The Darwin Effect (7 page)

The hum of the air handlers was constant, along with whatever other machines that ran ceaselessly behind these walls and ceilings. Those machines were the only sound in his room besides his slow breathing.

He tried to concentrate on his breathing for a moment as he closed his eyes. He wanted to give his mind a break from thinking, but he couldn’t seem to shut his mind down.

The same questions kept coming back to him over and over again.

Had all of them really been abducted and put into cryo-sleep? Had they been stuffed into the cryochambers on this spaceship and then launched out into space? What had happened to his wife and kids back on Earth? He tried to picture them in his mind, but their faces seemed a little blurry to him. He could see them in his mind, and he knew they were his family, but it wasn’t like he could see them clearly enough when he tried to focus on their faces, like minute details about them were fuzzy.

Tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes as he opened them again and stared up at the ceiling. He couldn’t help feeling that something bad had happened to his family. The possibilities that Sanders had listed were probably accurate: a missile blast that had wiped them out instantly, or a slower death from radiation sickness or starvation, or something else that had to do with the nuclear war that had devastated the Earth.

Cromartie tried to concentrate on the rumors of war that had been in the news. It was one of the last things he remembered before waking up here. He remembered reports all over the TV news stations, in all of the newspapers, but the details were still a little fuzzy. He remembered that there were major threats of a nuclear war. Iran had built up a huge nuclear arsenal and they couldn’t wait to obliterate much of the Middle East, starting with Israel. North Korea had been threatening to attack both Japan and South Korea with nuclear weapons. Russia, China, and America were all backing different countries. It seemed like the entire world was heading for war … but Cromartie couldn’t really remember the war actually beginning. Who had fired the first missile? Who had dropped the first bombs?

He rolled over and closed his eyes, wiping away his tears. He was frustrated and he just wanted to give his mind a rest. He wasn’t particularly scared to die now that he knew his family wasn’t with him anymore. Even if they were alive, he would never know, and he had no way to contact them or travel back to them. They might not know where he was right now, they might be wondering if he was alive or dead. They might be wondering where he had gone, possibly thinking that he had abandoned them.

And that was the worst thought of all.

He tried to concentrate on nothing. He was surprised to find that he was actually tired, exhausted from all of the stress over the last few hours. He just wanted to drift away and think of nothing …

Cromartie fell asleep and he began to dream.

Random images of his life flashed by in his dream: a childhood memory of riding his bicycle down his neighborhood street at night, pot holes in the pavement filled with water from a recent thunderstorm, the smell of rain in the air; his first job on a construction site with his cousin; the first few months when he started his own construction business …

Then those images morphed into a shadowy room where a man in a dark suit and tie was talking to another man who was mostly just a dark blob. Cromartie tried to focus his eyes on the men as they talked, but he couldn’t see them clearly. He tried to move but he couldn’t sit up—it felt like a giant hand was gently pressing down on him, holding him down on the table. The two men were talking, but their voices sounded garbled and so far away, like their words were coming to him from down a long tunnel that created a slight echo.

“Hard to believe we wiped out our own planet,” the man in the suit and tie said. “We’re like a virus that has killed its host.”

Again Cromartie tried to speak. He tried to call out to them for help. He needed help. He couldn’t move.

But maybe these were some of the men who had abducted him and put him onto this ship.

Panic surged through him. And then anger. He wanted to know where his wife and kids were. But he still couldn’t talk; he couldn’t even utter a sound.

Then he heard MAC’s voice from somewhere in the dream. The computer spoke to him in its calm and unemotional voice. “There are answers on this ship, Cromartie. There are clues you need to find that will help you survive.”

What are they?
he wanted to ask MAC … but he still couldn’t speak.

And then Cromartie snapped awake.

He sat up in his bed and looked around his small room. The light was still on over the desk. He sat there staring at the light and listening to his own heavy breathing. He was sweating. He felt like he’d just been about to learn something important in the dream, some critical piece of information that could save himself—maybe save all of them—and then he had woken up.

He thought about his dream, but the more he tried to remember it the faster all of it seemed to slip away.

Did he have some kind of brain damage?

Temporary short-term memory loss,
MAC had called it.

But Cromartie began to wonder if the damage was more severe than that.

A
braham had been asleep when a noise out in the corridor woke him up. It was a soft noise, a sly noise, like someone trying to be quiet. He lay there and listened for another moment and then he recognized the sound of someone shutting a door out there.

He got up and crept to his door. He opened it just a crack and peeked out.

Ward was walking down the corridor towards the bridge. He didn’t seem to be hurrying, but there was something strange about the way he was walking. He stayed close to the corridor wall, staring straight ahead and not looking back as he moved on down the hall.

Abraham opened the door wider and watched Ward.

Ward never looked back at Abraham even though he was fairly sure Ward had to have heard him step out of his room.

Before Ward reached the doorway that led to the next hall where the dining hall, kitchen, and eventually the bridge were, he turned to the archway in the right side of the hall which opened up to the metal stairway that led up to the upper level where the cryo-room was located.

Abraham slipped all the way out of his room and closed his door softly. He hurried down the corridor, trying to be quiet as he followed Ward.

He hurried up the metal steps and reached the top of them, waiting there for a moment, looking around. He didn’t see Ward anywhere.

He walked over to the circular archway that led into the cryo-room. For a moment he was sure that he would see the snarling face of Ward as he jumped in front of his path in the archway, demanding to know why he was being followed.

After a deep breath Abraham stepped inside the cryo-room. Maybe Ward had gone into the cryo-room to inspect the cryochambers, trying to find a way to get them to work again, trying to figure out a way to get back inside, back to the blissfully black sleep of suspended animation

Ward wasn’t in the cryo-room. He was somewhere up here on this level, but he wasn’t here in the cryo-room.

