The Darwin Effect (14 page)

Cromartie was now reading an article on the next page of the newspaper about cyber warfare. It was an interesting article that proposed the idea of a computer virus infiltrating our missile defense systems, leaving American vulnerable to nuclear missile attacks.

He remembered talking to his children about what was happening around the world, trying to ease their fears.

“What if we have a nuclear war?” Joey had asked.

“It won’t happen,” Cromartie had promised his son.

“But how do you know?”

Cromartie had come from a time when only a few superpowers in the world had enough nuclear weapons to do that kind of damage. Now there were at least seventeen countries with that kind of capability, and possibly several terrorist groups with smaller weapons. The days of a certainty that a nuclear war wouldn’t happen were over, the stalemate between the superpowers was a thing of the past. But how could he tell his children that?

“Dad?”

Cromartie lowered the newspaper and saw his daughter standing by the table with a platter of pancakes fresh from the griddle stacked up on it.

“Time to eat,” she said as she set the platter on the table.

“Yeah, let’s take a break from the news,” Julie said. She stood by the stove, smiling at him. She had that ugly apron on over her PJs, the apron that Cromartie always made fun of, calling it her “Little House on the Prairie” apron.

He smiled at Julie and then at Carrie, and then he folded the newspaper up neatly and tucked it down beside him on the bench seat.

Joey grabbed the syrup and butter from the refrigerator. Julie had a glass pitcher of cold milk in one hand and a bowl of diced fruit in the other.

From somewhere outside, from quite some distance away, Cromartie heard an air siren wailing out its warning.

The kitchen and dining area darkened quickly, the bright sunlight disappearing instantly, the temperature dropping suddenly.

“Is that a storm outside?” Julie asked. She had stopped in her tracks with the pitcher of milk and bowl of fruit still gripped in her hands, the “Little House on the Prairie” apron cinched tightly around her slim waist.

Both kids froze and they both looked frightened. Carrie backed away from the table a few steps and stared at the set of bay windows. Joey huddled closer to Julie who still hadn’t moved forward.

They all stared at the windows as the air horn droned on from somewhere outside, winding up to a higher and higher pitch, then dropping low before starting up its unending loop again.

“I didn’t know there was a bad storm coming,” Julie said. She sounded like she was trying to be conversational, but she couldn’t hide the truth. Her eyes were so wide with fear, her skin so pale, her hands so bony as she clutched the pitcher and the bowl.

Then she let the dishes go like she had suddenly lost her strength. They fell and shattered on the floor, milk splashing out and fruit bouncing away along with the sharp fragments of the bowl.

Cromartie wanted to tell Julie that there wasn’t a storm in the forecast—he had just read the weather report in the newspaper and the weather looked fine for the next few days. He wanted to tell her that everything was going to be okay.

But he didn’t say anything.

Because everything wasn’t okay, was it?

Carrie looked at Cromartie with wide eyes of terror, but she seemed determined to tell him something even though she was afraid of what was coming through the windows towards them, bracing herself for the impact. “You have to listen to MAC,” she told him, her voice rising to compete with the air horn outside and the strengthening wind. “He knows the way out of this. There’s only one way out … and you have to ask him.”

Cromartie felt the tears stinging his eyes. He knew this was going to be the last time he ever saw his family. He looked up at the dining room ceiling and he saw a maze of metal pipes, ductwork, cables, and wiring there.

Just like the ship.

“There’s a way out,” MAC said from the ceiling, his tranquil and unemotional voice clearly heard over the wailing siren and the rushing wind from outside.

Cromartie looked at the bay windows and saw the brightest flash of light outside. He looked back at his family and they were washed away in the light, their bodies vaporized in an instant …

Then the front door in the living room burst open and Cromartie saw the silhouettes of two men standing there. He couldn’t be sure, but he knew that they were dressed in dark suits and ties. They were the same men he’d seen in his dream before when he’d been paralyzed on the table … the same men who had abducted him, taken him from his family, and put him on this ship.

They walked forward through the bright light towards Cromartie.

“Come on, Robert Cromartie,” one of the men said in a flat voice. “It’s time to go now.”

Cromartie snapped awake in his bed, choking back a scream, his face wet with tears, snot draining from his nose. He was sobbing quietly, dry-heaving, trying to catch his breath.

Oh God, they were gone. He’d seen them in his dream and now they were gone again.

He scrambled across the bed and then sat on the edge of it in the darkness. He glanced over at the door and saw the little strip of light underneath it from the hallway outside. He wiped at his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his shirt.

The thought of Butler’s suicide entered his mind and he could just barely make out the outline of the knife on top of the desk in the darkness.

Why not?
he thought.
Why not just check out like Butler may have done? Why not take the easy way out?

He even reached for the knife in the darkness, but then he heard his daughter’s voice in his mind: “You have to listen to MAC. There’s only one way out … and you have to ask him.”

C
romartie turned on the light over the desk in his bedroom and stared at the knife for a moment. Then he turned his back on the weapon and went to his bathroom. He looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His eyes were red and puffy from crying in his sleep. He washed his face in the sink. The water pressure was barely more than a dribble, but at least the faucet worked. The water had a chemical smell to it, probably from the treatment during the recycling process.

He left the bathroom, and then left his room. He stepped out into the corridor and closed the door softly. He didn’t know where anyone else was; maybe they were all in their beds, all of them dreaming about their loved ones or the people they cared about—all of them gone now—and maybe they were crying in their sleep like he had done.

Cromartie walked down the corridor to the bridge. He thought about stopping at the kitchen for a cup of crappy coffee, but they were rationing all of the food now, all of them agreeing to meet at certain times to eat and drink together so they could monitor what was being consumed.

