Dark Horizons

by Jay Caselberg; Eric Del Carlo

  Finally, the firing and screaming ceased. I was still standing, dumbly, next to the opening.

  “What are you waiting for? Go on!”

  I came to myself, ran out to the hatch, and knocked. Everyone spilled out, except Sheila, who was sitting there and whimpering.

  “It’s all right. Stay here and open the hatch back up when Roscoe and his team come back,” I told her. I shut the hatch on her and ran back to the armory.

  We closed the doors while everyone loaded up as much firepower as each man or woman could handle. Siegfried grabbed a small pistol and handed it to Roscoe.

  “Give this to Sheila, but keep the safety on. Keep her with your team, but it might be better for everyone if she stays at the staircase until you have the engine room locked down.”

  Roscoe nodded.

  With everyone fully equipped, we opened the doors, braced for assault. None of them had yet come down this far to investigate the racket Siegfried had made. I guess he’d been right about them overlooking the armory. Roscoe and his team ran back to the hatch, knocked, and went in. It shut behind them, and the rest of us were on our own in the smoking, body-littered hall. Siegfried looked us over.

  “Carmen, you and I are up in front. Alix, Reychelle,” he pointed to the twins, “you two watch our flanks.” He looked at me. “You and Roger will bring up the rear guard.”

  We moved out, shutting and locking all doors that did not lead to the bridge. We worked quickly, at first, since there were few of them nearby. However, the further we got from the armory, the greater the resistance. They came in hordes, yelling, running straight at us, reckless. Despite our heavy firepower, sometimes their multitude would overwhelm us, and often we’d find ourselves taking them on hand to hand. Now we had knives, too, and so went our task of butchering the brutes who were quick enough to get through our guns. It was tiring and gruesome work.

  The fighting thickened. The air smelled like smoke and rancid flesh and blood and vomit. They were coming in from all sides, opening doors we hadn’t yet locked. It came to be more than I could bear. My nightmares kept flashing through my mind, and I would close my eyes and see the captain, then I would open them and see them racing at me, trampling the bodies of their fallen kin. I felt like I was screaming, Stop! Stop!, but I couldn’t hear anything except gunfire and their howling. I dropped my gun and crouched down, closing my eyes tightly and putting my hands over my ears. My mouth was moving, but no words were coming out. Or maybe there were. I’m not really sure. Everything else gets pretty hazy, because soon after that, I blacked out.

  I woke up in the bridge. There were dead bodies everywhere. I sat up and leaned on my arms.

  “Hey, she’s awake.”

  Carmen was sitting there, watching me. Roger was at the other side of the bridge, fiddling with a computer.

  “Where’s Siegfried?” I asked Carmen.

  “He’s in the engine room with Roscoe’s team. They’re having trouble finding out what’s wrong with the Core Drive. I’ll get him on the com if you want.”

  “No, that’s fine.” I shook my head. My mind was foggy, and I was trying to remember what had happened. It still fades in and out, even now.

  “You okay?” Roger said as he came over. “You kinda went a little crazy back there.”

  “I don’t … I’m starting to remember. What happened—did everyone make it?”

  “Everyone is okay, besides a few bruises and cuts. And one of us passed out,” Carmen said, smiling softly. “Roscoe’s team had an excellent tactical advantage from the catwalks. Secured engineering with no problem. We were able to lock down the path from the armory to the bridge. Siegfried opted to forget about the galley, at least for now, since there’s no food in there anyway.”

  I nodded. My head was throbbing, so I lay down again. My stomach rumbled.

  “We’re going to starve,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Carmen. “Siegfried and Roscoe will have everything fixed in no time.”

  The intercom crackled.

  “What was that?” Carmen said.

  “… Sheila. Is she with you?” came the fuzzy message.

  “Negative, she’s not on the bridge.”

  “Spread … for her. We can’t … her.”

  “Say again? The com is screwing up.”

  “… missing … We need … and search … the tunnels, maybe.”

