Monster Planet(7)

Only half the crew seats were filled. It was just that kind of world. It had been for twelve years.





Monster Planet





Chapter Four


The helicopter set down in the middle of the camp nearPort Said , five kilometers away from where Ayaan had died. Osman put it down gently between its twin and the third, smaller aircraft that had broken down a year before and was kept now only for spare parts. Sarah took the rifles from the women who'd made it out and checked their safeties, then loaded them back into the weapons rack. As the official mascot of Ayaan's squad it fell on her to do all the heavy lifting, even though she lacked the muscle mass of the soldiers. It was also her job to clean the blood out of the cargo bay with a hose and a pump with a foot pedal but she couldn't even fathom how she would do that. She couldn't begin to think of what she was going to do next. She jumped down from the helicopter's deck and felt the hard heavy lump of her weapon in her pocket. She took out the flat Makarov PM and released the magazine from the grip and let the slide move forward until it locked in the open position. Checking to make sure there was no round in the chamber she put the magazine in one pocket and the pistol in the other. She did all this without the slightest thought, just as she'd done it hundreds of times before. Ayaan had taught her to practice, to do it fast, to do it the same way every time. Ayaan...

Sarah had no idea what to do next.

Ayaan was gone. Dead'Ayaan was dead. She might be wandering out in the desert that very moment, mindless, hungry, unfeeling. Or maybe the fast ghouls had devoured her entirely. Dead. Either way... either way there was no one left to tell her what to do. She couldn't remember another time like that. If she thought back far enough she could remember her father's shirt, the smell of his sweat as he held her against his chest. She could remember him running, moving, she could remember her mother not being with them anymore.

After that every memory she had revolved around Ayaan. She ran her hands over her cropped hair, scratched at her scalp with her nails. She didn't know what to do.

'Hey, help me with this,' Osman said.

She wheeled around and saw him crouched down by the ruined fuel pod on the side of the aircraft. He looked up at her with an expression of such concern and compassion that she wondered if it was actually pity that he felt. Her cheeks burned and she moved quickly to help him disassemble the pod, unbolting it from the airframe with a socket wrench. She caught the webbing between her thumb and index finger in the rough metal and pain lanced up her arm. It cleared her mind out in a hurry.

'I'm hungry, do you want something? I have a can of stewed tomatoes I've been saving for a rainy day.' Osman didn't look at her this time, which was almost worse. 'Listen, little girl, we're alive, and that counts for something, that's an achievement in a world like this.' His arm slipped around her shoulders and she started to shove him away, then relented. After a moment she turned into him, pressed her body against his in an actual embrace. Osman had been in her life as long as she could remember. If Ayaan had been like a big sister to her, Osman had been her uncle. It was good to smell the kif smoke that cured his frayed jacket, good to feel his body heat. 'We'll get by,' he told her, 'just as we always have. God and his Prophet must not want us so badly if he let us live this long, right?'

She nodded and broke away from him. He went to get his tomatoes but as it worked out she didn't have a chance to share in his feast. An eight year old boy dressed in a pair of shorts and flip-flops came running in, out of breath, to tell her Fathia wanted her up at the perimeter wire. She went right away.

The boy lead her through the open-air souk of the encampment, a close space of stalls lined with broken cinderblocks where the elderly sorted through cans looking for signs of botulism or corruption. Alma, one of the women from Ayaan's unit, was washing her face in a pan full of sandy water from the communal well as Sarah hurried by. She looked up and then looked away again as if to pretend she hadn't seen Sarah at all.

There was no time to figure out what that meant. Sarah hurried down a long 'street' lined on both sides with semi-permanent tent homes. At the far end she found Fathia under a moth-eaten awning, leaning over a map of the surrounding territory. Other soldiers lay on the ground nearby in the shade of the palisade wall, trying to get some rest.

The boy who had brought Sarah to the new commander crawled under the map table and dug his fingers into the loose dirt. His eyes were very moist'had he been crying?