Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead (37 page)

“Listen. The important thing is to keep on with repairs and try to contact my ship. But I can’t trust myself to stay in full possession of my faculties. Is there somewhere on this ship that can be used as an isolation room? Somewhere that locks from the outside?”

Sara nodded. “The upper cargo bay.”

Joshua took a deep breath. “Lock me in. And then get back to work on the comms. Tell my crewmates you require urgent assistance, priority one. Wait until they get here. Until then, don’t let me out.”

“Even if you ask me?”

“Especially if I ask you.”

Ten hours later, it no longer seemed like such a brilliant idea. Joshua paced back and forth in the aisles between towers of boxes, with nothing to do except brood on his situation, aware of the hunger yawning wider in his stomach.

His path took him in a wide circle, past the bay door that led to space at one end and the door to the ship interior at the other. “Sara?” he said into the wall intercom. “How are the repairs going? Any contact with my ship yet?”

“No,” the curt response came. “Working on it.”

“Well, work faster.” He meant it to sound lighthearted, but it came out strained. Hoping to soften it, he added, “Please.”

After a pause, Sara said, “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay.” He gripped his arms and kept pacing. It had been a long time since he had last gone dry. So easy to forget, afterwards, how bad it got. He closed his eyes and leaned his hands against the wall.

He hadn’t fed on human blood in over a hundred years. But how easy it would be, an inner voice said, if only he had the courage to ask. Sara would understand. She was a spacefarer, an explorer, a survivor. He should take her into his confidence. They could deal with the situation together. She could afford to help him a little. Just enough to tide him over until rescue came.

Joshua sank to the floor and buried his head in his arms.

After a long time, he unfolded and stood.

“Sara?” he said into the intercom. “If you’re there, answer me.”

“I’m here.” Her voice echoed as though from far away.

“Any luck with getting a message through yet?”

There was a long pause, so long Joshua thought the intercom might have cut out. “There’s not going to be a message, Joshua.”

“What? Sara—”

“I found your suit.”

Joshua stopped dead. He could hear her harsh breathing rasp over the intercom. “I can explain.”

“Half stuck to the floor with dried blood—”

“Sara—”

“I could put my hand through the hole!”

Joshua closed his eyes for a moment. “I didn’t want to scare you, Sara.”

“It makes sense now,” she cut in. “All the pieces that didn’t fit. So the old stories are true. Monsters walking among us in the shape of men.”

“The world has changed. There are things you don’t understand—”

“I understand what you are!
Vampire.
”

“We don’t use that word anymore,” Joshua said.

A strange sound came from the intercom. It took a moment for him to identify it as laughter.

“It doesn’t matter what word you use,” Sara said. “I saw your ‘medical supplies’. Planning to restock?”

“It’s artificial blood. We have machines that make it. If I meant to hurt you, why would I lock myself up?”

“I don’t know what games you’re playing, I only know you’ve been lying to me from the moment we met.”

“Call my ship,” Joshua said in desperation. “When my shipmates come, they’ll tell you the same.”

“How do I know they’re not all like you? I’m turning off the intercom now.”

“No! Don’t!” He clutched at it in futility. Only silence. He pounded his fists against the door. “Sara!” The reinforced steel plating barely showed a dent. He struck it again in frustration.

Footsteps outside. He went on alert. Had she decided to confront him? An odd hissing noise. One edge of the door glowed with a line of light. He recognized the hum of lasers and stared in disbelief.

She was welding the goddamn door shut.

Joshua lifted the last of the crates into position, and then took a running jump and leapt on top of them. The tower of boxes rocked beneath his weight, but he could reach the air duct high up on the wall now. He took out his pocket screwdriver and began unscrewing the grill. His hands shook only a little.

The intercom crackled to life again. “I can see what you’re doing.”

Joshua didn’t allow it to interrupt him. “They’ll come looking for me, you know.”

“I know. I’m not going to be here.”

Joshua stopped, the implications sinking in. She was going for the
Griffith.
While his crew was over here, she was going to take their ship. With sudden desperation, he said, “Listen to me! Don’t do this. You don’t have to do this—”

“Yes, I do. There’s too much at stake.” The intercom cut out.

Joshua’s mouth tightened. There were only two screws left in the grill. He forced himself to work calmly and swiftly.

The sudden howl of klaxons almost deafened him. He clapped his hands to his ears, the screwdriver slipping from his grasp. It fell to the deck, bounced twice, and went skimming towards the far side of the cargo bay. Other small objects joined it, his eye tracing their path.

With horror, he saw that the cargo bay door was rising, the black of space widening.

“Sara!” he bellowed. “What are you doing?”

No answer. She was beyond persuasion now, fixed on her course and accelerating.

The tower of boxes beneath him collapsed, pulled towards the open door by the vacuum of space. He was swept along with them, grasping futilely for a handhold, any handhold. But there was nothing to grasp, though he snapped his nails trying.

Then they were out past the door, floating in eternity.

Joshua flung out a hand and the magline unreeled, thunking home on the hull of the ship. He was yanked to a standstill, the magline at full extension. He hung from its end like a pendulum weight, suspended in a sky full of stars.

His head throbbed like it was trying to expand beyond his skull, and his skin burned with a thousand icy pinpricks. But it was not cold or lack of oxygen or depressurization that would kill him, but the sun, shining steadily just beyond the curve of the hull — the sun that would disintegrate him instantly into cosmic dust.

He imagined letting go, allowing himself to dissolve into a thousand motes of light. Maybe it would be painless; maybe Lucas would be waiting for him. It would be easy to let go, easier than finding a reason to go on.

