A Cold Black Wave (6 page)

He calmed himself,
controlled his breathing.  It wasn’t long until the snow accumulated an inch on his body while he waited like a stone.  Unless the thing had
a
heat sensor
, or some other way of identifying his position,
he may as well have been a part of the forest now.

A half an hour passed.  Then an hour.  Nothing came.  As the heat dissipated from his body the cold chill settled in, yet he remained motionless.  When he felt it was safe to move he tried to figure out how to get back over the gully.  He had only brought one rope and there was no way of negotiating the gully without it, not without risking getting trapped at the bottom.  There was no choice but to walk its length and hope for a better crossing site.

It was dusk, nearly a full nine hours since Josh had left, when Leah saw something in the snow making its way towards the shuttle.  Having found binoculars earlier she had been using them, first to admire the intricate details of the craggy mountains and wayward birds, then to search for signs of Josh returning when it became late.  She saw plainly now that Josh was approaching her.  He was nearly slumped over and his feet pounded laboriously in the thick snow.  She put her coat on and ran out to meet him.

“Oh my God, Josh!  You’re freezing!”

“I’m fine,” he wheezed as the snow blasted their faces.
  Ice had formed across his exposed skin
and icicles hung from his nose and eyes.

Leah tried to take the rifle to help him but he shrugged her away, so she simply walked with him until they climbed into the shuttle and slammed the door shut.  Josh put the rifle aside and dropped the heavy pack to the ground.  Going straight into the supply room, he paid no attention to Leah and didn’t take any time in collecting himself.  When he entered the room, the supplies were completely organized and for some reason that annoyed him.

“Where’d you put the armaments?”  He asked loudly.

“The what?”

“The goddamn weapons, where are they?”

“I didn’t touch those ...”

After a few minutes passed he came out holding burlap that was sagging with weight, grabbed his rifle, and went back outside into the blizzard.  Leah ran after him. “What are you doing now?”

“Stay inside!”

“I’m sick of staying inside.
  Let me help you!”

“Do it!”

The wind and snow whipped fiercely at his exposed face.  Josh was sure whatever he ran into back there would follow his trail eventually, if it was alive.  He doubled back over his tracks to the tree line and set up his charges and flares.  His gloves made him clumsy so he tore them off and worked nimbly with his fingers, planting four charges at different intervals.

Just then he thought he heard a voice or a noise carrying on the wind and peered against the stinging snow and into the shadowy forest.  It was dark with only traces of waning sunlight that created shifting phantoms amongst the dropping snow that played with his eyes, but he wasn’t so sure they were mere illusions.

He grabbed the gloves and ran back to the shuttle.  Totally and utterly exhausted, Josh collapsed to the ground once he closed the door behind him.  As he put aside his rifle, Leah stared at him from across the way with her arms folded. “What was that all about?”

Josh eyeballed the interior of the shuttle.  It was covered evenly with thermal wrap.

“You’re welcome,” Leah snarled.  She wore sweatpants along with a blue short sleeve shirt
she had procured from supply
.  Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she eyed him suspiciously.  The incandescent light from the various emergency lanterns she had set up in the shuttle created sharp contrasts of white and black shadows on her.

He pointed weakly, “Get black tape from supply and cover that opening on the windows.  We can’t have any light shining out of here.”

“First of all, you need to stop ordering me around.  I’m not your slave.  Second ...”

“Secon
d is where you go do what I say.
”

Leah stomped into the supply room, grabbed the roll of black tape, and threw it at him. “You do it!”

Josh picked it up and bumped past Leah as he went to apply it to the small, exposed section of the shuttle window that hadn’t been completely buried under the earth when they landed.  As he walked back, he stood inches away from her face and had the tape pulled tight between both hands as if he were going to apply it to her mouth.

His eyes were dilated, and Leah found herself staring at a wild, unpredictable animal.  He could do whatever he wanted to her. There wasn’t anything she could do about it, and the sudden thought of being trapped here with Josh sent a cold shudder through her body.  She couldn’t help but hold his stare and was certain he saw the fear in her eyes.

Josh relaxed his grip on the wrap and calmly walked away as if nothing happened.  Leah breathed again, her eyes brimming with tears as she gripped her book.

He was standing next to her again, catching her off guard and she startled, her body sliding away from his.
  Josh held out a machine guns towards her “Here.”

She looked at him with continued recalcitrance. “I don’t want that!”

A distant, rumbling explosion blasted through the blustery storm outside.
 
The metal handles on the lanterns rattled.

"What was that?"

"Just take the gun!”  Josh ordered.

“No!  You need to tell me what the hell is going on, right now!”

Josh ran to the compression door and pushed it open just enough to peer out to where the explosion took place.
 
Small fires licked around the base of the trees and black smoke drifted against the slanting snow.

