“What’s Luigi’s?” Talbot asked. “Never heard of it.”
“You wouldn’t of,” Kalico told him. “It’s a favorite hangout for white-assed soft-belly Corporate types. I’ll bet Su’s sauce is better. What about the noodles? Homemade or does she buy them from Millicent Graves?”
“Homemade,” Dya told her. “The only thing this Luigi’s might have on us is eggs for the noodles. As if any of us can remember what an egg noodle tastes like.”
“Count me in,” Kalico said through what was obviously a dry mouth. “I’ll bring the wine.”
“Deal,” Dya told her.
From his position in the lead, Talbot grinned. Funny how their relationships had changed over the years since Kalico had tried to seize Mundo Base out from under Dya, Su, and Rebecca. But then that was Donovan for you.
Talbot clambered up, hoisting himself from one thick root to the next. It was maybe a three-meter climb to the top. There he stopped, staring ahead in the gloom, half expecting to spot Talina and Kylee struggling over the next root mass. Only to see nothing in the dim half-light but more roots. A vast expanse of them fading into the shadowed recesses.
“Crushed the airtruck?” Kalico wondered under her breath as she grasped Dya’s hand and let the woman pull her up the last of the climb. “What would have possessed Talina to set down next one of those damn lollipop trees?”
“It was close to where we were?” Talbot guessed. “Let me guess: No one’s ever reported that lollipop trees can crush airtrucks? Sort of like no one’s seen purple-burst flowers or sea urchin pincushions before, either.”
“At least no one who lived through it,” Muldare said wearily and winced as she climbed to the top of the roots. “How long was Tyson occupied?”
“Maybe four years,” Kalico answered, dropping to sit on the top root and rest her feet on the one below. “Most of that time was spent building the base, establishing the garden, flying regional cadastral surveys.”
Again Dya cupped hands and shouted, “Kylee?”
The forest seemed to scream back as the chime shifted up a notch and something screeched a mocking mimicry from above. No answer from the girl could be heard.
“Fire a shot?” Muldare suggested.
“Maybe. In a bit,” Talbot said. “If we don’t run into them soon. Sure as hell, we don’t need to worry about the Unreconciled. Dressed the way they are, if they tried to make it this deep into the forest, they’d be a meal.”
“They’d know where we are though,” Kalico noted as she leaned her head forward and massaged the back of her neck.
“Think they wouldn’t have seen the airtruck go down?” Muldare shifted her rifle and rolled her sore and swelling shoulder. “Surely they would have had someone watching from the cliffs.”
“Get me out of this,” Dya whispered to the empty air around her, “and I’ll never leave PA again.” She chuckled. “Funny, isn’t it? I just want to hug the kids again. Sit on the couch and listen to Su complain. Hear the kids playing.”
“I want a jug of water,” Kalico whispered. “A big one. Like a couple of gallons.”
Talbot nodded, shifted his rifle, and rubbed his shoulder. Damn, his empty belly was like a hole in his gut. He worked his mouth to stimulate enough saliva to swallow. Of everything, he hated being thirsty the most. Miserable as he was, he knew Dya and Kalico had to feel even worse. Unlike him and Muldare, they’d never undergone this kind of deprivation.
He glanced up at the trees on his right, in the direction of Tyson Station. That was the closest food and water. Up there. Right under the noses of the Unreconciled. With the airtruck gone, that was the only choice left.
So, what are we going to do? Shoot our way through the middle of them?
With Talina, that would give them three rifles, five pistols. Firepower enough to murder every last cannibal up there.
Murder?
What else could he call it? Batuhan hadn’t seemed like the type who could be bluffed. The guy believed he was a messiah who had a direct link to the divine universe. How did anyone rational deal with that?
Fact was: They had to get back up to Tyson. Soon. Dehydration was taking its course. Not to mention lack of sleep. It—along with hunger—was making them stupid. Slowing their thoughts and reactions.
It had been pure dumb luck that no one had been killed so far. It wouldn’t hold.
