That last bit brought Katrina to her knees, which immediately made me regret telling Aziza off at all. I’d just felt too shitty to keep listening to her bitching. I didn’t really want her to die.
“Lieutenant,” Katrina pleaded.
I turned from them and started back down the mountain. “If she wants to come, she’s welcome to, but I’m tired of her bitching and moaning. We don’t have enough time left to waste it on anything other than surviving. Now move.”
Favoring the side where the clown demon had skewered me before Sillinger’s miracle surgery, I braced myself and started toward the corpse fields. I didn’t look back to see whether or not they followed me, but they did. Evidently, no matter how much Aziza thought she was ready to throw in the towel, part of her still hoped for a happy ending. After that, her presence alone encouraged me. If even she thought there was a chance we would make it back to the ship, after all, and maybe even make it home afterward, then I figured the odds must not have been as bad as they seemed. It was fool’s logic, I know, but hearing her mutter to Katrina again on our way down comforted me even more.
After that, it didn’t take long to complete our descent despite our fatigue. Or maybe it just seemed like it because I dreaded reaching the bottom even more than I desired it. How long exactly, though? I’m not sure. I feel like I should apologize for my imprecise relation of time and distance throughout this account, but I’ve grown complacent and rely too heavily on our suits’ systems to monitor these so-called ‘trivial’ matters during a ground mission, and I haven’t been trained well enough to mark them in real time.
“Let’s rest here for a few,” I told the others, shambling behind the last bit of cover available before entering the corpse fields.
Katrina didn’t bother hiding. She collapsed the moment I gave the order to rest and didn’t move until I told her it was time to get going again. I didn’t need to ask why she hadn’t sought cover first, even ignoring her visible exhaustion. Just like during my dazed journey across the wastelands, we didn’t have true cover anyway and wouldn’t at all once we ventured into the corpse fields aside from the corpses themselves. She must have figured there was no point exerting herself for the sake of avoiding detection.
Aziza, on the other hand, did take cover but she hung back a ways to get it. Probably still pissed at me for chewing her out and ‘humiliating’ her, although I find it hard to believe she could be that stubborn knowing we were literally hours away from death, maybe less.
“You all right, Katrina?” I asked. It was easy to see she wasn’t, but I wanted to help even though I had nothing to offer.
She didn’t answer. The three of us fell silent again.
I can’t attest to what was running through Aziza and Katrina’s heads while we rested there. I would guess Aziza continued her internal debate about death versus suicide, suffering versus relief, and Katrina couldn’t think about much of anything at all except her ungodly level of pain. I started thinking about home for the first time in a long time, though. And not the Rockne Hummel or the fleet stations or even Earth itself.
Home. My real home. My parents’ house.
Michigan.
Mom and Dad. My brothers and sisters. My tiny apartment in the fleet barracks outside Kalamazoo. I started missing the idle summers of my youth in a physical way. The smells of the wilderness and the Great Lakes waves. The hum of insects at dusk. The movie-set quality of late-night walks on June nights outside Detroit. Those boyhood Junes and Julys were the direct contrast to everything on Furnace. I analyzed their imprint on my memory as a barometer of what I’d left behind and just how badly I wanted to get off that planet. To see the green shores of home again.
I hadn’t thought about any of that in a long time. I hadn’t even thought of my family beyond a general flash of memory that I had, indeed, originated somewhere that wasn’t Basic or the lower decks of some fleet warship. Resting there, I couldn’t believe how much I’d taken it all for granted while on Earth. Even just the freedom to return home and absorb the familiar smell of the old wooden floors. To remember what it was like sharing a complicated, all-encompassing history with someone that stretched back further than three or four years.
I’m a little ashamed to admit that it took so long for me to start thinking about my family on Furnace, although I’m not really surprised. It has little to do with the depth of feeling for my kin and a lot to do with how uniquely clouded a soldier’s brain gets in the thick of battle. There’s an assumption, I think, that whenever someone faces a life-or-death situation in the trenches, he or she is immediately reminded of everything they’re about to lose and all the loved ones they’ve left behind. In my experience, it’s actually the opposite.
