Chapter Twenty-Five

WE REACHED THE ship right before sundown. The day had been somewhat less miserable than the previous ones. The mist receded, and the air carried less humidity. The world had begun to dry.

Other than our shoes, our clothes had dried by midday. Our feet hadn’t been so lucky as we slogged on for the rest of an otherwise uneventful march.

For a slew of reasons, not the least of which included getting out of my damned boots, I felt an incredible sense of gratitude when the ship finally came into view.

Heavy vegetation covered the Genesis, but there was no doubt the landing had been a violent one. The flat forest floor rose here in great mounds of dirt and stone around the ship to form a massive crater.

Time had restored plants to the area, but the abrupt change in elevation, the great ridges surrounding a deep gulf, remained an unmistakable testament to the damage that had once been done. The Genesis had carved out a mighty resting place no amount of plant life could fully conceal.

It was here, for the first time since we’d ventured into the forest, that we had a real break in the canopy of trees. Rosy sunlight, all the redder for the time of day, angled into the clearing, filtering through the trees that grew near the edge of the crater. This younger growth seemed like saplings in comparison to the old trees. But that was a matter of comparison. They rose to the height of any respectable Earth tree.

It struck me vaguely that this forest must be extraordinarily ancient if the thousands of years of growth that had taken root after the Genesis’s landing was so minuscule by comparison.

Because of the break in dense foliage, light and corresponding shadow bathed the ship where it either faced the sun or away from it.

I found myself oddly unprepared as I mounted the summit of the crater and stared down at the wreckage of the Genesis II, half buried under tons of earth and years of growth. A sense of awe and confusion swept over me as my eyes followed the great stretches of charring still visible on the hull. I’d heard the description of all of these things from Connor and Granges. I already knew what to expect.

And yet, staring at the shell of that great vessel, at the long-overgrown windows of row upon row of pods, a sense of profound desolation settled on me. Just months ago, to my awareness, we had set out in the Genesis. And here it lay, a relic of ages gone by. Our ship, the vessel that had borne us all to this place, to this new life on Kepler-186f, lay as ruined and forgotten as any Mayan temple or desert pyramid.

And if it was just an ancient relic…what the hell were we?

A murmur of wondering disappointment rose from my companions, and I imagined they must be experiencing similar sensations to my own. But I couldn’t draw my eyes away from the wreck.

Caspersen let us soak the sight in for a few minutes but brought us back to the present with orders to scout the ship. “Russell, we’re going to take point. Johnson, Cohen, follow our lead. Granges, Connor, Law, stay here with the crew.”

And so it was. Caspersen took the lead, and we followed. The ship had planted nose first in the ground at roughly a fifteen-degree angle. We were coming upon it at about the same direction it had entered the atmosphere, and the nose lay directly away from us. The end that faced us opened heavenward in a mass of twisted metal and long rusted cable. Great vines and leafy lichens covered much of it, but as with our portion of the ship back in the mountains, there was ample evidence of charring and melting at these rough edges.

The breech stood a good four feet off the ground, and Caspersen poked her head over the ledge gingerly. When satisfied that we could safely proceed, she pulled herself up. Russell followed a second later, and Cohen and I took up the rear.

The interior of the ship looked little better than the exterior. A thick, mossy growth had taken up residence on most of the surfaces near the breech, which managed to quiet our footsteps. But light was sparse as that same moss grew over the windows internally and externally.

We entered in one of the cryochamber halls. Bent, misshapen pods surrounded us. To our immediate right, the frame of the ship angled sharply downward toward a pod that had been crushed to some two or three feet in height. The corresponding pod on the left was missing its door and half the floor. Great, charred breeches stretched down several chambers.

I doubted anyone in the area had survived initial impact. I was certain no one in the lower hall had. There wouldn’t be a lower hall there, for all intents and purposes. Not anymore.

