Half Way Home

by Hugh Howey

  In at least a thousand different ways.

  And not all of them verbal.

  Tarsi scooted up my body, her knee pressing into my thigh, her lips hovering just a few inches from my cheek.

  “What bullet?” she breathed, the air from her lungs tickling the tiny hairs deep inside my ear.

  I pushed her away, giggling and digging a finger in after her question, trying to stop it from itching. “Tell her,” I told Kelvin.

  He quietly related his day’s activities, telling us both what the rest of his group had been up to. I sat up, crossed my legs, and turned to face him. By the time he was done, we were all three sitting close together, our heads bent down over our laps. Tarsi looked back and forth between us, her eyebrows low in worry.

  “Aren’t you two being a little paranoid?” she whispered.

  “Paranoid?” Kelvin asked. “They’re making guns,” he hissed.

  “Maybe to go hunting. Or for defense,” Tarsi said.

  “Then why make them in secret?” I asked her.

  “They aren’t. We’re the ones making them.”

  Kelvin shook his head. “I don’t know. You had to see how it was being done. Everyone was kept apart, and nobody is talking about it.”

  “We’re talking about it,” Tarsi said. “And everything is being done that way. Building the rocket, waking us up, preparing for the future. I think you guys are reading too much into this.” She pointed to Kelvin. “You, I understand,” she said with a smile. She jabbed a finger at me. “When did you get bonked on the head?”

  “I think he’s right,” I told her. “And I think maybe it’s all my fault.”

  “Your fault? How is that?” Tarsi asked.

  Kelvin looked to me as well. I tried to sort out how to put it, but the theory had just begun to form while listening to Tarsi’s doubts.

  “I think it might have something to do with the conversation I had with Colony this morning.”

  Kelvin frowned. “I thought you said that went well.”

  “Yeah,” Tarsi said. “According to Oliver it was a ‘miracle.’”

  I frowned at her. “Colony said it was going to change some things. I thought it meant we would get back to planning for the future and chill out on the rocket schedule, maybe give morale a boost.”

  “How does making guns help that?” Tarsi asked.

  “It doesn’t,” I said. I glanced back and forth between them. “Unless you decide you don’t give a fuck about morale.”

  We stared at each other in silence, unbroken until the whistle of a bombfruit descended from the canopy, causing us to tense up, fearful of the impact. It had become our normal reaction to the sound ever since the tremors. A sign, perhaps, of our growing learned sense of helplessness.

  • 10 • Order

  I had more nightmares that night—the worst ones yet. In one, it wasn’t bombfruit falling from the trees, but the heads of the four-hundred-plus colonists who hadn’t made it out of the vat module. They rained down on us, streaming fire, and landed charred and black but still screaming. We gathered them up from the ground and ate them raw, lapping at the stuff spilling from the cracked skulls, caring more about our survival than the foul taste. And in the dream, I knew it wouldn’t be long before we ran out of heads and those of us left alive would turn on each other.

  A few days later, shadows of these dreams leaked out into the real world as a new group formed. The first person I saw with a gun on his side wasn’t Hickson, as I expected it to be—it was Oliver. Not that he got his weapon first, I just wasn’t actively avoiding him the way I was Hickson and some others.

  I passed him on my way to the power module, where I was helping build the mission package. The bright golden object gleamed from his hip and captured my attention. He greeted me, but I couldn’t hear what he said, so distracted was I by the sight of him carrying something I knew, even if only from training modules, to be very dangerous.

  “I said good afternoon,” Oliver repeated.

  I nodded, looked up, and tried my best to return his smile. “Missed you at lunch,” I said. “And the floor of the tractor gets pretty cold without you there.”

  Oliver frowned. “Yeah, weird how I miss sleeping like that. But I’ve moved into the command module full-time. Hickson made me an enforcer. No more bombfruit duty for me, scraping up all that green mess.”

  “An enforcer?” I asked. “What’s that?”

