Solitude: Dimension Space Book One

by Dean M. Cole

  Vaughn heard a feminine voice in the background say, "I can't reach your wife, sir." He could hear tears in the woman's voice. "I can't reach anyone. All the cell networks have crashed. They must be overloaded."

  "She's all alone out there," McCree said in choked words. "Her and the twins … Oh, Betsy …"

  The woman's voice returned. "Oh, God! Through the window … I see it! It's coming so fast!"

  The abject terror in the woman's voice along with the ache evident in the director's choked words dug a hole in Vaughn's gut.

  "Get out of here, Ellen," the director said. "Go on down to the tunnel. I'll be right behind you."

  Vaughn and Mark exchanged horrified, pained glances. Vaughn reached again for his back pocket, wanting, no, needing to call his mom. He had no idea what the hell was happening, but hearing these people worrying about their families had him doing the same.

  Through the connection, he heard the director say, "Betsy … Oh, my Betsy …"

  "Director?" Mark said, almost whispering.

  "Oh shit!" McCree shouted with sudden clarity. The handset returned to his mouth. Between heavy breaths, he said, "Colonel Hennessy … Mark! Listen! You … you have to rescue Commander Brown! You have to—"

  The director's voice died mid-sentence.

  A loud clunk followed by the rumbling and rocking sound of a dropped phone shot from the speaker.

  Wide-eyed, Vaughn stared mutely at Mark.

  Maddening moments later, the distant handset finally came to rest, and nothing but deafening silence oozed from the connection.

  Chapter 5

  Vaughn couldn't speak. The fear, no, the abject horror that had poured from the connection threatened to make him physically ill.

  "Hello?" Mark yelled for the third time. Again no one answered. Nothing but silence came from the apparently live connection.

  It was all Vaughn could do to hold down the morning's breakfast. His own raspy breaths echoed within his helmet again, but this time, they had nothing to do with his poor physical fitness. Bent over, hands on knees, he closed his eyes and swallowed back the bile that threatened to burst through his defenses. From his bent-over position, the Army captain cast a wary eye toward the makeshift telephone but shook his head. He was almost thankful that he didn't have his phone. Even if he had the nerve to risk the emotional consequences of an unanswered call to his mother, he couldn't place it. Nobody memorized numbers these days, and Captain Singleton was no exception.

  "What in the hell is going on?!" Mark said, yanking Vaughn from his reverie. The astronaut's words had a panicked edge. "What the fuck is happening to everyone?!"

  Vaughn shook his head. "Hell if I know!" he shouted between breaths. Fearing he was starting to hyperventilate, Vaughn took one last deep breath and held it. When stars began to fill his vision, he released the air in a long, slow exhalation.

  Mark shook his head. "This doesn't make sense!" He paused. Then looking at Vaughn, he said, "I mean, what was all that talk about being disconnected from the planet?"

  Captain Singleton stood upright. "I don't know." He swept a hand toward the wall. "But we sure as hell aren't going to figure it out in here!"

  Wide-eyed, Hennessy gave a quick nod. "You're right." The man looked around, scanning the room. Apparently spotting his quarry, he started walking around the base of the gantry, toward the far wall.

  "What are you doing?" Vaughn said as he followed him.

  The astronaut pointed ahead. "Over here. It's the manual pressure release, an emergency fail-safe." He walked up to a red box that sported a transparent front panel. Evenly spaced white chevrons covered the three-foot-tall, vertically oriented glass rectangle. A network of pipes protruded from the top and bottom of the fixture. A small tool hung from a chain on its right side.

  Mark grabbed the bronze hammer and struck the clear panel. In surreal silence, the safety glass shattered into thousands of pebble-sized shards and fell to the floor. Not wanting to risk a torn glove in the room's vacuum, Hennessy cautiously reached through the opening and pulled a metal pipe out of the enclosure. He stuck one end of it into a metal sleeve that protruded from arcane plumbing within the box. After twisting the tube a quarter turn, Mark grabbed the protruding end of it and began to pump the apparent handle up and down like a man trying to jack up a car.

  "It's a hydraulic pump?"

