At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) (29 page)

I cleared my throat. “Yeah,” I lied. My
vision was blurring, and my arms and legs were shaking, but I
didn’t want her to get frustrated by waiting for me.

Our pace had slowed when we started off
again. My motivation to escape was fought by fatigue, and it was
becoming a losing battle.

“Your eyes are pretty droopy,” Penelope
observed a while later. “You sure you’re okay to keep going?” Worry
lines attacked her forehead.

“For a little bit longer, yeah. I think
we’re getting close. We have to be getting close . . .” Unconcealed
desperation carried in my voice.

She frowned but kept going. On the third
panel after our discussion, a cloud of steam hit our faces, like a
refreshing sauna, though the warmth made me even sleepier. We waved
the steam away, glad that it wasn’t the blue mist that had been in
the freezer room.

When the steam cleared, a sight like I had
never seen before mesmerized my eyes. The room spanned a hundred
stories or better, tiny lights shined in long rows everywhere, and
ships buzzed in all directions.

“Wow,” Penelope gasped.

“Wow,” I duplicated.

She turned to me and grinned so wide I
thought her lips might split. “We’re going home.”

“Or die trying,” I declared.

She giggled. “Or die trying. Come on, we
can’t get down from here, we have to find another room to enter
from.”

I replaced the panel and followed as she
crawled away. A few passages down, we happened on an empty square
room. No convenient table awaited our feet, so I lowered myself
first, falling to the grating. Groaning, I hopped to my feet and
helped Penelope down, wrapping my arms below her knees.

The top floor of the hangar bay greeted us
with a dejected tone of disuse.

“It’s a scrapyard,” she remarked. “These
ships don’t look flyable.”

“Well let’s not give up so easily. If it is
a scrapyard, then the alions are unlikely to visit it often, which
is a plus for us. There might be something here. Look how far it
goes on.” I pointed down the narrow walkway. To our sides, piles of
abandoned junk piled high like mosaic towers. Gaps of open space
were left between each pile, allowing for a view of the lower
levels, though I couldn’t distinguish much beyond the lights,
walkways, and spaceships. If alions stalked the paths below us, I
couldn’t detect them.

“I guess it’s worth a shot,” she said. “But
I will say I told you so when we find nothing but discarded alion
parts.” She headed off down the walkway.

We passed ship after ship, all with huge
holes scattered throughout their hulls, as if a devastating weapon
had shot them down. Mixed about the ships were rusting fragments of
various metals, most I had never seen before, I just knew the feel
when I touched them. I could have been wrong though.

“That looks like a microwave.” Penelope
pointed at a box with a panel of electronic buttons down one side
of its front. “You think they cook using microwaves?”

I laughed. “A cat using a microwave, now
that’s a picture I never imagined.”

“Did you imagine walking through an alion
scrapyard, searching to steal a ship, all so that you could get
back to an Earth where everyone has been taken?”

I shook my head. “I just imagined blowing up
a spaceship,” I said. “I don’t even know why, I just wanted to blow
up a spaceship, you know, like in a movie.”

“Well now’s your chance for real,” she
replied.

“My chance? How?” I shook my head again. “We
can’t with all those people on board . . .”

“We can’t rescue those people,” she said.
“But we might be able to help the survivors on Earth.” She bent
over and picked up a green canister that looked like an outdated
muzzle of the gun she carried.

“Even if that’s true, we don’t have a way to
blow up the ship, unless you have some explosives stashed in your
back pocket. Though judging from their tightness, I don’t think
anything could fit in them.” I stared at her, blushing after I
realized what I had said. The words echoed in my ears.

She giggled, this time much louder than
before, traveling out into the open expanse of the hangar. “You’re
right, they’re useless. You’re also right that we don’t have a way
to blow up the ship. I was just saying to say, I guess. I just wish
we could.” She tossed the broken part back into a pile, then
continued on down the walkway.

We neared a bend in the walk when I heard a
chinking ahead. “To that ship!” I whispered. “Go!”

