Furnace (8 page)

I landed hard. The impact snapped my mouth closed and my teeth locked down on the tip of my tongue. I was up and running before the demon recovered to snatch me back up, though. I had no idea where the hell I was headed. My survival instincts had assumed control over every thought and action.

The clown thing laughed again and clawed at the back of my head, tearing streaks through my neck and the top of my suit.

“There’s no hiding place,” it told me again. “No refuge.”

I continued running a serpentine pattern around the room, looking for any glimmer of daylight I might use to escape no matter how horrible the alternative. I could only think of the immediate danger, and the putrid smell of the maniacal clown demon at my back spurred me on.

“Wherever you go, I will find you,” it told me. “You are my vessel.”

Suddenly, the wall in front of me vanished and I was running over the planet’s surface with miles of flat earth surrounding me.

Alone.

“Jesus…” I muttered, gasping for breath.

I fell to my knees and dug my hands into the dusty ground, shielding my face from the wind while I collected my thoughts.

My hands shook. My stomach screamed in agony. The back of my neck was aflame and damp with blood.

It was real
, I thought, touching the wound on my stomach with a wince and flexing my jaw.
This is
all
real.

For a while, I wondered where exactly that left me, and then I got to my feet, picked a direction, and started running again. One way or another, I knew I didn’t have much time.

WASTELAND

I don’t know how long I ran over the faded orange expanse. Long past the rendezvous time Salib set for her squad to compare notes. I didn’t know where I planned on going. I just knew that if I didn’t get back soon, either Rosie would fix the ship’s engines and they’d jump from the planet without me (even if they didn’t know what came after), or I would run out of food trying to find them. Admittedly, it was a shortsighted mindset. Water was, by far, a more immediate problem than food. Sweating out my short supply of fluids wasn’t exactly the smartest thing to do, in that case, but I wasn’t in my right mind. Truly, hunger and dehydration should have been the least of my worries.

I almost passed out from pain and blood-loss a half-dozen times, and that forced me to take several breaks along the way against my better judgment. I tried not to think too much about the clown thing. I didn’t see what good would come of it, but I couldn’t help myself. I had no control over my thoughts whatsoever, so images fired into my brain at random. My mind simply couldn’t process everything that had happened with a rational perspective while the whole universe was imploding around me. I had no clue what was real and what wasn’t, or if I was even still alive. For all I knew, I’d never actually woken from stasis. Furnace could either have been the worst nightmare I’d ever experienced or a glimpse into the terrible afterlife that awaited me.

Each time I took a break to skirt the black curtain of unconsciousness, I chewed over a thousand questions and doubts. Each time, I decided that it didn’t matter whether I was dead or not. The face of the clown demon and its weeping sores kept hijacking my thoughts.

There’s no hiding place
, its hideous face reminded me.
Wherever you go, I’ll find you.

Even in my head, the voice manifested with a full choral accompaniment. Mad harmonies echoing from deep within its hollow chest. The effect was chilling.

It was always at this point that I’d start running again. As long as I kept moving, I figured I’d find answers sooner or later. Either I’d die or I’d find some form of refuge from the wind and maybe quell the endless parade of questions, like how I was able to breathe on the surface without a helmet, or how I survived the supposedly scorching atmosphere with only a malfunctioning suit protecting my delicate human skin. It was ground I’d already covered, but at least when I was in captivity (or something like it) I was able to rationalize the phenomenon as the city’s life-support measures to protect its inhabitants. Out on the open land, I couldn’t fabricate any answers at all.

So I kept running, and gradually the scenery began to change.

By my rough estimation, I’d run at least five miles when I first saw the open flames whipping out from the ground ahead of me. I could see orange-red mountains in the distance by then with clouds of colorful gases hovering in their midst. Somewhere between the fires and the mountainside, I thought I saw some trees and other forms of plant life, but I was too far away to say with any certainty. I may have detected movement as well, but with heat baking the earth over the lakes of lava, it could have been a mirage or even a humidity distortion.

I stopped running again, this time because I recognized that I had a decision to make. Did I want to continue toward the lava and the mountains, or run parallel to them in either direction? I didn’t want to turn around and run back the way I’d come. I knew exactly where
that
led me, and I also knew I might be dead before I retraced my steps.

