Romeo Delta 2

by Taylor Rikkinen

  Erin looked at him with a penetrating gaze that was nearly unreadable and she eventually nodded in acceptance. “It’s fine, Joe… I forgive you.”

  “Thanks, and hey, there is a bright side. It looks like I’m conducting a few more interviews until Doctor Singh is finished with some of her other patients. I get the impression that she’s a little angry with you, so it’s just me and you until she simmers down.”

  “Well, that’s some good news, I guess,” Erin said in relief. “I really was trying to be civil and nice to her, but she keeps pissing me off. I’ve tried to talk to her like a normal human being, but I get nothing but that dull tone and uncomfortable questions. And I find her very condescending, but is that just me? Am I misreading the situation here?”

  Joe gave her a compassionate look as he shrugged his shoulders and shook his head slightly. “I told you, she hides her heart well. Try not to take it personally; she’s like that with everyone.”

  “Damn… Is it possible to feel sorry for everyone at once?” Erin asked stiffly.

  Joe tried not to look up at the hidden camera in the room and he desperately attempted to change the subject before he got in trouble with Doctor Singh again. “Look, I don’t mean to pressure you Erin, but we should probably get back to your account of the incident. Doctor Singh has got me on a strict time limit and though you don’t have to deal with her, I eventually do.”

  “Fine,” Erin said with a sulky sigh. “We were talking about my cleanup crew, right?”

  Joe leaned back in his chair and gave Erin a charming smile. “Hey, we both know it was something more than just a cleanup crew. I remember how you lit up while you were talking about it last time. It was special to you.”

  Erin smiled back at him. “Yeah, it kind of was. I don’t think Doctor Singh gets that. I get that she’s a doctor and everything and that she’s probably quite intelligent, but I doubt if she would understand what it’s like being in the underclass for most of her life.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Joe said vaguely. “So, if I remember correctly, you found a welcoming community and you were seen as an asset because you knew the maintenance tunnels well, right?”

  Erin nodded. “Yeah, I always felt that the maintenance tunnels were fairly straight forward, but with the network down and many of the tunnels collapsed, traversing them was dangerous work and nothing short of a nightmare. To give a reference to the size and scale of Sky Base 10, you have to understand that it could comfortably fit over 60,000 people and it could carry a maximum capacity of 150,000 occupants before things got too crowded. Since talks of decommission were in the air, people were opting out of work contracts and leaving on mass and I know that 60,000 sounds like a lot of people, but Sky Base 10 was huge. It was the size of a decent city and the maintenance tunnels were like every back alley shortcut within that city. In a way, the maintenance tunnels were like the back ends of restaurants and malls, you know, like rubbish bins and graffiti. We had a rail delivery system that brought in goods and distributed them to all the shops and it also doubled as transport for the unseen workers like me. When I joined Major Tom’s team, my job was to clear those collapsed paths, see if we could get the rails working, and map the cleared routes to my PDA and share it with the community.”

  Joe let out a small laugh. “It sounds more like you were a trail blazer than a janitor.”

  “Thank you,” Erin said with satisfaction. “See, this is why I like you. You’re personable and easy to talk to. It’s nice talking to someone that doesn’t sound like a robot. Anyways, it was long and tiring work, especially when the only things we had were makeshift shovels and the hopeful wish that we would find a bulldozer and an easy place to pile the debris. Neither of which existed on that station…”

  “Sounds rough,” Joe said.

  “It wasn’t too bad,” Erin said with a confined shrug. “I mean, it was rewarding work in a way, more rewarding than anything I ever did in the previous 20 years. This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I felt like I was that kid fresh out of high school trying to prove that she was worth her salt. I worked longer, harder and faster than anyone else on my team and turned in flawless maps as well as fast routes to possible supply caches. I was on fire and the pride I felt when I was made a captain of my own team in just three weeks…”

  “You were made a captain?” Joe asked warmly.

