Mask (9 page)

Glenda glared at him, trembling with rage.  “Semantics?  A time like this, and you’re offering up semantic platitudes?”

Doc Larson just shook his head.

“Lane, what about your kids?” she asked.

“What about them?”

“Just like that, you’re going to murder them?  You know you can’t.  Lane, you’re kind, and gentle.  You’ll never be able to go through with it.  You can’t, you just can’t.”

Lane grabbed both of her wrists and pushed her back against the door and leaned into her face.

She stared back through disheveled red hair with increasingly wild eyes.

“I can and I will.  You know the stories.”

“Propaganda and lies.”

Lane bounced her roughly off of the door.  “No, not lies.  I was there, at Outpost 3, just after.”

The other men sucked in air.  This was a revelation.

The tears streamed down her freckled face. “
But Lane, please, I’m begging you.”

Lane leaned his face against hers, dropping her wrists and hugged her tightly.  “We must, please believe me.  You can’t imagine what happened there.  If you knew, you’d never want anyone to go through that.  They are monsters beyond imagining, Glenda.”

“No!”  She screamed and pushed Lane away, “Never.  I’m taking the enviro-suits.”

Lane studied her face — she’d gone over.

“They won’t fit Polly.  She will hardly be able to walk, much less run.”

“No, we’re going and you can’t stop me.”

“Glenda, we can’t let you just —”

“What?  You going to murder me right here, Lane?”

She turned to open the door, but Lane grabbed her again and squeezed her bicep with a workman’s hardened grip.  He squeezed until she yelped.  She pulled back from Lane’s sudden rage, but he did not let go.

“Fine, Glenda, do what you must, but do it quietly.  We can’t have you going back out there and creating a panic.  Do you understand?”

He squeezed even harder, she gasped.

“
Yes Lane, I understand.”

He gripped her chin with his other hand and pushed her back against the door and stared into her eyes.  “Are you sure?”

“Yes Lane, please.”

“I want you to go find Corporal Dix.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, Dix.”

“Have him come see me.  He’ll help you with the suits and run the air-lock for you.  Got it?”

“Yes Lane, please, you’re hurting me.”

“Glenda, do you have it?”

“Yes, yes, have Dix see you, yes Lane, please.  I just want to go.”

She collapsed against his chest, sobbing uncontrollably.  He held her up and stroked her hair like she was a child.  She looked up and nodded.

“You good?” Lane asked.

“No, but yeah.  Yeah,” she said as her composure reluctantly returned, “I’m good.”

Lane nodded.  He released her and gently pulled her to the side and opened the door.

Glenda turned back and placed a trembling hand on Lane’s chest, “Thank you.  God Bless all of you.”  And then she was gone as the door clicked closed behind her.

When the door closed he dropped his head against it.

Doc Larson stood up and put a hand on Lane’s shoulder.

“Jesus,” Wally said.

“You were there?” Allen asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”  He faced each of them down, making eye contact and said quietly, “I’ll go last, because nothing’s going to break my resolve.  You’ve all read the reports, but unless you’ve seen it, you have no idea what they are truly capable of, no idea at all.”

Wally and Allen just stared at him.

“Why did they lock the weapons up anyway?” Allen mumbled.

“Because
Eton knew that when everything went to shit, we’d have folks like Glenda,” Doc Larson answered.

“Enough dicking around,” Lane said, “let’s get this shit over with, we’re running out of time.”

******

Lane stood at the windows of the Rec-room.  It was a large, open space on the main floor with a domed glass ceiling.  He looked up and watched the two moons stare back. 
Allen was right, we should have never come out here
, he thought.

Behind him the scientists, lab techs, maintenance workers, wives, mothers, husbands and fathers talked quietly and occasionally hugged their children, but more often pulled back at the last moment, like reaching for an apparition.  He fought back tears.  They were all being incredibly brave.  They understood and that was good, because this was going to be very ugly before their work was done.

“Lane,” Allen called from across the room, pointing out the windows.

Lane looked out to see seven figures walking away to the north wearing orange enviro-suits.  They carried two others — that made nine in total.  Lane did the math.  Forty-three adults, six teenagers and five little kids were still in the Outpost.  Two of those kids belonged to him.

He felt hands run across his waist and turned to look into his wife’s emerald eyes.  Catherine smiled up at him and kissed him gently, then laid her head against his chest.  He hugged her close and looked across the room to see his own children, Lily and William playing a vid game with the other kids.  Lily was five and William would be seven next week.

He squeezed Catherine to him and tried to choke back a sob, but it escaped and he began to cry softly, burying his face in her dishwater blond hair.  She shook in his embrace, fiercely squeezing back.

“There’s no other choice,” she said, “We were both there, we know.”

“What if I’m wrong?”

She pulled back and took his face in both of her delicate hands and spoke slowly, “You’re not wrong.  You know that.”

“Do I?”

“Yes,” she sniffed and ran the back of her hand across her eyes and then reached up and kissed away Lane’s tears.

“Glenda and some of the others took the enviro-suits and made a run for it,” Lane said.

Catherine took Lane’s hands and turned around to watch their children and leaned back into his chest, wrapping his arms around her.  “I know.  Corporal Dix went with them.”

“He did?  He was suppose to come see me first, doesn’t matter.  Who ran the lock?”

“Me.”

“You?  I was worried she was going to start in out here and panic everyone, but she kept her promise.”

