The Season of Passage Read online

  'You can't help. Finish the translation. Have you found out anything that gives us a better idea of what we're facing?'

  Lauren considered a moment. 'No.'

  'Well, I guess it'll be good to know what happened.'

  'I guess so,' she agreed. 'Hurry with your work.'

  Lauren started on the last day.

  11, 7: I pray that you who discover this record will not make the mistake of thinking me insane. If you do, then the evil on this planet that turns men into walking corpses will invade the Earth. Above all else, that must not happen. We should never have come to this place.

  I don't have much time. I must explain what happened today. My dearest friends are now aliens. They smile constantly, with vacant eyes that remind me of animals. I feel a strange power in them, a cold hatred.

  I decided our only chance was more medical tests. Since I no longer trust Gregory, I had his assistant, Fyodor, subject all of us to physical exams. Fyodor has never been to the canal or the island. But as he listened to my heart beat, I

  noticed his smiling expression. Where his hands touched my skin, I felt a disquieting chill. I asked if he was feeling well, and he laughed and said he had never been better. That made me suspicious. Fyodor had been feeling miserable like the rest of us. I asked him if he had examined Ivan and found anything unusual. He said no. I pointed out that Ivan no longer appeared to breathe. At that Fyodor laughed again, and said that must mean he's dead. Then he offered me a bottle of water and suggested I drink it immediately, for my system was dehydrated.

  I smelled the water and detected a faint, nauseating odor. To the touch, the liquid felt different than water. It was thicker, and it stuck to my fingers like glue. It also gave me a slight burn. I asked Fyodor where he got the water and he told me Ivan had given it to him. He also said that it was delicious stuff. I ordered him to continue his examinations and left for the control room.

  Once there I considered the idea that Fyodor had been changed, like the others, but without having visited the island. I felt anxious about having placed my uncontaminated men in his hands. I turned on a remote camera that viewed the laboratory. There I watched as Fyodor withdrew a blood sample from Peter. At first Fyodor appeared to do nothing unusual. Then he attached a tourniquet and IV to Peter's arm. He explained that he needed an exceptionally large amount of blood for a special experiment he wanted to perform. Peter agreed reluctantly. After Fyodor was done with him, Peter left the laboratory, and then Ivan appeared.

  What happened next was terrible. Fyodor handed Ivan Peter's blood. He bowed as he did so, and thanked Ivan for the opportunity of decision. Ivan took the beaker and made a toast in the direction of my camera - he must have known I was watching. Then Ivan drank down the blood and gave the

  empty beaker back to Fyodor. Ivan promised him that soon his thirst would be quenched.

  My old friend drank Peter's blood!

  I checked our weapons locker. The rifles and lasers are gone. The weapons the Katarina carried are also gone. They are way ahead of me.

  I have called for a meeting at the Katarina tonight. I believe they will come - they seem to fear nothing. There is only one way of stopping this plague. Ivan's remark about quenching their thirst haunts me. Fortunately he does not know of the weapon we carry that is far more powerful than the missing lasers and rifles.

  I have fed a program into the Karamazov's computer that cannot be overridden. This ship will never leave this world, but it is my hope that she will continue to serve mankind by protecting this record. Whoever should read this - leave this place before it is too late.

  I wish I could see Anna one last time. I wish I could get a message off to Carl. He will have a lonely journey home.

  I have to go now. They are coming.

  Lauren closed the diary and shut her eyes. Now she desperately wanted to leave Jessica. She longed to blast off and get back to Earth and warn everybody. She didn't want to be given the opportunity of decision.

  Gary came in over the radio. 'I'm ready, Doc. We can leave now.'

  She squeezed Dmitri's diary. At least it felt warm. 'OK.'

  'Did you find out anything?'

  'Yes.'

  'What?'

  'Gary,' she said. 'Let's make a couple of crosses before we go down there. They couldn't hurt.'

  Coming, Lori?

