Offworld (8 page)

Chris bolted for the SUV, cranked the engine, and gunned it back
out of the toll stop area.

"What?!" Trisha cried from the passenger's seat. "What is it?"

Chris didn't reply; he barely heard her. He rolled down all of the
vehicle's windows, concentrating, listening.

Their path became an on-ramp that returned to the highway, and
as soon as the walls surrounding the toll ramp were gone, he barreled straight through the low steel barrier between the northbound
and southbound lanes.

They'd barely crashed through the barrier into the southbound
lane, traveling in the wrong direction, when Chris slammed on the
brakes, screeching the tires to an ear-piercing whistle and stirring
up smoke.

A tiny subcompact was coming straight at them and it likewise hit
the brakes as hard as it could. The noses of the two vehicles crunched
lightly against each other as both came to a sudden stop.

Chris had to shake his head to clear away the jarring sensationthere hadn't been time to put on his seat belt as he looked through
the windshield at the place where the driver of the other car was.
But the subcompact's windows were tinted, making it impossible to
see its occupants.

Terry squealed to a stop behind him in the pickup. As Chris
jumped from the SUV, his friends rushed out of the vehicles as well.
He glanced back at them with a mixture of surprise and concern,
then climbed over the hood of the SUV and approached the subcompact's side door.

Terry caught Chris' glance immediately and pulled out a highpowered handgun from his waistband, holding it down at his side.

Where did he get a gun?

It didn't matter just now. Because suddenly they were not the only
four people on Earth. Whoever was in this car had to know more
about what was going on than they did, and it went without saying
that anybody left behind was, by default, automatically a suspect in
whatever had happened to everyone else.

Chris crept carefully to the driver's side door, but before he reached
it, it clicked and swung open, and the driver stepped out.

A diminutive girl, no more than twenty years old, stared back
at him. She was less than five feet tall, her red hair cut well above
her shoulders, without bangs, covering her ears. Her hair looked
as if it hadn't been washed in more than a week. The girl's teeth
were mostly discolored and crooked. Freckles dotted her sunburned complexion. Creases folded beneath her eyes, the only thing that
made her look older.

She displayed a blank, mildly curious expression.

Chris looked back at his companions, at a loss. Their reactions
echoed his.

The girl's striking eyes shifted between each of them, taking them
in. When she'd gotten a good look at each one of them, she opened
her mouth to speak.

The one word she said came out long and slow, the way a small
child talks.

"Wow."

Burke blinked awake in a haze of confusion, uncertain of where he
was or how he got there.

With a look at his surroundings, it came to him in a rush....

Oh, right. Mars. Lost. Almost out of air.

He was no longer leaning up against the large boulder hed sheltered against before losing consciousness. He was near it, but had
slumped over onto his stomach while asleep.

The sandstorm had abated, but Chris' newfound visibility brought
equally had news: the sun was almost gone. It would be down in
under twenty minutes, leaving him in freezing conditions that bed
never s u rvive.

He checked the timer on his arm. 7:15 PM. Less than two hours of
oxygen remaining. He d slept for quite a while.

So what will it be? Freezing to death? Or asphyxiation?

Habitat, this is Burke, do you read?"

Nothing.

The historic Ares mission had been graced with incredibly good luck and positive results thus far. They d made important discover-
yd advanced numerous scientific fields. Where the crew of
ies. The
Apollo 11 had once rallied a nation, the crew of the Ares had rallied
the globe. To have come this far, to achieve so much, and then have
things go so wrong ... It was a terrible thought.

I was the first man to walk on Mars.

I'm about to be the first man to die on it.

The light was already waning, unless his eyes were fooling him.
Or he was passing out again.

The Rover. Where's the Rover?

He cautiously rose to his feet, and did a fidl three-sixty. The Martian land vehicle the crew had brought with them was big enough to
carry all, four of them if necessary. But Chris had taken it out alone
about midday to undertake a routine survey of what appeared to be
a dry riverbed, part of the crew's ongoing search for evidence that life
may have once inhabited the planet. The sandstorm had caught him
completely off guard. Hed had no warning.

This is impossible.

The Rover was gone. He could see fbr miles in most directions, and
there was nothing but craggy, brownish orange land and the lighter
shade of orange sky overhead-which was quickly turnings black.

I couldn't have wandered this far from the vehicle....

How could it simply be gone?

The ground quaked, and he teetered over once more, facedown.
Dust swirled tip in a sudden gust of wind, the cursed orange dirt again
blocking his sight.

After the quake died away, Chris was lying perfectly still when
he felt a subtle shy in the soil. The dry lake bed cracked right under
his chest, the cracks spreading outward like breaking glass. Slowly,
dangerously.

He froze in place, wondering Y 'be should try to move, to crawl
away, or if that would make the cracking go faster.

Before he could choose, the ground gave way and he foil.

Chris staggered, but recovered quickly before he could topple.

Another dream, or flash of memory. And this time it had come
while he was awake. He fell through the surface of Mars? How could
he have survived that?

He looked around, getting his bearings. Right, the girl in the car
on the highway ...

