The Darwin Effect

by Mark Lukens

  But before searching the upper level, Cromartie decided to check the other rooms in the hall one by one. Just to eliminate all other possibilities, he told himself.

  Or to stall? his mind whispered.

  He ignored the voice in his head and he searched the rooms. It only took a few moments to search their living quarters and his body was tense as he inspected each room, his skin felt like it was buzzing with overactive nerve endings. His senses seemed heightened, and he listened for any strange sounds. He gripped the knife in his hand so hard his fingers were starting to hurt. He was ready for a wild-eyed, blood-splattered Ward to jump out at him with a knife at any second.

  But Ward wasn’t in the rooms.

  Cromartie continued his search down the hall to the next section—the dining area, the kitchen, and the walk-in freezer. Ward wasn’t in these rooms and Cromartie’s eyes lingered on Butler for a moment when he was in the walk-in freezer, her body wrapped up in plastic and leaning against the metal shelves in a seated position.

  Next, he checked the bridge just to be certain that Ward hadn’t doubled back from the upper level while he’d been in Sanders’ room. There were few places to hide on the bridge because every available space was crammed with computer equipment and machinery, but he checked every possible hiding place. He checked under all of the built-in countertops and around the swivel chairs. The bridge was murky but he didn’t bother turning on any other lights.

  He stopped by the captain’s chair for a moment, eyeing the computer controls. His earlier thoughts when he’d been here suddenly returned to him.

  He smiled.

  He knew the answer to the puzzle, the reason they were all here, and he was going to share the answer with Sanders and Rolle as soon as he found Ward and either detained him or killed him.

  He didn’t want to have to kill Ward but he was afraid he was going to have to do it—he couldn’t imagine Ward going down without a fight, so he needed to prepare himself to fight to the death. Maybe if he could just tell Ward the secret that he’d found, if Ward would just give him a chance to explain everything, then maybe he wouldn’t have to kill him.

  After leaving the bridge, Cromartie walked back down the corridor until he came to the foot of the metal steps that led up to the third level. He hesitated for a moment, listening, making sure no strange noises were coming from Sanders’ room. He was positive that Ward couldn’t have doubled back, but he still felt jittery, like something was wrong, like he had overlooked something big.

  He climbed the metal steps silently, the knife clenched in his hand. He hesitated at the top of the stairs, looking both ways. To his left was the cryo-room down the short, wide hall. And to his right were more storage areas and the part of the corridor that partitioned out. And beyond that partition, farther down the hall, was the airlock door.

  The hum of the machinery was louder up here, the endless purring of the air handlers recirculating their air.

  Cromartie decided to check the cryo-room first. He entered through the round archway and waited there for a moment. Like most places on this ship, there weren’t too many places to hide in here. He walked deeper into the gloomy room and checked each Plexiglas chamber that they’d woken up inside of just to be sure. The floors of the chambers were still shiny with the gel that had surrounded them in their suspended animation state, and it smelled faintly of chemicals.

  After a quick check around the room to make sure Ward wasn’t crammed into one of the small niches, he left the cryo-room and glanced down at the metal steps that led back down to the second level.

  There was only one last area to check, the corridor where the airlock was, and Ward had to be there.

  Cromartie hesitated again near the top of the stairs, gripping his knife harder. He needed to be ready to do this. Ward was going to attack quickly and lethally. Cromartie wasn’t an expert on knife fighting—he hadn’t even been in a fistfight since high school. He couldn’t help wondering if Ward was an expert at knife fighting. Ward was a survivalist, and he had told them before that he was trained in the martial arts. Did that include knife fighting? He couldn’t help feeling that he didn’t stand a chance against Ward.

  But he couldn’t back down now. They all needed to survive. Maybe if he could tell Ward that he’d found the answer to their survival, if he could reason with the man for a moment … but was Ward too far gone now to reason with?

  Cromartie crept down the wide hallway, coming to the partition wall in the path. He stopped there by the wall that jutted out and he peeked around the corner.

