by David Coy
“How’s he doing?” Phil asked.
“Piss poor. He’s dying.”
Ned shook his head, and Mary sighed. After all he’d been through, she thought. To be killed by a pen knife in the hand of a fop like Gilbert was almost laughable.
“Well, there’s not a whole bunch we can do for him,” Phil said rubbing his eyes. Mary saw him look in the direction of Gilbert’s hole; and for a moment, his face turned so hard and stony, she could barely recognize him.
A heavy pall fell over them. Then Ned clapped his hands quietly and shooed it away. “Bailey and me thought we’d do some reconnoitering,” he said.
“Yeah, can I go this time?” Bailey added.
Phil saw the fire in her eyes. “Sure.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Why not?”
In fact Ned and Bailey were the only logical choices. Both of them had been recently cycled and were unlikely to be taken again soon. Besides, it didn’t matter.
“Oh, good. I’ll get the backpack thing,” Bailey said.
A few minutes later she had the backpack full of foodstuff and was ready to go.
“Pen? Notepad? Maps?” Ned asked her.
“Got it all right here,” she said seriously, tapping the side pocket.
“Let’s hit it, then.”
“Try to get into some of those side tubes,” Phil said. “And if you get as far as the end, try to bring back a couple more pupae. I want to take a close look at them.”
“You’re gonna bring another one of those things back in here?” Mary asked like a concerned wife.
“Yeah, there might be something there.”
Mary made a face. They walked with Bailey and Ned to the rear seam and wished them luck.
On the way back, they saw Gilbert step down out of his hole, Bible in hand. He just stood there and waited for God only knew what from Mary and Phil. Seeing him standing there waiting for them to say something made her want to wring his neck. Some itsy-bitsy part of him was daring them, daring her, to say something.
“Tom’s dying!” she yelled at him. “You killed him, you cocksucker!”
“Hey, c’mon,” Phil warned, tapping her arm. “Be nice.”
“Oh, bullshit. He’s warped. He deserves it.”
“Maybe.”
“Uh-uh. No maybe. That one deserves it”
“I want to talk to him. I’ll see you later,” Phil said and headed over in Gilbert’s direction.
“That’ll be damned enlightening,” she said and hopped back up into Tom’s chamber. “I’ll stay with Tom—he’s better company.”
In a far place in Phil’s psyche, an old dog got to its feet and shook its coat. Dust flew.
Gilbert just stared ahead with his hands holding his Bible in front and when Phil was the right distance from him, he turned with a friendly expression.
“Hey, hey, amigo,” Gilbert said slowly.
Phil hadn’t been called “amigo” since he was a kid and the attempt by Gilbert to endear himself to him made the dog in him growl. The deep sound resonated in the tube.
“You stabbed Tom Moon, why?” Phil said evenly.
“I’m very sorry about—that? Tom said something that made me very—angry?”
Gilbert swallowed with his mouth open. “If I could take it—back?, I would do that, but I can’t—do that?, and I don’t know what else to do—about that?”
“I see. What did he say to you?”
Gilbert harumphed just barely and stared. When the moment was right, he shook his head. He knew his silence and hesitation would make the moment so much more weighty and meaningful. Phil would think Tom had said something very horrible, so horrible that Gilbert couldn’t even say it but could only shake his head—just enough.
“Well, what did he say that was so terrible?”
“I . . . I’m not even sure I can—repeat that? Even if I could, I’m not sure I would—want to?”
Phil was getting nowhere fast. He wasn’t in the mood to listen to the evasiveness of this liar. And there were times, Marine Sergeant Phil Lynch knew, when the cool voice of reason just wasn’t the answer.
The growl got deeper and the dog’s scarred lips pulled back over well-used teeth.
“Sure,” he said. “Now tell me what it was or I’ll bust your ugly head.”
Gilbert’s loose jaw came open and he swallowed. “I don’t think I have to tell you anything,” he said, swallowing again. “You have no jurisdict..nun over me.”
Phil set his jaw and nodded his head a few times. Then, its teeth bared, the dog attacked with a snarl.
He took hold of Gilbert’s thin, flaccid arm with his strong right hand and squeezed down hard until Gilbert winced. He had to squeeze much harder than he thought he’d have to and knew he was leaving one hell of a bruise on his scrawny arm. He found a reserve of a few more foot-pounds somewhere and clamped even harder.
Phil’s voice came up ten or twenty decibels and he stepped up to within inches of Gilbert’s face.
“Let me tell you something, shit bird, if you so much as look cross-eyed at anybody else in this tube, I’ll have your ass. Are you paying attention?” he asked, shaking the arm hard. The arm felt loose-jointed and useless. “So help me God, I’ll strip you naked, break your bones fuck your ass and choke you to death with my dick. Is that plain enough?”
Phil let go of the arm and grabbed a fistful of the loose meat on Gilbert’s face and pulled. That brought an immediate gasp and Gilbert dropped his Bible and his hands came up and wrapped around Phil’s thick forearm. Phil pulled his face close and locked Gilbert’s eyes with his.
“You think about that before you fuck up again. It’s hard enough staying alive in this nightmare without worrying about shit like you hurting somebody.”
