Avril and I struggle down the hilly expanse, kicking up clouds of ancient dust. I nearly slip down a dune, and a yelp escapes my lips that echoes off every hill of Noachis Terra.
Some hundred metres away, wiry villagers stare at us from sparse housing. They don’t make any moves to stop us, just gawk on from afar, their daily chores halted by my outcry.
‘The bunker,’ I shake myself off and roll up the map, turning from the blank eyes. A black hole in the side of the hill exhales chilled air like a snoozing beast, a listening post swallowed up by winds and time.
‘Why would they leave it open?’ Avril pants, fanning herself with her hat.
I squint, ‘Because it’s history, obviously’, not questioning who ‘they’ were.
Military history, primarily, though long abandoned. I took the coordinates from a fella on the DarkNet, though it cost the holiday home in Mare Crisium. I didn’t tell Avril.
She covers her mouth when she spies the Unified Martian Army emblem, faded and scorched on panelling where the sand meets the structural foundations. The telegram still haunts me to this day.
I swallow against the lump in my throat.
Avril goes to say something else, but I shush her abruptly, as I have never done. Because there is something outside of the light’s grasp, something pushing on the shadows in a bunker that, even perched at the entranceway, I can feel as if it is right behind me, huffing down my neck with a meaty breath. A structure that, despite rotting from the inside out, doesn’t seem to realise the war ended.
Sixteen was the drafting age.
I run a hand over the scratched-up Martian lettering over the door, sweeping red dust down upon us. Theta Base.
The DarkNet didn’t disappoint.
Foul grunting in the dark, from how far off I can’t tell. There is no moisture in the air, only whipping winds. And then a splash, a deep rush of water from inside this hole, this man-made cavern, as if something large has leapt from a height into whatever murky depths reside below this sun-bleached world.
‘Maybe that was—’ Avril starts.
She’s choked at the thought. As am I.
I reach into my rucksack and pull out a scattergun. It weighs heavy in my perspiring palms. The war’s been over for eight years, all firearms confiscated— or thereabouts. Avril says nothing when she sees it, and I’m grateful.
Tiny steps into the expanse, the musty air of the listening post strangling my airwaves.
‘Huey?’ I call with chapped lips, irritated at how feeble my voice sounds. ‘It’s father.’
Some hundred metres away, wiry villagers stare at us from sparse housing. They don’t make any moves to stop us, just gawk on from afar, their daily chores halted by my outcry.
‘The bunker,’ I shake myself off and roll up the map, turning from the blank eyes. A black hole in the side of the hill exhales chilled air like a snoozing beast, a listening post swallowed up by winds and time.
‘Why would they leave it open?’ Avril pants, fanning herself with her hat.
I squint, ‘Because it’s history, obviously’, not questioning who ‘they’ were.
Military history, primarily, though long abandoned. I took the coordinates from a fella on the DarkNet, though it cost the holiday home in Mare Crisium. I didn’t tell Avril.
She covers her mouth when she spies the Unified Martian Army emblem, faded and scorched on panelling where the sand meets the structural foundations. The telegram still haunts me to this day.
I swallow against the lump in my throat.
Avril goes to say something else, but I shush her abruptly, as I have never done. Because there is something outside of the light’s grasp, something pushing on the shadows in a bunker that, even perched at the entranceway, I can feel as if it is right behind me, huffing down my neck with a meaty breath. A structure that, despite rotting from the inside out, doesn’t seem to realise the war ended.
Sixteen was the drafting age.
I run a hand over the scratched-up Martian lettering over the door, sweeping red dust down upon us. Theta Base.
The DarkNet didn’t disappoint.
Foul grunting in the dark, from how far off I can’t tell. There is no moisture in the air, only whipping winds. And then a splash, a deep rush of water from inside this hole, this man-made cavern, as if something large has leapt from a height into whatever murky depths reside below this sun-bleached world.
‘Maybe that was—’ Avril starts.
She’s choked at the thought. As am I.
I reach into my rucksack and pull out a scattergun. It weighs heavy in my perspiring palms. The war’s been over for eight years, all firearms confiscated— or thereabouts. Avril says nothing when she sees it, and I’m grateful.
Tiny steps into the expanse, the musty air of the listening post strangling my airwaves.
‘Huey?’ I call with chapped lips, irritated at how feeble my voice sounds. ‘It’s father.’
