“Get Hank. I need an update.”
“Just lie down, Lieutenant,” Brett replied with a hint of nervousness.
“God damn it, no. Get Hank right now,” Darren squawked.
This time the sigh from Brett was not quite so imperceptible, but rather like a sweeping gust. “Hank’s sick.”
The words kicked Darren in his gut, and he almost threw up again. He dug his fingertips into the hard soil and scraped them until he felt as if his fingernails would tear off. He clenched his teeth and tried to recall which of his remaining scouts would be the most trustworthy.
“Fine. Get me Laura.” Darren blinked at the blurred mass of the nurse in front of him. The silence he received in return, and the lack of movement, spoke volumes. “Laura’s sick too?”
“Worse.”
Worse?
“What the hell do you mean, worse?” There was another pause. It seemed to Darren that the whole jungle hushed just a bit as he sat in anticipation of the negative news.
“Laura’s gone.”
“What?” Darren exclaimed and tried to scramble to his feet. He couldn’t gain his balance, wobbled, and toppled onto his hip. “She was just here yesterday.”
“I know. She was gone this morning. Sixteen others, too.”
“Sixteen? Jesus, why didn’t you tell me this bug is so bad?”
“Huh? Oh, no, no. They’re not dead. They took a bunch of supplies and left the camp, as far as we can tell.”
It took a minute for the implications to sink in. Darren was not only suffering the single most painful and humiliating illness in his life, and in danger of dying, but the injury had just had the insult of losing control of his camp heaped on top. He could feel his rage boil within him, but that quickly gave way to nausea. He rolled over and gave another agonizing heave as his stomach again emptied what little was left in it. When he regained control and the spasms left his body, he was given another drink of vile, tepid water.
Seventeen people just up and left. Do they even know where the hell they are going? Did Laura take… crap.
“What about the arms?” Darren asked, anxious to know if his supposedly trustworthy scout had raided the precious supply of weapons that protected the survivors.
“Hmm?”
“Did she take any arms? Rifles? Sidearms?”
“I… I’m sorry, I don’t know. If Hank were better, he could count what’s left.”
“I need you to do it, then.”
“I can’t. I’ve spent too much time on you as it is. I need to tend to the rest of the patients.”
Darren muttered a curse under his breath. “I’m sure you can get what’s-her-name to do it for a bit. What was it, Mindy?”
His question must have struck a chord with Brett, because he fell silent again. Darren sat up just in time to see the blue bulk of his blur squat even lower, into what he presumed was a sitting position.
“She’s dead.”
Darren hung his head low, until his vision was a uniform wash of fuzzy brown. His heart sank and thoughts of despair settled in his mind. Mindy didn’t deserve to die, he thought, as the possibility of his own death crept in. Like Brett, she was a nurse who had volunteered to help with the ever growing legion of the ill. Darren hadn’t even been aware that she had been ill.
She must have gotten sick just after I did. Damn, this thing can kill fast…
He closed his eyes and lay back down on the ground. “What’s the count today?” Silence greeted him as he waited for a response. “How many, please, Brett?”
“Including Mindy, four dead. Including you, there are now eighteen ill. Five have fully recovered.”
Six dead total now.
“How about food and water?”
“Well, we’re doing okay on the water for now. We’re able to purify it a little quicker than we’re using it. Food is another matter. I’m afraid that Laura and her group took quite a bit of what was left.”
God damn it. Darren sighed heavily as he saw a fleeting image in the back of his eyelids of a phantom Laura grabbing a pack and running away. How the hell did I not see that she’d do this?
“Understood. Thanks. I’ve kept you too long.”
“Please, Lieutenant, just get some rest.”
He could hear Brett’s strides fading as he jogged off into the camp. The shifting sun had begun to cast its burning rays through the tree canopy, and the stench of his surroundings was unbearable. Darren got to his knees and crawled into the shade of another nearby tree, and lay down as close to the base as he could. He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the encampment. A general murmur of activity was occasionally accentuated with the haunting groans or labored retching of the ill.