  “We’ve been falling more and more off schedule. The enforcers make sure we get back on.” He raised a finger and twirled it in a large circle above his head. “We’ve got flood lights going up today so we can work later into the evening. And with the gift we received the other day, nobody should go hungry as we wrap this project up.”

  “Wrap it up?” I asked. “Don’t we need to be thinking about the long haul? Where’s the power for these floodlights gonna come from? We’re rationing energy here in the very module that’s suppose to make it.”

  “We’re cutting juice back from the security perimeter. There hasn’t been any sign of predators—” Oliver stopped and looked me up and down. “Jeez, Porter, you sound pretty tense. Is everything alright? Do you need some spiritual guidance to get you through these dark times?”

  I laughed, then felt bad for doing so as I saw a spasm of pain in Oliver’s cheeks. “No,” I said. “I’m fine. I just—I guess some of us are finding it hard to sacrifice so much for a project we aren’t really being told anything about.”

  Oliver nodded. “I understand,” he said. “You scientists are always the first to become doubters.”

  “It isn’t that, it’s just—”

  Oliver raised his hand. “I’m here to talk, to help you, but not to listen. I don’t want you filling my head with any . . . whatever—” He turned to go.

  “Oliver, wait. I didn’t mean to—”

  He turned, his face twisted up in an expression of pure rage that brought me to a halt. “Colony gave you life,” he spat. “Don’t you understand that? It taught you everything you know. None of us would even be here without it. If everything had gone perfect, if there were a half thousand of us clearing these lands and breeding like animals, would you question your existence then? Would you curse the person who made you and taught you how to live your life? Or would you carry on building yourself a better world in the service of Colony and country?”

  “I don’t see—”

  “I know you don’t, Porter. You don’t see what’s going on. No matter what happens here, some of us have it in our hearts to obey and some have the compulsion to rebel. I bet if I were telling you to farm these lands, you would be out building yourself a rocket. We should probably be using some of that—oh, what do you call it?”

  “Reverse psychology?” I asked.

  “Yeah, some of that.” Oliver jabbed his finger at me. “You know, you’ve been miserable since the day we were born, and that’s probably your lot in life, but not me. I know the glory of the gods, and I will work in their service. I’ve been an enforcer of that since day one, with or without this,” he said, slapping at the gun on his waist.

  “You need to search your heart,” Oliver told me. “Figure out what you’re working toward. Get right with the gods.”

  He turned and stormed off.

  I just watched him go, feeling sorry for him. Then damning him for assaulting me the way he had. For planting a seed of doubt—

  ••••

  That night provided the first glimpse of our new life, in all the harshness of ten-thousand watt bulbs. After dinner, we were ordered back to our stations to work until we met the day’s quota. For our group, that meant finishing the three firing rocket phases attached to the end of the payload body. In order to get the package wherever it was going, three separate canisters full of two-part propellant would need to fire before dropping away. Those of us not really qualified to consider ourselves “scientists” worked on that, while another group soldered together the circuits that made up the navigation array
.

  While we worked, one of the guys that used to be with construction—a big lad I’d seen Kelvin speak to during meals—stood by the door, one hand resting on his gun. It was strange how readily we just went along with his presence, most of us publicly accepting the new rules with a shrug, only to bitch and moan once nobody could hear. Muriel, the girl helping me plumb the mixing valves for each of the three tanks, slept in the same module as the guy enforcing us. Several times, she tried to strike up a conversation, asking him how he was enjoying his new job, but he never replied. What little joy there was in our payload group—the jokes and gossip that gave us a tune to work by—had been sucked right out of the power module. Sapped like the energy being diverted from the defense grid to feed the demanding lights.

  So we worked in a silence punctuated by the occasional grunt of frustration from someone in our group. Every now and then, a bombfruit whistled outside and all of us cringed in fear. Even though there was a roof overhead to protect us.

