Chapter 16
Research Station, Kazi
Osara System, Ballas Branch
After they had arrived back at Kazi Depot, Johns gave the team a good twelve-hour rest. Let them cool down a bit. Rick was right. They needed their rest. They needed to kill the second queen quickly, but it was more important that the mission was successful. He’d send a message in a few hours letting them know the plan, giving them plenty of time to mentally prepare.
In the meantime, Johns decided that he could be most useful in helping with the evacuation. He and Rick had shared a quiet puddlejumper ride, over to the Research Station. Rick sternly thumbed through his com unit, silent, a flash of feeds reflecting off of the visor of his environment suit. Johns tried not to think about it, keeping himself busy with feeds.
“Turn it up,” Johns asked Rick, who nodded and played the audio on his external speakers.
It was odd that they could access the feeds from Osara Prime, but couldn’t transmit back at scale. The feeds on Rick’s com unit showed the stark disparity between Kazi and Osara Prime. Back on the home planet, a football tournament was dominating the headlines. They didn’t have a care in the world. No mention of Kazi or the imminent threat that was growing here. Of course, they hadn’t been told of any imminent threat on Kazi.
The visitor’s arrival had been portrayed as an explosion at the communications building, explaining the lack of communication from family members stationed on Kazi. They had originally said the communications outage would last several weeks but had recently admitted that they may be looking at an outage of several months until replacement parts arrive.
It didn’t surprise Johns that they had decided to keep it quiet. That was expected. When would they come clean? If they ever did. But if they didn’t beat this thing, how do you explain five thousand people disappearing? Of course, they had done worse before.
There wasn’t much that could surprise Johns anymore. He had seen it all throughout the war. The highs. The lows. The joys of victory and the trenches of despair. Raymond’s betrayal was anything if not familiar. But still, it felt new. Maybe it was the audacity of it—betraying him again.
It was easy for Johns to understand a political betrayal. Sure, he had turned his life to shit. Separated him from his family and sent him to babysit a research colony on a planet that would later be the home to mankind’s first recorded alien invasion. But someone had to have their head lopped off. The people had demanded it. Despite how much it hurt, Johns knew that he was the easy choice. He had technically overseen the atrocities.
Part of him hated Raymond. Maybe most of him. But part of him also knew that it was all part of the game. Raymond was ascendant. The planet was fresh off of a destructive civil war and the losing team needed a head on a pike before they’d buy in to recovery. That, Johns understood.
But this? It didn’t cost him anything to send help. If the ships had left when Johns had first requested help, they’d be arriving in a few days. Everyone could have been off-planet a week from today. Instead, we are pulling everyone from the Research Station back to Kazi, where we are better fortified and farther from the enemy.
But Raymond Duke couldn’t even do that. Was he unwilling to sacrifice any political capital to save five thousand lives? Could he really have fallen that far? Maybe he just thought it was best to keep it quiet. That could make sense. The populace finding out that they had a lethal alien presence currently growing like aggressive cancer on their nearest astral neighbor might send people into a bit of a panic. Or, maybe he just hated Johns and was willing to kill everyone as long as he could fuck Johns one last time. Maybe.
The puddle jumper set down on the landing pad just outside of the hangar. The hangar here was small, which was partly why they were sending civilians back solely through the train system. Johns and Rick hopped out of the back of the puddlejumper, which rose and headed back for Kazi Depot just as they got out of range, kicking up dirt and stray foliage as it whisked off above the thick jungle.
Rick didn’t say anything to Johns as they made their way into the station airlock. A cloud of disinfectant filled the room. The steam-like gas dissipated, and they removed their environment suits and waited to get sprayed again, then buzzed in by security. The doors opened with a whoosh. Standing on the other side were about fifteen people staring directly at them.
“What is going on?” a woman in the front said.
The evacuation announcement hadn’t been made yet, except to the security teams, but the bustle around the station must have tipped them off.
“An announcement will be made shortly,” Johns said and walked forward, hoping that they would part in the middle and let him through. They didn’t.
“We need to know. Are we in danger?” the woman insisted.
