Infernal Sky (14 page)

“Minus one minute,” contributed the copilot. I was ready to believe we'd at least get off the ground. The monitor showed the return of the spider-mind as it pushed past the minotaur. The steam demon was close behind.

The intercom crackled with horrible screeching sounds—probably some alien code. It gave me a headache even before we lifted the
Bova
to greet the stars. The most inspiring part of the blastoff was watching the spider-mind get caught in the rocket's bright orange flame.

As quick as the commander could push a button, the demon guards were no longer a concern. Now it was the monsters of gravity and pressure that presented the obstacles. I felt them sitting on my chest. I'd been spoiled by easy takeoffs from Mars. Leaving the virtual nongravity of Phobos or Deimos didn't even count. I'd forgotten how much rougher it was to escape from the gravity well of the old mud ball.

It hurt. I had to reteach myself how to swallow. The pressure gave me the mother of all headaches. When I tried to focus on anything, my vision blurred. The vibration was outside and inside my head. Closing my eyes, I thanked the sisters of my Catholic school childhood for delivering Taylor and Riley.

We could watch our assent on television monitors. I would have preferred a porthole. But the resolution on the screens earned its description in the procurement file: “crystal clarity.”

Blasting off when we did was like rising up into the endless night. Strapped to my couch, I could tell that
the
Bova
was leaving the atmosphere only by watching the stars stop blinking. They were steady, white eyes spread out across the black velvet of space.

Arlene didn't think there was any poetry in my soul because I never talked this way to her. She'd been an English major once. I forgave her for that. What more could I do? She rated head honcho in this department. The best way to cover my ass was to keep poetic feelings to myself.

It was good to think about anything other than the physical strain of the liftoff. The boosters boosted. We shook, rattled, and rolled. I thought about how much work the commander and her radar officer must be doing without the assistance of ground-based support. No one to ring up on the phone and ask about bearing and flight plan. We were on our own.

The little voice in the back of my head chose that moment to raise an annoying point: what if the bad guys blew us out of the air? At no point in our discussions had anyone considered that possibility. Not out loud, anyway. Oh, well, as long as I was at it, I could worry if it might rain.

An old filling started to ache in the back of my jaw. Great, maybe I could find a demon dentist! The shaking was starting to get to me. Intellectually, I realized the ship was holding together. It takes a lot of power to climb out of Earth's gravity well. Emotionally, I expected all of us to fall out of the sky in a million pieces.

I went back to thinking poetic thoughts.

And then it was over. The
good
part was over. The vibration stopped. I noticed I was sweating like a pinkie after fifty push-ups. Then all the weight that I'd worked so hard to put on simply disappeared. Free
fall. Falling. Zero-g. Zero tolerance for zero-g. My stomach started a slow somersault while I remained immobile.

Marine training to the rescue again! That, and the fact I deliberately hadn't eaten before playing space cadet. With applied willpower, I could put up with the rigors of space for the little week it would take to reach Mars.

Then the voice of Commander Taylor pronounced our fate. I heard it loud and clear. She wasn't using the ship's intercom. That was one of the luxuries we were giving up for this trip. But she had a loud voice, and everything was wide open so the sardines in the can wouldn't be lonely. Her words traveled the length of the ship: “We made it, boys. Now hear this. Reaching Mars shouldn't take longer than a month and a half.”

I
wonder which star in the sky is their ship. I may not be able to see it from this position, hiding behind an old Dumpster and watching monsters play. Their play is the worst thing I've ever seen.

Fly would be especially angry if he knew I'd already
thrown off Ken's schedule for my return. He'd scold: “Jill, how could you be so stupid? Every minute counts when you're using a timetable. That's why it's called a schedule, you stupid bitch.”

No, he wouldn't call me a bitch. I like thinking he would. I'd like to think I bothered him enough he'd want to call me bad names. I'm calling myself a stupid bitch because I wanted to see the ship take off. I waited until it was out of sight. Then I went the wrong way.