I’ve faced a few dozen hopeless situations with aliens or gunfire or system-malfunctions beating down on me, and each time, I’m so wrapped up in the surreality of the moment that I have trouble thinking of anything at all. I’ve heard other men and women say they can see the faces of their husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, children, parents, siblings, or pets when they’re staring down death, but I think that’s bullshit. Maybe that’s just an indication of a deeper void in my own life and my capacity for true emotional profundity (the girl on Eurpoa is still the only real relationship I’ve ever had, and I wouldn’t exactly describe myself or most other deep space soldiers as emotional or well-adjusted), but I think they just want to make themselves feel better.
That same combat obfuscation was responsible for my lack of sentimentality on Furnace, and I suppose on the battlefield in general. I’m unable to pull myself far enough from the situation to have proper perspective, and there’s a big part of me that doesn’t truly believe the events surrounding me on the battlefield are real or that my life is truly at risk. It’s not bravery or combat numbness so much as a lack of comprehension on my part. Even though my rational mind knows the difference between the two, my heart and soul do not. I guess, then, that it’s easy enough to see why the deaths of my shipmates didn’t affect me the way they should have, ranging from losses in the heat of battle to the sheer ubiquity of death on Furnace (not to mention how most of the crew were relative strangers to me), but I’m paying dearly for it now.
Anyway, thinking about my family and the summers back home (I’m not sure why I defaulted to my childhood memories, but I guess the psychoanalysts and arbitrators of my case would be able to tell you more about that) stirred something in me that I wasn’t aware could be stirred anymore. It was a highly-emotional swell of fear and hopelessness which had been completely hammered out of me in Basic. I remembered, for once, that I had something to lose, even if it was only the notion of a past that could never be regained.
I thought of my mother’s head thrown across the planet’s surface like a tumbleweed in the high winds surrounding the ship, and how I’d thought it was a hallucination or a trick of light at the time.
Mom, I thought. Is she here?
It didn’t seem possible, but neither did the planetoid or the circumstances preceding our crash.
She can’t be, I tried to argue. There’s no way.
It’s difficult to lie to yourself with death at your door.
I started panicking again, and this time I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t sit still, even though my miraculously healing wounds cried out for rest and Katrina looked three-quarter’s dead.
“Come on,” I said, practically leaping to my feet. My stomach swelled with pain. I almost fell straight back to the dirt, shrieking, but managed to pull it together at the last moment and spare myself the humiliation. The last thing I wanted was for the other two to think I couldn’t even stand when Katrina could hardly open her eyes. At least one of us had to lead our group, and I was the highest-ranking idiot with the least amount of pain (which wasn’t saying much), so I figured it still had to be me.
“We’ve got to keep moving,” I said through a grimace, more to convince myself than the two of them.
The pain in my stomach
, leg, and the back of my neck was returning in one coordinated wave. Probably from sitting down long enough for stiffness to set in. Mostly because whatever miracle drug Sillinger had given me finally ran its course. Maybe that’s why Katrina was suddenly so hard up, too. I’d thought it was just exhaustion from the agonizing hike up and down the mountain, but maybe Sillinger had shot her up with something sweet.
Aziza turned back in our direction and started following wordlessly, but it was clear Katrina wasn’t ready to get up. There was a good chance she never would be.
Is she dead? I wondered, making my way to her side while attempting to disguise my limp. I don’t think either of them would have noticed the hitch in my step or really cared if they had, but I wanted to hide the limitation as long as possible in case someone else was watching us, which seemed likely now that we were out in the open again.