Johns put his hands on his hips and looked down at his boots. They were dirty. Worn. Typically Johns boots wouldn’t be a nudge off from shined and mirror-like. It was a sign of the times.
“Look. I can’t tell you,” Johns said and the crowd moved every so slightly closer together, shutting his exit tighter. “…But I can tell you this. You aren’t in danger…right now. But you probably will be if you stay here another two or three days. If you head back to your quarters, pack up everything important—keep it to one big bag—and start heading toward the trains…you’ll have a head start on the rest of the station. I’m making the announcement in a couple of hours.”
The woman clasped her hands together and held them up to her face, her eyes shone with tears. A man in the back turned and started jogging down the metallic corridor and soon the rest of the group turned and did the same. Johns was sure that people would see that group sprinting through the station. It could cause a panic, he shouldn’t have told them.
Rick seemed unphased. As soon as the crowd was out of their way, he started striding forward.
They had to move quickly but had a long list of things to ready before making the announcement. As soon as the announcement went out, things were going to get chaotic. Johns would have to find a way to word things that would keep things calm.
Of course, the more bustle around the station there was until then, the harder it would be. It wasn’t like it wasn’t obvious what was going on as they pull trains into the station, ready supplies, and set security up all around the station. Not with an alien force lurking out there in the wilderness.
“You go to the trains. I’ll get the provisions,” Rick said when they reached the station’s center.
Johns nodded and the two of them parted ways. He made his way toward the trains but it was slower going than it should have been. He couldn’t walk twenty feet without someone trying to ask him what was going on. It dawned on Johns that he should have changed into his uniform later on. He probably wouldn’t have had to deal with the constant harassment.
Eventually, Johns started forcing people to walk with him and talk if they had something to ask. He gave mostly vague answers and told every person that there would be an announcement soon.
Fifteen minutes later, Johns arrived at the trains. The trains ran between each of the stations on Kazi. Of course, right now, they were only operating between Kazi Depot and the Research Center. Even when it was still there, very few people ever had a reason to go visit the communications station. There were seldom more than two-hundred-and-fifty people there.
The conductor’s room and operations were in the terminal at the far side, tucked into a corner. The room opened up in a large common room, which was connected to the communication room, operations, logistics, and a break room. When Johns burst through the door, the common room was full. He had chosen not to inform them from the coms but in person. That way they could ask questions.
But the room knew. They all sat, staring. Waiting to hear the words they probably already knew were coming — that they were going to evacuate the station.
The conductors and train staff all sat together, the various men and women in Kazi Transport uniforms, and two or three men in business suits. One of the suited men was Frederick Roleax, the Kazi Transport CEO. They were a private company, but Johns had regularly worked with him to take care of problem passengers on the trains.
Johns looked back at the room. They didn’t look scared. Anxious, maybe.
“We’re evacuating the Research Station,” he said plainly, opting not to beat around the bush. “No one is in any immediate danger. The aliens are still three or four days away. But we aren’t sure we will be able to stop them from reaching the station, and we’d rather be safe than sorry. We need all trains in a line, ready to go. We will be delivering a large amount of supplies to Kazi Depot. You’ll have plenty of help getting it into the trains, but things are going to be tight. Figure out how many trips we will need to take and whether or not we’ll need a run for the cargo alone. If we have to, we can run the cargo out first. We’ll have people on the other side waiting to unload as well.”
He let it hang in the air for a moment.
“Any questions.”
The room was silent. No hands were raised.
“You heard the man. Get to it,” Frederick Roleax said from the back of the room. Everyone immediately stood up, gathered their things, and headed off through one of the many doors in the room.
Johns nodded toward Frederick, who gave him a somber nod back. Normally he’d be hot-headed about this kind of thing. But everyone knew that it was no one else’s fault.
Johns exited the room and decided that he should head to a supply room to grab a cart. That way people would get out of his way, and he wouldn’t have to talk to everyone as he made his way across the station. He was heading toward the Research Station supply warehouse, which was at the opposite side of the compound.
Of course, it didn’t stop people from trying. One man yelled questions at him as he passed. Another ran alongside the cart, demanding answers as Johns drove.
