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Chapter six in a sci-fi novel in progress. rough |
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and then it was that I came to. my friend was crouching at me and gesturing. i must have been talking, reflex babbling, but i could not hear myself. I was disoriented. “we need to move” he said, “ grab your dog. shes hurt too.”, and with that I was up and moving. I hurt but it was bearable. He was right. I saw her laying in a strange posture across the floor. I could see her breathing. He moved about the cargo hold from fallen to crouching men. I looked the dog over briefly, she was awake but stunned. She was bleeding from a cut but it was not deep as much as it was open. Her tail was clearly broken and as I collected her I realized it had been that which shed the disturbing anima to her posture. I picked up my things and began to wrap her in one of my shirts. “give my some cloth quickly”, he ripped a section from the shirt i was wearing and moved to the interface by the cargo bay doors. “I need your knife”, I slid the knife out of the bundle and its sheath and tossed it across the floor toward him. “clean the blood from her wound” “clean all the blood from her wound and any that you have on you. If its on your clothes remove them. Do it now. there are things that can do this to a ship that can taste from across a room.” I did what he said. it sounded disgusting to me. he returned quickly with the strip of shirt in one hand and the knife in the other. The cloth was beginning to smoulder. he held a pocket ignitor beneath it. there was surpisingly little motion around the hold. i did not want to think what that meant. i tried to stand but found gravity funny. it was pulling from more than one place. the ship itself was quiet again though. no more shrieks. maybe it was already dead. My friend worked his little linen fire. Grabbing a shirt from my bundle he set about lighting it up as well. “stop watching me if you can and focus on the blood. All of the blood. Rub this onto it. Do you understand my words?” he pointed at the ash. “I do” in truth, I had been immersed in his language for so long in the mine that I had been thinking in it for months now. I cleaned as best I could around myself and Chupi, my dog, and I removed the sleeve of my left arm with the knife he left on the floor between us. I worked quickly and calmly. the fire smelled good to me like a home. i looked around but the others were not really regaining focus. most were assessing themselves and the situation or simply staring at the two of us working so intently. a few were up and talking. The fire was now smoldering ash. He cupped a handful of it and dumped it onto Chupi's stomach. “rub that into the wound and spread it around” he took another handful and threw it at the base of my neck from behind me. i felt the cut then. "you missed a spot." he said as he moved on, shooting me a look. I began to sputter a stifled cough as the soot settled around me. I spared him a look over my shoulder and saw him rubbing it onto himself. He was looking at the others and handing out small bits of chalky ash. “… the decision is your but I advise you to use the ash. You.” He pointed to on wiry man with stringy grey hair sitting quietly along the wall. he alone looked undisturbed and uninjured. “help him to bundle the animal.” The man stood and did as he was told. Some of the others were picking up the urgency and were collecting what remained of the ash. “that is a mistake friends please.” A few men were moving to a second hatch trying to activate it. But only one or two stopped for even as he was saying it he was somewhat absently wiping what remained on him onto the man kneeling to help me. We nearly had her wrapped and i looked up for a moment to take it all in and let my hands finish the work. my friend was now throwing, blowing and scattering ash about the hold. i moved to stand as the lights went out. “clean your feet” was the last thing I saw him say to the man in the dropping light. He tap-talked "follow." Then by sound we followed him around a corner into the hallway toward the main hatch. the one we had come in. I wonder if there were a better collection of men on board to move and follow thru this. the dark was reassuring. it was what we knew and suddenly we were at work. We made our way out into the stillness. the corridors were cold and damp with some liquid that was beginning to freeze on the walls. As we made our way further into the bowels of the ship we found there were sections of the hull that had begun to glow with small red luminescent safety marks. it was like the mid-day sun had once been to me, so bright it seemed. We stopped and stood at another door and once again he put out his hand and almost instinctively I handed him my knife. He began to calmly strip away the resin seal around the access console. he worked frantically, if frantically contained none of the emotion and all of the purpose. He was prying at the interface coding. I noticed then somewhat accidentally that there were others in this room. they were awake but not moving. they sat seated in several rows and lining the wall. they were dressed different than we. better. they sat motionless like fake people. they did not move or talk. “what the hell is going on” It was a smallish man who was sweating from his balding head and bleeding from somewhere else. he had come up on us. I vaguely remembered that he was one of the ones who started grabbing ash when he was told. He caught my eye and looked over toward the silent rich or officials or whatever they were. he stopped. he looked back to me with a strange expression but before we could exchange reactions the door began to hiss. ‘Step back.” My friend stepped back from the door keeping the man with the grey hair behind him. I stepped back, instinctively holding Chupi closer. He went quickly thru and i had to spring to keep up. We moved quickly through the door and i caught the silent group turning their heads almost as one to watch us go. Chupi let out a small cry and the door closed behind the five of us and suddenly they stopped in front of me. minors dont stop like that. then we met the guests. No matter how i describe this it will not convey the feeling. It was as if shadow moved in darkness but I could see it. In the deepest recesses of the mine, wrapped in the knowledge of their fate, men would sometimes break. Fear and fatigue would create creatures such as these, creatures hunting just behind them while they worked. stalking darkness we called it. incidents had been disturbing. it