The Dream Widow (38 page)
Authors: Stephen Colegrove
Tags: #Hard Science Fiction, #High Tech, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic, #Adventure, #Literature & Fiction
He tilted his head. “I’m Jack. You don’t remember that whole month in Tawang? The lumberyard?”
“But that wasn’t real. That Jack was a memory fragment.”
“The names people call me,” said the man. “Do I look fake to you?”
“Jack died weeks ago. Look––he’s still floating in that fishbowl,” said Badger.
“You think the military would trust a stupid grunt like me in a billion-dollar contraption like a hyper-oxygenated controller dome?” The man shook his shaved head. “That’s like strapping a goat inside an F-22.”
“What’s an F-22?”
“Trust me––the people in the controller domes were trained engineers.”
Badger pointed at Jack’s old dome. “If you’re Jack Garcia, tell us who’s really in there.”
“Konrad Antwarter, like it says on the side.”
“I don’t see it.”
“Look closer, it’s right underneath the lip.”
“Then why did he say HE was Jack?”
A female voice spoke up from the floor. “He thought he was Jack.”
“Don’t stress yourself, dear,” said Mary, and rubbed the cold hands of the olive-skinned Parvati.
“She’s right,” said Wilson. “Whether it was a fault in the system or some kind of tampering, most of Konrad’s personality was pushed to the side.”
A deep rumble vibrated the cavern floor. The warning siren coughed to life again and red lights began to flash over the two stairwell exits.
“Great cat’s teeth in the sky,” yelled Wilson.
Badger started to push the gel spheres away from Parvati. “So much for that automatic shutdown.”
“You can’t make her walk,” said Mary. “Her leg’s broken!”
Jack slid his hands beneath the bearskin and lifted Parvati.
“Don’t argue––just go,” he shouted.
Mary and Badger helped Wilson climb the stairwell. Halfway up they met Mast and Robb at the head of a group searching for Badger. The men carried Parvati and helped the other three up the steps as a great cracking sound came from below. The air filled with black dust that smelled like copper.
Luckily Robb had brought a lantern, and they climbed the rest of the stairs to the surface. The party stumbled through the pitch-black entrance chamber to the snow-covered fields of Station.
HE COULD DO IT.
A rifle. Bullets. Two iron rations. That was enough to make it to Lagos.
Darius pushed through knee-deep drifts on the shoulder of Old Man. It would have been easier to go through the forest, but the thick branches and pockets of shadow scared him. He wanted clarity, freedom, and space.
He could do it.
A rifle and food. Warm clothing. The idiotic children back at Station would be licking their wounds far too long before they remembered to search for him. They’d wait until morning, when he’d be over the mountain and in any direction. He’d spent enough time around savages to know how to survive, didn’t he?
Don’t stare at anything; keep your eyes moving and use the edges of your vision. Don’t drink anything that’s not clear. Don’t stop.
A shadow flickered behind the trees to his left. Darius panicked and fired the rifle. The shot rolled through the mountains and he rubbed his arm. He’d jerked the barrel up, shot too fast, and the butt had slammed into his bicep.
He could do it.
Lagos was less than a day of travel if he walked through the night. Since Flora had been deposed they were a loyal Circle tribe and would trip over their own feet to help him back to his sector.
Darius stumbled and fell face-first in the deep snow. He quickly stood and wiped melting shards from his skin. He couldn’t feel his toes, and his nose and cheeks felt rubbery.
He could––
Something howled from the forest. A cross between a wolf’s call and a dog’s growl, it was deep-throated. Vicious. Eager.
Darius started to run.
EARLY IN THE MORNING and long after the congratulations, introductions, and the good and bad news had been absorbed Wilson and Badger lay down for a few hours of sleep in a hastily-cleaned room in Office.
“I still don’t know where you’ve been the last six weeks,” said Badger, stroking his hair.
He smiled. “That’s fine, because I don’t know how you managed without me.”
“Very easily. Now be serious.”
Wilson shifted his head on the pillow. “A shared dream––that’s the best description. A kind of machine to keep the people in cold-sleep from going insane.”
“But didn’t most of them go crazy anyway?”
Wilson nodded. “Who knows––either through Parvati breaking free of hibernation and trying to protect Jack or faults in the machinery––many people became unstable, even absorbed parts of Jack’s personality, including the old man we thought was Jack.”
