raised by wolves

due to circumstances beyond my control, the raised by wolves project has come to a screeching halt. all the stories collected in Rbw 1-3 are lost to the aether. if you are in possession of any printed copies of these volumes, congratulations: you are now the proud owner of one of the only pieces of evidence that i have ever done anything productive with my life.

that said, it is time for new projects. i am working on a series of shorter format works which will hopefully be posted in this space with some regularity. thank you for staying tuned.

regards,

“I was in the ballroom with all the hostages. I was stunning them one at a time, the ones I didn’t get in the first sweep, and then we heard that sound and the boat nearly flipped over. There were people flying in every direction it looked like, and furniture—tables and chairs and banquet tables and all of that stuff these people have stacked up around them, always counting on gravity to keep them stationary. I saw a man get his head crushed under a chandelier. I saw two women pinned beneath a roulette table. I was lucky that nothing landed on me. And then we sloshed back over and,” here she pauses to laugh. I have never seen Yolita laugh. “And everything was all stuck over on one side of the room. The only way to tell the live ones from the dead or unconscious ones was that they were screaming,”

“Spare us the morbidity, Yolita. We haven’t got time for this Edgar Allen Poe shit,” Weston chimes in supportively. She almost looks like she’s going to laugh again, but clears her throat and continues instead.

“So I left. What could I do, apply first aid? I am not a medic. They were doomed anyway. I went out into the hallway connecting the ballroom and the banquet room and I heard a strange noise. Like if you were to cut sheet metal with a chainsaw. It was coming from the ballroom, so I went back in. And there were…these…” her face twists with the recalling.
“These things,” is all she gets out before lapsing into total silence. She closes her eyes and begins to shiver. She doesn’t resume her story. All our further attempts to pry information out of her such as: what kinds of things? yield nothing. She must be in shock. Occasionally she breaks the silence with a muted sob, but that’s hardly what I’d call useful information.

“Well, shit,” I say after a few moments of this. “Now what?”

“I already told you ‘what,’” Weston snaps. “You open that damn safe and we wait for Verne and Dole. If they aren’t here in five, I’m gonna go find ‘em and you’re on babysitting duty for these two. I suggest you open that safe before they show up.” I go and sit by the toppled but miraculously still-functioning computer console and resume trying to open this fucking door.

“The Agency will have our cards for this,” Weston says eventually. Oh god, I don’t even want to think about The Agency right now, and it turns out I won’t have to.

Enter Verne. I shit you not, he’s still wearing all his gear. Gas mask, goggles, helmet, all of it. Except for—are you ready?—his left boot. If I hadn’t been sitting down already, I most definitely would have fallen over laughing. He glares at me from behind those red-tinted goggles, then glances between unconscious Goober, catatonic Yolita, and pissed off Weston.

“Heh, ah, where’d your boot go, Verne?” I stammer out between chuckles. “Leave it in somebody’s ass?”

He shakes his head like a teacher shakes their head at the lost-cause student flicking boogers at the ceiling in the back of the classroom.

“Where you been, Verne?” Weston asks.

“Found the captain,” he hisses.

“Come again?” says Weston. “I can’t hear you with the mask on,” he says, pointing at his face.

“Oh,” says Verne. “I forgot I was wearing it.”

So nonchalant. He pulls off his guy and, despite what you were probably expecting, is just a normal looking guy. No deformities, no scars. Just some guy. I think that’s why he likes keeping his gear on so much, especially masks. They make him forget that under all the bad-ass commando shit, he’s just some guy. Well, just some guy with a genuine passion for homicide and a definite candidate for electro-shock therapy, but still.

“I said I found the captain,” Verne repeats.

“And?” Weston prompts.

“And, he’s dead.”

“Well ain’t that swell,” Weston says, displaying his mastery of sarcasm. “What happened to him?”

Verne shrugs. “It wasn’t me. He was all torn up. Looked like he fell in a big paper shredder or something. Found his keys tho’,” he says and pulls a little ring of official-looking magnetic keycards from one of his pockets. He tosses them to me at the computer. “Maybe one’s for the vault,” he says as the bundle of cards lands with a flop in my hand.

