After the Bite (12 page)

“Yes?”

“Dad, I’m gay.” I see, even in this situation, my father’s heart break. That’s how it seems. His eyes drop to the countertop. I feel my own heart grow very heavy, but he looks back up and smiles.

“That
’s it? That’s all? I accept that, Kevin. I know it took a lot of courage to tell me, but that’s not important right now. Well, it is, but…” He stands up and walks around to me with open arms. “I love you, Son. I always have, and I always will.” He hugs me, and at first I don’t know how to respond, but then I hug him back. We stand here, in this embrace, and I feel that strange feeling. It grows more intense. More intense, more, more…

My arms fall limp, and I open my mouth and press my face into my father
’s neck.

“Kevin?”
He backs away and nearly trips over the stool I’d been sitting in. I look at him. All I feel is the need to go after my father. All I feel is the need to feed, and nothing else. No more worries. I just need to feed, and I start shambling toward him. He runs for the door and hops in his car. I see him drive away with sad, fearful tears running down his cheeks. I don’t see him or that car ever again.

Alone Up There

I was already sick of the sunrises and sunsets.

I wish I had a better reason for it, something deep and complex; like they kept me from sleeping at night, or that I had no one to share them with. But the simple truth was that we saw them over a dozen times every day, and I had gotten sick of them.

They were beautiful from space,
but after a while I started to tune them out. The shades over the windows kept them from disturbing my sleep, and thoughts of my wife back home kept me from being alone. It came down, as so many things in our work did, to a matter of plain old numbers.

The sun didn
’t rise when I woke up on the 20th. I woke up to the radio playing one of my favorite songs, courtesy of Mission Control. I unzipped my sleeping bag and moved out of it and into the Tranquility Module.

I made my way to the breakfast table. There were three people already in the room, and all of them were sitting on the ceiling.

“All right, guys,” I said. “I’m not going to get any more disoriented than you are. Have a little faith in your captain.”

The three of them laughed. The prank wasn
’t too clever; in space there are no directions, but that didn’t stop the others from occasionally walking on a ceiling or wall to try to throw somebody off. It never worked, but for some reason it never got old, either.

“Hey, Captain! Catch!”

A small, red bubble of fruit juice was blown from the end of a straw and gently floated toward me. It gracefully made its way over the table, where I caught it with my mouth. The familiar faint cherry taste reached my tongue; the juice floated around inside my mouth for a moment, and then I swallowed.

“Thanks, Yamanaka,” I said.

Jun Yamanaka was one of the current permanent residents of the International Space Station. He was part of the Japanese space program, but his English was perfect. He was my friend.

The other two currently at the table (
or making their way to the table from the ceiling) were our visitors. They were scheduled to leave the next day, and I both dreaded it and couldn’t wait. They were fine men, great company, but their departure meant shifting back to our regular sleep schedules, a solid four hours off of the guest’s mission time. Once we got back into the swing of it, it’d feel more normal, but it would take some getting used to.

“I don
’t know about you,” one of the guests, a man named Mick Howard said, “but I can’t wait to get back home.”

“I miss gravity,”
said the other guest, Alex Graham.

“Say hello to terra firma for me,” I said. The three of them laughed. Jokesters to the end, all three of them.

I am Captain Trent Hampton, NASA astronaut, one of the leading researchers aboard the station. And I was scheduled to remain for another year. As such, I was a bit envious of the two visitors shipping out the next day, but at the same time I was not ungrateful.

When I grew up, kids wanted to be astronauts. Half of my kindergarten class must
’ve raised their hands when asked who wanted to go into space someday, but the great majority of them would eventually grow out of it.

Not me.

Space stuck with me my whole life. I remember watching on a small, black-and-white TV, maybe five years old, as the Apollo 13 scenario unfolded before the nation’s eyes. My dad, who had been in the Air Force during World War II and later went on to work at NASA, took the whole family out for ice cream when the crew returned safely to Earth. One day he brought me home Jim Lovell’s autograph, something I proceeded to bring to show-and-tell for the rest of my elementary school career, long after the rest of the kids stopped caring about space.

