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Chapter 20
Zach Croft: 2053
Zach’s boots crashed down in the Martian soil, his gelatin legs struggling to keep him upright. His joints felt as though they had disappeared entirely, and as he inhaled, the suit forced decades-old air into his mouth like a balled-up T-shirt.
“Have you considered that Prescott is a biohazard, and we’d bring the Red Plague back to Earth?”
“The bodies are still there, Zach. In Prescott.”
“Going back isn’t going to solve anything.”
It seemed like everything was trying to keep him away from Prescott, from Carver denying his request to return to Mars to the dropship outright disobeying them when they docked on the Gateway.
He stepped forward, sat beside the ramp, and waited for the others to join him. “Days are shorter here. Get a move on.” Through the haze, Zach could just make out the shape of the colony, and he reminded himself of why they were there.
“How do we get the fuel onto the ship?” Ryker asked.
“Here’s what I was thinking…” Zach started with the rover. They’d find one in the motor pool, load it with empty fuel drums, and drive it to the crater. There, they’d carefully pick as many irogen crystals as possible until they had filled all the drums. Half the crew would shuttle the drums back to the dropship while the others continued harvesting. They’d repeat the process until they had enough.
“Why would you go harvesting crystals when there’s a tank?” asked Erik.
Zach hadn’t a clue what Erik was talking about. “What tank?”
“The tank of irogen we filled up last wee—” Erik paused. “Sorry. The tank from back in the day. The one we managed to fill up before the meteor. It was last week for me.”
“There’s no way that wasn’t destroyed,” Ryker said.
Erik stomped his boot a few times. “Maybe. It was underground, though, so there’s a chance it’s still in one piece.” His eyes found Zach. “The crystals take up a lot of space—it’s the liquid inside the crystals that we need. If the tank’s there, we should use it.”
Zach considered Erik’s suggestion. “Fair point. We’ll start with the tank. If that doesn’t work, we’ll take the crystals. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” everyone said.
Together, they left the comfort of the ramp and began the arduous trek through a rocky gorge. Zach studied the cliffs surrounding them. The dunes and rock formations created a landscape that reminded him of Utah or Arizona.
After a few minutes, the group had topped one of the formations. The stale air in their suits provided little support, and they all found themselves gasping in exhaustion. Zach recognized the feeling from when he visited Big Bear as a child. It was always so damn hard to breathe, likely from the elevation.
Fearful of repeating history, Zach checked his wrist reader for O2 levels. Thankfully, they were stable and would be for a long time. One foot over the other, Zach watched his footprints disappear with the oncoming breeze and tried to remember the layout of Prescott.
He didn’t have to search his memory for long—once he pictured the town hall, everything else fell into place. The ration dispensary. The residential district. Zach could remember them all. He wondered what the buildings would look like now. Would they be in ruins? He pictured his old hab unit, no more than a pile of scrap.
By the time they reached the colony, Zach’s muscles had gone stiff. He didn’t know whether it was fatigue or despair, but it left him almost unable to move.
Leading into the colony was a long, glass tunnel that extended out from the dome. At the end of it, the main airlock sat wide open. Zach didn’t know why it was open or how long it’d been like that, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
A large sign, bent and corroded, greeted them as they entered. On it, Zach could just make out the words ‘WELCOME TO PRESCOTT,’but he had trouble reading the smaller text below.
“What’s all this?” Mabel asked, gesturing at the half-circle of barricades that surrounded the entrance. Most of the waist-high blocks were tipped over in the sand, though some remained upright, stained with what looked like dried blood. Straight ahead, the barricades met at a long line of railings extending into the sandy expanse.
It was the same story there. Many were half-buried in the Martian soil, while others stood tall in the orange haze. Zach shot a nervous glance at Ryker and continued walking. “It’s just a security checkpoint… for when people came back from EVAs,” he lied and averted his gaze. “The town’s not far.”
The group passed the barricades and carefully navigated the line of railings. In the distance, a stretch of buildings in no better shape than the checkpoint cluttered the horizon.