On the bridge, Cromartie sat down in front of the same computer screen he’d used before. He looked to his left at the long and wide windows that angled down from the ceiling to the nose of the bridge with the captain’s chair in the middle of it all. There was nothing beyond those windows except space, and it was still a sight that was difficult for him to get used to. The same thing every day—no closer to those twinkling stars, no farther away. It was almost like they were stuck in the middle of this vast space and nothing was moving anymore.

He looked away before the sight of all of those stars drove him insane.

A shudder ran through his body and he looked down at the touch pad on the plastic countertop in front of him. He needed to do something to take his mind off of everything. Maybe MAC had some games on this computer system. Even solitaire would be a welcome distraction right now.

He selected some options and various programs showed up on the computer screen. He swiped through each of the programs on the computer with a swish of his finger on the touchpad, but he didn’t see any games. He finally found a screen with a search bar and a typewriter keyboard materialized on the touchpad in front of him—the letters, numbers, and symbols glowing brightly in orange. He typed the word GAMES in the search bar.

Nothing came up, only a blinking cursor.

He sat there for a moment and watched that blinking cursor. He felt like punching the computer screen, smashing his fist right through it. But he was too depressed to move.

Instead, he typed: MAC. Are you there?

The response was nearly instantaneous: Yes, Cromartie.

He wasn’t sure what he wanted to talk to MAC about … but that wasn’t the truth, was it?

Instead of asking MAC what he really wanted to ask, he hunted the keys with one finger and typed in: Do you have any games on this computer?

Again the response was lightning-quick: I’m sorry, Cromartie, but the games are not available at this time.

It seemed odd, he thought. It seemed like there would need to be something on this ship to occupy a crew even if it was only for a few weeks before they landed on Eden, some kind of entertainment or distractions. There was a rec room with a few pieces of exercise equipment and some mats on the floor, but no books or board games or even a deck of playing cards.

What about books? Cromartie typed. He wasn’t a reader, but he would welcome anything right now. There aren’t any books on this ship. Do you have some books stored on the computer?

I’m sorry, but books are not available at this time, Cromartie.

Maybe those kinds of programs couldn’t be pulled up until they were close to Eden, Cromartie thought. Just like the Noah’s Ark storage units down below weren’t allowed to be opened yet. Maybe all of it was some kind of memory-saving space for the computer, he guessed. But he didn’t really know for sure. Computers weren’t his thing—he was a builder who worked with his hands. The only thing he knew about computers was that they could be unreliable and they could break down.

Like MAC is probably breaking down right now.

He was stalling. There was a question he really wanted to ask MAC … the question from his dreams.

Why not?
he thought.

He took a deep breath and typed: Is there a way for us to survive? Is there a way out of this?

This time the response from MAC seemed to take a little longer. It seemed like when MAC didn’t want to answer a question, he took his time to think about his answer. But a moment later words appeared on the screen: There’s a way out.

Cromartie’s heart skipped a beat and then it seemed to stop for a moment inside his chest. Then he felt a staccato beating of his heart as it tried to get back into a rhythm. His skin prickled with excitement, his body frozen for a moment in his chair in front of the computer screen.

A way out? Maybe there was a way out, a way they could survive.

He typed again with two trembling fingers, trying to find the letters on the illuminated keyboard. It seemed to take so long to get the words on the screen: What’s the way out of this?

MAC responded on the screen: Look for the doorway.

What doorway?

Where’s the doorway? Cromartie typed, his words showing up so agonizingly slow on the computer screen as he hunted and pecked.

MAC responded quickly again and Cromartie felt his stomach sink when he read the words on the screen: The way out is the airlock.

Cromartie thought of the words one of them had written on the airlock door with a black marker—
This is the only way out.
His mind went white with anger. “You piece of shit,” Cromartie hissed at the computer screen. “You fucking piece of shit,” he said a little louder. “You think this is funny?! A big joke?!”

No answer from MAC.

Again, Cromartie felt like punching the computer screen, ramming his fist right through it. He wished there was an ax on this ship so he could chop into this computer bank, and then the captain’s chair, and then everything else around it. He would just keep chopping and chopping and chopping. He wished there was a way he could hurt MAC like that stupid computer was hurting them.

“You’re a sick son of a bitch!” Cromartie screamed at the computer screen.

Then he heard a noise from beyond the archway that led out to the hallway. Someone was moving around in the corridor. It sounded like somebody had just entered the kitchen, maybe raiding the food.

A moment later he heard a scream from the kitchen.

It was Sanders.

S
anders was asleep in her bed, facing the wall when she woke up suddenly.

She was lying on her side and the knife was right beside her in the bed. She knew it probably wasn’t the smartest idea to sleep with the knife right next to her, but she wasn’t going to be caught empty-handed when Ward came for her.

And she was sure that Ward would come for her. He knew that she was his biggest threat. He might have the others fooled, but not her. She was a cop and she used to arrest slime like Ward every day. She had an instinct for things like this, and she trusted her life with those instincts.

She lay there for a moment in the semi-darkness. She had left the lamp on low over the desk as she usually did. She wanted to be able to see the room immediately when she woke up—see Ward right away.

She realized that something must have woken her up. She was pretty sure she’d been sleeping.

Was it Ward? Was he in her room right now? Had he slipped inside the room without her hearing him?

She had tied a few pieces of silverware together with some twine and hung the contraption from the door handle to alert her in case someone tried to open her door when she was sleeping, and she didn’t remember hearing her homemade alarm clanging.

Had she slept through the clinking of the silverware?

She lay very still for a moment, still facing the wall, her ears straining as she listened. Her hand moved slowly underneath the sheet, her fingers curling slowly around the knife handle.

Then she heard the crinkling of plastic from right behind her. It was the same sound she’d heard before.

It was Butler—she was back in her room again, her body and head still wrapped in the plastic.