He glanced down at Dya. Wished she wasn’t here. Wished, with all his heart, that she was still back home.
Dear God, I love her.
Yes, he loved Su, too, but Dya had always been special. Not only had she been the first of the Mundo women to become his lover, wife, mother of his first child, but more, she fit the best. Together they’d shared the most. Been the strength in the marriage after Rebecca’s death.
If anything happens to her . . .
It would kill him.
And then there was Kalico Aguila, once the unassailable Supervisor who looked down on him from on high. Still one of the most formidable women on the planet, here she was—a dependent partner in the desperate bid for survival that was Donovan.
He cupped hands around his mouth, filled his lungs to shout . . .
It came from the side. A blur. He’d barely started to turn, to try and identify the movement, when a blast of something ripped through his chest like a fountain of fire. Lifted him bodily from the roots.
Stunned agony.
Pain like he’d never known.
He was being lifted. Could feel his legs jerking. Felt and heard his ribs breaking. His chest torn in two.
The forest spun, his body flopping like a rag doll’s.
He had the horrible realization of something big stuck through his center. Bloody. Impossible to conceive.
A scream could be heard from somewhere far away.
As his consciousness began to fade, the distant sound of shots could be heard.
And then he was rudely . . .
58
The weight of the room, the dark shadows, and most of all, that insidious dome of moldering human bones, pressed down. The air like a miasma. What kind of sick minds built a monument to the people they’d murdered? The light played weirdly over the skulls, the polished leg and arm bones seemed to dance in the shadows cast by the intricate rosettes made of vertebrae and phalanges.
The dead stared out from the dark recesses, peered between the cracks, and filtered through the myriad of wired femora, humeri, and jaws. Each empty eye socket glared with malicious intent.
In all of his life, Miguel Galluzzi had never known a sensation as disturbing as this. His soul felt besmirched and fouled.
He turned, fought the tickling wetness that preceded the urge to throw up. As if the mere act of puking his guts out would rid him of the pollution, filth, and contamination that now clung to his skin like a film.
In the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of a long-haired man in yellow overalls as he hurried past. Hardly enough to recognize. Just that fleeting impression.
The temple of bones might have been a malignancy. It loomed, seemed to expand. Began to suck at Galluzzi’s soul. The sensation akin to the structure pulling a hazy thread of his spirit into its low-arched doorway, past the sprawled skeleton that lay like a broken doll.
“I have to get out of here,” Galluzzi whispered hoarsely.
“I understand,” Shig said reasonably and turned on his heel. As he passed the double doors, he slapped the wall panel. Darkness fell over the monstrosity of bones with a solidity that sent a quake down Galluzzi’s back.
Though left behind in darkness, he could feel the dome of bones—its looming presence. That the thing was alive, sentient, watching him with the gaze of an inquisitor. In judgment of his life, soul, and sanity.
Galluzzi stumbled under the impact, braced himself against the hallway wall as he fought for breath. Tr
ied to still the pounding.
The light smeared, slipped sideways, momentarily blurring Shig’s concerned features.
“Death is here,” Galluzzi whispered. “It’s all around us. Feeding on our souls.”
Shig’s features solidified again as the man said, “Curious that you’d use those words. It’s one of the phrases in the hallway we passed through. You read that there?”
“No. Just . . . just came to me.”
“You’ve gone pale.”
Galluzzi blinked, finally able to get a full breath into his starved lungs. “I knew Jem Orten. Have I told you that?”
“No.”
“Like so many of us, he was hopeful of getting Freelander. Would have sold his soul to sit in the captain’s chair.” He fought back tears. “Maybe that’s what he did, huh? He just didn’t know it when he spaced out of Solar System.”
“Can you walk?”
Galluzzi managed a weak nod, pushed himself off the wall. It was like the surface didn’t feel right. Sort of rubbery, not quite . . . well, real.
When Galluzzi looked down, his right hand was jumping around like a wounded songbird. The staccato clicking sound came from his chattering teeth.
