by Kyle West
It was the most alien thing I had ever seen, and each of those mouths bore long, sharp teeth that dripped purple saliva. It walked on four muscular legs, and its scales were the color of crimson blood. Its necks stiffened, and the three heads opened their mouths to scream, each a different pitch, producing the most horrifying, discordant noise I had ever heard.
It charged forward, lightning-fast. We didn’t even have time to shoot before it slammed all four of us back into the door from which we had come.
One of the heads was in front of me, snapping around my face. I dodged it, again and again, but I couldn’t keep it up forever. The head reared back on its stalk. I took the chance to grab the neck. I could feel the hard scales and the muscles bulging beneath. I slammed it with the butt of my Beretta. The thing screamed, hacking up purple phlegm that spewed onto the wall behind me.
I aimed for the neck, and fired.
It screamed again. I was hurting it, but I had made no visible wound. Those scales were strong if bullets couldn’t pierce them. All I had managed to do was piss it off.
Its head reared back from me again. It shot forward, nearly sinking its teeth into me. Instead, its face slammed against the door, making a dent in the metal.
I grabbed the Hydra in a chokehold at the top of its neck. I had no idea if it was working. I noticed Samuel and Makara were each busy with one of the heads, while Anna was behind the Hydra, dodging its swiping, spiky tail. She was trying to find an opening to stab it with her katana.
I screamed as the neck shook me loose, sending me spiraling horizontally through the air. Disoriented, I got up, only to knock my head on the creature’s belly. I had somehow ended up underneath it.
But when my head hit it, I realized this part of it was soft. Taking my chance, I took out my gun and fired.
It clicked. The magazine was empty.
A head snaked under its body, searching me out. I scrambled away, reaching for my combat knife. It wasn’t often that I used it. I hadn’t had the need.
Now I did.
I took it out, and stabbed the blade upward into the creature’s gut.
It gave a horrible wail, and purple gunk spewed onto the floor, covering my legs. Disgusted, I drew back, but I couldn’t stop. Infected or not, I had to keep gashing it. I stabbed it, again and again. Its tail behind slashed wildly, nearly hitting Anna. She slid on the floor, through the puddle of goo, holding her katana up as she slid. The blade sliced through the stomach, making a deep wound – so deep that it couldn’t support the creature’s bowels, which tumbled out and plopped on the floor right in front of me, causing me throw up on the spot.
The Hydra’s legs gave out. I had to move before it crushed me. I slid out of the way just as it came down, Anna doing the same thing on the creature’s other side. It crashed to the floor. Its tentacle-like necks quivered and grew still.
I was covered with purple goo and monster excrement. I felt as if I could wash myself for the rest of time and never be clean.
“Gross does not even begin to describe this,” I said.
“Come on,” Samuel said. “Stairs are over here.”
I followed the others, looking and smelling like death.
“You alright?” Anna asked
“Yeah. That was a slick move there. Wish you could have done it in a way that didn’t involve me smelling like sewage.”
She cracked a grin. “I try.”
We ran up the stairs. Somehow, the monsters had gotten in. They chased us upward through the flights. Looking down, I saw them two floors below us.
We were on floor twenty. We still had thirty to go.
I picked up the pace. I was dying from exhaustion, but if I died from this running, it would be better than letting those bastards get to me. We took the steps two and three at a time, never letting up. I thought I needed to grow a third lung to get enough air.
Finally, with ten floors left, Makara collapsed. The monsters were just one flight down. And unlike us, they didn’t get tired.
“Come on!” I yelled. “Up, let’s go!”
I remembered all the times Makara had forced me to go on. It was my turn to return the favor.
I grabbed her with my stinky hand and pulled her up. We ran the rest of the way. There were dozens of crawlers slithering their way upon their squat, bowed legs.
Finally, we made it to the tunnel that led to the runway door. The temperature up here was cold, and the monster fluids covering me from head to toe certainly didn’t help matters. We ran at a sprint. The door came into view.
