Deep Space Dead (14 page)

The doors to the starship opened quickly, but only to a height of five feet so that the colonists had to duck down to rush inside. The lowered height presented a greater problem to the revenants who found it harder to follow. People were running inside with their arms ripped off, with parts of their shoulders completely ripped out and huge gashes and claw marks across their faces. Most of the running injured made it inside then promptly collapsed inside the door, there to be trampled over by the rushing crowds before the rangers stepped in to roughly drag them out of the way.

Arianna was almost at the steps to the starship when something crashed into her with what felt like the force of a boulder. She cried out as she was knocked aside but managed to keep hold of Ambra and looked up to see the revenant rising above her, its teeth bared and its fist raised to destroy them. Arianna pushed Ambra beneath her, determined to shield the little girl as best she could with her own body, closed her eyes and waited for death to take her. There came a series of blinding flashes. Arianna looked up to see half the revenant’s head had been shot off and it was tilting back and forth. She leapt up and dragged Ambra out of the way just as the thing toppled down, landing in the exact spot where she had been crouching with a resounding crash.

“Come on!” Roared Sol, rushing up to her and pulling her away by the arm. Jak was with him and together the four of them hurried back up the steps and into the starship.

Jak and Sol remained framed in the doorway, firing indiscriminately and yet the revenants took no notice of their assault. They continued attacking even with hideous injuries, showed no pain even when their arms were hanging off and their intestines were seeping from their abdomens. More and more revenants were turning their attention to the ship, charging up the stairways and beating their fists upon the doorways which were quickly closed. It was only a matter of time before a breach occurred. There was nothing for it. Jak picked up the radio and spoke to his men. “Close all the doors,” he ordered with quiet determination.

Arianna spun around to look at him. “But there are still thousands of people out there!” She exclaimed in horror.

“Those people have no chance now,” replied Jak. “We have saved as many people as we can.”

The order went through on the radio. Within thirty seconds the doors had slammed shut. There came a frantic hammering from outside. It only lasted a minute before being replaced by the sound of tearing, snarling and cracking bone. Arianna dropped to her knees, hugged Ambra tight and for a good few minutes the tears overwhelmed her.

People were lying in the corridors, some being cradled by relatives. Other survivors had not been bitten but were clearly in a state of shock. Some slumped against the walls whilst others wandered up and down as if in a daze, unable to cope with the magnitude of what had just happened. Screams echoed up and down the corridors; they were the screams of the bereaved, the injured and the shocked.

“We need to isolate the wounded,” said Chairman Bol worriedly when he came to survey the devastation. “Get them to the concert hall in the arboretum.”

“But this is where the survivors have gathered,” objected Arianna. “We’ve jettisoned most of the living quarters.”

“There’s another problem,” said Jak gravely. They all turned to look at him.

Bol was the first to break the silence. “The bitten,” he said quietly. “You think they’re going to turn.”

“They will turn,” replied Jak with vehemence. He turned to Sol. “Let the order go out to your officers and the other rangers,” he said. “As soon as anybody turns, or appears close to turning they need to be isolated and dealt with, and by that I mean I want a shot put in their head before they’ve had the chance get up again.”

Sol started to protest then stopped himself. He knew Jak was right.

Magnuj Bol turned to Barra Herr. “Tell your people I want them up in the communications room scanning the cameras for all they’re worth. If anybody turns and you see any revenants running up and down you’re to seal off the entire sector. Close all the doors and keep them shut.”

Everybody leant a hand trying to get the wounded to the arboretum. Here they were lain down in long lines. Doctors Palk and Brigg conducted a quick triage of the patients, ordering those they were certain would soon die to be isolated straight away with the excuse to relatives that they needed to operate. The doctors and medical staff walked up and down the seemingly endless rows whilst Jak, Sol and those under their command were forced to almost rush back and forth taking the newly dead to the bandstands where they were quietly despatched. It sickened both Sol and Jak to be shooting corpses through the head but they knew there was nothing else to be done.

“They don’t understand why we’re guarding the wounded,” said Sol worriedly.

“Best they don’t find out for the time being,” replied Jak. “I sure as hell hope we can get the dead out of sight without a fuss and don’t have to put anyone down along these lines.”

