Meridien K - Chapter 8: The Blood In Their Eyes

There are certain elements of group fear that you can never decide are for the best or the worst. Like if you look around and see everyone nervous as you are, or if you're scared as hell and everyone around has faces calm as grazing cattle. Both versions get in your head in very bad ways.

             

It was a mix of both, mil and civ alike, as we grabbed all our gear and chucked most of the unnecessary things when the normal lights kicked out and the reds turned on, ha ha, red like Mars looming down below, not down there floating but threatening to pull us in mean and hungry, chew our puny metal bucket to pieces.

             

Ben and I were pushed toward the back of the ship, crawling and groping our way through industrial workings, emergency exits without comfort, no clear footpaths or overhead as we went along until, finally, we saw a few people seated ahead in the emergency landing capsule, "the pod," all of them with their heads bent forward along the contours of the highback chairs, regardless of how tall they were, like they were preemptively awaiting a brace position. Whoever was in charge pushed Ben and me forward into partitioned hunks of hard plastic that passed for seats. Too many hands for the number of faces in front of me wound me up in straps until I couldn't move.

             

The lights in the pod went out and an amber flashlight cut through the darkness at etchings on panels on the floor, bolted underneath our chairs.

             

"Surface suits. Emergency O₂. The beacon will flip on when you hit Martian soil. Parachutes will slow you but you're going to get rocked hard. Hold tight and we'll come back for you."

             

Then the door slammed, locked, sealed, then gas hissed from overhead. I looked up and saw a square window that, in that near-darkness, only revealed pipes and ductwork.

             

None of us said anything. Not even Ben, who I assumed would make a non-joke that we were all going to die, given how steep the angle was, how we couldn't pull out, how the geniuses running the show split the personnel into M1 proper and the pod, figuring that if one of us crashed and punctured and we all suffocated to death, half of us would survive and salvage what we could from M1 or the pod, set up the skeleton of the base with the materials already supposedly waiting for us, then wait for the next populated ship; not that there were any plans; not that they would've even told us with everything so hushhush and--

             

The gas made me calm. I didn't want to be calm.

             

Just looking up at that window, waiting to feel the gentle push of leaving the craft, the stars tumbling past and then the red red sky, ourselves a rocket through the thin atmosphere, parachutes up and floating down like a marshmallow, a nice soft landing on a feather pillow.

             

Instead:

             

Head banged hard against the wall. Violent ejection. We were lodged in M1's throat and the mothership needed to dry-heave us out. Scattered bursts of light from that far sun and the sun-bright exolights off the hull proper. Faces I had never seen before; limp, snapped necks from the first bang, bloody heads, bloody noses, already dead. Ben right across from me, Benjamin Meridien, for once in his life, scared that he was going to die without the big audience he wanted. His teeth clenched so hard they forgot there was a tongue between them, mouth bleeding, a thin line of blood dribbling down his chin, his eyes fixated on the whirling view overhead.

             

Too loud to shout.

             

Outer M1 appeared for an instant, awkward and bulky, no aerodynamism for space travel, shrouded in fire like a comet, a comet ourselves, flames licking at our shell, the pod heating up, roasting, sweat on my brow, underarms, tossed into a pan of flaming alcohol that wouldn't cook off.

             

No more deep space. The Void just… gone. That Martian sky. No abstract beauty hurtling down faster than you've ever felt. The pod spun. Sky, ground, red, red. Murderous boulders at the edge of mean hills waiting to welcome us to a place we invited ourselves to without asking permission. Chutes up and big flaccid bags, come on come on open! Waiting for the crash. The impact. The woman to the left of me gripped my hand, was crushing my bones. I curled my toes in my boots. The man to my right had one of his straps torn, was bent at the waist, could somehow keep a grip on his Rosary, mumbled prayers, do you see god up there, down there, wherever we're going buddy I'd like to put in a word huh?

