Orbs IV_Exodus_Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction Survival Thriller

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  I try to zoom in, but Lolo has completely passed out of view now. The feed dies, leaving me without visual, and only a tenuous audio connection.

  Between bouts of static, I hear voices cry that the rumbling is growing stronger. Suzuki manages to send the codes. I enter them into my system and am rewarded with the diagnostics of the alien fighter, the one I’ve codenamed Shark, due to the salient dorsal fin. The engineering is remarkable, far surpassing the complexity of any human machine, but that’s no surprise.

  “Standby, Commander,” I say.

  Shouting explodes over the transmission, and I hear the Japanese word Kaiju, which means giant monster. The word is an apt choice. Suzuki describes a bubble of blue light forming a dome over the forest, and then a limb the size of a building protruding out of that bubble.

  That is the last detail I hear.

  The line severs.

  END ENTRY

  ***

  The Rhino bucked from the force of the Sunspot’s explosion. The harness straps pressed tight against Emanuel’s shoulders as the vehicle was tossed on its side, holding him into his seat. Metal screamed in protest. Violently shifting forces lashed Emanuel against his seat, pummeling him back and forth. He felt the warm rush of blood from the back of his head.

  The Rhino whirred as its self-righting hydraulic system pushed it back upright. A long whoomph sighed out of the system.

  The noise waned, but Emanuel’s pupils still burned from the brilliant flash of the exploding Sunspot. The ringing in his ears started to die. With it came the worrying bark of alarms.

  The Sunspot had let out its last breath with a fury, and Emanuel was certain it had killed Jeff and David. There was no way the kids could have survived that blast.

  Grief was a mortal enemy that would have to be overcome, but there would be no overcoming it if they didn’t survive these next few minutes. There were still others alive now that he could help.

  Diego was mashing some buttons at the controls near the driver’s seat, and Bouma was trying desperately to reattach an oxygen line that had flung loose.

  “You okay?” Emanuel asked Owen. The boy had largely been sheltered by Emanuel’s body, but his eyes were puffy and red.

  Emanuel turned to see Holly checking on Jamie. The girl had been belted in, and she appeared more shaken than anything else.

  “Oxygen systems back in place,” Bouma announced, relief in his voice.

  Several of the alarms shut off.

  “We are still within visual proximity of Organic threats,” Sonya reported.

  Emanuel noticed a slight deviation in her tone. It seemed more robotic than usual. Maybe the transfer from the Sunspot hadn’t been completed before the spaceship had been destroyed.

  “No shit,” Ort said, pressing his huge hands against one of the windows. “I can see ’em with my own eyes. We need to move.”

  Diego started the Rhino inching forward again. The tires wobbled over the terrain like something in the suspension had come loose. Emanuel made his way to the front cabin. There, he let his eyes and fingers scan the various reports flashing across the display. There was still a persistent chirping coming from somewhere.

  “I think we got the most critical things back in place,” Emanuel said, “but I can’t find the source for that last one.”

  “Don’t think that one’s coming from here,” Diego said from the driver’s seat.

  It took a moment for Emanuel to locate the alarm through his scrambled senses. Any miniscule amount of hope he had felt after they’d survived that near wreck was vanquished by the sight before him.

  Near the top of Sophie’s cryo chamber, a red light blinked, and the biomonitor on the side flashed scarlet. Dark liquid was mixing with the crisp blue cryostat fluid, clouds spreading out from Sophie’s skull.

  “Sophie! No!” Emanuel squeezed past Holly and Jamie to reach Sophie’s chamber. The nausea he’d already been feeling wrapped its fingers tighter around his stomach.

  A long beep trailed from the EKG, reporting that her heart had completely stopped.

  Oh God, no!

  Other voices called around him, but he ignored them all. The Rhino was still charging forward, even as the dust storm swallowed them. There was no way a little tumble in the Rhino was going to take her. Not after everything they’d already been through.