“It’s time to get up,” I told Katrina gently. I didn’t want to startle her in case she’d fallen asleep, but I was suddenly very aware of our exposure in the green-orange haze. I could almost feel the breath of the corpses on my stitched neck when I turned from them. The sensation gave me a chill so violent that I couldn’t suppress a gasp of pain.
“Come on, Kat!” Aziza shouted. “If I can’t die on my own terms, then you aren’t allowed to, either. Get your ass up!”
“Quiet!” I snapped.
My eyes darted toward the mountaintop and back to the corpse fields again. I expected to see a whole army advancing, but there was no such force to greet us. I should have realized how truly insignificant Aziza’s shout was amid a sea of screaming souls, but I suppose it’s human nature to believe we’re always being watched by someone waiting for us to either slip up or turn heroic.
“Is she dead?” Aziza asked. I took it as a rhetorical question and squatted beside Katrina.
“We’re almost there, Kat,” I told her, half-believing it myself. “Hold on just a little longer. We’ll get you some help as soon as we reach the Hummel.”
She whispered something so weakly that I had to strain right up against her fiery breath.
“What did you say?”
She raised her head a little and opened her bloodshot eyes. Each branch of red stood out with alarming clarity. “I’ll catch up.” She stretched a little. The movement wafted death-stink in my direction from her leg wounds.
I frowned and started pulling her up from the ground. “Sure you will,” I said.
Aziza came over to help. We had Katrina on her feet within a few moments, but I knew she wouldn’t stand on her own for long, let alone run through open terrain with alien monsters hunting us. The hike had taken everything out of her. Whatever reserve of hope or narcotics had pushed her along until then in spite of her leg wound had finally worn off.
“Let’s go,” she mumbled drunkenly, then fell forward without even a reflexive attempt to brace herself. Aziza and I caught her a split-second before she hit the ground, but I paid for it when my abdomen flexed with plenty pain of my own.
“Jesus,” I winced.
We steadied her against a rock and caught our breath.
Aziza pressed a hand to her cheek and moaned. The gray-yellow infection had spread almost entirely across her face. It was difficult to look at, but I was impressed that she didn’t complain about the dizzying pain she was no doubt experiencing. Thank God she didn’t suggest we leave Katrina behind, otherwise I think I would have listened to her. I was out of energy and patience. I felt black strands of panic taking root within me. Even then, I knew that there was a specific timeline we needed to follow if we ever wanted to get off the planet, even beyond the demands of our physical forms.
“What do we do now, sir?” Aziza asked, putting heavy, sarcastic emphasis on the last word.
I glared at her and took a deep breath to hush the shrieks of agony building in my throat. More than ever, I didn’t want to show weakness around her. “We carry her.”
Before Aziza could protest—and I could see in her eyes that she was about to do so wholeheartedly—Katrina did it for her.
“Fuck that. I can walk myself.”
“I don’t think you can,” I told her.
I didn’t mean for it to be a challenge, but that’s how she took it. “I’ll decide if I can or I can’t.” She paused and swallowed dry breath. I could tell it took an absurd amount of effort to form words, and she wasn’t even the one with a torn-up cheek. “What can it hurt? If I can’t make it on my own, I’ll get all three of us killed. Neither of you are in any shape to carry me right now.”
She was right, and I was glad she was the one to point it out. It made the truth of our injuries better than if we’d admitted them to ourselves. As long as I didn’t tell them that I was worried the stitches had torn in my stomach and back, I could pretend everything was fine. The wounds didn’t exist at all.
That way, I wouldn’t have to think about the creature who’d cut me, either, which was an even greater relief than Sillinger’s drugs.
“Fair enough. Then let’s get this shit over with.”
Aziza nodded and accepted her rifle when I un-holstered it and held it out to her. She was the one who led us into the corpse fields. Katrina followed on unsteady legs that carried her every which way but straight. Each step she took made me wince, especially since I was behind her. I had a front-row view seat to the carnage along the back of her legs. The sight was bad enough, but the smell of her infected wounds made me nauseous to the point that I had to suppress a few gags strictly for the sake of morale.