Still, it was much quicker than trying to make the walk. When he arrived, he was pleasantly surprised to see that the supplies had already been loaded up into a fleet of vehicles and had been send to be loaded into the trains. Rick was speaking with a pilot at the far end of the warehouse. Johns approached and the closer he got, he could tell they were discussing logistics.
The scientists were figuring out what they would need to take with them and how they would transport it. They had several puddlejumpers dedicated to moving research equipment and hard drives. Much of the data had already been transferred via the network. Still, the work that they were doing here was important. Kazi’s ability to regrow quickly was being touted as a possible solution to terraforming.
In less than an hour, all of the arrangements had been made. A train had been filled with cargo and sent off toward Kazi Depot.
Normally, the railroad tracks were a loop, meaning that the trains could continue going one direction and arrive back at the Research Center. However, because the track at the communications station was destroyed, they would need to go back and forth, which added some complexity to the process. Ultimately, they decided that the trains would pull into Kazi Depot, unload, then pull forward onto the existing track beyond the station and wait there until all of the trains were unloaded. Then they would all head back to the Research Center together.
Because the first train in the line had to go first, that meant they had to fill up that first train with cargo. Of course, that meant that everything was being loaded in plain sight of anyone that was in the terminal. Rather than relying on the rumor mill or disinformation, Johns decided that it was time to make the announcement. He pulled out his coms unit and dialed into the stations communication system.
“Residents and visitors of the Research Stations,” Johns started. “This is Security Commander Nicholas Johns. You might have noticed that there is a lot of action around the station. Many have asked me if we are planning on evacuating the station. If you did, I probably told you that an announcement was coming. Well, here it is — you were right, we are evacuating the Research Center.
I want to make it clear that no one is in any danger. The aliens are still at least three days away from arriving here. We have the ability to stop their push, and don’t believe they will ever reach the Research Station. But having everyone gathered at one location makes things much easier for us logistically. And we’d rather be safe than sorry. I repeat, no one is in any imminent danger.
We ask that all residents stop what they are doing, whatever it is, and immediately pack up a bag, fill it with your most important belongings, and head down to the train terminals. You will be transported to Kazi Depot, where quarters are waiting for each family unit.
We ask that you only take things that you absolutely must keep. We are limiting each person to one major piece of cargo. It’s not a lot, I know. We can not guarantee when you will be coming back but I will tell you this much – this is a precautionary evacuation. We have noticed an increase in growth rate from the alien orgasm. It is spreading more rapidly. Not so rapidly that anyone here is in any danger. But if we were here in a week, we might –”
Johns closed the connection and began his slow jaunt back toward the trains, where he thought he could be the most help. Rick had his part of the supply chain running smoothly. He walked for several minutes, almost reaching the train station, when Johns received an incoming message from Sara that would turn their world upside down.
Chapter 17
Research Station, Kazi
Osara System, Ballas Branch
“Growth has rapidly accelerated. Evac ASAP. May have only hours,” Sara’s message said.
Johns, in the middle of his announcement and fresh off of telling the station that there was nothing to worry about and that they had time. Well, they didn’t.
He called Sara, and she broke down the data with ruthless efficiency. The pace of growth of the goo near the Research Station had more than quadrupled in the last twelve hours, and was increasing.
“How long do you think?”
“It’s hard to say.”
“God damnit, Sara, give me the worst case scenario.”
“If this rate of acceleration keeps up….hours.”
“Fuck.”
He told her to call Rick and tell him what she had just told him, then hung up and called in an order to send every available puddlejumper to the Research Station. They were going to need every vehicle that they could get.
Johns shut off the feed and immediately slammed his hand against the metal table in front of him. His com unit lit up. Rick was calling. He picked up.
“You hear from Sara?” he asked.
“I did. Got the message during the middle of my fucking PSA, too.”
“I figured. Well…we are truly fucked,” Rick said, matter-of-factly. “I’m looking at the data now. If it keeps coming and doesn’t speed up we have two-hours and twenty minutes. Gotta figure that the helldogs will be at our front door some time before that.”
Johns didn’t wholly disagree, but they couldn’t just lay down and die. “Should I sound the alarm?”
