Forecast (26 page)

Reaching the other side of the woods, he bent over to catch his breath again, hoping to slow his thumping heart and, in turn, his diminishing oxygen. Staring back at the dark woods, waiting, he had a lightning
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bolt moment. There hadn’t been a bear at all. He hadn’t eaten for days and, factoring in the emotional stress and fatigue, he knew his mind was beginning to play tricks on him. Contemplating his sanity, he surveyed his surroundings. The paint line had unified again with the frost, if it was there at all, and now he had no clue where he was or which way to go and night had almost settled in.

An hour passed and, in the unrelenting dark of night, he came to the top of a hill. In any direction, thick darkness clung to him, except for the glowing light from his EVA headlamps. Descending the hill, he kept moving, feeling his way with his feet. He was looking over his shoulder when he slammed into a ruined wall. One of his headlamps smashed. But he could still see that the wall belonged to the ruins of the Mission Control Base. Against the odds, he’d arrived back in St. Ives, feeling enormous relief. But his suit was beeping at him, his oxygen tank drying up. Time ticking by, he paced about the ruins looking for the shaft, tripped and went into a somersault. He landed face first, sprawled on his front in pain. The second headlamp broke and he was blinded. He realised that his legs hung over a ledge and presumed that below him was the elevator shaft, though he felt the descent would be insurmountable as he couldn’t move another muscle, he couldn’t see and his oxygen had just about expired. Desperate and panicking, he threw himself down the shaft, his body bending and twisting, hitting the bottom with a terrible bone
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crunching thud. It was a miracle that his spacesuit didn’t tear open or that a bone never broke.

Pulling himself heavily to his feet, he limped towards the door and exploded into the room clutching at the straps on his helmet. Inside, he felt his throat constrict and he couldn’t even gasp. Never had there been a more frightening moment in his life. He battled with the helmet, trying to pull it off, the end of his life seconds away, his eyes popping from their sockets, tugging on the tendons. The catches sealed the helmet to his head until he located them and flipped them up, pulling his head out. He made a loud, gasping noise as he sucked in a large breath, saturating his blood with air. An unpleasant smell was choking the room, compounded of stale urine and something undeterminable. The air was dense and fusty, as if an acrid breeze had blown in from a nearby dumpsite some time before and had never found a way out. He breathed through his mouth and pinched his nose, calling out to the crew. Feeling his way blindly along the wall, he collided with something at his feet – empty tins judging by the sound they made. Locating a second door, he pushed through it, entering another dark room and the scent in the air changed to that of blown out candle wick. The smoke was fresh.

“Brad? Simon?”

“
Welcome
.”

Gable almost leapt out of his skin. The circular beam of a torch poked at his eyes, the sharp light jarring him like an electric shock. That was not what frightened him. The voice that had spoken to him he did not recognise.

The Fable
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1 crew spent the best part of two hours loading the food provisions into the elevator outside the White Room and in the lobby where they were stacked to the roof. Six hundred and twelve tins of food, one hundred and fifty five cans of drink, sixty bottles of water. Hennessey, Matthews and Sutcliffe had made several return trips to the beach to collect them from the raft, along with sixteen life jackets, sixteen insulation blankets and two accessory cases. A human chain from the top of the shaft to the elevator completed the transfer. Keith Burch had stayed back to rest while Faraday took care of him. Otherwise, everyone had helped. Everyone except Trev Gable.

“Maybe he got lost,” said Hennessey, closing the White Room door behind her as Faraday lit a candle.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have sent him,” Matthews added. There was hostility in his voice. Sutcliffe sensed tension in the air and Hennessey confirmed it with a disapproving shake of the head.

“I sent him because everyone else was either ill or drunk. If everyone had been well enough, I would have suggested we all go.”

Matthews glanced over his shoulder. “You obviously didn’t need our help.”

“What’s your problem, Simon? Why are you such a defeatist?”

“What’s that supposed to mean, hero?” Matthews replied with unconcealed spite and provocation.

Sutcliffe vented his irritation by throwing his arms up into the air, sensing an argument brewing, one he didn’t want to have. Spirits were low and so was patience. For everyone. Nevertheless, he knew how important it was to remain calm. So he ignored Matthews, because he was acting like an idiot, but also because his idiocy was coming from a mind and body affected by a number of detrimental factors.

“Just forget it,” he said, walking away.

For a while no one spoke, the only sound chewing jaws and satisfied grunts as the crew tucked into food long
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awaited. While Faraday, Hennessey and Matthews ate, Sutcliffe drank some water and sat on the bench where he put his hands behind his neck. A sharp, throbbing pain filled his head, extinguishing his immediate hunger. No sooner had he closed his eyes than someone nudged him and sprang him awake.

“Sorry,” whispered Hennessey. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s about Keith.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Come and take a look.”

Burch was deep in sleep. Several insulation blankets had been placed over him and a life jacket cushioned his head. Something was wrong. His face was ghostly pale and racked with sweat. Sutcliffe peeled off his sock. All five toes were discoloured, his entire left foot pooled with blood, double in size, black as month
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old marrow. It looked as though it might explode.

“The cut on the sole of his foot has become infected. I think it’s gangrene.”

Hennessey agreed.

For hours, Burch moaned, twisting beneath the blankets in despair. They had been unable to feed him and he had been sick because painkillers had upset his empty stomach. He was a victim of his own paranoia as he kept the crew awake during much of the night. Around the room were half a dozen candles casting human shadows on the wall. Faraday believed they held a spiritual air and that the warm light might help Burch to relax. It didn’t seem to be working and Matthews was becoming increasingly annoyed. There they were, confined in one room and they had to listen to that. Burch wasn’t the only one hurting. His groaning only gave Matthews a new topic to complain about. He bemoaned the harmful effect Burch was bringing to their spirits and suggested that they lock him up in one of the toilet cubicles.

