Writing in Public: Story 4, Chapter 23

[image error]CHAPTER 23

Jian joined the Marines to help move equipment.  Hope retreated into the meteorite tent to help pack up the notes.  Sanger and Lewis had a big box on the table and were packing notebooks into it.  There was a surprising number of notebooks.

They also kept looking inside the notebooks and trying to organize them as they put them in the boxes.

Zuver was on the other table, dumping handfuls of notebooks into the box.  No effort to organize them whatsoever.  Hope liked that better and started passing over notebooks.

“People can be foolish in danger,” Zuver murmured.

“Like running back into a fire for a photograph,” Hope said.

“There’s nothing you can do to help resolve this?”

Before Hope could answer, the ghost appeared next to Zuver. One second not there, the next there.

The ghost looked nearly identical like the 49ers, except that it didn’t have the tentacles.  The hands were a different shape, too, which three big fingers rather than shovel-like ones.

“Not yet,” he said, his three eyes blazing.  His voice sounded like gravel being tossed together with water.

“What do you mean?” Hope said.  “What’s ‘not yet’?  Why haven’t you talked to me before?”

Hope’s belly jerked.  She had a bad feeling about this.  She forgot that there were three scientists with her.  Not noticing that they had all stopped to gape at her because she had started talking to empty space like a crazy person.

The ghost walked through the table.  He stood taller than her, and was only a foot away.  He stared down at her.

The menace in those three eyes made her shudder.

“Not finished,” he said.

“What’s not finished?”

“You fix.”

No, no, no.

“You fix,” the ghost said again.  “They came and they came and they killed us.  They killed us.  You kill them.”

Hope blinked.  Then outrage soared.  What was it about these aliens that they all wanted her to kill each other?

“No!  Have you lost your mind?”

“No choice.  You will fix.”  And this time she heard the chilling satisfaction in his voice, like a cat contemplating its prey.  “You will fix after what they do.”

“No choice?  What’s the mean?”

Then—

Lord.

She launched out the door, adrenalin pushing her through the heavy gravity.  She was vaguely aware that someone had followed her out.

She didn’t bother to look around.  She bellowed like a drill sergeant.  “We have to leave NOW!  The 49ers are coming back!”

It was only then that she noticed that it was too late.  Jian was a fierce warrior, back behind the line of Marines.  Brooks was at the end of the line, along with the pilots of both shuttles.  All lay in the sand on their bellies, devil blasters aimed and ready.

In the distance, the 49ers marched, and with a lot more reinforcements.  There wasn’t going to be time to run to the shuttles.  There might not be time to stay alive.

She smelled the mildewy smell of ghost.  He was behind her.

Watching.

Smiling.

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