“I don’t know. We don’t want to send everyone into a panic. But then again, we don’t want people to lollygag until these things are storming the station, either.”
“Should I make another announcement? Let them know that things have changed in the last two minutes?” Johns asked.
“Then we’ll really have a panic on our hands. But I don’t see any way around it. I say we sound the alarm, make the announcement, and post people in the corridors to hurry people along. We can’t fuck around right now,” Rick said.
He was right.That was probably the best decision. If they tell everyone helldogs would be on their doorstep soon, they’ll be clawing at the doors of the trains to get back to Kazi Depot. But they had no choice. And he’d rather people be busting their asses than taking their sweet time.
“You’re right. Tell Sara to train the satellites on the area and have the drones continuously watch. I want by-the-minute updates on this shit. That way, if things look like they might go South, we can sound the alarm. “
“Alright,” Rick said. “I’m going to divert some of the research equipment to the puddlejumpers. You get the security team in the halls moving people along.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Johns said, and went to hang up before he felt a punch in his gut and paused.
There was a brief moment of silence. They both knew the stakes of what they had just been told. It exposed some sort of deep-seated vulnerability that Johns often had trouble embracing.
“Now, let’s get this place evacuated before those things tear everyone to bits,”
“Indeed.”
***
After Johns made his second announcement and turned the alarm on, things escalated quickly. The station was a madhouse. Johns had placed security personnel in every one of the main corridors in the research station and had sent several around to sniff out the corners and make sure no one was planning on staying.
Johns spent the next hour helping move people through the corridors and convincing people that they wouldn’t be able to take a variety of large objects with them. Men, women, and children hurriedly gathered whatever belongings they could, with tears running down their faces. He could see the fear in them.
Of course, there were some idiots. An older woman had argued with him for five full minutes that she should be allowed to take her old earthwood chair. Johns understood. Earthwood was about as rare this far out as anything, but the fact was that they needed all of the space they could get.
“You can come back and get it when the Research Center is deemed safe and re-opened,” Johns lied. It had been enough to convince the woman to back off, and she placed the chair back in her quarters. Johns knew full well that she would never be coming back to get it. In a few hours the Research Center would be overrun. Then it was just a matter of time until the Blue Goo and all that came with it descended upon Kazi Depot.
Every five minutes or so, Johns would receive an update on the progress of the Blue Goo. It was moving quickly, and their time was running out. He watched as the AI simulated its movement across the remaining jungle and engulfed the Research Station.
Luckily, a full train of people were down at the terminal and whisked away toward Kazi Depot within minutes of the announcement. Frederick Roleax continued to send him updates as the second train was loaded. It didn’t sound good. People were pushing and shoving their way onto the trains. Arguments and fights broke out on the terminal as families jockeyed for position.
Each train held about 100 people, but for this they were going to squeeze in a few extra in each. Every inch of those trains needed to be filled. Within the first hour, the second train was gone. Only two more to go.
Once Johns was convinced that all of the quarters and corridors were sufficiently cleared, he and the security detail made their way down to the terminal. It was packed with people. There wasn’t an inch of standing room. The second train left and the third pulled immediately into its place, grinding against the rails as it pulled into the station.
Johns was afraid that when the doors opened that people would kill themselves trying to push through. He had the security team push their way to the front, pushing some out into the corridor outside the terminal. Several security team members manned each door. They had turned the alarm off in the terminal for that reason, but it wasn’t helping much.
Things went smoothly at first. The train doors opened, and people entered the train orderly. However, at the third door from the front of the train, a fight broke out. One man had pushed another, and the security guards left their positions to quell the fray. This left an opening, and the crowd seized on it, rushing for the door to secure their spot on the train.
Johns had immediately directed others to hold their position so that they wouldn’t have the same problem at other entrances. He pushed through the crowd toward the commotion. It was slow going and the more time passed, the bigger the problem seemed to become.
Johns was forced to tackle a man near the door that was throwing punches at anyone and everyone around him. As they hit the floor, one of the men kicked the man in the face, busting open his nose and sending blood spraying all over the legs of the crowd surrounding them.