“Well I sure hope so. Otherwise I’m gonna wring that little fucker’s neck,” I say and head over to start swiping keys in the big clear door separating us from the vault proper.

“Which little fucker?” Weston asks.

“The one told me about the keys,” I tell him. “The deck hand.”

“Which deck hand?” Weston asks.

“Our hostage,” I tell him, swiping the first card.

Weston looks to one side of the room and then the other. “I don’t see no deck hand, Parks.”

“Say what?” I say, dropping the ring of cards and starting to turn my head around. “Oh fuck me, I completely forgot about him…He musta run off when I wasn’t looking,”

“When you weren’t looking?” Weston demands. “What are you, an incompetent guard in some James Bond flick? This room’s fucking tiny, man! With one door!”

This last bit renders me silent while I puzzle over who the fuck James Bond is, but luckily it doesn’t take long for—whaddaya know—more crazy shit to go down and distract me. Suddenly out from under a precariously toppled bundle of papers and other office supply shit comes our friend the deck hand, with a bright red fire extinguisher that he’s swinging like Babe Ruth as he makes a mad dash for the door. For just a second, it’s so profoundly ridiculous a sight that I think he might actually get away.

Then he runs right smack into Dole, who catches him under the chin with a big gloved hand and sends him sprawling.

He comes the rest of the way in and looks at all of us, standing, sitting, conscious or un-, and his jaw drops open.

“What the hell is goin’ on? Why’re ya’ll just sittin’ there? We gotta get the fuck up outta here! Ain’t you seen them things runnin’ around?”

At the mention of things, that fucking emphasized pronoun that tells me absolutely nothing, Yolita starts laughing again. This time she can’t control herself and is soon rolling on the floor having a serious freak out.

I notice Dole’s not carrying his pistol, but his AK, his back-up without the stun-tranqs.

“You making a mess out there, Dole?” I ask.

“Mess? You wanna see a mess? Check out the infirmary. Check out the crew quarters. Check out all the fuckin’ decks between here and the hull!! We’re taking on water in multiple locations and there’s these fuckin’ things runnin’ around tryin’ to eat people! We gotta go! Right now!”

“Parks hasn’t opened the vault yet,” Weston says.

“Fuck the vault! Didn’t you hear what I just said?” Dole spits.

“Wait, did you say ‘trying to eat people?’” I ask.

“Yes I said trying to eat people! Things! Monsters, man, I don’t know what the fuck you wanna call ‘em, but they’re big and nasty and they’re eating everyone they come across, god damn it!”

If there were crickets on the simultaneously burning and sinking boat, you would have probably been able to hear them.

“That’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard,” Weston is saying when suddenly a hideous, gnarled claw on the end of a pale blue tendril whips out from around the corner and through the back of Dole’s head and out where his nose is. And that’s the end of Dole.

“You see?” Yolita shouts jumping to her feet, suddenly energetic as a landmine after it’s tripwire’s been pulled. “You see?” she says again and goes for the shotgun on Goober’s back. She begins firing at the door. Weston, Verne and I hit the deck (as it were) and probably out of sheer habit start unloading our firearms in the direction of the door as well.

When the smoke finally clears, it’s like the tendril thing had never been there at all. And it’s as if the wall opposite the door had never been there at all, either. We can see clean into the next room, which looks like DINGDINGDINGDINGDING the radio room. And all the equipment is utterly shredded by the unholy hail of lead we just wasted on it.

“Did you see that?” I ask.

“WHAT?” Weston shouts. Verne socks him in the arm and points at his ears.

“Oh,” Weston says, only slightly less loud. “WHAT did you SAY?” he says.

“Nothing,” is my reply, but I doubt he heard that either. Holy shit my ears haven’t rung like this since I saw Robbery in ‘67.

I motion to Verne to help me get Goober up.

“WHAT are YOU DOING?” Weston is still half-shouting here, but we’re ignoring him.

