But one thing bothered Jeff above all: if the woman had really been on Deneb-6 when the planet was blown up by the rebels, was it possible that his father was down here in this madhouse? Jeff had told the woman his father’s name, but she had shaken her head.
Now they were passing another group. Four men were lying on the ground screaming in pain, while a dozen others impaled them on iron bars. An older gray-haired man was still alive when the bar emerged out of his body through his mouth. Jeff turned away.
“I can’t take any more of this!” Joanne whimpered and covered her ears.
“This is a fucking madhouse …” Mac looked down at the ground as he continued to pull the equipment sled behind him.
They encountered more people as they progressed to the middle of the cavity. Jeff didn’t see any real houses. Where did these people live? The whole thing was surreal. Were they just holograms? A huge show to frighten Jeff and his crew? No. He had touched the blond woman. She had been warm and obviously consisted of flesh and blood. Jeff had even smelled her sweat.
They were coming up to another group that was pushing heavy rocks up a steep hill. Once at the top, the big chunks of stone immediately began to roll down the other side of the hill, followed by the people who ran after them screaming. At the bottom, the whole exercise was repeated, as if Sisyphus himself had organized a competition for his most devoted followers.
Jeff and his shipmates stopped and watched the bizarre show. There were about a hundred people taking part in this crazy spectacle.
“I don’t get it,” Castle said. “What makes them do this bullshit?”
Shorty was wide-eyed. “They must have lost their minds!”
Green ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head. Since they’d entered the cavity, he’d hardly spoken a word. There was a strange sheen to his eyes, and Jeff hoped he wouldn’t be the next one of them to fall victim to madness.
“Some of them are completely exhausted,” Shorty frowned. “Why don’t they just stop?”
“They can’t,” Joanne countered. “Look!”
Jeff followed her gaze. One of the unfortunate men was so exhausted he was stumbling around aimlessly. Again and again he paused for a moment, only to keep on running, his face distorted with pain.
But what—?
Then Jeff’s eyes fell on the man’s feet. As soon as he stopped for just a moment, the rock beneath him began to glow. With horror, Jeff saw that the man’s soles were already burned black.
Jeff couldn’t stop himself. He stepped forward and shouted: “Frank? Frank Austin?”
He didn’t get a reply. Not that he had expected one.
27.
Finally they started to near the other side of the cavity. They had taken two breaks. The first time behind a small outcrop, the second time in a hollow in the ground. During the first break, Jeff had been unable to sleep. As soon as he’d closed his eyes, his mind had been filled with the horrific images he had seen—and with so many questions. The more he thought about it, the harder it was to come up with a single explanation that made any sense. Joanne knew about his father, but he’d had to explain to the others why he had shouted out his father’s name. During the second break, however, he managed to nod off. His body was so overwhelmed with tiredness, that not even his restless mind could stop him falling asleep. But when he woke up, he felt anything but rested. Like zombies, they dragged themselves past more groups of people carrying out the most unimaginable atrocities on one another. And each time, Jeff forced himself to check that it wasn’t his father who was being hacked to pieces, whipped, stretched, or disemboweled. And every time he called his father’s name, he hoped he wasn’t among the tormentors. But he neither saw his father nor received a reply from anyone.
Finally, they reached a flat summit and Jeff saw a broad staircase, similar to the one they had walked down to enter the cavity. It extended upward around eighty feet. At the top, there was a black gate, which hopefully offered a way out of this chamber of horrors.
They passed the last group. Several men were standing around some stone structures that looked like ancient altars. Naked women lay on them, motionless, and Jeff didn’t want to know what the men were doing with their chained bodies. Almost out of habit, he called out the name of his father.
“Austin. Frank Austin.”
He didn’t even make the effort to lift his head.
“You’ll find the sinner back there.”
Jeff stopped in his tracks, as if struck by lighting, and looked up. A man with long brown hair was pointing vaguely toward an area to the left of the exit, then turned back to what he was doing.