Johns stood up and could see the train shifting as the crowd tried to push their way through the entrance. Few were fitting in and Johns was worried that soon, they would become stuck. If he didn’t do something now, they were never going to regain order.
Johns pulled his pistol from his holster and pointed it toward the ceiling. He let three shots ring out.
***
The Security Team had ditched their peaceful stance for a more aggressive approach. They stood guns drawn as they manned the doors and the third train began loading. They hurried passengers onto the train but kept their weapons trained on the crowds. The stakes were too high now, and any monkey business was going to get everyone killed.
Sara had been sending updates on the situation every five minutes or so as a probe passed.
It wasn’t looking good. The pace of acceleration had slowed but was still breakneck compared to where it had been at the beginning of the day. Each probe pass meant a new image that would eat at the pit of Johns’ stomach.
The Blue Goo creeped closer in each successive image. Sara had also provided an ETA for the helldogs arrival on the research stations’ doorstep. Right now it was looking like 45 minutes, if they were lucky. That figure assumed that
John could feel his stomach start to twist, like two people were grabbing onto separate ends and twisting in opposite directions until his innards were taut. He ran around the back of the crowds, quelling any distrubances that took place and pushing the crowd closer toward the entrances.
Once the third train was filled, they were going to need a fourth. Things were going to be very tight.
***
Once the third-train was filled, the conductor hastily shut the doors and the solar-powered railcars crawled off with a whoosh of air, moving down the track toward the airlock and sanitation compartment.
Just as the third train had left the terminal and as the fourth began to pull in tightly behind it, Johns heard a woman’s sobs from behind him, toward the corridor entrance. He turned around to find an older disheveled-looking woman waddling her way into the terminal with tears streaming down her face. She was wearing an old tattered robe, with the belt barely tied around her waste, the front of her robe swaying as she walked and exposing her pale legs.
She spotted Johns’ Security uniform and shuffled in his direction. Johns walked to meet her.
“Ma’am,” he barely got out before the woman fell face-first into his chest and wrapped her arms around him in an embrace that was much tighter than Johns had expected from her. “What’s wrong?”
“My…my..my husband,” the woman manged to get out between sobs. “He’s in our room. He’s sick. He refuses to come to the train. He wants to stay and die.”
“What quarters?” Johns asked.
“Four…seventeen,” the old woman said.
God damnit. He had told the team to check every room. An old man lying in his bed couldn’t just squeak by if they were doing their jobs.
He took a quick peak at the map. The goo was getting incredibly close now. It looked, on the map, like they were just minutes away from them breaching the building.
Johns sent a quick message to Rick letting him know what was going on and to hold the fort down while he was gone. Johns was sure that Rick was happy about that.
Johns ran out of the terminal and back into the sterile metal corridors of the Research Station. Quarters 417 was going to be at the opposite end of station, and Sara’s latest estimates have the helldogs reaching the research station doors in about 40 minutes at this point. It would be a good fifteen minute run there and probably at least twenty back, since Johns was an old man and he was certain he would be winded. A cart would buy him some time, he thought.
Luckily, he bumped into one that one of the security team had ditched just as he rounded the second corner of his sprint across the Research Station. He jumped in, hit the “Start,” button and floored it.
As he whizzed through the station at the brisk 25 KPH the carts topped out at, he couldn’t help but notice how eerie it was to see the station empty. He had spent plenty of days here when he had first arrived on Kazi. He remembered fondly some of the scientists and researchers that had come and gone in the seven years he had been here. Often, people’s stays on Kazi were short. They were professionals back on Osara Prime. They’d do a tour or two on Kazi to bolster their resume and experience another planet, but never really intended to stay.
There were those that lived on Kazi full-time. Lifers. It’s what Johns had expected he would be. From the moment he arrived, he had never really seriously considered returning home, even though Ellie was there. Kazi had been a refuge from the unrelenting attention he was receiving back home. A return would probably cause it to start all over again.
Johns had made a mistake. Or many mistakes. That was what they told him anyway. Johns saw it differently. The ends justified the means. And he had done his best to limit unnecessary death. He wasn’t personally responsible for everything that happened that day. But every slaughter needs a pig, and Raymond Duke, ascending as he was, had picked Johns.