“They’re all going to die soon enough,” said Sol darkly. “You know that, don’t you?”

“I know,” replied Jak quietly.

Arianna took Ambra back to their apartment and made her go to bed. The little girl protested loudly, for it was not even the early evening but Arianna was determined she was not going to be running around whilst there was the prospect of newly turned revenants roaming the starship. She went into the living room where she happened to glance out of the window in the direction of the city. What she saw was too horrible to contemplate and yet at the same time she was unable to drag her eyes away from the scene of carnage which she now beheld. Some survivors who had attempted to hide now broke cover and tried to make a dash towards the starship. The revenants did not leave them for long. Some of the colonists they devoured. Arianna saw them rip and tear with their teeth at guts and eternal organs, saw the blood of her people stained against the white skin of the monstrous hordes. But some bodies they spared intact. These bodies they held aloft and threw backwards like a wave until the colonists turned and became revenants like them and at that point they were just as ravenous as all the other undead. Even if the survivors could get to the starship, which some now tried to do, their way was blocked by the heavy metal doors. The revenants leapt on to the starship and began tearing and hammering at the metal plating and the windows. They climbed on to the roof of the arboretum and tried to break through the glass. In this instance they were out of luck. The asteroid fields had been switched on and as a result the interior of the starship would not be violated so easily. In the long term perhaps it didn’t matter. The colonists were trapped inside like tinned food. It was all just a question of waiting.

Meanwhile throughout the burgeoning town of Grumium all the hard work of the past few weeks was now destroyed. The revenants tore through the city, ripping up the roofs and smashing their fists through the building work. Arianna watched as the transmission satellite wavered and shook beneath their combined efforts before finally tipping and crashing to the floor where it sparked and ignited in a series of small explosions. Thus was destroyed their only hope of salvation, for without the satellite they could not send word to the Confederation.

From her raised vantage point Arianna saw a sea of white revenants stretching endlessly before her. For all she knew they might be pouring, infinitely, over the horizon, drawn from the bowels of the earth. The starship was now both the colonists’ sanctuary and their tomb. Everything they had worked for, all their hopes and dreams, was gone, torn up before their eyes in the worst possible way. For a few short weeks they had tasted the freedom of the new world and a veritable paradise it had all seemed. It was but a taste of Eden and just like in the old holy text that same paradise was now taken away, the gates closed to humankind forever. Here at last was a nemesis; faster, stronger, hungrier. This was their planet, and it was all the human race could do to retreat back to their four walls of metal and hope against hope for a miracle that would surely never come.

11

The laser pistols flashed several times. The newly turned revenant exploded in a firework of blood. Screams echoed across the arboretum. Those who could leapt up and bolted for the door; the semi-conscious wounded tried to pull themselves up on their hands and knees in a desperate bid to escape.

“Calm down!” Shouted Sol, swinging his pistol in an arcing motion, eyes scanning for further danger. “The threat is neutralised. There is nothing more to fear.”

“How did it get in?” Screamed one of the colonists. “I thought we bolted the doors. Have they smashed through the metal?”

The very thought sent the survivors into a frenzy of panic.

“It wasn’t a revenant!” Exclaimed another woman. “Why that was Don Hagne the miner!”
“But he went insane!” Came another voice.

“He was definitely a revenant!” Came another.

“Not another word!” Exclaimed Jak harshly, firing his pistol twice into the air to impose an immediate silence. “There are no revenants roaming about the starship. That was the only one. It must have slipped under the doors somehow before we closed them and it was not, and I repeat
not
, the miner Don Hagne or any other colonist. Anybody who says otherwise will be sent straight to the brig, injury or no injury.” Such was the menace in his voice the rest of the colonists quietened down promptly. Jak motioned for Jan Lybne and his rangers to help carry the revenant’s body away.

A couple of minutes later Chairman Bol arrived outside the arboretum and beckoned Jak and Sol to join him in the corridor. Dr Palk was also with them. “What is the status?” Asked Bol.

“We’re still trying to isolate them but they’re dying so fast,” said Jak. “The doctors can only do so much.”