Those last few weeks in Prescott trickled into Zach’s mind. He remembered the disrepair after the meteor, all the damaged homes. Even so, that paled in comparison to what he saw now.
Empty metal frames jutted from the dirt. Torn pieces of canvas flapped like flags against the foundations of decimated tents. The paved regolith streets were cracked and crumbling.
Looking out over the village, Erik glanced at him. “So, you just picked up and left?” His words had a bitter edge.
Zach barely shook his head. “It was more complicated than that.”
The group traipsed through the colony silently, allowing a few well-deserved moments to collect their thoughts. Zach paced himself to not use his oxygen too quickly, doing his best to push away the haunting question that kept popping into his mind: where were all the bodies?
“Zach…” Ryker flagged him down.
Zach followed Ryker’s eyes to the wall of a still-standing structure. He looked at the red and faded text splattered across the bumpy surface, his jaw dropping ever so slightly.
WE’RE ALL DEAD ANYWAY.
Then he realized why there were no bodies, no trace of the colonists’ demise. He’d always avoided thinking of what happened after leaving the colony—to the settlement itself or the people left behind. With the Red Plague tearing through the population, it seemed like a given that they would have died quickly. But as Zach stared into the writing on the wall, he knew that wasn’t true.
How long did they wait for rescue?
More and more people would have died every day, dozens becoming hundreds, graves getting harder to dig. Kids losing their parents. Wives losing their husbands. Day after day, the number of survivors would slowly diminish. Eventually, only one would remain. He’d look out over the colony with teary eyes, knowing his time would soon come.
Zach’s legs shook as he kept walking, reading the messages scrawled on the walls as he passed.
WHY?
DAY 48.
NEVER COMING BACK.
The last message shook him the most. Initially, it read FORGIVE THEM, but another word had been added later, in a different color: NEVER.
NEVER FORGIVE THEM.
Eventually, Zach passed the graffitied buildings. Even though the words were out of sight, they stayed with him—they would be burned into his memory forever.
What had they done?
He wondered what the paint was made out of. Dirt, maybe? That was red. Then, there was the darker possibility: it was blood. And lots of it.
Zach’s boots crunched on something metal. He lifted his boot to look, then froze. He was standing on a pile of bullet shells. The type used in assault rifles. “What happened here?”
“Whatever it was, it wasn’t good,” Mabel commented, nodding toward a few automatic weapons piled in the dirt a few meters away. “This place gives me the chills. Can we get this over with?” Mabel took a shaky breath and passed the stack of rifles. The others followed, and the storage center came into view soon after. Half was entirely collapsed, lying in a heap beside the upright portion.
Upon their arrival, they discovered even more text on the wall. Only this one didn’t have a cryptic message.
It was a list of names.
JOSE CURTIS
CRO JORDAN
LANCE FREMONT
It spanned the entire thirty-foot wall, each name carefully engraved. Zach noticed the similarities to Earth’s Prescott Memorial. The remembrance wall. A shrine to all those who passed away. There was something sick and twisted about this version, though. No, maybe not sick, but so, so different. The monument back home was refined. Dignified. Made from expensive marble.
Then, there was this. A steel wall with jagged carvings, the pocket knife used to make them still plunged carelessly in the sand. Zach kicked it aside and dragged his hand over the etchings.
He scanned the names and recognized a few. John Stouts, a doctor Quinton had worked with. Emma Heymont. Edgar Ferrano. Seraphine Reiner. Many were in their twenties and thirties. Now, they were gone, destroyed. Buried somewhere under the irradiated soil.
Zach noticed Erik scanning the names, likely looking for his daughter. What was her name again—Sophia something? Sophia Trivett. That was it. Erik’s eyes opened wide behind his visor, and he whispered something inaudibly. “Not here,” he said louder. “She’s not here.” A smile crossed his face.