“Har har guys, I KNOW you can HEAR me,” he continues. I nod towards the door and Verne nods in confirmation and, out we go. Yolita follows a little bit later, leaving deafened Weston alone to shout to himself while he wonders if we’re still there. I predict his pride will prevent him from looking out the door for at least a minute thirty. Let him find his own way out. This mission is over as far as I’m concerned. Worst case scenario we rent a sub and come back for the gold after the boat sinks.

“So, what is that thing?” I ask Verne as we go. We’ve got to head for the bridge, where ever that is. I figure they have a radio up there, right?

“What thing?” Verne replies dourly.

“That…That thing, man!” I spit out, exasperated that I had to clarify.

“Oh. I don’t know.”

I cast a look over our shoulders, mine and unconscious Goober’s shoulders, and see that Yolita has caught up.

“So, what is that thing?” I try asking her.

“Not the worst,” she says plainly and gingerly steps in front of us. It’s clear that she’s got no intentions of waiting for us.

“Hey, where you goin’?”

“I’m getting off this boat,” she says, still farther ahead of us now. I motion towards her with my head to signal Verne to speed up, but he doesn’t pick up on it. She’s getting away.

“How you figure you’ll do that?” I call, practically shouting at this point.

“They’ve gotta have a radio on the bridge, right? I’m going to the bridge.”

“How do you know where it is?”

“I saw it on the way down,” she hollers back and ducks down another hallway. I look at Verne and tell him to step on it, or I’m leaving him to hold Goober on his own. He steps on it, “it” in this case being Goober’s foot, which gets one of it’s laces looped around Verne’s big toe, causing him to trip and push all of Goober’s heavy-ass, junk-food-eating, no-exercise-doing weight on me, causing me to fall over, and thus find myself pinned on my stomach under them both.

“Oh, dear Jesus, kill me now,” I grumble.

Verne gets up and makes an effort to pull Goober off of me. He won’t budge.

“No, no, just go. Leave me here to drown and or burn. Perhaps I’ll die of hunger. Just go, man, just go!”

Verne actually stops pulling and asks: “Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m not serious!” I say, demonstrating my not-seriousness by pounding my unpinned fist on the floor in front of me. “Get this lug off of me! Put your back into it, come on!”

This is when Weston shows up.

“Oh god. Put a group of men on a boat for an hour and they all go queer on ya,” is the only comment he cares to contribute. It’s the kind of comment Weston likes making the best: vaguely homophobic and nonsensical.

Luckily, the (have a nice trip, see you next) fall seems to have jostled Goober into the shallower depths of unconsciousness. He begins to stir and finally asks, in a manner suggesting he just woke from a long, restful nap:

“What the hell are ya’ll doin’ to me?”

“Molesting you while you sleep, what does it look like?”

“That’s not funny,” he says.

“Will you please get OFF OF ME?”

He does.

“Let’s get going,” I say when I’m finally back on my feet. “We’ve gotta be pressed for time. There’s no way the boat is gonna hold up to a fire, sinking and those things.”

“What things?” Weston asks. My life is a lot like a broken record.

“You didn’t see that thing? The thing that killed Dole!”

“You gotta be crazy. Someone shot him in the back of the head,” Weston says matter-of-factly.

I look at Verne for the assist, but he just shrugs.

“Are you kidding?” I ask. “Then why did you start shooting?” He just shrugs. “If someone shot him, where he was standing when it happened, they would’ve had to have been down the hall, not behind him in the doorway!”

“Well, why’d you start shooting then?”

“Cuz I saw the fucking thing Yolita was talking about and it popped out of Dole’s face on the end of a big nasty blue tentacle thing, man. Dole said there were things eating people on the boat, come on, you were there!”

I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. Maybe I am crazy.

“He’s lost it, Verne,” Weston says. “Time to go. We’ll just have to leave him behind.”

“Verne, come on, you saw it! You know you saw it, because if you hadn’t seen it you would’ve said, ‘I didn’t see anything,’ right?”

“I didn’t see anything. I wasn’t listening to Dole.”

This is a real mindfuck I’m having pulled on me right here. I decide to shut up for the time being.

“So, gentlemen,” Weston says. “Shall we proceed to catch up to our lady friend on the bridge?”

“How’d you know she’s going to the bridge?” I ask him.