“Excuse me?” Jeff asked. He had spoken so softly, he had to repeat himself immediately, but he didn’t receive an answer.
He turned to his shipmates. They, too, had stopped in their tracks and were staring at him.
Jeff’s horror was reflected in Joanne’s shocked face. This simply couldn’t be!
Joanne stepped closer to him. “Jeff,” she said quietly and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t do it! Don’t let yourself be manipulated!”
Was that what this was about? Was someone trying to manipulate him? To force him to do something? Had he heard correctly or was he starting to lose his mind? No, he was thinking clearly. And he knew what he was going to do.
“I have to know,” he answered quietly.
Joanne looked at him beseechingly for a moment, then relented. “Of course. We’ll go with you.”
Mac cursed, but Castle and Green nodded understandingly. Jeff marched ahead. He could feel his heartbeat in his throat. They walked around the group at the altars, and a several hundred feet ahead of them, Jeff saw another cluster of people. About a dozen men and women were piling up logs and erecting poles. It was a pyre, there was no doubt about it.
A little to the side, four people lay on the ground, again wearing only loincloths. Their hands and feet were bound. There were three women and …
“Dad!” Jeff cried with a sharp intake of breath. He began to run.
“Jeff, wait!” Joanne screamed after him.
Jeff ran to his father as fast as he could. He had almost reached him when a tall man with curly black hair blocked his way.
“Where do you think you’re going, kid?” the man asked.
“I want to go to my …” Jeff swallowed. “I have to talk to that man over there.”
The curly-haired man shrugged and made way for him. “Be my guest. You don’t have much time, in any case. He’s gonna burn in a minute.”
Jeff ran the last few feet. He stumbled and fell to the ground in front of his father. He scraped his knee on the sharp rock, but barely noticed the pain.
“Dad!”
“Jeff? Is that you?”
It was unbelievable! Jeff had never expected to hear his voice again. He took his father’s face in his hands and looked him in the eyes. His cheeks were sunken. He looked thinner than Jeff remembered. His pupils weren’t dilated. He looked at him without a trace of madness. But his lips quivered. “Is that really you, Jeff?”
“Yes,” Jeff sobbed and pressed his father’s head against his chest. He breathed in his father’s familiar smell. He couldn’t believe he was hearing this voice, which he knew so well. This couldn’t be a hologram. This wasn’t a deception. This was Frank Austin. Flesh and blood.
“I’m so sorry,” his father said.
Jeff wiped the tears from his eyes. “There’s nothing for you to be sorry about, Dad. Nothing at all.”
“Oh yes there is. I didn’t know, I didn’t want it.”
“What do you mean?”
A stray tear ran down his father’s cheek. “I’m so sorry you’re dead, too. I’m so sorry you’re also in hell.”
Jeff’s felt his stomach cramp. “I’m not … you’re not …” He swallowed. “We’re not in hell.”
“It’s hard to come to terms with,” his father said, his voice thick with tears. “The sooner you realize you’re dead and
in hell, the sooner you’ll accept it.”
“No, Dad. I’m not dead. And nor are you.”
Frank Austin shook his head. “I saw it, Jeff. I felt it. The Quagma bomb on Deneb-6. I felt the heat consuming my body. I could feel my soul leaving my body. I was hovering over the inferno together with all the other souls that died. Together we flew into the red tunnel and together we were born again here. To suffer eternal damnation in hell.”
Jeff shook his head. His mind was racing. How the hell had his dad come from Deneb-6 to this ship? How could he explain this to him? That he wasn’t in hell but inside an alien spaceship that had somehow captured him.
“Dad, do you trust me?”
“Of course, son,” Frank said without the slightest hesitation.