Here and there, a piece of frame or some other rubble from the level below pierced the decking. We made our way carefully around it, unsure of the structural integrity of our path. Whatever had happened to the Genesis, it wouldn’t have been pretty. She’d literally been torn to pieces and flung across the surface of the planet, crushed and seared as she went. It remained to be seen how stable the floor could be after such violence and so much time.

The truth was, it seemed a miracle of engineering and dumb luck that any of the ship remained navigable. But I didn’t feel it in the moment—not stepping among the half-melted ruins of pod upon pod, remembering where only weeks ago in my lifetime my crewmates had settled in for their final journey. Miracles were the last thing on my mind.

We worked quickly, clearing room after room and finding nothing. The moss faded and eventually disappeared as we moved deeper into the ship. The state of the chambers, too, improved as we went on, with the damage to the pods lessening the farther away from the breach we got.

It was at this point that we started encountering partial skeletons. Before, there had been the occasional bone, some human and some of indeterminate origin. But here, we found more than a few aged human remains.

Though we wasted no time, time was nonetheless against us. Before long, the sun set, and little enough light filtered through the green growth that encrusted the ship windows at the best of times. We’d made it through most of the upper chambers when Caspersen sent Russell back for the civilians.

We had passed some solid chambers, unharmed by the landing, with their door mechanisms fully intact and operational. They’d be easily defensible, come what may. “Set up base, wait for us until we get back,” Caspersen directed.

I joined her at the front of the pack, and Cohen took up the rear. Caspersen switched on the tactical flashlight on her gun, and we proceeded.

“I want to finish this floor,” she said. “It’s too dark to go farther tonight, but I don’t want surprises here.”

A surprise is exactly what we got, however, when we reached the bridge. This was in the lowest section of the ship due to its current angle. It spanned both floors and was reached by a set of stairs that groaned under our weight rather more than I liked.

It being too early for moonlight but well past the hour of sunlight, the interior of the ship was virtually solid black at this point. As Caspersen had been one of the only ones in our party with the foresight to bring a flashlight of any kind—and, naturally, hers was affixed to a gun—we relied on her to light our path.

The bridge was massive and cluttered with all manner of debris. Caspersen traced a long, spindly beam of light around it, and tall shadows stretched behind piles of smashed and ruined furniture and framing. The floor itself had buckled up in places, exposing jagged edges of metal and even the ground underneath. As with the portion of the ship where we’d entered, vegetation had taken hold, and a soft carpet of moss muted our footsteps.

She moved forward, circling behind heaps that obscured our view, bathing each hidden nook and cranny in a moment of light.

We’d just rounded a section of bushy plant life when my foot landed on something soft. Something that moved. I damn near shit myself and jumped back before I even found my voice. At the same time, a shadow darted past me to the left.

Gesticulating with my free hand, I tried not to squeal as I called, “There. Something’s here.”

Cohen tensed, pointing his gun in the general direction I’d indicated. Caspersen’s light spun around, casting the dim gloom around us into something recognizable.

There, waddling in the direction of the stairs, was one of the moles we’d encountered in the mountains, its stout body wobbling from side to side in haste.

“Motherfucker,” I breathed. I could have sworn I heard Cohen release a sigh of relief too.

“Just a rat,” Caspersen spoke. “Keep it together, people. We’re almost done.”

She was right. We had no more surprises waiting for us on the bridge, and it was too dark to spend any time investigating. Our questions as to the ship’s fate and, more importantly, the crew’s, would have to wait until tomorrow.

We made our way back up the aged stairs and down the long corridor to our camp.

Where the ship had seemed desolate in daylight, night painted in an altogether more sinister light. Silvery-pink points of moonlight filtered in between the moss on the windows, throwing long, strange shadows into the hall. Now and then, a passing breeze would whistle through some invisible perforation in the ship’s hull, or a footstep would echo off the metal flooring in such a way as to send a shiver up my back.

I understood why the professor had fancied the place haunted. Even without the occasional skeleton or set of shadowy eye sockets staring back at you, the combination of decay and desolation was the stuff of nightmares, with each element feeding the imagination’s perception of the other.