That doesn’t mean she’s alive, Zach thought. But he just smiled too. “That’s good, Erik. That’s good.” Sometimes false hope is better than no hope. Zach stopped and motioned to the group to huddle up. “Okay, let’s get this sorted. We need some kind of containers to transport the irogen in. Mabel and I will find something for that.” He pointed at Ryker. “You and Erik head to the rover garage. Find one that works and bring it back here. Got it?”
Ryker Gagarin: 2053
“I’ll help you get the rover, but nothing else,” Erik said to Ryker as they crossed through the mecha district. “I don’t want to get tied up in whatever y’all are doing here.”
“Fine by me,” Ryker answered. The sky had gotten lighter, a grayish color quickly filling with orange.
Erik angled his chin to the heavens. “You know, it was night the first time I saw this place.”
Ryker wrinkled his brow. “Didn’t we land during the day?”
“I spent the first week in the infirmary, so I didn’t have a chance to see it.”
“That’s a shame.”
“When I was discharged, my daughter ran up and hugged me. The first thing I said to her was,” he cracked a slight smile, “‘aren’t you up past your bedtime?'”
Ryker breathed a laugh. “Then what?”
“Then, she showed me our living quarters. She made me a Welcome Home sign out of whatever junk she could salvage from the crash. Only she didn’t have enough to make the last ‘E,’ so it just said ‘Welcome Hom.'” He laughed at the memory.
Ryder chuckled too. “She sounds like a great kid.” His words lapsed into silence.
Up ahead, there were more signs of a firefight. A dozen bullet holes were punched through a hab unit wall and what looked like a barricade nearby. A helmet was tipped over beside it.
“She’d be my age now,” Erik said. “Or is… I don’t know.” His voice broke, and he shrugged. “I’m sorry. It’s just…”
“I get it,” Ryker assured. “Everything you’re going through, I have too.” He didn’t mean to make it a competition but was worried it would come off like that.
“How?”
“I watched both my parents die.” Ryker went to itch his forehead but hit the spacesuit’s helmet instead. He changed the subject. “Also, you and I were neighbors.”
Erik looked around. “Here?”
“No, not here. Well, I don’t know. Maybe,” Ryker said. “I’m talking about the Gateway.”
“Let me guess: Cryo slumber party?”
Ryker laughed. “Not that, no. I was there just as long as you were, only… awake. The whole time.”
“For twenty-three years?”
“For twenty-three years,” Ryker repeated. “I was just a kid.”
“Holy shit, man. How did you do it?”
Ryker shrugged. “I figured shit out. Didn’t have much choice.”
They walked another few minutes before Erik realized they were going in the wrong direction. He pointed to where the rover garage was.
“I know,” Ryker said. “We’re making a pit stop first. It won’t take long.”
“Where?”
“My father’s grave. I want to see if they buried my mother there too.” With everything she sacrificed for her family, a proper burial was the least they could do. She deserved it. When Cage had volunteered for Prescott, Kayla initially opposed it. “Ryker should have a normal childhood,” she had said. But when Cage explained the flares, about how bad they’d get, Kayla reluctantly agreed.
As Ryker felt Cage’s ring through his glove, he wished his mother hadn’t been so nice. Maybe she would have stood her ground and rejected the idea of leaving Earth. Things would have turned out so differently. “I don’t know what happened to her after she died.”
“How did you get over it?” asked Erik.
“Honestly? I didn’t.”
Erik gave it some thought. “That wasn’t the answer I was looking for.”
“But it’s the truth.” Ryker could have sugar-coated it. He could have told Erik everything gets easier. That one morning, he’d wake up and think, Sophia? I’ve never heard of her! But he wasn’t a liar. Things wouldn’t get better unless he built up his defenses. Grew numb to the pain. It was the only way to move past it. “It was our fault. Me and Zach,” Ryker said bitterly.
“What was?”
“This.” He motioned to the ruined colony. “The Red Plague. Everything. We snuck into the crater and brought some irogen crystals back to the colony. And right after that, people started getting sick. It wasn’t a coincidence. It wasn’t just bad luck. It was us.”
