Theo threw the second container toward the half destroyed slake.
And then there was a second KA-BOOM!
A huge, explosive fireball of red and orange blew the slake up into several pieces. But the front end of the slake kept slithering along the desert soil toward Theo. The things front was completely open and Theo could see into the belly of the beast.
Again, he lit the wick on the third improvised explosive device and threw it into the burning slake’s open mouth area.
There was a third KA-BOOM!
When the dust and debris settled, the slake was split apart in dozen different chunks of skin and guts of various shapes and sizes.
As seconds passed into minutes, none of the slakes returned to the area and the split apart slake did not move at all.
With a look to the others, Theo said, “We’re safe now.”
“Are we?” Ellie asked.
Theo didn’t answer. Safety was a hard condition to measure, especially when nearly half of the slake was still moving and slithering around off in the distance. Sweat beaded from his temple. He wanted to rest his weary body. He wanted to stop running. He wanted to calm his racing breath.
“They’re gone,” Theo said into his Communication device.
“Are you sure?” Ravi asked.
“Yes. What about you? Are you okay?”
“Just another day in Mister Rogers Neighborhood,” Ravi answered into his Communication device.
Slowly the Pod door opened and Harry Wolf rushed out to greet Theo and Ellie like heroes. They were nothing of the sort. Simply, they could just say that they had survived. All the Positives had.
Through the ring of fire excitement, the silverflies remained captured in the parachute.
“We’re safe,” Theo said.
“Are we?”
“For now,” Theo said.
“Are they really dead?” Ravi asked.
“I’ll check,” Theo said as he lit each torch in the ring of fire. “Cover me.”
With the fire burning from the Kevlar material, Theo approached the remains of the two slakes carefully. Theo poked and prodded at the burning creature. There was no movement and he relaxed.
“All clear,” Theo announced as he turned his back on the burning creature.
There was a quiver of movement from the slake. It wasn’t dead yet.
The slake lunged for Theo’s back. The slakes ugly mouth was wide open and ready to swallow him whole.
“Look out!” Ellie yelled.
Before Theo could react with the torch, Ellie aimed the taser gun and shot an electrical charge into the slake. The current ran through the slake and stunned its movement.
Theo spun around with the fire end of the torch and torched the creature several times. He pounded into the slake like the hunter he had become.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, but I’m never turning my back on that thing ever again…and hey,” Theo looked to Ellie, still breathing heavily.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
Ellie smiled warmly.
Finally able to rest, the Positives leaned against the Pod.
“This time it’s dead, right?” Ravi asked.
“It’s not moving,” Ellie observed.
“But is it dead?” Ravi asked again.
Exhausted, Theo dropped to his knee in the sun dried soil. The group was thinking and figuring and admiring the emptiness and danger of this place. There were small black clouds rising into the sky as the group of Positives felt the warmth of the sun hitting their sun burnt skin.
COMMUNICATION ENTRY:
From:[email protected]
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
I’ve lost track of the days. Is it day 84 yet? Day 86? Who knows? Maybe even day 100? Not sure. Maybe it’s time to hit reset and start everything over. But this isn’t a game. Nothing is going to bring Sam back to life. Nothing!
A hundred years from now will anyone really care? Five hundred years? A thousand? Will anyone even be here? I guess what matters is we lived. We lived here. Now. We survived. We helped others survive. We did no harm. Or as little as we had to do in order to survive. We live two by two. Four by four. We’re never alone. Life is filled with our memories. Is that all life is?
If nothing in life is worth dying for, then what is the point of surviving?
I just hope those slakes don’t return anytime soon. Whether they come back or not, we’re ready for them. It’s too quiet out there, but it’s always quietest before the storm, right?
Theo
ENTRY COMPLETE.
CHAPTER 27
THE GATHERING STORM
Late into the night, two golden moons settled high above the black clouds. The smoke hung like a rotten ocean rising from the charred, flaming landscape. The remains of the two slakes burned and smoldered all night long as the wind blew and red-hot embers burned liked a campfire. The entire mountain was bathed in a soft pink and orange glow.
The group decided they should keep watch for attacking slakes or hopping camelbacks and so every two hours they switched guards.
Near dusk, it was Ravi who was awake and on duty. He sat looking out the viewing window at the burning heap, seated at the common area table in the lower level of the Pod. An unlit torch was by his side as was the box of matches and the only gun left with any electrical charges to fire.
Ellie slept in the upper berth. She had a sickening sense that the battle of the previous hours was just the beginning of the war for this place.
Gray shadows filled the Pod. The moon roof glass had been cracked badly by the attack but had protected them from the slake menace.