And still, the smell of her rot was nothing compared to the corpse fields. Once we hit the first row of crucified aliens, I promptly doubled over and emptied the few scraps of nothing-much from my stomach.
And it only got worse from there.
THE CORPSE FIELDS
No matter how prepared we thought we were to walk among the rows of crucified bodies, each of us was shaken when we saw them up close. It was worse than we’d imagined, even after having a bird’s-eye view during our descent. The sense of claustrophobia was something I hadn’t counted on in such a flat landscape, either. It ate at my nerves and rang alarm bells throughout my head. I felt a tangible weight settling in over my chest. It was difficult to breathe.
The border of the white pillars wasn’t far from where we’d stopped to rest. It rose menacingly from the earth like the crooked teeth of a man-eating Titan. Each pillar stood nearly fifteen-feet tall and about three feet wide. Once we were close enough to distinguish the bodies, though, I barely noticed the pillars at all. How could I? Even the oddly appropriated features of the victims were recognizably twisted in agony. Aliens from corners of space humanity hasn’t touched outside the imagination of Lovecraft and a few equally sick individuals. The ones on the outskirts were still breathing, moaning, or sobbing softly for the most part, but their bodies were too weak to muster a cry for help.
It made a sick sort of sense for the outsiders to be the freshest, considering the locals (whoever they were) would have started somewhere in the center of the open land and gradually forged their way towards the mountains and hills on either side of the plateau.
The hills, I reminded myself. Just focus on getting to the hills. The ship’s somewhere on the other side of them.
It may have been wishful thinking, but the further removed I was from the wastelands, the easier it was to believe.
I can’t begin to describe how miserable it was stepping onto that field. My nightmares still take me back among the rows of corpses. Each victim watches me pass with an accusatory stare while rainbows of blood flow from their undeserved wounds. Sometimes, they climb down and chase me between the rows until I’m surrounded, then drag me to the ground and tear me apart with their teeth. Once they’ve eaten their fill, they pin me to the pillars with nails whittled from discarded bones.
Most nights, I’m afraid to sleep. But as bad as the dreams can be, the reality was even worse.
I felt a heavy faze bearing down on me the moment we en
tered the crucifixion forest. Even the corpses seemed to stare at me from their decomposing husks, which had once been equally unrecognizable alien creatures.
I only managed three steps into the multitude before one of the hanging bodies—this one slightly more humanoid in appearance than most—jerked to attention and shrieked at the top of its lungs. The sound startled me so badly that I lurched backward into a disemboweled Fronov corpse, though how a blue-skinned Fronov had wound up there, I can’t begin to guess. I gagged when its purple intestines wrapped around my face.
“Fuck!” Aziza shouted.
She started firing into the corpses like a goddamned fool. In the moment, I wanted to kill her, even though I’m partly responsible for her indiscretion. I shouldn’t have given the rifle back to her. She’d just seemed so together when we’d helped Katrina up that I thought she could handle it. Sulky and wounded, sure, but mentally composed. The situation was so thoroughly fucked, however, that it shouldn’t have surprised me to see that even an elite fleet soldier was liable to chase shadows and snap under pressure.
Tearing the scarf of entrails from my neck, I struggled free away from the Fronov corpse and ran toward Aziza as fast as my cramped leg would carry me. I could already sense the collective eyes and ears of the corpse fields turning toward us. I didn’t want them to settle on us before I stopped her.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I shouted over the gunfire. I shoved Katrina out of my way hard to get a clear line. She crumpled helplessly against the base of a pillar.
Desperate, I kept running until I plowed through Aziza full force. I didn’t even attempt to pry the rifle from her hands. I didn’t just want her to stop shooting. In that moment of terror-induced rage, I wanted her out of the picture. Not forever. Just pushed out of the way for a little while.
Furnace Page 12