I had a good excuse for going the wrong way. The monsters went ape when they realized the
Bova
wasn't supposed to take off. The spider that was fried by the ship's jets must have been important, because several other spiders showed up and wasted all the minotaurs in sight. They tried to waste a steam demon as well, but the thing was too fast for them. I never thought anything that big could run so fast.

While the monsters were busy killing each other I was able to slip away. Everything would have been fine if I'd been going in the right direction. As part of the plan, the navy guys left supplies for me along the return route. Ken planned the first leg of my trip to cover the same ground they followed on their last leg.

When I found myself at a convention of bonies and fire eaters, though, I realized I'd made a boo-boo. They didn't notice me; but I could see them clear as day. I wished the moon would go out so I could do a better job of hiding!

Some of the monsters naturally fought each other, but the bonies and fire eaters had a truce going. The same couldn't be said for the demon caught between them, one of the chubby pink ones Arlene likes to call pinkies. I couldn't help feeling sorry for the thing. The
bonies—Dr. Ackerman called them revenants—were all lined up on one side in a semicircle. The fire eaters—also known by a really weird name, arch-viles—were lined up on the other side, completing the circle. A bonfire blazed between them.

The fire eaters could control their fire better than I realized. They'd send out thin lines of flame that would burn the pinkie's butt. He'd squeal. Fly always said the pinkies made him think of pigs.

The pinkie would jump over the fire and run straight for the bonies. They made a sound that was half rattling bones and half choking laughter. They couldn't use their rockets without spoiling the game. They seemed to have picked up a trick from human bullies on a playground. They used sticks to beat and prod their victim. One had an actual pitchfork he'd probably stolen from a farm. When the pinkie turned to run away from his tormentors the bony poked him in the ass with the pitchfork. If it hadn't been so sick, I would have laughed. But there was nothing funny about the pink demon finally falling right into the center of the fire where he grunted and squealed and died. I wondered if the bonies and fire eaters would eat him.

I wondered if they ate.

As they gathered around their roasting pig, I snuck away. If I could retrace my steps to the base and work my way around the perimeter, I might be able to pick up the route that Ken had mapped out for me. If I believed any part of what Albert did, and God was looking down, my only prayer was to get back on track. If the monsters were going to kill me, I wanted to be doing what I was supposed to before they ripped out my guts.

When Arlene gave me the big lecture about growing up and taking responsibility, she didn't say anything I hadn't already figured out myself. I could have said it better than she did.

Growing up was about dealing with fear. One night, when Arlene and Albert went to the supermarket in Zombie City to find rotten lemons and limes, Fly and I had a long talk. He asked me what I'd be willing to do in a war. He wanted to know if I'd be willing to torture the enemy, even if the enemy happened to be human.

I never stopped thinking about the questions he asked. When I disobeyed his orders about the plane and refused to fly to Hawaii without Fly and Arlene, I'd grown up. I wouldn't let down my friends. That's all there is to it. On the
Bova,
I felt they were letting me down. It was easier for Arlene to tell me she didn't want me coming along because I'm not trained than for her to say she loved me.

Fly and Arlene just don't know how to say they love somebody. Albert knows how. I'm learning how. I'll bet all the ammo in the universe that Fly and Arlene will never learn. But it doesn't matter. I love them. Even though they're gone, I won't let them down.

So as I look up at the night sky, wondering if they are one of the stars, I promise them that I won't get myself killed until I'm back with the plan. I'll be a good soldier. Just so long as I don't have to do the really weird stuff.

“B
ack on Phobos again—where a zombie once was a man!”

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Arlene.

“I'm singing,” I said.

“That's not singing,” she disagreed.

“It's official Flynn Taggart caterwauling,” I said.

“No, it's singing,” said Albert, venturing where angels feared to tread.

“Are you making a wise move?” Arlene asked her would-be fiancé.