Yet looking off to the left and right, I didn’t see landmarks for a long way, either, and my throat already felt like sandpaper. The idea of running aimlessly again—possibly in the wrong direction—was completely out of the question. The steady, burning pulse in my stomach told me I’d be dead if I stopped to rest as well, and might not even make it to the mountains. My best bet was to forge ahead and hope that I’d run into some stragglers from Salib’s team or stumble onto the ship along the way. If I was lucky, I’d find a hidden stream in the mountains and buy myself some time.

Needless to say, natives were about the furthest thing from my mind at that point. They wouldn’t be for long.

I was a couple hundred yards from the nearest lava lake when I saw the figures standing around the shores, then the shadows squirming frantically in their arms. There looked to be about two dozen of them in all, but they were too busy to notice me from that distance.

What now?
I wondered.

I sure as hell didn’t want to venture any closer after my last encounter with a native, but I didn’t think I really had a choice, either. It was a wonder they hadn’t spotted me already with the endless miles of wasteland as a backdrop. I stood out like a shambling sore thumb on the orange-hazed plateau. I couldn’t very well escape in
any
direction without one of them eventually seeing me. And if they were even half as tall as the horned clown thing, they would overtake me in no time, even if I wasn’t seriously wounded or several miles into a jog in light atmosphere.

Guess I’ll have to take my chances.

I kept moving. As I approached, I noticed the figures were dipping the squirming shadows into the lava. Based on the frantic splashing the victims made in the shallows, they were having some difficulty with it, too. How they could step into the lava without burning alive was beyond me, but it was hardly the strangest thing I’d seen that day. I didn’t even flinch.

I assumed that they would chase me down and try to eat me just like my clown friend once they spotted me. This time, I vowed to be prepared if it came to that. One more significant injury would be my last straw. I’d fight to the death. And if there was nothing I could do to stop them, then at least I wouldn’t have to deal with the fleet’s bullshit anymore. I’d be going out on my own terms.

Screw the fleet.

I started thinking about the
Rockne Hummel
as I broke into a run again. I remembered how I’d left without reporting to Gallagher. How Gibbons had eyeballed me for questioning his orders in a crisis. How Marty told me to fuck off while he mourned his dead wife, and how the damaged spacesuit I wore had been Chara’s just a few hours earlier.

Suddenly, I wasn’t in such a rush to return to the ship.

But what was the alternative? I wasn’t dumb enough to believe I would last on the surface, and I wouldn’t have wanted to even if I could. The fleet may be a heartless death-machine, but it’s the only heartless death-machine I know. I knew I’d have it better if we survived.

Drunk on pain, thirst, and exhaustion, I called out to the figures with delirious good humor. “Hey, fuckheads. You hungry?”

The ones closest to me stopped what they were doing to investigate. I still couldn’t make out their features. The way the scenery doubled and trebled with each step, I couldn’t focus well enough.

“I’m a little spoiled, but I shouldn’t be too bad. I’m sure you’ve had worse,” I told them, laughing weakly.

I wiped sweat from my eyes and fell to my knees, unable to brace against the impact with the rough earth. A few jagged rocks cut me hard enough to bruise and draw blood, but I barely noticed. It was nothing compared to the wounds in my stomach and neck and I was on the verge of passing out, anyway. Or maybe dying. I couldn’t tell which. “At least I’m warm,” I whispered.

I stared up into the starless sky and closed my eyes, defeated. I listened as the figures approached and wondered how the vile planetoid beneath me could exist. How there wasn’t a visible star within at least a hundred trillion light-years and yet the planet was still hot. And not
too
hot. Habitable for humans, apparently, but at least as sweltering as the Arizona desert.

It’s not real
, I remember thinking.
You’re either dead or dreaming. None of this is possible.

I believed every word of it, but my body had reached its absolute limit. Rational arguments no longer had any real sway on my psyche. I’ve never ascribed to the old wives’ tale that if you die in your dreams, you die in real life, but this was one scenario where it seemed the only logical outcome for me. Another modified cliché seemed to fit as well: What came first, the death or the dream?

It’s not real
, I told myself.

