Missed a chapter? Go to the Table of Contents to catch up.
Chapter 9
Zach Croft: 2053
He fucking told them.
He always told them.
And they never believed him.
Even now, as Zach watched the catastrophe in Guatemala on the news, he was sure the MagRes team would brush it off as nothing. They always did. He turned up the TV’s volume in an effort to drown out his thoughts.
The news broadcast showed a bird’s eye view of a small rainforest village entirely ablaze. Black helicopters circled it, dropping thousands of gallons of water over the smoldering town.
Dark columns of smoke billowed into the air as flames surrounded the village like a border of molten lava. Trees were swallowed by the dozens. People were escorted out of their homes with only the clothes on their backs, herded onto evac helicopters, and flown to safety as their belongings were left to burn. The water hoses only seemed to aggravate the flames, suppressing them to embers before they exploded again, with their orange tendrils reaching higher than ever.
Suddenly, the camera zoomed out, revealing more fire as far as the eye could see.
“We are here at the village of Corazón del Bosque in southern Guatemala after a devastating solar flare hit earlier today.” The reporter was in one of the helicopters, struggling to shout over the roar of the propellers. The wind whipped through his hair, and his eyes were puffy and red from the smoke. “Countries all along the equator have felt the effects of today’s disaster.” He explained the horrors on screen for a few minutes, then passed it over to a female reporter in Kenya. In the savannah behind her, flames consumed the tall grass faster than Zach could comprehend.
Zach took a sip of beer, shook his head, and let his neck go slack. He wondered if Carver was watching the same broadcast. Did it matter? Carver was probably looking at the flames and thinking, Hm. They must be making smores.
The doorbell rang, and Zach perked up. It was likely Cora coming over to check on him. Or maybe she had found some lead on Ryker. Not wanting to keep her waiting, Zach pulled his tired body up and walked to the door, wincing as the bell rang several more times.
“Alright, alright! I’m coming!” What was so urgent? As he opened the door, Zach knew in an instant what was so urgent.
Ryker Gagarin was on his porch.
Zach Croft: 2030
The stock of the rifle felt cold against Zach’s shoulder. As he wound through the labyrinth of red boulders, his finger tensed against the trigger, ready to fire at the first sign of his target. But where to look? The Slabs, a secluded part of the dome densely populated with rocky overhangs, seemed deserted. But it wasn’t.
Zach could sense that the creature was nearby. He kept the weapon pointed straight, ducking into the shadows behind one of the rocks. The war paint was beginning to dry on his face. It mixed with the sweat and sand from when he dove to safety earlier, along with a streak of blood from where he had scraped his chin on a jutting blade of rock. It didn’t matter now, though. What mattered was survival.
After collecting himself for a moment, Zach pulled himself back up and returned to the hunt with renewed strength.
Suddenly, something hit him from above. A rock? He turned to see a cloaked figure jumping from one overhang to another.
Then it tripped, losing its footing and sliding ten feet down, where it landed curled up in the soil. Zach readied his gun, training the barrel on the beast. As he drew nearer, his legs were swept out from under him. The creature got on top of him, wrestling the weapon from his hand. Zach managed to knee it in the stomach, flip it onto its back, and pin it down.
“Okay, okay! You’ve got me!” Ryker conceded.
With a laugh, Zach released him and seized the toy dart gun from a few feet away, aiming it at the wall of orange rock beside them. “You work for me now. Tell me where your allies are!” Zach swiveled around and pointed it at Ryker’s head.
“Please don’t shoot me! I’ll tell you anything.” Ryker peeled off the green cloak meant to resemble alien flesh and tossed it aside. “Look! I’m human again. It’s a miracle! Now, we’re on the same team, right?”
Zach allowed it. “Fine. But don’t get in my way.” He pulled out a smaller weapon, a blue pistol, from his back pocket and tossed it to Ryker. It traveled slowly in the low-gravity environment but eventually made its way into Ryker’s hands.
Ryker carefully loaded a foam dart into the barrel and held it at the ready position. “The Zorbotrons are camped out at the schoolhouse. I’ll escort us there if you allow it.”
“Permission granted,” Zach said hesitantly. “Go. Get a move on, alien scum.”
“I already told you I’m human again!”
“I know what your species can do. Changing from this to that and back again. I don’t trust you for a second. But for now, you’re my best shot at taking down the emperor.” With Ryker out in front, they twisted through the maze of stone and reached the far side, leading out into an empty stretch of sand.
