The Path Between the Stars

Chapter four

~4~

2021

Nicholas

The air is stifling tonight. The stench of sweat and dirt coming from too many crammed-in bodies in the tent makes it almost suffocating to breath. The air, thick and heavy, struggles to make it down my throat and into my lungs. I cough, almost choking on the acrid air as I look around. The flicker of candles is the only illumination in the still, dead night, and I'm both grateful and not. The shadows caused by the candles hide a multitude of things, things I don't want to see, but they also make the things I can see all the more unbearable.

My mind is back in the ruin, the wreckage. My ears hear the starved cries of those I herded like animals, making them move from the only homes some of them had ever known. It made me feel like a monster then and it makes me feel like a monster now.

Another step into the room. The tent flap falls down behind me and I watch the flies moving among the bodies. They float from person to person. From body-bag to body-bag. A lazy dance among the dead...

...I jerk awake, sweat trickling down my bare chest as I grasp at my throat; the feel of flies crawling down it is all too real. Both nightmare and reality haunt me. All I want is one night's reprieve, one peaceful moment away from the madness. The air is cooler tonight, yet I find no comfort in it. I should though. I should welcome it with open arms, but it's hard to when the images are still scratching at the surface of my brain, like patients in an asylum begging for release.

They won't be freed though. Not by me. I swing my legs out of bed and sit on the edge of it, waiting for my heartrate to return to something resembling normality. My bare feet sit flat against the warm ground and I take slow, steady breaths.

God-damned Delta Quadrant will haunt me for months; I shake my head in annoyance at both DQ and myself. I am a hard man, strong, capable, but there is only so much one person can see before it begins to infect their soul. Before the images of starving children, and disfigured women gets under your skin. Before the reality of our lives hunt you down, chasing you through the black abyss of hell until you have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from it, and you have to turn and make your final stand.

Andrew doesn't understand. He never will. We're wired differently.

Some days, I can't help but wonder if extinction would have been easier. If we'd all died right at the start, when the monster storms began and the volcanoes erupted and the ocean rose to consume more and more land. We'd fucked up our world so much that the environment couldn't protect us. Pollution, and trash, and politicians spouting off that climate change wasn't a real thing, that the ozone layer was fine.

Yeah. We should have all died. Because surely anything has to be better than living this way. I let my shoulders sag under the heavy burden of responsibility and I squeeze my eyes closed.

My heart is still throbbing in my chest, thundering against my ribcage, and I know I need to get out of here. So I slip on my shirt and boots and I head outside. I need air. Good, clean air to fill me up and purge me of these thoughts, because I know I should just be grateful to be alive.

But outside the air is like it always is; thick and heavy.

Stifling.

God-damned suffocating.

And so I walk, pounding the ground with one boot-cladded foot after another, needing to rid the tension from my body. I walk and walk, moving and weaving around sleeping quarters, past the control room, the storage areas, the cafeteria. The buildings and tents that make up this place, our home, our so-called haven, are a blur as I move forward. I can't focus on anything but my desperate need for release. I avoid contact with the guards on duty—because there are always people on duty. Of course there are. Because even here, here in heaven, there is no real safety.

I get to the outskirts, to the boundary wall which is a tall, steel mesh fence that surrounds the perimeter of our sanctuary, protecting it from Quad rats and anything and anyone else that tries to get in. My eyes stare out at the barren wasteland beyond and as the perimeter lights sweep the land beyond for any threat, I wonder what the fuck we're doing this all for.

Clutching onto the fence, my dirty fingertips threading through the mesh, I lean my forehead against the hot metal, seeing the heat waves dance up from the cracked and dusty earth just beyond my reach. It will always be like this, of that there is no doubt; I just hope that one day, one day soon, we can make this a life worth living. For everyone, even those like the rats. Because this, right fucking here and right fucking now, is no kind of life.

I'd been to DQ before, a year or so back, and things had been bad then. But I'll be damned if we hadn't been working hard to make things better and safer. Yet it hadn't seemed to make a difference. Things are worse now than they had ever been. I had lied to Andrew when I'd said things were a little better over there. They weren't. I don't even know why I had lied about it. Self-preservation in a way I guess. Admitting the truth out loud... I worried the last of my hope would abandon me if I did.

Footsteps coming close have me standing upright and turning around. My fingers ache, the indent of the fencing spreading out across them, threatening to bruise. I hadn't realized I'd been gripping the wire so hard. A guard, Jiffy I think his name is, gives a brief wave as he passes by, and I wave back, keeping my chin raised and my shoulders back.

You can't show weakness here, to anyone. Because even in what should be our safe quadrant, there are always people you can't trust. People who will happily take you down for the price of a proper meal or an extra layer of protection. I frown at Jiffy's retreating back, waiting until he turns a corner before I move to head back to my tent.

The walk seems longer going back than it had going out, as all journeys do I suppose. But I am glad of it, not complaining. A few minutes more solitude. Arriving at my tent, I pull the flap to one side and walk back to my bunk. For a moment, I am frozen, recalling the nightmare and the flies. I have to shake my head, remember that I am awake now. Andrew is on his side facing away from me, but he rolls over as I pull off my top and climb into my bunk.

"Nightmare?" he asks, quietly.

"Something like that," I reply.

He sighs. "Gotta pull yourself together, brother."

"I know."

"Let shit be shit, ya' know?"

"I know," I repeat, more forcefully than necessary. 

He rolls back over and seconds later his snores join the chorus of other men. I lay on my back looking up towards the roof of our tent. The thick folds of fabric hang above us in waves, protecting us from the penetrating rays of the sun. I turn my mind to her, to Emilie. Because thinking about her is better than thinking about the DQ.

We'd dated for six months, on and off, but had called things off right before I got shipped out. It was a mutual decision, yet one neither of us were happy about. But we both knew the truth of this world, and the hazards that come with relationships. Neither of us could afford to be weak in a world where death was around every corner. We'd tried to live in the moment, but we'd both lost too many people already, losing each other would just be another nail in the coffin.

But I do miss her. She is beautiful, and funny, and can handle herself as well as any man can. Yet when she lets you in, really lets you in, it is obvious that her emotional scars are as vibrant as her physical ones. I wonder what she is doing right now. She'd been shipped out at pretty much the same time as I had, only going in the opposite direction from me. Though she hadn't known it had been because I had purposefully taken her place on the crew for DQ.

I wanted to save her from that. Save her from the images that would haunt her. Because when you come back from DQ, you are never the same again. Never. I didn't want that for Emilie. We may not be together anymore, but I will still look out for her, and I always will.

There may not be room in this world for love, but I love her all the same. And, if I can, I will help her survive this world for as long as possible.