“Even some of the walking wounded are starting to flag,” said Dr Palk worriedly. “If they all turn at the same time there’s no way we’re going to be able to keep track of them.”

Bol sighed heavily. “Get everybody out of there who hasn’t been bitten,” he ordered. “Order them all to withdraw.”

“But we cannot leave the patients unattended,” protested Dr Palk. “Some of them are close to death as it is.”

“Have you yet been able to save one?” Asked Chairman Bol.

“I have not,” replied the doctor.

“Then they are doomed,” said Chairman Bol, his tone matter of fact. “And we have more and more of them turning. Now get your people out of there and bolt the doors of this concert hall behind you. In fact clear the whole arboretum. I know there are colonists milling around in here but we need them out, at least for the time being.”

Arianna appeared outside the arboretum just as the evacuation had started. “What are you doing here?” Asked Jak. “Where is Ambra?”
“Back at the apartment,” replied Arianna. “I locked her inside. I just had to see you, Jak. To make sure you were alright.”
“I’m fine,” replied her partner. “But you should not have come here.”

“What’s happening?” Asked Arianna curiously, peering over Jak’s shoulder.

“Nothing,” replied Jak firmly. “Now go back to the apartment.”

“Don’t you start ordering me around,” snapped Arianna crossly. “I’ve been through as much as you, remember?”

“Jak is right,” said Bol kindly, coming to stand with them. “We are having to make some difficult decisions here, Arianna, and I fear you don’t have the stomach for it.”

“How dare you!” Exclaimed Arianna, her patience snapped. “Why I’ve been through more today than most of the rest of you will go through in a lifetime. I was out there with my daughter for crying out loud!”
“And this is precisely why you need to go back home,” said Bol flatly.

“Most of them refused to leave,” reported Sol, coming to stand with them. “They said they wanted to stay with their loved ones. They weren’t happy you know, that the doctors were leaving them. We’re going to have a riot on our hands.”

Bol sighed sadly. “So be it,” he said, shaking his head. Now he turned to
Bacc Goor. “Seal off the airlocks to the arboretum,” he said. “Seal them off for ten minutes.”

“What?” Exclaimed Arianna. “But there are people inside! Actual living people!”

Bol waved her aside. “Seal off the airlocks,” he repeated, and there was a steely determination in his voice. Jak took a deep breath then turned to his uncertain rangers and nodded. They hurried off to do his bidding.

Arianna
fled back down the corridor,
tears streaming down her face, unable to contemplate what had just taken place. She imagined the survivors choking and gasping, rushing up to the doors with their remaining strength and begging to be allowed out. To suffocate was a stifling, terrible death and Arianna would not believe the Chairman had no choice in the matter.

Jak came after her a few minutes later when she was back at the apartment. She turned on him angrily. “Why didn’t you take my side?” She demanded. “Why didn’t you try to stop him?”

“I could only have stopped him by thinking up a reasonable alternative to the plan,” replied Jak warily. “And there was none. The survivors were told to get out when they could and they decided to stay with their loved ones. We didn’t have the time to drag them out, not with people dying off and turning like they were.”

“We could have contained them.”

“We couldn’t contain that many people,” said Jak firmly. “Not with so few rangers. You weren’t there when one of them died without us noticing. It took every ranger and police officer to take them down and we were lucky. Well we couldn’t have stayed lucky, Arianna. Those people had been bitten and they were doomed. I’m sorry family members and survivors got caught up in it all but there was no way of getting them out without telling them what we were up to and if we’d have done that there’d have been a mass panic.”

“First of all we shut the doors and leave people at the mercy of the revenants to be ripped apart; next we herd people into the arboretum and suffocate them,” retorted Arianna. “This was murder. This was tyrannical.”

“I don’t like it either,” said Jak emphatically. “But we had to make a snap decision and that’s exactly what the Chairman did. This isn’t going to be the last difficult decision we’re forced to make, you know. We’re going to be trapped in her for a long time and there are going to be many dark days ahead.”

Arianna brought Ambra into the Council chambers with her for the emergency meeting called later that day. Although this raised a few eyebrows neither was prepared to be separated from the other. The little girl sat on her mother’s lap for the duration of the meeting and eventually went to sleep.