“Gotta have a radio on the bridge, don’t they?”

I concede and I realize I should be paying more attention how to get back to the vault. While I’m concentrating on figuring out which deck we’re on after going up a strangely cramped flight of stairs, Goober slows his pace to match mine, and sure as the eruptions of Old Faithful, interrupts my concentration.

“You wanna try and get me caught up on what the hell is going on right now?” he says. It’s not a request.

As I’m recounting the whole ordeal, Goober’s expression changes from amused, to perplexed, to amused again.

“What about the gold?” he finally asks at the end.

What about the gold, indeed.

The first one to get here is Yolita and she’s covered in blood and another black mystery liquid. Those strange eyes are glowing with an emotion that is very unsettling coming from Yolita: fear.

“Did you see it?” she demands frantically. “Did you see it?”

“See what?” I ask and she blows right past me. She slams and locks the heavy porthole behind her. “Hey now,” I say. “How are they going to get in?”

“We aren’t letting anyone in,” she says, very sure of herself.

“Oh really? That sounds perfectly reasonable, Yolita, tell me more.”

“Shut up! You didn’t see it. You didn’t see what they…what those things did to the passengers!”

She says all this through gritted teeth, her expression growing more manic with every passing instant.

Right then, the porthole begins clanking and Yolita’s gun comes up.

“Whoa baby!” I tell her, putting my hands up in front of me. “It’s just the team,” I coo at her, slowly, carefully moving my hand towards the gun, like a man about to snatch a rattle snake up by the ass.

“It’s just the team,” I’m saying again when Yolita emits a sound like a cornered dog and lunges at me with her shoulder, bending under my outstretched arm to hit me in the stomach. I go down. Hard.

“Help me hold the door,” she says, blowing past me like a breeze, me gasping to catch my wind on the ground. “Help me hold the door you idiot! We can’t let them in!”

The funny little wheel on the door begins to spin and I’m pretty sure Yolita’s mismatched eyes are about to bug out of her head. I see her mouth the words “too late” and she runs to the other end of the room. She looks at the big white door of the vault behind the glass and looks at me. She says:

“You have to get it open!”

Right now, I’m making an honest effort not to vomit up what ever’s left in my stomach after the plane incident, probably the only honest thing I’ve done all year.

“You damn right we do,” says a voice with a familiar obnoxious twang. The door’s come open, which I neglected to notice in my slumped-over position, and there stands Weston, cowboy hat back on in place of the helmet he was wearing when we dropped. He unbuttons the gas mask and spits rudely on the floor near me.

“’The hell you doing on the floor, Parks?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I tell him and struggle to my feet.

Yolita is crying big whale-tears of relief. It’s like she’s five years old again and jolly old Saint Nick has shown up at her door when she was expecting the boogie man.

“’The hell’s she crying for?”

I couldn’t answer if I tried.

“You ask her, she’s acting crazy.”

“You didn’t see it!” she yells suddenly, those fucking scary eyes seeming to glow like coals. She says it again and goes back to crying, this time with the helplessness of the damned.

“She hurt?” Weston asks.

“I dunno,” I tell him

“She’s covered in blood. You sure she’s not hurt?”

“For fuck’s sake, I told you I dunno!”

“Well what the fuck do you know aside from that you don’t yet seem to have even considered opening this vault?” he demands, emphatically pointing at the big locked door.

He glares at me a moment longer with Yolita sobbing in the periphery, before I reply:

“Not much.”

He grunts and stomps past me, leaving the door open. Yolita yelps and aims her gun at the opening.

“Close the door!” she shrieks. “Close the door closethedoorclosethedoor!”

Confused but finally able to stand, I close the door. Not because she told me to, but to shut her up.

“Alright!” I holler and almost slam the door on Goober, who grabs it and throws it back at me. Yolita yelps again at the sudden apparition of the giant black man, points her gun and fires POP-p-POP at Goober, who is simultaneously electrocuted and injected with an extremely potent sedative at the same time. He get’s the W in “What?” out before dropping. I roll my eyes and palm my face. Meanwhile, Weston has disarmed and is in the process of restraining Yolita. It’s a pretty drab scuffle, but then Yolita pulls a knife and things get a little more interesting. Then Weston takes the knife from her and shouts as he presses it up to her neck: “God DAMN Yolita if you do not get control of yourself right this instant I swear to GOD ALMIGHTY that I will have Parks slit your throat while you sleep, doyouunderstandme?”

