Mask (12 page)

“Why?”  Zack Leiffer, one of the Cosmologists, asked.  He was a heavy-set, middle age, sour colonist and recent arrival.

“Why what?” Lane asked.

“Why families?  I want to live, too.  I have just as much right.”

Zack’s eyes began to dart about and began to glaze over with the same sheen that Glenda’s had the previous evening in the commander’s office.

“Zack, good point.” Lane said sympathetically.

Lane stepped quickly over and then sucker punched Zack in the face.  Blood exploded from the impact, which broke his nose and scattered teeth across the tile floor.  Zack collapsed like a marionette, just like Larry had.

“Any questions?” Lane asked, looking around at the other bewildered colonists.  “When you get down there, Doc Larson will discuss how to get to the ship without the enviro-suits.  Just stay calm.”

Doc Larson took the lead and then felt the ground begin to move.  He paused and look to his right.

He and the colonists could now see the outlines of the
EVAC
ship coming into view through the west science lab windows.  The grav-engines vibrated the structure, glass panels undulating in waves.  A mild nausea overtook many of them and some were affected so severely they had to brace themselves against the walls to stave off vertigo.

The brick-shaped ship hung mere feet above the ground, dark purple over black paint outlined by the glow from the blue grav-engine emissions.  It followed their movements, running in parallel towards the end of the complex, broad circles of light illuminating the magenta grass.

Catherine grabbed Lane from behind and pulled him aside.  She led him back up the hallway as she spoke.

“Tim has a feeling something is wrong.”

“What?  I mean this isn’t anymore certain than what we were planning downstairs,” Lane said.

“No, he thinks something is wrong with the
EVAC
.  He thinks it may be
Them
.”

Lane looked ahead to see Tim standing in the radio room doorway.  He nodded his head in agreement.

“Why?” Lane asked.

“No Ident.  No signal jamming, but only for this one channel and it’s not even the emergency channel to boot,” Tim answered.

Lane looked down the long line of colonists, gathering at the end the hallway for a hope that now might not even be real.  It was cruel.

Wally slowly walked into the corridor.  “We saved?”

“No Wall, it’s even worse now.  Get back downstairs.  I think we’re going to have to work fast.”

He grimaced, but headed back downstairs.

“Dee,” Catherine shouted, “Dee, wait!”

Dee
was walking slowly behind most of the colonists when she heard the call and stopped with a questioning look.

Catherine motioned her back. 
Dee still carried Lily and held William’s hand, leading him back to his parents.

Lane stared at his wife and then sprinted along the hallway to overtake the colonists.

Catherine took a crying Lily from Dee and rested her head against her child’s shoulder, running her hand through her hair.

“It’s a trap,
Dee — a goddamn trap.”

“No, we’re going home.”

“Dee, listen.  It’s a trap, it’s them.  No one is escaping this shit hole.”

“No, no, you’re wrong,”
Dee said as she began to back away.  “You’ve gone crazy, Mrs. Pierce.  You don’t really have a death wish, do you?  You don’t want to kill your kids, you can’t.”

“
Dee, please listen,”

Dee
grabbed William’s arm and pulled him close.  He winced and looked up at Dee and then to his mother with surprise and started crying. “I won’t let you, Mrs. Pierce, I won’t.”

“Let go of my son, Dee.  Now!”

William wailed and push against her tenacious grip as Dee pulled him down the corridor.

Catherine started to panic; she couldn’t fight
Dee while she was holding Lily, who had wrapped her arms around Catherine’s neck tight to the point of choking.

She could see the line of bobbing heads racing down the dark corridor, reflections along the glass walls, lemon jump-suits, a menagerie of happiness and the macabre — racing into the abyss as though it were a ride at an amusement park.

“William!  Dee!” she screamed.

As
Dee turned to run, Allen was suddenly behind her.  She stopped and stared into his dead eyes.

“But
we must save the children,” she said.

Allen, a pacifist at heart, was contemplating the jig-saw puzzle he was about to create out of her face, but saw the hopelessness in her eyes and changed his mind.  He gently pulled William away from her and stepped aside. 
Dee leaned back against the glass wall and slid along it for a few paces and then turned and fled towards the air-lock.

Catherine mouthed a silent ‘thank-you’ and reached out for William who ran back to her.  She couldn’t see Lane anymore, and deep down she knew his mission was hopeless.  Given this last minute reprieve, no one was going to listen to reason.  She was most worried about Lane getting safely back to her now. 
So we can go back downstairs and kill ourselves
, she thought.  She just shook her head at the absurdity of it all.

******

“Doc, this isn’t right.  We think it might be a trap,” Lane said as he reached Larson, who was standing by the air-lock controls.

“Hell of a difference there Lane, is it a trap or isn’t it?”

“I don’t know, but something is way off.  Something is wrong; Tim could feel it in the radio transmissions.”

“Well Hell, if Tim felt something, why didn’t you just fucking say so, Lane?  I mean shit, if he had a feeling, what more do we need to know?  Perhaps we should put his sensitive ass in charge of this shin-dig.”

“Doc?”  Lane asked looking up into Larson’s eyes searching for any sign that he was losing it.

“Stop looking at me like that, I’m not Glenda.  We need real information here.  We can’t send all of these people back down to the basement, with an
EVAC
sitting right here, because some teenager had a feeling.”

“I’m not putting my kids on it Doc.”

Doc Larson examined his friend and nodded as he turned back to the colonists.

“Everyone, stay calm.  The
EVAC
has a problem and can’t take anyone.  We need to head back downstairs.”