Unseen things kept touching him. But when he looked, there was nothing there.
“I want out of here,” he told Shig without the least bit of shame. “This place is hell, and I want no part of it.”
“Just this way, and we’ll be gone.”
Following Shig through the half-light down the hall took all of Galluzzi’s will. They passed the Captain’s Lounge, the door ajar to expose a dark room. Unseen eyes peered out at their passing. Whispers and hisses, barely below the threshold of hearing, issued from within.
Before the door to the AC, Galluzzi started, sure that he’d seen someone peering at him from the wall. Familiar dark eyes were watching him. The lips were in the process of forming words. When he fixed on the sialon, the woman’s face wasn’t there. Just. Blank. Fucking. Wall.
I saw her. Black hair. Asian features. Like I knew . . .
“Oh, shit. That was Tyne.”
“Excuse me?” Shig had stopped before the duraplast and steel door that led to Astrogation Control.
“Tyne Sakihara,” Galluzzi said, voice rasping. “Someone I knew back in Solar System. Spaced with me on a couple of my early runs. We were . . . well, intimate. I loved her.” He choked on the memory. “Once upon a time.” Galluzzi balled his fists, used them to scrub at his eyes. “What the hell is wrong with me? Why would I see her face? Like it was coming out of the fucking wall?”
Shig watched him with eyes that almost glowed. “You saw her?”
Galluzzi forced himself to breathe. Glanced back at the blank and featureless wall with its faint coating of grime. “Has to be my imagination. She’s somewhere back in Solar System. Bet she’s got her own ship by now.”
“She’s here.” Shig’s voice carried no emotion. “Behind that wall. In Astrogation Control. Or at least her skeleton is. She was locked in with Captain Orten. When it became apparent that there would be no exit, he shot her in the head before he turned the gun on himself. Her bones were still on the floor when Talina sealed Tamarland Benteen behind this door.”
Shig reached out, reverently running the tips of his fingers over the battered surface of the AC’s door.
As the words sank in, the hallway slipped sideways, seemed to spin around Galluzzi. Voices whispered in the air around him. He slumped against the far side, tried to steady himself.
“She’s behind that door? Dead? With Jem?” He ground his teeth. Tried to understand. “Why the hell did you bring me here?”
“So that you would understand.”
“And Tamarland Benteen is in there, too?” He could hear the panic in his voice, the incipient insanity. “Should we knock and announce ourselves?”
“No, we should not. If Benteen’s alive in there, pounding on the door would be a cruel form of baiting. If he’s dead, like Jem and Tyne, the action would be futile and without meaning.”
“What the fuck are you saying?”
“I’m saying, Captain, that reality can be many things. That behind that door, Benteen may be alive, or he may be dead. You cannot know until you open the door.”
Shig leaned close. “You, Captain, had a choice to make: You could save your ship and crew, or you could suffer the same fate as Freelander. Like knocking on the AC door, you could not know the outcome until you’d made the decision and observed the results. Your reality is illusion.”
Something cold, like an icy finger, slipped along Galluzzi’s ribs. Tyne had stroked him like that when they were lovers. The sensation was real enough that he yipped and leaped sideways. With a nervous hand he batted at his side.
Looked down to see . . . nothing.
“I want out of here. Now.”
“After seeing all this,” Shig gestured grandly at the ship, “do you still think that blowing yourself out an airlock would be in the interest of cosmic justice?”
Galluzzi stared woodenly at the battered and welded AC door. The last refuge of Jem Orten and Galluzzi’s once-beloved Tyne Sakihara. The final internment for Tamarland Benteen.
“I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“Ah,” Shig said through an exhale. “With that realization, you have just taken the first step on your new Tao.”
“My what?”
“Your path. Only after you stop questioning will the answers come to you.”
Galluzzi flinched as maniacal laughter echoed down the hallway, vanished.
As loud as it had been to Galluzzi’s ears, Shig apparently hadn’t heard it. Not even a hint.
