No Man's Land Page 14

  “No! You can’t! It’s too dangerous! They won’t listen to me. You should stay. Let me go.”

  “Joshen, you’re a man now. Be the leader I know you can be. Do this for your sister. I’ll destroy the fence and you can bring the people here to bury her. That will make a good start. But first, tie Charney up and get him inside. Donard may need him to fly the ship.”

  “What about Ella? She killed Coree!”

  Cheela walked over to Ella’s inert body and extricated the weapon from her stiff fingers. Then, with shaking hands and pounding heart, she blasted Ella right in the chest. Turning to Joshen, she said, “You won’t have to worry about her.”

  She couldn’t show weakness and expect strength from him. She walked over to the panel that Donard had indicated when he told her about the fence. She opened it, stood back, and fired the pistol. Flames and sparks belched from it. She saw her son in her peripheral vision, stopping momentarily in his work of tying Charney.

  She knelt again at the side of her daughter and held her cold stiff hand. “My sweet Coree. I must be brave like you.” I knew there was something wrong about them. Why couldn’t I have been the one to follow them? Tears dripped onto her daughter’s blood-matted hair.

  Cheela stood up, straightened her skirt, and took her final steps on her world, toward the instrument of her people’s suffering. Joshen looked determined and older as he came out of the ship, having deposited Charney. She put her hand on his cheek and brought him close and hugged him. She had to resist the urge to tell him all the things welling inside. There wasn’t time. She kissed him on the cheek, squeezed his arm. She lost Coree. Now she may never see her son again. Loss came through every family on the planet. But to give him up was the hardest thing she’d ever do. Harder even than killing.

  “I know I’m asking a lot of you but you must convince the others to split up and go four different directions as far from here as they can.”

  “Be careful, Mom.”

  “You too. Now hurry. I love you.” She closed the door before he could reply.

  Donard banged on the glass and demanded an explanation. The deradiation cycle could not be interrupted. She collapsed into a chair and, with no expression at all, watched him. Hot tears rolled down her cheek. She could feel her jaw muscles tense. She still wasn’t sure he’d go for this plan. She hoped those looks he had given her at home meant that he had feelings for her. She wasn’t sure she thought much of him. But after Coree’s death, she wasn’t above using him.

  In the Middle of Nowhere

  Laurie Gailunas

  Wendy “Kit” Kitling thought she was maybe getting the hang of this whole pacifism thing. She no longer dove for cover with every loud bang, no longer reached for a holstered weapon every time she heard a quiet sound behind her. She’d moved on from her life of loss and revenge.

  So when the two-way radio crackled to life, she felt no premonition of doom, had no inkling today would not be like every other day on the colony world of New Hope.

  Only a few people had shown up for clinic hours. One of the farmers, Sylvester Mott, arrived with a rapid pulse and purpling insect bite on his arm, his wife Helen with him. Alicia Mina and her infant daughter, Cissy, both had coughs and elevated temps. Marianne Simpson had tripped over a well cover and cracked her right ulna.

  Kit was loading a cart with casting materials when the call came.

  “Kit, it’s Max Stimpel.” The mayor and security chief. “We got a ship in orbit that worries me. It won’t answer our hails, won’t acknowledge anything we say. I’ve ordered everyone into bunkers at the Meeting House. A team is on its way to help evacuate the clinic, get all of you over here.”

  Kit grabbed some towels for the cart. Casting was messy business. “If there’s no comm, maybe there’s no ship,” she said into the radio. “How do you know that obsolete tracking system of yours isn’t sending a wrong signal?”

  “This isn’t a rogue signal, Kit. Too many details in the data. Start getting your patients ready.”

  “Isn’t this a little dramatic for just a silent, orbiting ship?”

  Max hesitated. “The ship’s a Shark design.”

  She sucked in a gasp and dropped the towels onto the cart.

  Denise, the nurse, looked up from her charting, eyebrows raised.

  Kit cleared her throat, managed to swallow. “But we’re as far from Sharks as it’s possible to get. That’s why I came here.”

