Nights of the Living Dead
Page 13
He struggled against the handcuffs as I headed for the door. Soon as I cleared it, I gave a sharp whistle.
An engine thundered. Tires spun. A truck roared out of the darkness, coming on fast … in reverse. I leaped off the porch to get clear.
The truck had built up a good head of steam by the time its back end plowed through the front wall of the house, tailgate open.
When the dust settled, I could see Pam through the truck’s rear window, grinning at me from behind the wheel. She kicked open the passenger door. I climbed in, shouting, “Gun it, baby!”
She jammed the stick into first, popped the clutch, and floored the gas. The flatbed lurched, sending its cargo of flesh eaters tumbling out the lowered tailgate.
The last we heard from Garrett were strangled screams coming from beneath the horde of feasting ghouls.
He was begging me for a mercy kill.
I’d run plumb out of mercy.
* * *
That was four hours and two hundred miles ago. The last report we heard on the radio was that the undead had been largely contained in the area … but that there was still no word from across the state line.
As I sit here writing this, in a ransacked room in an abandoned motel, listening to the sounds of Pam’s fitful breathing while she sleeps, watching the candlelight dance across her pretty face, I can’t rightly say what’s in store for us. I only know we’ll find a way to survive … together.
And I’ll tell you one more thing I know from experience. Being undead ain’t anywhere near the same thing as being alive. I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson in that somewhere.
ORBITAL DECAY
by David Wellington
[The following is the final radio transcript of the International Space Station, discovered on a backup drive at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. That night three astronauts and one cosmonaut were aboard the station, identified by their initials in the transcript:
JH: Jackson Hartzfeld, “Hartz,” Mission Commander
SF: Sergei Favorov, Russian Mission Coordinator
KR: Karl Guernsey, Science Mission Specialist
MJ: Marcia Jernigan, Flight Engineer
Throughout, all mission control personnel are identified as MCC.
Given the events of that night on Earth, it is little surprise that the video feed of the following events is lost to history. However, we can piece together a partial account of what happened from the words of these final space travelers. Those of a sensitive nature, or who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from the events of that night, are advised to stop reading now.]
MCC: Go ahead, Hartz. Feeling nervous?
JH: A little.
MCC: It’ll be fine. Just remember to smile. You’re on in five. In position okay?
JH: I’m okay, just—
MCC: Two. One. Go ahead.
JH: Hello, Baker Elementary! My name is Jack Hartzfeld, and I’m talking to you from space! I’m on the International Space Station. Look, I’m floating! That’s because there’s no gravity in space. I’m in orbit around the Earth—you can ask your teacher what an orbit is. Right now I’m almost directly over Pittsburgh, about two hundred and fifty miles overhead. When it gets dark tonight, you might actually be able to see me. I’ll be a bright dot moving across the sky pretty fast …
[Portions of JH’s presentation to Baker Elementary School have been omitted from this transcript due to lack of relevance. Simultaneous to the presentation, MJ was overseeing the final approach of a Soyuz spacecraft, which was due to rendezvous with the ISS and deliver three new crewmembers, allowing JH to rotate home.]
MJ: Mission Control, I have visual on Soyuz TMA-21M. These numbers are a little—
MCC: Confirmed, Jernigan. We have a radio fault with Soyuz. Not getting any voice, and our telemetry looks a little off. Can you confirm Soyuz velocity?
MJ: About ten mps over nominal. Do we need to go to manual docking?
MCC: Negative, Jernigan. We can’t raise the crew. We’ll have the fault fixed soon, promise. In the meantime we’re going to scrub the rendezvous. Just to be safe.
MJ: Hartz isn’t going to like that. His stress level … man. I’m looking forward to him getting off of this tin can, I tell ya …
MCC: We’ll reschedule for tomorrow. He’ll be fine.
JH:… station is built from modules, kind of like Lego bricks. In fact, we built the station up piece by piece, from what we call modules. The first parts were called Zvezda and Zarya, which are Russian names, because those modules were built by Russians like Sergei here. Sergei is running on the treadmill, because in space you have to exercise constantly or your muscles get weak. Sergei, say hello to—
SF: Hello, Amerikanski children!
