THE CAPTAIN

The oily drips on the machine shop floor glint dully in the dim light. The air smells metallic. My forehead beads with sweat. 

A voice crackles through a radio that’s fallen to the ground, an edge of desperation to it. “Captain? Do you copy, Captain? They’re here. They’re inside.”

My fingers flex, but I don’t pick the radio up. I don’t know what to say.

“Captain!” A different voice this time. “Briggs isn’t responding. Neither is Taylor. What are your orders?”

My breaths come in short bursts. I wipe my sweaty forehead with my sweaty palms and dry them on my thighs. Orders. These people want orders. Their ship has been breached, and they are scared, and they want orders. 

They are scared. 

I cannot move. 

“Come in, Captain.”

I want to be a carefree child again, skipping rocks on the pond beside the farmhouse. I want to go home. 

I can’t go home.

“Captain?”

My eyes rake the room, passing over saws, lathes, presses, landing on the open door. It frames a perfect rectangle of white-washed corridor, shining bright against the dark, tool-filled wall of the unlit machine shop. Anybody could walk through that door.

“I’m leading a team to the aft storage room, Captain. Wait. Lee, no! Ru–”

Static.

I could shut the door. Shut it and lock it. Stay here until it’s over. 

Or…

I look at the porthole opposite the door, hanging from a broken hinge. Not too high. Air flows between the two openings, and the metallic odor rides its way into my nostrils, worming deep into my insides. There’s something earthy to it.

I might throw up.  

“Captain!” It’s the first voice lowered to a fearful whisper. “They’re right outside. I can hear them. Captain, what should I–Fuck!” 

A different voice: “Gomez? Gomez!” 

Inside I scream, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. But I make no move toward the radio to say the words aloud. Instead I back toward the door, avoiding the syrupy drips beneath the machinery. Keeping my boots clean.

Then I freeze, my heart pounding. Was that a noise in the hallway? Footsteps? 

Is somebody coming this way?

I listen harder than I’ve ever listened in my life. There’s a whirr and click from one of the sleeping machines. A thump somewhere in the distance that might be the ventilation system. It’s warm in here. I’m still sweating.

I step closer to the door, fixated on the rectangle of white, the scuff of my boot so soft it could be moth wings.

Then I hear what might be moth wings coming through the door. 

Is someone out there? Just outside my line of sight?

“Captain?” 

I bite off a scream and whirl to stare at the radio, then I leap toward the wall of tools at the right of the door. Several voices jam the channel. 

“–captain isn’t answering–”

“–found Gomez–”

“–killing everyone, no prisoners–”

“–so much blood–”

“–went back to the machine room–”

My nostrils flare as a mixture of oil, fear, and that nauseating copper-y smell wafts warmly toward me. I lick dry lips and peer sideways through the door, then lean hard against the wall to minimize my profile. 

Metal implements jut unevenly between my shoulder blades. I’ve landed on a row of socket wrenches arranged in descending order on the wall. Fuck. 

“Captain?” the voice, halfway across the room from me now, is low. “Hold on, Captain. I’ll come for you.” It has a resonance to it, wind blowing through the reeds of the farmhouse pond.

Tears leak out the corners of my eyes. I peer in the shadows from whence the voice had come. The machines are massive and look alien in the gloom. The radio is hidden behind a shapeless mass on the floor beside the radial drill.  I can’t move. If I do, the wrenches will swing into one another, clanging. Someone might hear. 

A scream comes through the door. It’s not that far away. 

Fuck. 

My fingernails bite into my palms, and my eyes jump to the neatly stowed tools hanging to my left. Drivers, gauges, a row of files. And…what’s the name for that one? The heavy ruler with two horizontal cross pieces that open and close, like a beak.

Calipers. A large set.

They remind me of the goose that took over the pond. When I walked by, she’d open her mouth and run at me, hissing. I was told to stand my ground when she did this, to make myself look big, to show her I was stronger.

But every time I ran away. 

There are footsteps in the hall. I wipe my palms one at a time. 

Clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp. I close my eyes. 

Closer. Closer. Is it wind-through-the-reeds voice, coming to the rescue?

Or is it the invaders? The ‘no prisoners’ intruders? The cause of ‘so much blood’?

The steps stop right outside the door. My heart skitters. I can’t see them, but I can hear their breaths. I spread the caliper's beak wide and hold my own. 

A powerful beam of light spears into the room. The liquid on the floor by the worktable glints like rubies.

“Captain!” cries the reedy voice. 

He runs right past me, right to the center of the room. I let my breath out. 

The man doesn’t avoid the viscous puddles beside the radial drill, and as he steps in them the coppery scent grows stronger. He grabs fistfuls of cloth and heaves the mass over. “Captain, no!” 

He reaches for the radio. Lifts it to his lips. “The captain is dead–”

I step away from the wall. The wrenches clatter.

The man twists, lifts a bloody palm toward me. 

I want to go home. 

It’s too late to go home. 

No prisoners. 

I raise the calipers over my head and run.