Exodus

by Toasha Jiordano

  //I don't know,// he muses, as I've done many times since waking from cryo.

  Suddenly, there's a bump on the bottom of his boot. We both jump and instantly his heat rises like a wall between us. He looks back and forth between the cactuses and his pod. Not sure which way to go. He's dead center.

  //No sense turning back now,// I say. //Make a run for it and be careful.// I hold my breath for him.

  //What am I supposed to do when I get there?//

  //I don't know but it beats standing still waiting for them to eat you.// Sympathy sweat beads up along my back, sticking me to the thin sheet on my bunk.

  //Touche.// Howie takes off running and I can feel the intense heat bearing down on me. I don't know if it's worse for him on the other side but I sure hope not. I couldn't bear what he's going through now.

  By the time he reaches the cactuses we are both pouring sweat. His arm bands turn to orange and red, then a dark angry red. He's panting and struggling for air. //Are you okay?//

  //Yeah just winded. And hot. So hot,// he assures me, although I feel the dryness of his throat as if it were my own. It’s obviously a lie, but one I welcome.

  //Where are they? Can you see them?// I ask. Howie turns his head so I can see the creatures’ humps rising out of the sand in different spots.

  It looks the same as before but they seem to be keeping their distance from him. They aren't attacking.

  //My blue is coming back.// He pants, and shows me his arm. The red is changing back to orange and a pale blue stripe forms around his bicep.

  //See if you can get some water and cool yourself down.//

  As I watch, Howie pulls out the I.V. needle from his pod and stabs it into the cactus. //Here goes nothing.// He pushes the needle as far as it will go through the cactus skin and pulls it back out. Nothing. He tries again closer to the base of the seven foot plant. But again nothing. //Maybe there's nothing inside these,// he says.

  I'm still thinking about the Howie-eating snakes and don't answer right away. //Are you fully blue yet?// I ask, distracted.

  //Yeah but didn't you hear me? There's no water in them.// He sounds dejected. All the plans we just wasted time on for nothing. My plans.

  //Go to another one.//

  //The other one is so far away. The snakes will get me if I keep running.//

  //I have an idea about that. Do you trust me?//

  //Do I trust you enough to run across a desert planet full of underground snakes that want to eat me? Sure why not?//

  //I don't think they want to eat you.//

  //Coulda fooled me.//

  //Show me the ground again.// I lean over my bed, miming the motions as Howie does them.

  It's the same. They're circling in the distance, but near enough. //Walk out there.//

  //No!// Howie recoils, practically hugging the cactus until one of its needles pokes him back.

  //You said you were gonna trust me.//

  //You didn't say you were gonna kill me with that trust.//

  Taking the tone I used on Brooks when he was little, and hated, I coddle Howie enough to pry his fingers off the cactus.

  //You better know what you're talking about.// He wipes his bloody hand down the suit and steps toward the other cactus. The snakes sense his movement and disappear underground. //That can't be good.// Howie says, but to his credit he keeps going.

  //OK stop.//

  //Seriously?//

  //Yes, right there.//

  //Stone, you better know what you're doing. What's in it for me if this goes south?// Howie asks, turning in his spot, watching the curvature of the snakes move closer.

  //That deathbed thing.// I offer.

  Howie becomes perfectly still, except for the growing Cheshire grin. //Then I sure as hell hope I survive.//

  ###

  The swarm bumps Howie’s boot again, each taking its turn, until I feel the heat rise to impossible temperatures.

  //Let me see your leg.// He obeys. The bottom band flickers between pale blue and orange. Another round of bumps sends it to deep red.

  //My arms are starting to turn.// Howie warns me. We both have trouble breathing.

  //Run to the other cactus.// I cross my fingers like a child and I’m glad both our attentions are on his world and not mine. But still, this is it.

  He takes off at full speed, which is much slower than this morning. How long have we been at this?

