Fiction Fridays: Afterglow Chapter 4
Hi there! Thanks for reading. If you’re looking for Chapter 1, you can find it here. If you’re looking for Chapter 2, it’s here. Chapter 3 is here.
CHAPTER FOUR
I’m so scared, Mama. There’s a monster here. They let us off the ship but the alarms went off. Everyone started screaming. Mrs. Mary pushed me into a cleaning closet and shut the door. It’s so dark. I started praying to Jesus like we used to and eventually the screaming stopped. Maybe He sent a guardian angel to fight the monster. It’s been quiet for a while now, so me and Mr. Snuffles are going to go outside and find Mrs. Mary. I’m trying to be brave like you taught me, but please come soon.
Love, Rachel.
Molly believed in her gun, in violence, in revenge, and in Rachel. Also, she found herself believing in the little kid. She’d get them both out of here, if not for her sake, then for his. So Molly began to lock things back away in her Box of Broken Things. She locked away her memory of the Earth dying; all the ugly, horrible words she and her husband had said to each other in anger, countless family secrets that had hurt her, that she’d promised not to tell anyone, then immediately had told Will anyway. Her father’s cancer diagnosis. The fact that he’d beaten it, fallen into alcoholism, beaten that, and then died a fiery death with every other person who had fought and struggled and triumphed and failed. Even stupid, small pains she locked back away: the fact that her dog had died in the fireball too. That she hadn’t just lost her home, her husband, and her world, but every physical copy of memory that she and her ancestors had ever produced. Photos, heirlooms, everything. She locked away Declan Murdoch from Maine. She locked them all back up in her Box of Broken Things and shoved them away until she’d achieved that cold apex of clarity that she’d so carefully cultivated. The world didn’t care about her. But she damn well cared about her world.
So, she gave the little kid one last hug and got to her feet.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Jack,” came the reply.
“Okay, Jack, we’re going to get out of here.” She stripped off her pack and dug in it. Three clips, an incendiary grenade, a flashbang, and a knife. In the outside pocket she had three rations packs. She clipped the flashlight overhead so it illuminated a little pale orange orb on the floor. She emptied her pack onto it.
“Right,” she said. She handed Jack the knife. “Do you know how to use one of these?”
He nodded.
“Good.” She handed him a ration pack and tore open one of her own. “Eat. We have time now.”
They ate. Molly explained the plan. If they could kill the Avandii leader, get on the bridge and close the blast doors, the crew wouldn’t be able to breach the doors. That would leave them free to fly to Mars and let whoever was in charge there clean up the remainder of the thralls. They finished and set the wrappers aside. Molly unholstered her gun, explained it to Jack, then explained the incendiary grenade and the flashbang. She stowed them back in her pack.
“Right,” she said. “Ready?” He nodded and looked very small in the dim light of the utility closet.
“Kill the leader, run like heck.”
“Right. On three, I’ll open the door and we’ll make for the bridge.” He nodded again and flung his arms around her. She allowed herself to hold him there for just a second or two and then brushed him off, stood up, and readied her gun.
“One.” Jack gritted his teeth.
“Two.” She put her hand on the door.
“Thr—”
The Avandii burst through the closet door, fangs dripping venom. Molly was ready for it. She already had her gun raised. She pulled the trigger in three staccato thwackthwackthwacks. The bolts impacted on the alien’s chest, pushed it out of the doorway (and made the room smell like hell). Molly drove her shoulder into it and rode it to the ground, firing the Tek the whole way.
“Run!”
Jack ran. The gun clicked empty. She reversed her grip on it and pistol-whipped the monster over the head.
The Avandii wasn’t fazed. It curled, taking the blows, got its clawed feet between them and kicked her halfway down the hallway. She bounced, skidded, rolled, and came up running, heading toward the bridge. Jack was already there, his hand on the blast door controls. She dived, knocked him out of the monster’s path and slammed a new clip home in the Tek.
She never got the chance to fire it. The Avandii pounced, covered the last 20 meters of the hallway, and tackled her into a metal railing. Something popped in her back and icy cold washed down her legs. It got its hands around her throat, lifted her up and squeezed.
The fireworks came back. The balloons came back. Rachel’s face came back. The Avandii squeezed and, as the world started to fade to darkness, Molly pushed away all those other things and focused on her daughter’s face. She kicked feebly at the Avandii’s gorilla stomach, but they were the frantic, powerless kicks of captured prey. Her vision started to dim, and she wondered what it would be like to die. Even now, the darkness was creeping into her vision. She expected there to be a white light and, yes, there it was.
She waited to see what would happen next, but the pressure on her neck was suddenly gone, airway clear. She blinked. The white light was fading, leaving the ship’s bridge in its place. The Avandii was on its back. Jack stood over it, her Tek in one hand. The other was a bloody stump. From somewhere, a thought welled up: that brilliant little jerk stole one of my flashbangs.
The gun wavered in Jack’s hands.
“Jack,” she croaked, “The dial.”
The kid fumbled with the gun, hissing in pain as it touched the stump of his left hand, and dropped it. The alien shook itself, raised its head and kicked Jack’s legs out from under him. He screamed, dived for the gun, pinned it to the ground with his bloody wrist, twisted the dial to “incinerate” and shoved it into the Avandii’s knee.
The Tek belched indigo flame that caught on the monster’s hair and set it ablaze. The alien bellowed its howler monkey cry and crashed back to the floor. Jack followed it, Star Wars shoes lighting up with each step.
He emptied the clip directly into the Avandii’s eye.
The monster convulsed, twitched, and went still. Flames burned on its fur. The ship’s fire suppression system blared on and doused the corpse in liquid nitrogen. Molly got to her feet, shut the blast doors, and crossed to the kid.
“They killed my daddy,” he whispered over and over again. Blood dripped from his finger stumps. “They killed my daddy.”
Molly said nothing, just ejected the burning hot clip from the Tek and pressed it into the kid’s wrist. It sizzled, cauterising the wound. Jack didn’t make any indication that he’d felt it. Molly held him for another moment to make sure he was steady on his feet, then released him and set a course for Mars.
“They killed my daddy.”
She held Jack the rest of the way and thought about Rachel.