  Erin smiled with the shadings of embarrassment on her face. “Yeah… I know it may sound stupid being made captain of a cleanup crew, but it meant so much to me. It was the boost I needed to get my confidence back and perhaps Major Tom did hand it to me to raise my spirits, but everyone around me reassured me that I had earned it. It was a shitty situation, but I felt like I was one of the people leading the charge to better days and though I tried not to let it go to my head, I probably let it a little.” Erin then sighed. “I guess after my last interview, it’s no secret that I’m a little self-conscious about being a janitor… Like, I did the job for years and in the end, it turned out that my experience was needed for something big and important. People were finally looking to me for guidance and treating me with respect. It was kind of nice… Is that egotistical of me?”

  “Nah, I get that,” Joe said pleasantly. “There’s a stigma that comes with being a nurse too, you know? I’m often seen as a gopher or a pair of extra helping hands for the real medical professionals, but I had to work my butt off to get where I am today and nobody really knows that except for me and other nurses. I went through years of training for a thankless job that I get playfully ridiculed for. You wouldn’t believe how often my parents ask me when I’m going for my proper medical license and how many times I’ve told them that I’m happy where I am. It’s not just you, Erin. Everyone’s got a bag of ridicule to deal with, no matter what walk of life they are in.”

  Erin groaned. “I guess you’re right. I like to think of myself as a thoughtful and understanding person, but I’d be the first to admit that I don’t know or understand everything.”

  “Humility is a virtue,” Joe said sagely. “So, what was it like working with this crew you had? Did the work go beyond clearing passages and mapping areas?”

  “Yeah,” Erin said with a nod. “When we weren’t stumbling upon dead bodies or checking for gas leaks within the wreckage, there was something of a treasure hunt feeling to it all and we struck gold many times. We were always looking out for rations and water and pretty much anything that could be deemed useful in helping with repairs.”

  “Did you find any more survivors along the way? Perhaps people like you clearing out tunnels?” Joe asked.

  “Oh yeah. Lots,” Erin said with an eager nod. “I got to see quite a bit of Sky Base 10 after the incident, but not all of it. Oddly enough, more than I ever did before the incident. I’ve always been a bit of a homebody… We were running into people left, right and center, but I don’t think there was a bigger pocket of community than the one I woke up in. It was actually my team that found and linked the first living community to our own by knocking out a bunch of walls between the sandwiched living units. I never counted, but I would guess that there were about a hundred people in that community and they were all scavengers and pack rats with no real sense of leadership. I heard that there had been a lot of infighting between them and everyone just agreed to leave each other alone and only came together in a crisis like a power outage or a gravity failure.”

  “Were they aggressive?” Joe asked.

  Erin rolled that one around in her head for a few seconds. “I wouldn’t use that word in particular. They were like any of us, scared out of their minds and feeling dejected. Being stuck in space with no way of contacting Dusk… We were all feeling the pressure. The only real difference is that we had a charismatic leader like Major Tom backing us and he brought a lot of calm and level headedness to our fears. He often made us forget that we were stranded in an abyss on a dying space station and instead made us focus on team building and good relations.”

&nb
sp; “Did you have good relations with that first community?” Joe asked.

  “Section nine?” Erin asked with a smile. “You bet we did. They were in more of a residential district and they ended up having tons of movies and games on storage drives along with some desperately needed tools for repairs. We became friendly and started to lovingly refer to Section nine as The Lounge. Trust me Joe, you have no idea how much you take a chesterfield for granted until all you have left are restaurant stools and those plastic waiting room chairs you find in a medical bay.”

  Joe let out a small laugh. “That has honestly never crossed my mind.”

  Erin let out a small chuckle as well. “You want to know what I did with my first day off?”

  “Sure,” Joe said with a charmed smile.

