"As The Blood Settles" - Published in Desire to Escape — Four Palaces Publishing Fall 2022 Fiction Anthology, 2023

As The Blood Settles

            My wife works the same shift as me. After work, after we both eat, we get on our phones and watch the videos that continuously appear one after the other. We rarely receive the same videos. On her phone, she gets videos of ancient history, people talking about how the indigenous people of the Americas were almost wiped out on Earth because of colonization. Videos pop on her screen too from people in the new colonies on Mars. She tells me how it’s happening all over again, but this time in Mars, this time it is the abandoning of indigenous people of Earth instead. I tell her that they really haven’t abandoned everyone just yet.

            The video stream on my phone is different. I sometimes feel guilty because of how shallow they are compared to hers, but maybe that’s a balance that complements our relationship. I inform her of the comedy that is around us, even in the isolated place we live in, and she in turn informs me about the serious reality of it all. We maintain ourselves sane while we wait for them to tell us it’s our time to go to Mars.

People from all over the United States have already been lifted off to the Red Planet, but like always Brownsville, Texas, has been the last to receive this new technology. Even though we are 30 minutes away from the Universe Z’s space teleportal by Boca Chica beach, they are just now going to select some of us. They say it will be a random mass selection. Then another city’s turn will begin, until Brownsville is selected again like popcorn reading. One of the requisites is that the person must be employed in Universe Z’s governmental facilities. Another requisite, having no children. They recommend for us to raise a child in the Mars colonies instead.

            I do not fully understand why or how, but Earth has finally become uninhabitable. I am no scientist, but it feels like we are on a race against time, each day waiting until it becomes totally uninhabitable. They tell us not to panic, that we will be transported before any of that even happens. Yet, it has been years since I’ve stepped out of the facility, years since the sun’s rays have touched my face. The gardens and plants we ceaselessly care for are not for Earth’s use, but for Mars. Everything we do is for Mars. Even us, we are for Mars.

            If we stop working, we die. They don’t tell us that, of course. But I hear about how each government and their big space companies that were able to go to Mars are doing the same thing. The people who have survived are only the ones helping the colonies. I think they still need us as much as we do. We grow everything that for some reason cannot be grown on Mars, send them things that they need from here. We live in these facilities by choice of survival. The natural environment on Earth has gotten to that point. We try not to think of what happened to all those nations who did not develop fast enough to install facilities like these. We try not to think.

            We just have to wait our turn. We just have to wait. And so, we watch the videos with their algorithms designed to entertain us, to engage, to distract. We eat the rations we are allowed to eat from the resources we send off to them. We survive. All of the resources can only be grown in the facilities.

            “Look,” my wife Christina told me, “Ronaldo and Troye are sitting outside their rooms.”

            I was so absorbed into the phone that I didn’t even realize she was telling me something.

            “Michael!”

            “What? Who?”

            “Ronaldo and Troye. They’re outside. Isn’t it weird?”

            I looked out of the window and sure enough the other couple, our front door neighbors, were sitting on lawn chairs as if the sun’s rays were really shining inside the facility and not with the use of fluorescent lights, as if our quarters were actually homes, as if we really were not trapped… as if the world was not dimming…as if the world was still the world.

            “They are, aren’t they,” I said. Both of us were peeking through the blinds. We turned around to see our phones vibrate with a notification of another video, then turned to each other.

            We walked outside our home. I looked up as if the fluorescent lights far above were actually blinding sunlight. Christina was brooming our patio, and I was looking for the dustpan. We couldn’t hear what Ronaldo and Troye were saying, but they smiled as they talked and laughed a little.

            Our unspoken plan failed, and they were having such a good time that they hardly paid us any attention, so I finally said hi.

            “What are you all up to?” Christina asked after they greeted.

            “We found some vodka in one of the containers,” Ronaldo said, smiling, raising a metal cup with ice. “Salud.”

            “The ones we’re supposed to send out?”

            “Yeah, I’m sure they won’t notice.”

            “Don’t worry guys, Ronaldo and I gave up a long time ago. Following every rule, and we’re still here. Fuck them. We don’t care about them anymore. Or, what, is somebody going to take our jobs?” Troye said as he took a gulp and we all began to laugh.

