“Yeah. Well, at least you’re alive. And I bet your mom is, too.”
Val regarded him skeptically. “You think?”
“For real,” he added. “Texas was one of the designated evac zones. Far from the tsunamis predicted along the West and East Coasts. Far enough from Yellowstone. People there are probably rebuilding as we speak.”
“Maybe,” Val agreed, flashing half a smile as she set aside her over-dried pan. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m never going to see my mom again.”
“Maybe not,” Tony replied. “But at least you’ve got your dad. He seems... nice.” He struggled with that word, and Val laughed.
“He is when he wants to be. He just needs to warm up to you, that’s all. He didn’t like boys hitting on me back home, either.”
“You had a boyfriend?”
“Not really.”
“Oh, okay, cool.”
“You?” Val asked.
Tony seemed taken aback. “I’m not... I mean—I don’t... I like girls,” he finished awkwardly.
Val laughed again, more freely this time. “I meant, did you have a girlfriend?”
“Oh, yeah. No, not really. Just a girl I liked who was a friend.”
“Yeah, that was me,” Val admitted. “Always the friend, never the girlfriend.”
“Guess we have something in common, then,” Tony said.
“I guess so,” Val replied. They held each other’s gazes for an uncomfortably long moment. Val felt something drawing her steadily closer to him, and he began inching her way as well.
Then a big pudgy head covered in a hair net appeared between them, grinning from ear to ear.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did I spoil the moment?” Sebastian’s grin vanished. “No kissing on KP! You’re gonna drool all over my dishes!”
He disappeared, and then both Tony and Val went back to cleaning and drying. They spent the rest of the time in an awkward silence, periodically stealing glances at each other.
Tony was obviously lacking confidence and way more innocent than she was, but he had a kind of country-boy charm to him that was a breath of fresh air, after all the players and assholes that she’d met at school in LA. It helped that Tony was so tall and handsome. He could have been a model or an actor if he’d lived in LA.
Lucky me, Val thought, finding a boyfriend after the world has already ended. Somehow that made dating seem redundant. Or maybe it was more important than ever. Val’s nose wrinkled at the thought. Starting a relationship with the goal of repopulating the species in mind wasn’t exactly romantic. And her dad would kill her—right after he tossed Tony out an airlock. Val smiled at the thought and shook her head, wondering what kind of trouble he was getting himself into with the director of HR. Knowing him, he’d wind up telling the director what jobs he was willing to do, rather than the other way around.
FIVE
Kendra
Another day of laundry duty. After only two shifts, she was wondering if this was her new life. Once the two hundredth pair of jumpsuits had been folded, she hoped not.
The door to the laundry room opened, and Carrie stepped inside, nodding to Veronica. Kendra and her partner had chatted lightly all afternoon, neither of them willing to share the dread of being on a spaceship for a few days before heading into a cryogenic tube for decades. Instead, they’d discussed things that no longer mattered: favorite movies, books, and preferred colors of nail polish.
“Hi, Kendra,” Carrie said, her eyes bright.
“I’ll be done soon. Coffee?” Kendra asked.
“Veronica, I’m going to relieve Kendra a few minutes early,” Carrie advised the worker, and there was nothing Veronica could do but smile and nod.
Kendra mouthed the words ‘I’m sorry’ at the other woman, and set the uniform on the folding table.
She followed her sister, whose gait was no longer familiar. Carrie had always been a little uptight, but she walked as though her back was a plank, her steps short and calculated. If Kendra didn’t know better, the woman was uneasy about the looming discussion.
“I thought we could head to my room,” Carrie suggested. “For privacy.”
Kendra forced a smile, feeling like a stranger to her sister. “Sounds good.”
They headed to another floor, taking the elevators. She hadn’t been on this deck before, and found that deck twenty was where the blue-uniformed workers reporting directly to Hound resided.
There were a few faces she was unacquainted with milling about, each of them smiling or greeting Carrie as they entered a compact café.