Even the disembodied voices of the rest of the crew sounded hollow as they traveled down the long hall, and I took no comfort in them until I could actually see them.

When, at last, we reached the main party and locked the door of our new, shared quarters behind us, nervous sweat covered me from head to toe.

The crew was happy to have us back though. They had set up a base in one of the storerooms, which was some two or three times bigger than the individual pods. They’d even rigged up a bathroom facility, of sorts, in a pod down the hall.

“It’s some real high-tech stuff,” Matt explained. “The professor’s own handiwork.”

“It’s a bucket,” the professor said. “A bucket to shit in. You don’t like it, go dig a hole.”

And welcome back…

Whatever was outside these four walls, whatever my own state of mind, the group seemed to relax a degree in safety. Our return was the final push, the jolt of energy that broke the tension of the last two days.

Matt dished out MREs, starting before we even had a chance to sit. Cohen started telling jokes about the killer mole “that almost did Johnson in.” Kayleigh nudged me good humoredly and joined in on the ribbing. The professor took time out of criticizing everyone who crossed his path to shake his head in disapproval at my “utter lack of nerve.” Even Caspersen cracked a smile now and then.

It was a curious facet of human nature that there was only so much fear or grief or anger that the mind could tolerate before mirth pushed it aside. In the particular instance, we really had nothing to laugh about and not much reason to think our situation had improved.

We’d gotten out of the open and established a somewhat more defensible base, it was true. But the cannibals were still out there, and our supplies hadn’t grown any. Who the cannibals were and how many of them there were remained as unknown as ever. We had no clue if we’d run into them often or if they were a minor force in the area.

But no one might have guessed how precarious our plight really was by watching us that night. Everyone seemed to be full of hope and good humor, bandying about awful jokes that elicited uproarious laughter. The dam of terror we’d worked so hard to stop up burst in this moment of quiet, and it primarily took the form of ridiculous levity. But everything seemed better. Hell, even the MREs tasted all right after our heavy exertions.

It didn’t happen right away for me, but I got into the spirit of things too. The creaking halls and shadow-filled chambers beyond us became a distant memory when we were all gathered together, pretending to be safe.

And then, having wolfed down his MRE while we all joked, the professor decided he was ready to turn in for the night, so he turned his focus toward setting up a makeshift bed. After that, off came his boots.

A new kind of horror descended once again on our happy party. Now I had spent more than a little time in the company of men and women who worked their asses off on a daily basis. I wasn’t unfamiliar with the reek of sweat or the odor of stinky feet or the blending of the two.

The professor, though, took those unpleasant qualities in combination and marinated them—literally—in days of moisture. And did they ever smell it.

“My God.” Verner practically choked on his food.

“Fuck.” Matt plugged his nose. “That’s some nasty shit.”

“Fuck you, Frat Boy.” The professor sniffed. “Like you smell any better.”

“Jesus, did you have to do it here though?” Russell asked. The smell had apparently carried from the professor’s corner to the other side of the room where Sergeant Russell was eating.

“Go to hell, Ghoul.”

“I think we found a secret weapon against the cannibals,” I said as he flipped me the bird. “If that doesn’t cure them of wanting human flesh, nothing will.”

“Seriously, man, couldn’t you have stepped out of the room?” Cohen pressed. “I mean, for a few minutes anyway?”

“No one should be stepping out of the room,” Caspersen interjected before the professor had the opportunity to offer up another of his signature witty comebacks. “We need to stay together.”

“Can you smell this?” I asked. It seemed hard to believe she’d be advocating for the professor to remain if she could.

But she ignored the question. “I don’t want anyone wandering around. If we’ve got to use the bathroom, we’ll leave in groups. Always make sure there’s a Marine or soldier with you. We’ll explore tomorrow. Tonight, let’s stick to this room. Let’s focus on finishing our food and getting some sleep.”