  He could see all the way to the airlock door, and Ward wasn’t standing near it. Ward wasn’t anywhere in the corridor … but there was blood.

  So much blood.

  Cromartie stepped out from behind the wall into the corridor and stared down at the gray metal floor. There was a large puddle of dark blood only a few feet away from him, and then a trail of blood, large droplets of it, that led all the way to the open storage closet door.

  It was Ward … had to be.

  Was he hurt?

  Cromartie crept towards the open closet door and he saw Ward’s shoe sticking out of the nearly closed door. He hesitated in the middle of the corridor, his knife gripped in his hand. He watched Ward’s foot for a long moment, but the man’s foot wasn’t moving.

  “Ward?”

  No answer from Ward.

  Was this some kind of trick? Maybe this wasn’t Ward’s blood at all on the floor. Maybe this was Abraham’s blood and he was setting a trap for him.

  “Ward? It’s Cromartie. I’m here by myself.”

  Still no answer.

  “We don’t have to fight. We don’t have to hurt each other. I … I just want to talk to you about what happened to Abraham.”

  Everything was still eerily silent up here except for the humming machinery behind the walls.

  Cromartie approached the half-open door cautiously, his eyes darting around as he got closer to the door, his ears attuned to any sound, ready in case a barefooted Ward jumped out at him from somewhere else.

  Then he heard the rustling of clothing coming from inside the closet. And then he heard heavy breathing, and then a grunting sound.

  “Ward, are you okay?”

  No answer from Ward … just another grunt.

  Ward’s foot drew back inside the closet. He was definitely inside the small room.

  “Ward, it’s me … Cromartie. I don’t want to hurt you. I … I just want to talk. Okay?”

  Cromartie rushed to the closet door in the last few steps and ripped the door all the way open. He jumped in front of the doorway with his knife out, ready to defend himself.

  But no attack came.

  Cromartie dropped his hand down to his side limply.

  “Oh God …” Cromartie whispered.

  FORTY

  Sanders hated feeling like this, being in this kind of position—helpless because of her injured ankle. Helplessness wasn’t a feeling she was used to. She was upset at herself for letting Ward get the jump on her when she had entered Abraham’s room. But the shock of seeing Abraham’s throat slit wide open and the sheets around him covered in blood had frozen her for a second. She had seen that kind of carnage many times before when she’d been a cop so it shouldn’t have shocked her like it had.

  She re-ran the memory of Ward pushing her back out the doorway and slamming her into the opposite wall. She tried to remember exactly how she had hurt her ankle, but she couldn’t remember. The only thing she knew was that the pain had been immediate.

  She concentrated on that moment when Ward had attacked her. She remembered Ward looking down at her after she had crumpled down to the floor in the hallway. For that instant, as he stared down at her, she thought he was going to pounce on her like a predator taking advantage of wounded prey. She was certain that he was going to kill her.

  But he didn’t.

  And Cromartie had asked her if Ward had the knife with him when he attacked her. And now that s
he saw him again in her mind, she was pretty sure he hadn’t had a knife with him. And she was also pretty sure that he hadn’t had any blood on his clothing or skin.

  Something was wrong with those details, and in these last few moments she had realized what it was. It had taken her too long to put the pieces together because she had been so convinced of Ward’s guilt. But now her errors had put her in danger because she realized that Rolle was the killer all along.

  Rolle stood in front of the desk and his expression had changed. He held his knife in his right hand, gripping the handle hard.

  She’d had her chance to grab the knife while he’d been in the bathroom, but she’d been too slow and her ankle still hurt like hell. She had begun to suspect something was wrong with Rolle when he said that her ankle wasn’t hurt as badly as she was saying it was. God, she should’ve put the pieces together sooner. Now she was here alone with this madman, with this killer.

  For a moment she wondered if he knew about her suspicions. Maybe she could keep hiding it from him. But judging from the look on his face now, she was sure that he knew.

