A Short Story
by S.V.Wolfland
Poetry & fiction
Poetry & fiction
Doom’s Day
You will take a gun from the rack. You will walk down the corridor. You will smell the unfamiliar smell of an ion-based atmosphere. It will be dark, dimly lit in sickly green, like something underwater. You will pick up a helmet. You will carry on, choosing arbitrarily left, right or straight on, at intersections in the passages. You will put on the helmet. As you go over a strip in the floor, a door slides open to your right. You decide to enter, and go that way. The floor opens suddenly in front of you. You stop short, and begin to edge carefully round the perimeter of the opening, on the thin ledge, trying not to fall in. You can see that if you make your way round the lip, which as your eyes become accustomed to the darkness, you see is a circular pit, - that a door at the further side, provides an exit. It is almost opposite the one from which you entered. You think of going back; but the silver metal door has shut behind you, and you can see no way of opening it from this side. You continue, aware of the weight of the gun. By keeping one hand on the wall to your left, you are slowly making the circuit. You can see the pit open just centimetres from your feet, it falls straight down, a long, long way, into darkness. It is some thirty metres across. It feels like eternity, but at last you reach the other side. You stumble through the door, which is really just a circular cut in the rock. You have come out of the artificial passages, and appear to be in a kind of cave system. The light now is a forbidding mauve, - sometimes you feel as if you can hardly see your own feet. From time to time, a hideous beam of puce light, flashes across your path, and illuminates the high rock walls of the cavern you seem to have entered. But you can’t see where the source of the light could be coming from. It is unnerving in its randomness. Is it a searchlight of some kind? Could it be looking for you? You start to sweat. So far you have not been caught in the beam. After you have been going some time, the weight of the gun starts to drag.
At last the light seems to be changing. You are nearing the end of the cavern. A faint red glow tinges the walls ahead. As you approach, the light gets stronger, the crimson deeper. When you get to the portal, your eyes can hardly stand the sudden immense heat. You fumble with the switches on your suit, trying to find the cooler option. The refridgeration unit begins to cut in, but the heat still feels smiting, you stagger back against the scorch and the weight of the air, leaning against the rock wall. You begin to try and focus on what it is that’s making the light and the heat. The stench of the sulphur is sickening even with the filters in your headgear. As the moisture unmists from your helmet, you can see an enormous chasm, stretching away right across the floor, but this one isn’t dark, it’s full of burning acid, with flames that leap up occasionally, ten metres high and more, to try and lick at the roof. It looks like something from the centre of the Earth. The vermilion is so intense, and the liquid acid lake shifting so much with the chemical reaction, you feel as if you were inside a goblet of wine, hot spiced wine. It is dizzying, the heat making you feel drunk. The redness though brighter than the purple, blearing your vision, not least because the flames can get so sharp, they give you retina burn. Finally you feel cool enough to go on, and you half stagger, half slip, down the incline toward the floor of the new cave. Again, even if you wanted to go back, you remember the pink searchlight; you go forward.
Around the sides of the hell-fiery lake, there are signs of what you take to be a struggle. You stop to look at the bodies of the combatants, spat at by the acid drops that fall from time to time. You arm yourself with extra weapons from them, take cans of what looks like concentrate, and medi-bottles from their belts. On one body, you see a shining medallion. You are sure it will be useful for something, from what you have been told. And in any case it looks valuable. You unclasp the chain, and take it for your own. When you have as much as you can carry, a blue sign flashes up - time to get out of here; you run, by now just cool enough to be capable, to make for the huge spiral you can see ahead beyond the cave mouth. You take a swig of a medi-bottle, to recoup strength from your heat-exhaustion. An alarm has begun somewhere, you can hear it rise and fall, and rise again - wailing distantly. Someone has been alerted to your presence. You run. When you reach the immense spiral causeway, like the inside of a vast shell, all interior laid bare, instead of trying to walk down it, or negotiate the endless slope, you just sit down and slide. You were making for up, up toward the surface - but the only direction this causeway will take you is down. You have no choice but the quickest method - the chase has begun. The smooth carved stone is malachite coloured, and slips past, in a wheeling motion, as you ceaselessly loop the loop downward - you must be descending fifty, sixty, no - seventy metres at least, maybe more - for some reason it feels like forever and a moment caught in time, all at once. You look up, and notice the cavern roof plummeting farther away from you. The frictionlessness of the stairless stairway makes you wonder if it is some natural geological feature.
When you get to the bottom, you are forced to arrest your descent by throwing yourself to the left, to avoid being catapulted into a slimy-looking underground channel, ahead. You get up, dusting yourself off, and try to take some bearings. The light down here is a subdued blue - for some reason you are reminded of sewage pipes, though the smells that come through the helmet aren’t anything you recognize. The water channel looks distinctly unsavoury, and, like everywhere else you have been, the walls and high ceilings are windowless, all obviously below ground, without a hint of starlight. The blue is either for workers down here, or from some natural phosphorescence, but you can’t decide which, not being able to detect a light source. You hear something behind you, turn, shoot, instinctively - you hit something, but it has darted behind a pillar, or into an opening off the tunnel. You could look for it, but nothing fires back; you run.
