Spacebound

My second science fiction writing. 8 pages. Had a blast writing this.

   SPACE BOUND

   a short story by c. 

 Lad puts the spacecraft on progressive drive and wanders through the rooms. It’s a LANCASTER 20, MODEL 38 and its shell has accumulated so much dust and rust it could be considered, from afar, as the inner bowels of a dish washer. Its inside is as vast and big as a new age shopping mall.

 It was meant to hold an entire crew, or academy.

 Lad is the only rider. The only person aboard.

 He checks the rooms often with the vague hope that he’ll find someone in all the gloom.  They are empty boxes with rough beds and left over closets once full of coats and clothes. Lad checks all two hundred, and they’re empty. The hallways are void, and Lad lets his hope pile up over his feet. 

 He returns to the control room and the controls are set on progressive drive. They always are. His ‘space mall’ drifts through the universe with no direction. For three years he’s been looking for Earth. He knows its out there. He doesn’t know if he can find it.

 Lad sits and sobs for his desolate self. When was the last time he saw another human, heard another human, smelt another human? Now, not even he can recollect. Lad finishes up his daily tears and his radar bleeps red.

 Another craft.

 A spaceship.

Smaller than his model but a craft just the same. He jolts the craft’s back entrance open and the other ship springs forward and lands in the space. Lad jolts the metal doors closed and descends.

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He connects onto speaker and contacts the ship. The white plastic wraps around his neck and ear and he speaks into it.

Is there anybody there.

Silence, and he can hear space whistling outside.

Hello? Hello? Hello? Is there anybody there? LANCASTER 20, speaking. Hello?

No one answers, not the slightest wisp of sound can be heard on the other end of the communication. Lad repeats ‘hello’ over and over and over again until a tear emerges from his eye and rolls down his face and plinks onto the floor. 

He unwraps the speaker plastic and throws it down.

Lad walks to the foreign ship’s entrance and presses the ship’s open button. The doors are rammed shut. Lad retrieves his toolbox and grabs a screwdriver. He attempts to pry the door open. The tip breaks off. 

He gets a more sturdy one and pushes into the space between the door. The two slides gradually separate an inch. He heaves himself onto the screwdriver and the doors clunk open another three inches. Lad tosses the thing into the toolbox and tries to get through.

The space is still to narrow.

He places his foot into the slot and presses down with every drop of strength from his legs. The door surrenders and crashes back into its corner. Dust whirls into the air and Lad coughs. 

He enters the ship and the walls are rotting in their own filth. The halls are peeled to their maximum. He sulks through and gazes into the fading rooms, the shriveled beds and the unkempt pillows and blankets.

The ship’s atmosphere is designed to look like a hospital. Each floor, is like a hospital ward and each room, rented by death and time. He goes through all six floors and finds no one. The ship is emptier than his. 

It must be on auto. That would explain its movements and how it landed into his craft. He finds the control room and the throttle is, as he knew, hurtled forward on auto. He presses the broken glass keys and they’re dead.

IS THERE ANYBODY HERE!? he yells. 

The abandoned ship lays still. 

HELLO! PLEASE, PLEASE, HELLO! Lad struggles not to break out into a cry.

He looks at every space and leaves no room unseen. When he’s sure that there’s no one, he heads back out onto his craft, back to his control room. He sits and eats a bag of chips, crunches the pieces between his teeth.

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Lad prays and inserts himself into his bed, blanket over him, head resting on hard pillow. He tries to fall asleep but constant thoughts tug at his head. Who’s ship was that? Why am i so alone? Why am i all alone?

Why am I still alive, still human, still searching for home, when everyone around me is dead, every space quiet and bare? Why do I still decide to live in this abandoned ship, why am I lost? Why do I search for something i’ll never find?

Lad hears soft noises.

Part of him is sleeping, the other part awake and alert. He listens. It’s as if someone is walking on the ceiling, webbed feet, because between every step, there’s a wet slop. 

Who the hell could it be?

He stays in his bed. He hears the feet multiply and now there’s twenty webbed feet walking over the ceiling, outside in the whole of the craft. Then, thirty, and forty. When he fully enters sleep, the noises inhabit his dreams and he can see little bats swarming around, until everything is black.

He snores.

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Lad awakens and the radar is bleeping again. He looks at the green circle and there’s a crimson dot getting nearer. He sees the dot circle his ship and then fade away. He presses the scanner button and the dot doesn’t re appear.

He goes to his window and looks out into space. The blackness everywhere, no other ship in sight. He clamps his ears to the glass, maybe get the rumble of a close ship. His ear freezes and he pulls back before it turns into an icicle and comes off.

What was that? he says.

The radar is motionless. Lad stares at the green screen for some time, expecting the dot to re enter his zone. He stands there, twenty minutes, and the screen is as light green as before.

He eats breakfast and brushes his teeth with fervor in the bathroom. He rinses and goes back down to the abandoned ship he explored yesterday. He remembers the feet he heard last night.

No one. He says. No one, you must be losing your mind. There is no one on this craft. You are alone. 

Lad gets a flashlight, a portable one, and flashes the beam over the ceiling. If there was anyone walking up there, the footprints could possibly be seen. The ceiling is a dust haven. There are no prints.

The craft groans.

Lad realizes that the ship is taking up space. If he doesn’t let it go, dump it back into the universe, it’’l just drag his craft down without control. 