She dashed for the open entrance of a
damaged ship. I hurried after her. Inside, only darkness smiled
upon us, a foreboding darkness that welcomed our end.

I peeked through a hole in the ship’s frame.
Three alions strode sluggishly along the walk. Their claws clinked
as their feet dragged. Their ears were perked up, listening.

“What are they doing?” I whispered.

She put a finger to my mouth. Then she moved
her hand down to my chest, over my heart, and tapped me, as if to
tell me something. My heart beat faster.

The alions stopped at once.

She waved her finger back and forth,
breathing slowly, trying to get me to imitate her.

Panic pulsed in my veins, escalating with
every quick breath.

She rolled her hands, breathing in and out,
slow and controlled. Our eyes locked.

It started to work. I copied her, slowing
down my near puffing attack. When I was able to close my mouth, I
shut my eyes too, relaxing. I focused on nothing else, just
breathing, slow and controlled, synchronizing with Penelope.

“They’re gone,” she said a minute later.
“It’s a good thing you calmed that heart down, they could hear it,
but I guess it wasn’t enough for them to inspect.”

I was still doing the breathing routine. “So
they do come up here . . . I guess we have to be a little more
careful.”

She nodded. “And keep our voices hushed.
Come on, let’s move.”

We walked, side by side, shoulders grazing
every so often, which did little to help my rushing heartbeat.

Three bends later, we spotted a ship that
appeared to have no exterior damage. “There must be some faulty
wiring or something,” Penelope predicted.

“Or something,” I said, grinning. “You want
to check it out anyway? It could be that it was just old and slow.
Things are always trashed when a newer model comes out.”

“I think that was four models ago for this
pile of crap.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked. I put out a
hand to the hard metal door. “Feels pretty sturdy to me.”

“I’m just guessing by the paint.” She
indicated to a line of faded foreign symbols that had once meant
something. But now most of the blue coloring gave way to broken
white spots, or sheer blocks of the white metal underneath, leaving
behind only traces of blue. “But yeah, we should check it out
anyway.” With a large stride, she crossed into the pitch-black
beyond the door.

Trembling, I followed, the stasis gun
supported on my shoulder.

“Shut the door,” she called back to me.

“Are you melted? I’m not closing the
door.”

“Close the damn door, Darrel,” she
whispered. “If it works, we’ll need it sealed shut.”

“Uhrm. All right, fine. Jeez.” I found the
handle to the door and pulled, but nothing happened. I pushed it to
the left and it slid in a track. “It didn’t seal.”

“There’s no power,” she said sharply, as if
I should have known.

“Right.” I stretched out my arms, feeling my
way around. There was no light in the compartment we were in.
“Dammit,” I said, when I bumped into something sharp. “It’s
dangerous in here.”

“I found a door,” she exclaimed. “Help me, I
can’t push it open on my own.”

“Keep talking so I can find you.” She
started to sing a quiet song, and for a second, I stopped to
listen, captivated by her unique voice: it was beautiful and light,
elegant and soft, completely enchanting.

She ceased. “I can’t hear you moving towards
me.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “Keep singing. I’m
coming.” She began again, until I finally jammed my fingers into
her shoulder. A curse escaped.

“Stop your whining and help me.” She guided
my hands in the dark to the door.

We yanked on the door and it budged a
centimeter. A shaft of light flooded the darkness. I squinted,
momentarily blinded. Once our eyes adjusted, we went back to work,
heaving with heavy grunts. Centimeter by centimeter, the door gave,
until it hid inside the space between compartments.

Three large windowpanes formed the front of
the flight deck. Two benches were positioned before a console of
dead buttons, along with two flat displays, black without power.
Four pads were built into the floor at the corners of each
bench.

“You think that’s how they fly this, with
those pads?” I asked.

“Look for a big on switch and we might find
out . . .” She scanned the console, touching every button as she
went.

I examined the buttons along the wall to the
right. None of them did a thing, and some of them were too rusted
to move at all.

When Penelope reached the middle of the
console, she flipped a big blue switch. The ship lit up with life.
Sounds of pressurizing reverberated throughout the hull. The entire
console flashed a couple of times, then ceased, as the flash
continued only at a port for a disk.