“Fuck that,” someone screamed.

“The cargo bay doors are opening,” another colonist shouted and pointed.

The ship had settled down on the grass outside the air-lock, utility lights had come on illuminating a shimmering path from the air-lock to the ship.

“No, I assure you — everyone please listen, we have a problem.  Let’s get going now,” the Doc tried again.

Doc Larson caught a glimpse of movement and dodged just in time to avoid a round-house punch.

Lane pulled him out of the way, nearly tripping over Carson’s body that still lay in the air-lock vestibule.  They worked their way around to the back of the mob.

Lane noticed that the families were standing at the back, fear in their eyes as they clutched their children.

Lane shouted over the mob, “Look people, the aliens aren’t firing on them.  Something is wrong, let’s pull back, now people.  Let’s go.”

The families and a few others began moving away from the mob and back down the corridor when the inner air-lock doors opened and the colonists fell, pushing and shoving, into the chamber.  The mob split into two at that point.  Zack Leiffer held his bloody face and glared at Lane as he pushed through the families and ran to the air-lock doors.

Those at the rear, numbering a little over twenty, began moving quickly back towards the Rec-room.  The rest of the colonists filled the air-lock vestibule, shouting and screaming at one another.  A colonist had triggered the manual over-ride and at last the inner doors closed and the outer doors opened.

Doc Larson jumped over to the main air-lock control panel and after a few moments bypassed the manual over-ride and returned the controls to normal operation and closed the outer doors.

But by then it was too late.  The mob, holding their breath, raced across the grass to the waiting ship, pushing one another, stumbling and falling.  They leapt onto the ship, those in the back pushing in, everyone trying to get inside before they ran out of breath.

Lane watched helplessly from the vestibule.

The supply ship doors began to close, more than ten people remained outside, waiting for their chance to board.  Fingers clawed at the doors and pulled, while fists pounded on the sides of the ship.  The grav-engines began powering up and the stragglers turned to race back to the Outpost.  One by one they collapsed, mere feet from the chamber, grasping their throats and faces.  Blood erupted between their fingers as the toxic atmosphere began to eat away at their faces.

They crawled towards the chamber, slowly suffocating.

Lane started for the controls to try and save those he could, but Doc Larson pulled him back.

“There’s no point.”

Lane shook his head as he watched them writhe around on the grass.  He saw Dee on her knees clawing at her face and gasping for air.  He jerked his head back around in a panic to see Catherine and his kids safely at the far end of the corridor.

Dee
’s face melted away as she collapsed into the magenta grass.

They were beyond saving, but it would take them hours to die.

The other colonists were now back beyond the Rec-room, the last of them visible near the head of the stairs, haloed in the red emergency lights.  And then they felt it, before they saw it.

Doc Larson and Lane were running back towards the stairs when they collapsed just before the Rec-room, vomiting.  Lane looked up to see a silhouette pass over the dome, illuminated by bright blue lights.

The colonists had been sent to Paradigm Alpha with simple grav-engine supply ships.  After the massacre at Outpost 3, the marines had brought a second ship with them — the small, streamlined gun ship known as the Stinger.

A Stinger flew over the Outpost now, coming in low from the west.  The grav-engine backwash had taken Lane and the Doc down.  As the ship flew past the dome, they regained their feet.

As soon as it had cleared the outer walls of the Outpost and had a line of sight, the Stinger opened fire on the supply ship, lasers and missiles lighting up the sky, flashes of green and yellow illuminated the interior of the Outpost.  Plastic furniture came to life, dancing like grotesque fun-house caricatures.

And then the tree line to the northeast blossomed with weapons fire.  The Stinger took hits, but its armor was holding up — for now.

The supply ship came into view above the dome, leaning drunkenly, nose down.  The grav-engines were forcing the tail of the ship up, but the forward engines had failed.  The supply ship continued to fall, erupting in flames as it nosed down into the grass, plowing a gouge in the turf.

The Stinger pivoted to maintain fire upon the wounded ship and then took a critical hit from the northeast.

Through his disorientation, Lane saw Allen and Catherine at the head of the stairs, beckoning them.

The supply ship and Stinger simultaneously pillowed into a slow-motion fireball.  It churned yellow, red and green.

The glass on the outer walls and dome slowly cracked, lines racing up and down the panels and then they spider-webbed into a frosted sea that suddenly imploded, followed by the multi-colored fireballs of the two exploding ships.

The fire melted the plastic furniture as it raced through the Outpost.

Lane and Doc Larson were again thrown to the floor.  They covered their heads from flying glass and debris.  They both sucked in a lung-full of air and tried to scramble to the stairs.

The hulk of the rescue ship looked as though a can opener had run around the passenger compartment.  The Stinger was scattered all across the Outpost and the grasslands that surrounded it.

The oxygen in the Outpost was pulled out by the retreating fireball and then toxic air rushed in.  Lane and Larson squinted and covered their faces.  Allen stood, pulling his undershirt up over his face, his other hand at the ready of the manual over-ride for the enviro-safety door that had automatically closed upon the change in air-pressure of the Outpost.

He pressed the proper buttons and the door began to open as his two friends arrived at the portal.  They slipped through the narrow opening and Allen sealed the door behind them.

They stopped at the stairs and took deep breaths.  They all knew the toxins were at work, but it was only an irritant and soon wouldn’t matter in the least.

Allen looked at them.  Under the red emergency lights, the hundreds of punctures from flying glass just looked like black confetti.  They both looked like they had been shot with a shotgun and had miraculously survived.