The Arliss

by Ann Bakshis

  At the mention of the bomb, my mind goes back to the nightmare I had of my body turning to dust. It had to have just been a nightmare, but it seemed so real.

  “There’s a lot of things that need answering,” Wavern responds. “She’ll be examined when we get back to Rinku, but for now we need to get some rest.”

  I’m too wired to sleep, but I don’t know if it’s from the injection or because of the fact that I’m alive when I shouldn’t be. I wish I knew what the hell is going on. Wavern thinks he has questions? Huh, I’ve got plenty of my own. For instance, how the hell did I survive that blast without a scratch and why can I only remember my name? I’m surprisingly calm about all of this, when I should be freaking out, which makes me question my sanity at this moment.

  I rest the back of my head against the wall while someone moves around, probably changing positions. I’m knocked into and notice that Keegan is now sitting next to me, a little too close for comfort.

  “How are you holding up?” he whispers to me once he’s settled.

  “Fine,” I whisper back.

  “I didn’t think we were going to find you, but Wavern wouldn’t let us quit. He was determined that we locate you no matter how long it took.”

  “Even if all you found was a body, or pieces of one? Why even bother looking for me if you all thought I was dead?”

  “Not all of us thought that,” Keegan replies, sounding hurt.

  “How did you find me?”

  “We waited for the heatwave to subside before we left Rinku. The satellites broadcast the blast to our control center. From his lookout in the mountains, Wavern saw you enter the abandoned city seconds before the detonation. He radioed for us to gear up and meet him by the compound’s entrance. When we reached the city’s outer edge, Wavern caught sight of you heading down the road. We followed, but then lost track of you when the sun set.”

  “That city was abandoned? Are you sure?”

  “Lymont, like much of the Aslu Territory, has been desolate for decades. You were the only one there when the bomb went off,” Keegan says.

  “But I saw body parts strewn about. And whose blood is all over my boots?” I ask, getting agitated and raising my voice slightly.

  “I don’t know, Sara, but the area was completely devoid of people.”

  “Then why was I there?”

  “We were hoping you could tell us,” Jules says from across the room.

  “I didn’t say anything when I left Rinku?”

  “You weren’t in the control center when roll call was made,” Wavern says. “It wasn’t until the satellites picked you up that we even realized you were out of the compound, but by then it was too late. The bomb was only seconds away.”

  “Who dropped it?”

  “We don’t know,” Keegan replies nervously.

  “What?” I ask, shocked by the answer. “How do you not know?”

  “Not everything is so easy, Sara,” Jules answers. “We try to predict when they’ll strike, which is why we have our lookouts. We haven’t seen aircraft dropping the bombs, so we’re pretty sure they’re being launched. We’ve never been able to detect from where. The projectiles don’t even show on the satellites until they’re close to impact. It’s almost like they’re shielded from detection until the last possible moment.”

  “How long has this been going on?” I ask.

  “Far too long,” Wavern replies. “Now, get some sleep since we have a long day ahead of us.”

  I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes. I try to clear my mind of all thoughts, so I can at least relax but the nightmare keeps replaying. I’m finally about to drift off when a strange, high-pitched howl pierces the quiet. It sounds almost like fingernails on slate and it’s hurting my ears. I’m about to say something when Keegan puts his hand over my mouth. The howling receives a response from several sources close by.

  “A pack of Mulgrim,” Keegan whispers to me. “They must sense the body of the one you killed.”

  “Are we safe here?” I whisper back, not liking the idea of being cornered in a room with monsters just outside.

  “We should be. They won’t come near the corpse because they can smell its sickness, but they probably also smell us. This could make for a long night,” Wavern says.

  “What do we do?”

  “Nothing at the moment,” Jules answers. “If we keep quiet, they should move on. The door and window are covered, which will make it difficult for them to breach the room.”

  “But not impossible,” I say.

  “Correct,” Keegan replies.