Her eyes flick over at me—still at the door next to slumped-over Goober, smiling a big ol’ smile and giving her the thumbs up—and then she swallows hard and nods a barely visible nod.

“Good!” Weston says and throws up his hands. “Now, little lady, do you mind telling me just what the fuck happened?”

“Give me my knife back,” she replies. Weston raises an eyebrow, a little brown caterpillar peeking up over the top of his sunglasses.

“After you tell us what happened,” he insists. She sighs and sits down next to the toppled desk, hugging her knees to her chest like an egg.

“And,” Weston says right when it looks like she’s about to finally start, “after you help Parks drag Goober the rest of the way in here.”

It’s been maybe twenty minutes when my concentration is broken by the sound of steel girders, the impossible weight of the ship above us, groaning in a most uncomfortable way. I pop my earpiece back in and hear a bunch of static and nonsense. Jesus Christ.

“Everyone. Shut the fuck up and listen!” Weston’s gruff command tone over the static. “Deck B fire control is malfunctioning. That means the fire is going to start spreading, and we’re looking at the possibility of Deck A collapsing. After that, it’s just a matter of time before Deck C goes, and so on. That means we have a very, very limited amount of time here. If Deck A goes down, we’re gonna have a hell of a time getting out of here, and if Deck B goes down, it’s very probable we won’t be getting out of here at all. That means move your asses, people! All units report.”

“Bakarov here, Deck D hostages checked, no sign of the captain. Decks J and K clear. Ten additional hostages contained, three hostiles down.”

“Keep looking, Yolita. Verne, report.”

“Verne here. Deck L and M clear. No sign of the captain, though there’s a locked door on the starboard side of Deck M here I can’t get open, it’s barricaded from the other side. No hostages or hostiles.”

“Wallace here. Parks is still checking his e-mail,” Goober taunts. I give him the finger and go back to my tapping, boring job. Ha, yeah right. Weston groans.

“Verne, stay put. I’m coming to help you with that door now. Goober, Yolita, rendezvous at the infirmary in ten or less. Parks, you stay put and keep trying for that safe. We gotta be gone in a half hour or less, otherwise you’ll hear them Interpol fuckers in helicopters real soon. That means move it Parks, you’re supposed to be good at this horse shit.”

I roll my eyes. “A-ffirm-attive,” I repeat. My hands don’t stop moving. Asshole that he is, Weston is right. Leaving this whole mess behind won’t even be worth the price of admission if we don’t snag this gold.

Goober is ducking out the door we came in, but before he goes I tell him to keep an eye out for a communications room, something with a radio. We need to try to arrange a pick up. Weston didn’t tell me to do this, but he didn’t mention any damn thing about how we’re gonna get off without the plane. The idea was to drop us in with ‘chutes, then scoop us up from the water with a hook on one of the life boats, but without the plane, we’re-ahem-dead in the water. Goober nods and goes on about his way. I holler after him, “Try to find me some coffee, too!”

Some more time goes by. I whistle idly, no real tune, a composition of my own imagining, thrilling crescendos and all that at my every whim. My fingers dance in time, staccato tapping a strange percussion, not keeping time but it’s following it’s own melody in my brain. Shoulda been a composerAND THEN WHAT THE HELL NOT AGAIN—

The floor below me kicks like a fucking brontosaurus out from under me and the monitor comes flying at my head and the keyboard too. What now? What now?

“Report, report, all units report,” Weston barks.

“Bakaraaaaaaaaaah!” Yolita shrieks.

“Yolita, report!” and silence.

“All units report!”

“Goober here, Deck C’s fulla smoke! I think Deck A’s comin’ down! What’re we gonna do?”

“Calm down, Goober. Get outta there, get back to the infirmary. Dole, report!”