Not now. Not like this.
Gabrielle Serrano
Planetfall +10 days, midday
Sleeper pod eleven site
The warm white sands tickled the soles of Gabi’s feet as she ran, giggling gleefully, away from a leggy seven year old boy. She darted to her right, nearly running headlong into the surf. The boy tagged her gently on the back as she tried to duck under his arm. She shrieked and dropped onto her shins.
“You’re it,” he exclaimed with a wide grin. “No tag backs!”
She gained her feet and felt the gentle waves lap at her feet. She paused for a moment as she thought she heard a rumbling noise. The green and blue sea sparkled almost endlessly as she looked over its expanse, but in the distance, just above the horizon, a band of inky black clouds shrouded the sky. She took a quick look above, and then back toward the massive gray metal dome that her mother and father called a “sleeper pod”. She could make out her mom, at work near the edge of the trees where they had spent the night before. She waved at Gabi, and Gabi flapped her arm, returning an exaggerated gesture.
A much older girl, with flowing brown hair, darted across Gabi’s field of vision, and she launched herself at her new target. She had nearly caught up with the girl when she laughed and outran Gabi quite easily. Gabi persisted, once again catching up, but the older girl sped up again and veered to the left and into the surf where Gabi dared not follow.
“No fair, you cheat!” she screamed.
The girl just laughed, bounded deeper into the water, and dunked her body in the surf. Gabi ran into the waves until she was waist deep, at which point a wave knocked her over and sent her tumbling back to shore. She sat on the sand for a minute and pouted, then heard taunts of other children from over her shoulder. Gabi giggled again and sprang up, locking her focus on Aidan.
He’s smaller; I can run faster than him.
She pumped her legs and flailed her arms as she chased him down. He ran toward where the river joined the sea, and looked over his shoulder. His eyes got wide as Gabi closed within reach. Aidan jerked to the left to try to dodge her tag, but was unable to get out of her way. Gabi’s fingers touched his shoulder just as he slipped, and as he went down, her knee ran into his head, and Gabi tumbled head over heels into the sand. She landed awkwardly, and scraped her hand on a small, jagged rock obscured by the sand. Pain shot through her hand and she immediately clutched it and began to whimper, but the noise was drowned out by a sudden, loud scream from Aidan.
Gabi turned and plopped her rear on the beach, and while nursing her scrape, she looked at Aidan. Tears streamed down his face, and a large red bump rose from his forehead. His eyes were closed and his mouth was wide open, with a deafening wail coming from within.
“Shhh, it’s okay, Aidan,” she said as she crept forward.
“Get away from him!” she heard Marya yell. Gabi looked up and saw Aidan’s sister running in their direction. “Leave my brother alone!”
Gabi was barely able to get the words “I’m sorry” from her lips before Marya closed the gap, lunged at her, and knocked her back into the sand. She was in utter shock, unable to understand why Marya would do such a thing. Before she could react, Marya began pounding her fists on Gabi’s chest. Gabi screamed and tried to wiggle away from the la
rger girl, but her efforts were only rewarded by a fist bashing into her cheek. She flailed desperately, and managed to loosen her arms from underneath Marya. Gabi brought her hands up to her face to protect it. Blows rained on her arms, occasionally slipping by and hitting her sides or head. Gabi shrieked a long, loud, blood curdling scream.
“Ow, stop it! Stop it!” she sobbed.
“Stay. Away. From. My. Brother!” Marya drove each word home with a punch.
“You’re hurting me,” Gabi protested.
A moment later, the hits stopped. She could hear the yells of adults in the distance, but her body and head throbbed and stung, so she curled her body into a ball. Quickly she shot a glance around, and saw Marya standing above her, and a long flash of brown. Gabi barely had time to throw up an arm before the driftwood crashed down on it with a sickening crunch. Her arm fell limp at her side, and suddenly it felt as if her arm were on fire and being cut, all at the same time. Gabi’s scream intensified, and she could hear nothing else until at last she ran out of breath and stopped.