“Coffee?” Carrie asked, and Kendra nodded her thanks. “Let me try to remember… cream and sugar, right?”
Kendra almost agreed, but corrected her. “I cut the sugar years ago. Just a little milk, please.”
The fact that her sister didn’t know how to prepare her coffee shouldn’t have been such an issue, but Kendra felt her eyes welling because of it. They didn’t know each other, not at all. But they could change that. There was finally time.
Their mugs full, they kept walking until they stopped near the end of the corridor. Their deck was similar to the other residences, but Kendra thought the bulkheads might be slightly taller, the corridors a few feet wider.
The real changes happened inside the suite. Carrie used a code to unlock her room door and stepped in, a look of trepidation across her face.
“This is… cozy,” Kendra said. The truth was, it was huge compared to Kendra’s own unit. Carrie had a sitting area, complete with a couch, chair, and coffee table. Everything was bolted to the floor, and Carrie offered her a seat on a plush chair.
“I know what you’re thinking. That we have luxury while you’re relegated to the cells.” Carrie laughed, a light nervous sound.
“No…”
“We’ve lived here for years, since the construction on this section of the ship was completed, so Hound wanted to make sure we were comfortable. You guys are only around for a week until cryogenics,” Carrie said, and Kendra had her opening.
There was so much she wanted to say, to ask, but she needed to ask this favor before the opportunity passed. “About that… is there any way we can see the cryogenic facility? Maybe tomorrow?” she asked.
“We?” Carrie raised a curious eyebrow.
“Andrew and I, maybe Roland,” Kendra said.
“What’s going on with you two?” Carrie asked with the caution of an older sibling.
“Who? Andrew? Nothing.” It all came out too defensively. “We just met. He’s hard-nosed, but I wouldn’t be alive without him, so I owe him my life.”
“Doesn’t hurt that he’s handsome… in that rugged sort of way you always liked,” Carrie said, a real smile on her lips.
Kendra rolled her eyes, and suddenly she was a teenager again, being teased by her sister about to go off to college. “How did you find out?”
“If you think I didn’t figure out your crush on Dane from my class, you have to be kidding me,” Carrie said, and Kendra dropped her grin.
“Carrie… can we not do this?” she pleaded.
“I’ll see if I can get a tour of the facility for you and your friends tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m sorry about that. It’s just hard to see you and not pick up where we left off.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. Do you have any idea of the impact you had on us by leaving?” Kendra’s hands shook as she asked.
Carrie leaned forward, setting her cup on the table. “I know…” She reached for Kendra, who jerked her hand away.
“No way, Carrie! You haven’t the slightest idea. You didn’t have to look at Mom and Dad every day, to see them wither away into husks of humans as they spent every damned dollar they had on investigators, and when that didn’t work, on wine, therapy, and antidepressants. You didn’t have to go to bed every night, wondering what kind of terrors your sister was going through, because you were so sure she was still alive, maybe even a captive.
“You couldn’t fathom
that I’d see your face everywhere in public. In line at the bank, in the face of a perp I’m chasing, in magazines. It’s beyond you.” Kendra was close to crying, but she’d shed enough tears over the situation, and now nothing came.
Carrie, on the other hand, was openly weeping, all pretense vanished from the room. “Ken, I’m so sorry. But do you see? Do you understand why I did what I did?”
Kendra bit her lip, angry that Carrie had abandoned them, but angrier at herself for not caring that the reason was valid.
“I was offered a chance to help save humanity, and I took it. I didn’t have a choice,” Carrie told her.
“There’s always a choice.” Kendra hung her head, her chin resting on her chest. When she glanced up, Carrie was dabbing her eyes with a sleeve.
“I missed you so much.”
“I know.”
“I checked on you.”
“You did?” Kendra asked.
“Of course. I followed your grades in school, watched as you entered the academy and became an agent,” Carrie said softly. It was so strange for Kendra to learn that she’d been aware of her life. “I was at your graduation. I even came to San Diego once. I saw you go into the office.”