Most of those kids were now grown up and sitting behind desks. I was floating miles above the earth, that beautiful blue-green orb I spent so much time staring at.

“Uh-oh, here comes trouble,” Yamanaka said. The three of them laughed. My good friend Geoff Loxley of the European Space Agency floated into the room.

“
You blokes are just jealous that you don’t know how to party,” Loxley said.

“What,
‘tea and crumpets?’” Yamanaka said in a mock British accent.

“Rubbish,” Loxley said. “When we get back home, drinks are on whoever downs the least.”

“I’ll take you up on that,” I said.

“G
’day, Cap’n,” Loxley said. “What’s on the agenda for today?”

“I think you have some chemistry tests to get done,” I said. Loxley grimaced. “And we say goodbye to our guests tomorrow.”

“Aye,” Loxley said, turning to Graham and Howard, “remember me to the Earth ladies. It’s been so long, they must’ve forgotten me by now.”

“Lox, how could
anyone
forget you?” I said. Loxley smiled.

“Well, when I find the cure for cancer in space, they
’ll remember.”

“You
’ll need to put a lot more hours in the biology lab for that,” I replied. It was an ongoing joke we had; despite being our scientist and not our biologist, Loxley was always going on about finding the cure for cancer in space. Said if it was possible on Earth, we’d have found it by now. He was joking, of course. Loxley was a brilliant man. I half-believed that if anybody found the cure for cancer in my lifetime, it’d be him.

“Excuse me,” a thick Russian accent broke in, followed by a thick Russian man, “am I late?”

“Did we wake you?” Yamanaka asked.

“No,” Sacha Borislav replied. “Are our guests leaving today?”

“Tomorrow,” I said.

“Forgive me, I must have my days mixed up.”

“Don’t worry, Sacha,” Howard said, “you’ll be rid of us soon enough.”

“Ha!” Sacha
said. “My only regret is that things will be too quiet around here.”

“Don
’t worry about that, Boris,” I said. “Yamanaka has enough mouth for the eight of us.”

“Where are the other two, anyway?”

“Eva is on the treadmill,” Sacha said. “She prefers to exercise before she eats. You Americans have it backward.”

“And I assume Tom is still sleeping?” Loxley
said.

“I wouldn
’t doubt it,” I replied.

Eva Lutrova of the Russian Federal Space Agency and Dr. Tom Michaels of NASA rounded out our six-man permanent crew. After Howard and Graham left, things would get a lot quieter, but it was our life. We performed various tests, exercised a good two hours a day minimum, and spent our free time thinking of our families, among other things.

For the most part, we were alone, up here.

After eating, I ran on the treadmill for a while, and then oversaw some test work. When nighttime came I returned to my sleeping rack, adorned with pictures of my wife, Halley, and listened to music. Eventually, I went to sleep.

****

When I woke up, I knew something had gone wrong.

It was almost like intuition. Before I was even fully awake, before my brain had processed anything at all, I just knew that something was not right. And then I realized what it was: silence.

The radio wasn
’t playing anything.

I almost laughed at how silly I
’d been. Everything was fine, I’d simply woken up early. I checked my watch, and it was nearly an hour and half past our usual waking time. The fear set back in.

I made my way to the Unity node, and nobody was there. I wondered if I was the first person awake. I didn
’t want to wake anyone; that wasn’t how we operated. At the same time, something seemed wrong. I decided to head for the radio and see if I could contact Mission Control.

“Mission Control, this is Captain Trent Hampton on board the International Space Station, do you copy?”

The radio made no sound, not even the click of static breaking in.

“Mission Control, come in,” I said. Still nothing.

“It’s not working for you, either,” Sacha said, entering the room from behind me. It was more of a statement than a question.

“Did something hit our receivers?” I asked.

