Read Deeper Into the Void Online
Authors: Mitchell A. Duncan
Tags: #Science Fiction, #General, #Fiction
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.
| Lawrence: | Don’t forget the one in the chamber, Captain! |
| Cardiff: | Sorry about that Mr. Lawrence. You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that unannounced. |
| Lawrence: | Seriously?! I… What are you doing with a gun out here?! You just shot at me! Who’d you expect to see on the other side of that door? Oh, better yet, why would you shoot them?! |
| Cardiff: | I guess it is a bad case of nerves or something. |
| Lawrence: | Okay, you two, I think monster-piece theatre is over. You two have been cooped up in here a little too long I think. We heard you screaming over the PA, I thought you were in trouble in here. I guess it was really I that was in trouble, huh? |
| Mendez: | Well, I think you are right about that one. I need to get out of here and get some fresh air. Come along Captain. |
| Lawrence: | I think I will take that, thank you very much! |
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: | Lawrence, I didn’t think you had it in you to be all serious like that. I think I like the other you better. |
| Lawrence: | Amusing. Don’t ask for something if you don’t really want it. Maybe I’ll shoot you next and you can lecture me on how to behave then. |
| Long: | I am only joking with you, relax. |
| Lawrence: | Just got shot at! Not going to just relax! You relax! |
| Long: | Hey! I didn’t shoot you! Why are you taking it out on me?! |
| Cardiff: | I didn’t shoot him! I accidentally shot at him, that’s all. |
| Lawrence: | I feel much better now. There are enough near accidents around here without livening things up with an awesome gun like this one. |
| Long: | Hey! Let’s just get out of here, we should go and finish our site exploration, you know, the one we started yesterday. |
| Lawrence: | Sounds good Long. Mendez, don’t let the captain get into any more trouble while I’m gone. I don’t want to have to come back here. |
| Long: | Hate to dwell on technicalities, but we are going to have to come back here at some point if we want to continue to breathe. |
| Lawrence: | Is this what it is like to talk to me? Wisecracks and stupid comments every two seconds? |
| Cardiff: | Well, in a word, yes. |
| Lawrence: | You can’t say anything, you just shot at me. Anyway, now I know why I don’t have any friends. Mendez, you can stop crying now, I didn’t get shot… I am a little deaf in my left ear, but I’ll live. |
| Mendez: | Wasn’t crying. |
| Lawrence: | Maybe you should have been. It is your job to make sure that crazy people don’t shoot other people with their gun, right? |
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: | This place really sucks, I have only been here a couple of days, you almost killed me and now she is shooting at me. At this rate I won’t live through the day. |
| Long: | Well, you never know what might happen out there. It is a wild and desolate place, you might just be right. |
| Lawrence: | Funny… Oh, by the way you’ll want to take it easy with all your words of consolation. Maybe I ought to bury this gun somewhere so I don’t end up shooting you with it. |
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.
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.
| Lawrence: | You know, I think my face got powder burned. I guess it wouldn’t be enough to simply be deafened. |
| Long: | I just think that you’re lucky to have survived the ordeal at all. From where I was standing, I thought you were done for when I heard the shot. You know, she could have taken your ear clean off or something. |
| Lawrence: | Having your ear removed by a round at point-blank is not really “clean off”, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen a lot of things that I wish I could forget. |
| Long: | All I have to say is that you have some quick hands. I could only see the shadow, but whoa. |
| Lawrence: | Well, I am glad that you were entertained. Did you see that look on their faces? Priceless. |
| Long: | Yeah, but why would Cardiff had loaded her gun and shouted over the PA like that? She was acting crazy. Should we be concerned that she might try and shoot somebody else? |
| Lawrence: | I have a feeling that we might just need to be a little concerned about it. I hid the gun pretty good, so unless Cardiff brought her metal detector, we should be okay. |
| Long: | Unless she brought a second. That whole “better safe than sorry” motto of hers has me a little worried. |
| Lawrence: | Hey! I have been meaning to ask you. What did you do with the solar rover? |
| Long: | Nothing… Seriously, I didn’t do anything with it, not after that rock I threw hit it anyway. |
| Lawrence: | Be straight with me Long because it didn’t just drive itself, and it’s gone. When I mean gone, I mean I couldn’t see it anywhere the other day when Mendez and I went sightseeing. So there is no way that it just rolled away. I know that, you know that; you have a hard time pushing these things over all of the rocks around here. |
| Long: | Maybe it was abducted by all of those folks you saw outside that first night. |
| Lawrence: | I didn’t see anyone, remember? |
| Long: | Right. At any rate, I didn’t take it. Besides, how would I have been able to stash it far enough away that you wouldn’t see it, and still be able to walk back in time? |
| Lawrence: | I guess that makes sense. Unless you and someone else both drove a rig, you parked the solar rig and they drove you back in this rig, there is no way. |
| Long: | I am going to chalk your paranoia up to you just getting shot at, how’s that? Anyway, what did Cardiff say when you told her it was gone? |
| Lawrence: | I totally forgot to tell her about it! How could I forget about something like that? |
| Long: | Maybe you were abducted in the night, and replaced with an identical you. That would explain it. |
| Lawrence: | Okay, now you are just being stupid. Something tells me that you are just mocking me now. I can’t really see your face, but I am betting you have that stupid sheepish grin under that mask of yours. |
| Long: | I am just taking advantage of the fact that you are off your game today. I’m usually opposed to the whole “kick you while you’re down” thing, but I’m having fun. |
| Oh hey, look at that. We’re finally here. | |
| Lawrence: | Logging all these hours in this rig is doing a real number on my back. We should have put in for the upgrade with the leather appointed seats, these metal bucket seats just hurt. |
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: | Oh, look. No skylight in this cavern. I don’t really like this one as much, it looks… malevolent. |
| Long: | I was unaware that you knew that word. |
| Lawrence: | Just because I didn’t go to school, doesn’t mean that I don’t know. I know. |
| Long: | Well put. When we get back I am putting that on a t-shirt for you. |
| Lawrence: | I seriously underestimated your aptitude to be a pain in my butt. |
| Long: | Now you are simply unveiling your immense vocabulary. No one likes a show-off you know. |
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.
| Lawrence: | I hate you. |
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.
| Long: | I think that this is the same stuff that we had seen the last time we came down here. Lawrence! Hey, where did you get off to? |
| Lawrence: | I am up over here. You really need to come and check this out over here. I just want you to know that I will forgive you for making all of those hurtful comments, you just can’t make anymore, that’s all. |
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: | Did you see that? |
| Long: | See what? I didn’t see or hear anything. Maybe you should get your mind checked. You are probably still high-strung from getting shot at earlier. Also, didn’t I tell you to stay off of the drugs? |
| Lawrence: | Ha! That is really funny. You are one funny guy Long. I am being serious. I heard a scurrying over there, and a glimpse of something moving along the wall. |
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: | Lawrence! Can you hear me down there!? |
| Lawrence: | (Low moan heard over the radio). |
| Long: | Hang on Lawrence! I will drop some flares down to you, and some more oxygen. After that I will go and call for help. I will get you out of there! |
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.
| Long: | Lawrence! Can you hear me!? I am going to call for help! Don’t wander off! |
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.