  Carmen and Roger looked at each other, alarmed. Then Carmen looked at me.

  “I’ll be fine by myself. Go find Sheila. She didn’t seem well earlier.”

  Carmen and Roger picked up their weapons and left the bridge.

  They’ve been gone for a while now, and my head has finally stopped pounding when I get up. My stomach hasn’t quit hurting though. It seems like forever since the last time I’ve eaten.

  Outside the window, I see nothing but black. I can hardly look away. It is unreal. No stars, no planets, no nebulae. Nothing but blackness. I feel like I could cut a hole in the window, stretch my hand out, and touch it.

  And I can feel it. Not with my fingertips, but with my body—no, with my mind. It weighs down on me longer as I gaze upon the void. My heart rate and breathing start to race, and my forehead is sweaty and cold. And in my belly, I can feel it, this oppressive shadow—it’s what drives my hunger. Because of this blackness, our food stores have run out. Because of it, many that I used to know and love are gone. Because of it, I will never set foot on another planet; I won’t even see light from a star.

  I will die out here. We all will. We all will die, we all, we all we all die die die black black in the black.

  I’m starting to get dizzy. I think I’m going to lie down again and get some rest. I’ve got to get out of here, away from this window.

  It is much cooler here in the armory. It feels nice. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but I’m feeling much better, now.

  Carmen came in here a little while ago. I was huddled up and sobbing at the time, and I must have looked pretty sorry. She asked me what was wrong.

  “I … I don’t know.”

  “We found Sheila. She had gotten turned around in the tunnels. She’s all right. I ran back to the bridge to check on you and let you know, but you were gone. I was worried.”

  “Thanks. Thanks. I … That’s good about Sheila.”

  “Are you okay? Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “No, I’m … I don’t know. I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten in a long time.”

  “We all are hungry. I’m sorry about that. Siegfried is pretty sure he’s close to fixing the Core Drive. He said it may take him a few days, but he thinks he knows the problem now. We’ll be out of here soon.” Carmen put a hand on my shoulder.

  “No … no … no … no …” I think this is what I said, or something equally moronic.

  “Hey, I’ve got to get back to the bridge. I’ll be there if you want to talk.”

  She turned to leave.

  “Wait, Carmen.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve been having these dreams. But I’m afraid to talk about them with Siegfried. I’m afraid he’ll just think I’m weak or say I’m worrying about nothing. But it’s not nothing.”

  She sat down next to me. “Tell me about them,” she said.

  And I brought Carmen into my confidence, so to speak, and she will not share my secrets with Siegfried; I am fairly certain of it.

  They look at me with shifty, nervous eyes. I do not speak to them much, and they suspect that something is wrong. And they are all on edge with each other, too, because the food has been gone,. They did get the engine working, though. But it will still be at least a day before there is any chance of contacting another ship, even travelling at full speed.

  The one who sleeps with me, he’s the leader of these. I will go to bed early, as if I am sick. Then later, he will come to bed with me. I will wait until after he sleeps and they all sleep. He will not be expecting.

  THE DAMASCUS CODE
r />   LEE CLARK ZUMPE

  “CARVER: IF YOU’RE THERE, pick up.”

  The phone call stirred me from fitful slumber plagued by pedestrian nightmares concerning missed mortgage payments and the recent ruin of yet another marriage. The combination of exhaustion and the aftereffects of countless whisky shots clouded my lucidity and slowed my reaction. Fumbling in the darkness, half a dozen items perched along the edge of the nightstand tumbled to the floor before I managed to locate the phone.

  “Yeah, hello.” Beneath the bedroom door, light from the television flickered in the hallway. Leaving the thing on all night had become a pathetic habit, a compulsive attempt to dupe myself into believing I was not alone. The self-deception clearly suggested some embryonic neurosis that would eventually require therapy. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  “Preston—is that you?”

  “Yes. Who’s calling?”