  • 11 • The Break

  It’s amazing how quickly you get used to things. My head was full of an education on how to help brains on the verge of breaking, but all I’d seen around me was them bending more and more under a growing strain and somehow remaining whole. For all the studying I’d done on the fragility of a thing, here I was a witness and example of its incredible perseverance.

  Another thing I noticed was how quickly the human brain paired causal events. “A” leads to “B.” We love to make that link, however tenuous. Like how Tarsi hits people when she’s joking. As soon as she slaps someone, you can expect her odd little laugh to follow. The one event follows the other like clockwork. Kelvin and I make fun of the habit, telling her we aren’t going to laugh on command anymore. That’s why we think she does it, like a little threat of violence if we don’t find the last thing she said humorous.

  Still, the harder we try not to laugh, the more we end up doing it. Harder and more often of late, it seemed, despite the longer days and the less time we spent together. More evidence of our bending without breaking.

  The whistle of the bombfruit was another of those causal pairs. After the whistle, there was usually a bang. Often, it was the softer thud of the rind exploding as it hit the mud, the dirt mixing with our next meal. But sometimes, it was the booming report of a large bombfruit hitting something metal. The next day, a dining group might find a new dent in their gold table and breakfast already spread out, dutifully tended to by a variety of little worms.

  Whistle followed by explosion. Like clockwork. There was always the warning of the first before the bang of the latter. The in-between time was spent tensed up, waiting.

  My nerves, then, were not prepared when the sounds reversed themselves. It was late at night, and my group was struggling along to meet its quota. Several of us worked outside joining pipes—not just to keep the fumes of our welding irons away from the others, but because of the ironic state of our lighting. The bulbs outside burned brighter than the dim flickering within the power module, which struggled to keep up with demand.

  The explosion came without warning. A loud boom. My entire body twitched, and I dropped my iron. We all looked at each other, wondering what had happened. Then the high-pitched screaming started. The two noises had come in the wrong order.

  I left my iron in the dirt and ran toward the source, trying to keep up with Muriel, who had taken off immediately.

  The wail emanated from the direction of the launch pad. Other colonists converged on it as well, despite the shouts from enforcers to return to our stations. One of them raised his gun and fired a shot straight up.

  I cringed, then I realized the sound from the gun was the same as the one we’d heard earlier. The whistling noise was distant shrieks, which grew louder as we stumbled down the slope toward the rocket site.

  Several enforcers stood together, their gleaming guns drawn. Hickson came running up to join them, shouting questions. Stephany, one of the girls I knew through Kelvin, sat in the dirt, screaming. She held someone in her lap—an eerie recreation of what I’d come upon the day Stevens died. The boy was large and unmoving, and for a second I thought it was Kelvin, but then I saw him drop down from the scaffolding.

  “What did you do?” Stephany shrieked, rocking back and forth. I ran to her, joining Julie—a nurse who had become, by default, the base’s doctor.

  The boy had both hands pressed to his stomach, vainly attempting to staunch the flow of blood. His chest heaved in and out rapidly; the only other thing moving was his eyes, which darted back and forth between us.

  “Let me see,” Julie said, pulling his hands away and pushing the thin fabric of his top up to his chest. Blood welled out, thick and dark; she immediately placed her hands over the wound and started barking out commands: water, clean towels, coagulant. I didn’t hear what else. Someone pulled me back forcefully.

  “Give them room,” Hickson said.

  I stumbled backward, feeling a fury rise up inside. One of the enforcers came to me, holding the gun out between us, but he wasn’t threatening me with it. He held it limp and on its side, looking at it like he wasn’t sure how it got there.

  “I didn’t mean to—” he said. He looked at me, water coating his eyes. “He was trying to take an extra break,” he told me. “I didn’t mean to—”

  I pushed the gun down, getting the barrel away from me, and looked around for Kelvin. He stood beside the scaffolding, his fists clenched in front of him, his eyes glaring daggers at Hickson.

  I stepped away from the enforcer, making him cope with his guilt alone, and ran to my friend to save him from making a huge mistake.