“Dole here, infirmary’s getting smoky too. And…What the fuck?” he goes silent for a minute. I’m on my back covered in computer paper and components, breathing heavy. Ow.

“Dole, come in,” Weston tries again.

“We’re taking on water! Infirmary’s taking on water, are we sinking?”

Sinking? Oh, fuck me. The infirmary’s on which deck? Which deck am I on now?

“This is Bakarov, come in! Can anyone hear me?”

“Yolita, we read you, what happened?”

“Sir, we’re taking on water. And there’s some…thingahhhhhh!” and then there’s some gunfire and silence.

“Yolita, come in! What happened? Come in!” This is more emotive than I’ve seen Weston since New Constantinople.

Big letters on the wall near some stairs inform me I’m on Deck J. J comes after D, right? Infirmary’s on D, right?

I hate using the earpiece.

“This is Parks. Weston, come in.”

“Go ahead, Parks.”

“The vault’s on Deck J, but everything’s all fucked up down here. I’m coming to you guys, what’s your location?”

Silence.

“Negative, Parks, we need that safe open ASAP. This is your job, do it.”

“Can you at least tell me which deck the infirmary is on? Where are we taking on water? Are we taking on water?”

“Infirmary’s on Deck L. Taking on water not confirmed—”

“Bullshit!” interrupts Dole. “I’m in the Infirmary now, and I say we’re taking on water! There’s a huge hole in the side of the ship. We’re going to sink!”

“Dole, can it! Everyone, reconvene at the vault on Deck J. Weston out!”

Here comes the cavalry. I wish I had a little flag or something to wave when they show up.

When we land, we stick to the plan.

Yolita, Verne, and Weston (who is now accompanied by a limping but hard-nosed Dole) spread out and clear the upper decks one at a time, snagging hostages and storing them somewhere convenient. Goober and I proceed below deck to the command center and the safe. We have what we call ATE on this mission, (as in “the dog ATE my homework,”) Authority to Expedite, meaning the Authority to decide that a particular soul needs to be Expedited along its mortal coil i.e., Authority to Kill People but ATKP or “atkhpuh,” comes out sounding like a muffled sneeze. Our job (cracking the safe—really, my job) is the most essential to the mission (stealing the gold), so our kills don’t count against us with The Agency (are you lost yet?). But I don’t kill unless I have to. And Goober doesn’t either unless you tell him to. Not exactly shining stars on the epaulets like in the military, but it’s about as close to rank as we have here, below Weston. In the eyes of The Agency we’re just a switch to be flipped. Faceless. Nameless. A game of numbers and figures moving on static fields that I’m happy to play. Easy.

I think of the monster in the water as Goober and I descend a ladder almost square in the middle of the upper deck, taking us below. There is thick smoke everywhere. I imagine that I am the monster in the water. Without a name. Without a face. Simply “Am.” Like an elemental or chemical force.

I smile and open fire into a crowd of screaming passengers mixed with the odd deckhand or officer and watch them go down fast. Potent stuff in these stun-tranqs Weston had put together. Remember? No killing. But they sure go down.

We find a goofy turd with a sailor’s cap on hiding in a closet in the next room. He’s got a rosary wrapped around his hands. He’s praying. How cute.

Goober yokes him up by the collar, a good foot in the air and says, “Safe. Now.”

The turd sputters and nods and then says, “This way,” and leads us down the cramped hallways below. Lots of narrow spaces and spots you have to hunch down so you don’t hit your head. Lots of blind turns. I’m surprised we haven’t run into any—

On the other side of this next door, the turd dives to the ground and yells, “There they are!” and the next thing I know I’m getting shot at. Security. I quickly side-step out of the line of fire and Goober does the same. I shake my head, tsk-tsk and Goober holds up three fingers. I nod. We pop back out and thup-thup-thup stun-tranqs all hit their marks and the sunglasses-and-black-suits “security” guys go down. The sailor, this stupid turd is praying again, belly down on the floor. I kick him hard in the thigh.

“Get up, asshole. Take us to the safe or you’re fucking dead.”

He does.

