I am not your load to bear - Chapter 13 (Early Access) (Patreon)

Dillan

They had walked in silence since Logan’s death. That is, no talking; Dillan was still making plenty of noise - much to Flickering-Hope’s irritation. First, he had been crying, then whimpering and hiccupping, now he just sniffed every once in a while. It earned him an incredulous look from Flickering-Hope each time. As though at any moment they might be ambushed because Dillan’s wet nose had given away their co-ordinates. There were no attackers; the only killer was right in front of him.

He continued to follow, partly because he didn’t know what to do by himself and partly because he feared Flickering-Hope’s response if he attempted to flee.

Flickering-Hope paused at the corner of a crossroad of corridors, pressing himself against the wall and falling deadly still, as though anyone on the other side of the wall wouldn’t have heard the approaching thumps of their boots on metal grated flooring. Dillan tucked in behind until Flickering-hope deemed the clearing safe to cross. Safe from imaginary enemies, at least.

Out in the open of the crossroad, a crash sent them both skittering forwards, boots squeaking betrayal against the ground. Fearing the imminent collapse of the ship’s structure, Dillan slammed into Flickering-Hope’s back, bringing grunts and grumbles out of both of them.

The grunts and grumbles of others drew both their noses back round the corner. The gurgled language sounded Western. Definitely not human. Flickering-Hope’s grave expression lit up, shifting into a grin. He called out to them genially, returning to the open space with Dillan scuffling at his heels. A group in all black waved guns and spoke greetings in words Dillan didn’t recognise. Flickering-Hope was elated at the appearance of his… friends? A cold feeling prickled up Dillan’s back at the sight of the barrels. So careless, so cocky, so cruel.

One shrugged a bag from his back and held it open for Flickering-Hope to appraise the contents. They exchanged words, quiet chuckles, and then items. Flickering-Hope accepted some bundles of black material and handed off the extra guns he’d slung over his back. Another of the group slapped a flashing door panel and a small cupboard opened. Flickering-Hope beckoned Dillan inside.

Dillan hesitated, but the guns hanging lazily from the hands of everyone but him kept him from taking a formal stand. He followed into the cramped space and when the door slid shut behind him, he noticed the one who had opened it was watching him with a smirk.

“These clothes will help us avoid detection from the scavengers,” Flickering-Hope said as he unfolded long-limbed items of rough black material. It resembled the uniforms that the military personnel wore, but without patches or tabs to denote superiority or unit.

“Scavengers?” Dillan repeated. He could only assume this was what the group outside had informed Flickering-Hope. First, they were under attack, now they were being raided?

Flickering-Hope threw his sweaty, dusty shirt aside, baring his chest proudly, and pulled a new black covering over his arms. “They’re going to strip the ship for parts, and we need to be gone by the time they do.”

“Gone where? We don’t have-”

“Those that survived the crash have got it under control.” Flickering-Hope tugged the head hole over his hair and wiggled his face back out. “Stay with me, and I’ll keep you safe till it’s time to leave.”

Dillan was still holding his own set of fresh clothes. “But-”

“Hurry,” Flickering-Hope grunted, reaching for Dillan’s jumpsuit and yanking it open, ripping the central seams. There was a look in his eyes that turned Dillan’s stomach, a sense of entitlement that blistered at Dillan’s skin.

“But why-”

Flickering-Hope’s fingers dug a little too deep into his waist as he yanked down the jumpsuit. “We can’t take any chances,” he huffed.

Hurriedly covering his nipples with the shirt pressed to his chest, Dillan argued, “There are lights everywhere.” They may not all be working, and some were flashing, but a swap from the blue-grey uniform to all black wouldn’t have any impact on whether Dillan was spotted in the rubble of the ship.

The hand at the crotch of his jumpsuit yanked him in closer, close enough to smell the sweat on Flickering-Hope’s skin, his stale breath, and the chemical-like residue of brand-new products. These clothes had been waiting, wrapped up in little packages, for this moment, he realised. “Enough talk,” Flickering-Hope growled. His hand softened a little. “Not that it isn’t nice to see a little more of you.” His eyes scraped over Dillan’s bare flesh, causing a cringe he couldn’t bear to withhold.

Then his touch was grazing up Dillan’s lower back, turning them like a dance curling into an embrace. Dillan relented to the new shirt solely to rid his upper body of Flickering-Hope’s hopeful advances. The man had killed an innocent human in front of him - in what deranged mind did he have to be in to believe that Dillan would now be attracted to him? He was handsome, if a little overzealous, to Dillan when they were simply shipmates and co-workers. Now, he was a murderer and Dillan his witness. Any charm the Southerner had carried fizzled out the moment he pulled the trigger.

Over the barrier of the black shirt, Flickering-Hope traced Dillan’s body with flat palms, all the way to his hips. He moved to shift the jumpsuit off the rest of the way-

The door jerked open and one of the group outside yelled in. Without a thought in his brain, Dillan dashed. Maybe the people outside would catch him, maybe Flickering-Hope would snatch him back, but his legs wanted to run, and run he did, like a cornered, skittish little creature.

He stumbled beneath the arm of their disruptor and took wobbly flight down the corridor that the group had come from. As he pelted his feet against metal grating, he couldn’t bear to look back and know if he was being chased, if he was mere steps from being Flickering-Hope’s toy to touch and tease. It wasn’t as though he were even safer with him, Dillan rationalised. They had wandered for hours, with no direction, with Flickering-Hope cowering at every corner. Dillan’s breaths were wheezy and his steps messy, but he ploughed onwards. Round corners, up contorted staircases, through jammed doors. He had no destination in mind, only that he take a path that would lose anyone following him.