He presses RELEASE and the back doors of his craft slide open. He takes the thing off auto and flies it up into the air. The ship slides back and tumbles out into space. It scrapes the floor as it goes, screeching into the air. He closes the doors and watches out his window as the ship twists, and turns, and dives into the backness.

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At midday he eats a sandwich. 

The lettuce crinkles over his teeth and the tomato slips over his gums. It actually tastes good. Out of all the meals he’s consumed on the craft, this one has to be the best. The main factor that plays into that is that it’s edible.

He needs to find earth soon. If he doesn’t he’ll starve. The food supply on the craft was added, in mind, that it would only be out in space for a short period of time. 

He only has twenty sandwiches, seven broccoli soups, and ten whole cheesecakes left, and then, nothing.

This’ll last me maybe another two weeks. He thinks. Maybe more, I hope.

Lad finishes the sandwich and hitches his napkin into the trash bin. He’s been forced to reuse the same napkin for every four meals, so that he’ll have enough for the remaining amount of food.

He despises the idea of having to wipe his mouth with his shirt. 

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Next day, the radar is up at its old game again. The red dot hovers on the screen, and Lad presses the RELEASE button. The back doors part and the dot enters his craft. He doesn’t want to loose it again. 

He shuts the doors and ventures down. The thing isn’t a spaceship but a tiny spacecraft. The kind, good to fit two people. They used those frequently to drop off robots, regular and hallucinogenic, on the moon.

The door opens itself and out steps a young man, maybe in his twenties. He extends his hand. Lad shakes it. He feels instant warmth and joy. Another human!

Who are you. Lad says.

My name’s Rob. 

Are there anymore people with you.

No, it’s just me. Nice, craft. Big.

Where do you come from?

 Rob’s hair is tousled like a mop head. He asks if there’s anywhere they can sit. Lad takes him up to the control room and lets him lay down on the bed.

You didn’t answer.

Earth. I come from Earth.

Lad’s eyes lit up. 

Rob says. You look happy.

I’ve been searching for earth for three years. Three long years.

Rob spreads his feet and fixes his hair. Its disheveled on one side.

It’s just north from here. A bit farther, maybe an hour away.

Take me.

I can’t, i’m going from Earth. I’m a robot dropper. I’m heading to the moon. I’ve got a hallucinogenic one back in the craft. He’s tied to the wall. 

Who is he.

Just a robot. I don’t know his name. He’s created this story about him traveling to the moon to get a sample of something. Everyone’s dead there, from a virus, he says. Then, get this, he meets another robot called Lanson and they get their craft stolen. He tells me this every day, the same story. 

I’ll go with you. 

Rob says. Sorry. Sorry. I can’t pick up anyone. 

Help me, i need to get to Earth.

Rob looks him in the eye. You can’t miss it, just keep on going North. Hey, can i have one of those sandwiches? Rob gets up.

Sure. Just one. 

Rob leans against the wall. You all alone.

I’ve been alone for a long time.

What happened to the rest of the crew?

I don’t know. I just woke up one day and i was alone.

I think i really should get going. Rob exits the room

Lad takes Rob back down and Rob says bye. He gets into his craft, but just before he leaves, he pushes out through the door and gives Lad a flyer. 

Watch out for that. He says. Lad opens the back doors and Rob makes his departure. 

-------------------

Lad flips the flyer in front of his face and his hands turn numb.

On the laminated paper is a full color photograph of the ship that he’d let in. The ship he’d explored, with its hospital walls and empty, rotting rooms. Beneath it is the word ‘warning’ in bold red, underlined.

“DANGEROUS SHIP. FLOATING IN SPACE, ABANDONED. DO NOT PICK UP. DISEASE AND BAT INFESTED. BELONGED TO THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY DEPARTMENT, LONG BEEN LOST SINCE THE YEAR 1903. DO NOT PICK UP! REPORT ANYBODY YOU SEE LETTING THIS SHIP INTO THEIR CRAFTS”

Lad lets the paper slip out of his hands and closes the door to the control room, locks it. He imagines hearing the slopping feet against the ceiling, walking, strutting. He glances out his window and earth is only a couple miles away. It looks just like it did in his dreams.

Lad imagines hearing bats. He wonders if he’s safe in the room, with the door securely shut. Bats aren’t that strong, are they? He walks to the window and looks at the ball in the star swept horizon. Earth. 

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Lad sleeps and listens intently. Tiny feet walking along the ceiling, along the walls, and now he can hear fluttering wings, expanding and folding. He tries to shut their sounds out of his system but he can’t.

He passes the night without sleep.

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Lad can see oceans, bodies of water, and land. He doesn’t eat breakfast, forgets entirely about it. He looks at earth and doesn’t know where he’s going to land. He doesn’t want to clutter into the ocean. 

Florida, around there. That’s where he dispatched from earth, long ago, and that seems like a right place to arrive.

The bats are out. 

They scurry over the ceiling and Lad doesn’t dare open his door. He lays in his bed for some time and then he can see the runway. He takes the throttle off progressive and skids the craft down, levels it, flies over the asphalt, and pulls below. 

He lands and rolls a distance. The craft hesitates, rolls forward, stops. 

People out on the runway think. Who the hell is this guy? Where the fuck did he come from?

Lad turns and the bats break through the door, little flying rag- demons, with maroon slits for eyes and their bones outlined on their wings. He yells as they overtake him, and land on his head, his arms, his legs. They nip their teeth into his flesh and bite.

When the police enter the spacecraft, after being shaken by his dreadful screams, it’s too late.