  Erin closed her eyes in embarrassment and snickered. “I went to The Lounge and traded four rationed meals and two packs of cigarettes so I could sit in an old guy’s luxury massage recliner all day and watch movies while single-handedly taking down a giant bag of salt and vinegar potato chips I had found on an excavation. And, oh my god, he had this big fluffy cat that wanted nothing more than to curl up in my lap and watch movies with me. I was in heaven.”

  “Sounds like it,” Joe said with a laugh.

  “I do love the simple pleasures in life,” Erin said warmly.

  “It sounds like digging out Section nine was a bit of a victory for you,” Joe guessed.

  Erin nodded with a proud expression on her face. “It really was. I think that’s when my ego was really beginning to swell. You see, that’s when people started calling us the Rangers and, more specifically, Erin’s Rangers,” she said with smug mirth. “They were my Rangers and you can bet your ass that I felt a little tingle every time I heard that name. After digging out Section nine and being given that title, I had to prove day after day that I deserved such an honor and I like to think that I did.”

  “Were there new expectations with the title, or was it all the same old stuff?” Joe asked.

  Erin thought about it for a second and an expression moved across her face as if she had just realized something that should have been obvious.

  “I guess things did change after that,” Erin said carefully. “We started putting out a lot of fires by keeping all of the would-be Napoleons in check. It felt like a natural evolution in a way. I mean, we were still digging out tunnels, but we were also helping anyone in need. I guess you could say that we all took a sort of silent vow in which we refused to give up on people and trust their better nature. Our only real reward for doing all this was to see the smiles that we brought to those who had suffered and maybe I’m a bleeding heart, but that was worth it to me…” Erin then frowned for a second and she bit her lip. “I just realized that I’m making it sound grander than it actually was.”

  “Hey, I’m not judging,” Joe said. “It sounds like you guys were peacekeepers during a terrible situation. That’s a good thing.”

  “I guess so,” Erin said tepidly. “But you may be falling into the same misconception that most people did back on the station. You see, when word got around about Major Tom’s Ranger division of peacekeeping problem solvers, a lot of people pictured us as quirky individuals in tactical armor with rifles over our shoulders and cigarettes in our mouths as we laughed and played cards in an olive-green tent somewhere in a dangerous war torn section of the space station.” She then let out a small laugh. “It wasn’t like that at all. Maybe the quirky bit, but for the most part we were plain clothed civilians with pry bars and makeshift shovels. A fan did make us some patches for our gear and I thought that was wild. Dale always walked around with a fire axe strapped to his back because he feared an alien invasion, but he never got to use it and yes, we made fun of him, even me. I called him Dale the Barbarian, but Maggie had something great, I wish I could remember it. I think he would have liked that name etched on the memorial… He was the first one of us to start coughing up blood…”

  “Erin?” Joe asked carefully.

  “Sorry…” Erin said quietly. “The Rangers didn’t last long and I’m getting to the part that hurts. It snuck up on me just now and I don’t know why I let it surprise me.” She let out a long sigh and looked at Joe with a regretful expression. “Because we opened up so many sections and people began traveling to other settlements, people started getting sick with all manner of illness and the medical bay quickly ran low on resources. Our section was the only one with an intact medical bay, or to the extent of my knowledge we had the only functioning one. I can’t speak for the whole station, but I digress… We were getting sick and we were out of medicine. Maybe someone brought it in from another settlement or maybe it could have been from one of the dead bodies that we pulled out of the rubble, but I don’t know for sure. A sickness started spreading and not the one I’ve got swarming inside of me. This was like a fever or flu of some kind. It could have even been some bad food with dangerous bacteria in it. No two people had the same symptoms and panic was starting to spread. We needed a plan…”

  “You ok? Do you need to take a break?” Joe asked tenderly.

  Erin shook her head. “No, I may as well say it here and maybe I won’t have to say it again later.”

  “Alright,” Joe said. “Tell me what happened.”

