Stone (Volume 1, Issue 3)

Shonda gave Martin’s foot a jab with her toe.

“Wake up.”

Martin rolled over with a throaty grumble; his eyes scrunched shut. His head hurt from sleeping on the floor and the bright Martian light did nothing for the ache behind his eyes. His back and neck had cricks in them as well. Shonda gave him another poke, this time between his shoulder blades.

“Ow.” Martin slung an arm across his face.

“Come on, man,” Shonda said. “You can’t sleep all day.” Martin let out an obnoxious snore just to mess with her. “Or maybe you can.” She leaned down and gave his shoulder a hard shake. The crick in his neck zinged up into his skull. “Get up, it’s time for breakfast.”

CW: Mentions of death, grief.

Image Description: A deep, red-orange sandy ground with craggy stone outcroppings across the horizon.

Credit: Daniele Colucci / Unsplash via Webador

Now that was something that could get him to pull himself together. Martin’s eyes flew open. “See, that’s all you had to say,” he said. He stretched languidly, arms and legs reaching out until he looked like a starfish. “Did you really find breakfast?”

“Nah, but I found us some hydration.” Shonda tossed an insulated water bottle his way and Martin caught it with his stomach.

“Oof.” Why was he awake again?

“Might want to ration it until we stock up on supplies.”

“You actually think we’re going to survive this place?” Martin stared at the ceiling. The gravity of their situation had haunted him late into the night. He almost envied the bodies they had found outside in their quest for a generator.

“I have a strong survival drive.” Shonda took a long swig from her water bottle and climbed into her spacesuit.

“Well, I don’t.” Martin took a careful sip. It smelled like someone else’s backwash. Disgusting.

“What are you talking about? You escaped the Stone People with me.” She tossed him his own suit. He ignored it.

“Maybe I didn’t want to die with my head bashed in.”

“Might have been better off. I hear starvation isn’t a fun way to die. The other way might have been quicker.” She shrugged as if she didn’t really care, but Martin knew she had been just as terrified as him.

“Well, isn’t this conversation a nice way to start the day.”

Shonda held out her arms. “Check my straps?”

Martin let his suit slide onto the floor as he got to his feet and gave her suit a quick safety check. He pointed at the helmet in her hands. Other than the gaping hole in your visor, you’re good to go.”

“Right,” she said, looking around. “Let me see if Maintenance left their spares behind. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

“You don’t like hoping a few pieces of duct tape will keep your face together?” Martin asked sardonically. He pulled his own suit over his workout clothes. If she was going to go off galivanting across a busted up and deserted colony, he was going to make she didn’t cause too much trouble. Maybe it was his security training. Maybe he just didn’t want to end up looking like roadkill. So, there was a little bit of survival drive left in him. Sue him.

They slipped out into the cold Martian morning to see precipitation for the first time since their arrival. Frost drifted to the surface of the planet like icy dew and blanketed the ground in hazy white.

“It’s beautiful,” said Shonda.

“It’ll show our footprints.”

Shonda’s voice came through the commlink thin and staticky. “We don’t even know if they can see.” She gave his shoulder a push. “Come on. Let’s go while the frost is still falling. If they can see, it’ll be harder to spot us through the haze.”

They tracked their way from pod to pod by running their gloved hands along the remains of the structures so that they wouldn’t stray off-course. The journey was grim. At times, they had to pick their way around the bodies of dead researchers and crew members. Martin forced himself not to vomit into his helmet as they passed Joe and Kareem, two of the security guards he had served with back in the Marines. They had died on an alien planet and Martin would never find a way to bring their bodies home. He sprinkled a little dirt over them with his fingers. It wasn’t a proper burial, but it was something, and he didn’t dare disrupt the soil and attract the Stone People.

They found the commissary in shreds, sacks of freeze-dried food torn and scattered across a floor with a crater at its center. Shonda peered over the rim formed of dirt, chunks of stone, and flooring that had been shorn into pieces.

“One of the Stone People must have come through the roof, here,” she said.

Martin took a closer look. The ruins climbed up from the center and a large hole had been torn in the side of the building. “Actually,” he mused, “what if we built on top of one of them?”

Shonda looked up at him in alarm. “Do you think so?”

He pointed to the hole in the wall. The way from the commissary to the pile the Stone People had created was a straight shot. “It kind of looks like one of those creatures climbed up through the floor and broke through the wall to get home.”

Shonda followed his gaze. “If that’s true, then I feel like even more of a jerk. I can’t even be mad that they attacked us.”

Martin felt a small fire flare up in the pit of his stomach as he thought of Joe and Kareem. “Be careful, Shonda. Good people died, yesterday.”

“I’m not saying they didn’t. It’s just – It’s complicated. We didn’t know what we were doing.” She gave him a mournful look. “I had been so excited to come here. To be part of something consequential. To change things for the better. But we didn’t know there was life here. Now I wish we’d never come.”

Martin nodded. He understood, but he couldn’t help feeling angry at the death of his friends. Like she said, it was complicated. He gestured at a pile of sheet metal with his thumb. A stainless-steel door peeked between the pieces.

“I think we might have a prize over there.”

Together, they moved aside piles of building materials until an insulated trunk that resembled an ice box came into view. Martin flicked the lock open with a thumb and lifted the lid. Jugs of water and piles of freeze-dried foods filled the container.

He grinned. “Bingo.”

That night, they ate a dinner of rehydrated chili and played cards on the floor of the maintenance pod. They constructed bedding from blankets and clothing. Shonda huddled on her pile of blankets as she recorded their day's activities in her journal, while Martin sketched in his notebook from a seat at the control panel. It almost felt like living.

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