Transport 3_The Zone

by Phillip P. Peterson

  She shook her head and pulled his hands out of her nightshirt. “No, it’s too late. You should have knocked off work earlier.”

  He scrutinized her for a few seconds, but realized that he wouldn’t be able to change her mind today. So he pulled an exaggeratedly disappointed face, and Marlene stuck out her tongue at him. Albert laughed again and lay down on his back. “OK, well, tomorrow is another day.”

  “What kept you so long?”

  “Problems with one of the jeeps.”

  “One of ours?” Marlene asked.

  Albert shook his head. “One of theirs.”

  Actually they’re all ours! “Great, first they take away all but two of our vehicles, and then they bring them to you to fix.”

  “And we can only use the two they left us to work in the fields.”

  She cuddled up to him. It was good to feel his warmth.

  “By the way, how’s it going with Major Palmer?” Albert asked.

  Marlene groaned. She didn’t even want to talk about it. “He’s a dickhead. Every time we meet I feel like he’s putting me in my place——somewhere far down the pecking order. It was much easier with Morrow, but he hasn’t shown his face for over two weeks.”

  “Have you asked about the spare parts?”

  “No, I haven’t had a chance. Can we change the subject?”

  “As you wish, Madame President.”

  Marlene boxed Albert lightly on the ear, which didn’t stop him from grinning. “You know how much I hate it when you call me that. So cut it out, Mr. Handyman!”

  “Alright. I apologize from the bottom of my heart.” He cuddled up closer and slipped a hand under her nightshirt. “I’ll make up for it.”

  He was starting to overdo it. Marlene propped herself up on an elbow and glared at him. “I told you I’m too tired.”

  He pulled back his hand and shrugged. “OK. But don’t tell me tomorrow that I didn’t offer.” He drew away from her a little and propped himself up on his elbow too. Suddenly he looked serious. “Have you thought about it some more?”

  “About what?”

  He seemed disappointed, but Marlene couldn’t think what he was referring to. She was simply too tired and her brain was only half working.

  “What we talked about the day before yesterday.”

  The day before yesterday? What was the day before yesterday?

  Albert opened his mouth to speak, and then she remembered. She nodded. “I’m sorry, I’ve been so overwhelmed with other stuff. Let’s leave things the way they are for the time being, OK?”

  “Things have been the way they are for years. I think it’s time we stop with all this secrecy. And basically everyone knows anyway.”

  Albert was right, in principle. She couldn’t remember how long they’d been having this strange, on-off relationship. When they had time, Albert came over or she went to his place and they spent the night together. There simply wasn’t the space for more. Organizing the colony on New California took up most of her time and energy and Marlene didn’t want to start managing a relationship on top of that. He had given her what she needed, and she was satisfied. In any case, she had been alone all her life, and she wasn’t sure if she could handle having Albert around her all the time. But above all, she didn’t want to have to think about it now, in the middle of the night.

  “Please—let’s talk about it another time.”

  Albert looked disappointed and this time she could tell that he wasn’t acting.

  “I don’t want to hurt you. You know how much I care about you, don’t you?”

  His face relaxed slowly. “Of course I know. I’ll stop being a pain in the ass.”

  “You’re not a pain in the ass, silly,” Marlene whispered.

  He ran his tongue over her lips. “That’s good to know.” And again she felt his hand creeping under her nightshirt.

  “But you can’t leave it today, can you?” she said, trying not to sound irritated.

  “No.”

  His finger touched the spot where he knew she was particularly sensitive.

  What the hell? I’m awake now anyway.

  She rolled over until she was lying on top of him, and began slowly gyrating her hips. She looked into his eyes and kissed the grin off his face.

  “That’s it. The splinter’s out.” Dr. Lindwall laid the tweezers to one side.

  Marlene stroked the back of her hand and flinched. “It still hurts a lot.”

  That morning, she and Albert had been moving furniture around and she had grazed her hand on the wall, which is when she must have gotten the splinter without noticing it. Neither she nor Albert had tweezers at home, so she’d had no choice but to go and see Doc Lindwall.

