We are back with another issue of Stone, a serial by Laura Browne-Lambert. In this issue, Shonda gets hit in the head while trying to get Martin out of harm's way. In her dreams, she remembers a moment from her past that pushed her on her path to Mars.
The audio-recording for this chapter is now available on YouTube. If you prefer to listen to this story, you can do so by clicking the button or by clicking play on the embedded video.
Stone is a science fiction serial that tells the story of a mission to Mars gone horribly wrong. Issues of this story are best read in order. If you are not caught up with this story, please use the links below to read other issues.
Image Description: A sheer, red rock-face reaches high into the sky. Dark striations run the length of the stone. An astronaut crosses the ground in front of the stone. The astronaut's suit is white with black accents. They look tiny in comparison to the stone in the backdrop.
Credit: Nicolas Lobos / Unsplash via Webador
Stone (Volume 1, Issue 6)
by: Laura Browne-Lambert
Shonda watched Martin through the porthole window and caught the moment when he realized exactly what Shonda had said. He jumped violently, bricks of explosives and balls of twine slipping out of his hands and rolling away.
“Ah, cra—” Martin’s voice dissipated, lost in the crackle of commlink interference.
“Marty?” Shonda called. Marty, you good?” Only static responded to her question. She held her binoculars to her eyes. Martin scrambled to collect the supplies that now littered the ground around him. Movement at the top corner of her field glasses took her attention away from Martin for a moment. The stone that had been cut off from its parent rolled playfully down the side of the hill. It wobbled back and forth like a child learning to walk. “Martin, you need to stop what you’re doing and get inside now.” The man outside showed no indication that he had heard her. “Martin, come in!” Shonda could hear her voice get shrill with panic. “Come in, Martin. Come in.” Martin did not answer. Instead, Shonda heard a distant rumble as the parent stone traveled down the side of the hill using practiced rotations which it controlled with one of its appendages.
Shonda felt the blood drain from her face. As she lowered her binoculars, her own face looked back at her, dimly reflected in the small, round window. Her pallor had changed to a sickly gray. It did not seem as though the stone beings knew how close Martin stood to where they played, but that could change any moment. Memories of the last time she had encountered them fought for her attention. Shonda shoved the thoughts aside. The commlinks were down and Martin needed her.
Shonda tucked her hair haphazardly into her hood and pulled her suit over her skintight underlayer. She clicked her helmet into place as the pair of stones stopped moving and turned in Martin’s direction. Oh no. Shonda threw herself into the airlock and slid the door shut. The few short moments it took for the system seal one door and slide open the other were enough for the scene outside to change drastically. By the time Shonda hurried into the reddish Martian light, the stones had begun to roll rapidly in Martin’s direction.
Shonda threw her arms up as she ran, gesturing wildly to Martin. Finally noticing her, Martin followed her gestures to find the pair of stone creatures, one large, one small, spinning toward him. He dropped the supplies he had just finished gathering. From her vantage point, Shonda could not see what he picked out of the pile, but the explosion that followed indicated that he had lit a stick of dynamite with a lighter. He threw the dynamite at the pair of stones and ducked. Fire and stone burst like the pappus of a dandelion on a windy day. A piece of debris caught Shonda in the chest and threw her to the ground. Her head struck the back of her helmet and—
Hellfire rained from the sky. Shonda pulled Claire into her arms and ran. Her daughter’s voice, screaming into her right ear clashed with the cracks and pops of gunfire and explosions that crept up the block from the main road.
The uprising had begun with protests and marches, demonstrations that she recognized well enough to join them with her fist in the air. She wanted her child to grow up healthy and well nourished, same as the rest of them. But somehow, it had turned to this – bloody skirmishes in the shops and streets and neighborhoods – all because the people were hungry. Shonda did not even know who was fighting who anymore. A car burst into flames across the street.
“Jeanne!” Shonda shouted hoarsely. “Jeanne, where are you?”
Her wife’s figure appeared in the open door of their modest ranch-style house. Jeanne bent double as another smattering of gunshots erupted down the street.
“Shonda! Oh, thank God. You have Claire.” Jean beckoned with one hand and held the door open with the other. “Get inside. Hurry.”
Shonda scrambled up the front stoop and inside. Jeanne slammed the door behind them.
“Come here, baby,” Jeanne asked as she took Claire out of Shonda’s arms and held her child tightly. “Who’s fighting out there?”
“I have no idea,” Shonda answered breathlessly. “But we need to get down to the basement. Where are Ryan and Aunt Dierdre?”
“I don’t know,” Jeanne ran awkwardly for the cellar, Claire sobbing into her shirt. “I went looking for you first.”
Shonda wrenched open the door – it had always been a little finicky – and ushered Jeanne and Claire through the door. “Go, hide under the steps. I’ll look for them.”
Jeanne spun around. “No, you have to come with us.”