JH: Ha ha, Sergei’s a pretty funny guy. He speaks English as well as you or me, don’t let him fool you.
SF: Da, is true, this thing he say.
JH: Oh, Sergei! Anyway, mostly we live and work in the Zvezda module, but I’m talking to you from an American-built laboratory module called Destiny. There are also labs called Columbus and Quest. Next we have the BEAM module, which is like a balloon you can float around in, it’s kind of like a bouncy house; and there’s the Cupola, which is a whole module that’s pretty much all windows, so we can see outside. We call it our observatory module. Hey, would you look at this pen—see how it floats in the air? It can’t fall down, because without gravity there is no …
MJ: Houston, I need a range check on Soyuz.
MCC: Looks good down here. What are you seeing?
MJ: Getting a little close for comfort. You aborted the docking sequence?
MCC: That’s affirmative, ISS. Soyuz should swing past you with plenty of room to spare.
MJ: Range check, Houston, this is—this is too close, we have—
MCC: Still showing fifty meters clearance, somebody—somebody get that radio fault fixed now. Now! ISS, we are not anticipating any issues. Soyuz is still five minutes out, plenty of time to fix the fault and adjust course if necessary.
MJ: Holding my breath up here, Control.
JH:… what everybody wants to see, right? Our bathroom! This is the question every astronaut gets asked. How do you go to the bathroom in space. Well. I don’t want to be too gross about it. Everything in space is different, though. In fact—in fact—let me tell you the truth, kids. Space … space fucking sucks.
MCC: Hartz? Did you just—
JH: I’ve been up here three months. I am sick and fucking tired of floating pens and clamping a vacuum to my ass every time I take a shit.
MCC: Hartz, please respond, you are—
JH: There’s nobody there, Control.
MCC: Say again.
JH: Houston, I’m telling you. I’m looking at video of an empty classroom. No kids, no teacher. What the hell is going on here?
MCC: Checking now. Okay, okay. Yeah … hold on, Hartz.
JH: Jesus, can we get it together down there? I rehearsed this stupid presentation for hours, and—
MCC: Okay, we have … we have an explanation, there was some kind of evacuation at the school. They’re all out in the parking lot right now and police are—
JH: Holy shit. Are the kids okay? Tell me they’re—
MCC: Sure they’re fine. This is probably nothing. Just an Active Shooter Drill or something, those happen all the time.
JH: They have … what did you call it? Active Shooter Drills now? Like they have to teach the kids what to do if a crazy guy comes into the school shooting?
MCC: In my day we had Duck and Cover. Maybe you want to stay up there, Hartz? Maybe it’s not safe down here.
JH: Hardy-har-har. No, Control. I am coming home tonight. I’m going to kiss my girlfriend and pet my dog and drink about fifty beers. Okay, what do we do now? No point in continuing my presentation without any kids, so—
MCC: Stand by, Hartz.
JH: What?
MCC: Just stand by. We have a … let’s not call i
t a problem, yet.
MJ: Soyuz is still approaching—Control, you need to tell this thing that you aborted the rendezvous. Or I need to move the whole damned ISS out of its way.
MCC: Jernigan, negative, we’ve figured out the problem, or rather—
MJ: I can see it. I can see Soyuz right outside, it’s moving too fast.
MCC: There is no radio fault, that’s the problem, we just can’t raise the crew.
MJ: Say again?
MCC: Crew is not responding. There may have been a depressurization event during liftoff—
MJ: Oh, shit. You’re telling me the crew is dead in there? They’re dead in there and—
MCC: ISS, do not panic, we’re going to move the station, okay? We’ll just move the station, and—
MJ: It’s right outside! It’s right here and it’s moving too fast, it’s moving too—
[Seventeen seconds are missing from the transcript, presumably due to a failure in ISS’s main communication antenna. The transcript remains garbled for another thirty-nine seconds, with only sporadic voice data remaining legible.]
KR: Control, it took off—
MJ:—depressurization in the Kibo lab module, in Columbus module, in Destiny, in—
KR:—lost, port photovoltaic arrays all gone, we have lost some heat radiators, checking which ones, we have lost the Canadarm-2, we have holes, actual punctures in—
JH: Sergei! Sergei, get out of—Sergei!
