Authors: Timothy H. Scott
Instructor Marshall Wangai
walked the dimly lit corridor, a massively built soldier of Kenyan blood, genetically blessed both mentally and physically, but the debilitating effects of the disease had already broken him down. He arrived outside the confinement door alongside Private Harman before the cell guard let him inside a small and brightly lit room. Elsewhere on the ship, the citizens of the
UNC
Westbound were preparing to hear the President’s address.
The cell smelled of unwashed skin and stale air. There was nothing in there that was not bolted down save for the teenager in the corner of the suicide room. Josh Tedesco, a fifteen year old student of the Academy, hammered out pushups in the corner as sweat fell from his face and shaven head, his feet up against the wall at an incline. Josh was supremely fit, ignoring Instructor Wangai as he stood waiting in the doorway.
The time he had spent in this room did no favors to his mind in recollecting his life and the chain of events that led him here. His earliest memories were of his mother reading him bedtime stories and cupping his cheeks before kissing him goodnight. Then he was taken, as all children were at a young age aboard the Westbound, to be permanently admitted into the Academy.
The memories formed in that place, devoid of love, were ones he wished he could erase. He had found only one answer to that problem and he had failed at it, and was subsequently locked away. He had been in here a year, maybe two, he couldn’t recall. It had become a place where time no longer mattered, where the past becomes the future and the future doesn’t exist. The day before is the day after, a hall of mirrors that reflects and magnifies ones greatest desires and worst fears.
“Tedesco,” Marshall barked.
Josh finished his set and stood, almost reaching six feet but only coming up to Instructor Marshall’s shoulders. He wore a thin shirt and loose sweatpants which seemed almost too small for his muscular body. His frame was carved of thick bone and fitted with muscles that were formed from years of brutal physical training administered by the Academy and its instructors, Marshall Wangai being one that had haunted Josh since an early age.
“You have to come with us now,” Marshall suppressed a cough.
“Fuck you,” Josh said flatly as he wiped his face. Josh stared at him with his hazelnut eyes that sat in his sockets with accusing defiance, daring Marshall to try at him again.
“Of all the goddamn students that could be immune, you’re one of them. Do you believe in God?”
“Believe, or have faith?” Josh asked.
“Either,” Marshall said, unmoving in the doorway.
“Even the demons believe,
” Josh replied accusingly. He
leaned against the wall, pulling his shirt up to wipe more sweat off his face. “I imagine people of faith don’t often find themselves in a place such as this. Do they Marshall?”
“They do.” Marshall let out a lung rattling cough. “The difference between them and you, however, is where you’re going.”
Josh took a few sudden steps towards him, “Don’t talk to me about God, Marshall. Because you better pray there isn’t one for your fucking sake, you piece of shit. Goddamn hypocrite.” He spat.
“Where you are going you will need more than your genetically flawed mind and underdeveloped muscles.”
“I don’t think you can take me where I want to go.”
Marshall turned to walk away, “We don’t have much time. Follow me.”
With no choice but to obey, Josh held a suspicious look on Marshall as he followed him out of the room. Anywhere was better than being in there another day. Private Harman, being one of a dwindling number of healthy security forces, dutifully waited for them in the hallway.
Marshall attempted to restrain Josh’s arms but he flinched away. “Don’t fuck with me.”
“President Koung has personally ordered us to escort you.”
“What the hell does he want with me?”
“Executive Order 13.”
Josh shot back, “Bullshit.”
Marshall’s eyes softened. “I don’t care if you believe me or not. I have orders and we need to leave, now.”
Josh’s guard dropped momentarily. Marshall was not one to pull tricks of this magnitude. He’d quip sarcasm and unabashedly deride Josh whenever he had the chance, but this wasn’t his style. Josh, along with every other student of the Academy, never truly believed EO 13 would ever happen while they were alive. The st
udents, as they were, were led from
a very young age to believe that there was a great destiny in store for them. That they were chosen to fulfill a mission only they could complete. It fed into a self-aggrandized ego that helped create the drive to succeed at the Academy through fierce physical and mental competition.
As the children grew older and their skills and knowledge compounded with each passing year, they fantasized about fulfilling their destiny as torchbearers of mankind, colonizing some new planet, forging ahead in uncharted land and being the forerunners of the rebuilding of human civilization. As with any fantasy, the thoughts of the mind seek to conjoin the images it has constructed with reality. It becomes a safe escape into a world that holds no tangible risk or danger, a narcissistic movie that can be replayed over and over. For Josh, this fantasy suddenly became a reality and it
filled him with unaccustomed trepidation.
The hallway that ran down the middle of the lockboxes, as they were called at the Academy, was long and sterile, a dark corridor lined with reinforced doors that led to rooms filled with broken dreams and empty hearts. Kids locked away for their own safety or the safety of others, students mostly, broken by the rigors of the Academy and lost in the bowels of the human psyche. Josh had been there and knew it all too well, and now he was going from a suicide watch to being responsible for saving the human race.
As they exited the facility an alarm sounded within the ship. Red flashing lights and three repetitive beeps, a signal for the type of distress the ship was experiencing.
Harman turned to Marshall. “Mutiny? Now?”