  “I’ll put a bit of analgesic on it,” he said. He rummaged in a drawer and took out a small tube.

  Marlene gave a start when the door to the infirmary was kicked open and banged into the shelf. A few transparent plastic containers tumbled to the floor. She turned around and saw Rhonda Fielder standing in the doorway. The stout blonde with the pointy nose was breathing heavily. Her face was red.

  “They’ve taken everything. The depot is empty.”

  Marlene stood up and took a step toward Rhonda. “What do you mean?”

  “The soldiers. They must have cleared out the whole depot. All of the food is gone. I baked some bread with William and wanted to take it to the depot. They ripped the basket out of my hand and said we weren’t allowed access. But I could see through the open door that the shelves were empty. Even the preserved vegetables we took there yesterday were gone.”

  “Those damn ...” Dr. Lindwall whispered.

  Marlene exhaled with a whistle. She grabbed Rhonda by the arm and pulled her outside. “Come on! We’re going to talk to Major Palmer.”

  The last two weeks had been difficult. After Marlene’s first conversation with Morrow, she had hoped they would find a way of getting along, but it soon became clear that the soldiers weren’t interested in cooperating. Again and again there had been clashes, and the soldiers seemed to enjoy bullying the people of Eridu. They kept entering the colonists’ huts unannounced to search for weapons. Allison Hadcroft had almost had her arm broken when a soldier dragged her out of her hut.

  A few days earlier, Stephen Grass had returned from his work in the fields after sundown because the tractor was broken, and had been interrogated by Major Palmer for hours. They only let him go once Marlene arrived. She was starting to feel like she was living in a POW camp.

  Marlene and Rhonda reached the small barrack on the edge of the settlement, which Major Palmer used as his office when he was in Eridu. The soldiers had their barracks in the woods, right next to the transporter, which was guarded at all times. They had even put up a barbed-wire fence around it.

  Marlene knocked on the wooden door, but didn’t wait for an answer. Major Palmer was standing with a soldier in front of a big table in the middle of the room. It looked as if they had just been discussing the map that was rolled out in front of them. Palmer looked at Marlene with his cool, blue eyes.

  “Major, we need to talk.”

  Palmer was tall and brawny, with short stubbly hair. He towered over Marlene by a whole head. He nodded at the soldier, who left the building.

  “Ms. Wolfe: How can I help you?” Marlene winced at his condescending tone.

  “Not only have you banned us entry from our own supply store, you’ve also taken away all our food.”

  The major shrugged impassively. “We need the supplies on Venus. A supply capsule from Earth burned up while entering the planet’s atmosphere.”

  “The agreement was that we would share our food,” Marlene retorted.

  Palmer gave a whinnying laugh. “Agreement? There is no agreement! We are in charge here and you obey our orders.”

  “And what do you expect us to eat?” Rhonda hissed.

  “Work faster in the fields. You’ll get your fair share of the next load of crops.”

  “Listen, it doe
sn’t work like that!” Marlene tried to stay calm.

  “It’s up to you what works, Ms. Wolfe. And don’t even think of trying to smuggle supplies past us and bunkering them for yourselves. If I find out about it, you will be severely punished.”

  “Major, if you don’t leave any food for our people, they will soon refuse to work at all.”

  Palmer grinned. He seemed to have been waiting her to say this. “Refusal to work is refusal to obey an order. Then I won’t have any choice but to pick out one or two of the deserters and make an example of them. You should concentrate on keeping your men and women under control, before I decide I no longer require your services, Ms. Wolfe.”

  “You are running the risk of a mutiny, Major! Surely that can’t be in your interest,”

  “Just leave it to me.”

  “I want to talk to General Morrow!”

  “I am in charge here. If there is anything you wish to discuss, you can come to me!”

  This is pointless. I’m not getting anywhere! Marlene shook her head and left the building with Rhonda in tow.

