Kraken Orbital (28 page)

I can see the tip of my axe glistening in the
flames ahead. I suck up the pain yet again and bend down to
retrieve it. It’s warm to the touch but the wooden handle hasn’t
been burned or scarred either.

‘Come on,
I’ve got an idea.’ I turn to see Lucy weeping into her hands again.
She tries to hide it behind a yawn and a stretch but it’s as
transparent as glass. She steadies herself and wanders over,
kicking some of the rubble aside as she does. She takes me by the
hand and nestles her head into my shoulder. She closes her eyes for
just a second too.

‘What are you thinking? Climb through the
torn door and see what we can find?’ I stroke her copper hair a
second and drag her around me to face me.

‘Are you
hungry?’ She just looks dazed and confused by my stupid question.
She doesn’t answer but she has to be. I know I am. Very. I haven’t
eaten since Kolt captured that snake out in the desert. But that
must have been days ago. There really was no way of telling time
here. We were inside, then outside, then back in again and
constantly dealing with problems and blood curdling issues that it
just didn’t matter what time it was.

But I would
like to know. It would be nice to figure out how long we had been
here. I pull
her with me and make my way
slowly back to the fallen train. The fire, though intense, had
burned fast and had died out into embers just as
quickly.

The train
carriage had rolled onto it’s side but it wasn’t too far off centre
to be
uncomfortable. I enter through the
smashed window and quickly check that the way is clear. It had been
lit in a clean surgical light when we first stepped into it. Now
it’s choked with smoke and flame scarred. The carpets are on fire
still and the last of the birds is laid dead in one corner. I nudge
it’s carcass first with my boot and then again with my axe a few
times. No sound or movements means that it must be dead. Good. My
plan might just work out after all.

There
’s enough of the diesel left
to feed the fire a while and the various parts of the train that
were flammable would feed it a while longer still. That’s pretty
much just the carpets really. But I can tear up the cushion and
felt pads that line the benches too. That will keep us warm for
even longer still. Lucy finally joins me and takes a seat. It’s a
bit skew whiff to one side but she manages to get comfortable by
laying down across it. I take to the task of dismantling the place
and feed it to the fire in the centre of the carriage. Lucy must
think I have lost it.

But she
actually ask
s me if that’s true when I
take my axe and start brutally hacking at the torso of the meaty
and muscular frame of the overgrown bird. I succeed in hacking off
two massive cuts of tender and bloodied meat. They, even uncooked,
look like two of the nicest steaks you could ask for. I slop them
on the dirty floor. I don’t care if they kill me. I’m eating them
either way. I take my axe to the leathery wing. The skin splits
with relative ease and I fashion two wraps, one for each of the two
steaks.

I place the
axe down and wrap the tender looking meat around the thick skin.
Perfect to cook them in. Lucy ha
s propped
herself up and has begun to smile a little. She must have caught
on. Her expression is a curious mix between admiration, love and
utter bewilderment. It just spurs me on frankly. My axe is double
sided. I place one steak on one side of the blade and the other
next to it on the other side of the tip. I then prop the axe into
the fire using whatever shard of metal would hold it best in place.
I wedge it in good and immediately hear the skin start to crackle
and burn. They won’t take too long but best to cook them through.
Lucy’s smile has evolved from a gentle, thin and admiring smile and
into an easy chuckle. One filled with pride in me.

‘
You
complete caveman.’ She laughs as I sit down
beside her. I nudge her playfully.

‘I guarantee
that will be the best tasting meal you have ever had.’ I laugh with
her and point to the now sizzling steaks. I’m really looking
forward to mine. It must have been literally years since I had
anything even like it. Maybe even back on the farm with my Dad come
to think of it. It even conjures a tear for me to think about it.
Not that I show it. Sadly our laughter and light mood dies off
after a few minutes. It was nice to lift our spirits just for a
moment but the reality of our situation eventually invaded what
would have otherwise been a really nice moment for a fledgling
couple to enjoy.

