Bones Burnt Black: Serial Killer in Space (18 page)

She must be in the control booth.

Climbing the crude staircase of storage cabinets, he
leaned sideways to look through the control booth’s big heavily reinforced
window. He played his light across the upside-down swivel chair, the control
panel, and the other hangar’s airlock. He shone it across the ceiling and floor
and into every corner, but the control booth also contained no Kim.

And he was running out of places to look.
Could she
have gone into the other hangar? She’d have had to wear a vacuum suit. Its
outer door is still open from when Frank abandoned ship.
But even as Mike
was thinking this, he didn’t believe she’d—

Security breach!

The control booth’s door to the horizontal hall—a door
that was supposed to remain locked—was wide open.

Nikita could have come in and killed us all in our
sleep! Kim must have gone out into the hall. But what in the world for? Is she
crazy? The amnesia! Damn. That’s got to be it. She must be losing the rest of
her mind. If she becomes a danger—to herself and others…
He tried not to
think too far along these lines; especially when it lead to visions of
restraining her by binding her arms and legs with duct tape.

Got to find her.
He grabbed the airlock’s
oversized handle.
Before Nikita does!

_____

At deck eleven, Kim had to stop and rotate herself in
darkness—exchanging her feet for her head—before continuing her climb. After
traveling another deck or two, she lost count of how far she’d gone, just about
the moment she heard loud shuffling noises back toward deck fourteen. The
shaking, which had eased, returned in force.
Jesus, help me; Jesus, help me;
Jesus, help me. Got to hide. Hide before she shines a light on me.

Sliding her hand all over the wall, Kim felt about for
a door but came up empty.
Jesus; Jesus; Jesus.
She climbed farther. Felt
the wall. Still no door.
Jesus!

Climbing a little farther, she found a door. Stepping
up two more rungs brought her feet to the right level. She eased it open and
stepped through into thin air.

Dropping four feet onto a hard surface, she could have
twisted an ankle or yelled out in fear, but she did neither. Though startled,
she landed as smoothly and silently as a cat.

The room around her was dark, then light, then dark,
then light. Sunbeams swept up and down.
No!
The door was still open.
Tina
will see the light!

Kim turned and closed the door as fast as she dared,
trying not to let it make a noise. Then, stretching herself as tall as
possible, she reached way up and examined the door handle by touch, looking for
some kind of button or lever. She found none.
Lord, why couldn’t they have
put locks on these doors?

She glanced around the room searching for her options.

Can’t take the other vertical hallway. Some of its
rungs are greased and I don’t know which are clean.

Twenty feet away and laying on the ceiling—she was once
again in the ship’s top half—she saw the upper and lower halves of a vacuum
suit. They lay scattered as if discarded. In the on-again off-again light, she
noticed two bulges of congealed white foam on the suit’s belly.
That’s mine.
I’m on deck nine.

She ran her eyes across her discarded gear, again
looking for options.
My tools! I can use one as a weapon.

Though she wore only white cotton socks on her feet,
she sprinted lightly across a ceiling generously sprinkled with tiny bits of
shattered glass: the scattered fragments of her faceplate glittered like a sky
full of stars on a clear winter’s night.

Rummaging through her tool pack, she took great pains
to keep the tools—especially the metal ones—from clanging. She pulled out a
medium-sized screwdriver.
No.
A small hammer.
No.
A large
adjustable wrench.
Hmmm.
She swung it up and down like a hammer, then
side to side like a sword. Its weight gave it the feel of a dangerous weapon,
like some kind of club.
That’s more like it. If she comes in here, I’ll be
ready.

Tiptoeing back to the door, Kim placed her head as
close to it as possible without touching it. She could hear the soft leather of
Tina’s zero-g shoes gently scuffling across the rungs as she placed and removed
her feet during her climb. The sounds seemed to be getting louder.

If Tina didn’t notice the light from in here she’ll
probably head back to the hangar.
Kim frowned.
Mike is there. All alone.
Sleeping.
Kim lifted her free hand and pressed it to her throat.
She
killed Zahid in his sleep.