Following the channel is the quickest route, and you keep beside it, trying not to fall into it, or even let your boots touch the viscous surface, but from time to time, you dislodge stones, and they fall in, making a noise that you come to hate. Everything is straining to get out of here. You are hoping that the sewers must join up somehow with a level nearer the surface. You go on for some time. Finally, you hear splashing - it isn’t you, or a loose piece of stone. Something, someone, maybe many, are coming up the channel behind you. But you are still some way ahead. The dark blue light makes you curse - you wish you could see better in this gloom, you are sure your progress would be faster if it were brighter.
The sounds are getting nearer - they are beginning to gain on you - you fire a couple of shots over your shoulder, and realize that why the run has been so punishing is because you have been going at an incline. All the time, in the half light, you have been running uphill. But the twists and turns have disorientated you. You feel a little better, now you realize why you are quite so exhausted. At last it looks as if you are coming to the end of the sewer tunnel - and not before time. Though you can’t place the smell, it’s still getting to you, and the sounds of the hunters are getting closer by the second. Coming to a kink in the tunnel, you see a metal rack, like a ladder attached to the wall. You go to it, and put your foot on it, automatically, and start trying to climb, though every bar seems irregular to you - you keep going, onward and upward, till you feel as if you’re about to drop off the ladder from sheer exhaustion. You remember the medi-bottles, and stop, to drain a second one, then wonder how long it’s been since you ate, and break open a concentrate, clinging to the ladder with one arm. When you’ve stuffed enough in your mouth, you replace the visor (though the smell grows less the higher you go), and keep chewing, as you go, waiting for the energy kick. You try not to look down, or to think about the growing drop below. Will the hunters have reached the bottom by now? Will they guess you went up? Are they fresher than you are?
At last you reach the top. There’s some sort of trapdoor if you can just...work out...the catch...the mechanism - yes! it swings down, suddenly, almost sweeping your head from your shoulders, but you dive down, just in time. It swings back against the wall beside you, and light streams past you, bright, natural-looking light - you steady the door, throw some of the things from your belt up first, in order to make your passage through the hole easier, and heave yourself up into the light, scrambling over the opening, to secure a place on the solid floor. The brightness is only like daylight, but it’s blinding - you take time to adjust. Then, sprawled on the floor, and blinking, you hear a voice say, from somewhere behind you -
‘Why did you shoot at my son?’ you reach for the gun, but you threw it up first before you, and you know that being behind you, they have the advantage, so you speak -
‘What?’
‘Why are you here? And why did you shoot at my son?’ You hear yourself answer -
‘...He was chasing me’
‘He was chasing no one. What are you doing here? How did you get here?’
‘......’ you open your mouth to speak - are trying to understand, but you pass out, instead.
You are lying in a room, with a window - you can see a sky of binary suns, daylight. It’s beautiful, and for a moment, is all you want to do, just go and explore the surface? Or are you just still delirious.
‘Why are you here?’ a whole group of them, and the voice you recognize.
‘I just came to look around.’
‘Why did you steal from our dead?’ A vision of the red lake crosses your mind -
‘I thought they’d had a fight. Thought they’d have caught me, if they’d found me.’
‘So you did not cover them, or take them out of the way of the fire.’
‘No.’
‘Instead you stole from them; Why?’
‘Finders, keepers?’ that is your logic, what you have been told. Does it sound weak?
‘Finders -’ You cut in -
‘I was hungry.’
‘Had you looked for someone to contact, they would have fed you.’
‘I felt sick - the sulphur-’
‘You were already somewhere we don’t ourselves go by choice. They had not fought, they were there doing research. There was a core-flare and they were caught in it. Others were coming, who would have had medical aid. And why did you steal the medallion?’
‘The medallion?’
‘Yes - why? Are you a thief?’
‘I thought...it was...It looked...useful.’
‘It wasn’t yours. It’s the property of his family. His friends.’
Your throat feels dry as a bone.
‘I was being chased.’
‘Only after you had stolen a dead man’s belongings. Things to be handed down to another.’
‘I...’ your brain is trying to untie knots.
‘And why did you shoot at my son?’
‘What was he doing down there?’
‘Looking for a sewage worker who reported he was lost.’
‘Ah...’
‘He may die of the injury.’
‘Well, I’m sorry...about that...’ you are thinking of things to say. Surprized they speak your language.
‘Why are you here?’
Because KST (Kill/Some/Time) offer exploration packages, stunt trips, danger sports, call it what you will, to the thrill-seeking treasure hunters they call frontiernauts? Get put down on another planet, and see how many aliens you can kill, and what you can bring back in one piece...because if you do make it, you’re not expected to know who, or why or even where - and not leave the living behind you. Talking to your opponents didn’t enter your calculations. Isn’t in the adverts for a start. The only thing you can think of to say -
‘So you’re telling me you only chased me because I didn’t hang around to meet a welcome committee? Because I found your dead and stole from them instead of praying for ‘em?’
‘Yes.’ And you were told all these worlds were full of psychos - dumb ones at that, out to kill you first, but that outwitting them shouldn’t be too tough.
‘Why did you shoot my son?’
‘Paranoia - I thought he was after me.’ You can’t think of anything else to say. Do you turn away? You don’t understand his (?) expressions yet, but you don’t want to look him in the face.
‘Why are you here?’ - And what will you say to that?
© S.V.Wolfland. All rights reserved.
This story first appeared in Canadian sci fi journal, Sputnik57.