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The boat was where they had left it, floating on the canal at the end of the cave two hundred feet below the edge of the cliff. The rope ladder that led down to the water was also in place, and they climbed dowrf into the boat without difficulty. Lauren found paddling a relief after the long walk. Her injured knee had swollen to twice its proper size - another waste of precious moisture. Yet the black waters that surrounded them no longer tempted her.

  'Where did you get this water, Fyodor?'

  'Ivan gave it to me. It's delicious.'

  'When we get back home, Lori,' Gary said, breathing hard inside his suit, 'I'm going to take you surfing in Tahiti. You can lie on an empty beach all day and let the hot sun bake your beautiful body a sexy brown.'

  She sighed. 'Tahiti - it's a place I can hardly imagine anymore. I can't even imagine a warm sun in this hellhole. We should all go there. Jenny loves the water. Terry does, too.'

  You remember Terry? That's my fiancé. We're engaged.

  'It'll be great,' Gary said quickly. 'All of us will go, yeah.'

  'I wonder how Ivan escaped Dmitri's trap,' she said.

  'I'm more curious about how he became possessed in the first place. He didn't have someone to show him the way.'

  Lauren recalled her last day in the forest in Wyoming. She had fallen asleep in front of Terry's cabin and had had a horrible nightmare. She had awoken with a start, with Jennifer asking whose name she had called. (Whose name had she called?) Then and there, millions of miles away, the attack on her had begun; all those weird voices in her head -1 see you brought the fire, and bizarre stuff like that. It was Mars trying to take over. Jim had hit the nail right on the head when he said the infection wasn't physical. The monster sucked on your mind before it drank your blood. Of course, you had to invite them in - all the stories said that. You had to make a decision.

  'Mars was probably all Ivan needed,' Lauren said in response to Gary's comment.

  Gary nodded. 'I hope we don't flip out in that cave.'

  After they had been paddling for about an hour, Lauren noticed a sudden series of ripples crisscrossing the canal. She wasn't sure, but had the wall just jerked?

  'Gary?' she said.

  'What?'

  'Did you notice anything unusual a second ago?'

  'No. Why?'

  'I think there was another earthquake.'

  'I wouldn't be surprised.'

  'Yeah,' she muttered. They continued to paddle forward. Yet something nagged at the back of Lauren's mind. The cavern up ahead held a large body of water. How large they did not know for sure. It could be as large as an ocean.

  Lauren paused to adjust the reception on her vocals up to maximum. Now every sound was like thunder in her ear: her breathing, the splash of the water, her heartbeat. Yet faintly, far away, she could hear the roar of something large and dangerous approaching.

  A tidal wave!

  'Gary!'

  'Huh?'

  'Turn your vocals all the way up!'

  He did so. 'Oh, shit! This planet is trying to kill us.'

  'What should we do?' She cut her receivers back to normal; nevertheless, the wave could still be heard, echoing in the black with the hollow sound of certain death.

  'The sides of the canal will be solid white wash,' Gary said. 'We've got to get to the middle.'

  With one powerful stroke, Gary pivoted the boat. They paddled frantically towards the center of the canal. The noise grew louder and louder. Yet they could see absolutely nothing in front of them.

  'Is this the middle?' she shouted over the din a minute later.

  'I don't know!' Gary stopped padd
ling and shot off a flare. The glare was blinding, but they saw enough to know that they were still far from the center. In the distance, a dark wall, wreathed at the side with cascading foam, stormed toward them.

  They tried to increase their distance from the wall. Unfortunately Lauren was nervous; she couldn't keep up with Gary's strokes. Their rhythm went out of sync, and the raft veered to the side. They began to spin in circles. Lauren tried correcting the situation but only made matters worse. Finally Gary turned and shook his head. He indicated she should set aside her paddle and brace herself. She couldn't have heard him had he spoken, the roar was deafening now. He shot off a second flare in the direction of the tsunami. In the brief dawn that followed they saw a mountain of water, at least forty feet high, churning with an avalanche of white foam, ready to sweep away their puny boat.

  As the flare died, however, Lauren saw that the swell was intact in the middle. There was hope. She gripped the sides of the boat as hard as she could.

