Forever Dark

by Gary Martin

  The dispenser beeps at me. Disappointingly, today, it would seem that we’ve finally run out of it. My only source of admittedly perverse pleasure has come to an end. What’s the second most awful thing on the menu? I look at the pictures and choose the banana curry. I haven’t tried it yet because it sounds fucking horrible, but it may well not be. I choose it anyway. The machine makes a whirring noise and the tray drops into the dispenser. I grab it and walk back to the ladder. I climb it one handed; I’ve got quite good at it with months of practice.

  The wash room is on the habitation deck at the end of the corridor, next to the sick bay. After making my way down to it, I put my ear to the door. There’s no noise coming from the other side. Usually there’d be at least some sort of whining or screaming. But this time, just silence. Maybe he has finally died. I type in my code, push the door open and walk into the fully white tiled room. Still silence. Slowly, I walk past the shower cubicles and toward the baths at the far side of the room. They are behind a closed blue plastic curtain that is covered in mildew. My breathing is heavy as I put my hand on the edge of the curtain, ready to pull it open. I’m actually nervous. Is it the fear of finding him dead or the relief? I’m not sure so, with a sharp movement of my arm, I pull it open. The smell hits me first. The rancid stench of death and rotting flesh. I stand back and put my hand over my nose. The emaciated body lying there isn’t moving. It turns out I’m relieved.

  Robert and I couldn’t kill him ourselves, but nature taking its course isn’t any sort of issue for us. I move closer and gingerly put my hand on his neck to search for a pulse, just to make doubly sure. His skin is cold and dry, and I can’t feel anything moving. I let out a sigh and start to pull my hand away when his arm quickly moves up and grabs me hard by the throat. He starts to pull himself up and at the same time tries to pull my face close to his. I’m in a nightmare. I can’t move, and I can’t breathe. The fear surging through me at this moment is so intense that I let my bladder go. He screams loudly into my face for what seems like forever. I suddenly snap out of it, realising I have to do something. Dropping the tray of food, I start hitting him hard in the face until he finally lets go of me. I fall backwards and land hard on my back, breathing heavily and rubbing my throat. I stare at the ceiling for a few seconds and then hear something hit the deck plates near my feet. I sit up, and Rupert is now out of the bath and crawling towards me screeching my name. Fuck this. I turn over on to my front, quickly stand up and run to the door. Slamming it closed behind me, I lean against it, and slide down into a sitting position. Only then, as my arse touches the deck do I realise that I might have to change my underwear. I let out a sigh of relief.

  17

  Once I’m cleaned up, (I use the shower in Tom’s quarters. It used to be the captain’s cabin, long ago when the ship had one, and a very different name) I tell Robert what happened. He smiles to himself and tells me to go to bed; he’ll keep an eye on everything on the bridge. I agree and head down to my quarters. I close the door behind me and fall face first on my bunk, not bothering to take my clothes off as I’ve only just put them back on again. I turn over on to my back and see Horaldo, the resident spider, on the ceiling, minding his own business. In normal circumstances, I probably would have swatted him long ago, just down to the fear of him getting inside my mouth while I’m sleeping to have a drink. But after recent events, I’ve decided that he deserves to survive. It’s also very likely that he’s the last of his species so he can fill his boots. There are worse things than having a spider in your mouth, and he’s sort of become a pet. As I watch him crawl around on the ceiling, I start to realise that I haven’t thought about Ez for a few days. What’s there to think about really? Just going over the same thoughts again and again. If she is still alive, she would have had our child about a month ago, which means I’m now a dad. Boy or a girl? I don’t think I really mind, but it’s all pointless. Earth is fucked and I basically ran away and left her to die in a hospital bed. I’m a good solid foundation for raising a child. That’s why I don’t think about her so much anymore. The reality is that when we do get back to Earth and find out that everyone is dead, we only have as long as the supplies last and we’re dead too.

