Hugh Howey - Half Way Home

She was alive.

The shivering and sobs were coming from her .

Jorge began cursing as I tried to help the girls tend to Mica. As weak as she’d been an hour before, we had a difficult time prying her arms off Peter. She probably would’ve chosen to stay there until the weight of him on her ribs finished her off.

We finally got Peter’s body free, and two of the boys laid it by the black stain of an old fire. Mica’s moans turned to wails. She sat up, the front of her soaked in Peter’s blood. It looked like her bruises and injuries had leaked right through her clothes, but I had a glimpse of the damage on Peter’s chest—it looked like something had erupted through him and out his back.

Tarsi and Leila tried to calm Mica down, and I moved in to help, but Vincent stepped in front of me, blocking me off. He knelt beside Mica, leaned forward, and wrapped her up in his arms. He began sobbing along with her. Mica’s hands went from fighting the girls to clutching Vincent’s back; her fingers squeezed the folds of his shirt into frantic clumps.

The two of them shook from the hard cry, and I could hear Vincent whispering something to Mica between the sobs.

I stood there, completely ineffectual. Someone thought to cover Peter’s body with a scrap of tarp, but I continued to remain rooted in place, my arms at my side as I watched two of my friends grieve together.

I wanted to join them. I wanted to beat my fists against the mountain. I wanted to pound the image of Oliver’s death out of my memory. Part of me wanted to unleash pain on myself for failing my friend. For failing my profession. All the words and advice, all the grief tactics I’d tried to use with Vincent over the past few days as I attempted to chip away at his sullen silence—the very same things I had been about to employ with Mica—they all crumbled away like loose rock.

Replacing them was the knowledge that even though such things were useful, the first thing Vincent had needed—and what I needed right then—was someone to feel his pain. An honest outlet for his heart-rending torture. He needed something the rest of us had worked as a group to protect him from, maybe because we were scared of it ourselves. He needed to feel it. To be allowed.

There were times when I wanted to grieve with him, to share just such an outpouring of sadness, but I had walled it off. I had hid it away with that secret me I had become ashamed of. Maybe I was wrong to have done so. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried so hard. Maybe it was the death of my former friend on top of so many other gruesome ordeals that finally had me realizing that maybe—

Maybe I wasn’t broken after all. Maybe the things I was scared of could be part of some solution, rather than a problem.

Tarsi and Kelvin sought me out, the numb confusion I felt reflected in their faces. And that’s when I saw that I wasn’t alone, that I didn’t have to suffer by myself. I reached for them.

And I cried.

We sat in a cluster by the mine’s entrance as the day outside began to fade, the sun slinking back behind the mountains. Vincent and Mica had fallen asleep—passed out, really—in each other’s arms, and none of us could stomach to move them. Some of the others had taken Peter’s body deeper into the mine. The thought of him back there—dead and covered in a tarp—made me feel sick. It made me think of Oliver and the other enforcer. I took a deep, shuddering breath, but my face was already chapped with a week’s supply of tears.

“It’s getting cold,” Leila said. I looked over and saw she was addressing Jorge. He still had his shirt off and bundled around the gun, which rested in his lap.

She helped him with it. They unwrapped the weapon, and it clattered to the stone floor. Nobody moved to retrieve it as she flapped the shirt in the air, trying to work the kinks out.

Those who had drifted off into their thoughts hours ago took notice of the sudden activity—several of them frowned in Leila’s direction. She held the shirt up in front of her and I could see her face through the large holes that had been eaten away from it. Our eyes met, and we both looked to the gold gun in front of her.

She reached out. “Don’t touch it,” I said. I crawled forward to inspect it. A light sheen remained on the weapon; it still looked as if it were covered in a layer of wax. “Let me have the shirt,” I said. I became numbly aware of the audience stirring around me as I took the ruined article of clothing from Leila.

I rubbed the side of the gun with the shirt and the shiny stuff came away.

“What is it?” Kelvin asked, leaning forward to inspect it.

“It’s wet,” I said.

Jorge leaned forward and showed us one of his hands. Several of his fingers were bright red and raw-looking. “Shit burned me,” he said.

“An acid?” Tarsi asked.

I shook my head, but not to answer her question. I could feel bits and pieces of a larger picture coming together in my mind, like drops of condensation flowing downward with the pull of logic—meeting and growing and becoming an awful realization:

The reason.

“Am I going to be okay?” Jorge asked me. “What do you think it is?”

“The reason,” I repeated to myself, thinking aloud.

“Yeah, it burned me. I thought it was just hot from firing. Am I gonna die?” Jorge looked around at us. “Aren’t one of you a chemist or something?”

“Quiet,” Kelvin said. I turned to see him staring at me, his hand on my shoulder. “What is it?” he asked me. “The reason for what?”

“For aborting the colony,” I whispered. “For changing its mind. For everything.”

Before anyone could respond, I added, as it had just occurred to me: “It’s the reason for the rocket.”

I sat back, leaving the gun where it was, and tossed Jorge what remained of his shirt. I pressed my palms flat against the cool rock and closed my eyes, my entire being weary with all the new awareness coursing through my veins. Just as with the setting sun, I could feel some source of light dying within me, leaving me dark and cold.

“So fucking tell us,” Jorge said.

“I’m trying to figure out where to start.” I opened my eyes and glanced around at the others. “It’s still rattling around in my head.”

“I’ll say,” said Jorge. He rubbed his hand against his pants before inspecting his palm again.

“It’s because of the creature back there, right?” Mindy asked.

“What’s the rocket for?” another said.

I waved them off and reached for the flashlight, finding comfort in just holding it as the completed puzzle danced in my vision. “Mica was right,” I said. I looked up from the flashlight. “She was right about why this planet was on-edge. Why the AI couldn’t make up its mind. There’s a deficiency of metals in the crust. The planet is ideal, but only for life. Not so much for making more colonies and sending them out to the stars.”

“We already know this,” someone said.

“But I think I know why,” I countered. “That… thing back there—”

“The monster,” Karl said. “Porter, we’ve already been talking about this—”

I waved him off. “That thing came for the tractor, not us. It had already eaten another one some time earlier.” I looked at Tarsi. “What was left of that other tractor blocked the mine shaft up where you and Mindy were.”

She nodded. “I saw it. What was left of it, anyway. There were pieces of tread.”

“So there’s no metal because something eats it all?” someone asked.

“Exactly,” I said. “Did you see that thing? Its teeth, the sides of its body, they looked like metal. I don’t think it was a giant robot, I think it uses ore the way we use calcium. To build bones. Skin. Whatever.”