             

It lasted longer than I thought. Thought it'd be one of those It Happened So Fast moments. I couldn't tell how long it took. No one was busy timing it. However painful, however violent, I didn't want it to end. Because, well, who'd want to crash into those red rocks at whatever terminal velocity we were quickly approaching? Odd details stuck out. My left bootlace was untied. The third button on my shirt had popped off. Odder memories. First time changing a tire on my dad's car. Hiking with my boys, my youngest son pushing me into a patch of poison oak and laugh laugh laughing, the half-pint bastard. Mowing the lawn. My wife folding laundry. My wife reading in bed, before I went to sleep and before I woke up. My wife gnawing on the same gnawed pencil she used every Sunday for the Times crossword puzzle, sitting out on the back deck in the warm spring sun and listening to the birds and--

             

"JOHN."

             

Too loud hear. Everything sounded like my name.

             

The pod righted itself. The chutes opened late. We crashed. We rolled down a hillside. I threw up on my khakis. A bad roll, end over end a few times before the cigar-shaped pod rolled furiously on its axis, a carnival ride from hell. I threw up again. I closed my eyes. Please, god, if you--

             

Dead stop.

             

"Everyone okay?"

             

"What?"

             

"I think I'm deaf."

             

"Fuck fuck fuck!"

             

"Okay okay okay--"

             

"Sit tight. Let's just wait for M1."

             

"Hey, maybe they got busted up."

             

"Maybe they touched down like they were supposed to?"

             

"There's not enough air in here to survive, dimwit."

             

"Can we please not name-call?"

             

"I'm out of my seat. My flashlight is in my pocket."

             

"Was in your pocket," said Benjamin Meridien.

             

"Help me find my flashlight."

             

"Unstrap me."

             

"Me too."

             

"Does anyone else hear that?"

             

"You're deaf!"

             

Another invisible form came undone and a million hands tried to do the same thing to everyone else.

             

"Hey, hey! Everyone cool down!"

             

"Fuck, he's bleeding on me. Wait, is that my blood? Whose blood is this?"

             

Ben crouched in the center, straddling the cracked window of the upside-down pod and working the screws of the surface-suit compartment with his pocket knife.

             

"Hey, who elected you leader?"

             

"Myself," said Ben.

             

I wiped something sour-smelling off my chin. I came into the moment. The ringing in my ears kept rising. It was stuffy and humid.

             

The suits spilled out on top of Ben.

             

"Hey, hey!" said Ben. "Everyone stay back, all right? Everyone gets one. Except the dead ones. Okay? Put them on fast. I don't know how long that crack will hold and how much air's out there."

             

"Again, who put you in charge?" said some guy in a military uniform with a specialist's badge.

             

"Just shut up, will you?" said Intihar with the two chevrons of a corporal.

             

We all struggled into the suits. Putting thick boots down into skinny pant legs. Zipping up the front and flattening the seal over it and putting on the helmet and feeling a hot space devoid of air before I smacked the tank on my back and felt nice cold breathable air hiss inside the fishbowl. Hot breath on the visor, steamed and receding. Looking around at the thin variglass over everyone's face in the dusty glow of the pale amber flashlight. We finally looked like astronauts, except the limp corpses of those few still strapped in, office-casual and military, not dressed for the surface, for the mission, for the idea and ideal. The dead like puppets in storage. There was only one woman in the pod, the woman who was at my side and she was dead, a metal support rod had broken loose and pierced the back of her skull and went right through her left eye, her eye bubbling a thick, soupy discharge and--

             

"Ready?"

             

Ben and another guy grunted and groaned and slid the airlock hatch into the pod's innards. They stepped to the second door and did the same. And then bright white outside, hand in front of my face, a hard squint and then eyes shut, hot pink eyelids, eyes forced open, the light dimming, dimming, dimming, no, it can't be, so many pictures and there it was, just out there. Ben stepped out, then the second man, then I found my feet had carried me out as the third man to step foot on Mars.

             

Pebbles crunched under my feet. I breathed air from a tank on my back. I was stuck inside a tight suit that sealed me from the outside. I looked through a piece of glass. But there it was. There it was all around us. All around us. I looked down and I looked up. There it was.

(Chapter 9 coming Monday, December 5, 2011.)