Unlatching it, Samuel pushed it open. The rush of subzero wind would freeze all the liquids on my body within moments. Crying from the pain of it, I ran with the others across the runway, wondering first why we were even here, and second, how long it would take us to die, either from monsters or the cold. There was nothing waiting for us as the doctor had promised. There was only a sea of crawlers closing in from every direction. There was no airplane, helicopter, nothing that I expected. Whatever was supposed to be here was not.
Monsters flooded the runway from all sides, including the door we had just left.
There were hundreds – maybe thousands. Even worse, even the skies were clouded with swarms of infected birds.
We weren’t going to get out of this one alive.
Chapter 23
That was when a blinding light flew over the top of Cheyenne Mountain. And I mean, flying. The engine roared, drowning out even the noise of the monsters. Even they paused a bit at the approach of the giant, flying machine. The machine flew closer, along the side of the mountain from where it had been hidden, floodlights illuminating our shivering bodies on the runway.
Is that...a spaceship?
I had little time to be surprised. The monsters regained their focus and closed in as the ship descended and hovered above us. Anna sliced a couple crawlers open as they neared, and the rest of us fired into the braver ones edging closer. A porthole opened on the ship; a synthetic rope ladder descended.
“Go!” Samuel said to me.
I hopped on, scrambling upward to make room for the others. Anna came after me, then Makara. Finally, even with only one good arm, Samuel hopped up, forcing his legs up the ladder.
The ladder was unwieldy, swaying back and forth in the bitterly cold wind. My vision darkened.
Anna pushed me up from behind.
“Go, Alex!”
I forced myself up the ladder. I didn’t have any strength left. The cold was sapping it out of me.
It was all I could do to hold on as the ship lifted up from the ground. The monsters below closed around where we had been standing, howling at seeing their prey escape.
The birds, however, could not be so easily avoided.
The ladder began retracting into the ship, carrying all of us with it.
Just hold on...
We neared the porthole. Finally I entered it and was inside the ship. I fell onto the cold deck. I was freezing cold. The others pulled themselves through and piled next to me. Samuel entered last, and then the porthole slammed shut.
In the pitch black, the engines of the spaceship roared. We were moving upward.
***
I lay on the deck, shivering and cold. The ship hummed beneath me. I heard the rush of wind outside.
There was a heaviness all over that I couldn’t explain. I realized that it was Samuel’s jacket.
“We made it?” I asked, shivering.
“Yes,” Samuel said.
“I guess we’ll meet him soon,” Anna said.
As we sat there in the dark compartment we had entered, no one said anything. We only shivered and huddled together for warmth. The gunk on my clothes and skin had frozen from being outside for a mere two minutes.
A nearby door hissed open. We all turned toward the light. But no one appeared.
Then the man’s voice came from the intercom.
“Come on,” he said. “Step inside. It’s warmer in there than the cargo bay. Welcome aboard the
Gilgamesh.”
The intercom clicked off.
“Is this really a spaceship?” I asked.
“Looks like it,” Samuel said.
“Did you read anything about that in your Black Files?”
“Nope.”
Warm air gushed out of the door. That was enough incentive for me to stand on unsteady legs and make my way forward. The others followed me. I stepped into the light, and the door hissed shut behind.
The surfaces were all gray. The corridor we were in led straight forward. From somewhere to our left came a low hum – the engine, probably. The bridge would probably be to our right.
We walked forward, unsure of our surroundings. The corridor was narrow. We passed an open door that led to a couple of bunks. We passed a circular table against the wall, went through a small kitchen. We entered a narrow corridor. Ahead were controls, LCD screens, and a pilot’s seat. Above the rim of the seat was a head of wild, white hair.
We entered the bridge. The man remained seated. We stood there, shivering and cold.
None of us said anything. Ahead of the ship, it was dark. I couldn’t see the land or mountain below.