But the footsteps were getting closer and closer, as if in direct opposition to my weak assurances. Each footprint in the dusty earth pounded through my skull, sending shockwaves of pain into my neck and stomach.

“Just kill me,” I muttered.

My lips were so parched I could barely form the words. They had already split from wincing a hundred times over during my run.

How has it come to this?

By my reckoning, it hadn’t even been a full twenty-four hours since we’d emerged from our FTL jump. I didn’t understand how the situation could have degraded so quickly. My physical health, sure, but not my spirit. Not my psychological health. Not the mental state of the
Rockne Hummel’s
crew. I hadn’t even engaged in true combat yet. I hadn’t been tortured beyond a solitary (though lethal) wound and a bad scratch. I never would have guessed an abdomen puncture and a few hours in a desert was enough to utterly break me, but there I was. I’d been trained for far worse, and yet the idea that my death would never even be marked, that it would remain a mystery written off to the tragedy of the
Rockne Hummel
which no one would care to explain because the situation itself was inexplicable, was completely unbearable. Especially on Furnace, as we came to call it. The soulless planet. It was a fate far worse than death.

And the footsteps pounded closer.

“Just get it over with.”

The creatures were near enough that I could feel heat radiating off them as they closed the final gap.

This is it, then
, I thought.
I guess it could be worse.

I opened my eyes and stared up at the hazy, starless sky, wondering how far I’d wandered from the
Rockne Hummel
before my legs gave out along with my will to survive. I wondered, too, whether or not Teemo had gotten away in time or if he’d suffered a similar fate at the hands of the clown demon. I guessed I’d never know, and somehow that was comforting.

“What an asshole…” I moaned.

A massive hand dragged me to my feet and shook me so hard I felt my brain rattling against my skull. A bald, muscular creature with no eyes and tar-black skin pulled me close to its blunt yellow teeth.

At least this one won’t eat me
, I thought. It was huge and seemed strong enough to tear me apart effortlessly, but its teeth were worn beyond the capability for even a liquid diet, let alone one that required gnawing flesh from bone.

Death is death.

I was still steeped in agony. My prospects for survival didn’t look good. Worst of all, I could hear more of them approaching, and I knew the others might be a little hungrier and a little more capable of feeding on me than my new friend.

Although, I thought, maybe he had his own way to consume me. A method I couldn’t even imagine.

Only one way to find out.

The monster’s rancid breath beat down on my face. The heat was unbearable, but the gases rising from its belly were worse. Sulfur mixed with other nasty elements I’d only encountered on asteroids. They were particularly pungent. One whiff and I was fully awake and ready to vomit.

I may have been thirsty, starved, overheated, and nauseous to the core, but it was the smell that finally pushed my body over the edge. I was spent. Before I could even upchuck into the creature’s face, though, it let out a grating, soul-shattering screech that stifled my gag and made me scream back instead. It threw me to the ground so hard that the impact knocked the wind out of me.

As if I needed something else stealing my breath.

What the hell are you doing?
a voice cried out inside my head.
Fight this asshole! If you want to die,
make
it kill you!

It was sound suicidal logic, if such a thing exists, but I didn’t have the energy for it. Instead, I lay completely still and watched the freak-show of demonic horrors continue its procession toward my beaten, bloodied body. They’d almost reached the tar-skinned monster’s side by then, and yet they seemed to float further and further away from me at the same time. Like I was seeing them from somewhere outside myself. It’s well-documented that many people have out-of-body experiences when they are close to death, but this was unlike anything I’ve read about. I was actually
there
. Present in every way possible, yet also able to see a great distance behind me. I could even see the thing following me through the desert. The horned demon.

Christ…

And it was looking for more than just a quick taste of flesh. It wanted to make me suffer. It wanted every part of me. Maybe to mount on its wall as a trophy, or to fashion into a new bone chandelier, or to frame my corpse wherever the bastard displayed its most cherished conquests. Maybe torture was just the only thing it knew. You can never account for alien culture or taste, least of all in hellish wastelands beyond the reach of the living.

It’s coming.

The vision of the grinning clown stalking me across the desert gave me a new urgency and I snapped back to reality. I may have been ready to die, but not at the hands of
that
sick fucker.