto my back, remaining motionless as the echoes faded away. I waited, long after the noise had subsided, dreading something more was coming. My imagination was starting to toy with me, as if I were some puppet fully aware I was on strings. I could feel it.

  Crawling on hands and knees, I slowly moved towards the section of wall once concealed behind the metal sheet. It was a cluster of wires I installed before the ship was launched. At the time, I was using these wires to eliminate a hindrance.

  When the ship’s main computer was first reactivated, red warning lights in this section of the ship began flashing, indicating hull breaches. Wherever there was a breach, a sealed door separated it from the other decks, but the lights would still flash. The doors were already sealed. They didn’t need power to stay that way, so I cut the power, thus killing the annoying lights. Now my quest to reach the command deck required reactivating the warning lights, and returning power to the doors.

  I managed a nervous smile, seeing the colour coding method on the wires I'd used. I could recall my thoughts at the time, the thoughts of a younger, naive self. I saw logic then, on a world that no longer existed.

  I looked around again, never fully satisfying my nervousness. My poor eyesight made it all the worse. The dark appeared endless to me. There wasn’t a hint of anything beyond.

  Something moved, down the hall to my right. An icy sensation filled me, as I stared at the mass of black. I couldn't tell if anything actually occupied the corridor I saw watching, but I imagined for a moment too long that something did.

  Whatever it was came out from its hiding place in the shadows, and slowly drifted down the hall towards me, never taking any solid shape. I was frozen for a few horrific seconds before I started fighting for control.

  There is nothing there.

  I may have already lost.

  An idea came to me, and I turned to the wiring, seeing the dark figure approach only through the corner of my eye. I worked quickly.

  “There is nothing there,” I repeated to myself. “It’s all in your head. It doesn’t exist. There is nothing there.”

  I continued working madly, my hands trembling.

  There is nothing there.

  It doesn’t exist.

  It’s all in your head.

  There is nothing there.

  I thought I could hear the figure making a whooshing sound as it cut through the air. Closer and closer it drew.

  With a great effort, I connected the final wire and a flood of red light filled the halls. The figure vanished, disappearing as if never there.

  I collapsed onto the cold floor.

  “There was nothing there,” I wheezed. “There was nothing…”

  It was times like these that made the drugs seem worthwhile. I had a bottle full of pills capable of taking this torment away. With hallucinations so vivid, how could I not be a danger to myself? It was like living in a ship caught between reality and nightmare. How could I hope to tell the difference?

  I was a little shaky, but I got to my feet. I took a deep breath and calmed myself. My mother traded for them once, just a single bottle. Yes, they made the nightmares go away, but they stole something else from me. They stole my creativity, my motivation. Only once had I taken them, and I promised never to do it again.

  I turned to my right and began walking. I reached large double doors with an inscription written in Martian English above them. My mother could have told me what it meant, but it didn’t matter. Due to the lack of windows in this section, there was no difference in appearance between now and when this ship was on Martian soil. I liked that.

  I deactivated the security system holding the double doors closed, then I used internal hatches to fill the room beyond with oxygen. I'd never been in this room before.

  I commanded the doors open, but they didn’t. The controls I used began flashing warnings in Martian English. I worked my way around the warning, then sent the door an emergency override instruction. Once the command was issued, the double doors shot apart a few inches, and the pressure difference between this room and the hall pulled me towards the door. I smacked my head against the solid door and stumbled back as the pressure equalized. An alarm sounded briefly, ending when all power in this section died. I fell into total blackness.

  Both hands clutched my forehead, and I could feel warm blood running down my face. I was bleeding, and I was disoriented. Everything sounded muffled. Even the pathetic backup lights I was using previously had gone out. It was totally black and silent. The only noise was my breathing, and my footsteps, both echoing off the walls I couldn't see.

  Keeping one hand on my forehead wound, I stretched the other in front of me. I stumbled forward, feeling the door, then the inside wall of the new room. Strangely enough, my wound had the effect of keeping my playful mind at bay in this dark. I knew what was real. The blood dribbled down my forearm was real.

  I had the feeling there was something in this room, and since I would never make it back to my family while injured in this darkness, I decided to explore.