  Emanuel unlocked the drain to the cryo chamber. It no longer mattered that they had less than two days’ worth of cryostat fluid to keep her in a protected comatose state. If her heart wasn’t working, no amount of cryostat fluid would bring her back. The drain dumped the fluid onto the floor of the Rhino, the liquid sloshing about their feet. He unlatched the lock to the chamber, and the rest of the fluid poured out over him.

  The oily fluid clung to his clothes as he reached for Sophie’s body. She slumped into his arms, and he grasped desperately at her wrist. A pulse throbbed against his fingers. It was weak and slow, but it was a pulse nonetheless.

  His eyes flitted to the loose tubes and cables dangling from the top of the chamber. Sophie had been torn from the cryo chamber’s intubation system in the crash. He stretched one of the wires from the top of the chamber and plugged it into the sensor secured at the bottom of Sophie’s skull.

  While the EKG no longer bleated, another ominous message flashed across the biomonitors. It warned of increased intracranial pressures.

  “A concussion,” Emanuel said. “If we’re lucky…” He knew it could be way worse.

  With Holly’s help, he cleared Sophie’s hair back to access the injured area. A cut several inches long bled profusely.

  “Here,” Holly said, handing him an emergency first aid kit.

  Emanuel opened the kit. His fingers trembled as he pulled out the suture. He was a biologist, not a surgeon. Though he’d had plenty of experience operating on mice and rabbits for biological experiments, never once had he so much as scrubbed in to even observe a procedure performed on a human.

  Stitches, at least, he could do. This wasn’t so different from suturing a mouse.

  His finger slipped as he stuck the needle through Sophie’s scalp, pulling the wound closed. He tightened his grip and hooked the needle in again. Loop by loop he brought the skin together. Even as he approached the end, his fingers didn’t stop trembling.

  But it wasn’t the suturing he was worried about. Taking care of this wound would do nothing if what the biomonitor indicated was true. Because of her concussion, cerebrospinal fluid was building up on her already inflamed brain. She’d been in a critical state ever since the RVAMP on Earth had cooked most of the Organic nanobots embedded in her tissues. The foreign nanobots had elicited the sustained response of her passive immune system. Her body had been fighting back against the nanobots, and now it looked like the concussion might have stolen any chance of recovery.

  “You know what we need to do,” Holly said, locking eyes with Emanuel.

  Ort and Bouma appeared confused, but Emanuel knew exactly what Holly meant.

  The two of them had the most medical experience among the group, and even that was pitifully little when Emanuel considered what needed to happen to keep Sophie alive now.

  The Rhino continued bucking against the rocky terrain, the storm winds shrieking around them. The delicate surgery Emanuel needed to perform would be made even more difficult by these conditions, but he had no other choice than to improvise.

  All the injuries, the inflamed tissues and broken blood vessels, that had been present when Sophie underwent the cryo procedure were still there. But the most immediate need was to relieve the increasing pressure on her brain.

  “We’ve got to drain her cerebrospinal fluid,” Emanuel said, “or she risks neurological death.”

  A host of emotions flooded his mind. He wanted to simultaneously hold Sophie tight and curse the world for letting her end up like this. Thoughts of Jeff and David still pervaded the darkness. He shoved everything away. There was no room for emotion now. After cleansing his thoughts, he adopt
ed the mindset he’d worn as a graduate student going in to perform surgery on a mouse for an experiment. Intense focus lent him the ability to manipulate the fragile physiologies of those tiny animals. He needed to draw on those old experiences now, resurrecting the steady hands and cool mindset that had enabled those past successes.

  But it was exceedingly difficult to rely on only his past strength. Equally real memories of surgical failures—of being unable to stop the rupture in a mouse’s aorta, or nicking the liver and watching the animal bleed to death as he desperately tried to clot the wound. They were rookie mistakes from rookie hands dealing with complex experimental procedures.

  I’m better than that, he thought. He was an experienced scientist now. An expert in his field. One of the best. So what if this time the organism he was operating on was a bit larger than what he was used to?

  He could do this.

  “Sonya, call up the procedure for an emergency cerebrospinal ventral drain implantation from your medical database,” Emanuel said.

