Deeper Into the Void (11 page)

Lawrence gets up from his crumpled position on the floor and rushes over to where Long stands with his head in a bag. The figure on the right quickly produces a lighter from his pocket. It is ignited and flung toward Lawrence. He never saw what was coming at him from behind as he erupts into a violent blaze. His flailing arms and legs knock the equipment off of the counters around the room.

Mendez misses the final scene as it unfolds on the screen in front of her, her hands cover her eyes tightly as if she were a small child. Long’s arms finally drop to his sides as he goes limp from the brutally delivered asphyxiation. Flame and cinder claim Lawrence, he flails one last time. He falls to the ground at Long’s side as he succumbs to the intense burning.

The figures, which are standing over their victims, turn and look up at the camera. A maniacal smile grows on their faces and they dash out of the door. The security footage returns to the split-screen arrangement on the overhead screen.

They watch each figure in every single feed begin to walk in the direction of the control room, where they are currently sitting. Mendez rushes to the door control. She presses on the door controls and the door begins to slide shut. The movement of the heavy door, and the motor driving it almost mask the unmistakable sound of footsteps as they clamor into the hallway just five meters away.

Cardiff draws her weapon. She adjusts her hold on the weapon while holding it tactically; she points it through the doorway as the door finally shuts and seals. The heavy metal levers that secure the door find their resting spots, giving off a heavy “thud” sound in unison.

The sound of steps outside the door prompts Cardiff to return her loaded weapon to its outstretched place. She pulls her left hand up to cradle her other hand, steadying it. Mendez stands just behind Cardiff as the sound of the air-tight seal breaking reverberates through the small room. The door begins its automated inward opening sequence.

A single, muscle-bound arm is flung through the widening crack of the heavy door. The individual, to whom the arm belongs, pushes frantically to get the door open posthaste. Cardiff draws in a quick breath through her flared nostrils and calmly squeezes the trigger. Just before the firing pin strikes the round in the chamber, a flailing hand swings away from the door and strikes the gun from the side.

A bright flash explodes out of the muzzle, following a single bullet as it spins out of the barrel. The small room seems to amplify the thunderous detonation. Mendez pulls her hands to her ears in a reflexive effort to calm the pain within. The whizzing fury of the bullet whips past a left ear and presses into the masonry wall in the hallway behind him. Fragments of stone and cement erupt from the craterous hole in the wall.

A terrified Lawrence stands in the doorway with his hand on Cardiff’s gun. He has enough sense to push the barrel up away from his head just after the slide recoils and reloads the weapon. His wide-eyed, slack-jawed gaze tells all. After a brief second, Cardiff presses the magazine release, sending the magazine in a free-fall toward the floor.

With his hand still wrapped over the barrel of the gun, Lawrence pulls the gun in closer at his side. The barrel is still pointed away from him as he prevents another close call. Long peers in through the doorway from his sheltered position in the hallway. He slowly turns his head to view the round lodged in the wall to the right of the door.

Long starts walking back down the hallway, his bag of gear in hand. Lawrence starts to walk out as well, except that he walks backward to avoid turning his back on Cardiff and Mendez. He points at his eyes with two fingers and then points the same two fingers at Cardiff. He follows that gesture by mouthing: “watching you”. After stepping free of the plaza, Lawrence turns and jogs to catch up with Long as they head for the oxygen processor.

Lawrence looks back over his shoulder to see if he is being watched from the plaza. After feeling that he wasn’t being watched he took the gun in his right hand and pulled it back over his shoulder. A quick double check to make sure no one is watching, and he hurls it about thirty meters in the low gravity. The gun collides with the soft sand and the sand flies up in the air from the impact. As the dust settles, he looks to see if he can locate it from where he is standing… there is no sign of the metallic object.

Back in the control room, Cardiff and Mendez are quietly staring at the puzzling sight in the dimly-lit hallway. A large spray pattern of blood adorns the wall around the small bullet-hole.

Chapter 11

F
ragments of black igneous rock crumble off of a much larger piece as heavy metal wheels roll over. The large metal wheels roll over obstacles with a subtle grinding noise as they spin. The rounded track marks left in the wake of the large rolling rig trail off toward the horizon. The noon-day sun beats down on the barren sands of the high plain. The ambient temperature rises to a relatively warm 12 degrees Celsius. The six-wheeled rig leans side to side as each of the wheels climbs up and over the rocks that litter the landscape.

Lawrence reaches up to touch his face, his gloved hand is stopped shy as his helmet prevents his reflexive motion.

As the wheels slide to a sudden stop in the sand, a cloud of dust rockets out from under the rig, obscuring the landscape in front of them from view. After a couple of hours of riding, the pair has found themselves, yet again, at the same rock formation that stands guard over the entrance to the chasm. They quietly climb into the gear and down the opening.