Maybe she had seen Carrie then. The realization sent a shockwave through Kendra. “Were there other times?”
“Only a couple,” Carrie admitted.
Relief flooded Kendra. Maybe those years of thinking she’d seen her sister were brought on by really catching sight of her.
“Why didn’t you say something? I became an agent because of you.” Kendra leaned forward, resting elbows to knees. “If I couldn’t save you, I had to help others.”
“And you did a wonderful job,” her sister said, sending a rush of pride through Kendra.
“Is this for real?” she asked.
“What?”
“This. The ship. The mission. The last thousand humans remaining,” Kendra said, slumping in her seat.
Carrie’s face grew serious. “This mission is everything, Ken. And yes, it’s for real.”
“Do you trust them?”
“The other crew?” Carrie asked.
“Hound,” she replied.
Carrie nodded slowly. “With my life.”
“What about Keller? He’s a little out there, isn’t he?” Kendra asked, hoping her sister was being forthright with her.
Carrie’s posture changed, her lips pursing. This told Kendra more than words could have. “Eric is a good man. He’s opinionated and strong-willed, but he’ll do what Lewis wants, and the crew trusts him too.”
Kendra noticed how she said ‘the crew trust him,’ but not ‘I trust him’. “How do we move on?” she asked, not specifying what she meant.
“Ken, this is exciting. How can you not see that? I understand you’re new to the mission, but it's amazing. We’re in a starship, about to head into cryogenic storage, and we’ll come out at Promixa. We’re the first colonists to leave Earth, and the timing couldn’t have been better,” Carrie said.
Kendra seconded that internally, but didn’t tell her sister that the timing was not only good but impeccable. Almost as if Hound had predicted what was about to happen, and Kendra didn’t believe in coincidence, not when it came to huge matters like this.
“I’m sorry for being so ungrateful. I think you should talk to the guards, though. Some of the people are struggling with their new realities, and I don’t think threatening to cage them is going to help anyone,” Kendra said, telling her sister about the altercation from earlier.
“I’ll talk to Keller about it tonight,” Carrie told her.
“I’m not sure he’s the right one to tell. Maybe Hound is,” Kendra offered. She remembered her coffee, and she picked up the cup, noting her hands were no longer shaking; the initial stress and anxiety had gone. She sipped it, finding it only lukewarm at best, and took a larger gulp.
“Why are you still single?” Carrie asked.
“It wasn’t by choice,” Kendra replied. That wasn’t entirely accurate, but she kept that to herself. “What does it matter at this point? If I was married, I wouldn’t have made it to the coast, and I never would have found you or this ship. I’d probably be dead with a ring on my finger.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help our parents,” Carrie said, not delving any further into it. “I checked on them too. I wanted to help them, to ease their minds, but I couldn’t. We… weren’t permitted contact.”
“It must have been difficult.” Kendra couldn’t find what else to say. Her parents had died thinking Carrie had been killed years ago. She dropped it. “Can you tell me about the colony?” she asked, changing the subject, and Carrie’s eyes lit up again.
Kendra settled in, letting her sister explain as much as she could about their coming adventure.
* * *
Roland
Stars inched by as Roland watched out the window. He knocked on it, feeling the screen depress at his touch. It wasn’t a window, but more of a projected viewscreen. There would be cameras mounted on the outside of the vessel that would relay the images onto the displays.
“How can you decipher what’s real and what isn’t, Rollie?” he asked himself. He didn’t have many pills left, and he fished the bottle from his pocket, shaking it to find three remaining. He closed the lid, pressing his lips together. “You’re fine. You don’t need those. You never did.” He repeated the phrase like a mantra, mumbling it to himself. He was right… probably.
They appeared to be moving quickly, much faster than anything NASA had under their belts. Even the other rich guys trying to win the space race to Mars had nothing on Hound, who’d created something straight out of a science fiction movie.