“It was you?” asked Erik. “It was… it was… it…” He trailed off, looked at the ground, and thought something over. “You brought back crystals…” His mouth fell slightly open as he was consumed by thought. He took a deep breath, then glanced back up at Ryker. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t have known.”
“We didn’t. But that doesn’t make it okay.”
“No. But we can’t go back and undo it. So, let it go.” He stepped over a pile of rubble and continued walking. “Let’s find your mom.”
Ryker caught up with Erik. Together, they wove through the metal labyrinth before reaching a stretch of empty sand. It went on for a few hundred meters, leading into a slope about halfway in. “It should be just up…” Ryker stopped. “Here.”
Where he expected to see five, possibly ten graves, there were hundreds. Mounds of dirt, most with markers made of debris jutting from them, spanned as far as the eye could see. Was everyone buried here? Ryker could recall there only being a few; the council wasn’t big on taking up colony space for ‘non-essentials.’ They only allowed Cage to be buried there because of his ties to Quinton.
Ryker walked between the mounds, searching for his father’s grave. He identified Cage’s headstone about thirty feet in and knelt beside it. What was he supposed to say? Could he say things were going well? That would be a lie. The world was falling apart more and more every day, and it’d be silly to say something to the contrary. What, then? Hey, dad. No matter how often life fucks me, I’ll always live to see another day! Finally, he mumbled, “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
Next, he searched for his mother’s grave. Part of him was unsure it would even exist given the circumstances of her death, but he couldn’t believe that the others would have left her to rot. Finally, he found it. He gave a tired smile. “Hey, mom.”
The grave was nicer than the others. Not by much, but noticeably so. The mound was a little neater, the metal used for her marker flat and rectangular, resembling a headstone. “I’m happy to see they took care of you.” The thought of her lying dead in that hab unit for who-knows-how-long found its way back into Ryker’s thoughts.
God, he missed her so much. Everyday. He hadn’t been that close to his father, but his mother… She was something special. And the fact that she was gone still seemed unbelievable.
Ryker glanced over his shoulder, scanning for Erik. He spotted him crouched over one of the graves, the face of his helmet cupped in one palm. Carefully, Ryker approached without startling him. The tombstone came into view.
“Do you think she was alone?” Erik asked. “When she…” The last word stuck in his throat.
Ryker got down on his knees beside Sophia’s grave. “Hey,” was all he could manage before Erik abruptly stood up. “At least you know for sure.”
“She was just a girl.” Erik’s resolve crumbled. He began to quietly weep.
Ryker placed a steady hand on Erik’s shoulder. Seeing Erik like this made the man’s losses feel like Ryker’s own. As if their shared trauma somehow bound them together. He had been in Erik’s shoes more than once. More times than he could count, in fact.
After a minute or two, Erik regained his composure. He stood and faced Ryker. His expression was grim but determined. “I’ll help,” he said.
“What?”
“With the irogen.” He pulled in a sharp breath. “Sophia’s dead. I don’t want her to have died for nothing.”
Zach Croft: 2053
The rover pulled up in a whirl of dust. Zach loaded the drums inside, then climbed up after them. He turned to help Mabel before shifting his attention to Ryker in the driver’s seat. “What took so long?”
Ryker waved his hand as if swatting away a fly. “It was a long walk.” The rover rolled forward, sputtering and jerking as it picked up speed. Zach was unsure whether to blame Ryker’s shabby driving skills or the machine’s twenty-year neglect. It was probably both.
“Is it safe to take off our helmets?” Mabel asked.
Ryker turned down an alley between the schoolhouse and the canteen. “I barely got this thing to start. So, probably not.”
Mabel dropped her hands. “What’s the point of it being sealed off if it doesn’t have air?” Annoyed, she stared through the foggy window, squinting to make out the surrounding structures.
A relative calm occupied the next few minutes as decimated buildings rolled past. Zach pressed his eyes shut, willing his thoughts to cease.