  The displays around the rear of the Rhino switched on. They showed, step by step, what Emanuel had to do. He laid Sophie as gently as he could on the Rhino’s floor. This was no operating table, and there were no surgical lamps hanging overhead, but it would have to do. The Rhino jostled again as the damaged suspension system fought against the raging winds and the unpredictable terrain.

  “Hold Sophie steady,” Emanuel said to Holly. “Bouma, Ort, a little help over here.”

  The two soldiers knelt around Sophie.

  Emanuel did the best he could to ignore the jostling of the vehicle and Diego’s erratic driving as the soldier attempted to evade the Organics. His mind switched to surgical mode. He had not forgotten the feeling of clinical precision and focus, as he’d feared. Every movement came out of his fingers like computer output from commands he’d entered into a terminal. His eyes left his focus on Sophie’s skull only to gauge his progress in relation to the steps displayed by Sonya. His fingers worked deftly to create an insertion point.

  He was almost done. Finally, he inserted a small shunt into the back of Sophie’s skull. Clear, viscous fluid flowed from the shunt, spilling into the mess of cryostat fluid already coating the floor of the Rhino.

  “Got it,” Emanuel said. He stared at the biomonitor. The warning still flashed, reporting the intracranial pressure was too high. He didn’t take his eyes off the screen, daring it to defy his efforts.

  This will work. This will…

  The warning disappeared. The EKG beeped with the report of a normal cardiac rhythm. He carefully placed Sophie on her back and cradled her head, brushing back the hair from her face. It had been months since they’d been this close, and his heart overflowed with emotions as he studied her near-translucent skin. Vaguely he sensed the others surrounding them, but they were nothing more than shadows in the night to him.

  Sophie was still alive. Still fighting.

  As long as you keep fighting, Emanuel thought, I will, too.

  When she’d gone into the cryo chamber, she’d been unconscious. Even with his intervention, there was no indication that Emanuel’s work would do anything to change that.

  So when Sophie’s eyes fluttered open, he reared back with shock, and surprise.

  — 9 —

  A grating wind cut across the mangled body of the chitinous alien. Spidery legs twitched, and blue blood pulsed out of its cracked flesh. The creature had been thrown into its current position at the tunnel’s entrance by the intense blast that had swallowed the landscape only moments ago.

  “You okay?” Jeff asked. He kept one eye on the spider as he bent low near his brother.

  David managed a nod.

  The dust and rocks blasted past just outside the narrow tunnel they were sheltered in. Winds roared against the rock with a monstrous force that frightened Jeff even more than the Organics did.

  “I think so,” David said. He sat against the wall of the tunnel, staring at the broken spider. “Is it dead?”

  The wind tugged at the spider’s fragile flesh, whipping at the skull. Jeff guessed it was being held in place by its claws alone, which were embedded in the rock. That same strength must’ve been what let the Organics use the dust storm for cover where normal humans would be simply blown away—and to shreds.

  “Looks like it,” Jeff said, eying the spider’s mandibles. The alien had chased them from their original hiding spot overlooking the route from the Dawn to the Sunspot before they had killed it. As they were running, desperate to put some distance between themselves and it, Jeff had seen the plasma start to vent from the Sunspot.

  It had risen into the sky like the finger of some great giant reaching for the heavens. He knew something had gone wrong, and had debated taking David back to the Sunspot to find out what it was. Thankfully, all his instincts had told him to stay away.

  Maybe it was luck they’d slid into this tunnel to escape the spider. A blinding flash had swallowed them as they dove inside. His vision had gone completely white for several seconds, and at first he had thought he’d gone blind.

  But it was back now. David was still alive, and so was he. That left him with one question he was afraid to ask aloud.

  David wasn’t. “Do you think everyone else is dead?”

  Jeff could see his brother wanted reassurance that Holly, Bouma and the others had survived, but Jeff couldn’t lie.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said. He slumped down next to David and put an arm around his shoulder.

  He tried pressing a button on his suit to call the ship. “Emanuel, Sonya, anyone? Do you read?”

  There was nothing but static.