  "Yeah," Mark said. "We'll have to take turns. I've never had to do this, but I've heard it takes about a million pumps."

  Vaughn ignored the exaggeration. "What do you think happened to the director?" He paused and then pointed through the large door. "To everybody out there?"

  The astronaut kept jacking the lever. Between breaths, he said, "I don't know. Maybe you were right, and that light was from an EMP."

  "No, I couldn't have been right," Vaughn said, shaking his head. "The phone lines and apparently every telecom facility between here and Houston are still online. Besides, an EMP wouldn't affect people. It doesn't have enough power …"

  Vaughn paused. His eyes widened. "Oh shit! Mark! What if something happened to the sun?"

  The astronaut's arm froze mid-stroke. His head slowly turned toward the captain. "Shit …" He stared through Vaughn. "If it did, if there's a massive solar flare going on, opening this door is the last thing we should do."

  "How long can we stay in here?"

  Mark frowned and shook his head. "Not long." He looked at his watch. "We've already been in here significantly longer than planned. Our CO2 scrubbers will max out soon." He shrugged. After a pause, the astronaut pointed to his suit's environmental controls and then hitched a thumb at the chamber door. "Pick your poison, Captain."

  "Screw that," Vaughn said. "I'm not going silently into the night. If we're going to die anyway, I'd rather have an answer, to know what the hell happened."

  Mark raised his eyebrows. "Even if that answer comes as a flare of lethal radiation?"

  Vaughn nodded soberly. "Yes, even if."

  The astronaut nodded slowly. "I agree, friend."

  He grabbed the end of the lever and started to stroke it up and down again.

  After a few minutes, Mark's pace fell off. Over their intercom, the man's breaths rasped in his ears. Vaughn held out his hand. "Let me."

  Mark backed away from the wall. Bending at the waist and resting a hand on a knee, he extended the other toward the lever. "Be my guest."

  Vaughn began cranking the handle up and down. After a few strokes, his wheezes returned. Moisture started to collect on the inside of his visor. For what felt like hours, Vaughn's universe condensed down to an oscillating silver pipe and the sound of his rasping breath—that and the mounting pain in his side. He mused that perhaps Mark hadn't exaggerated the required number of pumps.

  Some time later, an insistent hand pressed on his shoulder, snapping Vaughn out of his trance.

  "Give me that before you stroke out," Mark said as he gently shoved him aside.

  "All … yours," Vaughn said between pants. "How long did I go?"

  The astronaut grabbed the pipe and started pumping it at a significantly higher rate than had Vaughn. Hennessy consulted the watch strapped to his suit's forearm. "About three minutes."

  "Bullsh—" Vaughn began to protest, but then a hissing sound stopped him mid-word. His eyes widened. "Do you hear that?"

  Behind his fogged visor, the astronaut's head nodded. He paused and pointed to the digital display on his wrist. "We finished opening the valve in the first few minutes. Pressure's been building since. The air is still pretty thin, but it's finally thick enough to carry sound."

  "If the valve is open, why the hell are you still pumping?"

  The astronaut stopped and bent over again, breathing heavily. He pointed at the lever. "This door wasn't designed to be opened from the inside, not electronically, anyway." He paused. After a deep breath, Mark stood and resumed pumping. "The backup system is entirely hydromechanical. The designers assumed it would only be used in case of a total electrical
failure. So we'll have to keep pumping until the door opens enough for us to get out." He gave Vaughn a meaningful look. "Or until we get that answering flash of light."

  Inside Vaughn's helmet, a red light started pulsing above the top right corner of his visor. His eyes widened. Feeling like an insistent child, he patted Mark's shoulder again. When the man looked at him, Vaughn pointed toward the flashing light. "What the hell does this mean?"

  Still pumping the lever up and down, the astronaut nodded. "Figured that was coming. Mine will start flashing soon, too."

  As if on cue, the right side of Mark's forehead began to intermittently glow red as the same light started flashing within his helmet.

  "What the hell is wrong now?"

  Still jacking the lever, Mark said, "Our CO2 scrubbers are falling behind."

