Quarantined Planet Read online

  “How—are you sure?” Frey addresses his captain, moving slowly away from him and the others, who have huddled tightly together. “How do you know all this? The video screens?”

  “Your weapons please,” Earl says to his co-pilot and Marshall.

  Walking backward toward Chloe, Frey grips his gun tighter. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

  “Because the plan hasn’t really changed all that much, Frey.”

  Tivis motions for Jane to get behind him before addressing his former captain. “There’s a plan? Excuse me, but shouldn’t we be expecting some of the pale-skinned devils soon?”

  “They’re not actively involved here anymore. Far as they’re concerned, we’re quarantined.”

  “If this is Earth, then what is Gaea?” Frey asks.

  “Seems we’re Martians now, and they’ve walled us in with a rocky orbiting mine field.”

  “No, I don’t believe that,” Tivis says.

  “Well,” Earl chuckles, “maybe they tried yellow caution tape first.” He becomes menacingly serious. “Your weapon, Frey, over the edge.”

  “Flying jellyfish?” Chloe says, not convinced.

  “Those are transplants from another world, like they transplanted us. Don’t know what happened to the moon. We must have been asleep for hundreds of years while they made the red planet habitable. A lot has changed here, but it’s basically as we left it—completely uninhabitable for us.” He takes aim at Frey. “Your gun.”

  “We should talk about this,” Frey stalls.

  “We’ve talked enough.” Earl fires at Frey and the energy beam rips through his shoulder, its force knocking him off balance and over the railing. Chloe scrambles to grab hold of the wounded man’s arm as he dangles from one hand, but she can’t hold on, and he loses grip.

  “Better if I do this myself.” Looking over the edge, Earl can see Frey hanging on to another bridge directly under and fires off several energy rounds. The injured man manages to claw his way over a railing and scurry away in near total darkness.

  During the confusion, Naledri grabs Marshall’s gun and blasts away at Earl, just missing him. A slow, calculated return shot sends her hard to the floor. Jane rushes to the woman’s aid, but she’s mortally wounded.

  “Stop this,” Jane cries, “please stop this.”

  “Jane, if you’d be so kind as to toss that weapon over the edge.”

  She gently caresses Naledri before doing as Earl asks.

  Suddenly an elevator one level below begins to descend. Earl leans over the railing and unloads on it.

  Laser-like projectiles ricochet around inside the small space. There isn’t much Frey can do to dodge them, and one bolt nails him in the leg. “Damn it,” he yells, hitting the wall.

  Tivis takes a cautious step toward Earl. “Mind telling me what this plan of yours is?”

  “Well, old friend,” Earl says, “the Greys knew we were on a path to self-destruction long ago and couldn’t, for some reason, bring themselves to just let us disappear into the black. So they began putting some of us in storage. All those stories of people traveling to other galaxies, seeing the Greys’ home world, screwing with our cattle—that’s all nonsense. Everyone poached came here, where—if female—their reproductive organs were surgically removed. Why we can’t make babies.”

  “How could you possibly know all this?”

  “He’s tapped into their information network,” Marshall volunteers.

  “What makes no sense, what I can’t wrap my mind around, is what happens next. They couldn’t fix what we’d done to this world, so they terra-formed Mars and stuck a few thousand of us on it—then surrounded us with rocks so we couldn’t get out—couldn’t spread. But, why? Are we being watched? Are we the monkey cage in some galactic zoo—an example of how things can go really wrong?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Tivis says, “humanity has its issues, sure–”

  “Is it? You’ve seen what we did to our own world.” Earl’s anger grows as he speaks, fueled by all the images of Earth’s final months at the mercy of humanity out of control. “Whatever it is, I’m going to finish it.”

  Tivis looks around at his scared shipmates. “Finish it? Finish us all off, you mean?”

  “Is that why those anti-matter cells are here?” Chloe asks from across the bridge, terrified that she already knows his answer. “You plan to ignite them somehow?”