Bol turned to Arianna. “You’re going to be kept busier than ever in your library,” he said. “We’re going to need to train up those we’ve lost.”

“Let’s just hope there are still people alive who know enough to train them,” said Jung Pepp sadly.

“So what are they?” Demanded Arianna. “The revenants I mean?”

“As yet the answer is undetermined,” replied Dr Palk. “Give me a few days of tests and I’ll see if I can come up with anything.”

“From the point of view of the naturalist they certainly seem humanoid in appearance but they behave more like pack animals,” said Banda Ure. “Or perhaps worker ants is a better analogy. From the brief time I’ve had to observe them I believe them to be more or less incapable of independent thought.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Arianna. “I saw them devour some victims completely and yet leave others to turn and become revenants just like themselves.”

“Well whatever they are we must find a way of destroying them once and for all,” declared Jak.

“We can’t detonate a nuclear rod,” said Bacc Goor. “Not so close to the ship anyway. To do so would wipe us all out.”

“So what do we do then?” Asked the entertainment man Col Gayze, his voice sounding panicked. “We can’t just stay here on the starship forever.”

“We don’t have enough food in the arboretum for so many people,” said the agricultural Councillor Gan Cuk. “In time we’ll either have to leave or starve”

“I’ve taken a census of the remaining population using the motion scanners,” said Bacc Goor. “Two thousand people are missing; they’re the ones who were trapped outside the starship. Clearly there’s no hope for them. Fifteen hundred more were suffocated by the airlock in the arboretum.”

“Three thousand five hundred people dead out of a population of eleven thousand,” breathed Arianna. “Why this means it is one of the worst disasters in the history of the Confederation.”

“An even bigger damned disaster for us,” replied Col Gayze. “We haven’t got enough food. What the hell are we going to do?”

“I would need to do a proper stock take but we’ve dissipated most of the growing pods to the outside in order to facilitate the fields,” said Gan Cuk. “From what we’ve got left I’d estimate there’s enough to feed everyone for around a month.”

A silence descended across the room as the implications sank in.

“So we have no choice,” said Sol frankly. “We either defeat them or we die.”
“Or we let more colonists die so there can be enough for the rest of us,” said Col Gayze slowly.

Nobody said anything to this. Arianna felt a chill of dread running up her spine.

The meeting broke up without resolution. Everybody still seemed too shocked to think and in time Chairman Bol became tired of the baseless supposition and false hope and adjourned until the following day. A little later Jak and Sol were discussing the situation in the corridor when the communications man Barra Herr hurried up to them. “There’s been an incident,” he said. “Section two of the administration quarters; somebody turned.”

“Have you shut it down?” Asked Jak quickly, instinctively feeling for the gun he had now taken to carrying by his side at all times.

“Tight as a drum but they’re in the corridor,” replied the communications man. “Looks like an engineer by his get up; ripped his wife and child apart then started outside. There are eight other people in three different rooms who are probably wondering why the hell their doors have just locked down all around them, but they’re safe.”

Sol looked at Jak. “We need to take it down,” he said grimly.

The doors were tightly closed when the two men reached the sealed off section. Jak picked up the radio. “Open the doors,” he said to Barra Herr. They stepped back as the doors drew open with a smooth hum and stepped inside There came a sinister gnarling from the other end of the corridor. Sol and Jak were firing almost before the creature was out of the door. They aimed for the head which snapped back as the revenant hurtled towards them. It staggered as they kept firing before finally collapsing against the wall. Sol continued firing until Jak put a hand on his arm. “We’re going to be short enough of ammo as it is before long,” he said. “It’s not as if we’ve got an endless supply now we’re going to have to conserve power what with only one engine left to run on.”

