558 Days

“So how long has Grodie been out there exactly?” Jane stepped up beside Alice who lounged in a foldable deck chair on its last legs with her feet up. Her boots were freshly polished and spit shined. Jane had to wonder who she suckered into doing that for her.

“Three days.”

“I see… And when was her pick up supposed to come?”

“Two and a half days ago.”

“Ah hah. Do you want to go get her or should I?”

“Nah, leave her out there.”

“But her screams have permeated my sleep…”

“Yeah, she’s probably run out of water by now.”

“Okay. Go get her then, or at least bring her some water.”

“Are you kidding? In these boots? Look at how gorgeous they are!”

“I noticed that.”

“I was wondering why you were sitting so close to the door.”

“Sand is really hot.”

“No shit sherlocke.” Jane snorted. “Why’d you pretty up your boots like that if you know you’re going to have to ruin it?”

“I don’t know, my boots were hijacked. I kinda figured I’d just made a new pair or something.”

“Good plan.”

“Shouldn’t you know all this already? Your boots would’ve been taken too.”

“I made everyone think I’ve got foot fungus.”

“Clever. But now my boots are shinier than yours.” Another bout of screaming started up again. It set Jane on edge, her hands balled up into fists. Alice was unaffected by it as she pulled off her very phallic cigar.

“Okay. I’ve had enough of this. It’s enough that we’re living in a bad western movie, I don’t need it feeling like some overdone Japanese horror movies.” She stalked off back inside muttering to herself madly as well as incoherently. Her ravings did not cease to echo through the hallways along with stomping. They sometimes joked that Jane had actually flunked out of ninja school. Eventually after much wandering around and forgetting of the layout of her own base, she found what she was looking for. Max and Freya both sat in the Comm. Room surrounded by boots, covered in polish. They were both slightly high off the fumes.

“What are you two chickens doing in here?”

“Boot beautification project.” They turned red in a fit of giggles and gasped for air.

“We’re making a better world for out feet!” Tears streamed down their faces. It had been hours spent working at polishing every boot on the base up to military standards. It was a tricky task since their boots weren’t even military issue anymore.

“Why?”

“It’s a good excuse to huff shoe polish.” Max managed a perfectly straight face for that statement. Freya on the other hand nearly pissed herself silly. Jane looked flabbergasted.

“Freya, go get your girl. She’s bugging.”

“She’s still here?”

“Physically? Yeah. However, her mind’s gone AWOL. All that screaming ain’t cayotees.”

“Okie dokie.”

“And take someone with you. She’s a little squirrelly when she gets heat stroke, she might get vicious.”

“As long as she doesn’t get viscous.” There was more hysterical laughter and tears at Freya’s clever remark. Jane was upset to be caught up in a three stooges rerun. She stomped off, the angry ranting resumed.

It was nearing lunch time so the swarthy woman folk had begun together outside is small clusters. They always seemed to gather in the same spot when wanting to avoid everyone. It invariably tuned into a nice civil lunch until someone fell into the fire pit. It wasn’t really clear why they lit a fire midday, they didn’t use it for cooking. The meat was served at night. The best bet was that someone was a bit of a pyromaniac. Which would also explain the frequent fire drills. At that moment the screaming that had been constant for the past two days was coming closer. By the time they were able to discern coherent words, she was running stark naked through the small crowd.

“No! They’ll come! I know it! They have to. I am not one of you rejects!”

“Babe, you need a shower, a hot meal and about two gallons of water and then you’ll feel right as rain.” Freya ran after her, she would be enjoying the view of Grodie’s athletic body in action if the head attached hadn’t jumped over the moon and gotten lost on the way to the milky way.

“It doesn’t rain here. That’s not right! You don’t have a renewable source of water. You are all going to die out here!” Freya and Grodie ran circles around the base while everyone watched on chuckling. Jane turned to Alabaster.

“What do you want to bet that she was a conspiracy theorist in another life time?”

“Ha! Do you think if we asked her who killed Kennedy she’d know?”

“Who?”

“John F. Kennedy, and American president who was assassinated in the 1960’s.” Jane shook her head and walked away.

“You’re such a brain.”

“What?”

Now Georgette was the kind of girl who only got so much satisfaction from watching. She was a hands on try of person. They would joke that watching for Georgette was just waiting her turn. SO after the tenth lap around the base, she decided it was her turn. She pounced on Grodie, tackling her to the ground and as a result, forcing sand into all the unholy places. Freya freaked out.

“Georgette! What are you doing?! Don’t hurt her!”

