Alan’s voice came out as a low growl, “You don’t know that for sure. I could get lucky.”
Walsh raised his eyebrows, gesturing limply. “We’re running out of ammo. What if there are more of those things?”
“What if I kick the living shit out of you?” Nevermind that he couldn’t actually manage that.
Ajaya gripped his arm forcibly and led him some distance away. He leaned against the wall, chuffing like a locomotive through flaring nostrils, barely keeping from exploding.
Ajaya waited patiently, until he turned to her, throwing up a hand. “I’m not leaving unless I know she’s…. You guys go, if you have to. I won’t leave her here to…I won’t leave her here alone.”
Ajaya nodded slowly. “Do you trust me to fairly arbitrate this issue, Alan?”
Ajaya? Fair?
“Yes,” he said through clenched teeth.
He had no idea how long ago that conversation had taken place. Time seemed interminable without any way to mark it. They’d agreed to wait for him for three days while he searched for a way off this deck. Those three days were long-past being up.
Once the paralytic in his leg wore off, he’d found other deck transports. None of them worked. He never found a service ladder leading to another deck. He’d been returning to the capsule before the others took off, to ask for more time, to get more supplies and a cutting tool. He hoped to cut into the wall around the deck transport controls and manually trigger it to work again. It was a pretty desperate approach, but then, he was feeling pretty desperate.
That’s when it became clear a new brood of the creatures had hatched. Once they’d caught his trail, they hunted him. He was an easy target until he realized all the noise he was making was the problem. He never made it back to Providence.
There’d been a few tight moments. He’d backed into a room and barricaded himself into a small area by stacking storage crates around himself, like circling the wagons. The bigger animals couldn’t get to him unless they could knock down the stacks of crates, but the smallest ones could slip between them—smaller, but no less vicious. Just one had taken him by surprise. And now he was in a bad, bad way.
There was something going on out in the hall again. He listened for a few moments, to determine how close it was. Damn things were at it again. Some kind of war was being waged out there. They were fighting for dominance, for food.
Damn cannibals. He guessed if there was some other kind of food available, they’d want to eat that. He wasn’t about to broadcast his location and advertise that he was a willing smorgasbord. Not yet.
He thought about Jane to pass the time, as he often did. He closed his eyes and contemplated the day, early in the journey, when she’d spent hours washing her hair for the first time in microgravity.
She was self-conscious about it, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. He’d watched her, surreptitiously, as she went through the many steps of her ablutions, her hair floating like a cloud around her face as she worked on it painstakingly, section by section. Afterwards, she let it air-dry, combing through it occasionally. He’d observed her pulling a lock forward, twitching it under her nose and rubbing it between her fingers, like she couldn’t decide if it was actually clean unless it smelled a certain way.
He chuckled to himself silently. She’d have been mortified if she’d realized he’d seen that. She kept her dignity wrapped around her like a mantle, always steady, always calm, always reasonable. She helped him feel more…stable? Sane? Happy? He wanted to please her, so he tried harder. He wouldn’t do that for just anyone. She was special.
He imagined holding her again, one more time. The way he’d held her that day in the capsule, his chin resting on her glossy, silky hair. She’d smelled heavenly when the rest of them stank like baboons. She was earthy, woodsy, almost floral. She was warm and soft. She fit against him perfectly, no awkwardness at all. She was a gift.
He blinked back wetness and looked up at the ceiling, rubbing at his face and beard. A silent laugh escaped his lips as he remembered her reaction to his beard when he’d first started to grow it. He was the first of the men to give up on shaving with dull razors—without running water it was just a pain in the ass and the vacuum-assisted shaver they’d built into the capsule was worthless. So, he’d just grown a beard. It was the easiest thing to do.
First, she’d teased him about his hipster stubble. When it really grew in thick, she’d joked about his swarthy pirate-beard. Then she’d presented him with an eye-patch, painstakingly fashioned out of used food packaging, beaming as she handed it over. He patted the pocket on this thigh and felt the plastic crackle under his fingertips. Still there.
She was the glue that had held them all together. Without her, they probably wouldn’t have made it to the Target alive. He and Walsh probably would have killed each other a few months in.
His throat constricted painfully from emotion. It was just as well they would never get a chance to be together. He’d never get it right. He’d do something stupid, hurt her somehow. This way, their relationship stayed pristine. They’d have those few meaningful moments. He’d never make love to her, but he’d also never have the opportunity to fuck it all up.
He woke, hyperventilating, flinging his arms out to ward off the predator he was certain he was going to find there. He caught his breath, taking stock, cursing himself for having fallen asleep again.
He felt hot. He was drenched in sweat. His vision swam. But there was nothing there.
Oh, fuck. Do not look at the leg.
What woke him? He blinked rapidly, forcing his eyes to stay open instead of drifting shut again. The creatures were making a ruckus nearby, again. They were close. Really close.
This was it. They’d tracked him down. They’d bring down the walls of his makeshift barricade, overwhelm him with sheer numbers any minute. He could barely bring himself to care. Surely it wouldn’t hurt. Much.
Still…. He fumbled for the pistol. It was so damn heavy. It was enough to have it in his hand, for now. There were still some bullets in there, right? Weird how that burn on his hand still hurt more than the leg that was just a pustulant lump of meat.
The sounds the creatures were making out there were weird. Curiosity made him ease forward to peer through the crack between two storage crates. A larger creature that lurked out there, the one that had kept him from getting to the door and closing it, immediately filled his limited view, hissing and lashing its tail around. He called that one Barnabas. They were old pals.
Bergen rolled his eyes and scooted to the next crack. There was a stomping and smashing sound coming from out there that he hadn’t heard before. Was there a third stage in this disgusting creature’s life cycle? Could this actually get worse?
The scent of sizzling meat reached his nose and he wrinkled it in consternation. Was he so hungry he was hallucinating a barbecue? That was just sick.
He caught a glimpse of something black and shiny in the hall. His eyes widened and he forgot everything else. Something large and heavy lurched into the room and crashed to the floor, pushed over and overrun by the creatures. He couldn’t get a good look at it. He smashed his eyes closed and shook his head to clear it, then turned back to the crack, squinting with one eye to see better.
Whatever it was, it was strong. It was flinging the animals off itself ferociously, clanking heavily against the floor and wall as the animals swarmed over it, trying to keep it pinned down as they lashed and nipped at it.
A creature slammed into the crates that sheltered him. They rocked into each other, unsteadily. He thought for a moment they might topple over on top of him, but they settled back into place.