by Cally Black
One day, she said, we’ll work side by side in a freighter kitchen. All I need is to get a bit taller, then we’ll get some ID saying I’m old enough. We’re saving up for black market ID. There’s no real ID for me. Lazella is the only one who knows me. She is my parent, my teacher, my future. And now she is lying hurt on the floor and no-one’s coming to help her.
It has to be me.
I kick the vent grille away, wrap Gub around me again, cos I can’t leave him here, trusting him not to fall down the hole. I drop into the kitchen. My greasy hands slip on the vent surround and I bang my shin on the benchtop on the way to the floor. An ache spreads down my shinbone as I land, feet and hands like a mama-monkey for real. Gub’s legs slip and his little bum, well-padded in a nappy, hits the floor. I check him all over and he’s fine, but he’s round-eyed and open-mouthed with the sight of a whole new room. As I scramble to my feet, I pull his head against my neck, bury his face so he can’t see a thing, never mind he’s pushing me off. I run with him to the kitchen storeroom, already messed over with packets and boxes ripped and thrown on the floor and shelves scraped empty. I pull the door shut behind us and sit him on the floor.
‘Look, Gub,’ I whisper. ‘All the pretty things. Look here.’ I snatch up a bag of pasta from the floor, tear it open. ‘Pasta to chew.’ Gub hands me his headless dinosaur toy, wraps his fat little fingers around a double handful of pasta and shoves it in his mouth. I pocket the dinosaur and find a box of crackers and a bottle of juice and a bottle of water. I pull the lids off and line them up in front of him. I grab a pack of long-life milk and tear off the corner, then find a box of long-life cheese, tear open the foil. It’s pale and rubbery but all the better to keep Gub chewing and happy while I check on Lazella.
‘A real party for my Gubby,’ I whisper and smile. Gub sits, his chubby legs folded in front of him, dragging all the tasty things into his lap, slopping the liquids. I catch the juice as it’s about to tip, not that Gub making a mess or ruining his clothes even matters, just me learning food is precious all my life. ‘Stand it up, Gub,’ I whisper. ‘So it lasts.’ He’s so busy he just flashes a look, bits of soggy cracker oozing from his mouth as he grins. ‘Stay here, and be very quiet or someone will come and take all this food away,’ I whisper, making the poor kid pull stuff closer and look at me with sad eyes, but I gotta make sure he knows. ‘I’m gonna go out this door but I will come back in a minute, okay?’ Gub nods again and I do up his jacket against the cold, smooth his hair off his forehead and plant a kiss. ‘Love you strong, my Gub,’ I whisper, before I slip from the storeroom and shut the door firm behind me. I head across the kitchen to where Lazella’s shoes stick out behind the kitchen bench.
My first step around the bench skids and I drop to my hands beside Lazella. Everything I been avoiding thinking races at my face. My hands slide, skating on red, until they hit her body. The redness is cool and thick on my fingers. She smells of meat and rust. And her black hair spills from her head, tangled with blood on the floor. And the shape of her head –
I turn away. She’s dead. She’s dead!
My stomach lurches. Icy sweat drips down my face. I vomit and vomit until I’m retching nothing but drool. When I try to breathe in, it’s jerks of nothing. Nothing works. She’s gone. Without Lazella, nothing works. I can’t see this. I can’t bear this!
I want to die too. Let me die right now.
But I’m still here. I can’t pretend I’m not here on my hands and knees with this in front of me.
Her eyes will never open. I’ll never again see those soft dark pools. And they’re the only eyes in the universe that look at me the way they do. That look at Gub that way.
Lazella’s face is peaceful, like a mask, but the back of her head is messed up. I can’t let myself think what I’m kneeling in, but the red is gritty and clotted and sticky. Her hair’s tangled. She hates messy hair in the kitchen. And her face is perfect as, like she’s asleep and if I shook her hard enough she’d wake and tell me, ‘I’m fine, doan you worry.’
I want to shake her. I love her so much. I need her back so much. But I’m afraid I’ll hurt her more. But … no.
I touch her cheek. It’s slack. Cold. And now there’s a bloody smudge on her perfect face.