With the sound of glass breaking, Ellie woke from the upper bunk. She rose to her feet but something was already up on her head, sliding around her neck like a dark winter scarf.
She tried to scream. “Help!”
Before she could scream again, she felt something coarse and warm wrapping around her eyes and then sliding around her nose and over her mouth and down around her neck. Her hands reached for it, but it was too late. She could no longer be heard.
Coming up the rungs, Ravi saw a three foot long charred remains of the slake squeezing Ellie’s neck.
Again, she went to scream but her voice was just a whisper. She knew she was still alive.
“Bloody hell!” Ravi yelled.
He ran to Ellie and pulled at the loose end of the short slake and unwrapped it from around his neck and threw it down to the floor.
Up the ladder, Theo climbed up to join the fray.
The slake scampered along the floor, down the side of the wall by the ladder. It was sliding along the common area floor, right by Ravi’s foot. He jumped out of its path.
“Bloody thing! You’re going to die!”
Ravi grabbed one of the common area chairs and started to pound and pound the leg of it into the slake.
“Thank you. Seriously, little man,” Theo smiled.” That thing almost killed me.”
“No problem,” Ravi said catching his breath.
In the common area, Theo picked up a small jug that was filled with the liquid ammonia-methane mix. He ran to the console and opened the Pod door.
“Get it outside!” Theo yelled to his brother.
Theo kept hitting the small slake with the ends of the chair and he tried to guide it to the opening front door of the Pod.
With the container of liquid, Theo ran toward them both. On the way he doused the slake with the liquid. When they were out on the soil, Theo yanked the lit torch out of the ground and placed it down on top of the liquid. A trail of fire traveled along the ground, following the slake and then finally the three foot long thing caught fire.
“They’re all going to come back here,” Ravi said, “aren’t they?”
“Highly likely,” Theo answered.
“But when?” Ellie asked.
“Hopefully never, but probably soon,” Theo added.
A cluster of bl
ack clouds rolled over the Pod and hung in the air. The seasons on this golden purgatory never seemed to change.
CHAPTER 28
REUNION DAY
The Positives spent the morning after the attack out by the liquid oasis making as many improvised explosives devices as they could with any available container left in the Pod storage area. The liquid oasis provided plenty of the chemical liquid mixture of ammonia and methane. They were getting ready for the next attack, whenever and however it may come.
By the afternoon, they were a mess from the wind and dust. Their skin was sun burnt and covered with a thin layer of golden brown dirt. They looked like tribal natives to this dirt planet of life. They were alive, hungry, tired survivors.
They were also hoping, waiting, praying…
With a look to the heavens, Ravi said hopefully, “Any second now.”
“…three…two…”
And then BA-BOOM-POP exploded. It was a deep space shuttle, the one known as Genesis. It screamed through the sky, angling down toward the flattest stretch of land in the area.
For a few seconds, it was just a silver and white streak.
Genesis landed on the flatlands about a half-mile from the oasis. Two-hundred and two new colonial settlers had arrived.
The shuttle was two football fields long and it was shaped like a sleek teardrop. It was nearly as tall as the Washington Monument.
The Positives ran to the Genesis shuttle, holding their torches and each carrying an improvised explosive device.
From a small door, people in full hazmat suits began to descend from a small set of stairs down. Many of the suits were yellow or canvas white. A few were even silver or orange, making the new wave of arrivals a rainbow of color.
“They all look the same,” Ravi said and then he saw a lean, tall visitor in orange and an equally tall husky guy rushing toward him.
As the visitor got closer, they all saw that it was Doctor and Indira Starling who were waved as they neared the group.
Even through the hazmat visors, Theo and Ravi saw the tears flowing from their parents’ eyes.
“Welcome to paradise,” Ravi said. “We now call it New Acadia. And we have some bloody stories to tell you.”
“I bet you guys do,” Doctor Starling said.
Indira Starling took Ravi’s hands in her plastic orange one’s.
“You’re so dirty. Oh my baby,” Indira said.
“Mother. Please,” Ravi said.
Back at the rear of Genesis, the cargo door opened slowly. Earth moving machines, supply Pods and 3 wheel ATV vehicles rolled onto the New Acadia soil.
For the Positives, the rest of the actions of that reunion day were a pale blur against the golden brown horizon. They went through a series of medical exams, ate a feast of real food filled with fruits and vegetables and even a real piece of steak. They listened to speeches, attended debriefings and watched as the circus of supplies and earthmovers rolled off of Genesis.
