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= NEBULA EXPRESS =

a DarkSF novel

by John Argo

Page 18.

The four walked slowly and carefully down the corridors. It looked as though humans had just stepped outside for a few minutes. In glass-windowed cubicles on either side, desks and chairs stood empty. Dozens of persons must work here, Ridge thought as he looked at coffee mugs on desks, digital pads open to receive dictation, family holocubes knickknack shelves. It looked so congruent with his memories of life on Earth that he almost forgot they were closer to Neptune than to Earth or Luna. The others appeared to be thinking the same thing. Brenna tried a door in passing, and it swung open. Silently, the door crept open a few inches and stopped. The four persons stopped to listen. They heard air in vents, wind in airshafts, small machinery clicking in the walls as a million Microsystems fine-tuned the climate. "Wonder where they all are?" Brenna said.

"If you see any calendars," Ridge said, "let me know. That might give us a clue."

Tomson gave a humorless, nervous laugh and ran a hand quickly over his short, kinky hair. "Man, this is almost as creepy as that wasteland outside."

Lantz pointed to a glass case that stood partially open. "Look, emergency equipment. I see guns." They stepped into the office. Carefully, Tomson and Ridge sidled in holding their guns ready. Lantz and Brenna crowded behind them. Ridge sniffed. "Smell that?"

Tomson wrinkled his nose, shook his head, looked at Ridge. "What?"

"Dust," Ridge said. "Stale air."

"Cold," Brenna said, wrapping her arms around herself. Lantz followed suit, and goose bumps appeared in pinkish-white fields on her triceps.

Ridge said carefully: "If I had to guess, I'd say this was all shut down for a long time and just turned on when we came. You know, sort of like those lights that snap on when someone gets near your house back on Earth." It did smell stale in here, he thought.

Brenna put her finger on it: "There are no people smells. No perfume, no sweat, no mothball sweaters, no shaggy coats, no leather gloves or purses. Not that we'd see them in space, but civilians on Luna or Triton might have them. There's nothing like that here, nor are there any people sounds, like someone flushing a toilet, laughing, pouring coffee, sneezing. Nothing."

"It's a black hole of people," Tomson said softly. "Why?"

Ridge pointed to the open locker, where a half dozen long-arms stood in perfect soldierly alignment with their buzzmuzzles pointing up and their trigger guards pointing outward. Along the inside walls of the cabinet, left and right, were several small-arms plus all the expected equipment, from cleaning kits and synchronizers to spare charge packs. "Take a look at this." He walked over to the locker and knelt. With one fingertip he traced back and forth on the steel floor of the gun case. A fine layer of dark dust coated everything. From there, rising, he tracked the black dust to desks, chairs, ledges. "It's on everything," he said.

"Soot," Tomson said, sniffing his fingers after rubbing them on a ledge. "There was a fire in the ship."

Lantz pointed to several chairs standing around as if the owners had just risen a minute ago for their lunch break. "Nobody has sat here since it got dusty," Lantz said.

Tomson gestured with both arms. "Look, all the chairs are turned as if they suddenly rose and headed for the door we just came in."

Brenna pointed to a cup lying on its side on the floor farther in the office bay. "Looks like a few people did drop things. A cup, a handkerchief, a slipper."

Ridge added: "In and orderly fashion, I'd say. Like it was a drill. Or an emergency, but they had trained for it. But losing a slipper and not going back for it is a sure sign there was something extraordinary happening."

Brenna examined the closet and pulled out a rifle. "It's charged, but it's been on Sleep." She pulled the Wake pin, and the indicators glowed green along the stock under the barrel. "God knows for how long."

"Arm yourselves," Ridge said. "Let's take all the rifles. We can use them." He handed each of them one of the stun-rifles and pulled down two extras with Yu and Jerez in mind. "If you see lights, we can use those also."

A minute later they strode quietly down the corridor. Ridge felt a trifle more at ease now that they were better armed. "Keep an eye out for spare charge packs," he told them.

The corridor led to a central rotunda. The floors were coated with that faint black soot, but otherwise everything gleamed as though cleaning crews had been working nonstop.

"Ridge," a voice said. Yu.

Ridge whipped his hand to his throatcom. "What is it?"