It killed him. In retrospect, he should have seen it coming. Immediately, his world was turned upside down. Media hanging out outside of their building, berating him as he walked past. People screaming at him on the street. One time a man had thrown a bucket of black ink all over Johns as he had walked into the courthouse.
Being a pariah got old quickly. But the trial was really when things caved in. That was when she left. That had killed him too. He didn’t really blame her at that point. Who could? He had known it was coming for some time. No one can take that kind of beating for something that someone else did. It wasn’t fair to Ellie either. The best thing for both of them was to get away from him at the time.
The trial ended and Johns got the verdict he had supposedly wanted. Innocent. You’d think that would make him happy, but it only made things worse. They had spent nearly two years turning him into the devil. Now he was the devil that never got his due.
He had considered killing himself. Well, more than considered. He had decided to. Many times. But it never happened. He wasn’t leaving his home at that point so there had been endless opportunity. But he hadn’t. Some innate driving force in the back of him kept him from putting his gun in his mouth.
Kazi was an easy choice, once he had thought of it. Most had assumed that he had gone for his safety. They weren’t wrong. He probably was going to get killed if he stuck around Osara Prime. Just too much bad blood. Too many people that could blame him for the worst day of their lives. Kazi offered the best chance at a fresh start that he was ever going to get without heading into The Core. He’d get away from his wife and daughter and let them find some peace. And maybe someday, they’d find it in their hearts to forgive him.
Of course, he’d considered going through the gate back toward the the Ogando System and Earth. There he truly could have escaped and started over. But that was expensive. A ride alone through the gates would have drained his savings. At one point he had thought of that as the ultimate goal. To go see the Mother Planet and her moon. It was something that everyone always talked about doing but so few ever did. Eventually, that plan had fallen by the wayside as he had settled in at Kazi.
He had applied for a routine Kazi Security Officer position. He was overqualified, obviously. Still, when he received the message letting him know that he had been accepted, he was surprised that anyone would consider hiring him. He would later find out that his boss, Orson Crom, had been a supporter of his throughout his trial, giving him a bit of a lucky break at a time when he really needed it.
The people at Kazi Depot had been surprisingly receptive to him. Sure, he got the odd stares and looks at first. But it was much less so than he had been dealing with back on Osara Prime. He kept to himself for the first year, rarely talking to anyone and keeping his head down. But as he started to get comfortable and come out of his shell a bit and people got to know him, he had found a little niche here on this small jungle planet. But now the little bit of peace he had managed to carve out for himself was threatened.
Johns arrived at room 417 within ten minutes. On this side of the building, a faint blue color glowed through the windows, an ominous sign of the encroaching goo and the hell it brought with it.
Johns rapped at the door and heard a soft voice answer behind it. A moment later, the door whooshed open. He saw what looked like not much more than a skeleton laying in bed. He was covered by several weighted blankets, with a beanie cap on his head. He was incredibly pale. His cheeks were sunken in past the bones, his eyeballs yellow.
“Sir, your wife sent me to fetch you. She said that you told her you wouldn’t leave the room?”
“That’s right,” the man wheezed out under his breath, barely audible.
“Why not?”
The man broke in a laugh, intermittent with coughs and spittle flying out over his lower lip and chin. “Look at me,” he said. “I’ve got one foot in the grave.”
“How old are you?” Johns asked. He sincerely couldn’t tell. The man might be 60 and gravely ill, or he might be 120.
“One-hundred and seven,” the man said.
“What do you have? What’s wrong?”
“Advanced liver failure,” the man said. “It’s just my time. I’m too damn old and lived too damn hard to go through another transplant. Not that I could get off of this rock to get one, even if I wanted to. I worked in the mines on Shafeer until I was forty. Drank until I was sixty. This could have happened a lot sooner”
“I’m sorry,” Johns said and sat at the foot of the man’s bed.
“There’s no point in me going. The doctor said I have days…weeks at best. I feel like I could die right now,” the man said with a little laugh. “I could die trying to walk to the train. I don’t want to die in some abandoned hallway. I’d rather die in my bed.”