  A moment later her heart was stuffed into her stomach as the boat was grabbed by an all-powerful hand and tossed upward. The passage of the water was so swift, it actually threw them several feet off the surface. They landed with a sharp jar, and Lauren feared the force would rupture the bottom of their boat. When she opened her eyes, though, the boat seemed intact, although it rocked violently on the foam left behind by the tidal wave.

  'Maybe we won't go surfing in Tahiti,' Gary gasped.

  'We'll just wet our feet,' Lauren said, trying to catch her breath.

  The remainder of their watery journey passed without incident. At the mysterious island, Gary secured the boat and climbed onto the drenched shore with the bomb hugged close to his chest. Lauren followed closely, carrying the laser. It did not take them long to locate Jim's original phosphorescent markers. They proceeded inland, and quickly the island's spell of fear began to work on them. Lauren underwent a profound change in point of view. She was going to shoot at anything that moved, she decided. Jessica would just have to take her chances.

  They came to the pool where Ivan's remains lay scattered in bloody leaps. Incredibly, his eyes were still open, and the obscene grin remained on his mouth. Gary kicked the head into the water, where it slowly sank beneath the black surface.

  Good luck, Lori. Be sure to write when you get home.

  They pushed into the hills. At the spot where Jessica had fallen, the markers came to an end. They had no choice but to send up a flare, destroying their chances of surprise. In the burning light, approximately a mile distant, they saw a tall hill, topped with a distinctive plateau. They decided it

  was probably the monsters' clubhouse.

  Not long afterward, they huddled together in the center of the barren plateau. There they found a hole that appeared to lead downward. It was time for them to be fascinated. Lauren went in first, ready at every turn of the steep jagged cave to fire her laser. Gary followed two inches at her back; there was not enough room to walk abreast.

  Lauren sensed heat. A faint red light began to glow up ahead. It was a peculiar shade, very depressing. Something about it said quite firmly that there was no going back. Even if you were sorry that you hadn't been born a believer. The crucifix that swung around the neck of her pressure suit - two plastic sticks stuck together with medical tape - didn't glow with the white light promised in the books on vampires. If she died in this pit, she thought, and if she did have a soul, it would never get out.

  The narrow cave ended abruptly. They emerged into a fascinating room. It was shrouded in fog, bloody eddies of vapor that whirled in hypnotic circles. Pools of dark water and bubbling soups of red mud weaved around the floor. Although Lauren breathed bottled air, the stench was overwhelming - maggots consuming a corpse that had lain too many days beneath a hot humid sun. Sudden despair entered her heart, and she had to hug the wall to keep herself from jumping in the pits of lava.

  Then I'm going to make you take your bath.

  The floor was made of the same black substance as the floor of the cave, but the walls were gray and uneven, apparently softer and undoubtedly younger. Gary indicated they should explore the perimeter of the room. Lauren crept forward slowly, scanning the fog for the least trace of motion. According to Gary's horror books - and they were the only reference material that spoke even

  indirectly about what they were facing and she might as well admit it - the vampires' reflexes were blindingly fast. Constant anticipation had stretched Lauren into a taut wire. When Gary touched her arm a few minutes later, she whirled and almost blew his head off.

  'Oh!' she cried. Then, 'Shit. Don't do that again.'

  Gary glanced at the tip of the weapon pointed at his chest. He pushed if away. 'Shh,' he said. 'Look there. Jim's tools.'

  At her feet were Jim's favorite hammer, chisel, and brush. He must have been working here when he died, she thought. She glanced back the way they had come and decided, by the curve of the wall, that they were on the far side of the room, opposite the entrance. Gary stepped a few feet toward the center of the room and began to ready the warhead not far from a pool of glowing mud. Lauren knelt to collect Jim's tools.

  It was then she saw the ring.

  It was a simple silver band embedded halfway in the stone wall. Although flecked with gray dust, it appeared to shine with a soft white light that had nothing to do with demons and hell.

  'We've all read fantasy stories about magical rings and the wonderful powers they give to those who possess them. I guess being where I was, I believed those stories could come true.'

  Perhaps they had come true for Jim, this time.

