James Axler - Remember Tomorrow

“Perhaps, my dear, they wish to take us alive,” Doc mused. “This would be the best way. Force us here and then sit it out until we cannot go on.”

“But why wouldn’t they figure we’d come out blasting? Don’t they think we’d risk buying the farm?”

Doc allowed himself a sad smile. “We might, but that doesn’t increase their risk, does it? If we get chilled, we get chilled. This is, however, their best way of taking us alive with a minimum risk to themselves.”

“They’re here,” Jak said simply, pulling back into cover.

The companions took cover, blasters ready. Shapes flitted past the doorway to take positions on the far side and the companions fired. The roar of blasterfire and the stench of cordite was broken only by the screams of those they hit. From around the door, fire rained in on them. The barricade began to crumble.

“Have to take them head on,” Ryan yelled. “Otherwise we’ll be chilled meat anyway.”

They reloaded, ignoring the hail of fire around them as it ripped at their makeshift barricade and pit the walls with gaping holes of gouged-out concrete. They readied themselves for the attack. It was an almost suicidal charge, but they didn’t have the stomach to sit it out and wait to buy the farm.

“Ready?” Ryan asked. He was answered by gestures of assent.

One way or the other, it looked as though they were ready to join J.B., wherever the hell he may be.

Nothing made much sense to J.B. as he lay in a pool of water, a stream gently trickling around him. Nothing except the pain he felt, as though every muscle in his body had been torn, every bone fractured, every ligament wrenched. Even the pumping of his blood sent liquid pain coursing through his veins. If he could see through the agony enough to think with any kind of rationality, he would be surprised that the levels of pain hadn’t made him black out. But everything was too painful, the world too red and full of pulsing lights for that: he had no idea where he was and only a few vague memories of how he’d gotten there.

His head—that had been the thing that hurt most to begin with. He had been in a tunnel and he vaguely recalled something to do with dogs attacking him. Then the walls have caved in on him and he remembered the crushing pain of being under their weight. And then…

And then it went really crazy. It seemed like the whole pile of rocks around him had just been picked up and flicked over, like some force had turned the world upside down. He could remember the strangest sensation, in the blackness, of feeling an immense wave of motion wash over him, pushing him forward and then sideways as he hit a solid barrier that drove the breath from his body. He was tossed around like a branch in a dust storm, hitting the sides of the tunnel that was crumbling around him as he felt himself fall. He’d hit his head again and had the idea that he was blacking out and coming to, blacking out and coming to. How many times he had no idea. All he knew was that he had kept falling down until finally he hit water.

It wasn’t deep and it wasn’t moving fast, but he still hit it so hard that it felt like falling against another wall of rock. But this one gave under him and he found himself struggling not to breath, not to drag water down into his lungs as his descent slowed until he hit the floor of the river. Some part of his brain that was working despite himself wondered about the river. He’d figured there had to be a water table at some point, but not that it would be so deep. Stupe, how the brain does this when he should be thinking about staying alive.

The wave that had propelled him this far reached the water and the sluggish stream began to move faster, taking him with it. He had no idea which direction he was going in, only that he had to try to keep his head up and breathe in only when he could suck air into his lungs. Which would have been hard at the best of times, but he kept nodding in and out of consciousness from the blows to his skull.

The water seemed to fill the tunnel as it churned harder and faster, the force of it slamming against his body almost as hard as the rocks he’d been pelted with a short while before. There was less air, fewer pockets for him to gasp in quickly when he had the chance. The lights in his head began to glow more brightly, to move around in strange, dancing patterns. There was a humming in his ears, growing louder by the second, almost deafening. His lungs felt as though someone had tossed a torch of napalm into them. They were going to burst soon if he didn’t take another breath, yet he could feel he was still underwater.

So this was how it ended? He felt unimaginably weary and a lassitude descended on him. He didn’t care if he took in a lungful of water and drowned. Anything would be better than the awful burning in his chest.

J.B. relaxed and prepared to buy the farm. He exhaled and slipped blissfully out of consciousness.

He woke up with a head that felt like someone was pounding rocks on it and incredible pain everywhere else.

At least he was still alive.

He wanted to open his eyes, but was afraid of increasing the pain. He felt around him, slowly, with his fingertips. It was a muddy soil, slimy and slippery with a layer of water about two inches deep all around him. He could feel the water moving slowly past him in a trickle. It had to be dark where he was, as no great source of light penetrated his eyelids. And the water was flowing in a direction that took it from his legs up past his head. His legs felt particularly leaden. He flexed his calf and thigh muscles, which screamed protest at him. He stopped immediately, grateful for the sudden cessation. Then, steeling himself, he tried again.

From the resistance, he could tell that his legs were trapped from midthigh down and from the give, he knew that it wasn’t rock containing him, but mud. How the hell could he have gone through head and shoulders first and end up with his legs stuck so firmly? Trying to figure it out made his head spin and didn’t matter anyway. The fact was that he was stuck. Yeah, he had to have dislodged something as he came through the hole, and it fell around him, trapping him. Stupe thing was that he felt better for that, despite the fact that it did him no good.

Dark night, he needed to get the hell out of here before the water started to rush again, either sweeping him away or sweeping over him and drowning him once and for all. But he was so tired and it hurt so much. J.B. sank back into unconsciousness once more.

“FUCK’S SAKES, Sim, I don’t see what the problem is, here. Dammit, can’t Silborg or Denning see to their own damn problems?”

“Calm down, you’re starting to really bug the shit out of me.” The tall, broad-shouldered man called Sim cuffed his companion against the ear. It wasn’t hard enough to be meant with any malice, but despite his advancing years and graying beard and ponytail, Sim was still a strong man. The blow stung, making his companion wince.

“Fuck’s sakes, watch what you’re doing,” grumbled Hafler, who was smaller, skinnier and younger. He had a sharp, pointed face and his hair was cropped back apart from a thin Mahican stripe along the top of his skull. Both men were dressed in coarse linen trousers, plaid woolen shirts and heavy working boots. They were covered in splashes of mud, some old and dry, some more recent. Both had spent the day in their own sector, repairing and unblocking wells that had been damaged in the recent quake. The tremor had been felt all over their ville and while some were repairing houses and huts, they were part of the teams that had been sent to repair wells in the northern sector.

Only now, as a favor to Denning and Silborg, who had more damage in their sector to the south than the other three areas put together, Hafler and Sim were attending to the last well that was failing to bleed precious water into the storage tanks. It was hard enough keeping the ville watered as it was—they’d had to dig deep to find any water at all—without the wells blocking up from earth shifts.