  I find myself holding my breath periodically, as if trying to prevent the Mulgrim from hearing me. No one else seems too bothered by the pack being so close, but I can’t get myself into the same state. Instead, I clench my muscles every time they call out, which only adds to the stress running through my veins.

  Two

  A buzzing sound wakes me from my slumber. I turn over and notice Keegan turning off an alarm on his pack and then preparing the injector while Jules and Cody slide the dresser back from the door. We eat a quick breakfast of dried fruit and granola before we’re each injected with another dose of Cymatilis. There are just enough bottles of water for all of us to wash down the food that’s sticking to the back of our throats. The sun has barely risen when Wavern insists we start heading back to Rinku. He does a perimeter check to make sure the area is clear of Mulgrim. Keegan and Jules take the lead while I stay in the middle of the group. I make a request to stop in Lymont, which from my understanding, we need to pass in order to get to Rinku.

  “Why would you want to stop there?” Jules asks over his shoulder.

  “You all insist that I was alone when the bomb went off and I want to prove that I wasn’t,” I say defensively.

  “It’s a little further east than we need to go, but okay we’ll stop… briefly,” Keegan replies, causing Jules to give him a bewildered look.

  I’m not sure why Keegan is so agreeable to stopping when the others clearly don’t want to. I just hope when we get to Lymont those body fragments are still there, and that the Mulgrim haven’t eaten them.

  Everyone is quiet as we make our way to the city, and I can’t decide if I’m happy about that or if I should be unsettled. Maybe if I remembered more about myself I could decide. Not having any inkling as to who I am is disturbing to say the least. I’m putting all my trust into these four men and I don’t even know who they really are. They could be lying to me and I’d have no way of knowing. I have a lot of questions to ask and I’m almost tempted to start badgering these men with them, but I can’t seem to open my mouth to get the words out. I search my mind for the proper phrasing I want to use, but Cody speaks before I can.

  “So, you really don’t remember anything?” he asks.

  “No,” I respond as I adjust the cap on my head.

  Wavern took the sunglasses, which were lying on the floor beside the couch, from me before we left the house, so the only protection I have for my face is the hat. At least it’s something, since the others have nothing blocking the harsh rays. The sun feels hotter this morning than yesterday, and the parched ground has more cracks in it. Or am I just hallucinating from the heat? No one else seems to be as affected by the temperature as I am. Either that or they’re hiding it really well.

  “Do you remember the bomb going off?” Jules asks.

  “No. I only remember waking up buried under a pile of rubble and having to push my way out of it.” I wait a few minutes before asking the first question that finally pops into my head. “What type of bomb was it?”

  Keegan and Jules throw glances at each other, probably wanting the other one to answer.

  “Atomic,” Wavern finally responds.

  “It wasn’t a very powerful bomb,” Keegan says. “It was one of the smallest we’ve seen so far.”

  “But it was enough,” Wavern adds.

  Then why am I still alive?

  Maybe that wasn’t a nightmare at all
, but a memory surfacing. I wonder if I’ll ever remember why I went to the city, but would I even want to know?

  “We were lucky another one wasn’t dropped in that neighborhood while we slept,” Wavern says, adding to the stress I’m already feeling.

  “Or when we left the compound,” Jules adds.

  “So, why was one launched when Sara left and not when we did?” Keegan asks.

  “That’s something we’ll need to investigate when we get back to Rinku,” Wavern says.

  “When was the last time a bomb was dropped?” I ask.

  “Eight years ago,” Cody answers, his voice cracking in the process. “Hundreds died.”

  I decide not to ask any more questions for the time being, as I’m afraid I’ll put myself into a panic attack if we keep talking about it.

  It seems like the walk going to Lymont is taking longer than when I left it. We passed the gas station almost two hours ago, so we’ve got to be close. Another hour passes before the wreckage comes into view. More of the structures have collapsed, but other than that it all looks the same as it did yesterday. Keegan has me take the lead, so I can direct them to where I came across the remains. It takes me only a few minutes to locate the section I was trapped under. The larger body parts have been dragged off, but there are some still scattered about.