  “What a dickhead!” Rhonda said, once they were out of earshot.

  “You can say that again. I——” Her words dried up in her mouth as she heard a scream and a crash behind the nearby workshop. Marlene raced over with Rhonda. As they turned the corner of the building, she saw seventeen-year-old Cookie Shanker lying face down in the dirt, with a soldier behind him rubbing his fist. Cookie got up with a groan, his hand covering his nose. His knee was streaming blood.

  Marlene ran over to him and put an arm gently around his shoulder. She could tell immediately that the soldier had broken his nose.

  “What happened?”

  “He just hit me!” Cookie mumbled and pointed at the soldier with his left arm.

  “I just told that snotty-nosed brat he shouldn’t go snooping around the workshop,” the soldier said.

  “I was just looking for my dad!”

  “Private ...” Marlene glanced up at the name badge. “Private McIntosh. The father of this boy works here in the workshop. It is almost like his second home.”

  The tall, strapping soldier crossed his arms in front of his chest and gave Marlene a disparaging look. “I have orders from Major Palmer that unauthorized persons are not allowed near the workshop or the off-road vehicles.”

  “But you didn’t need to break the boy’s nose!” Marlene protested.

  “I do not have to justify myself to you, Ms. Wolfe. I have my orders. If you want to make a complaint, please go to Major Palmer.”

  That would be a waste of time! She grabbed Cookie by the shoulder and took him to the infirmary.

  It’s time to put a stop to this!

  Chapter 5

  “I’m not putting up with this bullshit anymore!” Lee Shanker was livid. “They can’t just go and beat up my son! They’ve scarred him for life. We have to do something.”

  “That’s why we’re here——to talk about it,” Marlene said. “Try and stay calm.”

  “I don’t want be calm!” Lee said. His voice was trembling.

  Marlene had summoned him to see her to prevent him from doing something stupid. Ernie Lawrence, Travis Richard, Dr. Dressel, and Chris Holbrook had also come. They had gathered secretly in her hut, as the administrative building was constantly under armed guard. The story of Cookie’s beating had spread around the settlement like wildfire, as had the news of the plundering of the supply depot. The harvest was going surprisingly well, and nobody was short of food, but that didn’t help to calm people’s nerves. What would Morrow’s henchmen come up with next?

  “We have to defend ourselves!” Travis agreed.

  “Yes, but they have weapons and we have none. They took them all away,” Chris Holbrook pointed out.

  “You’re right, an open conflict doesn’t make any sense. We have nothing to fight with,” Marlene said.

  “What are we even trying to achieve?” Dressel asked. The scientist had deep rings under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept for weeks. Marlene knew that he spent all day sitting in his lab staring at the wall. He hadn’t come to terms with the death of his son Ryan.

  Marlene glanced over at Holbrook. The former astronaut had also lost a son in the battle in the canyon. His sorrow didn’t show in his face, but Marlene knew he was suffering every bit as much as Dressel.

  “They should fuck off and leave us in peace!” Lee said.

  “It’s out of our control at the moment,” Marlene replied.

  “And there are advantages to having a connection to Earth again,” the physicist added.

  “What use has it been to us so far?” Richards asked bitterly. “They haven’t even given us any medical supplies, despite Doc Lindwall’s frequent requests. They’re only here to plunder our supplies. And what right do they have to do that?”

  Marlene picked up the cup of steaming tea on the table in front of her. “They regard the colony as their property and to an extent I can understand them. We were soldiers ourselves when we came to Eridu. And we built it with Army equipment and materials. It was our task to establish a base, even if we moved it from Russell’s Planet to New California long ago. Now they’ve simply taken back control of their base. And they need it to support their base on Venus.”

  “That doesn’t give them the right to treat us like dirt!” Lee was shouting now. Marlene raised a hand for him to lower his voice. “And definitely not to beat up our kids,” he added, in a slightly quieter voice.

  Marlene nodded. “I expected Morrow to work with us more cooperatively.”