  “Preston, it’s good to hear your voice. This is Bernie.” There was a pause as I rifled through my memory trying to attach a face to the name. “Wesley Bernard Weaver, from school.”

  “Bernard?” A classmate from my days at Tusgagunee University in Georgia, I had not spoken to or thought about Weaver in two decades. Unlike him, I stayed on at Tusgagunee to earn my master’s. After finally completing his prolonged undergraduate studies with a less than stellar performance, Bernard’s father penned a dozen endowment checks until some New England institution lowered its standards enough to let him glide through the admissions process. “How did you get my number?”

  “The Internet is omniscient. A few more keystrokes and I could probably locate your cholesterol levels from your last physical.” The clock on the dresser read 3:22 a.m. In about two hours, I would be wrenched from slumber by the irksome screech of its merciless alarm. Following a lukewarm shower courtesy of an undersized water heater, I would drive two miles in heavy traffic to the local high school where teenagers would ignore me through most of seven periods of literature classes. Though the prospect of catching up with Bernard appealed to me on some level, the thought that he might rob me of one more moment of sleep invoked an immediate animosity. “I know it’s late,” he said, interrupting me as I began to doze off again. “It’s just that—well, you’re the only person I can think of that might be able to help. The only one I can trust, anyway.”

  “What is this about, Bernard?”

  “Something I’ve been working on. Something extraordinary.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Near Cohutta, not far from Asheville. That’s another reason I called. Since you’re in Greeneville, you’re only a few hours away.”

  “Bernard, I haven’t seen you in 20 years …”

  “I know, I know.” An unexpected angst crept into his voice, a faceless fear that translated into exasperated stutters and long pauses. “Look, Preston … I wouldn’t call unless I thought that you would, um, benefit … not financially, but academically, as a scholar. This is something that should be of considerable interest to you, considering your … background. I know you focused on Shakespeare in school, but your true passion was classic esoteric literature … that’s why I need your input. I wish I could explain it more thoroughly, but I’m not comfortable going into it on the phone. That sounds paranoid, but … you just have to trust me.” His line of reasoning disintegrated into a hesitant plea. “If anything I’ve said has interested you, drive up this weekend. I’m working in a private facility near the town. I’ll e-mail you the directions.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said. Still half-asleep, I could think of nothing else to say.

  “Nice talking to you. Sorry if I bothered you.”

  The conversation ended, but Bernard had managed to annihilate any hope of returning to sleep by wheedling into my brain with unfathomable intimations and bizarre ravings. His entreaty had not been as unsettling as the tone in which he delivered it. Something wild and frenzied in his voice left me questioning his sanity as well as the urgency of his request.

  Though the precise nature of his “extraordinary” work remained a mystery, I imagined the overly eager, often obsessive Bernard squandering away hours in some laboratory evoking the very gods of physics and mathematics to derive some incredible, yet wholly impractical, creation. His grades may have been lackluster, but his genius—buried beneath social inadequacies and a trace of misanthropy—could never be doubted by his peers or the professors who derided him as lethargic and disrespectful. His zealous absorption of fringe theories and pseudoscience earned him little more than ridicule at Tusgagunee.

  How my admiration of medieval occult literature might somehow support his scientific endeavor I could not guess. As I dressed for work, I convinced myself that I should gracefully decline the invitation, avoiding what I envisioned as an awkward reunion at best.

  By the last class of the day I felt my resolve fading. My students fidgeted in uncomfortable desks, pens racing across notebook pages as I delivered a standard lecture on Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Perhaps half bothered to read the assigned work. One or two had outright refused, with parental support, claiming the novel touted a morally bankrupt character. Their snub, of course, encouraged twice as many to read it.

  In the midst of my classroom sermon, I discarded my index cards and eased into the chair at my desk.

  “Anyone read anything else by Hawthorne?”

  Heads bobbed, papers shuffled, notebooks unfolded like a brigade of butterflies preparing to migrate.

  “Did you assign it?” Geoff Heinz sat near the front of the class in the row closest to the obsolete blackboard.