I don’t know
why I thought that. A couple. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself
and ahead of her too. But that was how it felt and it made me feel
better
to just think it so I just went
with it. Not that I would ever tell her. I’m not that brave. And I
can’t persuade the new me to be that brave either.

No matter. We
just si
t in silence and try to enjoy the
flames and the warmth they create. It’s peaceful but the atmosphere
of the place would not give it away. It remains tense. With more
than one undercurrent flowing around the room. There is something I
need to ask her and I can tell it’s distracting me. But I’m going
to be the jerk who spoils our meal. I’ll just ask her after a
while.

The steaks
a
re cooking really well now. The room is
filling slowly with curious mixes of black and white clouds of
smoke and the gentle rasping of the sizzling meat. It smells
exceptional. It’s making my mouth water. I wait as long as I can as
Lucy naps contently by my side.

I need to
know why she freaked and lost it when one of those flying monsters
started dragging at her legs. That really was out of character for
her and it was making me sick thinking about it. I know everyone
has a fear. An off switch. Something
irrational that makes them terrified beyond reason. Maybe
that was hers. But it just didn’t add up. And no way was she going
to open up to it. Even when I did start prying for it, I doubt she
will tell me. I nudge her awake.

‘
I think
these are good to eat. You want to join me.’ She
rubs her eyes but smiles contently. She looks shaken again
and I wonder what she might have been dreaming of. I thought back
but only briefly to what she had said about her latest nightmare
and it unsettles me.

‘You okay?’ I
clarify but she only nods her head. I take the handle of the axe
and bring the nicely cooked sizzling dino-steaks out of the slowly
dying fire. Shame we have nothing to eat them off of or even with.
I guess we will just have to wait for them to cool and go at them
like animals. I’m fine with that but I think Lucy might just be
humoring me. She doesn’t look like she has any appetite. Something
is really troubling her. I need to know what so I can try to fix
it.

‘
Listen…’ I
start as I unwrapped the meat from the skin blankets I had hastily
but rather resourcefully crafted. ‘Even if you don’t feel like
eating, I think you should. No idea where the next one will come
from…’ I smile
to her and rub the top of
her shoulder with a gentle caressing palm.

‘They look
amazing.’ She smiles, forces herself to perk up with a deep breath,
and takes one of the steaks off the axe without worrying about the
mess or the heat at all. I must have given my surprise at that away
in my face.

‘What?’ She
protests
and takes a hearty mouthful.
Trying to stop smiling at the same time.

‘I knew I liked you.’

We
sa
y little more and tuck into the only
meals either of us had enjoyed for what feels like a lifetime. The
meat is cooked perfectly to my taste. Moist, greasy and tender. But
well enough so that it falls apart with each rotation of the jaw.
Only the odd big fat vein spoils my enjoyment of it and I think I
might have made a right pig of myself by finishing it in no time.
But when I look up, Lucy has pretty much destroyed her’s too. And
I’ve no idea why I found that so attractive. The perfect girl. Or
so I happily thought. Distracted at last from the horror around
us.

She
finishe
s and just laughs when she
realizes how much of a mess she was in. She just rubs the grease
from her lips away with her jacket sleeve and then cleaned her
hands across her thighs. I do the same. No time at all for manners.
I doubt I would even be able to remember any after so long in that
mine. We were animals at the end of the day. And treated like ones
too.

‘Why did it upset you so much.’ Time for me
to be that jerk. The guy I didn’t want to be to get the answers I
need and want.

‘It doesn’t
matter.’ She smiles at me, her legs tucked up against her chest
where we sat upon the floor, and her head resting ajar against her
knees.

‘Are you
sure?’ That isn’t what I wanted to say. I wanted to say “no chance”
or something more offensive and cruel but I hold it
back.

