After the Bite (15 page)

“You
’re there right now, Sacha, okay?”

“Yeah,” Sacha replied. His voice was cracking, and not just because of the reception. “Yeah, I
’m there. I’m home.”

“You
’re home, Sacha,” I said.

The radio went out, then.

****

A few weeks passed by. We ran out of pepper. Food became more and more tasteless
, and we grew tired of powdered food and drink even more quickly than we’d anticipated. Still, we gathered for breakfast, and one day Tom didn’t show up to eat. We all knew why.

Tom
’s condition had worsened. He could hardly move. He stayed in his rack, most of the time. His face became more and more puffy, and he complained of headaches often.

“We have to do something about him,” Eva said as we ate. “He stopped exercising.”

“He’s grown tired of this life,” Loxley said.

“We all have,” Yamanaka said. “We just have to hang in there.”

“Do we?” Loxley said. We looked at him.

“
Lox,” I said, “are you suggesting we let Tom kill himself?”

“It
’s what he wants, isn’t it?”

“I can
’t believe you’re saying this,” Eva said.

“Why not?
It’s the most logical conclusion. We don’t have much up here. At the least,
the least
, we shouldn’t deny each other our basic rights.”

“The right to die?” Yamanaka asked.

“The right to die the way we wish,” Loxley replied.

“Enough of this,” I said. “We
’re all tired, but we have to make do with what we have. I’m going to visit Tom.”

I made my way to Tom
’s rack and knocked on the door. He opened it. He didn’t look well.

“You stopped exercising,” I said.

“Better things to do,” Tom replied.

“What do you want?”

“I want to go home.”

“God damn. Don
’t we all.”

“I don
’t want to be up here anymore.”

I sighed. I wanted to help him, but I didn
’t know what I could do. I thought of Mick, Alex, and Sacha. They’d all gone out into space; one by choice, one by accident, the other… we still didn’t even know what had happened to Alex. Regardless, I didn’t wish either fate on anyone else in the crew.

“They
’ll come for us,” I said.

“They would
’ve come by now.”

“Well, what else can we do?”

“We can end it,” Tom said. “Just turn the thrusters off. Fall back to Earth.”

“We
’ll all die.”

“We
’re already dead, Trent. What kind of life is this?”

“What about whoever we land on? What if we kill innocent people when we crash?”

“The earth is mostly water, Trent. Besides, if there are any innocent people down there, why haven’t they come for us?”

I couldn
’t answer it. Tom continued.

“Maybe they
’re alone, down there. Maybe they got sick, maybe only a few are left. Maybe none are. Who knows?”

I remained silent.

“Take us down, Trent. Take us home.”

“I can
’t,” I said.

“Then at least let me go.”

We offered Tom a suit so he could talk to us. He refused it. Said he wanted it to be instant. We put him in the airlock and sent him home. I didn’t like it, but it gave Tom something none of the others had: He died smiling.

****

Even after a few months had passed, Loxley continued his work. I wasn’t even sure what he was doing anymore, but he kept himself to it.

I stopped counting the days. I didn
’t know how much time had passed, how many sunrises and sunsets flew by us. I just woke up in the morning, ate, exercised, then spent my time in the control room hoping for a signal, and keeping track of the others.

Yamanaka took care of his last
Bonsai. Eva started sleeping on the U.S. side of the station. We rarely visited the Russian segments. We didn’t have much reason to.

One day, the station console informed me it was time to fire the thrusters, to keep us afloat for another few months. Tom
’s words came to me. I wondered what to do. I sat there at the console thinking about it.

“Fire the thrusters,” Loxley said. I had no idea how long he had been standing there.

“What’s the point?”

“I have a lot of work to do
. If you don’t fire them, I will.”

I fired the thrusters. Then I left the console. Loxley followed me.

“How long will this last?” he asked. We passed Eva. She was on the treadmill.

“I don
’t know,” I said.

“Then why force it?”

“You’re the one who told me to fire the thrusters just now,” I said. Eva left the treadmill and joined us.

“Like I said,” Loxley said. “I have work to do.”

“Well I don’t,” I replied.

“Then find something. How was the book? Finish it yet?”

“Months ago,” I said. “It was wonderful.”

There was a beeping sound coming from the console. We returned to it, and it told us that one of the airlocks had been opened.

“Yamanaka!” I said.

We rushed through the narrow white spaces toward the airlock. Yamanaka floated outside the door, in the hallway.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Yamanaka said. He was
near tears. “Just saying goodbye to an old friend.”

He turned to me,
revealing the empty plant pot in his hands.

“I
’m tired of life. I figured he was, too. He was going brown. Plenty of water, plenty of light, but he was dying anyway. So I sent him home.”

I put my hand on Yamanaka
’s shoulder.

A few weeks later, I had a dream. A dream that I was falling through the earth sky. Tufts of clouds flew past me as I fell. I wasn
’t in a shuttle or on the station, just falling, completely naked. Below me was a field full of flowers. Sacha’s field, I guessed. My wife was there. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, I just did. Then I woke up.

At breakfast, I told the others my plan.

“We’ll put on some suits,” I said. “Then we’ll go out to the shuttle, and drop.”

“We
’ll die,” Yamanaka said.