  “I know, Kit, I know,” Max said. “I’m hoping, I’m praying, that it’s just some human who got their hands on a Shark vessel and is dumb enough to use it.”

  The door squeaked open and Kit tensed, but it was just four men huffing and puffing from running over.

  “I think the evac team is here,” Kit said.

  “Yeah, good. Get your people over here as fast as you can.” The radio clicked and Max was gone.

  Kit turned to face everyone, but found she couldn’t explain what was happening, couldn’t even say the word, ”Shark”. One of the evac guys, Ricardo Mina, hugged Alicia and Cissy, his wife and daughter, and did the explaining. His fear showed in the tight control of his voice and words.

  Kit’s training as both medic and warrior came into its own as she organized work teams to prepare her patients for transfer to the bunkers. She personally took charge of the two confined to beds.

  There was Crazy Jimmy, a regular visitor to the clinic. Yesterday he’d neglected his enzyme metabolizer supplement once again. In the ensuing dizziness, he drove a tractor into his mother’s hover scooter as she headed for town. Kit had casted his broken ankle, but was keeping him on an I.V. a few days while she got his enzyme levels stabilized.

  His mother, Nan Korlinski, lay in the bed next to him with a head injury from the accident, sedated and quiet.

  The little six-bed ward crackled with fear as they worked, and Crazy Jimmy muttered about the end of the world. He had a sixth sense about things, so when his voice cracked and stopped, everyone went quiet for a moment, watched, waited.

  Jimmy rolled and shook the side rail, trying to get out of the bed. “I have to pee.”

  “No, no, Jimmy, stay there!” Kit dashed across to his bedside. “Come on, man, stay in the bed. Denise is bringing a float pallet over for you to ride to the Meeting House.”

  “I have to pee before the monsters come.”

  “That’s fine,” Kit said. “Let’s get you onto the pallet and I’ll get you something to pee in.”

  Kit leaned over the pallet—a long stretch for her, the most petite woman in the colony—and helped him scoot over. She settled him with a urinal under the sheet, but didn’t draw the curtain around him. It was best to always keep Jimmy in plain view.

  As Denise and Kit un-tucked sheets around his mother and prepared to lift her onto a float, Denise said, “Are you going to be all right, Kit?”

  Kit snapped her head up. “There might be Sharks orbiting our planet, and you’re asking me if I’ll be all right? Denise, none of us will be, if it really is Sharks.”

  “Yeah, but, you’re the only one who knows what that really means.” Denise unhooked Nan’s I.V. pump and reached over to hang it on the pallet. “The rest of us, we grew up here. Everyone I know, except you, is Quaker or Mennonite or something. Nobody has ever been to war. We’ve never seen what Sharks can do. I’ve never even seen a real one, just pictures.”

  “Well, they’re gray, and kind of short, like me,” Kit said. “And they’re not really a fish, they’re marsupials. Oh, and the slits in their necks? We call them gills, because that’s what they look like, but they’re actually nostrils for air. That’s where you want to punch, or stab, if you’re cornered. Either there, or the nose. Or both if you live long enough. And do your best to stay away from those jagged teeth of theirs. Really, really nasty stuff.”

  Denise stared at her for a moment, trying to take in what Kit just said. “Somehow I don’t think seeing people bloody from an accident is the same as seeing them bloody from violence.”


  Kit’s memory flashed...hiding from Sharks behind a fence...her sister’s head exploding, splashing against their mother before she too collapsed... Kit’s vow of revenge...

  She forced in a deep breath, pushed the memory away. “No, it’s not the same.”

  “What I was getting at,” Denise said, “was that I think this is harder for you than the rest of us. So hang in there, OK?”

  “Yeah, I’m hanging. Now let’s get Nan moved.”

  Kit had the evac team pile a third pallet with towels, bandages, suture kits, I.V. pouches, and other supplies for the bunker. She loaded her pockets with the nano-injector and med vials she’d need for these patients in the next couple hours, plus a few extra vials of sedatives. No matter who the mystery vessel belonged to, some people were going to panic.

  Denise joined her and started stuffing her own pockets with meds. “Kit, what do we do if it really is Sharks, and they come down here?”