The scuffling noises grew loud and distinct.
She’s
outside this door! Just inches away!

Kim held very still, even refused to exhale. Slowly,
she raised the wrench; raised it high over her head.
If that door opens I’ll
slam this wrench right through her skull. Chop it in half if I can.

The scuffing noises paused. Silence filled Kim’s
universe: a universe that had swiftly shrunk so small it contained only two
people—herself and her enemy.

Kim’s straining ears picked up the light wispy sound of
an elbow or knee sliding against the other side of the door. Then silence
again. Long seconds of silence.

Then the scuffling noises resumed. They traveled the
length of the door and began to recede.

Kim exhaled, then inhaled deeply.

Got to follow her. Got to protect Mike.

She listened. The noises seemed distant now.

Wait a minute. Why do I have to protect Mike?
Because I want to? Because it’s the right thing to do? Or because I love him?

The noises were gone.

Do I love him?

She searched her memory. She couldn’t find him.

_____

Tina stepped out of the vertical hallway and into deck
seven. She pointed her flashlight this way and that, recklessly checking to see
if the coast was clear. Walking to the bend in the horizontal hall—where Kim
had hid from her only minutes before—she stepped around the corner and set her
flashlight down on the ceiling with its beam shining away from her, and away
from the bend in the hall behind her.

The flashlight rolled slowly through a uniform curve
for almost a foot, until its switch—mounted in the middle of the handle—pressed
against the ceiling and brought it to a stop. She then hurried back toward the
door to the vertical hallway, went three steps past it, leaned her back against
its wall, then inched as near to the open door as she could without being too
easily seen.

Come out; come out, whoever you are!

She listened for little tell-tale noises echoing in the
vertical hallway, but heard none. Leaning forward slightly, she gently pushed
the already open door until its handle touched the wall—to make sure it
obscured as little of her view as possible.

Think you can follow me, do you?

In her hand farthest from the door, she raised the
revolver while keeping it close against the wall; out of sight yet ready to
swing around and fire as soon as someone stepped out. Seeing them should be
easy enough, she reasoned, silhouetted in the glow of her flashlight decoy.

If it’s Mike, I’ll pitch a fit of fear and panic
that will make him think the devil himself is after me. And if it’s Kim? Ha!
This job just keeps getting easier.

She frowned, however, at the thought of the gun’s
noise.
Damn. Can’t shoot her. Too close to the hangar. Probably wake up
Mike. Then I’d have to explain why I’d gone outside into the hall. I could
claim I was in the control booth and only came out here when I heard Nikita
shoot Kim. But that wouldn’t explain why Kim had gone out.
Tina shook her
head.
Too complicated. Just have to kill quietly. I’ve done it before; I can
do it again.
Removing her index finger from the trigger, she placed it on
the grip alongside her other fingers.

The gun felt unnaturally heavy in the two gees. She
needed to know how much force would be required to bring it up to striking
speed, and how swiftly she could change its direction during a swing. Timing was
important; especially since she might be dealing with a moving target. She
shook it and swung it to get a feel for its true mass.

A ponytail. If I see one, I attack. If not, I go
into my act.
She squeezed the gun’s diamond-textured grip and smiled.
Either
way, I love it!

There were noises in the vertical hallway: climbing
noises, soft and intermittent, difficult to hear.
Someone is trying to be
stealthy.

She pressed her body closer to the wall.

The noises—soft as they were—grew louder.

She felt a rush of adrenaline, of excitement, of joy.
I
think I feel another poem coming on.

As slowly as the second hand on a smoothly running
clock, the totally black silhouette of a human head emerged from the door. Ears
flanked the elliptical globe. The round tip of a shoulder came into view, then
the head stopped and held position.

Are they looking at me, or away? If they’re looking
at me, they’ll be able to see me in the dim glow from my own flashlight!

