by SM Reine
“Yep.” Guess my bat had a name now.
“Doesn’t matter what you have. You’re coming with me.” Leslie came at me hard. Knife poised to stab my chest, she slammed into me and forced us to the floor. The bat was nearly flung out of my hands. She didn’t hesitate like Viz, and threw punches at my face. Immediately, the skin on my face to my hands went from tingling to numb. I couldn’t fight long. With a grunt, I used my arms to protect my face. When she threw a right, I came in fast and sunk my teeth into her forearm.
My teeth went right through the layers of polyplastic, but stopped cold when I hit something hard. Maybe a protective metal link layer. Leslie yelped and reared back.
Before I could bite her again, she hurried to her feet and put distance between us.
I smacked my lips for good measure. Unlike Wagner, I considered Leslie an open buffet. We circled each other, anticipation building as we considered the next strike. Each time I faced the core I had to shield my eyes. I was closer to the jolt sword and dove for it. Leslie anticipated my direction and kicked.
The hit to the side of my head got me good, but she’d made a mistake and gotten too close to me again. I flicked the switch on the bat and touched the end to the metal floor.
That’s for breaking and entering.
Electricity snaked up my legs and forced me to my knees. Damn. Damn. Damn. The pain was immediate—even more so when I refused to turn it off.
When a sizzling Leslie dropped to my right, I finally released the switch and collapsed on the spot. I didn’t dare look at my legs or bare feet. I was smoking, too.
“During the day, do not stray.”
I had to move. All I wanted to do was lay there. Not far from me, Leslie’s corpse smelled like burnt wire. Her mouth was wide open as if she was in the middle of a scream. One side of her face was reddened while the other half was charred.
Get up, See.
Somehow, I forced my limbs to move. The bottom of my feet were blackened. Not good.
The temptation to collapse outside of the engine room was strong. I fell down the first flight of steps I tried to climb. So I lay at the bottom until I could feel my feet.
At least I was safe again.
The Devil in the Details
Scurrying as fast as I could, I returned to the fish farm. The closer I got, the more I expected him to be gone. Why would he still be there? Hadn’t one or at least both of the ships left? Why not call for his friends to come rescue him?
For someone who was trying to evade my enemies, I sure made a ruckus on my way to the room. I didn’t even bother to listen for trouble.
Excitement filled my senses. When I got to the spot though, he wasn’t there.
My heart dropped.
Then I spotted a smear on the floor that led away from the exit.
Following on the blood trail, I found Wagner twenty feet away from his original spot going through the useless crates.
“There’s nothing in there…” I managed.
His flashlight bounced around the walls.
“So I’ve surmised.” The arrows in his leg were gone now and white bandages covered his injuries. “I was hoping for something better than the emergency med kit supplies I have.”
I didn’t even bother to hide this time. “What are you still doing here?”
He paused for a moment. “Where else would I be?”
“What about your crew? Don’t you have to leave before…” My voice trailed off.
“They’ve already left. Not sure about the Crescent’s crew.”
“They left you?” I was louder this time, even taking a step toward him.
He sighed and gestured to the crates around him. “There’s nothing in here?”
“Not really.”
He didn’t talk for a bit, then finally spoke. “The window to invade any vampire spaceship depends on how close it is to a star. As a xenoarcheologist, I’ve been looking for over a decade now. The last vampire ships fled Earth over a century ago. Finding your ship and getting left behind was worth everything I paid.” His slow smile disarmed me for a moment. “This far from Earth, your ship has been collecting fuel in the Virgo Cluster for a long time as if preparing for a big jump through folded space. Where are you going?”
I blinked. Now that was an interesting question. “I don’t know. I don’t even know where we are right now. This ship came from Earth?”
So many questions came to mind, but I was reeling from his words: The last vampire ships left Earth over a century ago.
My ship had likely left Earth. I spoke Terran English. Which meant I’d been traveling alone for over one hundred years. My knees softened and I had to brace myself against one of the columns for support.
“So you don’t know anything about the ship?”
“I’m not even sure about my name.” I pointed to my suit.
“See,” he read softly. He seemed pensive for a moment. “We can’t help your current situation.” He tried to stand and failed.
“Need help?” I offered.
His gaze flicked from me to the floor.
I shrugged. I gave him my I-don’t-see-anybody-else grin. He finally relented and placed his arm over my shoulder.
“I’m heavy.”
“I’ve eaten.” That made him jerk.
“Don’t worry.” I laughed, a sound I’d forgotten. “I like it when my food runs.”
He laughed. “Good one.”
We left the fish farm. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“The bridge. Do you know the way?”
“That much I do know.” I glanced at his leg. Blood was already seeping through the bandages. “She got you good.”
“That’s Leslie Dumar for you. The Crescent is one of many groups still searching for vampire spacecraft. I don’t blame them. The salvage rates are unheard of.”
I grunted, thinking of Leslie and our final encounter. “Groups? They’re filthy looters.”
His brown eyebrow rose and his beard tickled the side of my face. Our heights matched. “Before the vampires had left Earth, we would’ve never known such technology existed.”
“What technology?” I hope he wasn’t tired of questions. I had enough to last a long time.
“Look around you. This whole ship was constructed with materials not found on Earth. Even over the last century we have nothing that can withstand a star’s heat, pressure, or electromagnetic radiation.”
We’d reached the bridge. The closed door slid open. I didn’t come in here often. Why bother when nothing worked. The space was about as big as the aquarium, with consoles and seating for the ship’s flight crew. The view panels in front of the room were closed.
I helped Wagner to one of the maroon-colored cushion seats. He eased onto it and looked around.
“Now this I didn’t expect.” His voice bounced off the far wall. Maybe he finally saw what I saw every day. Pure emptiness.