Seventy-three years was a long time. They weren’t traveling faster than light, but this was a legitimate space voyage. The idea of being crammed into a tube for over seven decades terrified Roland. He’d hated confined spaces ever since Billy had shoved him into a gym locker. He’d remained inside, whimpering like a scared puppy, for two full classes, until the teacher finally found him. Of course, Mr. Henderson had called him all sorts of words implying ‘wimp’, like a thesaurus.
It was almost curfew time, and Roland had somehow managed to avoid working all day. He’d put in a requisition with some blue uniform on Deck Three, trying to get on the software team. Carrie had said she’d put in a good word for him, and he was going to follow up with her tomorrow.
He didn’t want to join the tour of the cryogenics facility with the others. Roland wasn’t sure which was worse: understanding how small the tubes were, or imagining how small the tubes were. He’d decide in the morning, after a full belly. He was surprised by how good the food was. He’d spent too many years neglecting himself.
He was skinny, but round and pudgy in the middle. Maybe Andrew could help him get into shape. There was nothing chubby about that guy.
Roland paced the corridors, nodding to a few faces that were beginning to become familiar. He spotted the reverend heading in his direction, and he ducked into the corner, pretending to see something interesting on the viewscreen.
She had one of her minions following along, listening intently as she spewed some twisted rhetoric that sounded oddly sacrilegious, even to Roland.
She didn’t stop, and Roland was grateful. He sneaked down the hall and into his room, where he suddenly felt too confined. He was on a ship. He couldn’t go outside. He was sleeping in a glorified box. The walls felt like they were closing in, and he clutched his bedding in a firm grip, taking deep breaths.
“Rollie, you hated going outside anyway,” he told himself, practically laughing at his situation.
The others were counting on him, and he couldn’t fail them. Not after all they’d done for him. He was really starting to feel a kinship with those people. He’d been a loner for so long, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to function in a group, but he was miraculously pulling it off. No one had teased him or called him out on his awkwardness. They seemed to value his
input, and for that reason, he wasn’t going to mess this up.
The walls ceased threatening to crush him, and his breathing smoothed out once again as he calmed. He thought about the pill bottle in his pocket, but didn’t reach for it. He was going to be all right.
He couldn’t sneak out yet. It was just after curfew. He’d checked the schedule, and three AM was the best time. The few active guards were in the middle of their thankless shifts then, and would be at their laziest.
He had to return to the room where he’d accessed the star map only twenty-four hours ago. Everything had changed in the last day. They’d gone from underwater deep in the Pacific, a world crumbling around them, to space, somewhere Roland had always dreamed of traveling to as a little boy.
That was before he’d grown up, when the only care in the world was making sure you didn’t run out of cereal for your favorite cartoon on a Saturday morning. He could almost hear his mother calling to him from upstairs of their modest Midwestern home, telling him it was time to go outside.
Even then, a pale ten-year-old Roland had hated the sun. Fresh air was something he’d thought of as a punishment. He only wanted to stare at a TV screen, watching imaginary superheroes fend off evil. He’d read countless comic books and fat fantasy novels, carrying him to distant worlds.
“It seems you’re finally getting your big adventure, Rollie,” he said, confident this would be far more exciting than waving a sword around at some orcs. He was going to have to really get his hands dirty. A colony… on Proxima. It was absurd. He knew there were rumors of the planet being potentially habitable, but he’d never bought into them.
What happened if they arrived and found the place was a barren hunk of rock? Seventy-three years down the drain, with nowhere to go. Was there a backup plan in place? Plan B? A guy like Hound always had contingency plans, of that, Roland was positive.
Sleep consumed him, a dreamless catatonic state. He awoke to the soft glow of a bedside light that he’d programmed to turn on at three in the morning. Could they tell he’d set an alarm? Were they watching him this instant? His head jerked side to side as he scanned for signs of cameras, but didn’t see any.
Final Days: Colony Page 4
