But there was one item he did not recognize, and after taking a moment to absorb the familiar, he moved to it. It was on the ground, right inside the unfinished wooden gazebo at one corner of the lot.
Approaching it slowly, he saw that it was a slate gray hunk of stone, standing two feet high and about a foot wide. It could have been a decorative rock placed in the center of the gazebo for effect. But Chris knew differently. Hand-carved in sloppy small letters on the bottom front corner of the stone was his father's three initials, and both his birth date and the date of his death.
Chris closed his eyes for a long moment, before opening them again and reexamining the second date. It was a little over a year ago.
Of course they wouldn't have told him. It was NASA's policy to withhold information of this nature while an astronaut was offworld, as the stakes were simply too high for an astronaut to suffer a devastating emotional blow during a mission. Every man or woman who signed on with the agency knew this going in.
But he still couldn't quite accept what his eyes were seeing.
He stood there beside it for a long time, his hands clasped in front, unmoving. He refused to take his eyes off of the makeshift tombstone, wanting to burn the image of it into his mind.
It was illegal, of course-burying a dead body in some place other than a graveyard. But Chris' father didn't care; he'd always planned to be buried here, "near the Cape." One of his father's old war buddies would have done the burial or arranged it personally, using his dad's specific instructions. His obsession with the space program demanded that he be laid to rest here, in the house where he'd raised Chris alone, where he'd watched every rocket launch from the front porch, binoculars in hand. Chris' mother had a matching stone of her own, a few feet away, on the other side of the gazebo where his father had placed her remains when Chris was a boy. His father thought he was so clever with his "disguised" tombstones that looked like decoration to anyone else.
Now both of Chris' parents were here, dead and gone, and still his father made and lived by his own rules, no matter whom he had to defy, just as he'd done all his life.
At last, Chris turned and made to leave.
As he was nearing the back of the house, he made a quick turn, grabbed the garden shovel from against the house, marched back to the gazebo and the grave beneath it, and without a single word reared back and swung it like a bat.
Much of his father's crude tombstone shattered in a haze of powder, and some of the smaller bits of stone seemed to hang in the air impossibly long, as if time had frozen for just a moment.
A large portion of the stone still stood when the dust cleared, and Chris pummeled the remaining stone, not stopping until he was red in the face, breathing hard, and the big chunk of rock was reduced to a pile of gravel.
He stood in place, bent slightly over, catching his breath and still hefting the shovel like a great hammer with both his hands, when somewhere behind him an alarm sounded.
He spun, assuming it was coming from inside the house. Just inside the old screen door at the back of the house, a figure stood, watching him.
It took him a moment to see clearly through the grate. It was Mae. Her expression was blank, her mouth agape just slightly, but she didn't move a muscle, seemingly staring him down.
Chris looked into her eyes, and she looked into his. Even from twenty feet away, he could see it in those haunting silver hues.
She'd seen everything he'd just done.
The alarm continued its wail.
FOUR
Chris tasted bile and felt as if his world was teetering out of control as the shovel fell out of his hands and clanked on the cement debris that lay all over the ground. The alarm continued sounding from inside the house.
He felt his knees trying to fold beneath him.
The young girl, Mae, was watching him, expressionless.
He had to get a grip, had to shove aside thoughts of his father for later. He'd been so angry a minute ago that he'd taken that shovel and...
And she'd seen the whole thing. Did she know what the rock really was that he'd destroyed? Could she make out the details from inside the house? Or did she just think he'd had some kind of meltdown? A temper tantrum from an otherwise normal, stable adult?
Chris didn't know what to feel. Other than the humid July air. It was hot, and he was sweating hard.
At last, Mae showed signs of life. She cautiously stepped forward, opened the screen door, and walked out onto the tiny back porch.
The siren stopped of its own accord. Maybe it hadn't come from inside the house? He couldn't remember his father ever installing an alarm system....
Mae made no motion to speak, and he couldn't blame her. What was there to say?
Chris let out a shuddering breath and stepped one foot forward. "So, uh, listen ..." he tried to say in a strong voice, but it came out weak.
"Chris!"
Now what?
It was Trisha, screaming. "Chris, where are you?!"
Chris bolted, following the sound of her voice to the street out in front of the house, which Trisha had just run past.
"What's wrong?" he cried. Mae walked out slowly behind him. Quietly, cautiously.
Trisha turned around and ran back toward him. But she didn't stop-she ran past the old house and continued on down the street.
"Come on! Hurry!" she yelled.
Chris followed. Behind him, he could hear the footsteps of the girl trailing, but he didn't turn back to look at her.
Not once.
"Beech!"
No response.
"Beech?!" Terry screamed. "Can you hear me?"
No sound, nothing at all.
"Can anybody hear me?!"
Terry tried to shift his weight under the rubble piled on top of him, pinning him to the ground. But it was no use-he was trapped. Something was pinching his left arm; something else was pressing with tremendous force deep into his sternum, making it hard to draw breath. And the circulation to his legs had been cut off. Already it was hard to feel them.