Marshall tapped the telecom in his ear. “Lieutenant Meyer, what is the status of the alarm, over?”
Background noise distorted Lt. Meyer’s voice as he reported back, gunfire, shouting, “Issa and his men have taken over the depot and are heading for the shuttles, we only got a couple of the students. We might not make it Marshall, you need to get there before they do!”
Harman readied his rifle and said with burrowing eyes, “I’ve been waiting to get my shot at those fuckin’ traitors. Can we still get to Tanya in time?”
“We have to. The shuttle doesn’t leave without her. We can head through med bay and cut them off,” Marshall said. He looked at Josh, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
They ran down the empty corridors. Even those people who were still relatively healthy remained behind closed doors, unwilling to expo
se themselves to the desolation
of life on the ship. There was no happiness on the UNC Westbound any longer, no joy to life as the inhabitants of the ship became infirm with the disease. The great hope of taking the last refugees of Earth somewhere to settle a new home had been extinguished by the vagaries of the strange and incurable virus.
They crossed through sick bay, a veritable graveyard of the dead and dying. The few nurses tending to them were sick themselves, but they kept at it the best they could. As they ran, Marshall tried to contact Lieutenant Meyer again.
“Lieutenant, where are they now?”
The distinct sound of exploding ion gas could be heard over the telecom as rifles discharged between the security forces and Issa’s rebels. “We’re falling back to the plaza! I’ve lost half my goddamn detachment and the students ... they killed them Marshall!”
“Say again? Your students were killed?”
“They’re overtaking our positions Marshall, you need to move your ass or they’ll get there before you do!”
“Lead the way Harman!” Marshall ordered as they pushed forward through the flashing red hallways.
“Wait!” Josh stopped. His mother. She was close and it would only take a minute.
The Academy actively suppressed many natural emotions. There was one Josh always tried to hold onto, “I-” Josh turned and ran the other way, running against the lifetime of training they tried to instill in him.
“Shit!” Marshall said, sprinting back after him.
“Marshall!” Harman yelled.
“Help me get him, come on!”
“What about the girl? We
need the girl!
Fuck!” Harman followed after them. Josh was quick. He knew the ship and was faster on his feet than his security detachment. He made calculated turns at intersecting corridors until he ran inside of a lift, hit a button and was rapidly taken four decks above. Marshall dutifully and exhaustingly kept pace with the kid so as to not lose him but couldn’t catch up.
By the time Marshall and Harman got to the lift, Josh had already made it to a door on the housing deck, punched in a code and slipped inside before it shut locked behind him. Josh was in his house. Or at least, the house he would have lived in had he not been in the Academy. His mother lay in her bedroom being tended by her long time friend and neighbor, Maria Santiago. The two women sat in the shadows, a faint light from the kitchen illuminating their bodies like statues in a museum as Josh’s mother lay dying in her bed.
Maria coughed, covering her mouth. She looked at Josh as if she had seen a ghost. “Josh? Is that you?”
Josh hadn’t seen his mother in years and wasn’t told how sick she had become. The Academy did not tell them much of anything outside of what they wanted the students to learn at the Academy. For the students, the virus had only been a faint rumor. Now he approached the two of them apprehensively and revealed to Josh for the first time the disturbing effects the virus had on its host in their final hours.
“You shouldn’t get too close,” Maria said weakly. Josh came closer anyway, unafraid of the virus. Maria shifted over on the bed so he could see his mother Janice with ashen, sunken skin stretched across the bones of her body. Her breathing was short and rapid and her eyes reflected a dull, lifeless quality.
“Mom!” Josh cried in shock by the gruesome sight. A brief smile came over his mother’s face and her eyes flashed a moment of joy. A boney hand reached out for him as he grabbed it tight.
“I didn’t know you were like this! They didn’t tell me anything about you, mom, what did they do? How the hell did this happen?”
“I know. Sweety, I know. It’s okay. How did ... ?”
“I’m immune somehow, I don’t know why. Now they’re trying to take a bunch of us to the shuttles. I don’t want to do this. I never did! When they took me away from you I cried, I cried for months and they tried to kill that in me but I never forgot, I never forgot you or how I felt about you. I always wanted to come back to you. You’re all I have mom and they took you away from me.” He desperately looked into her eyes as his emotions spilled forth
,
and he held onto her frail hands and never wanted to leave her again.
She swallowed dryly, “I never lived a day without thinking about you. I worried for you every minute of my life. Josh, I love you, but your place is no longer here now. I wished and prayed every night that things could have been different because this life, it’s all we have and I had to live it without you.”
He squeezed her hand. “If I have to go I will only do it for you.”
She smiled weakly and held his head up by the chin, “There is nothing left here and you’ve been chosen to survive, for all of us. I love you. I’m sorry Josh. I’m sorry you had to grow up the way you did and that I couldn’t be there for you. I couldn’t ... hold you in your darkest hours. I know you had many there Josh. Look at you, my handsome son ...” Her hand slowly caressed his face as she felt the skin of her only child for the last time. He buried his face in the palm of her hand. All he wanted to do was go back to a time before the Academy, when he was with his mother and life held a semblance of joy and hope.