MJ: Control, please come in, Control! Control, please please please …
JH: Sergei! I have to—I can’t stay, I have to—
KR:—feel funny, my ears are, shit, that’s blood, there’s blood coming from my—
MJ: Columbus is gone. Truss P1 is gone. Truss P2, Truss P3, the Pirs airlock is gone.
KR:—a little … can’t … my vision is restricted and blurry, my nose, my nose is bleeding …
MJ: Control! Come in, Control, we are—
JH: Sergei—I’m so sorry, man, I—I’m so sorry …
[Radio contact between ISS and MCC was not fully reestablished until 23:04 UTC. Several lines of the transcript were illegible and have been omitted here. It is believed they represent KR moaning in pain, and nothing more.]
MJ:… bus four is reporting yellow. Bus five is reporting yellow.
JH: I could have …
MJ: Bus six is, well, that’s new. It’s not reporting at all. Bus seven is—
MCC: ISS, are you receiving? ISS, come in please.
MJ:—red. Shit. Bus seven is reporting red. That’s … that’s not good, Hartz, are you—
JH: I could have saved him, Marcia. I could have. I could have.
MCC: ISS, please reply. Are you receiving?
MJ: Houston? Oh, God—Houston, is that you? We thought—we—
MCC: Took us a while to get the secondary antenna up, there’s—
MJ:—alone up here, thought we—
MCC:—not a lot of power, and we lost most of the camera feeds. Can you tell us what happened?
MJ: What happened? You want to know what happened? You ought to have a better idea than we do, Control. We’re half blind up here.
MCC: Situation’s not much better down here. I’ve got video of you and Hartz, but can’t seem to find Karl or Sergei anywhere, can you—
JH: Sergei’s dead. I killed him.
MCC:… say again, Hartz?
MJ: He’s being dramatic! Hartz, shut up for a second, okay? Control, we … we’re kind of screwed right now. Soyuz smacked into us at a pretty good clip. Tore right through the labs, and debris knocked out all the solar panels. We’re running on batteries, and those won’t last long. We need immediate rescue.
MCC: Sergei’s dead?
MJ: Yeah. Yeah, he. Yes, Control. Crewmember Sergei Favorov is deceased, time of death … it doesn’t matter. Hartz and Sergei were in the Destiny laboratory module when Soyuz crashed into it. Hartz was able to make it back here, to Zvezda, before he could succumb to decompression. Sergei wasn’t as lucky, he was—
JH: He was still strapped into the treadmill, he couldn’t get loose. Control, I could have helped him, I could have gotten him out of there. I take full responsibility, both as mission commander and because I could have fucking helped him, but I was … I was terrified, I just wanted to escape, to get away before—
MJ: Hartz! Shut the hell up! Let me tell them our situation, or we’re all dead!
MCC: What about Karl? Is Karl alive?
MJ: Affirmative, Control. Though he’s in bad shape. He was in the BEAM inflatable habitat module when Soyuz hit. The BEAM didn’t take immediate damage and I guess he thought he was going to be okay. He was monitoring the damage, seeing what we could salvage immediately after the impact, and I guess he just didn’t notice that the BEAM was losing air. That thing is just a big balloon, it must have been punctured … he started reporting signs of decompression sickness but by the time I dragged him out of there he was unconscious. I brought him in here and stuffed him in a sleepsac, I didn’t know what else to do. He lost some blood, and his eyes are pretty red. I don’t know. I’m not a flight surgeon, Control. I just don’t know.
MCC: Is BEAM sealed off, now? Zvezda is airtight?
MJ: Yeah.
MCC: How is your life support situation, ISS?
MJ: Not great. We’re down to bottled oxygen, all the oxygen generators are gone or down. Water and food supplies are good, I guess. Temperature is a little high, but not uncomfortable yet. We can hold on a couple days, should be long enough until the rescue boat gets here. If we’re careful. The real problem is going to be power. I’ve switched off everything that isn’t directly keeping us alive, everything but a couple of lights, and those’ll have to go, soon enough. We can ration battery use, but—it’s going to be close. It’s going to be close but we are going to live through this. Right, Hartz?