  //I don't know,// Howie answers my unspoken thought as he reaches the cactus. This one is much larger than the first, and it's color is richer. Still ruddy, but with a tinge of reassuring green. //I'm beat though.//

  //Me too. Hopefully this works and we can call it a win.//

  Howie smiles for me. //My Howie-eating snakes didn't eat me. I'm calling it a win. But it is getting dark out here.// He fumbles with the needle, and jabs it into the fattest bulb. As we wait for water, he asks, //So, were they vegan or something?//

  We both stare at the needle, willing it to drip. Thankful for the distraction, watched pots and all, I lay out my theory for him. //Basically I think they're like electric eels, only… backwards. They kept draining your suit, but they didn't like the cactuses.

  A thick blob of clearish liquid bubbles out of the end of the needle just as Howie is about to say //Cacti.// We both heave a sigh of relief and instead he says, //Because of the water.// He wiggles the needle until the juice runs a bit faster.

  //Yeah, glad I was right.// I can't stop myself.

  //Well,// Howie attaches the IV tube to the needle and fashions it to his mask. //Here's hoping you're two-for-two today. Bottoms up.// And he sucks the alien nectar into his breathing hole.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A life not worth the risk is a life not worth the living

  - ancient American proverb

  There’s a rasping sound; a choking that goes on forever.

  //Howie?//

  He’s coughing and gagging in my ear.

  //Howie? Are you OK?//

  //This stuff is gross!// Howie finally says. I see him wipe his mouth with the sleeve of his space wetsuit and gag beside the cactus. I don’t think anything comes out, though.

  I stand up straight, realizing for the first time that I’ve been leaning against the oven, shaking. How did I get here? The last thing I remember, I was in my room. Did I run all over the ship with him? We have to be more careful in these melds or I can get seriously hurt. Then what? //I’m gonna kick your ass.// I fling an angry scowl across our link, out of fear and relief and plain wanting to distract myself from what just happened.

  //What?// he asks, with that old glee in his voice, one I haven’t heard since before. And just like that, the anger’s gone.

  //What does it taste like?// My own stomach growls, then tightens with the memory of what I’d bee feeding it. Still, with no choice, I head to the walk-in cooler.

  //Remember that green vitamin stuff they made us drink when the crops started dying?//

  A wretch sweeps over me at the thought. //Poor thing.//

  //It doesn’t taste the same, but the tingle afterwards… It’s gonna be hard to live off this stuff.//

  As I fling gray slop into a bowl, part of me is glad to not be him. Then, as soon as I lick the salty sweet paste off the spoon, I wonder how long that feeling will last. //Let’s hope there are people over that ridge.// I say, dropping the spoon into the sink.

  Exhausted, we sit there, sharing a meal of sorts. Me on the cafeteria floor, too tired to walk across the room to a table, and him leaning carefully against a deformed cactus on an uncharted planet in a distant galaxy. But, that’s not how it feels. In the basest sense of the word, we’re together. And it’s wonderful.

  I imagine him making a tiny sand angel with his shoe, side to side, as he stands there waiting for the dew to drip into his hose. It’s a mindless gesture; one I’ve never pointed out for fear he’d stop doing it. Plus it made him terrible at hide and seek.

  //I knew you were cheating! All those years
—//

  All those years.

  Something about the way he said it makes me think of Marshall.

  All those years.

  I only catch part of what he says next, but it’s enough to pull me back to now.

  //… that shadow?// It’s a whisper, almost too low, which is what makes me take notice. I’m the only one who can hear him, so why is he afraid to make a sound?

  //What do you see? Show me… // For some reason, I whisper too.

  Red on red on red, every shade layered on top of each other; one black swath cuts across the horizon. It darts out of view before my eyes adjust, like a trick of the light. Only, this time Howie saw it.

  //What do you think it is?// I ask. //Did you get a good look?// I’m sitting up now, alert in my empty cavernous kitchen. I can’t tell if the warbles in my stomach are fear or fermented slop.

  //It was fast. I don’t know. But… at least it was eye level. Yeah, that’s good right? I mean, I’m not standing up. If he’s eye level down here —// Howie talks fast when he gets nervous, and even through my chip I can barely keep up.