had actually put the guards off and created some small policy changes about sectioning. the stalking darkness, whatever else they thought it was, was always animated and hateful of them. The difference between what we met in that hallway and the stalking darkness of the deepwater mine sections was vast. The difference was that those creatures made noise. Their's was the noise of settling rock piles, or wind from distant transports, or even of the mans own heart or mind. They made noise because that’s all they were there. There were no fleshed creatures lurking in the mines. Men went missing from time to time but it was not to some hungry being that claimed them. There were explanations. thats what we all believed. But these were something different. The weight to stand became enormous as the room opened into a dispatch bay. Soldiers were held or sat in place within restrains in files of men and women. I saw and heard men in the center of the bay dropping and as each did I saw creatures leaping like the men’s own shadows, returning to them as the light behind them moved. They latched on to them like some living fold of space. I could feel their hunger. It was rigid. I could see now too that it wasnt only the falling men who drew their shadows, the wounded and blood soaked were being mated as well, there was a smell coming off the victimes. as were others for seemingly no reason while the man beside them stood unmolested. there seemed to be no blood connection though. More creatures manifested in the room one after the other. I saw my friend. i had never seen that particular expression on him. i knew they were not what he expected to find. the knife in his hand seemed less real to me now. i could also see the grey man across the doorway thru the gaps in the creatures ranks. i did not see the other. folded dark beings moved like a transport passing between us in the mine. Then suddenly one was not moving. it did not stop. it was just suddenly not moving like a wave that stops as it moves down a length of rope. They did not change course. They simply moved within space from one point to the next. it was unnatural motion. the thing was not present then it was. I knew it stopped, that it had been moving. I believed I knew that. And then there it was in front of me. There was not a man or woman in the room that did not have one of the creatures on them except myself and the two across from me. They were behind this hideous thing that stood before me. but they were distorted as in a bent, shaded mirror. vision seemed to stretch or reach out around these hungers. The others of its kind with it were either fastened to a man or hovering doing a stick-slip shiver in some shriekish fashion without noise. All but the one intent on me. I began to feel my heart pumping harder. My throat was closing and then the growl. It started low but began to grow. I almost didn’t realize what I was hearing. “RUN! You have to run! Shut that animal up! We are all gonna die!’ but noone had said anything. It was in my mind. I was tightening my grip on Chupi and loosening it on myself. ‘let her growl” a voice came from behind the creature. “it does not hear her” and then it was over. The creature moved toward the others perhaps joining in the lament or waiting for scraps. “move”, and as he said it my friend moved thru the open doorway into the hallway followed by the grey man and so I did as well. I was surprised how possible it was to move. Quickly and quietly, randomly, we made our way down the corridor. There were rooms opening off to our right and left or closed and locked and in some of them were these black creatures nesting on their sprawling or motionless host. There was no noise. Not a cry of anguish or shriek of terror. i could see the facial expressions of the victims though and occasionally I thought I heard the scuffing of limbs dragging back and forth across the floor or walls or the sound of spilling. no intelligent noise though, nothing. We stopped before a closed door in front of us. I was surprised how quickly we ran out of ship. It had seemed larger when it landed and we boarded; of course, we were never meant to see this area of it. I was also surprised that the balding man carefully unloaded Chupi just as I felt as if I would drop. Briefly, I wondered how long he had been in the mines. his ability to see things in the way another carries a weight and to be part of a group that cant see each other. i had never seen him before though and that could not be. Once again my friend began on an interface, this one to the side of what must be the command deck door. I didn’t turn around. If they were gliding up the corridor behind me I didn’t want to see it. i was afraid if i looked at one they may look back. i did not want to share that with one of these. Again and again he tried, physically prying with one hand a portion of the casing away in an attempt to gain access to the hardware. While trying as well to think his way past the coding of the interface programming. It was not working. I don’t think even he thought it would. After a few minutes he simply handed me the knife and turned. “we cant get in” he turned again toward the other man, absently he began to unload Chupi from him. I had been about to do the same. “we are going to need to cut it” he said “should we hide first and wait for those other things to… leave?” I felt still distantly nautious. I almost said finish. He only shook his head. we stood in the corridor for several minutes. The temperature of the ship was continuing to drop and air was getting thin. If It dropped enough, none of this would matter. I wondered about the air as well, i couldnt hear it leaving anymore but it was growing lean. "i wonder how much ship we have left." the little balding man was wiping his head but staring with intent eyes at my friend. ‘we need to stabilize the environment. We need to determine if there is a critical systems failure. We need to find out if we are about to blow up. We need to find out our heading. We need an access transponder. Without the codes they will be useless to open this door . and we need to not be wrapped up by one of those things.“, he patted the door behind him absently without looking at it, “but we should be able to access some routines as system observers." he moved forward and around to the right toward a mini cookingstation we had passed. "We wont be able to change anything but we will know if we should bother trying. And…” he said the last as he set down Chupi. “we’ll be needing names now. we are free men." |
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