“We have to be careful,” Ryker warned. “They usually have sentinels posted.”
Zach scoffed, patting the body of his gun. “A couple of guards isn’t anything to worry about.” They continued silently. After crossing the long expanse of sand, Ryker led the way back into the settlement, where stone roads had been paved during the past few weeks. Rows of hab units, arranged similarly to neighborhoods, lined the paths and provided cover as they slithered to the schoolhouse.
The newly operating mines and processing plant ensured that most workers were gone during the day, either a hundred feet underground or sweating in the nearby processing facility. Of course, stragglers still roamed the regolith streets, mostly the children and spouses of the miners.
When they reached the school, Ryker ducked into the alley behind it, signaling for Zach to follow. “The coast is clear, Commander.”
But it wasn’t. When Zach popped around the corner, a boy hidden behind a trash can shot a dart at him. Zach lunged out of the way and landed on his stomach, looking down the scope to see three others emerge from where the trash can was, armed to the teeth, ready for battle. Damn Zorbotrons.
Ryker proved to be a traitor, claiming a rifle from one of the assailants and firing on Zach. “For Zorbia!” he called out, foam darts whizzing through the air.
Zach managed to get in a few shots but was forced out of his position. How could he pull this one off? He was outnumbered five to one! He ran through the school’s back door, nearly tripping over one of the desks, and made his way to the front entrance. Crashing through it, Zach made for the residential district. Retreating was probably the best option he had, however cowardly it was. But one of the Zorbotrons, a girl named Sophia, cut him off on the other side of the street and landed a shot to his head.
He recoiled, fell to the ground, and plucked the suction cup dart from his forehead. The other aliens surrounded him. There was no way out. No path for escape. This was the end. Zach nudged his weapon to the side, spreading fingers across his thighs. “Okay. You win.” He rose to his feet and accepted a pat on the back from Ryker, and a playful punch from Sophia.
Then, as if they hadn’t been at war only a few seconds ago, they all started laughing. Doubling over in the sand. Pointing finger guns at one another. They were so excited they neglected to notice the object streaking across the sky or the ground beginning to shake beneath them.
Then, the blast threw them off their feet.
Ryker Gagarin: 2053
Zach finished pouring Ryker a cup of coffee, then the two men entered the living room and sat down.
Ryker clutched his mug as if his life depended on it, not caring if it was burning his hands. Zach studied him from across the zoom. “I just don’t get it,” Zach said.
“Get what?”
“How you’re alive right now. I keep running it over in my head, and I still can’t understand it.”
Ryker’s life was simple up on the Gateway. Wake up at the same time every day. Eat produce from the hydrofarm. Glance through the windows every so often for signs of rescue. Spacewalk, if he had no other choice. Rinse, and repeat. Then, something would go into catastrophic failure every few months, and he would figure out how to fix it. He could feel Zach’s eyes on him, awaiting a response.
“Things weren’t that bad,” he lied. “After a while, the days blended together, and I accepted that—” Ryker hesitated, unsure whether he should continue.
“Accepted what?”
Silent, Ryker stared into the ripples of his black coffee, remembering the vast blue oceans visible from orbit. “That nobody was coming back for me,” he finished with a glance at the sky outside.
An awkward silence swept over them.
“They told me you were dead,” Zach said. He seemed unable to meet Ryker’s eye.
Ryker offered a flat smile. “And what made them think that?”
“I already told you. They said there were no signs of life. No motion, no heat, no vitals.” Zach paused. “Why didn’t you radio to the ground? The Comms system was—”
“I tried… God knows I tried.” Ryker looked at the TV, wanting to change the subject. He could only answer so many questions before the ones he didn’t want to answer came up. “So, what’s the deal with all this? The world’s just on fire?”
For a moment, Zach seemed hung up on continuing his interrogation. But he soon relented and gestured at the TV. “Yeah, that…”
“It’s gonna be okay, right?”
“Do you want the ‘welcome back’ answer? Or the ‘we’re all fucked’ one?” Zach winced a little.
“The… welcome home one?”
“Basically, we’re all fucked.” Zach took a sip of beer.
Ryker awkwardly chuckled. “I see I came at a weird time.” He picked at the arm of the couch. “So… what, exactly? Why are we fucked?”
“See that?” Zach pointed to the TV with his beer hand. “Take everything you see and multiply it by fifty. Then, add enough radiation to make Chernobyl look like a grape juice spill. Add a dash of charged particles from the sun, a sprinkle of mass extinction, and you’ve got yourself a party.”