“Well, sir. It just so happens I have a cart outside. You wouldn’t have to walk anywhere. And we’ll make sure to save you a nice spot on the train so the ride is comfortable. Once we get back to Kazi Depot you’ll have a room.”
“I don’t want to die in some room,” the man said, spittle flying out onto his chest as he enunciated.
“What about your wife? You want to leave her behind?”
“Well I haven’t got much choice now, have I? Today or next week, I’m leaving her behind whether I want to or not. We said our goodbyes.”
Johns nodded. He understood it. Of course, the man’s wife would never understand it. But there was something to be said about having some control over how you go out. Johns had seen many men that got no say. And this man truly wasn’t well enough to travel anywhere. He probably would die on the train.
“I get it. I truly do. But when these…things…get here. You don’t want to go that way, I’m telling you. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen what they do. I’m Head of Security—”
“—I know who you are,” the man said. “You should be a man that understands that sometimes dying is the right thing to do. Truth be told, dying from those things doesn’t seem half bad compared to dying a slow death from liver failure.”
“Yeah…I suppose it wouldn’t. What’s your name sir?”
“Walter,”
“Walter,” Johns repeated. “I just want to make sure that you’re making a sound choice. That you’re in your right mind and thinking clearly.”
“Well, I’m not. Who thinks clearly when they are dying? But I’m never going to think clearly again and I know what I want.”
“Ok. Walter. I can’t in good conscience leave you here to get torn up by those things,” Johns said as he reached down and unlatched his ankle holster, pulling out his pistol and setting on the bed beside the man “So I’m going to leave you this. When you’re ready, I advise that you use this and not wait for those things. If you hear them in the building it might be too late.”
The old man nodded. Johns gave him a pat on the arm, tightened his grip for a moment, then stood up.
“Rest easy, Walter. I’ll make sure your wife is on that last train out.”
“Thank you.”
Johns walked out and turned down the hallway toward his cart. He didn’t make it ten steps before he heard the gunshot ring out behind him. Johns stopped and listened to make sure the man had been successful in his attempt. He heard nothing.
He took a few more steps before stopping again. He shouldn’t leave the gun behind. They would need all the firepower they could get their hands on.
Chapter 18
Research Station, Kazi
Osara System, Ballas Branch
As Johns drove down the narrow hallways of the Research Station, he began to hear the first sounds of the arriving swarm on the outside of the station. First, it was a slam into one of the airlock doors as if it had been hit by a truck. He turned the corner, the blue hue from the encroaching growth lighting his back as he headed toward the opposite end of the station and the trains.
Behind him, he heard more helldogs slam their bodies into the sides of the building. Then a new sound – they were running into the quadruple pane security glass. As he rounded another corner, he heard the glass break behind him.
Johns put the pedal to the floor of the cart. He was cruising at maximum speed, but it still seemed slow. He questioned whether it might be faster for him to run. Of course, intuitively, he knew that was a bad idea. But with those things coming behind him, it was hard to think straight.
He pulled the radio out of his coat pocket and radioed ahead.
“Rick, you there?”
“Yup,” he replied.
“I’m comin in hot. Those fucking helldogs are beating their way inside the other side of the station. You have to get that train rolling right the fuck now,” Johns said.
“Alright,” Rick said. “We’ll be rolling in three minutes…”
Johns went to stuff his com unit back into his pocket, hearing the scuttling of claws somewhere in the hallway behind him.
“You going to make it?” Rick asked, his voice flat.
“I’m going to try,” Johns replied.
Of course, he didn’t have much control over whether he did or didn’t. He was flooring it, and the cart wouldn’t get any faster. Behind him, he could hear the familiar screeching of the helldogs. He palmed the pistol in his belt loop. If the helldogs reached him before he got to the train, he wouldn’t go out getting torn apart.
As he neared the middle of the Research Station, the only sound he could hear was the rubber tires squeaking as they spun over the metal floors. He took corners drifting. Why not? Might as well have a little fun with it. Behind him, he heard a helldog slam head-first into the wall as it turned a corner.
A decade ago, his current predicament would have come as the ultimate surprise. Not that he would have died a violent death. He would have expected that.