  A loud metallic report reverberated through the chamber's atmosphere and aluminum floor.

  Both men flinched and looked toward the door. Mark stopped pumping. He turned back to Vaughn. "That was the first lock."

  Singleton raised his eyebrows. "No sign of a solar flare yet."

  "There's still a lot of latches to go."

  The astronaut checked his atmospheric gauges. After a quick nod, he started working on his helmet's locking ring.

  "Pressure's up to normal."

  "It's about time," Vaughn said as he began to grope blindly for his helmet's lock as well. Condensed moisture now covered the inner surface of his visor, obscuring much of his vision. He fumbled with the latch, but his fat, glove-encumbered fingers found no purchase.

  Through the haze, he saw Mark twist his helmet ninety degrees and then remove it. He placed it on a nearby workbench and then turned to Vaughn. The astronaut extended a hand. "Here, let me."

  Vaughn wanted to bat the hand away, but even before the CO2 alarm, he'd been more than ready to have the damned fishbowl off of his head.

  A moment later, Hennessy twisted the helmet and lifted it away from Vaughn's suit. Refreshing cold air flowed down the now open neck. He looked at Mark, shocked to see roiling torrents of steam rising from the top of the man's spacesuit, his head barely visible in the tumultuous column.

  Vaughn grinned. "You look like a dryer vent in midwinter."

  Just as he uttered the words, the trickle of vapors rising around his own head escalated into a torrent as steam began to boil out of his spacesuit as well. A chill ran down his spine as a fresh wave of frigid air plunged down the crack of his ass.

  "Holy shit!" Vaughn shivered and looked wide-eyed at Mark. "It's freezing in here!"

  The astronaut nodded. "Thermodynamics at work, my friend. NASA doesn't dump regular air back into the chamber. They compress the room's original atmosphere and store it in large tanks. When the engineers are ready to flood the space with air, they normally run it over a heater to compensate for expansion cooling, but the mechanical backup doesn't have that feature."

  Vaughn saw ice already forming on his discarded helmet. He could feel condensation freezing on his nose hairs as well.

  The astronaut shivered and said, "Hopefully, we can finish this before we freeze to death."

  "Jesus," Vaughn said. He pushed aside Mark and stepped to the pump. In his mind's eye, he saw the series of mechanical locks that ringed the massive chamber door. "That was just the first lock we heard?"

  Mark nodded. "Yep. We have about thirty more to go. And when the last one unlatches, the pump will start turning the gears that move the door."

  Vaughn shivered again as another chill wracked his body. Remembering how slowly the door had moved when it closed, he started pumping the lever furiously.

  Icicles now hung from Vaughn's nostrils. In front of him, Mark continued to pump the handle. The same wintry decorations adorned the astronaut's nose.

  "I think that was the last latch," the man said between breaths.

  Suddenly, blinding light flooded the chamber. Both men flinched and threw up their arms as they turned toward the source.

  Vaughn squinted into the glare. White light now framed the massive metal door.

  "Is that …?" Vaughn started.

  Mark shook his head. "I don't think so. My eyes are already adjusting to the light. It always looks this bright when the door cracks open."

  The astronaut stepped tentatively toward the door. Vaughn reached out and grabbed his shoulder. "Are you sure about this?"

  Hennessy nodded. "I'm sure I want to get a closer look before we open it any farther."

  He shrugged off Vaughn's hand and continued walking toward the door.

  Vaughn watched him for a moment. The light was eye-burningly bright, but it didn't seem lethal. He walked after the astronaut. Mark had already reached the near edge of the door.

  Vaughn gasped as the man, haloed in the golden light that streamed through the crack, appeared to catch on fire, but the illusion faded quickly. It was just backlit steam rising from the frost in the astronaut's hair.

  Colonel Hennessy peered through the half-inch crack for a long moment. Then he turned from the light and looked at Vaughn with evident confusion. "Everything looks … normal."