Nobody agreed.

Now Matthews was wide awake and he was determined to keep everyone else awake. “You know, there were people in the world that chose to have healthy limbs amputated you know, just because.”

Faraday looked up. “That’s absurd, where did you hear that?”

“I saw it on a documentary a long time ago. Some people went through life wanting to lose a leg or an arm. Many of them were filled with guilt from a young age after knowing an amputee. They said they wouldn’t feel like themselves without an amputation. Absolutely obsessed.”

Hennessey had been unable to get Burch and his terrible injury out of her head all night, knowing where it was leading him and she’d heard enough on the topic of amputations. She didn’t think she could listen to it any longer, so she went to the other side of the room to escape the zone of conversation. Matthews detected her acrimony and watched as she turned her back on the group. There was still something about her bothering him. A few times he had thought about it, but the opportunity to air his suspicions hadn’t arisen. Now, he felt, was an opportunity.

“You know, something about you Jen doesn’t add up,” he called out across the room.

“What are you talking about?” she shouted back.

“Why were you really assigned to Fable
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1?”

Hennessey was quiet. Everyone thought Matthews was out of line, but they were interested to see where the conversation was heading.

“To launch Chandra II, originally, why else?”

“I don’t buy it. Chandra II could have easily been launched from the ground. NASA has done space balloons before. You didn’t need to be on our balloon to launch it.”

His words got the group thinking. Now they were all listening alertly as he continued. “Here’s what I think. NASA wanted a research pilot, i.e. you, not just to launch experiments, but to do research on our balloon and the flight into space in the hope of obtaining information for its own commercial space ballooning venture. NASA knew we were considering tourist flights and didn’t want us to be the first in the world to make space tourism a reality. It’s the old Russia
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versus
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America space race all over again. Am I right?”

She shook her head. “Think what you like, Simon, I don’t give a damn.”

“Just what I thought,” he said.

“If it helps you sleep at night.”

Oh, she was good, he thought. She was quite outstanding. She had everyone in the room fooled. Everyone but him. He had sussed her out a long time ago. The ever
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present accretion of suspicion had hardened into fact.

“I knew it. She’s a fucking spy.”

Sutcliffe looked quizzically at Hennessey, hoping Matthews’ accusation held no truth. At the same time, he knew how important keeping the peace was because sometimes conflicts that were not resolved quickly were not resolved at all. Everyone was quiet, including Burch, at last. Whether or not that was a good thing could only be determined by slapping two fingers on his pulse, which Faraday did every so often. The peace in the room was bliss. The night had been long and distressing and all anyone wanted to do was sleep on fed stomachs beneath warm blankets. Now that Burch was sleeping, it was possible.

“At first light, I’m going out to look for Trev,” announced Faraday. With all the attention on Burch and his misery, she got the impression nobody had given Gable a second thought.

“I’ll come with you,” said Matthews. “I don’t feel like sharing this room with a spy right now.”

Faraday went around the room blowing out the candles. She paused on the last one, confirming the bearings of her bed before blowing out the flame, the light gone in an instant. Stepping carefully towards her bed, she nestled herself beneath her insulation blankets and pressed her head into the life jacket, the closest thing to a bed in ages.

It was about ten seconds later when they heard the disturbing scream, a sickening human noise. The blood
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curdling shrieks were coming from Burch, as though he was trying to exorcise every morsel of evil from within his body. Matthews shakily retrieved his lighter and relit one of the candles. The room grew lighter and, steadily, the screams faded. What had just happened to him? They were all hesitant to attend to him, all except Faraday who was already kneeling by his side. “What is it, Keith?”

He didn’t respond. He stared absently at the ceiling. Not all dark places hid a monster, Burch thought. But some did.

The lights went out and the corridors fell dark. Some of the inmates piped up, making noises to annoy the wardens, clanking objects on their window bars. Usually, Burch didn’t get to hear them because his brain switched off in unison with the lights. That week he had heard them every night. Felix Dunmore, a monster and a bully, blamed him for the missing Marlboro balloon photograph and had given him a severe warning in a fear-provoking whisper. “Watch out for the bogeyman, he’s gonna make ya life a fucking misery every night.”

Burch took the threat seriously and in the early hours of the morning, having finally fallen off to sleep, he awoke screaming in absolute agony. His nose felt as though it’d been ripped off his face. His eyes spewed tears, his nose oozing blood. Dunmore had turned his fingers into claws and had fish hooked them deep within his nostrils, pulling upwards with such force it had lifted his head off the pillow. On the second night, just as he nodded off to sleep, Dunmore arranged a piece of tissue doused with lighter fluid in and out of his toes and set the tissue on fire. Burch awoke writhing in pain, patting his right foot with his pillow to put out the flames. With toes covered in black ash and bulging blisters that hurt like hell, he registered a complaint with the wardens, but to little effect. He doubted they even made the complaint official.

The newfound fear of night
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time and darkness was affecting his ability to function as a normal human being, making his life even more difficult in prison. Now, for Burch, his need for sight was as essential as his need for air. Nights meant torture and torture led to mental disturbance. Then it happened again, on the third night. He’d kept himself awake until late, fighting sleep, jerking awake every so often in a rush of panic. When he did start sleeping, something touched his face. It woke him, but he could not open his eye. Dunmore had squirted glue all over his eyelids and started to punch him all over his body, smashing the life out of him while Dunmore’s scary voice penetrated his ears. “The bogeyman don’t like thieves.”

“Stop, please. I didn’t take your photo. I didn’t take it.”

Dunmore persisted with the punches, raining them down on him, destroying him.