I pull my hand back and heave again. I pick up her hand, heavy and floppy, lean down and push my lips into her cool pale palm, fold her fingers around the last kiss to keep, like she’s just gone to sleep.
I have to hold it together. Lazella was everything. Now I have no-one to look out for me, but Gub only has me. We have to get out of the service areas. Get out to the flight deck on Six. To blast doors and officers and protection. The Crowpeople will find us here and we will die. I’m shaking so bad I can’t think. I’m not breathing. I can’t. Cos of the smell, the taste in my throat.
I push myself up and wipe my hands on the benches and on my trousers. I slap at the tears streaming down my face.
My whole world is gone and I don’t know what to do. I need to find someone to protect us. Will they do that on Level Six? Why can’t I think?
I grab up the kitchen knife lying beside Lazella’s body, cos I’m gonna kill those arse-shits if they come at us. My hand shakes so much, I can’t hardly hold it. I turn off the pot, boiled dry on the stove, pinging and cracking. My arms are weak as and it takes me a couple of goes to put a stool on the bench, ready for me to carry Gub back up there.
Boots thud, a whistling rings out, and two Crow-things step into the kitchen. Their pale eyes in their shiny teardrop helmets lock on the knife in my hand. The knife that’s pointing right at them as I stand in the blood of my aunt, behind the bench. Their shiny black weapons lift. I take off, ducking low, as the first shot smacks the bench and sends chunks of it hitting my boot and bare heel. I’m heading for the corridor, thinking only to lead them away before they hear Gub crunch on a pasta or something. I have to get them away from my Gub!
I'VE LET HIM DOWN
In the corridor behind me, they follow, weapons out in front, whistling, maybe at me, maybe calling for other Crows to cut me off.
I take the emergency stairs out, jump over a body in a crewman uniform slumped over the stairs, hit the wall cos my legs can’t hold me, shove off. What are these weapons that take flesh apart? I’m taking the stairs two at a time, gravity pulling me faster than I’m used to. Stumbling, grabbing the handrail. Too scared to slow down. Too scared to breathe. I suck at air in weird snorts.
Boots pound above me, but they can’t get a clear shot. I take each bend in the stairwell ahead of them. Chunks of wall patter down behind me, around me. Scraping under my bare foot. Burning the skin. Still two Crows chasing, getting further from Gub with every step after me.
A metal door lies shattered like glass. Tiny chunks smashed outward. I never knew metal could do that. That it could just shatter. The Crowpeople must have burst through from this stairwell already.
Screams and thuds echo through the freighter. Maybe Crowpeople are just ahead of me as well. Do I go on? Hide? How can I get back to Gub?
I take to the vents again on Level Six, inside the walls this time, cos that’s how the Sixers like their venting, not groaning overhead, but hidden, muffled, in the walls. I let the vent grille clatter to the floor as the boots of the Crowpeople behind me thump from the stairwell, showing I went this way so they stay chasing me, not going back to check the kitchen. I crawl towards the flight deck. My hands burn, and I’ve banged my knees so many times they’re numb. The corridor outside the fire door through to the flight deck is clear. I kick out the vent, run to the door and hammer at it. My hands leave bloody smudges. If I can just get them to help me save Gub.
But maybe the crew won’t let me in, them thinking the stowaway kid ain’t worth saving.
I’m heavy as here, every muscle aches. Lazella says that’s why we’re so thin and why we were weak as on Dios. She says our muscles wasted from years working on non-Earthed floors. She says that getting off the ships is harder for us
than them fat Sixers, and why they call us lazy for no good reason. What will I do without her? I pound the door again, hard as I can with my aching muscles. Was all right for us to be all bony thin, hollow muscled, but when I see it setting in on the chubby arms and legs of my little Gub, my heart breaks. They have to help me.
A blast blams behind me. Boots thumping. Whistling. And somewhere behind that the whistle, ‘Tootoopne!’ The door slides open and I leap in, waving the knife so they won’t push me out again. The door slides shut.
There are fifteen crew in this foyer room. Just an empty area before the main blast doors. Doors built to stand an explosion. That’s the only thing that might stop these Crow freaks. Being out here isn’t safe.
‘So you’ve given up hiding from us now?’ a man says and sneers at me. His uniform is grey. Some kind of engineer.