59
Kalico Aguila was sitting wearily atop the highest root, staring out over the dim forest floor with its tangles of roots, vines, and immense tree trunks. Her only concern was how miserably thirsty, hungry, and exhausted she was.
Talbot stood beside her, Dya squatted at his side. Muldare, to Kalico’s right, was scanning the surrounding forest through her rifle’s optic in search of any sign of Talina’s party.
Something tore through the air. Mark Talbot’s body jerked under a mighty impact. Was flung forward and up off its perch. The man’s rifle clattered down across the roots, torn from his hands by a force that catapulted him into the heights.
Kalico froze, gaped, unable to comprehend what she was seeing: Talbot’s body—skewered through the chest—was being hauled skyward by some long tentacle. The man’s arms, legs, and head jerked and swayed, limp like rubber. Then he was gone. Pulled into the high branches. Vanished.
It seemed impossible.
Couldn’t be happening.
Dya’s piercing scream shattered Kalico’s dazed disbelief.
Briah Muldare—her instincts true to her training—pulled up her rifle. She didn’t hesitate. The blasting racket of a burst hammered at Kalico’s ears as bullets shredded the branches high above. Bits of detritus came floating down, but no body. No terrifying alien.
“Mark!” Dya screamed, her throat straining until the veins stood out. She leaped to her feet, almost tottering on the root. Her fists like rocks, muscles flexed as she stared up in absolute horror at where her husband had disappeared.
“What the hell?” Muldare whispered hoarsely, her rifle at the ready, muzzle pointing toward the dark branches overhead.
Kalico scrambled down, recovered Talbot’s rifle. She raised it, worked her mouth to try and swallow. Felt her heart hammering against her chest as if fit to burst.
Overhead, only the slow shifting of the branches—the apparently endless dance that was Donovan’s forest—could be seen. The chime rose and fell as if nothing had happened.
“Mark!” Dya screamed again. She struggled to keep her balance on the high root as it slithered to one side.
“We’ve got
to get off of here,” Kalico said, shifting the heavy rifle as she scanned the heights.
“Come on, Dya,” Muldare said as she started down, leaping from root to root. “There’s nothing—”
“That’s my husband!” Dya continued to stare up, tears leaking down her cheeks.
“Damn it, Dya,” Kalico cried. “He’s gone! You saw that same as I did. Whatever that thing was, it punched a spike, a tentacle—whatever the hell that was—right through his chest!”
“We can’t lose him,” Dya almost whimpered. “Not again.”
“Dya, come on!” Muldare shouted, starting back up the roots to physically drag the woman down.
Dya began, “This will break Su’s heart! Leave us . . .”
This time the spike came from behind. Unseen. Caught Dya Simonov between her shoulder blades. The point of it, black and sharp like polished horn, shot out between her breasts. It jerked her upward so hard and fast the weight of the woman’s head could be heard snapping her neck.
Kalico, taken aback, stood paralyzed as Dya Simonov disappeared up into the high branches.
“Supervisor?” Briah Muldare scrambled down, grabbing her arm. “I need you to leave this place now!”
Talina’s voice was yammering in Kalico’s earbud, demanding to know what was wrong. What the shooting was.
Kalico nodded, struggled to think. Let Muldare pull her sideways, ahead. Somehow Kalico managed to run, to put one foot ahead of the other.
Lost track of the mad scramble as she climbed up over masses of roots, half-leaped, half-fell down the far side, only to stagger onward. She couldn’t think, couldn’t answer Talina’s frantic call for information through the com.
Panic. It was all panic.
Until something deep inside her screamed Get a grip!
“Wait!” she cried, pulling up, slowing, aware of what their mad flight was doing to the roots. Looking back, she saw a writhing trail. “Think!”
“Think what?” Muldare cried, the glaze of panic in her hazel eyes as she scanned the trees, shifting her rifle this way and that. “There’s something up there!”
Unreconciled Page 35