  I pointed myself at what I believed to be the room’s centre. Moving in a straight line, I felt around eagerly. After a short ways, my waist struck something unexpectedly sharp. After letting the pain subside, I felt cautiously for the object with my hand. I was the corner of a storage container of some kind. Kneeling next to it, I swept my free hand across its surface.

  My hand curled around a handle. I tried twisting it, but to no avail. I moved my other hand away from my wounded forehead, and placed it on the handle as well. With the added strength, the handle broke free, and the container’s side hatch fell open. I pulled back as several small objects came pouring out of the container. I could tell by the sound they made rolling across the floor that they were cylinders. My head throbbed, so I placed my hand against it once more. Using the other hand, I searched the floor, finding one of the cylinders. After some investigation, I discovered a small switch on one of its flattened surfaces. Flicking the switch, the cylinder erupted with powerful green light. I averted my eyes, both surprised, and in sudden pain from staring directly at the light. I knew what the object was the moment I saw green.

  This was a power cell.

  I hadn’t seen a power cell since my early youth. They could stay in storage forever and still function, and could be used for everything. If machinery needed power, these small cylinders could fit right inside, and were fully compatible with most technology. It was Martian technology quickly stolen by Terrans during the war, or maybe it was the other way around. They were priceless in my time.

  After my eyes adjusted, I used the new light to view my surroundings. There were at least ten more cylinders on the floor. I couldn’t hold back my excitement at the find. This kind of power would have never been found in the hands of a scavenger. Now, however, this cylinder was in the hands of a scavenger, because a scav
enger’s hands were the only ones left to hold it.

  I held the shining cylinder high above my head. A green glow settled over other containers in the room. There were five, all different shapes. I doubted they held more cylinders. Walking to one I noticed writing on the side, a series of numbers and letters I recognized immediately…

  These were weapons.

   

  __________

   

  The ship's medical room was small, with only a single bed, which extended from the wall. There had to be a larger space on the ship built specifically as a medical room, but I'd never found it. This room suited my brother fine, so he set up shop here.

  The walls were lined with shelves and cupboards, filled with supplies my brother accumulated over the years. Some of it my father and brother had even salvaged from the junkyards.

  I'd been in this room many times over the years. I hurt myself often, following one foolhardy pursuit or another. Sometimes, when my hallucinations were very strong, I would scare myself into harm's way.

  My brother was moving about the room, searching for bandages. Once he found them, he poured a clear liquid on them, a very small amount. Picking up and bandage, he carried it over to me, where I sat on the extendable bed. Delicately, he placed the bandage against my forehead, wrapped it in place, and secured it with a pin.

  The liquid he'd soaked the bandage with stung once it touched my wound. It was a sensation I barely noticed now. Cain turned back to his desk and started putting the bandages away, screwing the lid back on his bottle of clear liquid.

  I barely paid him any attention. I was too busy turning the power cell over in my hands, admiring its green glow. If I hadn't found it in the dark, it would have been nearly impossible for me to find my way back to the central decks. Somehow that didn't bother me.

  “What you did was stupid,” Cain finally said, not looking at me. He sounded unhappy. “You should have come directly to me.”

  “I know,” I answered, without looking up. Maybe I should have just turned back to my family. I shouldn't have risked my life to find something in the room.

  When I didn't say anything else, Cain grew frustrated. He walked over to me and flicked off the power cell, its light vanishing. I looked up at him, disappointed, even a little angry myself.

  “Listen to me, Abel. We can’t do this without you. Whenever you go off on your little adventures, you're not the only one at risk. If anything were to happen to you, we'd be in serious trouble. So quite acting like you're only putting yourself at risk. And for goodness sakes, we're your family, and we love you. Take better care of yourself.”

  I've gotten this speech a thousand times before, but it never sunk in. My work was dangerous, no matter how careful I was. This ship was, and always would be unpredictable. I think my parents had accepted that. They both understood what it took to make progress in places like this. My brother, however, who was responsible for healing each of my wounds, never quite understood. I started to explain why I act in such a reckless way, but realized I'd delivered that speech nearly as many times as Cain had delivered his.

  My parents entered the room, putting an end to Cain's and my staring contest.

  “How are you feeling?” my mother asked.

  I nodded, with a small smile. “A little weak, but better.”