“I wanted to play too. It looked like fun.” Grodie had the wind knocked out of her and some of the crazy too, apparently. She allowed herself to be led off to the showers for a good hose down. However, not without Freya giving Georgette a very swift, hard kicked in the butt.

“I guess the show’s over.” Jane frowned at Alabaster.

“And the rum is gone.” She shook her canteen, looking into it at the few dregs left that would never come out short of evaporating.

“When did you get run?”

“I didn’t. That’s just what they always say when the booze runs out. Never been sure why that is.”

“Well, actually, it’s from – “

“Alabaster. I don’t really want to know.” She turned to go inside for a refill.

Grodie sat sobbing in the mess, shoveling cold beans and eggs left over from breakfast into her mouth greedily. Freya had managed to get her clothed, despite much protest and self-pity. Some of the others drifted in and out of the room. They’d lost interest once the theatrics were over, now it was just pathetic.

“How could they do this to me? I worked hard. I followed orders, did my paper work on time. I even took initiative from time to time.”

“I know, babe.” Freya sat beside her, rubbing her back and listening to her. She didn’t have much comfort to give. They’d all been through this same feeling of rejection. It was hard because Grodie’d managed to lord it over them all that she actually had a reason to be there and would be able to go home. She would get to see her family and friends, even eat real food again. There were times when even Freya wanted to strangle her with her envy.

“I can’t believe they abandoned me here.” A wave of melancholy hit as the reality of started to sink in. Just then, Castor and Pollux entered.

“Not just you, they’ve abandoned all of us here. We were just about to tell the others.”

“Tell the others what?” Jane suddenly appeared behind the twins with ninja like stealth. They both jumped but recovered quickly enough and began to speak almost if unison.

“All communication with earth has been lost. We can’t even get a signal from any of the relay stations. It’s like everyone suddenly dropped dead.”

“So I’m not retarded?” Grody perked up at the news. She was the only one who could find anything good in it.

“The jury’s still out on that one.”

“So what now?” Most of the faces in the room had gone pale.

“Town meeting? How does that sound?”

“Sure, why not?” There was general agreement among the few in the room. They quickly filed out of the mess, into the hallway. They banged and crashed about on the walls and anything else they encountered on their way out. The general ruckus was great enough to peak everyone’s curiosity and thus the meeting was convened.

“What’s all this nonsense?” Georgette looked as though she’d been interrupted from a catnap.

“I’m calling a meeting.”

“You can’t do that!” She sneered out a Jane. This was the worst reason ever to be roused from a nap that good.

“Uh, yes I can. I’m the Captain.”

“But meetings are so boring and long. Who can sit still for that long?” Even as she said it she was fiddling with some gadget while pacing around.

“Fine, it’s a tea party. Either way, we need to talk.”

“Way to go Captain Boring. Let’s get this snooze fest started then.” Alice rolled her eyes before going to sit down around the fire pit.

“Right. Castor and Pollux have some wonderful news to share with you all so if you want to shoot the messenger, go a head and shoot them. I don’t mind.” The others assumed story time formation around the twins who shot a glare at Jane. The silence dragged on after everyone settled as they waited for the twins to begin. There were still a lot of confused faces among the bunch. Those who knew anything weren’t capable of voicing their feelings about it coherently. Even Jane was flustered if she could just figure out how to express it.

“To put it bluntly, we’ve been cut off.”

“That’s nothing new.”

“As in all of us. From the sounds of it, or lack there of, everyone has been cut off from earth. The usual comm. Chatter is gone. All the satellites have gone offline. Anything that was connected to the infrastructure on earth has stopped transmitting.”

“Great! We really are all going to die out here!” Georgette let out a wail.

“Because we weren’t going to die out her before?” Alice rolled her eyes. She always was sarcastic in dire situations.

“Well I always figured they’d dump us somewhere else once this moon became important…”

“That’s correct.” The twins were not the most tactful creatures.

“See! I knew it! You all thought I was crazy.”

“You are crazy. Just because these two have a crush on you doesn’t change a thing.” Alice stuck her tongue out at Georgette.

“Oh shut up. You’re just jealous because I’m a genius.”

“We’re getting off point.” The twins were becoming increasingly irate with the amount of useless banter that was going on. The prospect of being forever stuck with this bunch of adult children was wreaking havoc on their blood pressure. Jane cleared her throat, summoning silence.

“You got the point out already. I called this tea party to figure out what to do now. We obviously can’t stay here forever. We’ll completely deplete our resources in under a year.” There was silence in the crowd. Faces had all gone pale while everyone waited for someone to crack a joke. Their usual defense mechanism had been disarmed. In an uncharacteristic moment of pragmatism, Max cleared her throat and spoke up. Her voice was a little rough as it sliced through the silence.