Abraham peeked back out through the archway of the cryo-room at the part of the hallway that he could see. The hallway up here wasn’t a straight line like the one on the level below them; this corridor had two sharp jogs in it where more storage rooms and machines were built into the walls.

There was a sound from somewhere farther down the hall; it was a very soft sound, just a slight scrape, like a shoe scuffing against the metal floor.

Ward was somewhere down that hall.

Abraham left the archway of the cryo-room and slinked down the hall, staying close to the metal wall. When he came to the first of those jogs in the corridor, he hid behind the wall for a moment and then peeked around the corner.

Ward stood very still in front of the airlock door. His face was slack and emotionless, his hands hung loosely down by his sides.

Was he going to try to open the door?

Ward still hadn’t moved a muscle; he wasn’t reaching for the large green button protected by the clear plastic shell mounted on the wall beside the door.

Abraham didn’t know what to do. Should he call out to Ward and stop him from opening that door? Should he go back down below and get the others?

Suddenly, Ward seemed to come alive. He glanced around like he knew someone was watching him, and then he turned around like he was going to walk back down the hall.

Abraham ducked out of the way just in time before Ward spotted him. He hurried down the corridor a few feet and then he slipped inside a small supply closet. The closet was nearly empty but it was still a tight squeeze. He closed the door almost all the way, but he left it open just a crack so he could watch Ward.

He braced himself, expecting the closet door to fly open. He expected Ward to be standing there, staring down at him, screaming at him, demanding to know why he was being stalked.

But Ward just walked on by.

This time Abraham got a closer look at Ward as he walked by, even if it was only for a brief moment. Ward’s face still showed no emotion and he stared straight ahead as he continued his purposeful walk. It seemed almost like he was in a trance, or maybe sleepwalking.

Was he sleepwalking?

Maybe it was some kind of side effect from the suspended animation, like the short-term memory loss. He would have to ask MAC about it later.

Abraham made himself wait a few more moments before he left the small closet, just in case Ward might be waiting for him down the hall or at the top of the stairwell.

But Abraham made it all the way back to his room without seeing Ward again.

C
romartie asked everyone to gather in the dining area so they could eat together and talk more about what was going on. They all seemed open to the idea except Ward, but even he grudgingly agreed.

They sat at the built-in table with plates of freeze-dried food and cans of prepared meals in front of them. They had heated some of the food in the microwave ovens. Ward called these containers of food MREs (meals ready to eat). He said they were similar to what he had stocked at his bunker in Georgia.

Cromartie didn’t think he wanted to eat, but once the food was prepared he found that he was very hungry. He wolfed down half of his food as he stood at the counter. He turned and watched the others.

Butler sat at the table with an untouched container of food in front of her. Abraham tried to coax her into eating, but eventually he had to feed her with a spoon. She accepted the food and chewed methodically before swallowing.

Rolle cut his food into tiny pieces with a determined slowness.

Ward stabbed at a piece of meat (Cromartie was sure that it was some kind of fake food designed to look and taste like meat) and popped it into his mouth. Like he did everything else, he chewed quickly and forcefully.

Cromartie couldn’t get the dream he’d had out of his mind. He was sure parts of the dream were his memories, flashes from his past that were all jumbled up together: his wife, his kids, his construction business, even the two shadowy men talking while he lay on a table while most likely being prepped for suspended animation. But there was something else in the dream, the voice of MAC. There were answers on the ship: that’s what MAC had told him in the dream. Maybe it was his own mind in the dream trying to tell him that there were clues here on this ship that he wasn’t seeing because his mind was still somewhat scrambled from the shock of waking up here. Maybe there were clues to their salvation, clues that led to a hope of survival … he just needed to
see
them.

But what were the clues? The more he tried to focus on that part of the dream, the more it slipped away.

Yet he still couldn’t help feeling a sense of hope inside of him, like there might be some kind of chance at surviving this. It was the first positive feeling he’d had since waking up inside of that Plexiglas chamber.

“I’m telling you,” Ward said as he chewed his food, “that computer’s fucked up.” Ward glanced up at the ceiling as if MAC might be listening to him, but he really didn’t seem to care. He looked at Butler, pointing at her with his steak knife. “That computer could’ve fried us all. Who knows how close we came to ending up like her. Could you imagine the six of us stumbling around the ship in a stupor like that?”

Ward barked out a laugh and stabbed another piece of the meat into his mouth and chewed.

Sanders stared at him with disgust.

“Hell,” Ward said as he continued talking around a mouthful of food. “Maybe it would be better to be like Butler. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.”

Sanders was about to respond to Ward, but she snapped her mouth shut like she didn’t want to talk to him.

Cromartie could tell Sanders was steeling herself, doing her best to control her temper. He was sure it was something she’d had to do often as a cop in the streets of Los Angeles. He looked from Sanders to Ward. “What good is it doing us for you to be so angry?”

Ward chuckled as he sucked at his teeth. He pushed his metal container of food away and locked eyes with Cromartie. “What good is it doing us to sit around here waiting to waste away and die? What good are your little meetings doing us?”

“We could think,” Cromartie said. “We could come up with some ideas.”

“Ideas about what?” Ward asked, still chuckling. “About a way out of this? There is no way out of this. We’re in the middle of space. Too far from our destination. Too far away from Earth, an Earth that’s been destroyed by nuclear war.” Ward looked up at the ceiling. “If that stupid computer’s even telling us the truth.”

“Maybe MAC
is
malfunctioning,” Cromartie said. “But maybe there’s some kind of way around MAC so we can get back into cryosleep, some kind of override or something.”

Ward sighed like he was trying to discuss something with a child. He looked up at the ceiling again. “MAC! Good morning!”

“Good morning, Ward.”

“MAC, can I ask you a question?”