  My father's expression was dark, but not angry. I'd seen this before. He felt responsible for me getting hurt, as he often did. It was he who encouraged me to work on the distant decks and continue searching for the command deck. My parents may have understood the risks of my work, but that didn't mean they stopped worrying. It was a parent's job to worry.

  “It was just a stupid mistake on my part,” I put in. “It won’t happen again.”

  “You’re damn right,” my mother said, holding me to the promise. I rather wished I hadn’t said it.

  “What do you think, Cain?” my father asked, looking at my forehead.

  “It isn’t serious,” Cain answered. “He should have three meals a day and get plenty of rest.”

  My father nodded.

  I wanted desperately to take their minds off my injury, so I didn’t wait for them to see the power cell themselves. “Look,” I said, holding up the cylinder. My parents gazed at it in surprise, even reverence.

  “Where did you find it? In an old machine or something?” My mother asked.

  They were assuming it was dead, like dozens of others we found amongst the junk back home. Instead of answering, I flicked the cylinder’s switch, allowing the power cell to come to life. My parents jumped back, startled and amazed.

  “I found at least a dozen more, never used,” I explained.

  My sister entered the room, cane in hand. She almost lost balance when she saw the cylinder.

  “What?” she squeaked.

  “What are they doing on this ship?” my mother asked.

  “You’re not going to like this,” I began.

  “It’s alright, son,” my father said encouragingly. “Go on.”

  “These cylinders were meant to power…weapons.”

  The curiosity and excitement of the entire room died. Everyone looked somewhat uncomfortable, while my father’s expression darkened even more. This time he was angry.

  “Weapons?” my mother asked.

  “Guns,” I clarified.

  A silence ensued, and slowly but surely, all eyes landed on my father. This situation was a strange one to find ourselves in. The need for weapons back in the junkyards was something we'd discussed several times. The other groups in the junkyards tended to be friendly enough. There were even some families, like us. There were others, however, who were dangerous. These people tended to be cowards and thieves, but every now and again, they'd get desperate, and do horrible things. We were lucky, for the most part. Cain always said we should arm ourselves. I may have agreed on occasion, but not always.

  My father had always forbidden us from making weapons. Our family usually made decisions together, but when it came to the topic of violence, my father would allow for no discussion. He was, and always would be, against such things.

  My father was born in one of the outlying Terran colonies, and raised there as a mechanic. He spent some time visiting the distant junkyards collecting scrap whenever it was needed, but from what I understood, he'd lived under the Terran flag into early adulthood. The war was still raging at that time. I don't know for certain, but I think my father spent some time in the military. What I do know is that he turned his back on Terran society because of the war. He was a peaceful man, born into a world of conflict. The idea of violence sickened him.

  I remember one night, maybe a year before we left Mars, when my father didn't return to the ship from scavenging. Cain and I went looking for him, and found he'd been beaten within an inch of his life by some of the dangerous people. He didn't have to tell us. He was a strong, capable man, but my brother and I knew he didn't fight back when they attacked him. He wouldn't condone their violence.

  Almost a full month after that, when he was recovering, he and I got drunk on some Martian whisky. He told me that if anyone tried to hurt his children or his wife, he wouldn't hesitate in stopping them. Besides that, he would sooner die than raise his hand to another human being, and he'd do anything to keep his family's hands clean. I saw what he meant. He didn't want his children to take life.

  I don't know if my father had ever taken a life. I don't suspect I ever will know.

  We talked there in the medical room for a long time. My father explained how a combination of violence and insanity had ended the human race. If our family was truly all that was left, he wanted no violence on our ship or in our lives.

  It was suggested that all weapons be thrown out the airlock and forgotten. I suggested, alternatively, that I be allowed to dismantle some of them for parts, but my father wouldn't have it.

  "You're memory is too good," he'd said. "If you take them apart, you'll know how to put them back together. Please, Abel,
throw that evil off this ship."

  And so I did.

  __________

   

  I couldn’t sleep, even though I was quite tired. It was the silver pearls I was holding loosely above my eyes. I couldn’t help but stare at them, completely entranced by their beauty. They evoked some kind of protective instinct from me. There was something in their subtle glow.

  “What secrets do you hold?” I asked the dangling pearls.