“Not likely,” Sacha replied. “Surely we’d have felt it. Besides, it’s not just the radio. Our GPS systems are all offline.”

I looked at the various monitors before me. Nothing seemed to be working. There was power, but no signal.

“Sacha,” I said, “where the hell are we?”

“I don
’t know,” Sacha said. “But I fear we are alone up here, now.”

I looked through the window toward the earth, and for once, had no idea what to do.

“We need to wake the others,” Sacha said. I nodded.

We made our way to the Zvezda module, and to Eva
’s sleeping rack. Sacha knocked on the white, padded wall. A few seconds later, it opened.

“What
’s going on?” Eva asked.

“Good question,” Sacha
said. “We don’t have any reception. No radios, no satellites.”

“Is this a joke?”

“I’m afraid not,” I said.

“Okay,” Eva
said. “Let’s go get the others. We’ll work on a plan after that.”

We made our way to Tranquility, to the other sleeping racks. We weren
’t usually given any reason to wake each other, but this was no usual circumstance. Alex’s rack was the first one we came to.

“If we don
’t get contact back up soon, we have ways of getting back to the surface,” Eva was saying as we floated into the cramped, white space around Alex’s sleeping rack.

“Let
’s worry about a plan later,” I said. I didn’t even want to
begin
thinking of ballistic re-entry.

I raised my fist to knock on Alex
’s door, but before I could the door knocked back, from the inside. If we could’ve, I’m sure we all would’ve jumped backward, but the lack of gravity made that impossible.

“Alex, are you in there?” I
said. “You need to get up, something’s gone wrong.”

There was no reply. All was still.

“Mr. Graham?” Sacha said.

The door was pounded on again, and then nothing.

“We don’t have time for this,” Eva said. “Just open the door.”

I opened the door, and inside, Alex was awake. He was staring straight at us. Only something seemed wrong, somehow.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Alex groaned, and then reached for me. Only, he missed. He flailed around weightlessly, scrambling his arms and legs and head around, trying to get to me but entirely unable to figure out how to move.

“What the hell is wrong with him?” Sacha said.

“I don
’t know,” I replied. “We need to restrain him.”

Sacha reached forward, and Alex gnashed his teeth at the oncoming hands. Sacha retreated. Alex tried, but couldn
’t seem to follow.

The noise must
’ve woken a few of the others, because Tom and Loxley soon emerged from their racks.

“What the bloody hell
’s going on?” Loxley said.

“Something
’s wrong!” Eva said.

Alex finally figured out how to leave. He placed his feet against the back wall of the sleeping rack and pushed. He began to emerge from his rack, teeth gnashing as he came toward me
, but he stopped dead after moving a few inches. He was still fastened to the wall of his rack by his harness. He was pulled backward, and he hit the frame of the rack, then tried again, but didn’t get any farther.

“You can say that again,” Tom said. “I
’ve never seen anything like this. He’s acting like a wild animal!”

“What
’s the racket?” Yamanaka asked as he joined us.

“It
’s Graham, he’s gone insane,” Loxley said.

“
That’s not all,” Sacha said. I interrupted him.

“We
’ll get to that later, Sacha. Let’s deal with Alex first. Help me get him inside and close the door.”

“But for God
’s sake, don’t let him bite you,” Tom said. “This could be some kind of disease, it could be contagious.”

“A space disease? Awesome,” Yamanaka said.

“Okay, I’ll hold him down, you close the door,” Sacha said. His accent made every word come out clear, purposeful, and calculated.

“Okay, but be careful,” I replied. “On three
—”

“Now!” Sacha s
aid. He pressed his hands against the wall behind us and shoved off, planting a foot on Alex’s front, kicking him back into the rack. I slammed the door shut. There was some rustling from inside, and then things went silent again, as though Alex had forgotten all about us, about his own ravenous bloodlust.

“So
,” Yamanaka said, “what now?”

“We wake Mick,” Sacha said between pants.

“Why hasn’t he gotten up already?” Eva asked.