  “Well,” Jules begins, “I wonder who that was.”

  “Let’s take some back to Rinku. Nex can run a DNA scan and search our database,” Wavern says.

  Cody is selected for the task, while the rest of us look under charred sheet metal, rusted cable rods, and melted glass. I don’t know what everyone is expecting to find—maybe pieces of another body. Thankfully we only spend a few minutes doing the search, as I’m not comfortable being in the city. Cody selects a partially dismembered finger and a tooth, which he wraps in plastic and tucks into his backpack, then we leave Lymont and head towards the mountains. There isn’t a direct road that goes into Rinku, so we have to go around mounds of dead cacti, debris that look to have once been part of a building, dried riverbeds, and discolored bone slivers. I can’t tell if they’re human, and I’m not interested in finding out.

  We go around a bend in the mountain and a cave-like opening comes into view. The entryway is narrow at first, but widens and begins to slant slightly downward as we go deeper. Keegan tells me the actual entrance into Rinku is a mile in from the opening. When we reach what I’m assuming is halfway down the tunnel, we pass a large, thick steel door on our right. It appears to be another entrance; however, I don’t see any door handles or even a way to open the heavy barrier. When we finally reach the end of the tunnel, a similar door blocks our path. Next to it is a panel, which Keegan places his palm over. A blue light scans his print and the door hisses open, revealing a small room with two additional points of entry. Wavern removes the sunglasses from his face and the hat from my head, then tosses them aside before we enter. As soon as we’re all inside, the door closes and masks drop from the ceiling. Keegan instructs me to put it on quickly. I barely have it secured when a cloudy gas floods the room, obscuring everyone from my sight. I try not to panic when I feel a substance touch my skin and adhere to it. The gas stops as red lights flicker on overhead and out from the smooth metallic walls. The substance from the gas dissipates within a minute or so and the room clears.

  “Decontamination complete,” a mechanical voice says, echoing around us.

  The others remove their masks, so I do the same. They retract into the ceiling disappearing behind small, round covers that slide into place. Jules takes our weapons then heads over to the door on our right, while Wavern proceeds to the door on our left.

  “You all head to the showers while I take Sara to the medical ward,” Wavern says.

  Jules pushes on a lever that covers the front of the door and shoves it open. Cody hands the remains to Wavern before quickly following. Keegan, however, hesitates. Wavern has to order him to return to the barracks as commanded. As the door closes behind a sullen Keegan, Wavern opens the other door. That’s when I notice the metal for these doors is much thinner than the main entrance, which seems odd to me.

  “What’s with the varying thickness of the doors?” I ask.

  “The outer doors shield us from the harsh radiation that’s outside, and since we don’t need that kind of protection inside the base the internal doors don’t need to be as heavily reinforced,” Wavern replies.

  As the door closes, soft lighting illuminates the edge of the floor and ceiling. From this I’m able to determine that the tunnel is carved out of solid stone. The air is surprisingly cool, which feels nice coming from an overheated environment. The journey to the medical ward is taking a lot longer than it did from the opening of the cave to the main entrance. Wavern explains to me that the medical ward is on the far side of the compound, which sits in the widest section of the Kai Mountain range.

  “Normally a medical team would be waiting for us by the decontamination room, but since we didn’t tell them we needed assistance we’re stuck walking the whole damn thing,” Wavern says, gesturing down the hall.

  About every hundred feet or so along the sides of the tunnel are tall, thin plasma screens, vertically adhered to the wall. I stop to look at one, but Wavern insists that we continue.

  “You don’t have to concern yourself with those at the moment,” he says as he quickens his pace.

  “What is it?” I ask, trying to catch up.