  ••••

  Later that night, the three of us sat together in the cab of our tractor, the overhead light turned up just enough so we wouldn’t bump into each other. It felt hot and muggy inside, but none of us felt safe out on the hood. Partly out of fear of being overheard, and partly out of fear of the bombs overhead.

  “We need to get out of here,” Kelvin said, looking back and forth between Tarsi and I.

  “And go where?” Tarsi asked. “Just wander out into the wilderness of a planet we haven’t been properly oriented for? Colony won’t even show anyone the satellite maps. We have no idea what’s out there.”

  “We know what’s in here,” Kelvin said.

  “Tarsi’s right,” I told Kelvin. “Besides, we would just be aban-doning everyone else.”

  “Anyone that wants to come, can come,” he said. “The more the merrier. The place gets enough rain, right? And there must be tons of bombfruit out there, especially since the tremors. It’ll last us until we get started—”

  “Started on what?” I asked. “Rubbing sticks together? Do you have any idea how long it would take us to rebuild a fraction of this?”

  Kelvin squared his shoulders at me and raised his voice. “Do you have any idea how long we’ll last here if we keep killing one another?”

  “Settle down,” Tarsi said. “Both of you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kelvin said. “I’m just angry at what happened today. I knew that enforcer was going to do something. We’ve been whispering about it all across the scaffolding today. Hell, I should’ve done something earlier.”

  “Then you’d be the one getting a blood transfusion,” Tarsi said, holding his arm with both her hands.

  Kelvin sniffed, his mouth tilting up at an angle. He looked to each of us in turn. “You guys can stay here if you want,” he said, “but I’m leaving. I’m gonna take a piece of magnesium from the supply store and a machete, so I can start a fire. Maybe a few strips of tarp for carrying water or to make a shelter. Not much. I don’t care if I only last a week, I’m not gonna sit here and watch us tear each other apart.”

  Before I could complain, Tarsi floored me with her reaction.

  “I’ll come with you,” she said. “I can grab a few seed packets from support in the morning. But I think we should spread the word, give others the chance to join us.”

&
nbsp; I shook my head at this, arguing tactics when what I should’ve been doing was dismissing their entire plan. “Tell anyone and you’ll be stopped. By force.”

  “So you’re staying,” Kelvin said.

  “I don’t think I can leave,” I told them. I immediately recognized the hurt on Tarsi’s face. “I’m sorry, it just feels suicidal to me. And I think you guys should sleep on it and reconsider. Give it a day, at least. Once you go, Hickson will know what happened. I don’t think you’ll be able to come back—”

  Saying it cemented the seriousness of what they were considering. I pictured myself sleeping in the tractor at night. Alone. I turned away and pretended to peer through the cab’s glass, but it was fogged with a billion droplets of our condensed worry.

  “I don’t want you guys to go,” I whispered. “There’s no telling what’s beyond our perimeter.”

  “We’ll give it a day,” Tarsi said. I felt her turn away from me to face Kelvin. “Is that okay with you? We could use it to gather a few things. Another day like today, and I don’t think we’ll be alone in going.”

  “Another day like today, and I won’t have any of my sanity left,” Kelvin said. “In which case, the shrink here will have to come.”

  Tarsi slapped him in my defense—which automatically got us laughing. It felt nice, even if we weren’t sure why we were doing it.

  And I don’t know that we would’ve been laughing, had we known it would be the last time the three of us enjoyed a moment like that in our small home. Because, even though Tarsi and Kelvin had agreed to wait a day, we would soon discover that the day would not wait for us.

  • 12 • Missing

  For the second straight night, I hardly slept a wink. And when I did, more nightmares chased me, nightmares of waking and finding myself alone. Several times, I snuck out and sat on the hood, trying to catch the glimpse of a star through the dense canopy overhead and listening to the occasional whistle of breakfast falling, cringing in anticipation of getting whacked the way Kelvin had.