Phil let go of the side of his face then palmed it and shoved Gilbert’s head hard into the wall. Gilbert’s glasses came off and he stumbled and fell down trying to catch them.
“Christ, boy,” Phil said, watching him stumble. “You’re like a damned rag doll. You oughta get some exercise.”
Punishment, Phil thought as he walked away. Works every time with lab animals and humans.
He looked down at his strong right hand and flexed it. He was surprised he hadn’t pulled Gilber’t face right off with it. He hadn’t felt that much righteous violent emotion in years. His civilized personality had let go of the leash and let the old dog loose, and had Gilbert put up even the smallest fight, Phil was sure he would have spent the next few minutes killing him with his fists, knees, elbows and teeth. It would not have been pretty, but it would have been appropriate. He glanced back at Gilbert and Phil thought he looked nothing more than pitiful; sorrowful and embarrassed by it all. That little spark of remorse in Phil was drowned a second later when the dog lifted its leg and pissed on it.
Fuck ‘im, Phil thought. Next time I will kill him.
* * *
Gilbert got to his feet and stood there hunched over and worked his glasses back onto his head then picked up his Bible and straightened the pages.
His mouth had fallen open again and stayed in that slack position as he stepped back up into his chamber. He stood there in the center of it, holding his Bible. Then he wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and middle finger.
Gilbert remembered being shoved down like that once before when he was just a child. He couldn’t remember the names of the children who did it, but the faces were clear. He remembered that they had called him a liar when they did it.
Gilbert’s cheeks felt hot as if he’d just stepped out of a steam bath.
We’ll see who fucks who in the ass, he thought.
* * *
“Tom’s dead,” Mary said.
Phil lowered his head for a second. “Poor bastard,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said and wiped a tear on the back of her hand. “He just went to sleep. He’s got no pulse, no respiration—nothing.”
“Well, that’s the way to go, if you’re gonna go,�
�� Phil said. “He’s better off.”
Mary nodded her head in agreement. “I guess we should carry him down by the soakers.”
“Sure.”
As they laid him down in the far corner, once again Phil thought about how efficient the aliens were with their resources. And he hoped to hell the law of “dead once, dead forever” held true within the confines of this vessel. He couldn’t shake the thought that it just might not be true.
* * *
“How about this one,” Bailey said to Ned. “It’s got light in it, and it looks big enough to crawl through. Even you could make it.”
She hadn’t meant it as an insult but as such statements in regard to another’s girth are concerned, it got taken as a small one. Bailey saw it and realized right away what she’d said.
“I didn’t mean that like it sounded, Ned. Sorry.”
Ned just winked at her.
“After you,” he said, with his palm open toward the side tube. Bailey hitched the pack up tighter and started in. The tube was about four feet in diameter and led off in a slightly upwards direction. Bailey was reminded of the big pieces of sewer pipe she used to play in along the highway next to her house as a kid. That had been fun. This was fun, too. She turned around with a big grin.
“C’mon. This is great.”
Ned wasn’t so sure. He climbed in and crawled along after her, wishing to hell this were happening to someone else. It had become his favorite fantasy over the last few weeks to think that. Sometimes he could almost make it seem true.
The passage zig-zagged and changed direction with no reason he could discern. At several points the upward angle was so steep they nearly had to climb to make progress. Ned couldn’t tell if it was getting warmer, or if he was just working up some heat from the crawling, but he began to sweat. The dimming light could have been his imagination, too; but he swore the light organs along the top of the narrow tube were getting weaker, or perhaps smaller.
“This thing’s going on forever,” he said, wiping his brow on his arm. “Let’s take a rest and break out some lunch.”
Bailey worked her way back to Ned’s position and slipped the pack off. She’d brought an unopened loaf of bread, some grape jelly and a half-full jar of peanut butter—but nothing to
spread either with.
“Sorry . . . ” she said on discovering the fact.
She managed to spread the peanut butter with her fingers after asking Ned if it would be okay. They both passed on the same procedure for the jelly; somehow that was going too far.
After eating, they went on for five or ten more minutes.
“Bailey, stop,” he finally said.
He watched Bailey stick her head and shoulders into a smaller side tunnel. A moment later he watched as her feet disappeared in it.
“Be careful,” he tried to yell.
He closed his eyes for what seemed like just a second and when he re-opened them, Bailey had her head and shoulders out of the hole and was looking at him, grinning.
“Hey, guess what?” she said.
“What?”
“We found the bus depot.”
“What bus depot?”
“Better come and see.”
She backed up into the tube and disappeared. With a grunt, Ned got into position and crawled forward, regretting each dog-like step.
The side tunnel was even smaller than the one they were in, and Ned felt a flush of claustrophobia come over him like a heavy, musty blanket. He could see Bailey up ahead lying on her stomach. The tunnel ended and seemed to open into a wider, better lighted area. As he got closer, Bailey turned around and waved for him to get down lower. Wishing his wish that it were happening to someone else, Ned crawled the remaining fifteen feet to Bailey’s position on his stomach and elbows.
“Stay down!” she hissed and put her hand on his head and ducked down herself.
“What is it?” he whispered back.