  Robert does have a point about the shipping; there were probably thousands of space vehicles out there. Inter-galactic cruise liners, cargo ships, war ships, I think someone even converted a two-hundred-year-old VW camper into something that you could pilot in space. We’ve managed to survive more than six months on this crippled monstrosity, so there must be people out there, like us, just surviving. Unlike us, the Earth’s demise wouldn’t be weighing on their conscience. I close my eyes and try to get some sleep. As usual, it comes easy to me.

  I start to stir when I feel something lightly touching my face, it tickles slightly and I start to smile. It’s got to be Horaldo coming down for a drink, and this is the first time I’ve ever noticed or caught him at it. I open my eyes. It’s much worse.

  “Hello John,” Rupert says to me in a calm, almost pain-free way. I jump up and quickly crawl to the corner of the bed against the wall. I look around. The door to my cabin is open, and I suddenly realise I didn’t lock the wash room. Rupert has crawled from there into my cabin and pulled himself up onto the bed whilst I slept.

  “You didn’t let me finish, John. You know how I don’t like to be interrupted.”

  The initial shock has passed, and I’m feeling somewhere close to calm which is surprising. But the just woken up stunned pulsing feeling is still there.

  “In my defence, you were just screaming in my face,” I say.

  “You have to kill me, you have to kill me, my pain …” he grimaces. “It’s too much, it’s too much to bear, you can’t let me live like this, it’s ... inhuman.”

  His hands are pawing at me and his eyes are pleading.

  “After what you’ve done? I really should kill you. But I won’t. I can’t do it. This is your own private hell. You deserve it. If you want to die so badly, just kill yourself. I don’t understand why you haven’t.”

  He looks at me, his pleading eyes turn dark.

  “Because you keep feeding me!” he shouts. Flecks of spit hit my face, and his breath smells like rotting death. I dry heave.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” I shout back.

  “I’ve tried to leave it, to starve myself. I just don’t have the strength to go through with it, and I always end up eating a small amount. Stop feeding me, and just let me die,” he says, and then starts whimpering. He slides off the bed into a crumpled heap on the deck. He starts wailing again, and I realise that he’s lost control of his pain. He must have had to focus hard to have held it in as long as he did. I can’t believe that I’m actually starting to feel sorry for him. I slap myself around the face and look up. Robert is at the door staring down at the pathetic, writhing mess on my floor.

  “This is how we want you,” he says. “Paying for everything you’ve done with a pain that will never stop.”

  “Fuck, you’ve got a dark side Robert,” I say, getting off the bed. I have to practically stand on Rupert to get to the door. He grabs hold of my leg as I pass.

  “I can fix it,” he whispers and starts to laugh maniacally. It quickly turns into pathetic wailing. I shake my leg until he lets go and leave my quarters, shutting the door behind me.

  “Great, he’s ruined the only place on the ship that felt like it was safe,” I say.

  Robert looks up and down the corridor.

  “There are plenty of empty rooms to sleep in.”

  I just look at him.

  “Okay, sorry. What do you think he meant by that?” he says.

  “Just rambling nonsense I’d imagine. We should probably drag him back into the washroom,” I say.

  “Definitely. But keep the scary bastard locked in this time.”

  18

  I’ve been sitting at Mark’s old station for about an hour wearing his headphones, slowly going through all the frequencies the ship c
an receive. Every one of them is just static. I take the headphones off, slightly worried that the white noise will carry on even if they’re not on my head. Robert has gone to his cabin, so I’m alone up here with my thoughts. I decide to have a look at the biggest and brightest speck of light ahead of us, the one that, when we finally get to it, will probably break us. I stand up and look out of the forward viewports. I can’t see it. Has the sun gone out completely, making it invisible? I head to the back of the bridge and into the captain’s office (I finally took off the crappy shift manager sticker) to look at the sun through its tinted viewports. It’s still shining but it sort of looks bluer. Maybe that’s just my imagination. I head back out onto the bridge and have another look out of the forward viewports. Still not there. How is that possible? I squint my eyes, and can just make out a dark shape where I think it should be. Is it debris? Has it been destroyed?