We work our way even further below deck, through what looks like crew’s quarters and maybe a cafeteria or something. I don’t know a lot about boats. Forgive me. Then finally, here we are: The Safe.

It’s a huge white door mounted on the other side of a huge white room that we’re cut off from by a thick glass barrier. There’s a door with a steel border and a serious set of complex electronic locks cut into the glass. Somewhere above us, I hear screaming and shots and general mayhem. “Crowd control.”

“Can you open this door?” I ask the turd. He shakes his head. “Who can?”

“Th-th-the c-c-c-captain,” he sputters.

“Where’s the c-c-c-captain, turd?” I ask. “Try not to spit on me when you answer.”

“I…I d-don’t know?” he says. I drive my forehead into his head and hear that satisfying crunch. My favorite sound next to breaking glass and tumblers turning in locks. Ahhhh.

“Where’s the captain?” I repeat myself (which I hate doing). Blood gushes from his nose and he moans in pain. He snorts and sniffles through the blood-laden mucous cascade and then sobs, “This way.”

“Bakarov to Weston,” Yolita’s voice on our earpieces.

“Weston reading, go ahead Yolita,”

“Decks B through D clear. Deck A’s burning up, but I think it’s empty and the fire-control on Deck B is keeping it from spreading. Forty hostages contained in Deck D ballroom. Five hostiles down.”

“Thank you, Yolita. Keep in touch.”

“Verne to Weston,” says that hissing creep.

“Go ahead Verne,” Weston says.

“Decks E, F, G, H and I clear and secure. Thirty hostages detained, waiting on your signal to move them to Deck D ballroom. Ten hostiles down, one out.” This ‘one out,’ means one killed. How Verne managed to kill a man with a gun full of stun-tranqs is beyond me…

“Dammit, Verne,” Weston growls. The psycho throws our cash in the toilet and, Flush, there it goes. “Move hostages now,” continues Weston. “Yolita, be ready to receive Verne.”

All the while this is going on, I’m tap-tap-tapping a nearby computer console, trying to find a hole in the system, an emergency shut-down or security maintenance drill I can use to trick the door into opening and letting me into that safe.

“Awaiting report from Parks and Goober,” Weston says over the earpiece. I put a finger to my gas mask, silencing Goober before he can get that mouth going. A lot of weird stuff on this here ship’s log, I notice thumbing through this file here, that file there. But that’s not what I ought to be doing. I check the security files and again, Weston’s in my ear going: “Awaiting report from Parks and Goober.”

I’m smiling behind my mask, even as the relays and loops go marching by on the screen. Weston hates it when I won’t report. And I hate these stupid earpieces, but whatever. What’s a little antagonism between team mates?

“Parks and Goober, one of you assholes had better report or I’m gonna come down there and shove my foot so far up yer—”

“Parks reporting. We’re at the safe. Running primary security drills now. One hostage detained, three hostiles down. Anyone got a fix on the captain? Our hostage says he’s got the key.”

“Wallace reporting. Parks’s on the computer now and—”

“Shut up, Goober,” Weston barks. “Yolita, Verne, find the captain. If he’s on Deck A, we’re gonna have to find another way to open that shit. Parks, keep at it.”

“A-ffirm-ative,” I say in my best 1950’s robot voice. “Dole, how’s that foot?”

Goober laughs, voice breaking into static over the earpiece, echoing a strange fraction of a second after I hear him laugh there in the room with me.

“Fuck you, Parks,” I can hear him say as I pluck the earpiece out and unsnap my gas mask and a warm smelly cascade of vomit drops out. I spit. “Parks out,” I reply as the mask drops to around my neck.

“Have you…?” Goober starts to ask.

“Yep,” I reply.

“The whole time?” he asks.

“Yep,” I tell him again.

“That’s disgusting,” he says. I wipe my mouth off on the back of my arm and rub my knuckles into my eyes and stretch. I lean down and run my eyes over the screen again. I look at Goober, who’s taking off his mask and shit and I say, “Think you could find me a chair?” He drops the mask and replies, “Fuck you, Parks.”

“No respect,” I say, shaking my head and leaning over the nearest important-looking computer console. “No respect around here at all.”