Worse, the rubble had fallen around him in such a way that he was cocooned inside his own tight little box. Light was only a memory. He was without a sliver of it, a pinprick.
But he could hear. He heard all sorts of things. Creaking, groaning, popping. If anything was left of the building, it was threatening to come down. He heard his heart as it thudded in his chest. And he heard his own breathing, which had never sounded so loud in his life.
In and out. In and out.
Faster and faster went his heart....
Terry closed his eyes and tried some relaxation techniques he'd been taught during his training. They were meant to force his body to calm itself, to take his mind off any predicament he might find himself in. He was a top-level astronaut, after all. He'd been confined to rooms not much bigger than this as part of his training, for hours on end.
Of course, he hadn't been pinned down in those tiny little rooms, with no feeling in his legs, and difficulty breathing. But it wasn't all that different otherwise. This was no big deal.
The others were coming. Chris, Trish, the homeless girl. They had to be. They would find him, and they would find Owen. And everything would be all right.
But what if they didn't? What if something happened to them too? What if they tried to move the rubble and got trapped themselves? It's not like they could dial 9-1-1.
It's getting harder to breathe....
Light couldn't get through. What if air couldn't either? What if he was already breathing the last of the oxygen that was in this minuscule space?
Terry was in danger of hyperventilating, but this time he wasn't able to calm himself.
"Help!" he shrieked with every last bit of energy he had.
Terry's mind wandered as he waited, and hoped. Who's going to take care of Gordon? You idiot-Gordon's gone, along with all the other animals.
I miss him.
I wonder if he d even remember me.
Why am I thinking
about that dumb old dog at a time like this?
Maybe because there's no one else who missed me while I was gone.
His heart pulsed ever faster, ever harder, until he could feel it beating against the large piece of metal that mashed against his sternum.
Every one of Terry's instincts had been rewritten as part of his training. He knew never to panic. He knew how to use fear as an ally, a motivator instead of an obstacle. He knew how to set his feelings aside and focus on the task at hand. His training had drilled these principles and many more into him to the extent that they'd become second nature-no more difficult than walking or breathing.
And yet here he was panicking like a little kid. All alone on an empty planet ... Imprisoned beneath a broken building ... Running out of air ... And the old grocery store was groaning again ... If any more weight fell on top of him ...
His high-and-mighty training was being stripped away with each minute that passed, and he felt small and alone in ways he hadn't felt since childhood.
Terry's mind imagined seeing himself from a helicopter high above the broken building, a small figure amid a large pile of ruins. The helicopter image turned to a high-altitude plane, high enough to see all of Orlando; in this image his trapped form was little more than a speck. His imagination pulled back even farther, a satellite image looking down at the outline of the whole of Florida. He was invisible now, all alone in a vast wasteland. He thought back to how Earth had looked in the forward windows of the Ares, and tried to wrap his mind around the idea that in all he could see then, the vast oceans and mountain ranges and plains and deserts and forests, only five people could be found, and he was one of them.
There would be no first responders coming to save him. No ambulances, no fire trucks, no police.
"Guys! Help me! Please!"
I can't go out this way. Not like this.
He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. Couldn't move. Couldn't see.
"Help!"
"You're sure they were inside?" Chris asked as the three of them jogged to a stop in front of the grocery store. The outer walls were still standing, but they couldn't get beyond the front door. The entire roof had collapsed. It was a mess, a hellish pile of wood, jagged metal, and glass.
"I told them to go together," Trisha said, grief filling her voice. "The crash was so loud.... I'm surprised you didn't hear it, but then the disaster alarm started going off...
Chris glanced at her once, but then centered his thoughts. All right, we use the trailer hitch from the truck; you drive. We'll need some horsepower to move these metal beams, they look heavy."
"We can't," she replied. "Terry had the keys to the truck in his pocket. And I don't think the truck had a hitch anyway."
"What about the SUV? Does it have one?"
"I don't remember!" she said hopelessly. She looked tired, yet her entire body was tensed like a coil, ready to spring.
He grabbed her gently by the shoulders. "We're going to get them out," he said, speaking slowly. "Because we are all they have."
Trisha nodded solemnly. "I'll make it work," she said as he handed her the keys to the SUV. She ran.
"Why is this happening?" Chris mumbled to himself. It was so strange, to run into trouble so quickly after setting out on their cross-country drive. He turned back to the demolished building. "Give me a hand."
Mae complied. She didn't seem to have much strength to offer, but she didn't complain at the difficulty of the work either. The two of them labored silently-without eye contact for a few minutes, quickly picking up whatever debris they could handle and throwing it clear. Chris awkwardly stepped over and through much of the debris, until he was ten yards or so inside the crumbled building. The stench of rotting food seeped through the wreckage.
"Owen!" Chris shouted. "Terry!"
He turned sharply at a sound only he could hear.
A long piece of plywood was wedged under what looked like an entire aisle of metal shelving, a dozen feet to his left. He saw something at the edge of the wood that caught his eye, something that looked like Owen's dark skin. Climbing again until he could reach the wood, he tugged at it.
