Shadow of the Transition

Chapter 8

With every step we took, Rick's weight pressed more and more on my shoulders. When I looked at him askance, I saw the trickle of blood oozing through his fingers pressed to his side; it was streaming down his pants and bare foot, leaving strange one-legged prints that marked our path with a red dotted line.

Finally we stopped, and an exhausted, skinny Harvey helped Rick sit on the floor against the wall. I heard the crackling of the bottle's plastic, gurgling and soft voices: apparently our guide was sharing the water with the others. Maybe I would like to look at them, but I didn't want to distract from Rick and waste time, because he obviously didn't have a lot of time left...

"Hey, where's Evelyn's tracker?" I heard Harvey's voice. I reached out my hand, without looking at him, to let him take off the bracelet.

His fingers deftly pressed on something, and the ceramlite serpent slid off my wrist like a real snake.

"Have you also lost all the iron during the Transition?" Rick asked with an effort.

"Yeah, only plastic and ceramlite were left. Besides, Dan has a wooden badge of the Almighty."

"Tell the General about it, Harvey. Ok? We need ceramlite knives at least... Or shockers... Against rats..."

"Have you met rats too? These creatures have bitten our guys."

"And one more thing, Harvey... Tell the Professor: fish... the free fish... It makes the Transition easier... The alien protein... I could control the Transition..."

"Is he delirious?"

Harvey sat down next to us and looked worriedly into Rick's face and then at his side. Suddenly I realized that he was also young, barely older than Rick, and that he could hardly move; it was only his stubbornness that had kept him going for so long.

"Let's load him, I've already dragged the rest. Hurry up!"

The Transition Frame was... well... an odd construction. Apparently this room had once been a bathroom. When the ceiling collapsed, the concrete slab, with its bent rebar, sagged at one end, nearly reaching the wide edge of the broken bathtub. Faintly moving bodies in dirty camouflage were placed inside it. Four? Six? And above them, up to the slab, were thinner and lighter bodies of teenagers, two boys and a girl. Their civilian jeans, T-shirts and jackets were so dirty that they were almost indistinguishable from the military clothing. I also saw black ceramlite bracelets tied to the rebar with laces, and green lights blinking rhythmically on them.

"Hurry up, hurry up, the batteries are running out! No one has thought we would be stuck here for five days. I've estimated the transfer zone by eye: Dan's unconscious, and it was he who'd calculated it usually. But the smaller the area is, the more reliable it is. I've marked it with these bricks. Try to keep your arms and legs within these boundaries, ok? Because during the Transition... well, let's hope there's enough power."

Harvey took off Rick's bracelet and tied it to a piece of iron reinforced with four bricks, next to this pile of human bodies that was somehow held together by the broken bathtub and propped up by Harvey himself. Well, how could Rick and I fit within the given boundaries?

"Hurry up!" Harvey snapped. "Countdown! Ten, nine, eight, seven..."

I dropped Rick at Harvey's feet and fell on top of him, afraid only to press on the wound on his side. Did we fit within the boundaries?

"...six, five, four, three, two, one..."

It didn't matter. I grabbed Rick tightly and pressed my cheek against his wet and cold chest. My last thought was, "Is his heart beating?" I closed my eyes.