            I don’t know if it was the alcohol, but their laughs were genuine. I can tell when Christina uses her fake laugh, the one she uses to not make people feel bad about an unfunny joke. That laugh, it’s like a piano recital that goes off-key for a bit. Her genuine laugh, a natural flow as the high pitch of a small stream of water. They didn’t notice but she actually laughed for the first time in so, so long.

            “Do you all want a drink?” Ronaldo asked.

            We both said no, but we both wanted to say yes. As we left, I took a glimpse of Ronaldo and Troye as they kissed, too absorbed in themselves to notice. That used to be Christina and I.

            “Why did we say no?” Christina asked me once we were back inside.

            “I don’t know. I thought you were going to say no. Well, it could ruin our chances to get on to the Mars colonies, no?”

            “We have to stay focused,” she said and picked up her phone.

            Everybody had left already. We were the only ones left to go to Mars. We fooled ourselves day by day as if it did not bother us. We kept watching the videos, kept on working, until maybe we did forget about everything. We had not seen Ronaldo and Troye in so long, and now they had found this alcohol bottle all of a sudden. What had we missed?

            I think she was having these same questions in her head. After that day it is as if we had suddenly realized that we had forgotten where we were, who we were, what we were, and now it had been time to accept after we don’t know how long. We had forgotten us.

One day, Christina stopped using her phone.

When we came back from doing the day’s work, I kept finding her peeking through the window on those glimpses I took when my videos were loading. She didn’t notice me wondering what she was up to. Her phone kept on lighting up, begging to be picked up.

            “They’re not there anymore,” she said.

            “Who?”

            “Really? The only other people here.”

            “Sorry, my mind was somewhere else.”

            “The chairs are there.”

            “Maybe they’re using their phones like us inside.”

            “No, I haven’t seen them in a week.”

            “We have different shifts sometimes.”

            “What if they already left.”

            “No. No. No…that’s–”

            “I’m going to go check.”

            “Don’t. That’s rude.”

            “…I’m going for a walk.”

            And there I saw her leave, for the first time in such a long time, saw her leave without me. After being together for so long, I watched her take her own path. I watched her walk through the door, saw her close it fast behind her, leaving me inside. I should have gone after her, but I felt she needed to go on that walk. Now that I think about it, I needed to go on that walk too. I should have done more. All I needed to do was look her in the eyes, to ask her what was wrong. Last times, they tend to happen without us knowing they are the last times, and how I wish I could have kissed her there and then. Not a sexual kiss, but to let her know, that I was here, that I was here with her, that we both were in this shitty situation, but together.

            I first noticed her absence as I turned to the other side of the bed and attempted to reach for her. Then the cellphone screen gave a notification that two people had been teleported from our facility to Mars.

            It was my day off, but I awoke at the same time I woke for work. I hurriedly dressed and went out only to find Ronaldo outside with the same look I must have had on my face.

            “They left, Michael,” he said.

            I did not answer. I ran. I don’t know why I ran. It was fast. I did not notice the other abandoned dormitories, the fake plants, the real plants, the blank corridors. It all just looked empty, white.

            I ran until I couldn’t, until I no longer knew if I had tears or sweat.

            “So they’re really gone,” I finally said to Ronaldo.

            “…I know,” he said. “No, don’t run again.”

            I stopped.

            “Why would they do this to us?”

            “I don’t know. I was cooking us some food when Troye just disappeared from the table. We were going to celebrate our anniversary…” He looked down to his feet.

            “Christina went for a walk, and she never came back.”

            “There must have been an error. The teleportation in Brownsville was not scheduled until at least another two years.”

            I put my hands over my eyes.

            “Hey listen,” Ronaldo said. “Troye and Christina love us. They would do anything they possibly could to bring us with them. Maybe they’re talking to the people on Mars right now. Maybe they’re—”

            “I need to go inside. I need to get my cell phone.”

            I closed the door behind me. The darkness was more comforting than the blaring artificial lights outside the room. I pressed my back to the door and slowly sat down to the floor. Another year? Another two years? Without Christina. Without even Troye. Damn. Fuck.

            There was no way of contacting the people on Mars. The contaminated skies on Earth only allowed us to receive but not send out. All the functioning technology was in Mars now. Here on Earth, we worked with what we had. What we received was algorithms. Nothing from actual people.

            I don’t know how much time passed by until I heard the knock on the door.