  Kit looked up at her. “Then we do the only thing you can do with Sharks. Fight or die. Or fight and maybe die anyway.”

  Denise’s face went still. “You’re in the Caritas Unity now, Kit. You know we don’t fight.”

  Kit turned away. “Then I guess we’ll just die.”

  As Denise and Ricardo lined up the pallets in a convoy, Kit decided to throw a cast on Marianne Simpson’s arm. It would just take a moment, she had the materials all set up, and it would make the woman more comfortable.

  “All right, Marianne,” she said, “let’s get that arm in a cast so you can get over to the Meeting House with everyone else.”

  “Is it going to hurt?” the young woman asked.

  “Not much. I don’t need to set yours, just cast it.” Kit held up a foil packet, about the size of her outspread hand. “See? Immobilization foam. Put your arm in this little trough here, like this. Once I open the pack and pour it over your arm, the foam expands and hardens instantly.”

  Kit started to open the pack when a scream erupted from the front of the building, a scream that stopped mid-breath. The radio chimed for attention just as the doors bashed open.

  Kit was on the other side of the room. She ducked behind a bedside curtain that offered no protection except a short-lived invisibility, and peered through a gap.

  Two gray creatures, males wearing only blue shoulder pouches, leaped into the room. How the hell had they snuck to the surface like this? That damned tracking system.

  Both Sharks started shooting heat darts, thin projectiles with a tiny explosive compound that also released a high-voltage current on impact. The current followed the major blood vessels, the path of least resistance, searing and destroying as it went. It usually grounded through the feet, unless the person was touching some other grounded object. Then it was the hands that fried. Lucky victims died instantly, their hearts overloaded by the electric charge.

  Denise gurgled and crumpled, one of the lucky ones.

  The colonists froze and stared. In the brief moment before their brains processed the scene, blood spewed from the mouth of Nan Korlinski.

  Crazy Jimmy pulled his full urinal out from under the sheet. Kit had forgotten all about it. He hurled it at one of the Sharks, and the little bomb hit it square in the face, surprising it, disrupting its aim for a moment. Maybe Jimmy wasn’t so crazy after all.

  The clang of impact and urine dripping off the Shark’s shoulders galvanized the stunned colonists. The room erupted in a pandemonium of screaming and running; a few made it out the door, some crawled under beds, Sylvester dove at a Shark’s knees and got his brain fried for it.

  Three years of Kit’s pacifist training shattered and her warrior conditioning flamed into action.

  She bit a tiny hole at the top of the packet still in her hand, and threw it like a grenade. The hole blew wide open when it smacked against the creature; white casting foam spilled across his shoulder and arm. The Shark blinked in surprise as his arm holding the heat gun froze in its fully extended position. Enough splashed against the gun to block its firing mechanism.

  The second Shark turned and broiled Jimmy.

  Kit grabbed another packet of foam, ripped it at the seam and hurled it at him, this time aiming for the face. The hole was too big, though, and foam spurted out as the pack sailed across the room, hardening the moment air touched it. Irregular white blobs tinkled to the floor like marbles falling on tile.

  Enough hit the Shark’s face to make it mad, but by then Kit had another pack ready, with just a tiny slit. She threw it just as the Shark turned his heat gun toward her, the foam busting open full in his face.

  Bingo. Blinded Shark. Another throw blinded the other Shark.

  The two creatures careened around the room, each trying to scrape the foam off his face. The one with the working gun fired blindly at the same time; maybe he’d accidentally shoot his comrade.

  The baby screamed, a sudden, high-pitched wail of pain. From her mother and father came a lower-pitched shout of disbelief.

  Kit grabbed a few more foam packs and dashed toward the blinded Sharks, dodging a couple of dazed colonists crawling on the floor.

  With a front snap kick, Kit knocked the one functioning heat gun from the second Shark’s partially webbed hand. He whirled, trying to find the attacker, but before he could find her, Kit slapped her foam packs against his shoulders, which were the same height as hers. His arms froze into place. She ducked quickly when he turned to bash her head in.