Shonda gave her wife a hasty kiss. “I will. As soon as I my brother and your aunt.” She gave Jeanne’s shoulder a little push. “Go, I’ll see you in a minute.” Shonda swung the door shut and sprinted to the other side of the house, calling for Ryan and Aunt Dierdre. She checked the living room where Diedre used to watch Jeopardy, back before the power became too inconsistent to waste on entertainment. She checked the kitchen where Ryan liked to bake apples. She checked each bedroom, one by one. But the house was empty. Shonda turned helplessly in a circle in the middle of her bedroom. Where had they gone?
The sound of fists pounding against the back door answered her. Shonda raced out of the bedroom and froze. What if the person outside that door was not her family? The pounding grew louder, and a sharp voice joined the ruckus.
“Jeanne, Shonda! Open the door! Open up!”
Aunt Dierdre. Shonda resumed her journey to the living room and unlocked the back door. An older woman with a body that looked as though it had recently lost its comfortable plumpness stumbled into the house.
“Oh, Shonda!” Aunt Dierdre threw her arms around Shonda’s neck and gave her a squeeze. “I lost my key. I couldn’t get inside. They’re coming up the street, Shonda.”
“Do you know where Ryan is?”
“Ryan?” Aunt Dierdre’s voice rose into hysterics. “I couldn’t get him to come with me. He’s out there with a baseball bat, as if he can fight off a mob with a stick.”
Shonda felt her chest heat with fresh dread. She cracked the door open again and slipped outside. “Don’t open this door until I get back.” Slamming the door shut, she followed the exterior of the house. At each turn, she peeked around the corner before continuing.
The last corner turned her into the driveway. Hidden behind the car that had been rusting since the military had become the only authorized consumer of gas, Ryan held an old aluminum baseball bat over his shoulder.
“Psst! What do you think you’re doing, Ryan?” Shonda whisper-yelled to her brother.
Ryan whipped around, accidentally knocking the car with his bat. They both winced at the sound it made. “What do you think I’m doing? I’m protecting my family.”
Shonda rolled her eyes. “No, you’re not.”
Ryan rolled his eyes back. “Go inside, Shonda.”
“I will if you do.”
“We don’t have time to argue, Shonda.” Ryan turned his back.
“You’re right. We don’t,” Shonda said. “So, listen to me when I tell you that standing at the end of the driveway like a security guard is exactly how to tell that mob there’s something inside this house that’s worth their attention. Get inside with me and maybe they’ll think no one’s home.”
Ryan looked uncertainly back and forth.
Shonda took a step toward her brother. “Come on, Ryan. Let’s go!”
A deafening boom from a house two doors down the street convinced him. As debris pelted the fence and the car and the side of the house, he turned and chased Shonda around the back of the house. They pounded on the door until Aunt Dierdre let them inside. The next boom rattled the windows.
“Downstairs,” Ryan shouted. “Hurry!”
The three of them scrambled down the steps as another explosion shook dust onto their shoulders and into their hair.
Jeanne stuck a hand between the piles of scrap wood that concealed their hideaway. “Come inside here, Auntie.”
“You want me to get in there?”
It’s okay,” Shonda said. “I’ll get some of the scrap out of your way.”
Ryan wrapped his arms around Dierdre as Shonda picked over the oddly shaped pieces of wood to form a path.
“It’s gonna be alright, Auntie,” he said.
A boom, louder than all the others, tore through the house. The splintering of wood and shattering glass followed. The force threw Shonda onto her front, a wood shard ripping open the palm of her hand. The ceiling caved in and Shonda rolled away just in time to avoid the recliner that fell from the living room above her and cracked into pieces on the concrete floor beside her.
When she stopped choking on the dust long enough to take in her surroundings, Jeanne and Claire were terrified, but alive. Her brother and Aunt Dierdre were neither.
“Shonda. Shonda, wake up.”
Shonda felt her body rock back and forth. Hands gripped her shoulders. She moaned. Her head ached. She felt like she was still in her wrecked basement with the sun shining through the dust, but the light was harsher, and her body was cocooned by a thick, scratchy material.
A clapping noise pulled her back to the present. Shonda stared blearily up at a face protected by a bubble-shaped helmet. Martin.
“I’m so sorry, Shonda,” Martin said. “I was just trying to protect us. I didn’t mean to hit you.”
Tears rolled out of the corners of her eyes and wet the hood around her face. “I just wanted to take care of my family,” she sobbed. “That’s the only reason I came here. I just wanted to find a place they could be safe.”
Martin pulled her into a sitting position. “Come on, we have to get out of here before they figure out what happened.” He strung his arms under her shoulders and heaved. As her body rose without her help, Shonda cried over his shoulder. Tears dripped onto the face of her helmet. Through the droplets, she saw the shallow crater and the splintered stones that bordered it.
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