It wouldn't budge.
"Help me!" he shouted. "I think Owen's under here!"
Mae stepped over the debris until she was next to him, looking at the spot he was concentrating on. Working together, they strained to pull up on the long metal shelves. But they remained firmly in place.
"I need something," he said, his eyes darting about. "Something to use as a lever ... A crowbar maybe, or a--
"Shovel?" Mae asked.
He let out an angry breath and forced himself not to glare at her.
Just then, there was the roar of a powerful engine as a rusted tow truck barreled across the strip mall's parking lot. The driver threw it into a spin so that it screeched to a halt just in front of the toppled store, its rear facing Chris and Mae.
Trisha piled out of the truck and ran around behind to find Chris staring at her, astonished.
"Where did you find that?" he cried.
"We passed it a few blocks from where we parked the cars. It was outside a garage."
Chris inspected the inside. The ancient gasoline engine was running, but there was nothing in the ignition. "You hot-wired it?" he asked, impressed.
Trisha nodded as if she wasn't really listening.
The three of them sprang into action, using rope and chains to attach the back of the truck to the large metal shelving.
"Where did you learn how to hot-wire a gasoline car?" Chris couldn't resist asking as they worked.
"Oldest of seven kids, remember?" she replied. "You learn things. Mostly how to take care of the people you care about. Whatever it takes."
With the tow truck's help, they had the metal and the wood out of the way quickly, and they found Owen, bleeding from an ugly scrape to the back of his head and unconscious. As Chris and Trisha carefully hefted him from the ground, he began to mumble, delirious.
"Clara ... please be with me on this, Clara ..." he said low, just above a whisper. "I need you ... I always need you, babe, you know I need you ... But I have to do this...
By the time Owen was out of the wreckage, Mae had reappeared with a bag of supplies and began tending his wounds. Chris and Trisha watched for just a moment and then continued the search for Terry.
It was painstaking, difficult, sweaty work. Every now and then one of them would call out Terry's name, but they never got a response. Hours passed, and ravenous hunger and thirst set in, but they refused to stop. Owen even recovered enough after a time to join them, and the four survivors picked through the remains of the building desperately trying to locate their friend.
The sun was setting by the time they reached him. Terry was unconscious and weak, buried much deeper than Owen, toward the back of the store. But to their great surprise, he didn't seem to have suffered any permanent damage. He stirred when they tried to pick him up. Moaning at first, he startled everyone by shouting himself awake incoherently. When he opened his eyes, immediately he squinted. The sun was low on the horizon, but even the dimness of dusk was terribly bright to him. His legs were dangerously numb, yet their color began to return almost immediately once they'd freed him. They all knew it would be several hours before he could support his own weight again.
Terry struggled to catch his breath, as if he'd been running a race. Pools formed in his eyes and he looked gratefully into the faces of his friends.
He was pale, chilled with sweats. None of them had ever seen him so weak, so frail.
"Took you long enough," he whispered, smiling, barely able to get the words out before launching into a coughing fit. He took gasping breaths as Chris and Owen worked together to pick him up, before he retched up a vile mixture of black tar and soot.
Hours later, Mae stared at the ceiling above the bed where she tried to sleep, but it was no use. She was much too wired after the day's events. And she doubted she was the only one.
The tall guy,
Chris, said that they would write this day off as a wash and find some place to rest, so the black guy, Owen, and the goofy one, Terry, could recuperate. The lady, Trisha, always agreed with everything Chris said.
Chris had directed them to drive around-himself piloting one vehicle and Trisha the other-for a couple of hours until they found a neighborhood that still had power. They wound up near the airport in a neighborhood of nearly identical, smallish houses with single car garages jutting out in front. Owen guessed being so close to the airport meant some backup grid might still be working. The others agreed, but like most of the stuff these four astronauts talked about, it was something she had never paid any thought to. She wondered idly what it was like for them to travel to Mars, to get out of their ship and walk around on another planet. How long did it take them to get there? Was there air on Mars? And what did they eat? It wasn't something she was interested in finding out personally.
After finding this neighborhood, they went from house to house until they found one with the door unlocked and began settling in for the night.
Mae had plopped down on the floor, in a corner of the living room near the broken front door, and watched everything that happened. She wouldn't have minded helping, but no one seemed to want her help.
Terry looked to be improving by the minute, and by late evening he was capable of moving under his own power again. Trisha was forcing him to eat plenty of food and drink lots of fluids, and insisted he get a good night's sleep. Mae had wanted to help with tending to the two injured men, but Trisha glared at her whenever she tried to get close.
Owen had deposited himself on the living room couch shortly after their arrival, where he promptly fell asleep. When he'd opened his eyes a few hours later, he rubbed at the large bump on the back of his head. Like Terry, he had plenty of cuts and some nasty bruises all over his body. But he would survive. Chris had pumped a painkiller into him with a syringe from a first-aid kit, and forbade him from moving from the couch until morning. Trisha distributed food-mostly sealed bags of chips and cookies-to everyone, without a word.
Offworld Page 7