But he reeled himself in, towards the open maw of the cargo bay.

Even if you didn’t have a reason, sometimes you had to make one.

The corridors of the ship twisted like some nightmare maze, warped by flawed science and flawed engineering, and the laws of the universe enforced with a vengeance. Lights flickered with sudden power surges; intercoms hissed white noise like the whisper of ghosts.

Joshua stalked down the twisted corridors, intent on his goal. He had to get to the bridge before Sara did and finish repairing the comms. And heaven help her if she got in his way.

Broken pylons and collapsed walls blocked his path. He wrenched them aside like tinfoil, his fingers leaving dents in the steel. He knew this wild frenzy would slake itself, but right now it ran unchecked, this demon gale rising inside him, this raging flood that swept rationality away. The human race, including its many aberrations, had built civilizations spanning the stars, but their spirits were still yoked to their bodies.

“Sara!” he shouted, not knowing if the intercom was picking him up, or if she was even listening anymore. His voice crackled back at him from the speakers, cut to pieces by the static.

“You can’t kill me. I’m still here! You need my help. And I need yours.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you know where the word ‘sanguinaire’ comes from, Sara? It means ‘bloodthirsty’. I’m thirsty, Sara, so thirsty…”

He pushed open another door in his way, and emerged into the cryocapsule hub he had passed through when he had first come aboard the ship. Where were the other survivors, anyway?

He found himself staring at the cryocapsules cradling their precious cargo. A terrible thought entered his mind.

Drawn like a moth to a flame, he walked towards the nearest intact cryocapsule, blood pounding in his head. He would only be borrowing a little. He only needed a little.

The surface of the capsule was fogged with condensation. He wiped it away, hands shaking. The shape of the man inside became clearer. Joshua froze. The man was missing his arms.

There was no mistake. Each arm had been severed at the shoulder, clean cuts almost surgical in precision.

His gaze went to the opened cryocapsules. The ghastly realization dawned.

There are no other survivors,
Sara had told him.

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

Joshua turned around. Sara stood in the doorway, laser welder pointed at him. Her face was white. “You shouldn’t have seen.” She fired.

Joshua dropped, the heat of the beam spearing over his shoulder. He rolled sideways as the beam tracked his path, lines of molten metal marking its wake. When he hit the base of a cryocapsule, he scrambled to his feet and ducked behind it.

“Sara, what have you done?”

“You don’t know what I’ve been through. What it took to survive…”

Her footsteps approached. Joshua pulled away from his shelter and ran across to the next aisle. He swept his gaze over the rows of cryocapsules, realizing for the first time that the cables trailing from them were corroded, that their lights blinked in meaningless patterns.

“How many years since you woke, Sara?” he called. “Five? Ten?” Long enough for stores to rot, for hydroponics to fail. “How long have you been trapped here, alone with all the dead?”

“Shut up!” She punctuated her words with another blast of the laser welder. Joshua edged along the aisle towards the next. “I didn’t have a choice. I tried to wake Robert. I tried to wake them all. But they thawed out dead. Every time. And then—” Her voice cracked. “And then the food ran out.”

The final aisle. Sara was just around the corner. Joshua spotted a lone cryocapsule sitting a short distance from the others, cables attaching it to them like a long umbilical. Scant cover, but better than nothing. He made a dash for it, just as Sara strode into view.

“Get away from that!” she cried.

A lance of fire pierced his legs. He muffled a cry as he stumbled the last few steps, moving like a machine with jammed pistons, before collapsing against the side of the cryocapsule.

He looked up as Sara’s shadow fell across him. Her eyes burned with white hot rage and grief.

“Who is it, Sara?” he asked. “Who’s in this cryocapsule?”

She hesitated, chest heaving as she gulped down the stale air. “My daughter.”

So that was it — the reason why she had chosen to live on despite the slim chance of ever being rescued, the reason for the desperate things she had done to survive. Because she wasn’t alone. She had someone to live for.

“I’m going to take her, and get off this ship, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.” She raised the laser welder, knuckles white around the grip.

“Sara, she’s gone. What you’re doing won’t bring her back.”

“Shut up.” Her eyes were still hard, but they were bright as well, glistening with unshed tears. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not lying. You know I’m not lying.”

“No!” Sara gestured with the laser welder. “You — you can bring her back! You can make her live forever!”

He saw the desperation in her face; he saw the hopeless denial. And he recognized it. A sense of vertigo assailed him.

You could cling to an illusion for a very long time. That was easy. The hard thing was letting go.

I’m sorry, Lucas.

I wish I had come with you then. But I can’t unmake the past. And now you’ve gone where I can’t follow.

Goodbye.

“I wish I could bring her back,” Joshua said. “But I can’t restore the dead to life. I can only help the living.” Gently, he added, “She’s gone on ahead. Let her go.”

Sara stared at him for a few moments, her gaze darting about his face, searching for the truth. Then the laser welder dropped from her grip. She sank to her knees and wrapped her arms around the cold, lifeless cryocapsule.

“All I wanted was a new life with the people I loved. So what was it all for?”

Joshua pushed himself painfully to his hands and knees and placed a hand on her shoulder. Some fluke of the universe, some chance in a million, had spared her the fate of everyone else aboard, but that would not be any comfort now. “You still have a life ahead of you. It doesn’t end here.”

“I don’t deserve to live!”

“That’s not for you to decide.” He watched her struggling with her despair, and remembered. “Do you think you’re the only one who has ever committed terrible acts to survive? You can always redeem yourself. But first you have to live long enough.”