“You’re sure this guy is the real one?”
He kissed her. “As sure as rain in springtime.”
The door rattled from a heavy knock.
“Cat’s teeth,” said Wilson, getting up from the bed. “Yes? What is it?”
“We found something,” said Mast, from the other side of the door. “You might want to see it. Both of you.”
Wilson and Badger dressed and followed Mast through the tunnels into the half-light of morning.
On the icy main plaza Robb and four hunters stood around a body covered in scraps of fur and stained black with blood. Wilson knelt beside the frozen corpse and stared into the gray, dead eyes of Darius. His throat had been ripped apart in a wide gash and dark blood covered his mouth and neck.
“Where’d you find him?”
“That’s the funny thing,” said Robb. “You told us what happened and we ran up Old Man toward the back exit, only we never made it there. Halfway through the forest we found a deep trail, like something heavy being dragged through the snow. We followed it and found the dog pulling the body back toward Station.”
The ugly black dog trotted up, his tongue lolling. Wilson rubbed the dog’s patchy scruff and patted his bulbous, tumor-covered head.
“Good dog,” he said. “That’s a good dog.”
Badger spat on the pile of frozen flesh and walked away.
REED’S FUNERAL WAS HELD a few days later. It was a symbolic gesture––radiation levels in the cavern had made it impossible to retrieve his body. Luckily none of the exhaust gases from the reactor had found their way outside.
Not yet, thought Wilson as he stood on a rocky point above the valley. Wet snow dropped through the twilight and onto the muddy tracks of villagers and four-dozen mounds in the cornfield below. The bodies of the dead lizards and Circle invaders had been burned that morning, but he could still smell the sour, coppery stench.
“Strange to think you’ve never had a cemetery,” said Jack, bundled up in a hunter’s thick leather jacket, trousers, and bearskin hat. Beside him, Badger wore a similar outfit and Parvati a bleached-white woolen dress and cloak.
“Everything’s strange after three hundred years,” said Parvati, leaning on a wooden crutch.
Wilson held out a palm and watched the flakes melt on his skin.
“No,” he said. “Everything’s gone after three hundred years.”
Badger took his hand and rubbed it. “We’re still here.”
“Right on,” said Jack. “And not to bring you down or anything, Wilfred, but we should leave the valley,” said Jack. “Radiation will leak into the tunnels sooner or later. Also, someone might come looking for that prisoner of yours, ‘Console’ Nahid or whatever she’s called.”
“You don’t understand––the rules, the founders, our entire reason for living is upside down,” said Wilson. “The people are in a state of shock over dead family and friends, and now I have to give them more bad news? I don’t know if they can handle it.”
“They’re tougher than you think.”
Parvati touched his shoulder. “Even with youth and inexperience against you, there’s no better person to lead them away from here. If the last living priest does not take up the burden of leadership, no one else will.”
“But where do we go?”
“South, to join the others.”
“I don’t understand.”
Jack cleared his throat. “Not everyone entered the caskets. Some stayed outside––those are the people you call ‘founders.’ Another group led by Greg Allen decided to risk a trip through fallout and the virus to another base. That’s where the actual Project Hyperion was to get off the ground. Here, we only worked on support machinery like the cold-sleep tech and the implants. The base in New Mexico had all the voodoo and hoo-doo, like we used to say.”
“Do you think anything’s still there?”
“It was a special place, and important enough for Greg and his team to risk their lives,” said Parvati. “Something will have survived. Even if it is the tiniest fragment of hope, it’s what your people need to pull together.”
Wilson lifted his chin and closed his eyes. The feathery ice touched his face and melted, then rolled down his face like tears of freezing water. He finally wiped his eyes and cheeks and looked down at the valley.
“Let’s do it.”
Badger hugged him around the waist. “Don’t worry––we’ll get through this.”
Jack shook Wilson’s hand in the old way––the firm and bare-handed style of the founders.
“She’s right, kid. Galactic Spaceport, here we come!”
END
Author’s Note
Thanks for purchasing my book! I hope you enjoyed it and look forward to future books in the series.
I love connecting with readers so feel free to stop by my website, Goodreads profile, or Facebook page:
Best wishes,
Steve Colegrove
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