Providence - Max Barry Page 0,63

nostrils.

“Anders, you need to get back to Beanfield so I can drop this door. They’re converging on you.”

He knew this deck. The corridor ran ahead for two hundred yards and had only one branch. Whatever had been making that dragging sound had to be down there. “Drop the door.”

“You’d be trapped in there with one of them.”

He rose and began to move down the corridor. He could move more quietly than a salamander, he was pretty sure. “That’s fine.”

Gilly continued to protest, so Anders put him on mute. He needed his ears. He crept forward. There was a soft thump. Some scraping. He couldn’t see and was sorely tempted to light up the corridor again but there was no way one of those big fucks had crawled out in front of him without making more noise than that. He had a sense of it now.

He reached the junction and set his back to it. No sound at all. He leaned out and tossed the glowstick into the darkness. It looped through the air, spreading blue light along the walls and floor, and touched a hulking alien shape that filled the corridor, thick, muscular legs, resin scales, its neck contracting, its jaws cracking open. Anders dropped. There was a sound: huk. It all happened faster than he expected and a force seized him and tossed him against the ceiling. He rebounded and hit the floor. But he hadn’t lost his sense of direction and he aimed the lightning gun along his feet and squeezed the trigger. The world flashed and danced. The gun leaped in his hands like a gleeful spirit. He hosed the corridor until the weapon stuttered and fell silent.

He crawled behind the safety of the corner and breathed there a minute. There was a crackling sound. A yellow flickering. When he peered out, he saw small fires. The shape that had filled the corridor was slumped, rivulets of fire running from burning fissures.

He approached it carefully. The walls were charred and scoured. The smell was terrible. Like poison. As he neared the shape, it coughed fire. A piece broke off and fell to the deck. Something bubbled, red and wet. Broiled salamander.

“Hey,” he said to it. His film was lighting up with muted chatter from Gilly and Jackson but Anders was on a different plane right now. The salamander popped and fizzed and he crouched beside it. “Not so tough,” he said. “Not so tough.” It abruptly struck him as funny and he had to sit for a minute. Look at him, here, with a lightning gun and a dead salamander. Of all the bullshit Service had invented about him, this part was true: He had loved his brothers in a way he never felt about anyone else, despite the box, because of the box—whichever it was, they had been in it together against a father more monstrous than any alien creature, and he’d come out here because the only thing he could think to do after they died at Fornina Sirius was kill salamanders. And here he was. He kicked the corpse with his foot. “Hey,” he said again. “You know what I call you?”

The salamander didn’t answer.

“A good start,” he said.

9

[Beanfield]

THE JET

Something needed to come out of her and she retched. It was a sad retch. It had no enthusiasm. It was the most perfunctory retch of her life. A thin line of drool issued from her mouth and when she went to wipe at it, she couldn’t move her arms.

She couldn’t see, either, actually.

Her head dropped. She wrestled it up. She didn’t know when her head had gotten so heavy. Or when her body had started hurting. And it wasn’t like it was just one part of her body. It was the whole thing. Actually, it was her side. And her left foot. But also everything. She felt squeezed. She tried to call out and emitted a low, wheezy croak, like a disappointed frog.

She appeared to be in a corridor. Alone. Alone in a corridor. Also she couldn’t move. Something was wrapped around her body. She felt entombed. It was very dark and her eyes wouldn’t focus but she was definitely entombed, alone, in