  Even the possibility of vampires hadn't challenged Lauren's sense of reality as much as did the sight of the ring.

  'Gary!'

  He came up at her shoulder. 'What?'

  'Look,' she said. 'It's Jim's ring - Jenny's ring. It's here on Mars!'

  'Mother Jesus,' Gary whispered.

  This must also be the Russian dig Bill had spoken of, Lauren thought. The Russians, however, had not removed the ring from the stone, merely uncovered it, which she found odd. She tugged at the silver band. It was stuck, but she figured they should be able to get it free. A curved finger of stone wrapped through the center of it. Lauren reached for Jim's chisel. Gary stopped her and shook his head.

  'We don't have time,' he said. 'I've already started the timer on the warhead. Leave the ring. It could be dangerous.'

  'No,' she said firmly. Already she had fallen under the spell of the ring, for it reminded her of Earth, and of her sister. The dread that had weighed on her heart since they entered the pit was cast back at a distance. She told herself she would take the ring and bring it back home. 'I want it,' she said.

  'We don't have time,' Gary protested.

  'Why did you have to be so stupid and start the timer?'

  'I didn't want you pleading that we had to stay and find Jessie. Too long in this place and we're going to flip out. Can you believe that smell? How is it getting through our suits?'

  'I think it's all in our heads. Can't you stop the timer?'

  'No.' Gary said. 'The bomb would explode. I rigged the trigger that way so's it couldn't be tampered with.'

  'That's just fucking great.' She grabbed Jim's tools. 'I'm still going to get the ring. It'll only take me a moment.'

  Gary stood indecisive for a moment. Then he took the chisel and hammer from her hand. 'I guess this was a job Jim didn't get to finish.'

  'Careful,' she said, as Gary began to chip around the ring. 'Don't hurt it.' A deep longing to touch the ring pushed aside her fears. Gary continued to work around the

  band. Lauren noticed if was smaller than the one Jim had given Jennifer; it was sized more for a lady's finger.

  A portion of the wall suddenly crumbled to the floor, revealing another incredible sight.

  The bones of a human hand!

  The outline was clear to Lauren's trained eye. She grabbed Gary's hand, stopping him. The bones were fossilized, and encase
d in a fine yellow coating. She took the chisel from Gary and carefully exposed more of the dead hand that held the ring.

  'Do you know what this is, Gary?' she asked finally.

  'No.'

  'A human skeleton.'

  'You're sure?'

  'I'm sure.'

  Gary's voice trembled with emotion. 'Is it possible that humans once lived here?'

  She did not know the answer, nor was she given a chance to think of one. A tiny stone crunched softly at their backs. In one smooth motion, Lauren spun and brought up the laser, pointing it directly at Bill.

  'Gary,' she said.

  Bill stood in the red fog beside the warhead, his face hidden by a shadow that crossed the front of his helmet. Ignoring them for a moment, he knelt and touched the metal casing that held enough power to destroy the entire island.

  I see you brought the fire.

  The thought was filled with both fear and respect. Lauren knew it had passed through what was left of Bill's mind along with her own.

  'No,' Bill said, his voice soft and deep. 'It's not like you think.' He looked directly at them. 'Humans never lived here.'

  Gary regained his voice. 'Shoot, Lori!'

  Lauren shook her head. 'I can't. He's too close to the bomb. It could go off.'

  'You have a point there,' Gary muttered. He left her side and slowly drifted to the right. Something in the depths of Bill's eyes flickered. A faint smile touched his lips. He focused his attention on Lauren.

  'Why are you pointing that gun at me?' he asked.

  'The game's over,' Lauren said. 'You're not Bill.'

  'Are you sure?' he asked gently.

  Three simple words - yet they filled her head with doubts, never mind all that she had seen. Was the fog clearing? Strange how she could see Bill's face better, particularly his eyes. He had such fascinating eyes. They were two featureless black points. They did not really frighten her, not as she stared into them. They were actually quite interesting, in their own special way. Lauren shook her head, trying to clear it. But the eyes quickly drew her back.