The magnesium flare floated high in the sky, illuminating the trees and the snow below in a brilliant white light.  A dark figure appeared as it ran through the snow towards the shuttle.  He shut the door and turned to Leah. "It’s coming.  All you do is point and shoot.
 
You can’t miss, got it?"

"I'm not shooting anything," she said, crossing her arms.

Josh had already begun mov
ing past her, assuming there would be
no
further
argument as their lives were in danger.  He spun around at her refusal and spoke as to not waste any more time, “Pick up the gun or we’re both dead.  You either-”

“Who’s out there?  Will you tell me something for God’s sakes?”

He shoved the gun back at her, “Whatever is out there is coming to kill us Leah. Stop talking and take the gun!”

She held it in her trembling hands, both from her fear of Josh and of the threat he warned her of.  Her mind sought another route of escape from the scenario but found none in the face of Josh’s imminent demands.

Seeing her limp handling of the weapon and hesitance to even try and command it for their own self-defense, he burst out in a venomous rage, "Use the goddamn gun or we’re going to die!”

She wasn’t entirely sure why, as the voice inside her told her that she should just do as he said, but another part of her rebelled against him and shot back, "No!  I’m sick of you
 
ordering me around like I'm, I'm some idiot child who can't even tie my own shoes.
 
You know nothing about me and I'm not about to shoot something just because you tell me to.
 
No, no, I'm sorry.
 
You take the gun.
 
You shoot it," she shoved the gun at him and walked away.
 
"Do whatever you want ...”

S
omething moved outside.  Strange noises were being uttered and the sounds shifted from one point to another as if it were circling around the perimeter of the shuttle.  Her spontaneous act of defiance suddenly turned against her, as the only thing she could think of now was for Josh to save them.

The sound of metal on metal echoed within the shuttle and the entire craft jolted as if a tree had fallen against it.
 
Josh put a finger to his mouth and grabbed Leah’s gun, laying his rifle next to her.  Josh quietly slid behind the cover of one of the launch seats, rested the gun on the arm bar and leveled it
 
at the door.  Leah tentatively grabbed the rifle and shrunk away to find cover, awkwardly holding the weapon in both hands.

The noise disappeared and they remained silently watching the compression door, each of their hearts palpitating with expectant death.  Josh had witnessed their adversary up close and became terrified of it in his moment of truth, while Leah had no concept of what lay outside that door, and her mind imagined increasingly hostile and monstrous things that were about to burst through the shuttle in any second.

T
he handle on the door turned slightly, a tentative and almost gentle turn belying th
e truth on the other side.  A
moment later it turned abruptly and the compression door violently flung open as if it had been ripped entirely off its hinges and tossed away into the snow.
 
Nothing showed itself in the entryway.
 
Snow flurries whipped into the shuttle as bitter cold rushed inside.
 
Josh’s sweating hands anxiously gripped the machine gun as he steadied his mind and his breathing.
 
This was it.  His finger rested on the trigger.

The machine leapt inside, its heavy frame slamming down on the metal entryway.
 
Josh froze at the ghastly sight of the inhuman soldier staring back at him.
 
The black menacing silhouette stood there, pulsating white pupils with hostile intent.
 
It raised an arm and they both fired at each other simultaneously.

A spray of bullets ripped into the machine as a mysterious blast expelled forth towards Josh.
 
The exchange of gunfire was deafening as holes blew
 
clean through
 
the metal components in its chest and head until
 
it
 
fell backwards out into the snow.
 
In the same moment Josh felled the machine, he struggled with his parka, ripping at it frantically as if he had been set alight.
 
Smoke wafted from a hundred pin-sized holes that had burned through his coat.

He screamed in agony, "It burns!  It’s burning me!  Get it off!”

Leah jumped to his side, pulling off his coat and tossing it away.  Josh
 
cried out as the smell of burned
 
flesh, cordite, and metal filled the air.
 
Leah turned pale at the sight of his bloodied flesh.  She desperately pulled at the little projectiles that were embedded in his skin, but they were white hot and blistered her fingers.
 
She kept at it though as Josh shrieked and writhed, forcing her to press him down with one arm to stable his body enough to extract the projectiles.  She burned her fingers with each one she removed.
 
By the time she finished Josh had passed out, and his torso bubbled blood from his fresh wounds.

Leah placed the back of her bloody hand against her head as she tried to calm herself with pleas to a higher power, "Oh God, oh God, Oh God!  Help me!"

Then she ran into the supply room and grabbed the medical kit and did her best to ignore the pain in her fingers, sitting down next to him and fumbling with everything she grabbed as her body shook.
 
Blood trickled out of Josh's
 
wounds like tears.
 
Leah used alcoholic wipes for his wounds but the blood kept coming.  She found the coagulant and spread the jelly-like substance over his body and the bleeding quickly stopped.  The holes were small enough that they could close easily, and she checked his back to make sure there had been no penetration.