Chapter Eight

SOMETIME DURING THE last half of my chicken fajita meal, Law slipped out. I wasn’t sorry for it. Aside from the fact that there was little to recommend his company in any situation, my second MRE was going down very slowly. Whether the fajita was particularly foul, or I’d been so hungry that the stroganoff had seemed more palatable, I didn’t know.

By time I’d gotten through the first half of this meal, I was choking down each subsequent bite. Every mouthful seemed worse than the one before. But I’d been adamant that I wanted a second MRE, and our rations were limited, at least until we figured out what the hell had happened to the rest of the ship. So, I stuck with it. But Law’s absence left me freer to suffer at my own leisure.

I decided I’d save dessert for later since it came packaged separately. There was only so much punishment I could endure in one sitting, after all.

I’d managed to get through most of the fajita when the door opened. I nodded at Caspersen, mouth full of food-sludge, and said nothing.

“Hey, Johnson,” she said, leaning back against one of the cupboards across from me. “So, how you doing?”

I swallowed the sludge. “What?”

Her manner was relaxed, but she was studying me. “How are you feeling?”

“Feeling? Fine. Better since that dumbass left. Tired, but good.”

“Good. When you’re done, Ellis is going to give you an exam.”

“An exam? Why?”

“You’ve been out there for—what? Eighteen hours? Twenty?”

I nodded again. That sounded about right.

“In this atmosphere, the oxygen content is,” she continued. “It’d be sufficient for sedentary human life, but that’s about it. We’ve been taking it in shifts, spending most of our time in the filtered rooms, and it’s still taking a toll on us. And…” She gestured at me. “I’m guessing your time away wasn’t a vacation.”

That was true enough. “But now that I can breathe again, I’m much better.”

“I don’t doubt it. Still, I don’t want to take chances.”

“Fine.”

“Oh.” She retrieved a pistol from a leg holster. “This is yours.”

It was a 1911. My 1911. And judging by the pristine condition, it looked as though it had been cleaned recently. “Where’d you get it?”

“Out there, on the rocks. We found the shell casings, some blood, and this.” She cocked a crooked smile. “There wasn’t a trail to follow, but I figured we hadn’t seen the last of you. And I knew you’d want it back when you got here.”

“How’d you know it was mine?”

She scoffed now. “Who else etches ‘Death’ onto their sidearm?”

“Fair point. Thanks.”

“’Course.” Then she stood. “Well, I better get back out there.”

“What’s going on?”

“Research, mostly. Figuring out the composition of the rocks, trying to get readings on the rest of the ship—”

“Any luck?”

“None so far. But if there’s anyone else out there, we’ll find them.”

I shivered, the memory of a shattered cranium returning unbidden to my mind. “They’re out there.”

“How do you know?”

I sighed. “It’s a long story. The Thing—”

“The what?”

“The monster. The one that took me.” For some reason, I’d been thinking of it as a “thing” for so long the name had taken hold in my mind. What else was I going to call it anyway? “It had bones in its cave. Human bones. Lots of them.”

She sat down now, across from me on the slanting floor. “What is this ‘thing’? Tell me about it.”

I described it as best as I could, from its enormity to its foul stench to its loathsome appetite. She listened as I recounted my story. Now and again her brow would crease, but otherwise, she remained silent and unmoving.

When I'd finished, she nodded. “Well, good to know what we’re up against. And that we can kill the son of a bitch. All right, I’m going to get Dr. Ellis.”

I pushed to my feet. “It’s really not necessary, Caspersen. I’m good. Food—” I gestured to the remainder of my MRE. “Or something near enough, and oxygen. That’s all I needed.”

“Probably. But we’re not taking chances, remember?”

I acquiesced grudgingly. “Fine, fine. I don’t suppose our resident genius has rigged up anything like a shower, has she?”

Caspersen paused at the door and laughed. “Not yet. Although now that you’re back, it’s probably going to be a higher priority.”

She was gone before I could threaten to kick her ass. I sighed, leaning back against the wall. I was tired as hell. Right now, all I could think of was getting sleep and taking a shower. One wasn’t an option, and the other wasn’t an option at the moment. Damnit.

A few minutes later, Dr. Ellis arrived. “Johnson,” she said, extending her hand. “Tracie says you went through hell out there?”

“Tracie? Oh.” I still wasn’t used to hearing people address Caspersen by her first name. “Well, she exaggerates. It wasn’t a walk in the park, but I’m fine.”

“Uh-huh.” If she’d called me a liar, she couldn’t have expressed her disbelief any more clearly. “Well, we’re going to just do a quick exam. I’m going to check those puncture wounds on your sides—”

“They’re fine,” I insisted.

She raised an eyebrow but continued. “And I’m going to do a blood draw. That’ll tell me a lot.”

I frowned. “I didn’t think you were a medical doctor.”

Dr. Ellis shook her head. “I’m not. Medical division was in east wing, remember?” She didn’t need to elucidate; our doctors were, at best, missing and quite possibly dead. “I do know what I’m doing, though, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Uh-huh.”

The corners of her lips twitched, but she said, “I completed a field medic course before launch, and I can analyze blood in my sleep, Captain Johnson. You’re perfectly safe.”

“All right. No operating though.” She might not have had professional training, but based on our interaction so far, I guessed she’d have done all right with difficult patients.

“I’ll save the mad scientist routine for later. Okay, you’re going to need to take the shirt off.”

I did as I was bid, and she scrutinized the red welts on my sides.

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“That’s a lot of irritation. Are the puncture wounds sensitive?”

I shrugged. They hurt, but they were nothing I couldn’t get past. “Eh, no big deal.”

