Half Way Home

• 11 • The Break

It’s amazing how quickly you get used to things. My head was full of an education on how to help brains on the verge of breaking, but all I’d seen around me was them bending more and more under a growing strain and somehow remaining whole. For all the studying I’d done on the fragility of a thing, here I was a witness and example of its incredible perseverance.

Another thing I noticed was how quickly the human brain paired causal events. “A” leads to “B.” We love to make that link, however tenuous. Like how Tarsi hits people when she’s joking. As soon as she slaps someone, you can expect her odd little laugh to follow. The one event follows the other like clockwork. Kelvin and I make fun of the habit, telling her we aren’t going to laugh on command anymore. That’s why we think she does it, like a little threat of violence if we don’t find the last thing she said humorous.

Still, the harder we try not to laugh, the more we end up doing it. Harder and more often of late, it seemed, despite the longer days and the less time we spent together. More evidence of our bending without breaking.

The whistle of the bombfruit was another of those causal pairs. After the whistle, there was usually a bang. Often, it was the softer thud of the rind exploding as it hit the mud, the dirt mixing with our next meal. But sometimes, it was the booming report of a large bombfruit hitting something metal. The next day, a dining group might find a new dent in their gold table and breakfast already spread out, dutifully tended to by a variety of little worms.

Whistle followed by explosion. Like clockwork. There was always the warning of the first before the bang of the latter. The in-between time was spent tensed up, waiting.

My nerves, then, were not prepared when the sounds reversed themselves. It was late at night, and my group was struggling along to meet its quota. Several of us worked outside joining pipes—not just to keep the fumes of our welding irons away from the others, but because of the ironic state of our lighting. The bulbs outside burned brighter than the dim flickering within the power module, which struggled to keep up with demand.

The explosion came without warning. A loud boom. My entire body twitched, and I dropped my iron. We all looked at each other, wondering what had happened. Then the high-pitched screaming started. The two noises had come in the wrong order.

I left my iron in the dirt and ran toward the source, trying to keep up with Muriel, who had taken off immediately.

The wail emanated from the direction of the launch pad. Other colonists converged on it as well, despite the shouts from enforcers to return to our stations. One of them raised his gun and fired a shot straight up.

I cringed, then I realized the sound from the gun was the same as the one we’d heard earlier. The whistling noise was distant shrieks, which grew louder as we stumbled down the slope toward the rocket site.

Several enforcers stood together, their gleaming guns drawn. Hickson came running up to join them, shouting questions. Stephany, one of the girls I knew through Kelvin, sat in the dirt, screaming. She held someone in her lap—an eerie recreation of what I’d come upon the day Stevens died. The boy was large and unmoving, and for a second I thought it was Kelvin, but then I saw him drop down from the scaffolding.

“What did you do?” Stephany shrieked, rocking back and forth. I ran to her, joining Julie—a nurse who had become, by default, the base’s doctor.

The boy had both hands pressed to his stomach, vainly attempting to staunch the flow of blood. His chest heaved in and out rapidly; the only other thing moving was his eyes, which darted back and forth between us.

“Let me see,” Julie said, pulling his hands away and pushing the thin fabric of his top up to his chest. Blood welled out, thick and dark; she immediately placed her hands over the wound and started barking out commands: water, clean towels, coagulant. I didn’t hear what else. Someone pulled me back forcefully.

“Give them room,” Hickson said.

I stumbled backward, feeling a fury rise up inside. One of the enforcers came to me, holding the gun out between us, but he wasn’t threatening me with it. He held it limp and on its side, looking at it like he wasn’t sure how it got there.

“I didn’t mean to—” he said. He looked at me, water coating his eyes. “He was trying to take an extra break,” he told me. “I didn’t mean to—”

I pushed the gun down, getting the barrel away from me, and looked around for Kelvin. He stood beside the scaffolding, his fists clenched in front of him, his eyes glaring daggers at Hickson.

I stepped away from the enforcer, making him cope with his guilt alone, and ran to my friend to save him from making a huge mistake.

Later that night, the three of us sat together in the cab of our tractor, the overhead light turned up just enough so we wouldn’t bump into each other. It felt hot and muggy inside, but none of us felt safe out on the hood. Partly out of fear of being overheard, and partly out of fear of the bombs overhead.

“We need to get out of here,” Kelvin said, looking back and forth between Tarsi and I.

“And go where?” Tarsi asked. “Just wander out into the wilderness of a planet we haven’t been properly oriented for? Colony won’t even show anyone the satellite maps. We have no idea what’s out there.”

“We know what’s in here,” Kelvin said.

“Tarsi’s right,” I told Kelvin. “Besides, we would just be aban-doning everyone else.”

“Anyone that wants to come, can come,” he said. “The more the merrier. The place gets enough rain, right? And there must be tons of bombfruit out there, especially since the tremors. It’ll last us until we get started—”

“Started on what?” I asked. “Rubbing sticks together? Do you have any idea how long it would take us to rebuild a fraction of this?”

Kelvin squared his shoulders at me and raised his voice. “Do you have any idea how long we’ll last here if we keep killing one another?”

“Settle down,” Tarsi said. “Both of you.”

“I’m sorry,” Kelvin said. “I’m just angry at what happened today. I knew that enforcer was going to do something. We’ve been whispering about it all across the scaffolding today. Hell, I should’ve done something earlier.”

“Then you’d be the one getting a blood transfusion,” Tarsi said, holding his arm with both her hands.

Kelvin sniffed, his mouth tilting up at an angle. He looked to each of us in turn. “You guys can stay here if you want,” he said, “but I’m leaving. I’m gonna take a piece of magnesium from the supply store and a machete, so I can start a fire. Maybe a few strips of tarp for carrying water or to make a shelter. Not much. I don’t care if I only last a week, I’m not gonna sit here and watch us tear each other apart.”

Before I could complain, Tarsi floored me with her reaction.

“I’ll come with you,” she said. “I can grab a few seed packets from support in the morning. But I think we should spread the word, give others the chance to join us.”

I shook my head at this, arguing tactics when what I should’ve been doing was dismissing their entire plan. “Tell anyone and you’ll be stopped. By force.”

“So you’re staying,” Kelvin said.

“I don’t think I can leave,” I told them. I immediately recognized the hurt on Tarsi’s face. “I’m sorry, it just feels suicidal to me. And I think you guys should sleep on it and reconsider. Give it a day, at least. Once you go, Hickson will know what happened. I don’t think you’ll be able to come back—”

Saying it cemented the seriousness of what they were considering. I pictured myself sleeping in the tractor at night. Alone. I turned away and pretended to peer through the cab’s glass, but it was fogged with a billion droplets of our condensed worry.

“I don’t want you guys to go,” I whispered. “There’s no telling what’s beyond our perimeter.”

“We’ll give it a day,” Tarsi said. I felt her turn away from me to face Kelvin. “Is that okay with you? We could use it to gather a few things. Another day like today, and I don’t think we’ll be alone in going.”

“Another day like today, and I won’t have any of my sanity left,” Kelvin said. “In which case, the shrink here will have to come.”

Tarsi slapped him in my defense—which automatically got us laughing. It felt nice, even if we weren’t sure why we were doing it.

And I don’t know that we would’ve been laughing, had we known it would be the last time the three of us enjoyed a moment like that in our small home. Because, even though Tarsi and Kelvin had agreed to wait a day, we would soon discover that the day would not wait for us.