  "Let me see." He pushed aside the astronaut and stepped to the edge of the door and into the pleasant warmth that flowed through the crevice. He positioned his left eye in front of the narrow opening. It quickly adjusted to the light beyond. In the bay that lay on the other side of the door, a forklift sat with its tines halfway inserted into a pallet. Vaughn couldn't see much more than that through the opening's narrow aperture. From the angle of the shadows, it appeared that the room's outer door was still open, but the light looked normal, no brighter than he would've expected on a regular day.

  "You're right," Vaughn said.

  Mark patted his shoulder. "Come on. Let's get this thing opened enough so that we can get the hell out of here."

  Several minutes later, two frost-covered spacesuits fell through the narrow slit of the vacuum chamber's now partially retracted door.

  "Get the hell off me!" Mark said.

  After the tall, thin astronaut had squeezed through the narrow opening, he'd had to pull and tug to get Vaughn and his belly out of the chamber. When he'd popped free, they'd fallen into a heap.

  Vaughn rolled off of him. Laying his head on the warm concrete floor, he panted for a few seconds. Cold air still poured through the opening, sweeping away the steam of their breaths.

  Mark stood and then helped Vaughn to his feet.

  They looked around. The previously busy facility sat devoid of movement or noise.

  Vaughn looked at Mark and shook his head. "Where is everybody? I mean, worst-case scenario, I thought we might find crispy bodies. But …" He paused, waving a hand toward the empty facility. "But not this. Nothing! Nobody. No bodies, even!"

  Hennessy nodded. "I know. This just keeps getting weirder and weirder." He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. "Let's go check the equipment room."

  Vaughn nodded. "Yeah," he said distractedly as he looked around trying to spot somebody.

  "You're not going to need that."

  "What?" Vaughn said, turning back to the astronaut.

  "The helmet. I don't think you'll need it."

  Vaughn looked down to see it still in his left hand. He released the helmet, and it bounced off the concrete floor with a loud crack.

  "What the hell?!" Mark yelled. "Do you know how much that thing costs?"

  Vaughn's eyes focused, and he looked at the astronaut. "I think we have way bigger problems than a broken helmet."

  Mark glared at him for a moment. Then his eyes widened, and he said, "Do you smell that?"

  Vaughn nodded as the odor wafted over him. He recognized the stench as it generated a wave of nausea. "Oh shit. It smells like … burned meat."

  "Yeah, it does," Mark said. He looked behind himself. "Smells like it's coming from this way. Let's check it out."

  The astronaut turned and started walking toward the building's administrative section.

  Vaughn stood frozen in
place. Unbidden, his hand drifted to his nonexistent back pocket, muscle memory seeking the phone in its usual location. Of course, it still wasn't there. He didn't know if its absence was a blessing or a curse. Whatever had happened here had also happened in Houston, so it had probably reached Colorado as well. A simple phone call might answer the question. If she didn't answer, well, absence of evidence wasn't proof of absence. That's what he'd try to tell himself. But if she did answer, he'd know she was okay. Staring at the floor, Vaughn shook his head. If she didn't—

  "What are you doing?" Mark asked sharply.

  Vaughn looked up. Hennessy had stopped short of the door to the facility's inner offices and turned back toward him with an impatient look.

  Yanked from his thoughts, Vaughn stared back at him mutely. Then he said, "Shouldn't we try to call someone else?"

  "We will, but right now, someone right here might need our help."

  Vaughn nodded. "Yeah … yeah, you're right." Uprooting his spacesuit's boots, he walked toward Mark and then followed him into the facility.

  A few minutes later, they stepped into a foul-smelling break room. Vaughn and Mark had wandered through the entire building, seeking the source of the stench. They still hadn't seen anyone. The equipment room, as well as every office they'd passed, had been completely devoid of life. Their noses had finally led them to this room and its smoky kitchen.

  Along the way, they'd seen plenty of evidence of sudden disappearance. Here in the break room, it looked like people had run out mid-meal. On the table, a spoon rested in a small puddle of oats next to a half-filled bowl of the same.

  The smell of burned popcorn filled the room. Vaughn opened the microwave to find a puffed-up bag of the stuff still sitting on the oven's glass carousel.

  Charred embers sat in a small skillet.

  He pointed into the pan. "Scrambled eggs?"

  Mark nodded. "Charcoal now."