“I’m not in hell. You’re not in hell. We are inside a huge spaceship.” His father looked at him incredulously. Jeff pointed to his shipmates who were lined up behind him. “These are the crew members of the bomber Charon. Our ship was damaged. We had to abandon it and were picked up by a huge alien ship. And we ended up in this hell, which …”
Frank began to sob again. “Oh, Jeff. It’s different for everyone. Everyone arrives in hell in a different way. It seems so unreal. When it’s fast, you barely even notice you’ve died. Probably your ship was destroyed and you all came here together.”
Jeff shook his head. “Our ship was destroyed,” he said softly but firmly. “But we weren’t killed.”
“No, Jeff. I know how it is. The spirit looks for a way out. It takes time until you accept the inevitable. You’re dead and your soul is in hell. And here we will be punished together for all eternity for our sins.”
Jeff closed his eyes. He felt a painful throbbing behind his temples. None of this could be true! How the hell had his father ended up on this alien ship? He began to wonder if he was losing his mind. Or had he lost it already? Could his father be speaking the truth? Had their ship been shot down in the attack on Acheron-4? Had everything that had happened been an illusion, a hallucination, which his mind had used to alleviate his descent into hell?
He opened his eyes again and looked at Frank. The kind, blue eyes. The smile lines around his eyes.
No! His father wasn’t a sinner. If there was one man in the universe who deserved salvation and paradise, it was his father. He had always put others before himself: his family, his friends, his work colleagues. And he had been one of the few people who still attended church regularly.
No, Jeff didn’t know what game was being played here. But he was not dead, and this place certainly was a kind of hell, but not hell itself.
“Do you trust me?” Jeff asked again.
“Yes, I trust you.”
“Then come with me and let me prove to you that this is not hell!” Jeff was sobbing now himself.
“Oh, Jeff. That won’t be possible.”
“Why not?”
His father turned his gaze to the right, where the pyres were standing. “They won’t allow it,” he said quietly. “And they’re right. I deserve to suffer.”
“No!” Jeff began to cry in earnest now. “I will not accept it. I—”
A hand grabbed his arm and jerked him aside. Jeff landed face-first on the rock and hit his head hard. He put a hand up to his forehead and felt blood running through his fingers. Castle helped him get up.
He saw the man who had dragged him away pulling his father to the nearest stake. The three women had already been tied to the other wooden stakes. They were all staring blankly into the distance as if they had surrendered to their fate. Several men holding burning torches stood ready and waiting in front of the pyres.
Rage welled up in Jeff. Without conscious thought, he ran after his father’s torturer, pulled his pistol from his holster, aimed, and fired. He hit the burly man in the back. A woman standing on the other side was suddenly covered in blood and bits of brown tissue. Jeff rushed forward and grabbed Frank’s arm before the falling man pushed him down with him. The other men cried out in anger. One of them grabbed Jeff by the arm and he struggled to free himself from his grasp. A woman tried to grab his father. Jeff shot her down. He felt as if someone had switched him onto autopilot. All that mattered now was saving his father’s life.
Another man stood in his way. He was holding a heavy club and swinging it over his head, ready to strike. There was a shot, and the man’s skull exploded above the nose. Green had hit him in the back of the head.
“Jeff, you can’t do that!” Frank gasped, but ran with him.
“Trust me!” Jeff screamed. “I’m going to get us out of here.”
More shots were fired, and several men and women fell to the ground. Others weren’t deterred, and stormed toward them. There were too many of them.
“Run!” Shorty screamed, as he fired another shot.
“Fuck this,” Green cursed, running toward the exit, which was just a few hundred feet away.
The attackers were close on their heels, but with their bare feet, they couldn’t run as fast across the rocky terrain as Jeff and his shipmates in their boots. Only Frank screamed in pain. Jeff pulled him on, regardless. Better for him to have injured feet than to die.
They reached the stairs. Green and Castle ran ahead. Mac cursed the whole time.
“No, Jeff!” his father screamed. “Don’t go any further. We’re not allowed there.”