  “No, I meant in another class.” I studied their vacant stares, befuddled gazes and anxious fingers pawing at the official course syllabus. “I thought you might have been exposed to Hawthorne’s shorter works. Like ‘The Minister’s Black Veil’?”

  “I read ‘Tall Tale Heart’ last year in Ms. Allen’s class,” John Schmautz said. He immediately regretted the admission, fearing I might ask him to give details.

  “That’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’ But that wasn’t Hawthorne. That was Edgar Allan Poe.” I glanced at the clock. Mere minutes separated me from the weekend and from a decision that suddenly seemed more portentous than I had realized. Well into my 40s, a refugee from two aborted attempts at marital bliss, I wondered if the rest of my years might be spent summarizing the works of famous American writers before inattentive and indifferent pupils, abridging literary masterpieces and reducing their significance into short and easily digested blurbs that students readily regurgitated during exams. “Here’s an unscheduled assignment for the weekend, for extra credit let’s say. Find and read Hawthorne’s story ‘The Birthmark.’” I could not banish from my mind the caricature of Aylmer, Hawthorne’s prototypical mad scientist. I wondered if Bernard had degenerated into something analogous. “We’ll discuss it Monday.”

  “What do you know about instrumental transcommunication?” Bernard escorted me along a sidewalk skirting the perimeter of the privately funded facility located in a relatively isolated expanse in the highlands of western North Carolina. Beyond a tall, electrified fence crowned with a strip of barbed wire, the mountainous terrain of Pisgah National Forest surrounded the heavily fortified compound. On my arrival, I had been quizzed by two security guards manning the front gate. Others, I expected, monitored the property through closed circuit cameras mounted along the building’s rooftop. “You know,” he said, “electronic voice phenomenon and things of that nature.”

  I’d expected to find a solitary, reclusive and fixated scientist with a pale countenance and an emaciated form; with unkempt gray hair that reached below his shoulders and a maniacal glint in his eyes that attested to his unconditional commitment to cloistered scientific study. Instead I found my old classmate impeccably well groomed, clean-shaven and dressed in professional attire. He spoke with a confidence and conviction that belied his apprehensive tenor during the previous late-night telephone conversation.

  “You
mean recordings of ghost voices?”

  “Well, that’s what some people consider them. There may well be other sources for such occurrences—I know there to be other sources, in fact.” Bernard looked furtively over his shoulder. He guided me toward a picnic bench overlooking a creek bed running parallel to the fence. “Several years ago I developed a new technology for the military, a kind of encryption device that utilized experimental high frequency pulses to transmit orders directly to troops in the field. The transmissions were inaudible to the average person—only select soldiers could receive and decipher the messages. To them, it is as if someone was standing next to them, giving the orders. I created both the transmitter and the nanotechnology that gave the soldiers the ability to hear a wider range of frequencies.”

  “That’s amazing.” Considering his uninspiring performance at Tusgagunee, that Bernard had managed to develop such a viable innovation enhanced his legitimacy and minimized my skepticism. “Must have made you a few bucks, too.”

  “Actually, the military seized the whole program, confiscated and classified our documentation, and forcibly evicted my researchers from their own labs. They allegedly discontinued the experiments, but I’ve been told that a modified version has been used in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Bernard shook his head, silently cursing the bureaucracy that first encouraged, then stifled his initiative. “Fortunately, I persuaded an organization in the private sector to fund more research. I had backup data and we were able to pick up where we left off.”

  “I’m still not sure how all of this involves me.” Overhead, the silvery skies began to darken. Autumn winds raced through the balsams, howling over distant ridgelines, swirling through sloping valleys and scouring darkened hollows. On grim October days in the Appalachians, winds could transmute into wicked whispers, hinting at the prospect of winter. I leaned against the end of the table, folded my arms over my chest and unsuccessfully tried to suffocate a shiver. “Judging by the amount of security around here, I don’t think your employers are too keen on giving tours, either.”