“What the fuck…?” Ryker suddenly muttered with his mouth ajar.
Zach opened his eyes, looked out the window, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Hanging from the crossbeam of a partially collapsed building were five desiccated bodies in blue and black fatigues. Nooses of metal wire suspended them high into the air. Across the chest of each one, white paint spelled out TRAITOR.
Zach felt his stomach turning. His mind went blank. He had expected to see bodies in the colony, but not this. Not corpses strung up for public display.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Mabel groaned.
“Is there anything else you want to tell me about what went on here?” Erik asked firmly.
“I have no idea. Really.” Zach searched his mind for answers but came up dry. “I— I don’t know—”
“He’s telling the truth,” Ryker said, glancing at Erik. “This must have happened after we left.”
When they reached the tunnels leading to the crater, Ryker slowed the rover to a stop so they could get out and inspect the landscape. Zach stepped out of the vehicle and tried to make sense of his surroundings.
This was it. This was where it all started. His foray into the mines with Ryker had brought the Red Plague back to the colony, resulting in hundreds of deaths and leading to the failure of the entire Prescott mission, along with humanity’s best chance of escaping the solar flares.
And now he was back.
While Zach lingered beside the rover, Ryker jumped out and ambled to a steep drop-off into the crater. As he drew near, he froze, then turned and motioned frantically for Zach to join him. “Zach!”
“What’s the matter?” Zach called out through the intercom.
“Check this out!”
Zach went to Ryker and stopped at the edge of the dropoff. He grabbed Ryker’s arm to steady himself.
As he scanned the crater, he didn’t know whether to smile or scream.
Cora Keaton: 2053
“This is a day of mourning,” Carver said, adjusting the lapel of his fine black suit as his eyes dragged across a sheet of paper on the podium. He held back tears. “We have lost not one but two of our dearest friends.”
Friends, Cora thought. Zach was so much more than that. He was a brother, someone to rely on when things got tough, a good person with a good heart. The list of Zach’s merits was so long that Cora couldn’t finish it in one go. Instead, she stared straight ahead with a stony glare.
She knew she should be crying. People expected it of her. But how would that help Zach now? Breaking down in a sobbing fit would only make things harder. Instead, Cora ran her fingers over the coarse fabric of her dress, tracing them in circles to take her mind off the ceremony.
Carver’s voice boomed from the stage. “I knew Zach better than anyone. He was my apprentice and the closest I’ll ever get to a son. I’ll never forget all he did for me. For this agency.”
Cora didn’t know why Carver was leading the proceedings. It felt like the memorial should have been led by a priest or someone like that. Then again, Zach hadn’t been particularly religious, and Carver was closer to him than almost anyone.
Almost.
Cora and Zach had spent decades together. She didn’t have a single memory that he wasn’t a part of, from her fifth birthday, to graduating college, to the countless hours they spent jogging through the park. This park.
The wreckage had been cleared, and the city had filled the large craters it left behind with fresh soil. But it didn’t matter. Nothing grew in the new patches of land, as if the plants could sense it was hallowed ground.
I really failed this time, Cora thought. She had been unable to protect Zach. The promise she made to him twenty-three years ago—that nothing bad would ever happen to him again—had been broken. How could she have let him do this? How had she not tried harder to talk him out of it? It was her one job! And she couldn’t even do that.
She watched Carver lean against the podium. “In many ways, I saw myself in him,” he continued, making Cora wince.
Zach was nothing like him, not in a single way. Carver was selfish, controlling, and, most recently, a liar. Suggesting they were at all alike was an insult to everything Zach stood for.
If her job wasn’t on the line, Cora would have punched Carver across the jaw right then and there, smiling as he hit the ground in a crumpled heap. The nerve he had, standing up there while he pretended to give a shit. If he cared about Zach, he would have trusted him when Zach said the solar flares were getting worse. He would have funded Exodus. He would have authorized Zach’s request to return to Mars to harvest the newly-discovered irogen. And Zach would still be alive.