‘Gahrr!’ I croak, mouth too dry for words. I point to the blast doors. The ones leading to the flight deck. To officers who can order the rescue of a baby.
‘Lockdown. This is as far as we go. Don’t worry, this door is solid.’ He squints at my face. ‘Is that your blood?’ He has a weapon in his hands.
‘My Gub!’ I whisper and grab his shirt in my fist. ‘We have to get to the kitchens!’ He has to come back with me, see what they did to my Lazella, shoot those Crows while I get Gub.
He pushes me off. Makes me angry, but then he can’t get out with Crowpeople outside the door anyway, so I turn away. I’ve seen what happens to solid doors with Crow weapons. Coming here was a mistake. These people are good as dead. I can’t go back the way I came.
A vent sits on the side wall. It won’t go into the flight deck, but anywhere is better than here. I run to the vent cover and lever the frame of the grille off the wall with my knife. Rough hands grab me, shove me back. People rush the vent. Most of them far too big to fit. I back away. Too much gravity to even fight them on Six. My only exit is a crush of people.
A boom pounds behind me. The fire door mottles. I back into the middle of the room, shuffle back towards the flight deck.
No way they’ll open that door for us now. There’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing to hide behind. There’s no path back to my little Tamiki. I blink cold sweat from my eyes. Lazella’s voice in my head: ‘Doan you leave my bub alone!’ I’m sorry, Aunty. I’m sorry as. I’ve let him down.
People with weapons – one man with just a fire extinguisher, a woman with a cargo hook – get back along the walls on both sides of the door, lift their weapons. The rest of us, we don’t know what to do. Another blast. The door cracks.
It’s too late. They’re going to get in. I’ll be mashed on the floor like my Lazella. Will the pain be too much? What will Gub do when I don’t come back for him?
Another boom and the fire door shatters, crashes in at us, hits the floor like a thousand metal cups smashed down. Chunks skate across the floor, hitting my boot and my bare toes. People shout. My head pounds so freaking loud above it all. I’m so heavy, I’m looking through black creeping edges. ‘Give me that!’ a woman yells and swipes my knife right out of my hand. Nothing I can do. I can’t even move.
Crowpeople swarm in. What do I know about these killers? I drop my head and lift my elbow across my nose. ‘Tootoopne!’ I squeal over and over, never having learned how to whistle. My never-used voice gets stronger with every high-pitched squeal.
Their weapons pound, and every person with a weapon dies before they get the second shot off. A stench of blood and burning flesh fills the room. A woman behind me rushes forwards, my knife flashing in her hand. Warm spray on my forehead. Red in my eyes. People scream. Weapons blam. My elbow over my eyes now, and I keep squealing, ‘Tootoopne!’ Just the way I saw the Crowpeople do it. ‘Tootoopne!’ I squeal it like it’s the only thing in my world. My forehead numbs, swells. Bones of my arm pressing into it. Behind it a pain starts up, pushing my eyes back and back like they’re sinking into my skull. Anyway, I don’t wanna see no more.
The screaming stops. The weapons stop.
Only I stand there, my head dipped, not moving, still squealing, my voice thin and loud in the sudden silence.
THE PINK SCAR TWITCHES
I stop squealing when a Crowperson steps up to me. Three shiny talons stick out from the front of each of its boots. It leans down, face long and scowly. Its nose, in its long helmet, sniffs at me.
If I still had my knife, I’d stab it. If I could move.
The smell of me makes it angry. It whistles and I repeat whatever it said in a squeal as close to a whistle as I can. It lifts its weapon and bashes me across the side of the skull. It clunks on bone, wrenches my neck, and I hit the floor hard, jolting my hip, my shoulder, jerking my neck the other way. The ache spreads like a burn from the side of my head across my skull. But I’m alive. Its taloned boots step back.
I shake my head, scramble up, lift my elbow over my nose and squeal, ‘Tootoopne!’ It’s the only thing I know how to do. It’s the only thing that’s kept me alive the last two minutes.
If I can stay alive, I can get back to Gub.
The monster towers over me, staring with pale killer eyes. I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m going to die. Inside my head, blood swooshes, pulsing, and I listen to the sound that will soon be stopped forever. Just like Lazella’s beating heart. I’m sorry, my Gub.