I took out the yellow disk from my pocket
and fitted it into the port.

From the console, a voice greeted us in the
alion language, and the lights began to dance all around, until
only one button remained lit.

“I think it wants us to press the button,”
she said. “Should we?”

“Let’s think this through for a second.” I
sat down on the right bench.

She took a seat on the left bench. “They
might notice that the lights are on in here. We shouldn’t delay too
long.”

“All right, fine, press the button,” I told
her. “I just thought you might want to think for a moment.”

“Time for thinking is gone. Time for doing
is right now. Ready?” She rested her hand over the button.

I cleared my throat. “No.”

She pushed down hard.

An alion appeared on the left display,
speaking to us with a courtesy in its voice. Then it squinted at
us. Its jaw dropped in surprise.

Penelope pushed the button again but nothing
happened.

The alion twirled its head and called out.
All of a sudden, an alarm rang in the hangar bay, alerting each and
every alion to our presence.

She cursed. “Well there’s nothing for it,
put your hands and feet on the pads,” she ordered, as she flopped
down on her bench.

I pressed down with my hands. Nothing.
“Press down at the same time,” I suggested.

She nodded. When we did, the engines fired
up. I could feel the power behind us. I pressed my feet down and
the ship jumped a meter, grinding its bottom on the grating that
supported it.

“Press your right foot down,” I said.

The ship took off, flying from the grating,
out into the open hangar.

My leg started to shake, and it twitched off
the pad.

The ship nosedived.

I replaced my foot on the pad. The ship
leveled out. “So we have to keep our right foot on the pad,” I
said.

She exhaled a long sigh. “What does the left
foot do?” She tapped her left foot on the pad.

The ship jolted left.

“These definitely weren’t made with us in
mind,” I screamed. My leg was shaking violently now. “I can’t keep
my foot on the pad, it’s too awkward and too far away.”

“Too far way? Try being my size. My tiptoe
can barely reach.”

I glanced back at her foot. It was shaking
more than mine, scarcely connecting with the pad.

“We can make it,” she asserted. “You see the
opening?”

“Yeah, to the right.”

“To the right. Tap the right footpad when I
say go . . . GO!”

We tapped the pads in unison. The ship
shifted right, jerking.

“What about all these buttons. We haven’t
even done anything, we don’t know if it can go into space.”

“We’ll find out soon enough, I guess.” She
laughed, grinning.

Within a second, my leg began convulsing,
and the ship dropped, lurching as my foot connected and
disconnected from the pad. Cramping, I couldn’t extend my leg
anymore, and I rolled off the bench, howling in pain.

The ship plummeted straight for the bottom
of the hangar.

I rolled towards the console and smashed
into it.

“Darrel!” Penelope called out. “Darrel, get
up!” She looked over at me. Our eyes met. She noticed my leg and
gasped. Finally, her leg no longer reached, tightening up. Her body
shaking, her grip waned to nothing, and she hit the console.

Neither of us could see out the windows. I
didn’t know how long we had until the end, but I gauged we had only
seconds left. “You’re beautiful,” I shouted.

She stared at me.

I had always wanted to tell a girl what I
really thought, with confidence, and this was my last chance. “I
just wanted you to know.”

She smiled at me. “You’re—”

The windows shattered. An explosion
followed; it was a boom that ruptured my eardrums. I saw a flash of
red before engulfed in blackness.

I came to when I felt a tug on my leg. I
gazed up at the blurry contour of Penelope. A stabbing pain
attacked my ribs. My shoulders seemed disconnected from my body.
Spasms plagued my muscles.

I noticed a red outline around her body,
around our bodies, protecting us as if a force field.

The ceiling shifted as she hauled me away,
until we were out in the hangar, and lights infiltrated my eyes
from all directions. The red force field faded. Heat pressed upon
my skin, burning. Suddenly, my leg smacked the floor.

Blue stasis-orbs flew over my head. Penelope
was cursing furiously. Then I was sliding along the grating
again.