Yes, the fact that he was going to die getting ripped apart by a new alien lifeform that, to some, might qualify as our first run-in with truly intelligent life certainly would have come as a surprise. But it’s more than that. It’s the fact that he’s on Kazi. Not even at Kazi Depot, but in the Research Station. It was that here he was, leading in the thick of it, with no one at his back. Again. He wondered, for a moment, if they might find a way to blame this on him too.
It was his family. Well, Ellie. It was Ellie. It was the fact that he hadn’t spoken to her since he had set foot on Kazi. After the trial had ended and he had been acquitted, Johns had some hope that he might return, vindicated, to a normal life. But vindication in a court of law is not vindication in the court of public opinion. There, the verdict had been reached before his trial had even begun.
He saw the toll that it took on them. He watched his beautiful wife’s face sag with worry. The deep pockets that formed under her eyes never went away. She started to feel ill. Ellie couldn’t go to school without being teased mercilessly for what they thought he had done.
When Johns had received the offer from Kazi Depot, they hadn’t spoken in nearly four months. “I’m taking a job on Kazi Depot,” Johns had said. She’d nodded and left the kitchen without a word, leaving him standing over his synthetic cranberry juice.
He left a few nights later. He didn’t say anything to Ellie before he left. He couldn’t bare it. His first stop had been to the Communications Department in Tillion to request a new com number. Ironic that he was leaving through Tillion.
He hopped on the next ship to Kazi. It was a slow burn, taking more than a month to arrive. When he did, there was a new life waiting for him.
He had abandoned his daughter. He had known what he was doing. But it was the right thing, or so he had thought at the time. He still did, for the most part. Mostly Johns wished that he hadn’t been a coward. He wished that at some point in the last decade, he might have mustered the strength to call her. But he couldn’t. But he wished that he could call her now.
So that could be it. He might die on this god-forsaken jungle planet, having never made things right. Since they had arrived, the thought to call her had been popping into his thoughts on a near-hourly basis. Like he had known that his time would be soon. I wasn’t really that much of a stretch, he thought. They had been invaded by a hostile alien lifeform, and having a feeling that he might die didn’t exactly make him a seer.
If he made it out of here, he would change things. He would fix things. Even if it meant causing Ellie pain. He had to try to make amends for disappearing from her life.
Johns heard more slams behind him as the beasts ran into the metal walls of the Research Station. He was nearing the train terminal and could hear shouting in the distance. As he rounded the corner near the terminal, he could hear the helldogs gaining ground behind him. This was going to be close.
The familiar humm of the solar-powered trains filled his ears as he entered the terminal. They were just beginning to pull out of the station.
“Their close! Open the airlock and don’t stop! Gun it!” Johns screamed into his com unit as he dismounted his cart in the terminal and began to ran toward the train. A train door in the third box slid open and Rick was waving Johns in. As he ran toward him, he saw his eyes widen. He snuck a glance behind him in time to see a pack of helldogs rounding the corner, blue shining off of them, sliding as they ran.
Johns ran as quickly as his feet could take him. He seemed to be moving in slow motion as he arrived at the train and pulled the door shut behind him. Just as it shut, a helldog ran full speed into the door, which dented in about a full two feet, knocking Johns into the opposite wall. The train car screamed.
Johns felt the train lurch forward. There was one traincar behind them who had been late to spot the helldogs as they entered the terminal. One of the helldogs had run straight for them, getting its head through the door and getting stuck while the people in the traincar banged on the “Emergency Shut” button, meant to seal the traincar off from the outside world and prevent exposure if the door were to open in between stations.
It didn’t take long for the helldog to pry the door open and work its way into the traincar. Johns could see it taking place through the window. The helldog began thrashing around, digging its claws into anyone in sight. Blood sprayed around the cabin. Soon a second helldog entered the train. Then a third. They tore at flesh and threw bodies around like ragdolls. They banged around, rocking the train. Blood coated the walls. The helldog at the front let out a ferocious roar and honed its gaze on the windows between their traincars.
The Conductor must have been watching the camera feed, because it was at that moment that Johns felt the clink below his feet and the final traincar began to fade into the distance, left behind as the train chugged along toward Kazi Depot.