‘Yeah.’
She
sighs. ‘I think I know what this
place is. I think I know what’s going on here.’ My heart sinks. Not
because she is talking in riddles. Because I know exactly what she
meant. I’m starting to figure it out too. I just didn’t want to
know. It’s another truth I’m happy to hide from. Another
realization that I was all too happy to forget and run away from. I
think I knew from the start.

‘Don’t say
that.’ I nervously ru
n my hands through
my long greasy hair and sigh to fight back a tear. Not like me at
all. This girl really does have me off balance.

But
I was starting to get it. I was starting to
figure it out too. For all the conflict in my mind and for all the
times I fought with the obvious truth it was hiding from me, the
answers were starting to ebb through. The burning man who thought I
was God. The drowning woman who didn’t want to be saved. Then there
was Kolt. Kolt who had been dead all these years and never able to
move on. I didn’t believe in ghosts before I came here.

That was the
old me though.
What choice did
I have now though?
When confronted with
them in so vivid detail. This word was unlike our own. And a small
theory was starting to warp it’s way around my tired mind. Kolt
died in a fire. When he saw his ship again he burst into flames.
The burning man aboard the ship died in a fire that would not
consume him entirely. A fire that would not die. The drowning woman
who wanted to drown again and again. People who died here
constantly relived that death in the life beyond it. That death
relived itself over and over again and hung there. In this world,
unlike to my knowledge of Earth or any other, death was not the
end. And the afterlife was a torturous remake of that same
death.

I hope it’s
wrong. I hope I’m wrong. I hate myself for even thinking it and I
hope it’s just a figment of my imagination. I want to ask Lucy what
she thinks but I daren’t.
Because I
already know the answer.

‘
Listen.’ She
began rubbing my arm gently. ‘Let’s stay here a while and sleep.’
She hit the nail right on the head. We
’re
both tired. Maybe after some sleep the world might not seem such a
bleak place. Maybe I could start to think right again. She pulls me
to lay beside her and she cuddles into me and shuts her eyes. I’m
not getting to sleep. But every muscle in my body is aching so hard
that I know I need to rest. Even if it meant just staying here,
holding onto her, for a few hours to recharge.

Chapter 20

The
C
rash

‘
Hyper drive
failure.’ The automated voice bellowed out around the rig. I had
fallen asleep in the captain’s chair and hadn’t been paying
attention. My dreams had been unsettled and vivid. Those men I shot
on the stairs. My boss’ face as I slammed the butt of the exe down
into his skull over and over again. It haunted me and tortured me.
But what hurt more was that I was proud and glad too. I was happy I
did it. There was no going back, that was for certain, and there
was no way either to take back what I had done. But I didn’t want
to take it back.

I was
glad.
They drove me to it. I had to keep
thinking that. I had to keep that truth alive even though it was
over now. I had to keep remembering what broke me and why I ran
away and stole this rig in the first place. But that didn’t stop
the nagging voice. The programmed voice that told me I should have
stayed where I was. That I should have put up with it. Should have
just kept bowing down to the devil I knew. And not come here on
this God-forsaken mission into the depths of space.

‘
What!’ I
shout at the console in front of me as the warning bellowed out
again and again.
I start banging my fists
against the screen over and over. In frustration. In guilt. In the
solemn and sad realization that I had no idea how to fix it. The
shutters came down over the windows just as I realized we had
reached the far away planet I had been aiming for. I can see the
desert on the surface of the world below as the last of the shutter
sections closed against the window. The machine is going into
crisis mode and I have no idea what is going to happen to me. I’m
just a miner. Just a thick headed miner. I have no idea how to land
it. Or what to do in an emergency.

‘
Come on!
Think!’ I scream to myself and st
and up
just as the lights fail. The warning beacons start erupting and
blaring alarms sound from every corner of the miserable pod that
was the command deck of the retro fitted rig. I have to think fast.
I’m sinking into the surface of the planet and I’m going to hit the
surface hard and fast. I have to think about my training. What
little precious training those jerks had given us way back at the
start of my sad episode of life that was my employment
there.