Bailey grinned. “You’ll see. Be quiet. Wait.”
She lifted her head finally then pulled Ned’s up by the hair. “Okay, look.”
The shuttle port was enormous, at least one hundred yards across and forty feet high. Like a blow on the head, that single view drove home the enormity of the vessel. The area was divided into two sections by a wall composed of the same thick, translucent material used in the wall chambers in the labs. The shuttle-craft could be seen on the air-lock side of the divider, resting like huge scarabs in a neat circle around an immense star-shaped seam in the floor. Two goons stood near a section of the wall on the staging area. The wall there was covered with what were obviously controlling mechanisms. As Bailey and Ned watched, one of them began to touch the controls.
“Watch this,” Bailey said. “I’ve learned a lot while you were asleep.”
Ned looked puzzled. “How long was I asleep?”
“Couple of hours. Okay, watch.”
Couple of hours? Christ.
Two seams on either end of the divider squeezed closed. There was a sound of rushing air as a ring of vents around the upper section of the airlock opened wide. When the air inside the lock was evacuated, the star-shaped seam began to open. Bright white light filled the airlock from below and spilled through the divider’s window, whitewashing the brown interior and illuminating the entire facility. From their vantage high in the wall of the staging area, they could see down through the divider and view the crescent shape of the earth beyond. As they watched, a shuttle drifted up through the opening, turned slowly and set down gently in an open space between two others, completing the neat ring around the seam. No sooner had it set down that the one to its right lifted off the floor, drifted over and dropped out of the port. Once it was out, the seam squeezed closed, and the sound of rushing air once again filled the facility. Bailey grinned over at Ned. “Cool, huh?”
“Those are the shuttles they use on their runs back and forth to Earth, eh.” Ned asked.
“No duh.” Bailey laughed quietly.
“They look like bugs.”
“Cool, huh?”
“Well, are they?”
“Yes! Yes!” she said patting his head. “And all we have to do is sneak onto one and catch a lift back to Earth.”
Ned wasn’t a genius, but he knew that performing that little trick would be next to impossible. Between them and the unlikely bus on the other side of the window were two hundred feet of alien space, weird biological controls they didn’t know how to use—not to mention that the bus itself was, quite literally, a giant bug. Getting on board one of those things and getting a lift home would be like some fairy tale from a children’s book. “Uh, I don’t think that would be possible,” he said. “Besides we can’t even get back to where we started, let alone get down into one of those damned things.”
Bailey looked at Ned like he was a child who’d dropped his ice cream cone. “Poor baby . . . look, what other chance do we have? I’m gonna get out of here.”
“Not right now, you’re not.”
“No, of course, not now!”
“Oh . . . ”
“Look, we have to get back to the tube. We have to tell Mary and Phil and them, and then, we have to plan how to do it. It’ll be like a prison break or something. We’ll have to plan every little detail. Everybody’ll have a special job to do. We can use these watches like Phil said and like synchronize the whole operation. It’ll be cool! We can do it!”
Ned shook his head. “I don’t know . . . ”
“What other choice do we have?”
“I don’t know what difference it would make.”
“What?”
“What difference does it make? We’d just be jumping from the frying pan into the fire as I see it.”
Bailey looked at Ned like he was nuts. “Ned . . . you’re a Canadian. Do you have any idea how much firepower the U.S. of A. has at its disposal?”
“A lot, eh?”
“You bet. Our military can dust this whole invasion before you can say kweebeck.”
“Whatever.”
“That still leaves the little problem of convincing your almighty military that the invasion even exists.”
Bailey looked out at the shuttle port.
“You’ve got no imagination, Ned,” she finally said.
“And you’ve got enough for both of us, eh?”
“Maybe. But I’ll tell you one thing, I’m gonna get out of here if it kills me. I don’t want to die in this nasty place.”
Ned thought about it. He rubbed his arm. It was an evil place. No one wanted to die here. “That’s probably a good enough reason to try, eh?” he said, finally conceding.
“Oh, Ned, we can do it. I just know it.”
“Sure,” he said and winked at her.
Bailey got all excited. “Look, I’ve got a plan for us.”
“Uh-oh.”
“We stay right here and make notes about every little thing that happens down there. That’s the key to getting out of here. If we can figure out how that control panel works we stand a good chance.” She’d said it with such certainty that Ned almost believed it.
“I wish I had some binoculars,” Bailey added.
Ned reached over and started to open the backpack and Bailey, puzzled, twisted to accommodate him. With a grin like Santa Claus, he unzipped a side pocket and pulled out a pair of compact binoculars.
“No shit!” she said a little too loud then whispered it again. “They were in the pack when I found it. Never thought I’d have a use for them.”
Bailey put them to her eyes and adjusted focus.
“Have a ball,” he said. “I’m taking a nap.”
“Get me out the notepad, first,” she said, keeping the binoculars trained on the scene below. “Nobody’s smarter’n us.”
He pulled out the note pad, handed it over to her, then scooted back down the tube a short distance and stretched out. He looked at the black and ugly surface of the narrow little tube in the alien spaceship and tried yet again, to imagine all this was happening to someone else.
* * *