  “It’s the Daily Slate. All passageways have them, as well as the mess hall, the rec room, the medical ward, the control center, and the barracks. It displays the daily schedule for each squad, the weather outside, and what’s happening in the home city of Demos.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “In the Nove Mountains, approximately one hundred and seventy-five miles west of here.”

  “Are there any other cities close by?”

  “Not anymore.”

  I can tell from Wavern’s clipped answers that I should stop with the questions. I’m sure I’ll learn about everything in time, but I get the uncomfortable feeling that time isn’t on my side.

  The tunnel gives way to an open expanse which is divided by a thick glass wall. Wavern has to clear his throat to get somebody’s attention. Two women, whom I presume are nurses, turn around and their mouths drop open at the sight of us. One of them hits a panic button by the entrance which causes a heavy metal door to slide out from the walls behind us, cutting us off from the tunnel. The nurses rush toward me after throwing on white, plastic suits and masks, and then push me towards the first room on our left. Wavern starts to enter but he’s ordered to wait outside. As the door closes I’m taken towards the back, stripped, and shoved into a shower stall. The water that pours down from the spout in the ceiling is hot to the point of scalding.

  “I’ve already been through decontamination,” I protest as the women lather up two sponges and begin to scrub me from head to toe.

  “You’ve been out there way too long, Sara. We need to make sure you’re free from all contaminants,” one says.

  “Besides, your return wasn’t expected,” the other one adds.

  “So I heard,” I mumble.

  The water is shut off. I’m handed a towel, and a pair of white cotton pants with a matching top. I dress while the nurses prep the lone bed for me to lie down on. Once I’m settled, Wavern is allowed to enter, but he’s not alone. A tall woman with long dark hair tucked into a braid joins the nurses by my side. The woman holds a tablet in her hands and judging by her flipping her finger across the screen, she seems to be going over some sort of information.

  “Hi, Sara, I’m Nex, the physician for Rinku,” the woman says, shaking my hand. “Wavern tells me that you don’t have any memory of who you are, so I’d like to run some tests just to make sure there isn’t any permanent brain damage from when you were in Lymont.”

  Nex hands the tablet to one of the nurses and instructs her to take the remains that Cody collected down to the l
ab to examine them. The other nurse pulls various vials and a syringe from the cabinet against the far wall. While the nurse prepares my right arm to draw blood, Nex examines my other limbs. She pulls up each pant leg and carefully looks at every inch of my skin, but I have no idea what she’s looking for. I feel the pinch of the needle going in as Nex takes a look at my left arm. She picks up my hand and flips it over so it’s palm side up, then halts when she notices something on my inner wrist.

  “Where did this come from?” she asks.

  I pull my hand from hers to examine what she found. Tattooed into my skin is a small, black, six-legged spider, something I didn’t notice before because it was under the leather wristband I’d been wearing. From the way Nex reacted, I take it that I didn’t have this marking before. She goes over to the wall on my right and pushes a button, which turns on a screen embedded into the wall. She taps the corner to pull up records and then scrolls through the files, finally stopping when she comes across the one with my name: Gentry, Sara. The screen fills with photos of me, along with my medical history, military background, and family relations. She taps on several of the photos, but the spider isn’t on any of them.

  “When were those last taken?” I ask, curious as to when this could’ve been etched into my flesh.

  “This picture here,” Nex says, pointing to one in the far upper corner, “was taken the night before you fled the compound.”

  “So I must have gotten it between that night and yesterday.”

  “That’s not possible,” Wavern says, stepping around Nex to get closer to me. “That mark hasn’t been seen in over sixty years, and it’s banned. The faction it belonged to has long since vanished, so there isn’t any logical way that you could’ve been tattooed with it. Besides, you can only obtain tattoos in Demos, and you haven’t been there in months. You would’ve needed to sign out one of the terrain vehicles and drive the two and a half hours to reach the city. Our squad was part of the watch team the other night, so when you left your post you would’ve gone straight to Lymont.”