  Erin sighed. “What happened was that we got scared and panicked. We were too busy freaking out over the sudden outbreak, that we didn’t use our heads properly. We should have known better than to go to the research district. It was so far out of the way and so much work needed to be done to get to it that it was stupid to even try with everyone as sick as they were. It was a gamble to begin with too because we were not actually sure what they were researching, but people were slowly dying and we were running low on supplies, so we rolled the dice. All it took was the rumor that R&D Lab Number 2 had been working in biology and the decision was made to make a run for medical supplies there. We didn’t know what was waiting for us. We simply plotted our route to Romeo Delta 2 and started digging our way through the wires and steel.”

  She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself down as the memories rushed through her like a tidal wave. Images of death and the essence of rot filled her mind and she wanted nothing more than to forget, but there was no way to forget Romeo Delta 2.

  “Over the following week, I don’t think any of us ever got used to seeing bodies decomposing in the rubble and a part of me is thankful for that. Death and decay disturbed us as it should have. It meant that we were still human and unbroken by the carnage. Becoming numb to it would have been the true nightmare. I think it was Leanne that noticed it first. The horrible smell. It hit her fast and I remember her dropping her shovel and gagging as the putrid odor assaulted her nose. Others began smelling it too and when it got to my nose I nearly threw up. I never got used to the smell of decay, but there was something else in it. An undertone of something…unnatural. It was like a dangerous mold or fungus with deadly spores that had forced its way into the living world. There was definitely something off about it and it filled us all with a lingering fear.”

  “Walk me through it, Erin,” Joe said with a gentle goading. “What did you find?”

  Erin knew exactly how crazy the next part was going to sound and a part of her wanted to lie and make up something more believable, but that would be spitting upon the graves of all those who had died.

  “We punched through the final wall and as we pulled back the debris it smelled as if there was dissected roadkill on the other side. A burst of wet grey dust shot out at us as we breeched the reinforced wall and then there was a sound. A piercing shriek that reverberated in our heads and sent panic and confusion between us. Over half of my team ran off scared and to this day I don’t blame them. I should have run too. Evolution distilled fear into us for a reason. It is survival of the fittest, not survival of the bravest. We should have run, but the jagged cavity was open and we were already doomed.”

  Erin visibly shivered at the memory of what she s
aw next and she had to close her eyes as she spoke. “Something unearthly reached through the hole and grabbed Franco. Its arm was grey and slender and covered in peeling skin. The muscles beneath were exposed and festering. I remember Franco screaming and trying to pull away, but the thing wouldn’t let go. Soon everyone was grabbing him and trying to bring him back from that decaying void of black and grey. We thought for sure he would be pulled through the hole, but he wasn’t. Instead, we pulled the thing that had grabbed him through the opening and I don’t think I will ever have a truly restful night again. It was hideous and deformed. Something that perhaps had once been human, but what it had changed into left it completely unrecognizable to an earthly understanding. The only truly human quality it displayed was when it wept while begging us to save it and then screaming as Morrison smashed its head in with a shovel.

  “Jesus…” Joe breathed.

  Erin gave Joe a stern and earnest look. “Morrison saved our lives. I want that to be clear. You need to understand how this thing operated. It lured and tempted us into doing things. It used pity and empathy as weapons. That thing… Morrison was the first one to see it. The retracting claws and teeth it was hiding. The subtle look of hunger on the edge of its mouth… That intense moment of silence before a predator is about to strike…”

  A tear then rolled down Erin’s face and she looked out the window to feel the calming warmth of Dusk’s twilight plains, but it did little to help.

  “Morrison saw it first and later I did as well. We tried to seal off the hole, but even as the opening got smaller we could see the things lurking in the darkness of Romeo Delta 2. Their eyes shined and reflected our flashlights. They watched us through the darkness as we worked and they made no attempt to stop us. We heard whispers of help and save us, but we ignored them. We had foolishly made them an exit and they were intelligent enough to wait for us to leave before they tore it down and rushed through Sky Base 10 like another infection.”