  “You like him, don’t you?” Rolle asked Sanders as he stood by the desk.

  “Who?” she asked, trying anything she could to stall Rolle. How long would it take Cromartie to find out the truth, to realize that it had been Rolle all along? Had he found Ward? Was Ward trying to plead his case to Cromartie? Would Cromartie even listen? Would Cromartie kill Ward anyway? Or worse—would Ward kill Cromartie in self-defense?

  “You know who,” he sang out with an insane smile on his face.

  “I like everyone here,” Sanders finally answered.

  “No, I mean you really like Cromartie. I’ve seen you two running off to the bridge together. Spending all that time alone.”

  Sanders stared at Rolle, studying him. He wasn’t the soft weakling she’d thought of him as for so long now. Now he seemed harder, dangerous, darker. “We were just talking,” she said in a careful voice, trying not to antagonize him, yet still trying to remain firm. It was cop talk, and she was instantly reverting back to it.

  “But I can tell you like him,” Rolle insisted. “A man can tell these kinds of things.”

  She was still doing her best not to antagonize him. It was like she was dealing with a criminal again back on the streets of L.A., a criminal who could go off at any second.

  “What about me?” Rolle asked her. He took a step towards her with the knife in his hand. “Have you ever thought about me for one second?”

  “Of course,” Sanders said, trying to say anything to keep Rolle calm right now.

  He walked back towards the bathroom door like he was trying to gather his thoughts for a moment.

  She glanced at the door, wondering if she could make a run for it.

  No way. He would be on her in seconds. With her sprained ankle, she was no match for him right now.

  “This is called the Darwin Mission,” Rolle said from behind her.

  She didn’t say anything, but her body was tense, ready for an attack.

  “Do you know who Darwin was?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, suddenly reminded of her and Cromartie’s conversation about Darwin in front of the computer terminals on the bridge. She turned around to look at Rolle; she wanted to keep an eye on him at all times. She was going to keep her voice neutral as she spoke, trying her best to keep the anger out of it, trying to keep Rolle calm.

  “Survival of the fittest,” Rolle said as he walked back towards her. He had the knife down by his side now. “MAC woke us up. He said he was programmed to wake us up. And I know why. Do you know why?”

  She didn’t answer him.

  “I know why,” he said in that sing-song voice of his.

  Sanders thought of Cromartie’s words: I know what the answer is.

  The answer.

  “Do you want to know the answer?” Rolle asked her, and his blue eyes were gleaming with madness as he walked back towards the desk, only a few steps away from her right now.

  Her eyes darted for a second to the knife blade. It was at least eight inches long and it tapered to a point. It could part her flesh in an instant, sink into her skin like it was butter and pierce her organs.

  “Do you want to know the answer?” Rolle asked again. He took a step closer. He still held the knife down by his side, his hand clenched around the handle so hard his knuckles were white.

  She didn’t respond. She kept eye contact with him and she braced herself for the attack that she knew was coming.

  “That computer woke us up because it was programmed to do so. I bet this has happened on every other ship in this fleet. They want to see who’s the strongest on each ship. They want to see who is the fittest. They want the best to survive. They want the strongest and fittest to kill off the weak, and then that person, the winner, gets to go back into cryosleep for the rest of the trip. Only the strongest and the fittest are going to be allowed to colonize the planet.”

  Sanders still didn’t say anything. She wondered if Rolle’s madness was a side effect from the cryosleep. Or maybe the idea of dying on this ship had slowly driven him insane. He had killed Butler first—the weakest—and then he had tried to pass himself off as the reasonable doctor, someone none of them would suspect as the killer. He hadn’t overtly gone after Ward as Butler’s murderer … he had let her do that for him. She felt like such a chump.

  Sanders was sure that Rolle would attack now. What was he waiting for? He had her cornered here in her room. She was hurt and defenseless. And he had his knife.