From inside the quarters came another snarling sound. It seemed they were not finished yet. Jak and Sol crouched low and crept towards the open door, hoping to surprise the creature before it realised they were there. They peered around the door to be greeted with a terrible sight. The newly turned revenant was a child, no older than five and it sat upon the floor, feasting upon the caved in skull of what had once been its mother. Sol leapt back and slammed the door shut but was not able to engage the airlock in time. The revenant child smashed the window with a single punch then began a furious assault upon the metalwork of the door. “Shoot it!” Screamed Jak. But it was clear the police chief had frozen. Jak rushed forwards and barged Sol out of the way, his pistol raised. The revenant child reached forward and clawed at him with lightning speed and for a terrifying second the creature had a hold of his sleeve. Jak pulled hard, dropping his pistol in the process. The garment ripped away and he staggered back. The revenant child began to climb quickly out of the window. Four shots rang out as Sol at last regained his nerve. The revenant collapsed in the mangled remains of the window frame and was still at last. Jak peered nervously inside. The engineer’s wife lay in an emaciated heap on the floor. There was blood everywhere. Jak doubted whether she would be able to turn but he fired a few shots into her half eaten body anyway, just to make sure. Afterwards he called for the rangers to come and clear away the mess before the frightened inmates of the sealed off rooms were allowed out again.

“It was a child,” said Sol vacantly. “A little girl, just like Ambra. I just gunned down a little girl.”

“You have to stop thinking like that,” said Jak sternly. “That thing wasn’t a little girl. It was dead; there was nothing left of the human that once was there. That thing was a parasite, a monster.”

Sol stared down at the revenant child’s body. “It was a child,” he kept repeating to himself. “A little girl.” Sol looked down at the pistol in his right hand then, in a sudden florid movement, brought the firearm up to his temple. Had Jak not already been highly strung from their encounter with the revenants he may not have reacted as quickly as he did but in the event he was able to lunge forwards and seize hold of the policeman’s wrist just before he fired. The two men fell to the floor and grappled for a while before Jak was at last able to push the pistol out of the way where it skidded across the floor. “You can’t do this,” said Jak emphatically. “And it’s not because the survivors need you. Ambra needs you as well.”

“Ambra has you,” retorted Sol, and he appeared close to tears.

“You’re still her father,” replied Jak. “Come on, Sol. No good can come of this.”

“I’ve got nothing,” replied Sol vacantly. “I’m alone.”

“We need your help to get through this,” replied Jak, unwilling to get drawn into a counselling session. “We all need to think and quite possibly we’re going to need to fight. We can’t do that without you, Sol. It isn’t just your life on the line here. Look, nothing like this has ever happened before. We’re all going to have to do things we don’t want to do, things that would have seemed atrocious just a few hours ago but that’s just the way of the new world, Sol. You did it, Sol. She wasn’t a little girl. You came through and you saved my life, prevented me from turning into one of those things. Had you not shot the thing it might have broken out and infected the entire ship.”

Sol simply shrugged. Jak put an arm around him and led him away. The policeman did not resist. He seemed like a broken man.

Jak walked back with Sol to his quarters and made sure he got to his room okay. He decided not to tell Arianna what had happened. He was deeply worried, and it was not just because he was concerned for Sol’s life. The fact was Sol had been forced to an extreme, and if the siege dragged on it would simply be the first of many. Jak knew their survival depended on being just as ruthless towards the revenants as those creatures would be to them. If Sol didn’t have it in him to react when the going got tough he would not last long regardless of whether or not he took his own life. Jak was feeling slightly humbled too. Sol had saved his life despite the policeman’s blatant dislike of him. Jak turned and made his way back to the apartment he shared with Arianna. He had a lot to think about.

Sol remained sat on his bed for a long time with his head in his hands. Jak had given him his pistol back. He wondered if the ranger wasn’t actually bothered if he committed suicide but just didn’t want it on his conscience, although Sol was not going to try again. Now that his own apartment had been conquered and demolished by the revenants Sol would set up a bed in his office. There was nothing else there in the way of personal effects. The room was bare and business-like.

Night had fallen. Arianna walked into the corridor and stared out towards the landscape beyond. There was no sign of the revenants dispersing. They stood straight and still like statues, all eyes turned towards the starship. Arianna could still see blood on their gleaming white bodies. They were not going to leave and even though they had tested and probed the starship for weaknesses it was as though they knew the survivors were trapped inside with dwindling food supplies. It was simply a question of waiting. Arianna looked out but could see no traces left of what was once the burgeoning city of Grumium. In the arboretum the revenants were sat perched on the glass above, blotting out the natural light. She supposed the starship would soon be forced to revert back to the artificial sunlight.