Offworld (12 page)

By the time Owen was out of the wreckage, Mae had reappeared
with a bag of supplies and began tending his wounds. Chris and Trisha
watched for just a moment and then continued the search for Terry.

It was painstaking, difficult, sweaty work. Every now and then one
of them would call out Terry's name, but they never got a response.
Hours passed, and ravenous hunger and thirst set in, but they refused
to stop. Owen even recovered enough after a time to join them, and
the four survivors picked through the remains of the building desperately trying to locate their friend.

The sun was setting by the time they reached him. Terry was
unconscious and weak, buried much deeper than Owen, toward
the back of the store. But to their great surprise, he didn't seem to have suffered any permanent damage. He stirred when they tried
to pick him up. Moaning at first, he startled everyone by shouting
himself awake incoherently. When he opened his eyes, immediately
he squinted. The sun was low on the horizon, but even the dimness
of dusk was terribly bright to him. His legs were dangerously numb,
yet their color began to return almost immediately once they'd freed
him. They all knew it would be several hours before he could support his own weight again.

Terry struggled to catch his breath, as if he'd been running a
race. Pools formed in his eyes and he looked gratefully into the faces
of his friends.

He was pale, chilled with sweats. None of them had ever seen
him so weak, so frail.

"Took you long enough," he whispered, smiling, barely able to get
the words out before launching into a coughing fit. He took gasping
breaths as Chris and Owen worked together to pick him up, before
he retched up a vile mixture of black tar and soot.

Hours later, Mae stared at the ceiling above the bed where she
tried to sleep, but it was no use. She was much too wired after the
day's events. And she doubted she was the only one.

The tall guy, Chris, said that they would write this day off as a
wash and find some place to rest, so the black guy, Owen, and the
goofy one, Terry, could recuperate. The lady, Trisha, always agreed
with everything Chris said.

Chris had directed them to drive around-himself piloting one
vehicle and Trisha the other-for a couple of hours until they found
a neighborhood that still had power. They wound up near the airport
in a neighborhood of nearly identical, smallish houses with single
car garages jutting out in front. Owen guessed being so close to the
airport meant some backup grid might still be working. The others
agreed, but like most of the stuff these four astronauts talked about, it was something she had never paid any thought to. She wondered
idly what it was like for them to travel to Mars, to get out of their
ship and walk around on another planet. How long did it take them
to get there? Was there air on Mars? And what did they eat? It wasn't
something she was interested in finding out personally.

After finding this neighborhood, they went from house to house
until they found one with the door unlocked and began settling in
for the night.

Mae had plopped down on the floor, in a corner of the living
room near the broken front door, and watched everything that happened. She wouldn't have minded helping, but no one seemed to
want her help.

Terry looked to be improving by the minute, and by late evening
he was capable of moving under his own power again. Trisha was
forcing him to eat plenty of food and drink lots of fluids, and insisted
he get a good night's sleep. Mae had wanted to help with tending
to the two injured men, but Trisha glared at her whenever she tried
to get close.

Owen had deposited himself on the living room couch shortly
after their arrival, where he promptly fell asleep. When he'd opened
his eyes a few hours later, he rubbed at the large bump on the
back of his head. Like Terry, he had plenty of cuts and some nasty
bruises all over his body. But he would survive. Chris had pumped
a painkiller into him with a syringe from a first-aid kit, and forbade
him from moving from the couch until morning. Trisha distributed
food-mostly sealed bags of chips and cookies-to everyone, without a word.

And then, with everyone's needs seen to, the strangest thing happened. Mae watched as her four newfound companions dispersed
without exchanging any further words, each one going in opposite
directions. It was as if each of them had retreated inward to some
place deep inside. Each consumed by his or her own thoughts. She
wondered if they had done this before. She gathered they'd spent a lot of time together on their big mission. Was this how they had
always dealt with things while they were in space?

They would probably be surprised, she thought, to know that
she was observant enough to notice such details. She might not talk
like them or think like them or act like them, but she understood
them. She understood most everyone. And she always noticed the
little things. She had a knack.

Hours later, Mae was lying in a bed of her own, wondering if
any of them had really gone to sleep. She heard creaks and bumps
from elsewhere in the house, but that could've been the house just
creaking and bumping the way buildings do.

Or not.

Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, while still staring
at the drab ceiling, Mae's curiosity got the best of her.

An ear to the next bedroom door over revealed sounds of movement. Mae knocked, and then opened the door, afraid that if she
waited for permission to enter, it might never come.

"Did I wake you?" Chris immediately said. The room he occupied appeared to be the house's master bedroom, with a canopy
bed, meager walls lined with bookshelves, and an adjacent bath. It
felt cozy, quaint.