  “Four here, a couple for…New Earth. Should be enough,” he confirms, quickly doing the calculations again in his mind.

  “You’ve gone space postal,” Tivis says without thought and barely loud enough for the others to hear.

  Earl laughs. “Space postal—clever.” He points the gun at Jane’s head. She squints and turns away. “Anyway, you’ll all be going to sleep soon, old friend. You won’t feel a thing. Now cross.”

  Earl keeps a healthy distance while ushering his captives across the short access bridge to a wall of cocoons. Chloe is already there, attempting to free Nix and Gordon. Both pods are open, but neither man is responding.

  “Please come on. Please wake up,” she says.

  From behind her, Earl slams the shell doors closed. “Everyone pick a pod.”

  Wray tries to make a run for it, but doesn’t get far as Earl blasts him in the back.

  “What are you doing?” Jane says. “Stop!”

  “It will all be over soon, Jane. Now, pick a pod.”

  Tivis inserts himself between them. “Don’t believe I will, old friend.”

  In a sudden and fluid motion, Earl knocks Tivis unconscious with the butt of his rifle. Jane screams, flails her arms, and kicks at Marshall, who, for some reason, has decided to help his captain and forces her into a slimy alien cocoon.

  ***

  As the alien elevator he’s seized travels like a rocket, downward deeper and deeper, Frey tears open his clothing to reveal the grisly wound in his shoulder. He’s in trouble—he knows it—losing so much blood.

  This sudden change in his captain was completely unexpected. While the man was prone to rash and snap decisions, he’d never resorted to violence against his own crew.

  Even though Frey didn’t hear what Earl told the rest, he suddenly understands what those power cells are going to be used for. There is enough explosive energy to put an end to humanity.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  All but Earl, Marshall, and Chloe are hibernating in cocoons. “You wouldn’t put me in one of those,” Marshall says with a nervous laugh. “I’d like to help you.”

  “I won’t be needing your help any longer,” Earl tells him.

  Marshall’s uneasy smile fades, and he lunges at his captain. Earl’s gun discharges, sending an energy beam right through the other man’s chest. Chloe closes her eyes and turns away. The men embrace for a moment, eye to eye, until Marshall loses consciousness and wilts to the floor.

  “You’re crazy,” Chloe says.

  “Chloe, I’m doing the universe a great service. Now, get in.”

  “No.”

  “Prefer a hole through the heart?”

  “No. I’ve–” She stammers, trying not to lose it. “I’ve changed my mind. I want to go with you back to New Earth.”

  “To try and stop me?”

  “No, I…”

  “Because you can’t.” He points the gun at her.

  “No. I know. Please?”

  “I don’t think I trust you,” he smiles, “but it would be a long, lonely ride back.”

  She runs a hand along the bubbles holding Nix and Gordon before following him across the access bridge.

  “Come on, Chloe,” he prods, and soon they’re passing the glowing cylinder that Earl inspects again.

  “When does it go off?”

  “When I flip the switch.”

  “Where’s the switch? How do you do it?”

  “I’ll be happy to show you, but first,” he takes her right hand, and before she knows what’s happening, he snaps the young woman’s middle two fing
ers. She cries out from the shock and pain and falls to her knees.

  “Amon, stop,” she begs, desperate to pull away, as Earl takes hold of her other hand. “No—please don’t. Please.”

  “I’ll break them all. I love you, you know I do, but I can’t let you stop me.”

  “I know. Please, oh, that hurts.”

  Looking into her sad hazel eyes, he’s sorry about injuring the woman he loved—still loves. His blood pressure takes a little drop, and after releasing Chloe’s hand, he gently helps her up.

  ***

  Frey’s alien elevator rests at the last stop on its track, a few hundred levels from where Earl had shot him. The shoulder wound has been self-dressed, and a tourniquet slows the bleeding from his injured leg. Although weak, he’s able to stand.

  Knowing that his only chance of escape is returning to the main level, he punches a button, sending the alien lift in motion upward.

