Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

They sipped the last of their hot chocolate while the bathwater warmed up, and Trent experimented with various things in the fire, checking to see what would melt and what would burn outright. Arrows worked just the same as the other kind of wood, although the tuft of greenery at the end would burn like a torch if you stuck that end in the flames. It dripped flaming gobs of plastic, though, so you didn’t want to hold it upright. The waxy-leaved ground cover was actually wax, by the looks of it; it certainly melted easy enough, and the liquid burned just like the molten wood. The chips that Trent had busted off the slo-mo shells the day before took a lot more heat to melt, but they finally did, and the flame from that was an intense white. He tried leaves from the tree overhead, and he ventured out into the night with a flashlight to gather twigs off the bushes, all to the same effect. Everything he could find except rocks and dirt melted and burned when he gave it enough heat.

“Being rained on all day doesn’t seem to affect it a bit,” he said. “It’s like water content isn’t even a consideration.”

“I wonder if a fish would burn,” Donna said.

“Jeez, I don’t know. We’ll have to try it.”

Donna turned to toast her back. She didn’t say anything for a while, but when she did, it was a bombshell. “What do you bet we won’t be able to eat anything that grows here?” she said.

He hadn’t even thought about that, but she was probably right. If life on this planet was made out of plastic instead of protein, there was no way their bodies could digest it. They might as well try to eat a PVC pipe.

“We haven’t tested actual meat yet,” Trent said. “That might be different.”

“It might. You gonna go fishing in the morning, then?”

“I don’t have to wait that long,” he said. He got up and went over to where he’d dropped the tarp and its cargo of slo-mo shells, and sorted through them for the heaviest one. “This one’s still got its innards.”

It took him a while with a screwdriver and a hammer to bust open the underside of the shell, and when he did, he wished he hadn’t done it on a full stomach. The insides were a gooey mess of slippery organs that stank almost as bad as the alien liquor. He held his breath and cut out a long, stringy slab of something that looked like muscle and speared it with an arrow, then held it out over the fire.

It sizzled at first and stiffened like regular meat would do, and when it got hotter it started to drip the way a steak would drip fat, but these drips looked suspiciously like the ones that came off wood. Trent took a closer look, and sure enough; it was just the end of the meat melting. He held it in the fire until it had completely dripped away, along with the end of the arrow.

“Not good,” he said. Not only that, but the odor was still strong in his nostrils, and his stomach was about to rebel. He picked up the ghastly shell and carried it to the creek bank, where he tossed the whole works into the rushing water and wiped his hands clean on the wet weeds, but when he sat back down by the fire, his stomach still felt queasy. “Gah,” he said. “That was a mistake.”

Donna didn’t look very good, either. “We’ve only got about a month’s worth of food,” she said.

“A month is a long time,” Trent told her. “We’ll have power again long before we run out. We can go look for another planet if we have to.”

She didn’t say anything, but he knew what she was thinking. If she could figure out where they were, then they wouldn’t have to look for another planet. They could just go home.

They huddled around the fire for a while longer, soaking up its heat for the long night ahead of them, and Trent’s stomach slowly began to settle. When the fire started to burn down, he said, “You want me to put another log on, or should we call it a night?”

“Let’s go inside,” she said, so they picked up their chairs and the pot of warm water and the bottle of fire starter and carried them in. They turned on the flashlight and set it on the countertop pointing upward, then closed the door and peeled off their wet clothing and took their bath, dipping washcloths in the pot of steaming water and rubbing themselves clean. The warm water felt great on their skin, but drying off with a fresh towel felt even better.

“I hope this rain blows over in the night,” Trent said. “I’m about half tired of it.”

“Me too.” Donna rubbed her hair with the towel, setting her breasts ajiggle. Trent felt himself responding to the sight, but his stomach was still not happy, and Donna didn’t seem to be in the right sort of mood, either, so he just toweled off his own hair and helped her set up the bed, piling every blanket they had on it this time.

Donna crawled in first, and he slid in beside her, ready to sleep, but she said, “I’m still wide awake. Do you mind if I read for a while?”

When they had first gotten married, he couldn’t sleep when she did that, but he had long since gotten used to it. “No, that’s all right,” he said. “Stay up as long as you want.”

She reached across him for the computer and woke it up from sleep mode, then switched out the flashlight.

“What are you readin’?” he asked.

“What do you think?” she said, holding the computer sideways so he could see the screen full of equations.

His stomach rumbled again, and he had to fight to keep the macaroni and cheese down. “Good idea,” he said.

He couldn’t sleep after all. It wasn’t Donna’s reading; it was his stomach, which had never recovered from the whiff of slo-mo guts. At least that’s what he hoped was the problem. They had used the local water for hot chocolate and to boil the noodles. If there was something wrong with that, too, then they were in even worse trouble than if it was just the food.

He struggled for over an hour to keep his stomach in check, but the nausea just grew worse until he finally realized he had about thirty seconds to choose his spot. He tossed off the covers and bolted from the camper, running a dozen steps out into the meadow toward the trench they’d dug for a latrine before the cramps doubled him over and he fell to his knees, heaving his supper all over the ground.

“Trent!” Donna yelled from the doorway. “Are you all right?” The flashlight beam caught him just as he heaved again, then the beam wobbled and he heard her take a couple of steps before she, too, lost her dinner.

For a moment, Trent thought throwing up might be the worst of it, but then he realized that his trouble wasn’t just in the front end. He barely had time to get his feet out of the way before his bowels cut loose, too. He heaved and groaned until he was sure he had no insides left, and then he dry-heaved some more. He could hear Donna doing the same behind him. They would both be sitting ducks if there were any night predators out there in the darkness, but at the moment he would have welcomed the release.

The rain was like little ice picks on his back. He finally managed to straighten up and take it on his shoulders, then after a couple of deep breaths he struggled to his feet and staggered back to the camper. Donna was a silhouette on her knees off to the right, the flashlight dropped on the ground beside her.

“Don’t come near me,” she said.

Trent couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m as rank as you are. I’m just getting us something to clean ourselves up with.”

“Oh. All right.”

He leaned inside without actually going in, felt for the paper towel roll under the cabinet, and tore off a long strip of towels. He tore that in two and gave half to Donna, then went back out into the darkness to clean himself. He felt surprisingly better now, despite the rain robbing the warmth from his body, better enough to get the shovel and bury their mess in the latrine.