Tina held perfectly still—neither breathing nor
blinking—as she searched the silhouette for eyes. Searched it again and again
but saw in it only blackness.
If they were looking at me, surely they would
have reacted by now.

The head eased out farther, revealing a shoulder, an
arm, a ponytail.

Tina surprised herself by swinging the gun with a force
even greater than she’d used in slamming the wrench into Gideon’s skull. The
pistol struck the side of the silhouette’s head with a blow so powerful Tina
lost her grip. The weapon bounced, skipped and skidded down the horizontal
hall, making all manner of racket until it banged into the wall not far from
Tina’s flashlight decoy. There it spun on its side, teetering like a drunken
ballerina.

The silhouette dropped out of the vertical hallway and
onto the ceiling of the horizontal hall. As Tina stood over it, it ceased to be
a silhouette. Illuminated from the side, it was now clearly a woman.

Kim lay face down; limp, motionless; one leg extending
into the vertical hallway, the other folded partly under her. She was bleeding
from the head, though less profusely than had Gideon.

Tina watched her; not triumphantly but methodically.
Once satisfied that her victim was, at least temporarily, incapacitated, she
walked calmly to the bend in the hall and picked up her flashlight and bloodied
weapon.

It won’t be necessary to exert myself by beating her
skull in. This time all I need do is slide her a few feet into the vertical
hallway and let those wonderful gee forces do the rest. They certainly worked
their magic on Akio.

Keeping the gun and flashlight pointed at the newly
limp body, she stepped around Kim—until Kim was between her and the vertical
hallway door. Still pointing the gun and light at her, she leaned back and
braced herself against the wall, then placed a foot on Kim’s shoulder.

Smiling as she tossed back imaginary long hair, it
occurred to her that though this was neither the hardest nor the easiest of her
murders, it was—so far—the most satisfying.
This marks the end of the
preliminaries. The last of the minor murders. Hereafter comes the real goal;
the real reason I am here!

A distant voice shouted, “Kim! Where are you?”

Roused from her daydreams, Tina glanced toward the
voice; then, with renewed resolve, focused her attention on Kim and shoved the
woman’s shoulder with her foot just as hard and just as far as she could shove.
The body was so relaxed, however, that it absorbed the entire shove by
passively altering its posture rather than sliding. Hurrying to reposition her
back against the wall to try another shove, Tina slipped and fell beside the
body and, in the process, dropped her gun. The multiple clangs of the bouncing
pistol did not go unnoticed.

“Kim? Is that you?”

Tina grabbed the weapon and drew her foot back to
position it against Kim’s shoulder one more time but saw a circle of light
dancing and growing on the wall at the bend in the hall. Jumping to her feet,
she ran just as Mike came around the corner.

_____

Mike turned the bend in the hall and saw a silhouette
running away.
Nikita?
He couldn’t tell, so he raised his flashlight and
pointed it at the runner, but at that same moment the runner—without
slowing—directed a flashlight at him too: making it impossible to see any
details in the glare. When the runner ducked into a side door, Mike’s light
became the only illumination in the hall. He saw a body laying still and
silent.

“Kim!” He ran to her, sat beside her, patted her face
and spoke to her, but she did not respond to any of this.

With only one side of her head illuminated—he’d set his
flashlight on the ceiling beside her—his fingers found the wound before his
eyes. Blood had seeped into the hairs above her ear. As he turned her head
gently some of this liquid broke free; it drew a line across her cheek and chin
and dripped to the ceiling. Its dark red color contrasted strongly with her
light skin and blonde hair.

Mike felt a weight crushing his heart. He fought the
emotion. There was no time for it.
We can’t stay out here. Nikita won’t stay
scared off forever. She’ll be back.

Getting up on one knee, he put his arms under her
and—with great difficulty in the nearly two gees—raised her onto his shoulder.
Standing to his feet proved still more difficult, requiring strength he didn’t
know he possessed. One thing was clear: having done it once, he wouldn’t be
able to do it again anytime soon.