  Again, he tried. “Holly, are you there?”

  But no matter what he tried, there was no response. His stomach sank. Maybe, in his attempt to alter the suits for him and David, he’d ripped off the comm units that connected them with the ship. Sonya might not even know they were missing.

  “Oh no,” he muttered. “I screwed up.”

  David tried to comfort him, but Jeff shrugged him off. He’d set out to prove he and David could help the others, that they were just as good as the adults. Now they were stuck out here, alone with a dead spider.

  The winds continued to roar outside. Piles of broken rock and dirt started to build up at the tunnel’s entrance. If this storm continued for too long, Jeff and his brother would be buried alive. A gauge on his suit’s HUD showed that his oxygen levels were running low. He wouldn’t be able to survive more than a couple hours longer out here if he didn’t get the suit recharged.

  He wanted to look brave, but tears threatened to pour down his face. He wanted to curl into a ball and go to sleep, to wake up and find this was all a dream. Maybe he’d wake up on the Sunspot, in the safety of the others.

  Then he remembered something his dad had liked to tell him and David. “Bravery doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid. It means that you do something even when you are afraid.”

  Jeff needed to be brave now. “Stay here, okay?”

  “What are you going to do?” David asked, worry tingeing his voice.

  “I got to make sure that we keep the entrance to the tunnel open,” Jeff said.

  “I’ll help.”

  Images of David being swept away in the intense winds flashed through Jeff’s mind. “No, you stay back here. Warn me if you see any Organic activity. Plus, you can stay safe and help me if I need it.”

  David nodded meekly.

  Jeff climbed toward the entrance of the tunnel. Pebbles carried by the wind bounced against his suit the closer he got. He shoveled away the piles of dust and rocks with his hands, scooping them up and spreading them along the floor of the tunnel toward where David sat. The pull of the wind tugged at his suit, threatening to drag him outside, so he maintained a safe distance from the entrance of the tunnel. The body of the spider slapped against the ground, its lifeless, arachnid-like eyes staring at Jeff while he worked to keep the tunnel clear.

  Each second tha
t passed seemed like he was losing the battle. Every handful of dirt and rock he moved from the entrance was replaced by two more. Sweat trickled over his face and stung his eyes. Only a pinprick of space existed between the growing pile of debris and the roof of the tunnel. His muscles burned, but he went into overdrive. If he failed, David would be buried too. They’d die in here, choking on their own breath.

  Scoop by scoop, he tore at the pile of rock and dirt. The wind ate away at the other side of the pile even as it added to it, sounding through his suit like a growling monster.

  First, the aliens had tried to kill them, and now Mars was having a go. Fear threatened to take hold of Jeff again, urging his muscles to lock and freeze. But he wouldn’t let it win. His dad’s words kept repeating in his head, and he dug and dug and dug.

  A new clunking sound replaced the din of the howling storm. The entire face of the scree suddenly slipped into the tunnel and onto him, the dirt settling against his chest and limbs, pinning him to the ground. He tried desperately to breathe, but an immense pressure pushed down on his chest.

  A wet sheen formed over his eyes, and his vision blurred. Panic took hold, telling him to thrash and flail, to fight for his life. But he couldn’t so much as twitch his fingers. He was completely stuck.

  The clatter of rock against rock came again, and Jeff waited for the added weight to crush him. Here he would stay, left to lie for eternity, while his brother suffered because he’d failed.

  But instead of feeling the press of more rocks, the weight on his chest lessened. A flood of white light washed over his body. David looked down at him, his helmet-mounted light illuminating his small hands as he shoveled Jeff free.

  “I got you, bro!” David said.

  Soon Jeff’s hands were free, and he was able to help David uncover the rest of his body. Finally out, he sat and gasped for breath.

  “You okay?” David asked.

  “I think so.”

  Jeff marveled at how quickly things had changed. He’d been asking David the same question before, then telling his little brother to stay out of harm’s way in an attempt to protect him. Fate had other surprises in store, and in the end, it was David who had saved him. Jeff figured it was more proof that they were an inseparable team.