  I pick up the headphones and mic, put one of the speakers to my right ear and tune the radio into one of the standard shipping frequencies.

  Fuck me!

  “This is the Skylark cruiser Zeus, what ship is that, over?”

  I drop the headphones, run to the hatch and shout down it.

  “Robert, there’s a ship, there’s a fucking ship calling us!” I run back to the communications console, pick up the headphones and try to reply.

  “This is Sunspot Two, over, do you copy?” I say into the mic. The voice repeats itself.

  “This is the Skylark cruiser Zeus, what ship is that, over?” I forgot that the radio was only working one way. Maybe Robert will think of something now we actually have direct contact with someone. He climbs through the hatch.

  “What have we got, John?” he asks. I pass him the headphones. He puts them to his ear and his eyes light up.

  “We can’t reply,” I say and, for a second, he looks disappointed. He then smiles.

  “The escape pods have communications equipment in, maybe ...” I smile too. Six months of trying to get the radio to work and neither of us had even considered using them. We both quickly head down to deck three, run past the blood-stained pool table in the rec deck and into the cargo bay.

  Each pod is big enough for twelve people, five sat against the walls on either side and two piloting at the front. The pods have a vaguely spherical front section, two rocket boosters attached to an engine at the bottom and a long rectangular body above the rockets and attached to the sphere. They are not particularly stylish but when they are full of supplies, and the oxygen tanks are replenished (which they are now), you can apparently last months in them.

  Robert climbs onto one of the boosters and up the three steps to the port side hatch. He spins the wheel, pushes it open and climbs in. I follow him and he’s already sat at the pilot station with headphones on by the time I’ve awkwardly climbed through the hatch, into the surprising claustrophobic space. I walk over and stand behind him.

  “Hello, Zeus, this is Sunspot Two, do you copy? Over,” Robert says into the radio, looks up at me, smiles and crosses his fingers. After months of awfulness, this genuinely feels like the most exciting thing that has ever happened. But there’s no reply. Robert twists a dial slightly and tries again.

  “Hello Skylark cruiser Zeus, do you copy?”

  The silence while waiting for a reply is deafening. I’m about to say something very defeatist and unhelpful.

  “Hello Sunspot Two, we copy you loud and clear. We have scanned your vessel and you seem to have almost no power. We nearly didn’t see you. Do you need assistance?”

  “Yes, we really do, Zeus. We’ve been out here, like this, for more than six months now, over.”

  “Okay Sunspot Two, we’ll be with you in a few hours. I’m sure you’ll have some questions if you haven’t been back to Earth for that amount of time. The situation is bad. But that’s all I can say on an open frequency.”

  “Copy that Zeus, see you very soon and thank you. Sunspot Two out.”

  Robert spins round in his chair and looks at me.

  “I guess they don’t know that this ship is responsible for the bad situation then,” I say.

  “I guess not. What are we going to do with Rupert? We can’t just leave him here; he’ll be found and we’ll look very bad. Do we tell them who he is?” Robert asks.

  I hadn’t thought about that. If we do tell them, are we all going to be held responsible for what happened? It could all go very wrong very quickly.

  “Skylark were after him. I don’t know how much of his story was true because he was a sick crazy bastard. But some of it definitely was, Ez knew him, he did disappear with a doomsday device, and he was onboard because he knew I worked here. I doubt they’d care anymore, bigger fish to fry and all that, but is it worth the risk? It’s not like he’s recognisable at the moment, or even coherent.”

  “We could just blow him out of an airlock and finally be done with him,” Robert says. The idea is appealing and it’s something I think we’ve both wanted to do, but there’s no way either of us could go through with it when it came to the crunch.

  “We’ll have to say he’s someone else. There’s no other option,” I say and smile.

  “Yeah, I guess. I thought that finally getting rescued was going to be a good thing but it’s starting to become a massive pain in the arse.”