  Like a gunslinger reaching for holsters, she pulled two more foam packs out of her pockets, nicked the seal, and crushed them against his hips.

  This time she didn’t pull her hands away fast enough; a blob of foam sealed her left pinkie and neighboring finger together.

  A few more packs on the lead Shark kept him out of the way for a few minutes.

  The two Sharks hobbled around, their sputtering invectives muffled by the sloppy casts over their heads and joints. Kit scooped up the heat gun she’d kicked away. It was empty, but she tucked it into her waistband.

  Whimpers of fear sounded from around the clinic; Helen Mott crawled out from behind a waste barrel and scuttled out the door. The room smelled of the acrid effluvia of death excretions and the unmistakable stink of charred flesh.

  Kit used her right hand to try and break the cast off her fingers, but the hardened stuff was stronger than plaster or fiberglass. A Shark’s dense musculature would crack through it before too long, though. She’d only slowed the creatures down, not disabled them.

  A new series of screams sounded from outside.

  Kit wouldn’t be free to help the people in here or out there as long as these Sharks were alive. She remembered from her medic days caring for POW’s, that Shark metabolism had a different electrolyte balance than humans; they required more sodium and less potassium, so fatal hyperkalemia was easy to induce.

  In the med room, she wrenched open a cabinet door and pulled out the potassium chloride. Three bottles. She loaded a twenty cc syringe and attached a long, old-fashioned needle, which was more direct than a nano- injector.

  It was going to be tricky jabbing a big needle between the ribs of a moving target. Kit sidled up to each Shark, matched their motion and stabbed. She got one on the first try, and shot the deadly potassium straight in, as close to the heart at she could get. The other Shark needed two tries.

  The effect was highly gratifying; in less than a minute their hearts stopped. Each crashed down in a satisfying, final thud.

  “Are you hurting them?”

  Kit spun around. Marianne sat on the floor under a bed, holding her broken arm against her chest, her other hand clutching the lifeless hand of her husband.

  Kit couldn’t tell if the woman was concerned for the Sharks, or if her pacifist upbringing had shattered and she wanted the Sharks hurt.

  “No,” said Kit, “I’m not hurting them.” It was true. Sudden cardiac arrest did not hurt, it was the resuscitation that was a bitch. And there would be no resuscitation for these two. “I�
�m just sedating them so they can’t cause trouble.” (Oh, they died? Oops.)

  Kit searched the dead Sharks for charge pods for the gun. In her assault with the casting foam, though, she’d covered their ammunition pouches. She tried reaching underneath the casts, but the foam had adhered directly to the Shark’s skin. She could cut the damn things out, but that would take a while and she didn’t have time right now.

  She did a rapid triage of her patients.

  Marianne had no further injuries.

  Crazy Jimmy was, amazingly, still alive and gasping shallow, moaning, breaths. His right hand had exit burns, from where the heat dart’s current flowed out of his body. He’d been on a float pallet, hovering with nothing to ground him. He must have been touching a piece of furniture or something and thus let the current run its course. Poor Jimmy.

  Kit knew he would not survive long enough to get to a burn center off-world, and even there would probably not survive. With a lump in her throat, she pulled out her nano-injector of sedative, set it for a high dose, and pulled the trigger. He’d at least be comfortable while he died.

  Wiping her tears, she moved on to the next huddle of people, on the floor behind a supply cart. Ricardo Mina, his wife, and baby. When Kit called Ricardo’s name, he rolled over and looked at her with haunted eyes.

  “Cissy’s dead,” he said.

  “Let me see.”

  His wife lay, unmoving, next to him. When Kit reached to take the silent baby from her arms, Alicia’s eyes flew open and she locked her arms tight, holding the baby close. “You can’t have her!” the woman screamed. “She’s mine, and you can’t have her.”

  Ricardo spoke quietly, tried to calm her, get her to let Kit examine the baby, but Alicia just screamed louder and held on tighter.

  But Kit didn’t need to examine the baby, it was obvious she was dead. She tapped Ricardo’s shoulder, shook her head. “Are you injured?” she asked.

  “No. Alicia and I weren’t hit.”