"Not sure. Something is happening."

"We're coming back." Ridge turned and started to run. "I knew we should not have split up."

"What is it?" Brenna said with a worried face as all three fell in behind Ridge at a goodly trot.

"Not sure," Ridge said, "but why take chances. I want us all together from here on in."

They heard Jerez scream, and that was when they knew something was really wrong. They started running back to the trolley stop as fast as they could. Their footfalls echoed around the gleaming windows and walls. Dust kicked up lightly around their feet as they pattered along the rubbery floors. They heard shouting-Yu, Ridge thought-and then another scream—Jerez, Ridge thought—and then muffled shouting from both.

As they emerged into the trolley station, they saw swarms of frantic movement. A number of mudmen bodies lay spattered on the tiled floor surfaces, smearing the fine blue and white decorator tiles with greenish-brown blood. Yu and Jerez had left the moving platform and had their backs against a dead-end wall. The platform rocked as mudmen clambered up from underneath. Jerez looked dazed and bloodied as she fought two of the creatures off, wielding a wooden staff she'd found, with which she swiped at them. Her face was contorted in a silent scream, and her eyes were half-closed in terror. Yu's face looked calm, and his eyes had a mechanical, methodical appearance as if he'd shut down all emotions and was acting with his last shreds of rational calm. One by one, he shot deadly sizzling charges into his attackers. He aimed his gun again and again until it ran out, and then both he and Jerez disappeared under a pile of attackers.

"Careful!" was all Ridge could shout as he and his three companions appeared in the midst of this roiling chaos. It must be clear—they were armed to the teeth with fresh weapons, but a single stray shot could sever a limb or a head, and those must not belong to Jerez or Yu.

In another ten seconds, the appalling truth became clear. Ridge and his companions fired away at the edges of the mudmen crowd. There must be three dozen of the creatures, Ridge thought, shooting those that turned and ran toward him with their talons open to grasp and kill. The mudmen had a kind of fungus-like, mushroom smell, of forest floor and rotting wood and moisture in pulpy crevices. When scorched with the charge guns, they gave off a stench like burned rubber. They were leathery, and when they came apart under the darting energy rays, amid the smoke and carbonization, Ridge could smell the odor of their half-digested food, their feces, their rotting-leather blood. Several mudmen heads exploded as Ridge and his companions fired. It was all over in a minute or so, but by then the disaster was complete. The few surviving mudmen scampered away, throwing themselves over the sides into the dark to escape. They left the platform littered with the bodies of their fellows—and the bodies of their two human victims.

"Damn you!" Lantz sobbed as she walked through the roiling smoke, kicking mudmen body parts aside. Brenna, Ridge, and Tomson stepped over mudmen bodies. Ridge found himself slithering over their slime and offal. He slipped at one point, and nearly sprained his free hand bracing himself against the wall while holding up his rifle with the other hand. The fall brought him face to face with the mudmen's handiwork. Brenna screamed hysterically.

Ridge felt tears of anger, sorrow, and pity rolling from his eyes as he regarded the torn bodies that lay propped up against the wall. The remains were largely skeletal. The mudmen were like the fierce flesh-eating piranhas of the Amazon rivers. With their blank faces, slitty buttonhole eyes, and those little round mouths full of rows of tiny teeth, the mudmen had swarmed over their victims. They had sucked and torn and ground and whirled the flesh away right down to the bone. If they'd had another few minutes there would be nothing left but bone. As it was, most of the flesh was gone, and what remained in the torn and twisted jumpsuits were grinning caricatures of death.

"There is nothing we can do for them," Ridge said quietly. "We've got to get to safety." Seeing the hesitation on the others' faces, he added: "We can burn or bury them later. We'll talk about them, maybe have a service. For now, we need to get out of here. Stay with me!" So saying, he started back toward the rotunda at a jogging pace. The others fell in behind him. They ran with their rifles at ready.

Nobody spoke, nobody cried—the situation had gone from desperate to grim, and Ridge could not fathom how it might get worse, but it surely could. Each knew they had to be prepared for some final stand, much as Yu and Jerez had just been forced to make. Hopefully, the end would be less ugly if it had to come now.

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