Marya hefted the chunk of wood over her head again. Gabi rolled over and closed her eyes, waiting to be hit again. The blow never came; there was a shuffling sound next to her, Aidan crying, and a jumble of voices. Then Marya bellowed, “Let me go! She hurt Aidan!”
“Gabi? Gabi, are you okay?” her mother’s voice cut through the ruckus.
Gabi cried again, her arm still in tremendous pain. She shook her head and curled up again. She felt arms around her, and the sensation of being lifted out of the sand. Her eyes fluttered open and she saw her mom’s face framed by the pale blue sky. Her body was jostled, and she took a quick look around. Her mother was carrying her from the beach, and behind her, her father had a screaming and struggling Marya tucked underneath his arm. The older girl whom Gabi had chased earlier had Aidan in her arms, walking alongside her father. A throng of adults and children followed behind.
“Mama, it hurts so bad.”
“I know, Gabi. Hang on, Mija. We’re going to see a doctor. He’ll make you feel better.”
Gabi was jostled again as her mom bounded onto the ramp to the pod. She squealed as renewed pain shot through her arm. She could barely make out the walls of the hallways as they came in from the sun. Her mom lay her down on the metal floor. She curled her chest to her knees and cried. Gabi could tell her mom was talking to someone, but she could only pay attention to the agony that was throbbing, pulsing, and shooting through her arm.
Why did she do that to me? Gabi’s attention drifted to a chubby man with a sunburned face kneeling next to her. He had been talking to her, but she hadn’t been listening. He smiled as she made eye contact with her.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“G-Gabi,” she sniffed.
“Hi Gabi. I’m Doctor Petrovsky. Your mom tells me you’ve got a pretty big owie. Can I look at it?”
She shied away for a second. “It really, really hurts!”
“I know it does, sweetie. I want to look at it so I can make it feel better, okay?” Gabi nodded and offered her injured arm. The doctor took it gingerly in his fingers. He started examining from her fingers up. “Let me know when it hurts,” he said. His fingers probed farther up her arm. The pain intensified a little, and then he reached a point that he touched and the flood gates opened. Gabi screamed and tried to pull her arm back, but he kept her from doing so.
“It hurts!”
“Okay, that helps me tell how to fix it. Does this hurt?” He poked and probed again, and she could feel his fingers, but the pain remained in the last spot he checked.
“No, it only hurts here,” she said as she gently placed her finger next to where her arm was throbbing.
Dr. Petrovsky nodded. “You’ve got a broken bone in your arm, Gabi. I need to fix this up. I’m going to talk to your mom and be right back with you, okay?”
Gabi nodded and curled up again. She whimpered, and as she waited for the doctor to return, she overheard part of the conversation with her mom.
“…Do you just want me to give her something for the pain?” he asked.
“Yes, please.” Her mom’s voice was quivering, and Gabi knew she was very upset. “Just fix up my baby.”
“Alright. Does she have any medical allergies?”
“No, just bees.”
“Okay. I’ll sedate her. You’re going to need to watch her for the rest of the day.”
“I will,” her mom promised.
Gabi could hear rustling noises near her as the doctor slipped on a pair of disposable gloves and laid out some medical tools next to him. Her mother knelt behind her and held her across her chest. The embrace of her mom helped dull the pain, until the doctor returned with a syringe, placing it on a tray next to him. Panic started to grip Gabi as she stared at the shiny tip of the needle. She recoiled, but could go nowhere as her mother held her fast.
“I’m going to give you a shot that will make you feel a lot better. It will sting for a minute, and then you’ll sleep for a little bit. When you wake up, your arm will be in a cast, and you won’t be able to move it for a while. We need to do this so your arm can heal, okay?”
Gabi looked up at her mom, who gave her a nervous smile and nodded. Gabi looked back at Doctor Petrovsky, pursed her lips, and nodded. He swiped a cleaning wipe across her other arm, retrieved the syringe, and pierced her arm with the needle. She barely felt anything as it went into her skin. She watched as the clear medicine was pushed into her, and the needle was pulled back.