            “Michael. Don’t tell me you’re on your phone,” Ronaldo’s voice entered my room as he knocked.

            I looked up from the video of two cats fighting in a house on Mars.

            “I’m not on my phone, Ronaldo. What do you want?”

            “I have a plan.”

            I put my cell phone aside and opened the door.

            “Why is it so dark here?”

            “You don’t get tired of all those white lights?”

            “I get your point.”

            “You have a plan?”

            “I’m not going to wait until they teleport us. If they teleport us they will teleport us trying to be teleported.”

            “What?”

            “Look, we keep sending off things to them that they need. We keep putting them on those vehicles that go straight to the teleportal. All we have to do is follow that passage.”

            “We can’t put ourselves inside the cargo. It would kill us under the pressure of that tube.”

            “You are not listening. We simply have to follow it to the teleportal from this facility. Then we go to Mars from there.”

            “Ronaldo, we can’t go outside. We wouldn’t survive. Even if we do, how would we survive the teleportation.”

            “Michael. Remember how I found that vodka bottle? Well, I found a vehicle to go outside, equipment too. I found the suits that are compatible with the teleportal from the bosses that used to be here. Nobody has gone over there since they first used it to teleport themselves from here. They kept it unannounced, but I’m starting to remember things. I don’t know how we never thought of this.”

            “But they will know that we cheated, and you know how that will affect our jobs over on Mars. It’s government property. They will not leave us here. They wouldn’t do that.”

            “You think they care about us? Why should we care about their property?”

            “Let me see it.”

            It was directly outside my dormitory, right in front of his as well, right in between us. He was smiling, and I was afraid. His smile told me that he really did not care anymore. It also told me that he was going to do it, regardless of if I was going or not. No matter what, his motivations were out of my control. And so, I said yes.

            The vehicle looked like the space rovers that were in the colonies of Mars, perhaps it was one of them. I had not seen them since we all ran for refuge to the facilities. I had no idea how to even drive one, but Ronaldo said that at the end of the day it was just another type of car.

            We finished our work like any other day, tended the bees, the plants, and when it was time to send it all off to the teleportal, we packed up everything that we needed, enough for maybe a week. When we were ready inside the vehicle, waiting for the facility doors to open to what was left of the outside world, I wondered how much time had actually passed. Ronaldo had grown a lot of stubble on his dark chin, almost the length of his short black hair. He had the same resolute look from the first day he proposed the plan. He stared beyond the windshield, watching the doors rise open, unafraid.

            The long, blue pipeline that was connected to the teleporter glowed under the dark starless sky. Each pulse gave a white halo like a radio wave. That was it, it was what we were going into, the waves of an unknown ocean. It had been years since Ronaldo had seen the outside, decades before me. Years, decades, I had not known until I saw those doors rise and give way to those waves.

            “Vámonos,” he said, and I was ready.

            We were so protected inside that I couldn’t hear the wind or feel the tires go over the dunes and rocks. Ronaldo didn’t move his gaze from the wasteland beyond until close to an hour after. His grip on the steering wheel loosened and he began to calibrate the dashboard.

            “We have one more hour left.” He finally turned to look at me.

            “We should have done this ages ago,” I replied.

            “I know. I didn’t think we would have to do this.”

            The clouds above promised no sunlight, but even under our insulation I knew there was intense heat without rays waiting for us.

            “You brought your damn phone, Michael?”

            “It’s a long trip. I thought we might need it for something. I don’t know.”

            “I know it is easy to keep on seeing videos, and trust me I’ve been there before,” the young man from a Mars colony said on the screen, “those videos will be there the next day. Go get some sleep. Give yourself that. Have a good night.”

            I put the phone away.

            “I hope they do find out what we are up to. I hope this shows them that we are not going to sit here and wait until they decide to blast us over there, not when they didn’t respect the rules. They started this,” Ronaldo said without looking at me.

            The sky grew darker. The dashboard buttons lighted up, and the eternal blue brightness of the long tube next to my window outside pulsed more visibly like a vein on very pale skin.

            After I had no phone to distract myself. Ronaldo was busy studying the path with eyes that moved in every direction ahead. I began to think of Christina. I felt like when somebody loses an arm, that phantom itch, that unaccustomed loss. It still felt as if she was here, I even turned back to the seats behind me, hoping. If I felt this, I knew Ronaldo was feeling the same thing about Troye, even if he did not show it. Maybe it was that motivation that was steering the wheel.