“Trust me,” Jeff said, pulling Frank along behind him despite his father’s increased resistance. They almost both fell. The first attackers had reached the steps but stopped in front of them. They, too, seemed afraid of doing something forbidden—whoever it might be that had forbidden them.
The others had reached the door and were waiting.
“We’re not allowed in,” his father screamed again. “It’s not allowed.” He put his arms around Jeff’s chest so tightly, he could hardly breathe.
“Help me!” Jeff hissed.
Mac grabbed Frank Austin by the arms and pulled him away. Jeff was able to free himself and grabbed his legs.
“It’s going to be OK. You’ll see!”
“No!” His father howled as if in fear of his own life. “He’ll punish us.”
Finally, they reached the plateau. Mac dragged Jeff’s father through the door and into a lobby, which—like the one through they had entered the cavity—was covered in hieroglyphs and drawings.
“Who will punish us, damn it?” Jeff gasped.
“HE will!” his father screamed. “HE will punish us.”
Suddenly Jeff’s hands, which were still clutching at his father’s ankles, were burning. The pain made him cry out. He let go and staggered back.
Mac had fallen backward and hit the wall. His hands were smoking.
Frank Austin screamed. His burning legs kicked like crazy.
“Dad!”
Jeff stumbled forward. He tried to put out the flames with his bare hands; they were blazing as if his father consisted of gelled gasoline.
Joanne and Green pulled him back.
Those screams!
He knew he would never be able to forget them.
Joanne placed a hand on his shoulder and together they watched as his father was reduced to a pile of ashes.
28.
Jeff opened his eyes, and stared at the black ceiling.
Joanne was immediately by his side. She knelt down and laid a hand on his shoulder. “How are you feeling?” she asked gently.
How was he supposed to feel? He had found his father, who he had believed to be dead, in this crazy and most unlikely of places—only to lose him again.
Jeff’s shipmates had carried him deeper into the ship’s interior after he collapsed. They had set up a camp for the night in the first suitable room they came across. He had been aware of Joanne treating the burns on his hand with an ointment, before drifting off into a fitful sleep.
“Jeff?”
“S’OK. I’m OK,” he said weakly.
“Do you want to talk?”
“Later maybe.�
��
Joanne nodded and handed him a concentrate bar and his water bottle.
It took a long time before he was able to get up and join the others, who were sitting in a semicircle around a spotlight on the floor of the dark room. Here again, the walls were made of the gray-black alloy of the ship. He sat down next to Joanne, who was sucking listlessly on her food.
“What next?” Shorty asked. His question was directed at Jeff.
Jeff looked around the faces of the others and tried to marshal his thoughts. He had no more energy. All he wanted to do was crawl back into the corner and close his eyes. Someone else could lead the group. What was the point of it all?
He shrugged. “No idea,” he said weakly.
Nobody spoke.
It was Mac who broke the silence. “No idea,” he repeated. “I don’t want to hear that from you, Captain!”
Jeff looked up.
“You dragged us down here into this hell,” Mac spoke quietly, but his voice was tight with anger. “Fields died as a result, and so did Owl. And now you’re kicking the can?”
“Mac!” Joanne raised a hand.
“No. I won’t accept it. We followed this bastard all the way to hell. He has no right to wallow in self pity just because he came across his dead daddy.”
Anger welled up in Jeff and brought him back to his senses a little. “Watch what you say about my father.”
Mac stuck his arms up in the air. They were wrapped in thick bandages. “See this, big shot? I burned my hands for you and your pop. I’ve earned the right to shoot you dead. And you know what?”
Jeff didn’t say anything.
“I told you I thought you were a mamma’s boy and an aristocratic asshole. But over the last few days I changed my mind about you. You brought us down here, which I never would have had the guts to do. You were convinced that our only chance of survival was to get to the center of this Satanic ship.” He squatted in front of Jeff so their faces were level. “And now move your ass, get us to the goddamn center, and prove to me you were right!”
The Dark Ship Page 26