  An unsteady laser focus bores into the spot where this thing disappeared. Vanished. It didn’t hide behind a tree or leap over the sand dunes. It was there one second and now…

  //I was hoping you wouldn’t think that.// Dread mixes with resignation of a doomed fate as Howie scans the horizon again.

  //It might be nothing. I mean, you’ve been there a couple days already, right? If it wanted to hurt you… I’m sure it’s fine.// I rationalize.

  //I was in the pod. Maybe… maybe it couldn’t smell me… or whichever alien sense it tracks prey with… until I got out.// Howie makes a run for it, before I can tell him to do exactly that.

  We both keep our eyes locked on that red void where the ominous shadow lurks no more. Intense heat rises in his suit, and my own pants and t-shirt. The electric sand eels anticipate his every move and are there to bump each footfall. They seem harmless now compared to the shadow creature.

  //Stone!// Howie slams his pod lid shut. //This planet hates me.//

  And the only thing I can think to comfort him is, //Not as much as the last one.//

  Somehow, it’s enough.

  //Guess I’m in for the night,// Howie transmits after catching his breath and fumbling for the spare IV supplies.

  A moment of unjustified terror sweeps over me and down our line of communication.

  Alone.

  //I’m not going anywhere… literally. I’m gonna stay up and keep watch for my new friend.//

  Even as he says it, the yawn in his throat grows. Only Howie could sleep through getting eaten by a shadow monster.

  //Do a three-sixty scan and send it over. I’m gonna try to research your planet.// I stand, exhausted, and still disoriented from being in the kitchen at all. Still, I’m not ready to give in.

  //OK, but we don’t know what planet I’m on.// Howie says as he starts the scan.

  //I’m sure the Council did preliminary research on all the potential planets before landing on Gliese. We could get lucky.//

  Howie sends a cheesy grin my way, along with the scan.

  I stand and stretch. It’s gonna be a long night.

  ###

  For the first time, I notice that there’s no strong smell of decay. Bodies still line the corridor and fill an unused hallway to the left that Marshall told me never to go down. But why don’t I smell them? Why aren’t they mummies? I think back to when I first woke up, when Marshall hurried me away from them, from my questions.

  Everywhere I go, the ship smells like rotting slop, but not rotting bodies. My hair. My hair is long — well, longer. Long enough to mean these people… shouldn’t look like real people anymore. It’s unnerving.

  Pushing the swirl of thoughts out of my mind, I pull up the ship schematic in my chip and turn toward the control office. I need to find out everything I can about the planets around here. Where in the world did Howie land?

  //Eaaht!// Howie yells, as if I’m a dog about to pee on the floor. It works. My heart skips and I grab the nearest wall.

  //I thought you’d be asleep by now, shadow monster or not.//

  //Thanks for calling it that. Now I’ll never go to sleep.// Howie teases, but I can feel his fear and regret my words.

  //Sorry.//

  //I’m almost out. I haven’t seen anything. But I can’t sleep because your brain won’t shut up. And… we talked about this.// I can picture him folding his arms in reproach, even though the pod leaves no room for it.

  //I didn’t say anything. And I didn’t think anything really. Not this time. I can at least figure out where you are. I may not be able to get to you — // My heart lurches at the thought. //But I can help you save yourself.// I lift my head in defiance, and send him the mental picture.

  //Yes, ma’am,// Howie chuckles. //Now, let me get some sleep. I’ve got shadow monsters to nightmare about.//

  For Howie’s sake, I send a haze of gray noise over our connection, interference against whatever my mind decides to think in the next few hours. He needs the rest.

  The control room is tucked into a corner, almost unreachable through the mass of plump ripe bodies. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Marshall purposely covered it. With corpses.

  I begin digging through the stack of people, clearing a path. At first I squeeze my eyes shut so I don’t have to see their faces. It makes it easier to treat it like an excavation mission, and harder at the same time. I don’t know what I’m grabbing or where. The last thing I want is to accidentally recognize someone, see their ending. Although, the only people I met were Comier and…

  I stop.