The classmates were children when they entered space. They were something else now, more than youth, not quite young men and women, in between two lives and apart from their past, yet searching for a future.
That night the Positives slept in the Pod. The medical examiner from Genesis, Doctor Willokowski, had not given them the all clear yet and so the new colonists kept their hazmat suits on and the Positives remained in quarantine. Perhaps that was how they would always live.
Actually, the Positives preferred staying in the Pod. It had been their refuge, their damaged and flawed home.
Even when the Yin-Yang infection was gone from their body, they would always be the outsiders, changed forever by something they could not see with their own eyes.
They still had many unanswered questions about this place. In time, perhaps, all of them would be answered. Perhaps in time, all foes would be conquered or tamed and the Positives would be able to rest.
Just not yet.
COMMUNICATION ENTRY:
FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
I’ve been asked by people throughout the colonies to send regular messages about the developments of life down here on New Acadia. What can I say that hasn’t already been said in various other posts and entries?
Out here, there are always new stars to name, new asteroid belts to dance through and new planets to find. For now the plan is to colonize this place and put down some roots. We’ll build a new world and hopefully not make the same mistakes we’ve made in the past. Some are here by choice, while others are here because of an infection. The vaccine has been successful to date. Perhaps it’s our salvation, because there have been no new Positives discovered among the new colonists.
As for us three Positives, I guess we’ll always be a little different than the others. We take a steady diet of silverfly goo. Just in case.
While the Yin-Yang Twins have not been completely removed from our body, they are at a low enough parts per million level that we can be qualified as medically stable with viable prospects for long-term survival. We’ve already started to plant half grown fruit trees and plots of vegetables. Terraforming is progressing slowly, but effectively. In a sense, this colony began when people on Earth looked up and asked what was in the stars.
A lot of people have written me to ask what I’ve learned on New Acadia. I guess I’d say that I learned that life is not a game to be won or lost. Life is a game to be survived. And to survive, it’s us or them. Sometimes us is a crazy large slake and other times it’s something you can’t even see.
And sometimes it’s a ghost message from your friend. Sam’s text messages keep getting sent to me, Ravi and Ellie. Once a day, we get a random message that he sent to us at some point this summer. No one can figure out how to stop them.
Some of the new arrivals say this is our planet now, that we own it like some piece of property. I tell them, don’t be a fool. We’re just visitors. Always will be.
Word among the other colonists is that others are on their way to New Acadia to crash this colonial party. The others come from a self-named Ark known as Defiant led by Oliver O’Ryan. They go by many names – free-thinkers, freedom lovers, pirates, terrorists. Most colonists think the Defiant crew is going to be trouble, but not me, I know we’ll be ready for them.
We are now exiles from our past, no longer wanderers. Once this place was just a couple of letters and a number, but now New Acadia is its name. There’s still much to learn, and a lot of land to explore.
We’ve already found another new species here on New Acadia. It can only be classified as a living crystal plant. Ravi, has appropriately named it the Vine. The thing has been found on the flats of the Not So Grand Canyon. It grows and lives down there. Vine, unfortunately, has claimed two lives. Ms. Esparanza has written much about this event in her Communication-entries, so I won’t repeat the gory details here. As for the two largest of skulls found by the craters, we have not found a living source for them. Maybe we never will.
My fellow Positive Ellie Lloyd says I’ve changed, but when I ask her how she just says it can’t be put into words.
In the quiet of my sleep, at least when I’m able to sleep the night through, I almost believe I am one of the lucky ones.
And no matter what this place throws at us next, I know we will survive here on New Acadia. Down here, we will love and live and grow and build a new life. God-willing it’s going to be one to write home about.
Respectfully,
Theo Starling
ENTRY COMPLETE.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my lovely, patient and super-smart wife Nicole for her unwavering support. She was the first to read this novel and always encouraged me to reach for the stars.
Also, a huge thank you goes to my parents for bringing me into this world. They have always done what parents should do well – listen, teach, nurture, guide, support and love.
My thanks also go to Dave Tabaczyn
ski, one of my best high school friends, who also happens to be an expert in microbiology. He offered some very informative scientific details about the nature of biology and gut bugs. Thanks to Jinn Nelson who provided thoughtful and helpful feedback on an early draft. Since readers really do judge books by their cover, I owe a shout out to Mike Gonzales for his superb design. Check him out www.mikegonzdesign.com.
Advice to my sons: work hard, be kind, do everything in moderation and never give up on your dreams.
Lastly, look for my next novel coming soon. It is an earthbound adventure novel of fantasy called THE ROAD TO THUNE.
Odyssey Rising Page 17