“That didn’t hurt at all,” she said bravely. A moment later, her head began to swim. The pain in her arm quickly faded. She looked up at her mom. “I feel funny, Mama,” and then slipped into sleep.
Capt Haruka Kimura
Planetfall +10 days, early afternoon
Sleeper pod eleven site
“There’s been an incident.”
The look on James’s face told Haruka quite a bit. She had learned that he had a tell when something was eating at him. His eyebrows would furrow so deeply that they would weave together, and he would scratch his cheek. As he stood in front of a stand of wiry palm trees just off the beach, he went through this routine. Haruka sighed as she lifted herself to her feet. She wobbled once and he made a move to help her, but she waved him off.
“You still feeling a bit off?” he asked.
Haruka nodded and steadied herself on the trunk of another tree. She had thought that a day of rest would be enough to get her back on her feet after the ordeal she had endured since Raphael’s reactor went critical and the pods crashed, but she was just as tired this day as the day that pod eight’s survivors had arrived at the beach.
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “This incident, what happened?”
James eyed her for a second and scratched his cheek again. “It took a while for me to get the whole story, but I guess a bunch of kids were playing on the beach, and Aidan got hurt. One of the kids that saw it says that Gabi accidentally knocked him over and he hit his head, but his sister attacked Gabi.”
Haruka’s heart sank. She was very fond of Gabi and her family, and it made her anxious to know that another child had intentionally attacked her.
“Is she alright?”
“She’s got a broken arm, but she’s seen the doctor from pod eleven,” James said with a measured bob of his head. “It could have been much worse. Luis says that Marya clubbed her pretty good with a piece of driftwood, and was about to hit her again before he, Maria, and Kristin broke up the fight.”
“That’s pretty severe for a little kid to be doing that. Have you talked to Marya?”
“I have.”
“And what did she have to say?”
“Well, she was upset, but I’m pretty sure she thought that Gabi hurt her brother on purpose.”
Haruka cast her gaze down at the packed dirt and let loose a sigh. “Those two have been a bit of trouble since I returned Gabi from the jungle, haven’t they?”
“Yeah.”
“And now this.”
“Yeah.”
Haruka thought the situation through. She knew that the orphaned children would be struggling for some time with the loss of their parents, and that the Serranos had shown great kindness by taking them in as their own, but Gabi and Marya together at times were like a powder keg waiting to explode. Gabi didn’t understand the grief that Marya or her brother were dealing with, and Marya was so emotional that she was prone to irrationality.
And now violence.
“Get Luis for me please, James. I also want to speak with the doctor, if you don’t mind.”
“Understood. What about your meeting with Leight?”
I hadn’t forgotten, James. But thank you.
“A little demonstration for him, I’m thinking. If you could, bring all three of them here,” she replied.
His eyebrows perked up and his eyes widened. “What are you planning?”
“You said he believes we’re a burden, right? I’m just going to show him that we can handle ourselves.”
James gave her an incredulous look before he nodded and headed off toward the sleeper pod. A distant clap of thunder rolled through, nearly drowned out by the rustling of the breeze through the canopy of palm leaves above her head. Haruka paced parallel to the beach, emerging from behind the pod’s shadow. As she looked across the sparkling sea, she saw storm clouds on the horizon, closing in.
Great, just what we need.
A tiny yellow streak amongst the clouds, and a white flash silhouette of another cloud confirmed the presence of lightning, and almost a minute later, the faint rumble again taunted Haruka’s ears. She looked back at the camp where the survivors from pod eight had set up. Other than the trees and a few makeshift tents woven from fallen palm fronds and wood debris, they had absolutely no protection from a storm.
This is a tropical area, too. Haruka’s eyes swept back to the dark, roiling mass on the horizon. If this storm is anything like those on Earth, we’re in danger.
Project Columbus: Omnibus Page 44