The man swiveled in his chair, revealing his wrinkled face, sharp blue eyes covered by glasses, and thin lips. Long white hair descended to his shoulders. He wore khaki pants, a long-sleeved green shirt, and a thick brown vest.
“My God, you could have at least cleaned up a little before coming in here.”
No one said anything. We were cold, exhausted, and had nearly died a dozen times in the past hour. We weren’t exactly in the mood for humor.
“As you might have guessed, I am Dr. Cornelius Ashton. You can call me Ashton; not quite as bad as Cornelius. And this is the Gilgamesh – one of several advanced spaceships built by the U.S. government during the Dark Decade. S-Class. It runs on a prototype miniature fusion reactor. It has a titanium and carbon nanotube hull – light as a feather, stronger by many factors than steel. It can carry up to twelve crewmen, and as far as I know, it is one of four spaceships operational in the world – or out of this world, if you prefer it.”
“And where are we going, in this spaceship?” Samuel asked.
“You must be Samuel,” Ashton said. “You look just like your father.” The man turned to Makara. “And you must be little Makara. Not so little, anymore. You were probably too young to remember me. And you two, I don’t know.”
“That would Alex, and Anna,” Makara put in quickly. “And Lisa...Lisa is gone.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ashton said. “We don’t have much time, in any sense. I can explain it all later. Right now, we need to get home.”
“Home?” Samuel asked. “What do you mean, home?”
“You don’t know about it yet,” Ashton said, “but you will. This place was known to only a few on the surface. I was one of the few, among the President and others – before they all died.”
What place was this man talking about?
He pressed a button on the dash. “Gilgamesh...take us to Skyhome.”
A deep, computerized male voice responded. “Destination: Skyhome.”
The ship shifted below us, aiming upward.
“Strap yourselves in,” Ashton said. “We’ll be there in mere minutes.”
“Skyhome,” I said. “Is that a space station?”
“Yes. The Skyhome Program was the other side of the coin from the Bunkers. The government planned to build more – but funds ran out, so Skyhome was the only one to be completed.”
By this point, we had strapped ourselves in. The ship paused. The floor vibrated beneath me, intensifying. Finally, we were pointed at a 45-degree angle upward.
“Here we go,” Ashton said.
The ship moved as I was pushed back into my seat. Someone screamed – either Anna or Makara, I couldn’t tell. Suddenly, there were stars as we broke through the clouds. Just as I was on the verge of losing consciousness, the ship slowed. The stars grew in intensity. A minute later, I was floating upward in my seat, restrained only by my seatbelt.
We had escaped not only Bunker One, but Earth’s gravity. Sickness came over me, but I had already thrown everything up down below.
Down below; it seemed strange to think those words. The ship pointed downward, away from the stars. The surface of our planet curved below – dark, shaded in night, surrounded by an aurora of violet blue. Straight ahead was the moon, unbelievably bright and clear without any atmosphere to mask its grandeur. Stars studded the black void, steady and eternal in their myriad thousands.
No one said anything as we took in the vista. So much had happened that it was hard not to believe it was all a dream – the dreamlike quality enhanced by the fact that none of us had weight. When I was young, I thought I would go my whole life without ever riding in a car, much less a plane. Now, I was flying in a spaceship. Surreal did not even begin to describe it.
Ten minutes later, a shape formed in the distance. Three rings spun around a large central hub. Branching out like giant arms were solar arrays, capturing unfiltered sunlight to power the station. Flecks of green colored the windows of one of the spirals – plants being grown?
“There she is,” Ashton said with pride. “Skyhome.”
I never thought I would see anything like it. We were going there, and I wondered if it would be our new home. Would we stay there? Would we be safe from the xenovirus, or would it touch us here, too?
Out there, in the black void of space, maybe not even all that far from us, our doom lurked. We knew what was coming after us, and the knowing somehow only made it worse. I had no idea how we were going to stop this, or even if we could. Maybe Ashton had a plan. But first we would have to rest, recoup. God knows I needed a hot shower that would last for eternity.