“No she didn’t,” Catherine said, “she started talking to Father Timmons as soon as she came out.  A few folks gathered around and they were talking about being too far from Earth for God to find them and guide them to Heaven.  They started to panic, for their souls I guess — wondering if God could hear their prayers.  Then she started to address the group, but I was done with her by then.”

“And?”

“And now her little group is out there,” she said pointing blindly out the window.  “She was bat-shit crazy, better for her not to be here.  Better for us.  You know?”

“I know.  How did she get the recruits to join her, the God thing?  Never mind, it doesn’t matter either.”

“What do you think is going to happen to them?” she asked.

“If they’re lucky, they’ll die from painful toxic poisoning when their scrubbers run afoul.”

“And if they’re unlucky?”

He kissed the top of her head, “You already know the answer to that.”

“Want to hear something interesting?”

“Sure,” he said.

“A coupe of days ago, before the, before, we re-aligned the orbital telescope and found another earth-like planet.  It’s just over a light year from here.”

“Another planet we should never go to.”

“Probably.  I sent the information back to earth anyway, before the jamming started.  I’m curious what they’ll do.”

Lane wrapped his arms around her tighter.  “They’ll come, but they’ll bring more soldiers than scientists this time.  This is the beginning of an inter-stellar war, Cat.”

“We should have stayed home, huh?”

Lane looked up through the dome again at the alien stars.  “It’s been an adventure.  I’ve loved almost every moment of it, but I think I’d rather be back in our little South Side apartment.”

“I loved that place.”  She turned again and looked up at him.  “I love you Lane, I love you so much.”  She sobbed again.

“I love you too, Cat.”

He watched his children play as Catherine sobbed into his chest.  They had no comprehension of what was happening, what was about to happen.

He scanned the stoic faces of the other parents — moist eyes and brave smiles.  Squeezing their spouse’s hands and not letting on by paying too much attention to their children.  They fought against every instinct to hold them, to protect them, but instead, allowed them to be children for just a few more moments — a few more moments to play.

The Rec-room was quiet except for the gentle laughter of five children — five children playing under the hopeless gaze of their parents.

Lane leaned back, tears slowly streaking his cheeks.  He wouldn’t have time for this later.

******

Wally stood back and looked at the punch under the red glow of the emergency lights.  The muted steel track was mounted to the wall so that the punch housing itself was horizontal.  The bright red housing was spherical and looked like a ripe tomato.  It contained the mechanism and motor.  Hydraulic tubing sprouted from it like roots seeking soil.

Wally had found several aluminum equipment cases for people to stand on so they would reach the proper height for the punch.  He stacked them up neatly to the side.  He found a flat rolling cart and parked it on the other side of the machine.  He would take the bodies as they fell, place them on the cart and roll them through the back entrance of the Equipment Room and around into the Bunker.

They would have no choice but to stack them.

Wally stood, staring into the Bunker.

“Like cord-wood,” he said aloud, choking on his words.

He grimaced and walked over to a supply closet and retrieved a ledger book and a pen.  He opened it on a table next to the Bunker doorway so that he could make note of each colonist.  He leaned over and began to write in a surprisingly delicate script:

This is the last record for Outpost 9, Paradigm Alpha — Earth date, year 2187, 17 March.

Herein
lie the bodies of the colonist of Outpost 9, brave souls all, who took their own lives rather than surrender to the Alien Demons.

Even though he had no family here, he never felt alone.  These people were his friends.  Friends like he had never known.  He was grateful for the blessing of being able to call them friends.  He was richer for having known them.  Now, he was about to murder every last one of them.  He leaned over to re-read his note and a single drop of sweat fell onto the ledger, turning the ‘9’ into a blotchy zero.

******

Lane joined Doc Larson and Allen in the radio room.

“Anything?”

The Doc turned.  “No, just static.  Not a goddamn thing since yesterday afternoon when Eton phoned home.”  He patted Tim on the shoulder.  “Sorry.”

Tim nodded and resumed monitoring the channels.  He had steadfastly remained with the radio over the last two days, even though his father’s fate was almost certainly a foregone conclusion.  Tim looked up, his longish blond hair falling to the sides and offered a reassuring smile, although his eyes, like everyone else’s, were swollen and red.

Lane ruffled Tim’s hair.  “Good kid,” he said as he turned to Doc Larson and Allen.  “We need a volunteer to go first to see if this thing is going to work.”

“Is it that time already?” the Doc asked.

Allen looked back down the hallway to the Rec-room and then said, “Me.  I’ll go first.”

“Thanks, but we still need you,” Lane said seriously.

“I’ll go and talk to a few people,” Doc Larson said and headed for the hallway.

“Allen, stay here with Tim, and if you hear anything, come running as fast as you can.  Got it?  Scream your head off,” Lane said.

“Got it,” Allen responded.

Tim gave a salute and Lane smiled back reassuringly.

Lane walked back towards the Rec-room and peered in.  He spotted Catherine with Lily and William.  She looked up and saw him and waved.  His jaw clenched and he smiled at her as he quickly turned away.

He walked past the central hub science labs and then turned into a maintenance corridor and walked down the steps towards Equipment.  The stairs opened up to a small vestibule.  The door was open.

Wally looked up and gave Lane a grim smile.

Lane examined Wally’s work and nodded his approval.

“Have you tried it yet?”