  Hopefully, I’ve waited long enough, he thinks.

  ***

  Chloe and Earl whiz along in a different People Mover. She pulls the injured hand in close to her chest. “What if you’re wrong, wrong about all of this?”

  “I’d always suspected we were on Mars. Once I got past that asteroid-briar patch, I was sure.”

  “No, Earth. I mean, what happened to it. Maybe you’re wrong.”

  “I’m not.” The shuttle doesn’t require any attention from a user, and Earl squirms in his seat like an addict needing another fix. “Once we thought we were alone in the universe, Chloe. Now we know we’re just the most dangerous things in it.”

  “I can’t believe that. I won’t.”

  “Oh, there are other predator species, but we’re the best at preying on each other.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “And we’re filthy. You know that to make Mars habitable for us they had to pollute it first. All those big machines rotting in the desert, you know what they did? They spewed dirt and gas into the air for hundreds of years. We can’t even survive without mucking things up first.”

  “Please calm down.”

  “We’ll never stop killing each other. Laying waste to everything in our path. We have to be stopped.”

  ***

  Frey’s lift, moving at an incredible speed, blows by intersection after intersection until stopping abruptly on the main level.

  He steps out cautiously and hobbles to the cylinder. On his knees and with much pain and effort, he attempts to pry a small device off the anti-matter cell. He gingerly pulls, then wiggles, pushes, and even pounds. Finally, with both hands around the object and his feet against the cylinder for leverage, Frey puts everything he has into it.

  The attached gadget doesn’t budge, and he loses his grip. His hands slip, and the force sends him back into the railing and against his wounded shoulder. He waits for the pain to subside, then limps to Gordon’s cocoon and presses the buttons on its control panel.

  ***

  Chloe and Earl scuttle through a rocky corridor. As they round a corner, it opens up to the familiar alien bunker where she, Nix, and Gordon entered.

  Earl drags her through the door, past those big-eyed, severed alien heads, and out into the murky forest. Lilith isn’t far.

  Just a few feet from the ship’s main hatch, Chloe stumbles over a good-sized rock. She has an idea.

  Earl is delayed opening his ship, needing a moment to remember the new code for its door. He turns around, and Chloe nails him in the head with that rock, but not brutally enough. It’s an act too violent and foreign for her, and she isn’t committed to smashing his skull, so he easily deflects another strike.

  He thrusts the butt of his gun into her ribcage, and she goes down hard. Earl fires off an energy blast, just missing the young woman’s head.

  “Just stop. Don’t do it,” she says.

  “I have to finish this.”

  “We can change. Look, Amon, I have missed you—so very much.”

  “No, don’t do that.”

  “Look—please.” She crawls forward. “This is all so mixed up. Don’t do this.”

  He backs up toward Lilith’s main hatch with the gun trained on her.

  “You won’t have time to save them, even if you can find your way back.”

  “It’s murder.”

  “It’s an end to murder. Goodbye, Chloe.” Earl closes the hatch behind him. “Stop!” she cries.

  ***

  Gordon, now free from his pod, promptly punches Frey in the mouth.

  “I’m attempting to save your miserable lives.” The injured man cowers on the floor, backing away.

  “Get up, you bloody dirtbox.”

  “Gordon, listen to me.” Frey pulls himself up by the railing. “Earl’s going to nuke this place, and we—.”

  “Where’s Chloe?” Gordon wallops the other man again. “Where’s Nix?”

  “Here. They should be here.”

  “They better be in one piece.”

  “They are. We need to free them, Gordon. Free them and get out of here, or we’re all dead.”

  As Frey struggles to get up, Gordon has a moment to eye his surroundings. For the first time, he sees the thousands of human cocoons.

  “Bloody hell, where are we?”

  “Earth.”

  ***

  Lilith’s engines light up the night sky like a sun. Chloe, struggling with her broken fingers, hurls a jagged rock at one of the ship’s larger portholes; it bounces off harmlessly. She picks up another stone but is forced to dive for cover as the sleek craft lifts off and roars away.