Another Crowperson whistles, ‘Tootoopne!’
I open my eyes. He’s here in front of me, the big boss of the squad, Tootoopne. Tall armoured boots, glossy black jacket, massive streamlined weapon gripped in three claws, leathery wings hitched high, staring down the long beaked nose of his helmet, head tilted, eyeing me off through large grey eyes flecked with orange. The pink scar under his eye twitches.
‘Tootoopne!’ I squeal.
The Crowperson beside me makes a report and I listen hard as, repeating the sets of whistles in my head, and when Tootoopne whistles at me, I dip my head just like the other Crowperson did and repeat what it said. It’s not like talking where the words tangle in my mouth. Noise squeals out of me bold as, never mind I have no idea what I’m saying. I’ve found a voice. Now, at the shit-arse end of everything, I’ve found a voice.
There is a quiet sha, sha, sha from other Crowpeople around me. They’re laughing, maybe. Laughing’s better than killing.
Tootoopne whistles and strides forwards right into me, the heat of his body, the back of his claws, and the brush of his wings across my face, and I think, this is it. The end. But he’s pushing me away like I’m nothing.
I fall down, and watch him go. They’re all moving slower now. Kinda sluggish, like maybe this is too much gravity for them too. I hope they’re hurting.
Then a Crowperson hauls me up and shoves me on after Tootoopne.
And I can’t get away.
SEEMS WRONG
The alien weapons slam through the blast doors, easy as, and the Crows head towards the flight deck. I stagger after them like this is a movie. Like this is not real.
A Crowperson behind me jabs my back with its weapon, and I squeal, ‘Tootoopne!’ cos that’s my thing now. That’s the thing that keeps me alive.
The Crowperson shoves me to the floor. There’s a full-on battle ahead. The final door to the flight deck is down, smashed in just like all the rest. Weapon-fire snaps and sizzles the ceiling and walls. Smoke pours from black scars in the ceiling, stinks like burning plastic.
I’m shaking bad as. I wipe my cold sweating palms on my thighs over and over. I wanna pass out. Not see. Not deal.
Tootoopne comes back from the front of the fight, his pale, flecked eyes on me. He stomps over, boot talons clicking when he stops. I scramble up, lift my elbow and squeal his name.
He whistles at me and I copy it. Then he looks up the corridor to the flight deck. He whistles again and grabs my shoulder with his three long claws, shoves me forward. I’m supposed to do something, maybe. I stumble forward, hunched, into the line of fire.
I don’t think I’m supposed to die.
T
he Crowpeople stop firing as I pass, and the blam, blam of their weapons dies away. It’s only the snap and sizzle of ours now. I look back at the Crowpeople like maybe they’ll tell me what to do. They’re staring, waiting. What would happen next in a movie?
‘Hold your fire!’ I yell and duck as a shot flies over my head. ‘Stop!’ It comes out as a squeal. They won’t have heard.
The officers on the flight deck stop firing. ‘Who is that? Identify yourself!’ It’s the captain’s voice.
He’s yelled, ‘Identify yourself!’ at me like that before, never mind there was no way I would get my aunt in deep by speaking. Now I have to make myself heard like I’m in some movie. A hostage movie. I think I have to make them give themselves up. That must be what the big Crow wants. Maybe cos of my squealing he thinks I can speak for him?
If the captain knows it’s his stowaway, he’ll probably shoot again. ‘You have to give up!’ I yell.
‘We’ll negotiate. They take half the cargo, we keep the ship and crew,’ the captain says.
Tootoopne don’t look like the negotiating type. ‘You’re the only ones left. If you don’t surrender, they’ll kill you too.’
‘What the hell are they?’ the captain asks like maybe I have a clue.
‘Throw out your weapons,’ I say. My voice shakes. I don’t know what the right words are. I don’t know what I’m doing. Every muscle tells me to run and scream, but I hold that down, try to think through the panic fogging my brain.
I’m guessing there’s the captain and two pilots in the flight deck, like there was when I was hauled out here. Maybe some other officers.
When five weapons clatter out into the doorway, I think that’s about right. I turn and bob my head to Tootoopne the way the Crowpeople did.