Once down the familiar opening, and through the main tunnel, the pair stand in the utter black dark at the same “fork in the road” that they had found yesterday. With a sudden jerk of the lamp to the right, the ominous-looking alternate pathway comes into sharp contrast against the path that they had chosen before. Instead of walking into the relatively safe-looking tunnel to the left, Long starts down the tunnel on the right. This tunnel is convoluted, pressing upward and downward, left and right. The size of the opening in the cavern has varied greatly as they walk through its winding path into another large cavern.

Lawrence squares his body to face Long. He slowly brings his hand-held flash-light up to Long’s helmet. After he is sure he is pointing the light directly in Long’s eyes, he mutters a simple unenthusiastic utterance.

Long can only chuckle as he turns away from the dejected Lawrence. Long reaches out, and under the intense focus of the light from his headlamp, his hand touches more of the slime that covered parts of the wall in the other tunnel. He rubs his gloved fingers together, again, to test the consistency of the odd substance.

Lawrence stands up on an outcrop of stone above Long. His gloves and head are the only parts of him that Long can see from down below. Long reaches up to grab Lawrence’s outstretched hand, beckoning him to climb up and join him. After pulling himself up the rock face, Long pulls his knee up over the edge, and with that he takes a second to breathe.

A quick jerk of the hand-held lantern that Lawrence is carrying startles Long. The light is now directed down below them, off into the unexplored portion of the cavern.

Lawrence turns around to look at Long. His right foot’s hold betrays him. The hand-held lantern falls, in what appears to be slow-motion, to the rock face below. The lantern comes to a rest after bouncing back and forth for a brief moment. As Long looks back to Lawrence from the lantern, he sees Lawrence falling down onto the ice. From his resting place on the ice, he begins slipping toward the crevice. Lawrence’s hands frantically grasp at anything and everything around him; this proves to be a worthless endeavor as everything he touches is covered in a layer of ice. His legs slip into the icy portal, into a hidden cavern below. His arms grasp at the sides of the small opening, trying to slow his descent into the void below him. Lawrence calls to Long, but Long remains completely motionless.

Lawrence is momentarily successful in his attempt to stave his fall a moment longer. His yells and screams are well audible without the radio, but Long remains dazed, simply staring at his fallen comrade. All at once, Lawrence’s frail grip fails, leaving him to fall deeper into the void below him. A moment of utter silence passes, Long finally manages to stretch his hand out to where Lawrence had been moments ago. A ghastly thud sounds in Long’s earpiece as Lawrence lands hard on the floor of the cavern hidden within the large rock formation that they had climbed up on.

Long still stands frozen in place, unable to utter a sound, unable to breathe and ultimately unable to move. Hours seem to pass slowly in what only takes place in mere seconds. Panic returns to the mind as he awakens from his acute stupor of thought; he becomes aware of what has just happened, and that it really did. Long shouts loudly down to Lawrence, avoiding the icy edge, for fear that he may fall in too.

Long quickly grabs the bag on his back, it is quickly swung around to the floor. Long frantically searches through the extra supplies. The pressurized oxygen canister is quickly pulled out of the pack and set on the floor. Next, the flares come out of the pack; they are all promptly set next to the oxygen tank.

With the short amount of cord that is remaining in Long’s pack, he ties the flares and tank together. Gingerly, he begins lowering the supplies over to the edge. He lies on his stomach about a meter from the opening, ice lay around every edge. Long nudges his foot into a smaller crevice on the floor and he reaches out over the crevice with his hand, holding the dangling supplies over what he can only believe is Lawrence down below.

The physical strain of holding 15 kilograms of supplies outstretched causes Long’s strength to wane and his hand begins to quiver. The oxygen tank begins to slide off to the side of the roped bundle. After a few brief moments of quivering, the tank slips out of the bundle altogether. The heavy tank drifts downward under the reduced gravity and strikes the stone floor of the cavern adjacent to where Lawrence lay.

The flares left in the bundle all begin to drop around Lawrence as the knot holding them in the bundle became too loose once the tank had fallen out. Lawrence lays lifeless on the floor, unconscious and prostrate. Long once again calls to his comrade.

The flares which Long had dropped are specialized flares designed to burn in zero oxygen environments, like on Mars. Long grabs one remaining flare out of his bag, and strikes it swiftly against the ground to ignite it. The bright red flame emits brilliant metal sparks out of it, the smoke rises quickly to the ceiling. Long lays the flare down as close as he can to the edge of the crevice. After a moment of watching the brilliant flame, Long rises to his feet and slides down the rock face and begins to sprint toward the opening.