BACK   

= NEBULA EXPRESS =

a DarkSF novel

by John Argo

Page 8.

"Ridge, are you okay?" Jerez asked from nearby.

He nodded, but tears were running down his cheeks. Am I going insane? Or is it fear of heights, something new I didn't know I suffer from? What is going on here?

"Ridge?" Brenna asked from mid-line of slowly moving figures in a phantasmagoric landscape. Nightmare within nightmare. He was in love with her, and it was eating him up. Why did he suddenly now realize this? Why was her tone so warm and concerned, as if she knew what was burning inside of him? Was it in her too, this desire to hold and be held, this longing for one another's warmth and reassurance?

"Speak to me, Ridge," said Tomson in a worried tone.

"I'm all right," Ridge said. "Just thinking."

Jerez imitated in an annoying falsetto: "Eyes on the path. Eyes on the path, or we'll fall in the manure." Several persons laughed, and Ridge laughed too, which sort of broke the tense and scary atmosphere.

A minute later, there was a shriek. The line stopped and people bunched up. "What is it?" Tomson said.

Ridge had one hand on the gun in its web holster on his belt as he looked around. Jerez had shrieked and stood pointing. She was pale. "Look, did you see that?"

"You're hallucinating," Yu sneered.

"What are you smoking?" Mahaffey added.

"No no no," Jerez said, "I saw one of those guys in gray suits or whatever they are wearing. Looks like those sugar candy guys from the Days of the Dead in Mexico, the Dias de los Muertos."

Ridge felt a new shiver on his back: he thought he spotted a pale gray figure, just for a second, across the chasm on the other side. It looked like a man wearing stitched rags and red sunglasses, fleeting from one hole in the wall to another. He heard a scurrying sound, and a noise like air blowing softly through a flute, just for a second before silence reigned again. Amid the silence, water splashed in distant places, as if the place were terminally leaking.

"Get yourself together," Lantz said. "You're trembling, and I hear your teeth rattling." She did what she often did when nervous, which was to loosen her coppery red hair and tied it back in a pony tail with rough, freckled hands.

Ridge raised his hand. "Everyone be still." He listened intently. Why were there holes over there, a thousand yards or more away? Why were there no decks? He thought he could make out twisted, melted girders, but it was too damned dark in this general gloom, and the lights on their helmets did not carry far enough. Just bright enough the lights were so they became targets if someone malevolent were watching them. But who or what would be watching them? What kind of nonsense am I thinking? He listened another second, but heard no more sounds.

"This place is trashed," Tomson said drawing up alongside Ridge. "This place is truly trashed, man. I don't mean just impacted or zipped or zapped by some pebble. This place caught the Huge Bazongo, and I mean long ago."

Ridge had to agree. He nodded and pointed across acres of blackened slag that seemed to hang like a frozen river below. "You're right. This is ancient damage, Tomson. What is going on?"

Tomson frowned and looked back. Ridge involuntarily turned his head back and looked at WorkPod01. Their home gleamed distantly like a white lantern amid gloomy bronze and brown shadows. Tomson said under his breath: "Don't let on you just shat your pants."

"I feel like I might," Ridge said with dry, terrified humor. "I've never been this scared in my life."

"There is something totally wrong with this picture," Tomson muttered.

"Are we going forward or not?" Jerez said with staring eyes.

"Of course," Ridge said. "Let's keep on schedule and stop being distracted. The sooner we get our day's work done the sooner we get back home and lock the door." He wished he hadn't said that, as soon as the words came out, but it was too late.

"I'd like to go back now," Jerez said.

"Me too," Mahaffey said.

"Guys," Ridge said, "we can't-"

"No, bullshit," Mahaffey said loudly, "we're civilians. We don't get paid to risk our lives or a heart attack from fear."

"Really," Jerez said. "I wouldn't mind if we went back now."

"Yeah," Yu said, "I'd like to get some reassuring words from Venable before I drag my tired butt out here and get scared to death."

"We can't go back now," Ridge said. "There is no reason to." He felt a rebellion rapidly brewing in his hands, and the worst part was he wanted to join it himself.

Tomson stared at him. "Your call, Section Leader."

Ridge knew he must think fast. They could not stay here, suspended a thousand feet or more in thin air above an alien-looking field of charred objects embedded in slag. Were they hallucinating or were there pale men running around who had just dragged a stranger to his death. What had the stranger been trying to tell them? Ridge wished he were a lip reader. No time now for nonsense; he must make a decision. Should they go forward or back? Instinctively, he knew the answer. "We can't go back because we are locked out, folks."

Several persons, including Jerez and Mahaffey, protested. Fear was written on their features.

"I don't know the answers," Ridge said, raising his hands and dropping them. "I don't even know at the moment how or why I got to be in charge of us, because I can't even remember my first name right now. Can any of you remember much of anything?"

"What the hell are you saying?" Tomson said, his face suddenly contorted with emotion. "You're crazy, man."

"Am I?" Ridge looked at him. "We can argue later." He turned to the others. "Folks, we're standing on a noodle high up in mid air. We're asking a lot of dumb questions and we have no answers. Suddenly, our whole world is like a house of cards. All I can suggest at times like this is that we hitch up our pants, put aside all the dumb questions, and get on with the job. I don't know what else to tell you. Those who want to go back, you do what you want. I'm going forward and I hope the rest of you follow me. Frankly, I think it's our only option." So saying, he started marching forward at a brisk pace. At first he was afraid nobody would follow. Then the gangway behind him, and under him, began to vibrate in a kind of familiar unison as they all marched in step, single file, holding on to the railing on both sides as they crossed the abyss, and for a short time the illusion of normalcy once again prevailed.

TOP  |  MAIN

Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.