Her left eyebrow crept up again, but she nodded. “What about breathing? Any trouble with that lately?”

“Not really. We’re not on Earth, so it’s not exactly the same, but…”

“Okay. Any…soreness, aching, overall pains?”

I shrugged again. “Not really.”

“Okay. I’m going to just take a look at the sides. Can you move your arm?”

Grumbling about how none of this was necessary, I did as she asked.

I held back a wince as she brushed the wound on my right side. “We don’t have any gloves, so I’m going to have to—”

“Fuck!” I interjected. Without a change in tone or a bit of warning, she’d gone from ginger examination to squeezing the area of soreness. “What are you doing?” It seemed I’d grossly overestimated her medical ability.

She straightened up and faced me. “You’ve got matching eighth-inch incisions that reach a minimum of half an inch each into your sides. You’re wincing as I even get near the site, and yet you’re telling me it’s ‘no big deal.’ You’re breathing fine, nothing hurts, you’re A-OK.”

I started to explain, but she interrupted.

“Captain Johnson, you’ve come into contact with an extremely powerful paralyzing and possibly hallucinogenic agent. There’s obvious tissue damage at the site, and I need to know how bad. I need to figure out what we’re dealing with here. So, you need to be honest with me. No more of this hero crap, you understand?”

I scowled at her. “You’d be a shit doctor.”

“Probably. But the incisions—how do they feel?”

“Feel? They hurt like hell. Especially after your ‘care.’”

She ignored the emphatic dubiousness I added to the word care, and prompted, “Be specific. Is there soreness only at the site of the wound? Or does it extend through this whole patch of redness?” She gestured at the site of the wound. “Or beyond?”

I shrugged. “All around, I guess. The general area.”

“Okay. And when you got bit, describe the feeling.”

In this way, we stepped through my injuries, my experience with the Things, and even the stomachache in my mountain cave. By time we’d finished, she knew more than Caspersen—Caspersen hadn’t inquired into, and I hadn’t offered up, details about my particular pains and aches. She cycled through a handful of tools that, she explained, were collecting samples of my blood, measuring my vitals, etc.

“There,” she said when we’d finished, “we’re done. See, not so bad?” She wisely didn’t wait for a response before continuing. “All right, I’m going to take a look at this data. You stay here. Oh, and I brought you some clean clothes. Your other ones are in pretty rough shape, but once Kim gets the water filter up, we should be able to wash them.”

I nodded dubiously. Dr. Isaac Kimutai was a Kenyan immigrant whose work in bringing clean water to the regions of the world worst and first hit by climate change had saved countless lives. His specialty was developing natural filtration systems using nothing but the area’s resources, but his research on waterborne parasites had earned him the nickname “Dr. Water” because it seemed there wasn’t a water-related problem he couldn’t fix if he put his mind to it. I’d met him a few times, and he’d introduced himself as “Kim.”

It wasn’t Kim’s ability to fix the water situation that I doubted. If anyone could figure it out, it’d be him. My skepticism was directed at Ellis’s assertion that there was anything we could do with my clothes. I had the feeling nothing short of a miracle could save them. Still, I slipped the stained and torn relics off and relished the experience of putting on something that didn’t smell. Even if my wearing them was about to change that.

Ellis returned a good fifteen minutes after she’d left me, with Caspersen in tow. I’d taken up a vigil over the remains of my MRE, trying to force the last few bites down. “All right, Captain Johnson,” Ellis said, “the good news is, the toxins in your blood shouldn’t have any lasting effects.”

I couldn’t resist an “I told you.”

I caught a flash of irritation in her hazel eyes as she continued. “The bad news is I’m detecting some infection in your puncture wounds.”

“Infection?”

She nodded. “As far as I can tell, it’s not too serious, but I’m going to give you an antibiotic all the same.” I started to protest that we should save the supplies, but she frowned. “We’re not on Earth anymore, Johnson. The immunities we developed there might not mean much here.”

“What are you saying? Am I in some kind of danger?”

“She’s saying,” Caspersen cut in, “that the antibiotic should do the trick, but we don’t know for sure. There’s a chance it can’t account for whatever’s here. And we need to be very careful.”

“So, what? I’m going to die from…a scratch?”

“Probably not,” Dr. Ellis returned. “But infection is the bigger risk here.”

I sighed. “Damn it.”

“And there’s something else.”

“More good news?”

She shook her head. “No. Your blood oxygenation levels are low. Dangerously low. Look, you’re not going to like this…but…I’m putting you on bedrest. Just for a couple of days. But I need you to stay in bed, keep your activity levels to an absolute minimum, try not to get too excited—”

“Bedrest?” I nearly spit the words out. “What the hell do you mean, ‘bedrest’? I can’t be on bedrest. We just touched down. We’ve got crew members out there we’ve got to find—people dying. Our people.”

Caspersen and Kayleigh exchanged glances. “About that… Listen, Johnson, there’s something we’ve got to tell you. But…it’s going to come as a shock.”

I scoffed. “More shocking than this fake doctor telling me to play sick?”

Caspersen sat down across from me. “Yeah. By a lot.”

I knew enough about her to realize the concern in those blue eyes portended something big. I wasn’t willing to give in on the bedrest, but it could wait. “What?”

“We didn’t just land.”

I blinked, repeating, “What?”

“And those people you found in the cave? They’re not our people. Not directly.”

I glanced between Caspersen and Kayleigh. The doctor nodded gravely, her pretty features morphed into the same sober, clinical expression she’d worn when talking about infection risks.

“Johnson, we’ve been here for about thirty-one hundred years.”