  The forest soon becomes hauntingly quiet. Chloe buries her head in her arms.

  Chapter Thirty

  Gordon and Frey are well into freeing and reviving the others.

  “He told us the plan was to firebomb this place if the Greys wouldn’t release these people,” Frey says, “if they wouldn’t let us go home, go back to Earth.”

  “How the hell does that make any sense?” Gordon replies, attempting to bring Nix out of his brief hibernation.

  “Marshall and I were the only ones foolish enough to buy it, I think. The others were just waiting for the right moment to get away from him.” Frey eases Jane out of her cocoon. “Then he tells us this is Earth.”

  “You believe that? You think he’s right?”

  “Yes, I do. It might explain why he’s gone so nuts. I mean, he may have been losing it anyway, but Earth is all he ever talked about—all he wanted was to get back. If this is Earth, then there’s nothing to go back to.”

  Gordon shakes his crewman. “Nix, wake up. Come on, donkey.” He resorts to slapping the young man across the face a couple of times.

  “Stop it.” Nix swats his captain’s hands away. “Where’s Chloe?”

  “Frey thinks she’s with Earl.”

  “She went with that crazy son of a bitch?”

  “Not by choice, I’m sure.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “We don’t know, Nix.”

  The young man finally gets a look at his surroundings. “Where the hell are we?”

  “You have to leave here now,” Frey says as Jane wakes Tivis from his short coma. “It’s a long way to the surface.”

  Tivis is focused on Earl’s anti-matter bomb. “How long ‘til that thing goes off?”

  “I don’t know. He can activate it from Lilith.”

  “How does he know it’ll work?” Gordon asks.

  “He has an uncanny ability to understand and manipulate their technology. It’ll work. This one will set off the others.”

  “Others?”

  “One on each of the next four levels. I’m gonna take it to the bottom and push it over the edge.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s an abyss.”

  Jane raises her hand. “So, how do we get out of here?”

  “Well it’s, umm…I, ah—,” Frey stammers.

  “You lead them out of here—you know the way,” Gordon tells Frey. “I’ll do it. I’ll pu
sh the damn thing over.”

  “No, let’s just go.” Nix grabs on tight to his captain’s arm.

  “What about all these people, Nix? Can we free them, Frey?”

  “It’ll take,” Frey says as he glances around, “forever, right? You should hurry if you’re gonna do it, Gordon. He could fire it any time.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe we’ll get lucky?”

  “Just come with us, Gordon,” Nix urges.

  “Look, find Chloe, yeah? Don’t let anything happen to our girl,” Gordon tells the young man before addressing Tivis. “The ship is yours, big boy.”

  “Damn it, Gordon,” Nix pouts.

  “How far down is it exactly?”

  “Don’t know—miles,” Frey points to an elevator, “last stop on that lift.”

  Gordon peers over the edge. “Alright. Go then.” He begins rolling Earl’s bomb toward the lift.

  Nix steps up to help. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Nix, stop. Find our girl, yeah? She’s in trouble. She needs you. I’ll catch up. Now, go!”

  The others sprint off, but Nix stays, backing away slowly until Gordon is on the lift and out of sight.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  A thunderclap gets Chloe’s attention, making her look skyward and straight up at that broken moon. It’s now visible through a break in the clouds and jelly creatures. After wiping away some tears, the young woman, with all the strength left in her, rises from kneeling—as if in prayer—and slowly gets to her feet. She knows what she has to do, the most horrible, unthinkable thing, and putting one foot in front of the other, she stumbles along. Her legs are heavy, but her pace quickens, and soon somehow she’s running—running headlong into the darkness.

  ***

  Jane, Nix, Tivis, and Frey zing through the bottomless caverns in another People Mover. Jane cradles Frey, who drifts in and out of consciousness.

  “How far to the surface?” she asks him.

  “Far,” the badly injured man responds, “it’s a long way back.”