He sighed, touched his leg, then looked at me. “I guess we’ll have to do what we can, See.”
“Like what? This ship has been unresponsive since I can remember. There aren’t any access panels in here.”
He tried to get up, and I hurried to his side. “We’re not looking for a panel. The only documented records state the controller merely sat down and the ship responded. A vampire is the key.”
A key. That’s what Leslie had called me.
“Sit down?” I asked.
“Have you sat in all of these seats?”
“You gotta be kidding me.” There were over thirty seats in this room. I’d been bored at times, but not that bored.
“What about the one in the center?” he asked.
“Sat there once already.”
“What about there?” He pointed to one near the central seat.
“I think I had a meal there.”
Wagner made a sour face.
I sighed. “So you want me to try them all?”
“Other than checking out the fish in that tank, what else did you have in mind?”
>
I had yet, after a century, to try this, so I sat from chair to chair. At first, I was eager, practically grinning with unbridled enthusiasm, until I plopped down behind the fifteenth console. This task got old fast.
By the time I walked to the twenty-ninth one, my skip had turned into a shuffle.
At the thirty-first seat, something happened the moment my bottom touched the cold surface. A single blue handprint flashed on the console in front of the seat.
No way…
Wagner stood up halfway from the other side of the room. “You find something?” he called.
“Yeah.” My hand hovered over the handprint, not sure what to do. What if I turned on the auto-destruct sequence or something crazy like that?
Instead of thinking further about it, I laid my hand on the smaller one. The chilled console lit up with lights and those strange symbols flittered around the handprint.
Above our heads, an opaque light appeared. Swirls of colors blossomed above that finally coalesced into a video: It was the bridge. I immediately recognized the rows of seats and consoles. The room was just as empty as it was now except for two people: a woman and myself. My memories of her had faded, but now that I saw her vividly, they flared, renewed.
She was tall with prominent cheekbones, deep brown eyes, and a sleek, bald head. When she smiled her fanged teeth were a dazzling ivory white. On her right wrist she wore a band of stones that made noise when they rubbed together.
I could see more memories now, practically tasting them. There had been a strong smell of burnt ozone in the air when we’d hurried to board this ship on Earth.
The video caught my attention again.
Wearing a light blue space suit, the woman stood on one side, pointing a weapon in my direction, while I was on the other arguing and yelling.
There was no speech—just garbled static.
Why wasn’t there any sound?
In the video, I took a step toward her, and she thrust the weapon in my direction. There was something on the brown skin next to her right eye. Like a scab, but yellowed and ghastly.
“Stop,” the woman’s lips said. “Don’t.”
When my figure in the video dared to take two steps, she shot me and the side of my head exploded.
My stomach turned to stone. My mouth widened.
A final sliver of sound snaked through before the video ended: “Auntie needs you to stay out of sight, my little fern. The sun is rising for the last time.”
She’d shot me. She’d shot me.
Not my mother, but my aunt.
She’d shot me and left me alone with only this final message.
I hadn’t moved for so long, the hand that squeezed my shoulder belonged to Wagner. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“I needed to see that.” I tried to swallow, failed, and tried again. “I’ve seen that woman’s face so many times in my head. That’s…my aunt.” My throat dried even further. “She…shot me.”
“To protect you from what happened on Earth.”
I shot him a dark glare, but he didn’t flinch.
He continued. “There was a reason the vampires left us.” He looked at the barren, metal floor. The glow from the console revealed his remorse. “We engineered a virus to get rid of them since they wouldn’t give us access to their tech. Instead of giving into Earth’s demands, they left.”
I leaned my clammy forehead against the console and let the information sink in: I hadn’t been abandoned. I’d been saved. Cast away in a ship toward safer shores.
Wagner sat quietly in the seat next to mine looking over the console.
“Can you read those symbols?” I finally asked.
He nodded. “I can teach you, if you want.”
For a moment, I didn’t want to learn anything. I didn’t want to be stuck on this damn ship anymore. I’d been executed in this room and left to heal as a shell of my former self.
I could’ve died.
“Why bother?” I said. “We don’t know where we’re going and in a few decades you’ll die and I’ll be left all alone again.”
He shrugged. “I’m a lot younger than I look.” His light tone was an attempt to make me feel better, but my mood was poor. “You don’t have to be alone. You can have purpose instead.”
I glanced at him. His eyebrows were lowered and his lips formed a straight line.
“I can teach you the symbols and you can learn how to control this ship again. You can find your way home, See.”
Home, I liked the sound of that. Even if I didn’t know what it looked like. Maybe, if I was lucky, my new home looked like the landscapes in the mural.
“If you want me to leave, I will.” His expression was sincere.
“Where you gonna go?”
He shrugged. “Maybe hitch a ride on the next looter ship?”
“After they shoot your ass?”
“Like I said, I’m younger than I look. I’m a pretty good shot, too.”
“Yeah, the wound on your leg totally says that.”
He finally flashed me his smile again, the one that both lifted the corners of his mouth and my spirits. I couldn’t help returning the gesture. I bet if I saw my reflection right now, I would look worse than I did when the day began. I didn’t know where we were going, nor had I even scraped on the surface of my past and my memories, but what I did have was so much more valuable.
I wasn’t alone anymore.
* * *
Shawntelle Madison is a web developer who loves to weave words as well as code. She’d never admit it, but if asked she’d say she covets and collects source code. After losing her first summer job detasseling corn, Shawntelle performed various jobs—from fast-food clerk to grunt programmer to university webmaster. Writing eccentric characters is her most favorite job of them all. On any particular day when she’s not surgically attached to her computer, she can be found watching cheesy horror movies or the latest action-packed anime. She lives in Missouri with her husband and children.
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