Silence filled the air as the four astronauts and the girl examined
one another.

Chris looked upon the small young woman with nothing but
confusion. Terry put away his weapon, but couldn't take his eyes
off of her. Trisha's brows were knotted in suspicion, while Owen
remained, as ever, calm, thoughtful, and noncommittal.

The girl, for her part, appeared oddly detached. She examined
all four of them as though they were vague curiosities she'd never
encountered before, but nothing important enough to be excited
about.

Her appearance was a peculiar balance of appalling and charming. Not a single garment was correct in size, and nearly everything
was torn, with fringes around the edges and dirt stains all over.
Mismatched socks were covered by tennis shoes that barely clung to
her feet. She wore a hooded sweat shirt, only its arms had been cut
off, letting her dark, tanned skin show through. Indeed, all of her
visible skin was a dark shade of amber, leathery and hidelike, and
her cheeks were burned red from too much sun exposure. She had
three tiny braids in her hair on one side, with a few charms flopping
around on the ends.

The girl's expression struck Chris as almost innocent and full
of wonder. Yet there was something about her eyes that seemed to
counteract this effect. Her irises were a curious shade of silver; they
were more than beautiful, they were haunting, almost inhuman. Captivating and magnetic. Once Chris gazed into her eyes, he found it hard to turn away. They looked as though they had seen too much of
the grays of life and had taken on this peculiar hue as a reflection. It
seemed to Chris that she was sizing him up, and his friends as well,
with those weary, entrancing eyes.

"Who're you?" she asked.

Chris blinked. That wasn't what he'd expected. He didn't have
a conceited fiber in his body, but the four of them were historical
figures, internationally famous, and he found it difficult to believe
that anyone could be so out of touch with world events. "Who are
you?" he replied.

Asked you first," she shot back.

Chris tossed a look at Trisha, hoping for help, but she was projecting distrust, rooted to her spot and squinting at the girl.

"Well," he began, "we're the crew of the Ares."

"What's a air-ease?"

Chris took a moment to regroup, his mind working hard to blunt
his memorized talking points and NASA-speak. "We're astronauts.
We've been in space for a few years, and we just got back."

"You was what dropped out of the sky," the girl observed. "Thought
that was a falling star."

"You've really never heard of us?" Chris asked.

"Would remember if I did," she replied. "Got a photogenic
memory."

Chris blinked. 'A photo-what?"

"When you remember everything exactly how it was."

"Yeah, I-I know what it means, I just ..." He shook his head
rapidly, as if trying to shrug off a blow to the skull. "Um, where did
you come from?" he doggedly pressed on.

She shrugged. "In between."

"Between what?"

"The cracks."

Chris didn't know what to do with that. "What's your name?"

She recoiled a bit, as though he'd just suggested something absurd,
or offensive. "Don't tell that to strangers."

He opened his mouth, then closed it. She may have been an adult,
but she didn't sound much like one. He reframed the conversation
in his mind. "Well, I'm Chris. This is Terry," he said, pointing to his
youngest companion, who had slowly made his way closer to the
conversation, "and over there, that's Owen and Trisha. Now we're not
strangers anymore, are we?"

The girl was still frowning, clearly thinking this over, yet she stood
very still, barely moving at all as the wheels in her mind spun.

Finally, she said, "Mae"

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mae," Terry said, offering her his
hand. Her eyes fell to the hand he held out in front of her, and simply
lingered there. She made no effort to return the gesture, but there
was no coldness in her manner.

Trisha cleared her voice loudly, and Chris knew what that meant.
"Mae, could you give us just a minute?"

She shrugged, indifferent, and leaned over, sifting through the
inside of her car.

Chris and Terry joined the others behind the SUV, and the four
of them formed a tight circle.

"This is so wrong, so much I don't even know where to start,"
Trisha whispered. "Who is this girl? Why is she here if everyone else
is gone?"

"From her appearance," said Chris, "she must be homeless. Probably lives on the streets in Orlando."

"Very convenient," Owen said in his calm monotone, "that she
should happen to be homeless here, so that we encounter her right
after entering the city."

Terry was incredulous. "Look at her, Beech. You don't seriously
think she had something to do with everybody disappearing? Or the
crash? She doesn't even know who we are."

"The shortest distance between two points is a straight line," said Owen, crossing his beefy arms before his broad chest. "Point A:
everybody on the planet is gone. Point B: everybody on the planet
is gone-except for this one girl. The line between the two practically draws itself"

The four of them looked at one another.

It was Trisha who broke the silence. "I'm with Beech on this
one. I don't know if she's somehow related to what's happened or
not, but I don't trust her. And it seems odd that she hasn't mentioned
anything about everybody else vanishing around her. It's almost like
she doesn't even know."

"Well, maybe she's not the only one still here," Terry suggested.
"Maybe we'll come across more people like her, scattered around."

"What's most important," Chris said, waving away the various
arguments, "is what we do with her. I don't think we should just
leave her on her own."

"It would appear that the answer to that question has already been
decided," Owen whispered, nodding at Terry's pickup truck.