All these questions would remain unanswered...at least for a while. Even as I beheld the wonder of that floating city, I couldn’t help but feel sick at what we had learned: that Ragnarok truly was only the beginning.
Chapter 24
There was nothing to do but wait.
We had been in Skyhome for a full month, and it had taken me a week just to get used to the dizzy spinning of the stars from the three rotating rings. The fact that we were here, in space, never ceased to be mind-blowing.
Beginning in the Dark Decade, NASA devoted all of its energy to the Skyhome Program. Skyhome 1 was the only one to ever be completed. It had taken ten years, hundreds of launches, and billions of dollars just to get it livable. Skyhome was designed to be self-sufficient, but in the rare case that a spare part or supply was needed, the Gilgamesh could easily travel between Skyhome and one of the Bunkers. Odin, a second, smaller ship, was also docked in Skyhome’s hangar.
The Gilgamesh, as well as the Odin, had been constructed during the Dark Decade, along with two other ships. It was clear that launching rockets into space was inefficient – an advanced, reusable spacecraft was necessary. During the 2020s, huge advances were made in fusion power. These advances made it possible to equip the four under-construction spaceships with a fusion drive. Though the drive was massive, the enormous amount of energy produced was more than enough to make up for it. And to refuel, the ships would not need complex rocket fuel, a commodity that would not have existed for long post-Ragnarok. All they would need was hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe.
Unfortunately, Gilgamesh and Odin were the only ships that were operational. The other two, Orion and Perseus, were still docked in Bunker Six, a massive complex not too far from Bunker One. Of course, it was covered with the Great Blight, so getting in and liberating the ships was extremely risky. Skyhome just did not have the manpower to do it.
In that first month at Skyhome, we all got the chance to think, finally. We ate fresh fruits and vegetables, and there was even chicken. The Outer Ring, the largest of three, was entirely devoted to food production. The plants produced oxygen, and the humans and animals in turn produced carbon dioxide. All water was recycled within the closed environm
ent, and there was plenty in reserve in case something went wrong. And of course, the sunlight provided more energy, both for electronics and plants, than Skyhome would ever need.
Living in space, however, brought two great risks, and Skyhome had so far been spared from both. The first was radiation. While Skyhome had normally adequate radiation shielding, a sudden solar flare would douse the station with unhealthy levels of radiation. It would fry electronics as well as anyone exposed to the harmful rays. There was also the threat of stray rocks and debris striking the station. Skyhome had a tracking system that monitored space debris orbiting Earth, but the system wasn’t perfect. There had been a couple times in Skyhome’s history where its occupants had to do an emergency EVA to change the course of debris on a crash course with the station. If good-sized debris hit, it could poke a hole large enough to depressurize the station in minutes.
Hits by smaller debris were a somewhat common occurrence. Usually, the pieces were not large and fast enough to go through the station’s shell, but if they were, there was a system in place within Skyhome that detected leaks. After the leak was discovered and pinpointed, it was a simple matter of covering the whole with resin until a more permanent repair could be implemented.
While living in space might seem as if it was safer than the surface, this was far from the truth. Solar flares were never a question of “if,” but “when.” And one day, a big rock or piece of space junk could hit the station and end it.
But for now, Skyhome operated, and within its three rings people lived and worked. It was strange, seeing so many people again. About eighty lived here. The entire community had reacted to our coming with a mixture of fascination and fear. The citizens of Skyhome treated us in much the same way as a Bunker resident would treat a Wastelander. None of them had seen anyone who had lived and survived on the surface. We had been the stuff of speculation, and even legend.
After the fall of Bunker One, Dr. Ashton and several Bunker One refugees had managed to pilot the Gilgamesh to Skyhome. There were already survivors from Bunker Six living on the station, who had used Odin to escape. Sadly, none of the survivors knew Samuel or Makara.