  “The general isn’t even here. He hasn’t shown his face for two weeks. Instead he’s left that fuckwit in charge,” Lee grimaced.

  “I don’t know Major Palmer and I can’t really make him out. It’s possible that he’s just following orders.”

  “Bullshit! That scumbag gets his kicks out of bullying us. And let’s not forget, the people they sent to Venus don’t have a return ticket to Earth unless they unlock the secret of how the transporter works. And what kind of people are sent on a mission with no guarantee of returning? People who are being punished. Who knows what Palmer and his sidekicks did to deserve that kind of mission.”

  Marlene leaned back in her chair. She’d already pondered over this. In Morrow’s case it was clear: he wanted to atone for the loss of the transporter, for which he was responsible due to his negligence. But she had no idea about the other soldiers, including Palmer. And there must also be scientists on Venus who were working on the transporter. They didn’t know nearly enough to seriously consider fighting the occupying force. But the mood in the colony had sunk to such a low that before long, rioting was bound to break out. They needed a plan to avoid this. But what could they do?

  “One thing’s for sure: we need to tell Morrow and Palmer that we can’t work with them like this,” she said. “Surely they can see that it would be better to cooperate with us than to put pressure on us.”

  “Can’t we just go on strike?” Richards asked.

  Marlene shrugged. “They would force us to continue with the harvest——at gunpoint. And anyhow, it would mean that we would have nothing left to eat ourselves.”

  “We could try to get the harvested food past Palmer and set up a secret depot,” Lee suggested.

  Marlene shook her head. “They’d notice and punish us. Palmer already threatened to make an example of anyone who didn’t follow orders. And I have no doubt but that he would act on his word.”

  “Then we don’t have a leg to stand on,” Lee sounded resigned.

  “What about using guerilla tactics?” Richards suggested. “Sabotage and other covert methods. They can’t punish anyone if they don’t know who it was.”

  Marlene swayed her head from side to side, uncertain. “I don’t know how they would react. And what could we sabotage, anyway?”

  “The jeeps, for example.”

  “But they’re ours,” Dressel said.

  “Not anymore,” Lee replied.
“They’ve confiscated them and are using them themselves to travel back and forth between Eridu and their base.”

  “But they’re also letting us use them for the harvest.”

  Lee snorted. “Only so they can then take the food away from us. I think we should inflict some real harm——so that it hurts.”

  Marlene shook her head again. “We need to be able to defend ourselves. And for that, we need weapons.”

  “Then we need to get our weapons back,” Lee said.

  “We don’t even know where they’ve taken them. Maybe they took them in the transporter to Venus.”

  “Goddammit!” Lee cursed. “Is there nothing we can do?”

  Dr. Dressel cleared his throat. “We do still have weapons. We just need to get them.”

  Marlene swung round to look at him. “What do you mean?”

  “The depot in the lowlands. Morrow and Palmer don’t know about that.”

  Marlene waved her hand dismissively. “The barrack would have been washed away by the flood. They’ll be nothing left there.”

  Dr. Dressel shook his head. “No. The hut is fairly high up on the slopes of Mount Fairweather. I’m sure the flood wouldn’t have reached it and that it’s still intact.”

  Marlene ran a hand through her hair. If he was right, and she sent an expedition to the hut, they would have enough weapons and ammunition to defend themselves against the invaders if necessary. But she didn’t want to start a war in the colony if there was any way of avoiding it.

  “Let’s get the weapons,” Richards said.

  “I’m all for it,” came the soft voice of Ernie, who hadn’t spoken up to now. The athletic ex-soldier was mourning the death of his wife, who had died when a flamethrower had exploded. Since her death, he had been a shadow of his former self. All his exuberant energy seemed to have been extinguished.

  “And then what?” Marlene asked. “Do we really want an armed confrontation? We don’t even know how many soldiers Morrow has on Venus. We might suffer far worse losses than in the battle against the monsters. I don’t want to risk it unless it’s absolutely necessary.”