It had been a month since Cora saw Zach’s ship descending from the sky. The hope she had felt, thinking he was coming home, had been overwhelming. Then, the dropship exploded. She dodged falling bits of debris, barely able to catch her breath before the world erupted into flames. Chunks of metal burrowed into the ground as soot rained on her face. Trees were set ablaze. Fire trucks filled the streets. EMTs arrived and took her into their care, wiping her face clean. In those moments, she remembered thinking—was it Zach’s ashes they were wiping off? Mixed with burnt wood, vaporized composite, and god-knows-what else? Cora hadn’t gotten a good night’s rest since, tossing and turning for a few hours before giving up and watching reality TV until the sun came up. At this point, she practically survived off coffee and stale bagels. But who could blame her? She had just lost her best friend.
A few days ago, her mother had come by with a large basket of wine and chocolate, claiming the sweet stuff helped her through Victor’s death. Unwrapping it, Cora assured Sarina she was doing fine, though her voice showed little confidence. They reminisced about the past for a while, then clocked out on the couch. Sarina had wanted to come to the funeral today, but Cora informed her that only OSE personnel were in attendance; they could honor him once she got home. With a saddened look, Sarina nodded. “Go along, then. Don’t want to be late.”
Cora looked away from Carver, her eyes settling on a table beside the main stage. It boasted framed pictures of Mabel and Zach. The shrine had been set up in their honor, compensating for the fact that their bodies had never been recovered. It seemed dumb to bury two empty coffins. But that’s what OSE was doing.
Jason sat next to Cora, nodding at Carver’s words of sorrow with one hand clutching a handkerchief and the other closed into a fist. Cora patted him on the back, whispering, “It’s okay.”
“Today, we join their spirits with the Earth, as their lives were so swiftly taken from them,” continued Carver, looking from person to person, face to face. His eyes settled on Cora. “Ms. Keaton? Would you like to say a few words?”
Hearing her name, Cora nodded and mumbled a soft “Yes.” She reached down under her seat. Her fingers closed around what was left of Zach’s sweater, and she stood, holding it tight in her arms.
Cora cut through the lines of chairs and people, approaching the podium. When she reached it, Carver bowed his head and stepped aside, allowing her to take his place. For a few seconds, Cora surveyed the crowd and studied each member.
“Zach,” she started, “was a brother to me as he was a son to Nicolas.” Good. Getting a few Carver mentions would dilute the hatred she felt for him right now. “There was a time… We were thirteen or fourteen, and I broke my leg while mountain biking. The closest hospital was a few miles away, but neither of our phones had reception. While I was lying there, half-conscious, with my ankle shattered, Zach had to make a tough decision: leave me there and get help, or pray that someone found us.” She went quiet for a moment, reaching up to wipe her eyes. “Then, there was a third choice: pick me up and trek four miles to the clinic, not stopping until I was on a stretcher. Which do you think he did?”
There were murmurs of assent from the audience.
“It took three hours. By the time we got there, he was too weak to stand and had to be admitted alongside me. I don’t know what would have happened if he didn’t do what he did. Would help have eventually come? How long would we have been stuck there? I’m just grateful I never had to know.”
Carver took back the stage and celebrated Zach’s good nature with some experiences of his own, then handed the charred piece of his sweater to someone just off the platform. The shred of fabric was carried to the empty coffin and placed inside. Was that truly all they had left of him?
At the reception, Cora stared helplessly into the void with a glass of champagne in hand. She reluctantly ate a serving of pasta, thinking of Zach until every ounce was gone.
On occasion, someone would offer their condolences. Cora would explain that he’d live on through them all and through his work. The work Carver ignored.
There Carver was, nursing a glass of whiskey as he accepted apologies from all around.
“He was a great boy. You did a good job, Nicolas.”
“The smartest guy I’ve ever met!”
“You guys were two peas in a pod. I’m sorry.”
If it wasn’t for Carver, Zach might have still been alive.
He was to blame.
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