            The dark dry land stretched ahead and so did the dark sky, storm without rain. I could see the teleporting station in the distance up ahead, looming among it all, gray and ominous.

            Ronaldo looked at them before I did. There, right beside the blue pulsating tube was a horde of creatures. I had heard of them but had never seen them before me. They were what had survived, or what had managed to adapt under these horrible conditions of Earth. These hairless ape-like creatures were believed to have come from the sea after large patches of it dried up. They ruled the land now and fed on anything that had survived too, even their own.

            “I knew they would show up. Hang on to your seat,” he said.

            “You’re not seriously going to–”

            Then the vehicle began to gain speed, until even under our bubble of insulation with shock absorbers I could finally feel the force of velocity. Even at such a distance, I could sense the stares of the creatures, as if they were using their eyes to stop what was headed their way. Ronaldo gripped the steering wheel tighter. Some managed to get out of the way. The ones that did, quickly managed to jump on the roof of the vehicle. The vehicle did not lose speed.

            The dashboard announced minor damage, and objects on the roof. It was them, clinging on for retribution, or food. Ronaldo stopped the vehicle and we saw them fly and fall before the windshield. He ran them over just as fast.

            “We probably have several hours before they catch up to us,” he said as the teleportal base still looked like a small mountain in the distance. “They can travel quick.”

            That is when our vehicle just stopped in its tracks. Those bastards had managed to cut and penetrate from the bottom wires, snapped several loose. Not even Ronaldo had anticipated this would happen. There was no choice but to get off and continue on foot.

            “If we sprint towards it, we might make it still on time before it closes,” he said.

            If the portal closed…it meant we had to wait for another month. There is only one thing that was certain. If we chose to walk back, the hordes were waiting. All there was, all there ever is, was forward.

            We were fast, carrying everything that we could carry. Our weapons were attached to the red suits that allowed us to roam temporarily on what was now Earth. There was no time to even digest that it had been years since we had stepped on natural ground. The dry grabble crunched under our feet. The wind. I could not even sense it under the suit, let alone see it impact anything before us. There were no trees, nothing the wind could lift to its arms. The most ancient things in the world had perished. It was only a matter of time until the world, ancient of all, perished too.

            I didn’t want to show him that I was afraid, that it was fear that was keeping me moving. Ronaldo, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He still had that determined look, with no time to communicate. Only the sound of our boots and the clinking of our gear was what consisted of our conversation in a wasteland where silence had not been broken by humans in years.

            I could feel the sweat trickling down my suit, see the sweat on Rolando’s brow. I knew our oxygen system was working overtime as we tried to catch our breath. It felt like one of those nightmares where no matter how much you try to be fast, you are still moving in slow motion. The base seemed so far away, and I expected my shoulder to be touched by one of those creatures at any moment from behind.

            It was an abandoned thing. It looked even more grim up close, as anything that served a purpose looks when it is left behind. It reminded me of a castle where a terminally ill vampire surely must live, except it had the latest technology, at least on this area of Earth.

Ronaldo blasted through the door, firing the heaviest weapon on our disposal. There was no time for hacking. The teleportal opened and closed at intervals. Minutes were left before it would close again, after the things we sent were all finished being transferred through the large blue tube. We entered the last vestiges of the people who had once been our bosses.

            Even in decay, and darkness, the luxury of it all could be seen more than the nature outside. Ronaldo aimed the light beams now curiously from one bust to another chandelier. I was curious to see if maybe there would be cobwebs like in those videos on our phone that showed the Earth of long ago, but no. Just time passing by uninterrupted, unwitnessed.

            We then heard loud mechanical-like chirps. I thought I heard crickets in the distance. The noise, it felt like they were inside my ear, but I knew it was them even before Ronaldo told me to hurry. We sprinted as fast as we could with all that we were carrying, ignoring all the wonders that our supervisors had kept from us in this base. Ronaldo knew where he was headed, and I followed without reluctance.

            “Come on!” he shouted.

            The hordes were nearing in, the sound of a million cicadas hungry, bulldozing everything on their path. All I could tell from those horrible noises was violence. Ronaldo opened the door ahead of a long hallway after the door scanned a card I had not been aware he had. It slid shut behind. The lights turned on in the room. The doo activated its locking mechanisms.