  She took a closer look at the knife. All of the knives that they had taken from the kitchen looked alike, but she had a gut feeling about the one in Rolle’s hand. “That’s my knife, isn’t it?”

  Rolle just smiled at her.

  “You swiped my knife as soon as you came in here, and then you slipped it down into your belt so it would look like it was yours.”

  “I needed a knife. I lost mine.”

  Instead of attacking her, Rolle backed up to the desk and rummaged around in the first aid kit on the desk while keeping his eyes on her. He pulled another roll of elastic cloth out of the kit and slit the plastic with his knife blade. He tore the plastic off of the roll of cloth bandage and threw it on the floor.

  “Hold out your wrists together in front of you,” he told her.

  Sanders didn’t move a muscle.

  “I’m trying to save you,” he said. “Either you do what I say or I kill you right now.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Cromartie stared down at Ward who was crumpled up inside the storage closet. There was blood everywhere underneath Ward and all over his torso; he was holding his stomach, trying in vain to keep the blood inside of his body. But the blood was oozing out through his saturated fingers.

  “Rolle did this,” Cromartie said and everything suddenly clicked into place in his mind now. For a moment he had considered that Sanders might be the killer, and then he had even considered himself—some kind of sleepwalking episode that he hadn’t remembered. But now the pieces seemed to fit together. Rolle hadn’t been there when Sanders found Ward in Abraham’s room. But where had Rolle been? He must’ve been stalking Ward, waiting for the right moment to strike while Cromartie had been helping Sanders to her room.

  Ward nodded like he saw the realization in Cromartie’s eyes, like he saw the truth. He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. “You need to stop him,” he whispered. “He’s … he’s crazy.”

  Cromartie bent down and reached out for Ward, but then he pulled his hand back. What could he do? “How can I help?” he asked.

  Ward shook his head. “It’s too late. I’ve lost too much blood already.”

  Cromartie knew it was the truth.

  “When I ran up here, Rolle was waiting for me,” Ward said as he fought for breath. “He must’ve been in the cryo-room. He … he ran up behind me and then … he stabbed me.”

  Cromartie’s eyes darted down beside Ward and he saw t
he blood-stained knife on the closet floor along with a crumpled-up rubber apron and discarded rubber gloves. They looked like the same apron and gloves Rolle had used to clean up Butler’s room. He had worn the gloves and apron to protect his clothing from Ward’s blood. He had stabbed Ward and then he had hurried right back down to Sanders’ room.

  “We were all going to die anyway,” Ward said and chuckled. A few dribbles of blood dripped out of the corner of his mouth as he barked out the laugh. “I might as well go now.”

  But they didn’t have to die, Cromartie thought. There was a solution … a way out … a way to survive. But he wasn’t going to tell Ward about that now. No, he wasn’t going to ruin Ward’s last few minutes of life, teasing him with the knowledge that the answer was so close now.

  Cromartie stood back up, his knife still in his hand. “Rolle is with Sanders right now.”

  Ward’s eyes widened with shock as he looked up at him.

  “I left Rolle with her. I left him to watch her while I went looking for you.”

  “Go get her,” Ward whispered. “Don’t worry about me. You just go get her and … and save her.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you.”

  Ward didn’t respond. His eyes were closing again.

  Cromartie couldn’t waste any time. He had to get back down to Sanders’ room right now. He turned to head back down the hall towards the metal stairs, but then he froze.

  Rolle and Sanders were standing in the corridor, right in front of the wall where the hallway jogged. Sanders stood in front of Rolle, her hands bound together in front of her with a cloth bandage. Her eyes were wide with fear and most of her weight was on her good foot.

  “Sorry,” Sanders whispered and she looked miserable.

  “Shut up,” Rolle growled at her and nudged her. She hobbled a few steps forward.

  Cromartie glanced down at Ward crumpled up in the closet. Ward’s eyes were closed, his body limp, and he didn’t seem to be breathing anymore. Cromartie looked back at Rolle. “You did this.”