There were blurs of bodies, and pools of blood and oily substances. Squeezing his hips through a half-open door into what appeared to be the water filtration side of the middle deck, Dillan realised, with a thigh still prying through the inflexible shaft, that there was a human - a living one - on the other side.

Long dark hair was snagged in a band that had become knotted in the tumbling of the ship, beneath it a bruised face was trembling against the ground. Their limbs were sprawled, with one foot contorted and bootless, the rest of their maintenance crew uniform was torn but attached. There were pipes hissing and clunking on either side of the thin corridor, with dials in all stages of readings from flat and unresponsive to ticking jerkily in the DANGER zone.

“Hello!” Dillan whispered, clearing the door with a wiggle.

The human flinched.

“It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you,” he assured, dropping to his knees at their side. “Does your back hurt? Can I roll you over?”

Their eyes lifted, hesitant and unwilling to trust what they were seeing. “My hip,” they gasped. “Nothing else hurts as bad as my hip." They licked dry lips and swallowed thickly. "It’s broken, I’m sure.”

“I’ll get help-”

“No! Please, they’re out there.”

“Who?”

“The ones dressed in all black.” They nodded at Dillan’s shirt. “They’ll kill me if they find me.”

“Are you sure?" Dillan desperately wanted the human to be wrong. That Flickering-Hope was a lone trigger-happy moron was all the distress he could bear. To know there were others killing humans senselessly... "I just came from out there and there was no one," he said, reassuring himself. "We thought there were attackers, too, but-”

“Not you!” they huffed. Possibly from frustration, although all of their breaths sounded puffed and laboured. “Us. I saw it with my own eyes. They shot every human in the cafeteria as soon as the dust settled from the crash.” And in one sentence, Dillan’s worst theories were proven correct. His stomach hurt, and his head throbbed, and he wanted to cry in a ball on the floor. Somehow, he maintained a deadly still hold on his kneeling. The human continued, “I only got out cause one of the Ailu’t maintenance guys dragged me.” At Dillan’s glance up and down the cramped corridor, they added, “He went back out for supplie,s and I haven’t seen him since.”

So there were some Ailu’t aboard like him. At least one other who wouldn’t butcher a human.

“Can you walk at all?” There was no way to politely add, ‘because I can’t drag you.’

“This was what I got for trying,” they answered, indicating their sprawl with a head bob followed by a wince.

Honesty was the least complicated path, as Dillan's teachers had once taught him. “I can take some of your weight… but not all of it.”

“What a polite thing to say to a lady.”

“Ah, you are a woman?”

The woman was not impressed at this deduction. “What’re you?”

It was complicated. “I am Dillan.”

The woman appeared additionally pained in the head for a moment. “And I’m Katerina. Let’s see how much muscle you’re hiding.”

Dillan could tell her plainly that it wasn’t much, but he did manage to drag her upright and over his shoulder. She made lots of muted screaming sounds until stuffing the collar of her jumpsuit into her mouth to bite on. Dillan wouldn't have done that to her himself, it seemed bad manners, but he was glad when she did. Now the hissing of steam filled their ears instead.

They shuffled like this through the tangled pipe walls, a three-legged struggle.

By the time they reached an exit into the standard areas of the ship, Katerina was panting and drooling around her makeshift gag. Tears gathered but hadn’t fallen. Dillan was very impressed by her. He wanted to cry and, he had no injuries to push through.

Staggering into a corridor connecting empty offices, they found themselves facing a pair of Ailu’t at the other end. They wore full outfits that matched Dillan’s top, and long guns hung from their hands. They were not startled to see the pair stumbling through the ship. Dillan could only hope that meant they had helped others like them. Katerina squeaked around the material in her mouth, her body taut and shaking.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Dillan hushed her, struggling to keep his grip on her waist as she fought to retreat. The two in black had already spotted them anyway. They were not familiar, but then it was hard to tell their features apart with their hair and faces partially covered. Attempting pleasantry, Dillan smiled at the slowly approaching pair. They slunk like predators, and it scared him. Still, he called out, “Hello, friends. We need hel-”

Katerina's head rocked back with the force of the shot that reached them sooner than Dillan could register the lift of the barrel. Stiff, petrified, he continued to hold her to him as her body emptied itself of blood over his chest and the floor. She was so heavy now; his back could barely take the weight.

Dead weight.

Bexley had used that phrase when talking about a very drunk colleague. So inebriated he couldn't hold himself up. All of his weight slumped on his friends to carry.

Katerina was dead. The blood was in his boots.

Dillan's knees shook. He was forced to sink into the puddle beneath them, laying Katerina face-up as though she might drown in her own blood otherwise. She hadn't cried, not to the end. Dillan's lips puckered with the effort to follow her lead.

The Ai'lut were approaching, leisurely. They watched him fold Katerina up on the ground with all the care he could show her and stroke her hair with a whispered apology. A few steps remaining between them, he tore away, pounding his feet back in the direction he had arrived from. The feel of her hair strands against his fingertips burned as he fled. To leave her seemed cowardly, to stay seemed pointless.

He was running at random, awaiting his own bullet in the back. The tears were so close, pinching his eyelids half-closed. His panting breaths had switched to pathetic sniffles and his legs were soft like the wet string humans enjoyed spinning into balls before eating. Against his will, his body was slowing, unable to keep up his erratic pace.

The slide of a door opening came from behind, and Dillan's collar was snatched backwards, dragging him into darkness.