  19

  I open my wardrobe and throw all of my clothes onto the bed ready to pack. I look at everything I’ve got, five uniforms and one set of black civilian clothes. No bag to pack them in either. Shit. I was in such a rush when I left Earth, I had nothing with me except the clothes on my back, and Bruce. Poor old slow crappy Bruce. I imagine he’s still waiting for me in the Sunspots Waste Disposal Inc. car park where I left him, alone and now probably frozen solid. There is so much that I’ve tried not to think about while I’ve been trapped in this metal prison. I had a whole life going on, a full and pretty happy one. I realise, now that we’re about to be rescued, how much I miss everyone and every part of it. I’m heading for a completely new life, one that I can’t even begin to predict. My old life was nicely predictable, at least until the last few months of it. I liked that and I want it back. I’d give anything to be down the Fire and Water sinking a few litres of lager with Jacob and Terrell. To be able to spend an extra day with Ez. I’ve made a few mistakes, and, in a roundabout way, I helped to end the world, but I think that I deserve something good to happen for a change. It’s been pretty awful for what seems like a very long time, and I need to prepare myself for what’s next. I have to pack and, without a bag of any description, I decide the best option is to wrap up all that I have in my slightly stained white bed sheet. I tie it up and sling it over my shoulder like I’m some sort of space dwelling hobo. I leave my quarters for what I hope will be the very last time and meet Robert in the corridor.

  “We ready to do this?” I say.

  “I think so. I’ve got the sack trucks from the cargo bay and a whole load of bungees and cable ties.”

  Robert and I walk down the corridor toward the washroom, the sack trucks squeaking as Robert pushes them in front of him.

  We get to the door, and I can already hear the low wailing coming from within. We look at each other, both with concern on our faces. I type in my code and slowly push the door open. The wailing abruptly stops. Rupert is still in the bath where we left him earlier but is now staring directly at us.

  “Have you boys finally got the nerve to do what you’ve wanted to do for the last six months?” he asks, without a hint of pain in his voice.

  Robert and I make our way towards him, and the prolonged squeaking of the trucks is setting a surprisingly eerie atmosphere.

  “I’m afraid that’s not and never has been the plan. We’re here to ... talk,” I say.

  “We’ve made contact with a ship, and we’re finally going to be rescued. It’ll be here in about an hour.” Robert says.

  “A ship?” Rupert whispers, the pain coming back into his voice.

  “They’ll have all sor
ts of medical supplies. As much as I like you in pain, they’ll be able to help you with it,” Robert continues.

  “We just need you to ... not tell them who you are. To be blunt, you need to be Tim again,” I say.

  We both look at Rupert. I’m trying to gauge his reaction, to see whether he even understands what we’re saying.

  “A ship ... whose ship?” he slowly whispers.

  “It’s a … Skylark cruiser,” I say.

  His eyes widen, he laughs loudly and starts violently coughing. Something black and marbled with phlegm starts to drip out of the side of his mouth. He licks his lips to clear it.

  “You can’t let them get hold of me. You can’t. They’ll torture me for everything I know. I won’t be in pain the same way I am now; it’ll be an eternity worse. They know how to keep me alive and awake the whole time, knowing I’ll feel every agonising second of it.”

  “That sounds fucked. How do you know this?” Robert asks.

  “Because it’s my machine. I was tasked with creating it to get the truth out of an enemy. It’s the most effective interrogation device I ever designed. Imagine the amount of pain your body can take before the brain shuts down to protect itself, this machine bypasses that shut down. I want to die but I do not want that. I’ve seen it working on test subjects,” he says, sounding scared.

  “In which case, you best keep your identity to yourself,” I say, feeling a little worried.

  “No, this won’t work. I’ll do anything. The sun, I can fix it. I broke it, I’m sure I can fix it. If I do that, will you promise not to hand me over? Anything but what you’re planning on doing. We just need to tell the Skylark cruiser to go away and that we’re all fine. Yes, let’s do that.”