            There was a large cylinder in the middle of the oval room. The teleporter. The access to it could not be overridden. We had missed the time it had been programmed to open. Next time would be until another month. We had trapped ourselves.

            It seemed there was an ocean outside the door, shaking the entire base. The massive locks made the door unbothered. It seemed to just stare at Rolando and I, like a disappointed parent, as we sunk to the floor, accepting what had happened.

            “We were so close,” I said.

            Rolando did not reply. His eyes were glued on the door, his hands on his weapons.

            “We have a month until it opens back up again. We don’t have enough rations to keep on, we barely have water for a week. We–”

            “Stop. I know,” he finally said.

            “Fuck.”

            We tried looking for another way out, so much so that we didn’t look at the hours passing by. The cylinder would not open. All of this under that maddening sound. Those hordes of cricket-like chirps, almost mechanical and definitely maniacal. They were waiting for us. They were maybe even trying to drive us crazy with that noise.

            “We had to try it. You know we were not going to sit still and wait another year. I wasn’t going to wait,” Rolando spoke.

            This time it was I who had no words. I took out my phone. The videos instantly absorbed my vision, and I ignored my surroundings, seconds later even my own worries.

            “You have got to be kidding me. You’re doing this now?” Rolando said.

            “What do you want me to do? Cry?” I looked up from my phone. “I agree with you. I would have not stayed either. This was inevitable.”

            “No. We are not going to give up. This is not it. Troye is waiting. Christina.”

            Rolando did not know it, but it was actually it. There was no way we were going to be saved. Countless had already met the same fate we had before. The people of Mars had their own problems to worry about. Nobody cared about what happened on Earth.

Maybe by some miracle we could last a month. Then again, I was thinking that before hunger crept into our minds. 

Our backs to the cylinder. Our eyes to the massive door. The cicada-like screeches filling everything. Their noise was almost tangible. Their sounds seemed to be something that was next to us, closing in, suffocating like walls about to crush us.

I don’t think we slept. Our facial hair had grown as much as our sanity had shrunk. The creatures outside were fighting amongst each other. They kept murdering each other. Their screeches were even more horrible as they died, and I imagined all of them beginning to eat whichever of them fell. That fucked me up. It is as if they were telling us that we were up next, that that’s how we were going to scream too.

Hunger, fear, thirst, everything finally got to me. Rolando was still trying to figure out how to program the teleportal to open inside the cylinder.

“We’re going to die Rolando!”

Nothing from him.

“Why don’t you fucking answer me. Just admit it. Stop. There’s nothing we can do. Rolando we’re going to fucking die. It’s pathetic. They’re going to–”

“Don’t drag me down to your weakness. You sit there and wait for your death. I’ll let Christina know of your courage when I see her on Mars.”

The door was giving in. We both turned to it and then our weapons. There is a clarity that comes when death is fast approaching, maybe it is the dirt its hooves pick up as it comes. My trembling hands managed to aim at the door. Rolando had every single weapon at his disposal ready to use, even the blade.

The first one scrambled in. The first one writhed dead. The second one. The third. The fourth. The horde.

My fear pushed every trigger. The bursts of our weapons were clouded with the mist of blood. Everywhere. They slipped on their own puddles. The pale bluish bodies, smeared in red. Even through all of that, I was thinking of what Rolando had just said. We kept beaming the weapons until our backs were heavily pressed to the cylinder.

Our energy was running out. The bursters were empty. My fists clenched as hard as my teeth. I saw Rolando’s long blade cut through the never-ending horde. The rest were coming towards me. I had only my hands.

Rolando came running towards me, past me so fast and pushed me so that I fell into the cylinder. Somehow it had opened and immediately closed us inside. The impenetrable glass cut the jaw of one of the creatures as it closed.

It writhed in pain outside the glass. The other creatures sucked its blood as it gushed out from its severed face. They started to devour him. The rest of the horde that came in punched, scratched, licked, sniffed at the glass cylinder.

I stared at the bloody, bluish red jaw next to Rolando. His sword was on his lap, his head resting on the glass wall, and eyes closed. There was a tear.

The teleportal began the process. Our cells, along with all our traumas, were teleporting to Mars.