“We have enough spare parts to put together the dirtiest shuttle known to womankind.”

“That won’t get us very far. We don’t have the fuel for a deep space trip.” Alabaster frowned, deep lines furrowed on her forehead.

“Not necessarily. We have enough to power the generators for six months. That translates to about a week in space plus all the fuel from the droids and anywhere else. We could even set up the still to make ethanol fuel as a back up. It wouldn’t take much to modify it.”

“We could find a habitable place that’s within range.” Freya looked hopeful and excited again, like a child who had just been told that Santa did really exist.

“This is nuts. Assuming we can get a shuttle together and off the ground. It’ll break up in atmo or shortly there after. We can’t waste all our resources on this cockamamie plan!”

“Way to be a kill joy, Alice. I’ve seen Max MacGuiver us out of impossible situations like this with fewer paperclips.” Jane smacked Alice in the back of the head for nearly inciting a mass panic attack.

“Jane…” Max murmured sheepishly.

“What?”

“Most of that was just dumb luck.

“Damnit, you people are horrible for morale.”

“Jane, you’re drunk.”

“Ophelia, shut up.” The meeting devolved into an acidic staring contest that no one would win. The staring fight was about to escalate when Pollux and Castor began to beep like those doctors did on TV.

“What the hell is that?” Jane said dejectedly, upset to see the end of what could have been a glorious brawl before it had a chance to start.

“The supply shipment is entering the atmosphere. It’ll be setting down in twenty minutes.”

“Supply shipment? How is that possible? They would have turned back as soon as shit started to go awry.” If there were more of them, it would be sheer pandemonium instead of just mild anarchy. Jane did not feel like taking charge. She let everyone’s voices run over each other. Instead she just tried to pick out what the twins were saying.

“When we started to get wind of somekind of upheaval we ordered a ton of survival supplies. We made sure it came on an unmanned shuttle so there was no chance of it turning back once the course was laid in.”

“We can use that to get off!” Max had already been cooking up designs for her homemade shuttle on the back burners of her mind.

“Now is not the time to be thinking about sex.” Alice chided Max.

“Alabaster, take Max, Alice and Georgette out to pick up that shuttle. Freya, hit the net and see if you can find us somewhere better than this dump. Paradise if you can swing it.”

“I’ll help her.” Grody piped up from the back, not wanting to be forgotten.

“Good. Ophelia and the twins, finish up what ever you need to down in the labs. Hugo will help you.”

“What are you going to do?” Alice was still not sold on this leaving business. It was unrealistic of anybody to even think that they weren’t going to die on this moon.

“I’m going to assess what supplies we do have. Then we can start forming a game plan.”

“Make sure you put down how booze is left after you stop drinking.” Jane merely stuck her tongue out at the sharp jibe.

Sitting on her horse, Max couldn’t help but whistle gleefully to herself as they rode out towards the coordinates the twins gave. Even in such a dire situation she could not contain her excitement over getting new toys. Alice on the other hand was still fuming with a black cloud hanging heavy over her. She shot furtive glances at her companions, thinking angry, evil thoughts.

“Whoa… Alice, lighten up.” Georgette was the soul brave enough to try and diffuse the time bomb of negativity that had become Alice. Max was too distracted to tend to her lady lover.

“You people are all morons, you shouldn’t even be entertaining the thought of leaving let alone trying to actually cook up a plan for it.”

“Will you at least let us try before giving up all hope?” Georgette pleaded, a pitiful expression crossed her face.

“No. It’s stupid. We’re wasting time and resources.”

“So you want us to focus on staying on this dry rock where virtually no plants can grow and the ones that do are poisonous? Where the sand burns our skin and there is no relief from the two suns? Where we will only ever have each other for company and nowhere to escape that? While we watch our supplies dwindle into nothing and the hope and life fade out of each other’s faces day by day. Eventually we’ll have to start digging graves for friends and lovers because people will be offing themselves to avoid having to take one more damn minute of this hell. Is that what you think is best?” Alice’s jaw fell open. The others stared at Georgette as she caught her breath. Even Max had been shaken from her reveries by the ranting monologue.

“We need to get off this rock!” Alice was suddenly stricken by the reality of what staying put would mean.

“Exactly. And I bet the smart scientist ladies ordered us everything we need to do that. So Alice, shut up and quit being a dumb ass.

“Georgette?” Alabaster said almost shyly.

“Yes?”

“You are one morbid fuck when you want to be. I’m going to have some of the wildest most passionate sex now to make me feel better.”

“You’re welcome then.” Georgette winks at Alabaster who was busy fantasizing about later that day.