Ryker crossed his hands over his thighs. He’d seen forest fires from space, but never anything like Zach described. Part of Ryker didn’t want to believe him. It was simply too unreal to consider. “How long do we have?”
Zach checked his phone. “It’s October, so…” He looked at the ceiling, a sigh sinking through his chest. “About eleven months. A little more with some luck.”
Eleven months until the world ended? Suddenly, Ryker wished he could go back a day and stop himself from leaving the Gateway. “Well, you’re doing something about it, right?”
Zach smiled, a vacant look taking hold of his eyes. “God knows I tried.” He stood up and turned the TV off. “And I’m going to keep trying. But right now, I can’t do anything about anything except for you. So I’m gonna figure out why you were left behind.”
“The airlock closed, Nancy Drew. What more is there?”
“Yeah, but why did it close? We were about to go home. Why then?”
“You think someone did it on purpose?”
“I don’t know what I think.” Zach tossed the remote on the couch. “I’m going to sleep. We can talk about this more once we’re both well-rested.”
Zach headed for his room, but Ryker stopped him at the last moment. “Hold on.”
“What’s the matter?”
Ryker hated what he was about to ask. He hated himself for it. For years, he had done everything himself. Looked after himself. Cared for only himself. It had been so long since he’d had anyone that the idea of asking for help seemed unfathomable.
He knew he could fend for himself, so why was he there instead of figuring out how to rebuild his life? “Do you mind if I crash here for the night?”
Zach nodded. “Of course. Stay as long as you need. Blanket’s in there.” Zach pointed to a nearby closet. “Top shelf.” Then, he walked into his room and shut the door.
As nervous pins and needles danced across his skin, Ryker pulled out the blanket and settled on the couch.
The next morning, silence filled the house like the wind had lost its voice. Orange-red sunlight streamed in through the window beside Ryker. He opened his eyes, lifted his hand, and looked at the G-engraved ring. Good. It was still there.
The silence made the hair on Ryker’s arms stand up straight. If there was one thing he didn’t miss about the Gateway, it was the constant machine hum. He had gotten so used to it that the quiet almost hurt his ears. But the silence didn’t last long.
Ryker sat up as a disheveled Zach walked into the living room. His eyes were sunken and purple. He grabbed a loaf of bread from the kitchen and peeled off the plastic. “Sorry if I woke you.”
Ryker pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve been woken by worse.” Memories of blaring sirens, mysteriously closing airlocks, and sudden shifts in the Gateway’s trajectory jabbed at the back of Ryker’s head. Once, he’d been choked awake when the station’s oxygen generators had failed. “Do you have any apple juice?”
“In the fridge. Bottom shelf.”
As Ryker stood, a ringing phone echoed from another room. With a grumble, Zach went and answered it. “Hello?”
From the kitchen, all Ryker could hear was a murmur on the other line. He pulled out the bottle of apple juice and took a swig straight from it. Then, he heard a hiss behind him and turned around.
Zach leaned against the doorframe of his bedroom, the phone sandwiched between his cheek and shoulder, and waved Ryker over.
Ryker sauntered into the bedroom and mouthed, “What’s the matter?”
“Wilford Owen,” Zach whispered.
“Who’s Wilford Owen?”
“He’s—” Zach stopped, listening to the voice on the phone. “Yes, I’m with him right now. I’ll put you on speaker.” Zach tapped a button on the screen.
“No—don’t!” Wilford said, then sighed. “Fine. Just listen. I have information for you.”
Zach crossed to the drawer beside his desk. “Hang on. Let me grab a pen.”
“No. I can’t tell you over the phone. I need to give it to you in person.”
“Okay.” Zach sat down on his bed. “Where?”
“My cabin. It’s on Morton Road in Big Bear. Last house on the right. Just keep driving until you see my mailbox.”
“Okay—”
“Don’t tell anyone you’re coming. And make sure you’re not being followed.”
Zach and Ryker exchanged worried looks. Why all the secrecy? “Yes, okay,” Zach said. “I can do that. Thank you.”
There was a knock at Wilford’s door. “Ah, jeez. I gotta get that.” Wilford groaned as he stood and walked across creaking floorboards. “I’ll see you in an hour, Zach.”
“An hour—?”
The line went dead.
Want to keep reading? Don’t want to wait?
You can buy The Forgotten Colony on Amazon today. The Kindle ebook is only 99 cents, and can be read on any smartphone, tablet, or computer via the free Kindle app.
jbryderauthor.com 