Yet Chris couldn't have been more out of place. His eyes were
red and blotchy, shifting uncomfortably around the room. He was
pacing, yet looked as if he could fall over unconscious at any moment.
She had no idea what was feeding this strange behavior, but she still
remembered what she'd seen him do at his father's house.

"Wasn't sleepin'," Mae replied.

"Hey, listen, I'm glad you're here.... I wanted to explain what
you saw this afternoon."

"Sorry," she said.

"What?" he said, surprised.

"Broke into your parents' place . .

Chris let out a nervous breath. "That doesn't matter."

Mae said nothing, watching his face, his body language. He looked
like a coil wound exceptionally tight, something he buried with the
others around. She wondered how he had gotten so far in his career
while keeping powerful feelings and thoughts buried deep inside.

`About what you saw .. " he began, rubbing the sleep from his
eyes.

"Was private," she said, shrugging.

He sighed, eyeing her carefully. "Then you know that ... that
rock was more than just a rock."

"Gravestone," she replied. "Walked through the backyard before
goin' inside, saw letters on the rocks. Didn't know what they meant,
but figured after you showed up ... Sorry," she said again.

"It's okay, I'm not upset with you. It's just ... it's complicated.
My father and I ... It's a long story, and honestly I'm too tired to get
into it now. What you saw was ... a moment of weakness. I would
appreciate it if you kept it between us."

"Don't like secrets," replied Mae matter-of-factly. "Keeping 'em
don't never do nobody no good. But don't usually do no good telling 'em either."

That seemed to satisfy him, so she turned to go.

"Mae?" he called, and she stopped in the doorway. "What about
you? Did you lose your family to-well, to whatever's happened?"

She shook her head. "They was lost already." She didn't look back
as she spoke, but there was no self-pity in her voice.

He didn't come up with a response to that.

She left and shut the door.

At the foot of the stairs was another bedroom. From inside she
heard a quiet sniffling and knew it had to be where Trisha had finally
settled in. She thought of going inside and making sure Trisha was okay, but Trisha didn't seem to care for her, and whatever she was
going through right now, it seemed to be intensely private.

She kept on walking.

Mae heard the tinny sound of a bouncing ball just outside the
front door, so she investigated. She found Terry dribbling a basketball
on the pavement to her right. An old hoop on a white pole was stuck
into the ground on the far side of the driveway.

Terry took a tired jump shot from outside an imaginary three-point
line, and the ball bounced off the basket. He still looked pale-white
as linen, really-from his ordeal.

"Brick," Mae said. He hadn't noticed she was there.

"Hey, keep it clown," he said, smiling as if to ease the admonishment. "If Trish realizes I'm out here, she'll skin me."

Mae frowned.

Terry almost laughed, but stopped short, clutching his chest and
wincing. "Not literally. She just ... she kind of mothers me a little. I
guess she does it to all of us."

"How come?" Mae asked.

"She's from a big family." He shrugged. "Sometimes I think she
doesn't even know she's doing it."

Mae looked around, breathing in the muggy night air and wondered what it'd be like to have a family. "It's late."

"My legs were restless. Still feeling kinda numb, thought I'd give
'em a stretch."

Terry took another shot and it ricocheted off the backboard, soaring in her direction. She picked it up as it rolled to her feet.

"Oughta be sleepin'."

"So should you," he noted. He rubbed again at the spot where
the beam had pressed into him.

"Pain bad?" asked Mae. She didn't move forward to offer comfort,
but her voice wasn't entirely devoid of sympathy.

He unbuttoned his short-sleeve shirt just enough to expose a
bruise, running the central length of his chest.

"Get you something," she said, making to go inside to retrieve
some painkillers.

"Hey, okay," he said, "you got me. The pain's not the only thing
keeping me awake."

She turned back and said nothing. Merely cast him a blank
expression.

"Everyone else has better reasons to be upset about all this than
I do," he said slowly, looking down the street at nothing. "I do know
that. I'm the only one who didn't have someone waiting for me to get
back home. The others all have family, friends, loved ones."

"You don't got friends?"

"Oh, sure I have . . " He paused for a moment of reflection and
then scrunched up his face. `Actually, I kinda have groupies. They
keep me from being alone, but ..

"No family neither?" she asked.

"Nah. Beech has a wife and a son. Chris has friends and colleagues, and Trish has her gi-normous family. I'm sure they miss the
people who care about them. So does it make me a terrible person
that all I can think about is myself?"

"Yep," she answered with conviction. He turned to her, shocked,
but she gave just the barest hint of a smirk. He returned the gesture,
his shoulders dropping at ease.