  The last time I saw Vallon, he was fighting with Marshall at the base of my pod. I think back to when I first woke up. I was so disoriented. And Marshall looked so sick, so weak. I can’t remember if I saw Vallon’s body.

  Shame tugs at my chestas I catch myself hoping to see it. Needing to see him lose after what he did to Comier. Then, determination takes over and shoves shame out of the way. I won’t pretend to be better than I am. I want him dead.

  A tingling sensation buzzes my fingertips and electricity crackles through me. I’m alive with… rage. Familiar seething rage. Every night since that day in the woods, I’ve dreamt of tracking those wannabe soldiers down and tearing their skin off piece by piece. Only slightly comforted by the thought of them shriveling to nothing on a dying Earth, I’d rather be the one to send them to their maker.

  Vallon. Oh, he’s a distant second on my list, but he’ll do just fine. I have to see him.

  I drop the arm I’d been holding this whole time, a woman in her mid forties with perfect nails. The classiest corpse on the ship, I’m sure.

  I get halfway back to the ship’s center, to the place where it all started, before I freeze. Turning on one foot, I spin back and forth, caught between going back to the control room for Howie or to find Vallon for me. In the end, after much longer than my conscience is happy with, I turn one final time back to where I came from. Howie deserves a stronger person than me. But I’m all he has.

  It takes an hour to breech the corpse barricade. The bodies may look pristine and barely dead, but they don’t feel that way. I’m covered in reddish brown slime. It’s between my fingers, all over my uniform, and — after an ill-timed sneeze — it’s been a long night.

  With every person that I moved, I became more worried about what they were hiding from me. Why they were erected in the first place. I’d built the horrors up in my mind to such proportions, that when I open the door and find… nothing… it’s somehow worse than everything I’d imagined.

  The control room is exactly how it should be. Everything is in place according to the blueprints. Monitors line the walls, some flashing reassuring green lights. Other stream a steady line of code or coordinates. One, the one I’m looking for, is playing a similar briefing montage as the one I had watched in my pod.

  As I get closer, I see it’s got to be
the Sanitation training. Large drones that look too heavy to control remotely zip in and out of the bubble houses, and make their way to the camp perimeter. There they dock to other, permanent-looking tubes, and unload their waste.

  My eyes follow the length of the tubes as they bore into the crystal blue ice below, then back up to the drone. The video zooms in, right where my gaze is trained. A panel drops out of the bottom of the drone and a steady stream of trash falls toward the tube. Trash and… bodies.

  Emaciated, bald, deformed bodies pour out of the drones and down the garbage chute. For the first time, I realize just how similar they are to the Waste Containment drones from home. Dad and I would watch them flit up and down the roads like clockwork, sucking up our neighbors’ trash from the cylindrical cans. As a young girl I was always amazed how the drones knew to skip triangles and squares; recycling and compost. I had personified them as good little helpers, Dad’s name for me.

  I stumble backward, a cry forming in my throat at my pathetic innocence, and catch myself on a table. The monitor on top of it wobbles and flickers on.

  A light green cursor flashes over the first of four empty dashes. Remembering my mission, I enter Marshall’s code and scroll through the files until I find one named “Rejected Terraforms.” It sounds just the right amount of ominous to know that’s where I’ll find Howie.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  For death and life, with ceaseless strife,

  Beat wild on this world’s shore;

  And all our calm is in that balm, —

  “Not lost but gone before.”

  Caroline Elizabeth Norton

  “Well, shit.” Three hours of my life, gone. I try not to think about just how screwed Howie is, to keep the dread from leaking out. Whatever this new level of intimacy is between us, it can read my thoughts without permission.

  For a long moment, I don’t move. Don’t propel myself toward the inevitable. As long as I’m here, in this moment, he’s safe.

  My monitor goes black, revealing the reflection of the screen behind me. Pod after pod dumping bodies into the beautiful blue ocean below. A fitting scene for what I’m feeling about our chances.