“Yeah,” I replied. Nobody contested this.

We suited up outside of the airlock. Loxley just stood there. He didn’t put his suit on.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“I’d love to join you,” Loxley said, “but I still have work to do.” Everyone stopped.

“You
’re going to stay up here?” Eva asked.

“Yeah,” Loxley said. “I think I am.”

“What
for
?” I asked. “What could you possibly have to do?”

“That shuttle is smashed. It
’ll have to be released from here.”

For a while, nobody said anything.

“What will you do?” I asked.

“I guess I
’ll just stay around for a while, continue my work.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes, Loxley said.

I hugged him. He hugged me back. Tears filled my eyes. Loxley didn
’t cry. We let go of each other.

“The earth ladies,” Loxley started, finally starting to choke up.

“I’ll take care of it,” Yamanaka said. He tried to force a laugh, but even sarcasm wouldn’t cover him this time.

Three of us stepped into the airlock. Loxley remained outside. We suited up, and I watched my friend
’s face fade away as we entered the space shuttle.

The front was smashed, but many of the seats were still usable. We picked our places and strapped ourselves in. With no windshield, the view of
Earth was extraordinary. Beyond it the sun was rising. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

“Okay, Loxley,” I said into my radio. “Send us home.”

There was no sound as the shuttle dropped. That magnificent blue orb rushed closer and closer. It was getting difficult to breathe. The temperature began to rise, and pieces of the shuttle, both inside and out, began to peel away, to burn up and fall apart.

I closed my eyes, thought of my wife. The moans and shouts of my friends with me, the sobs coming in through the radio filled my ears. For the first time in so long, we weren
’t alone.

“Hall
ey,” I said, “I’m coming home.”

Dog
’s Story

I felt a nice breeze rush over me as I walked down the sidewalk in the quiet neighborhood. I was not alone; my friend was with me, and I walked just ahead of her. The few glimpses I got of her, she was smiling, and she had something over her ears. I’m not sure what it was, but it was strange.

Not
far from our house, there was a strange man in his garden, and I felt an undeniable urge to bark and run at him. I could not overcome it, but my friend stopped me, and I began to calm down as we passed him by. The man gave us a strange look as he was pouring water from some green tube all over the garden.

We stopped for a moment for me to do my business near a bush, and I turned to look at my friend. She seemed to be messing with some device; maybe it had something to do with the thing over her ears? I wasn
’t sure. She smiled down at me, and clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. I swung my large tail. It slapped against the sidewalk.

“You ready,
Skipper?” she asked in her soft human voice. My tongue was hanging from my open jaws, pulsating a little; my tail was going nuts, and I was happy, ready to continue our walk. I took off, and I heard her playful pleas to slow down a bit. I did, and we were back on track.

There was a small black thing on the ground that caught my interest, and I had to stop and investigate. My human didn
’t seem to mind too much. I poked it with my nose and sniffed it. When I felt it move I freaked and backed up a step. My big body bumped into my human’s leg, and she seemed startled. I barked at the black thing, thinking it might go away. It did not. It moved a few inches over the sidewalk and then stopped.

“Come on, silly dog,” my human said, laughing. I tore myself away from the black thing, then continued on.

I was growing a little tired, but I felt the need to go again, so I stopped near a fire hydrant and did more business. When I was finished, I looked up at my friend. She looked strange. She dropped the string that was tied to the collar around my neck. I stepped over to it, sniffed it, and bumped against my human’s legs.

She
looked down at me, and I didn’t feel comfortable. Something was different about her, I could smell it. I barked at her, but she made no remarks. She grunted as she began to move toward me.

What was she doing? She wasn
’t my human. Who was this human? I had to get away, and quickly, but she was standing on the rope attached to my collar. I pulled, and she took a step forward, freeing me. I got away with the rope slapping against the sidewalk as I ran. I was terrified of this human, and didn’t want anything to do with her. I wanted my old human back.

As quickly as I bolted off, I stopped when a big moving object nearly hit me
as it rushed along. It hit a big hard object growing out of the ground, one I had peed on regularly. Both things crumbled up like extra skin. The thing that almost hit me stopped moving. It looked a lot like the one my human would take me in when we went to the park. I missed my human.

Later in the day I was running down a quiet street. There was no one on the street, no one wandering the neighborhood like there normally was. I felt a little scared all by myself, and then I heard a voice call to me. It was a human, and even though it sounded friendly, it was not my human. I turned around
to bark, and instead found myself running up to the human. A man came out of a door near the woman who had called me. She knelt down as I ran to her, and she slowly reached out and patted my thick brown coat. Her hand ran down my long back. I felt happy that this new human was so kind. She was not like my old human, but she was just as nice.

“What
’s your name, boy?” the woman asked as she took the rope off my collar. She looked at the little metal bone on my collar and smiled at me as she rubbed behind my ears. I wagged my tail. “Skipper! What a great name! Come on, you’ll be safe from the zombies in here, Skipper.” I was taken inside; the two new humans introduced me to two smaller humans, and it was nice. I felt safe.

That night I lay in a makeshift bed of blankets in the room with the two humans
. I couldn’t sleep right away. I worried about my human, and hoped she’d be okay. Eventually I did drift off to sleep, and I slept very well.