“Probably not,” he agreed wisely. “But I recognize the song Fly has made his own. He's doing a zombie version of ‘Back in the Saddle Again.' ”

“Thank you, Albert,” I said. “When I invited you to join the Fabulous Four, I knew I was selecting a man of exquisite judgment.”

“That's not exactly how I remember our little adventure in Salt Lake City,” Arlene corrected me.

I had the perfect answer for her: “Back on Phobos again . . .”

“Cease and desist, Flynn Taggart,” she said, putting her hands over her ears. “We're not even on Phobos
yet. Can't you wait and sing it there, preferably without your space helmet?”

“You can't fool me.” I was firm. Besides, I'd already waited close to a month and a half—a lot longer than I'd originally planned on spending in this rust bucket. That had something to do with the fact that fuel was in short supply these days, thanks to the aliens, and something to do with the kind of orbit we were using, which made the usual one-week jaunt to Mars six times longer, which had driven me to singing. “We did not leave Phobos in shambles, like Deimos. There may still be air in the pressurized areas.”

Arlene interrupted: “Along with pinkies, spinies, ghosts—”

“And a partridge in a pear tree.” I wouldn't let her change the subject. “The point is that if the air's on, I can sing.”

“The one weapon we didn't think of,” Arlene agreed at last.

“Do we have any idea what the Phobos situation is like?” asked Albert, real serious all of a sudden.

“No,” I said, ready to postpone my performance. “But whatever it is, it will be more interesting than one more second inside this . . .” I stopped, stumped for a good obscenity.

“In the belly of the whale,” Arlene finished for me. She was getting biblical on me.

“I'm ready for battle,” Albert admitted, almost sadly.

I took inventory of our section of the deluxe space cruiser, letting my eyes come to rest on my last candy bar. I'd used up my quota of Eco bars, the ones with the best nuts.

“Know how you feel, marine,” I said to Albert. “We're all getting antsy. That may be the secret of
preparing a warrior to do his best. Drag ass while delivering him to the war and he'll be ready to kill anything.”

“With a song if need be,” contributed Arlene. I'd found a new Achilles' heel in my best buddy: my singing voice. Maybe she had a point. I could just see a pumpkin deliberately smashing itself against a wall to escape from my perfect pitch. An army of imps would blow up a barrel of sludge themselves and die in glop and slop rather than let me start a second verse. Yeah, Arlene might have something there.

I didn't elaborate on any of this because our fearless leader chose that moment to join us. All the marines were awake on the bus. That was what it felt like—a bus.

The little voice in the back of my head could be a real pain in another part of my anatomy. It reminded me that this situation was strangely similar to a time in high school when three of us were the only ones awake in the back of the band bus—I was in the band; I played clarinet.

I was interested in a certain girl who happened to prefer a friend of mine. Her name was Noelle; his name was Ron. Bummer. But we had a nice three-way conversation going when our teacher suddenly came to the back of the bus. Old man Crowder. We called him Clam Crowder because he looked like something you'd pull out of a shell, and you wouldn't get a pearl, either. He just wanted to make sure that nothing was going on that was against the rules. The darkness of the spaceship, the kidding around of three friends, the arrival of the man with the rule book—all that was enough for me to be unfair to Captain Hidalgo. Time to snap out of it.

We no longer lived in a world of high school
football games. Now the pigskin only covered ugly pink demons who didn't need a rule book to spoil a day's fun.

I hadn't been able to stop thinking about Arlene's potential threat against Hidalgo, that she'd get rid of him if he got in the way of completing the mission. I'd never heard her talk like that before. I had known how daring she could be from the first time I met her, when she went at it with Gunny Goforth to prove she was enough of a “man” to wear her high-and-tight. I knew how smart she could be from Phobos where she left her initials on the walls for me, a la Arne Saknussen from
Journey to the Center of the Earth,
so I'd realize whose trail I was following.

Put smart and daring together and you have a combination that spells either patriot or traitor. I'd studied enough history to understand that it could be difficult to tell them apart. When your world is up against the wall, you have to make the tough choices. It's priority time. No one ever likes that.