JH: I …
MJ: I said we’re going to live through this. Hartz, say yes.
JH: Yes.
MJ: Say fuck yes, we’re going to live. Say it!
JH: Fuck yes. We’re going to … live.
MJ: Jesus. Control, tell me something. Tell me something, just, just anything—tell me why this happened, why your range estimate on Soyuz was off, why we couldn’t move the station in time. Tell me why this is happening to us. I don’t want to hear that it needs further study. I don’t want to hear you don’t know. I need to understand what happened.
MCC: Well …
MJ: Please, Control. Come on.
MCC: I … look. This isn’t an excuse. What happened, yeah, it was our fault.
MJ: Huh.
MCC: Again, not an excuse, but—but only about half of the crew down here showed up for work today. There’s something going around, some kind of flu or something, and we didn’t have enough people, we didn’t have the right people—
MJ: You hear that, Hartz? It wasn’t your fault. Look at me, you fucker!
JH: Ow! Jesus, you didn’t have to slap me, Marcia, you—
MJ: You didn’t kill Sergei. Control did. They just admitted it, okay? They just told us that. So you didn’t do it. Okay? Okay?
JH:… okay.
MJ: But if you don’t help me right now, if you don’t work with me, then you will be killing me. And Karl. You understand that?
JH: Sure, Marcia. Sure.
MJ: Control—I’m going to switch off the radio to conserve power. I’ll report in every half hour. You make sure there’s somebody listening when I do.
MCC: Understood, ISS.
[The following transmission was received at 23:37 UTC.]
MJ: Control? I’m in the Cupola, looking at you. Looking at Earth. We’re over California, and I can see a forest fire down there, and it’s just beautiful. I know it’s terrible, I know it’s a disaster, but up here it’s just flickering lights, red in the green. It’s kind of beautiful. I guess. There’s never enough time for this, you know? To just take in the view.
MCC: You sound like you’re in a little better spirit
s, Marcia.
MJ: Do I? I must have been a wreck before. I’ve been crying … I can’t seem to stop. Damn. Big tough astronaut ladies aren’t supposed to … hell. Maybe I sound better because I’m away from Hartz for a second. He’s working, but he’s slow, dragging. Helping, I guess, but damn. Being around him … never mind, Control. Talk to me about rescue. What’s the ETA on our rescue ship?
MCC: We’re working on it. The second I have actual numbers I’ll let you know.
MJ: Sure. Sure. Okay. Shit, I’m getting tears everywhere. They’re just floating away from me, kind of drifting toward the air vents. I’ll catch them before they short anything out, don’t worry.
MCC: We’ve got a lot of faith in you, Marcia.
MJ: Thanks.
MCC: Listen, there’s something … maybe it’s better if Hartz doesn’t hear this.
MJ:… go ahead.
MCC: We’ve seen a kind of weird reading. It’s got to be anomalous, I don’t want you taking any action on this. It can’t mean anything.
MJ: Go ahead.
MCC: It’s the treadmill. In Destiny. It’s moving.
MJ: What?
MCC: The treadmill, the one Sergei was using. It’s reading out as still being in motion, as if he was still using it. Which is, of course, impossible.
MJ: Yeah.
MCC: It can’t mean anything. But you need to know about it. Because it’s draining your batteries.
MJ: Understood, Control.
[23:46 UTC.]
JH:… have to. We have to! If he’s—
MJ: Control, Hartz is going to—
JH: If Sergei is still alive, somehow, I mean, maybe there’s still some air trapped in there, or, or something—
MJ: Houston, are you receiving?
MCC: We’re here, Marcia. Please report?
MJ: I’m helping Hartz get into one of the old Russian Orlan spacesuits. I’m helping him because he’s still mission commander and he gave me an order. I’m calling you to register the fact that I disagree with his decision.
JH: We can’t just leave him in there! He could die at any minute!
MCC: Please confirm, here. Hartz is suiting up so—why? So he can—
MJ: He’s going into Destiny. To see if Sergei is still alive.
JH: Help me with this, Marcia. Help me get the gloves—there. And the helmet.