Posts Tagged ‘survival’

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Escape Pod 957: Vault (Part 2 of 2)

Vault originally appeared in Clarkesworld, Issue 141 in June 2018.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:04 — 59.6MB)

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Vault (Part 2 of 2)

By D.A. Xiaolin Spires

(…Continued from Part 1)

“Lukas?”

Chenguang’s voice echoes in this expanse of dark.

A vortex of light opens to her right and she sees a warped head and legs emerge from a point in the dark. It’s Lukas. As he enters the space, the light bends, his figure elongated as he pulls himself through and it closes behind him. It’s dark again.

“Hey, Lukas.”

“Chenguang?” His voice is low and resounds against unseen walls. “Where is this place?”

“Did we just—enter the structure somehow?”

“I—I—don’t know.” Lukas’ voice uncharacteristically wavers before it quiets down in the darkness. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 956: Vault (Part 1 of 2)

Vault originally appeared in Clarkesworld, Issue 141 in June 2018.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:34 — 54.8MB)

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Vault (Part 1 of 2)

By D.A. Xiaolin Spires

Chenguang hikes up her sleeves before vaulting over the pile of fuzzy moss and greets Lukas with a nod. The chloropolyurethane fabric flaps in the slight breeze and the double suns beat down onto her arms.

Lukas fishes in his bag next to his tent for a bottle of sunsoak and releases the spray, running it generously over his solflex-covered arms, torso, and legs.

“Your head,” Chenguang says and he smiles, as if he hadn’t been doing this for years.

“Can’t reach,” he says, lying and Chenguang knows he just likes the attention. She grabs the spray and discharges that exhale of mist, covering his football-shaped clear helmet. She even sprays some on the clear hard arc under his bearded chin. She turns the mist onto herself, bringing down the spray over her exposed transpandex inner layer, the foam frothing up at her arms before becoming clear, encasing the invisible solflex pores of her fabric. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 640: Paradise Regained

Paradise Regained first appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January/February 2017.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:48 — 74.0MB)

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Paradise Regained

By Edward Lerner

My head hurts. I expect it: this is winter. I want it to be spring.

Paradise does not ask what I want.

The winter is young, and I think the dogs are not yet so hungry as to attack me. Still, I hold tight to my spear. Dogs or no dogs, the spear helps me walk through the knee-deep snow.

Only trees show above the snow, and I do not know what is under. In winter, asleep, the plants cannot scream when I step on them.

Because they are asleep, Father told me. Long ago. Before Mother died. Before I left home. I did not understand what he meant. I do not now.

I think Father is gone, too. “Watch the flag,” Father told me, long ago, pointing at the tall pole that stood near Ship. “I will change the flag every day. Unless … I can’t. Then you must come. You must.”

From a high hill in my part of the forest, around a great curve of the sea, I look every day for a spot of color on top of the pole. Day by day, the spot changes color. Once, I knew the names of the colors. No more. Talking only to myself, the words go away. But then a day came when the color did not change. Not the next day. Not the day after. Not in … many days.

I see I do not remember numbers, either.
(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 633: Lucky Shot (Part 2)

Lucky Shot was first published in the Desolate Places anthology (Hadley Rille Books, 2007) and also appeared in Gerri Leen’s collection Life Without Crows (Hadley Rille Books, 2010).

This story contains a mention of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help with suicidal thoughts, you can find information and resources here: International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) or Suicide.org.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:04 — 59.3MB)

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Lucky Shot

By Gerri Leen

The fire crackles, and Sirella watches as Kai lies with his eyes closed, pretending to sleep. She knows he’s pretending because his breathing is too soft. She’s heard his almost snores since the second night, when they’d both finally relaxed enough to sleep. She heard them and registered the strange, soft noises—realized they came from him and not from someone or something trying to sneak up on them in the dark of night—before falling back to sleep.

“Kai?” The word is a whisper. She isn’t sure what she wants to say to him. Just that she should say something.

His breathing stutters, but he doesn’t open his eyes.

“I’m sorry.” She looks away from him. She is sorry. But she doesn’t know who the people he lost were. She doesn’t know if they were innocents or not. She doesn’t know why they died, only that someone from her side killed them. She wishes he hadn’t lost people he loved. But he would have died if her shot hadn’t flown so damned wide. And then what? Would some other Vermayan have sat with some other person from one of the nations that make up the Revirian Confederation, and drawn out in strangely colored sand how Vrenden Kai was killed?

Vrenden Kai would have killed her if his shot hadn’t also gone wide.

They’re in the middle of a war. Killing is part of that. She can’t feel bad about it.

She mustn’t feel bad about it.

She feels bad about it.
(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 632: Lucky Shot (Part 1)

Lucky Shot was first published in the Desolate Places anthology (Hadley Rille Books, 2007) and also appeared in Gerri Leen’s collection Life Without Crows (Hadley Rille Books, 2010).

This story contains a mention of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help with suicidal thoughts, you can find information and resources here: International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) or Suicide.org.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:50 — 72.7MB)

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Lucky Shot

By Gerri Leen

Lieutenant Sirella Nacleth breathes in green dust and tries not to cough. Her feet feel too heavy to move, but she forces herself to walk on, ignoring the heat that blasts down and around her, heat carried by winds that do nothing to cool the air from the sun above. This planet is a harrowing furnace, and she is bound here for the rest of her life—or until her people find her.

Or until her enemy’s people do. She glances back and sees that the Vermayan has finished filling in the deep grave he put his crewmates’ bodies in. She’s assuming the Vermayan is a he. It’s hard to tell from where she stands, and she doesn’t intend to get very close if she can help it.

If their ships hadn’t crashed almost on top of each other, she might not have seen him for days, if at all. But their ships did land nearly twisted together, and the bodies of the crews are strewn all over. She has to get closer to him than she likes just to retrieve her dead.

She’s the only one on her ship who survived the crash. Her left arm is broken, and her right ankle wrenched. Her back feels strained and her head hurts. But she’s alive. She’s alive and burying her dead, shoveling one handed and pulling her crewmates behind her as she limps from body to hole, body to hole.

The Vermayan is way ahead of her. There are no rust-colored bodies strewn over the plain anymore, while so many of her own dead still lie waiting for her to reach them. The green sand blows over the bodies as the blazing wind lifts stinging grit and flings it at her, making her eyes hurt and her lips crack. She will help her friends; she will give them rest. But not soon. She’s only one person. And she’s tired. So tired.

The Vermayan has sat down. He’s watching her as she limps toward the next body, which is halfway between where she’s dug her hole and where he’s resting. Glancing at his rank, she sees he’s the Vermayan equivalent of lieutenant. He’s taken his weapon out of its holster and is playing with it—no, he’s checking it. She laughs bitterly. If it’s built as poorly as hers, it will be clogged with the fine green grit of this damned world. And since his ship didn’t perform any better than hers, why should his gun?
(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 596: The Wind You Touch When You Run

Escape Pod 596: The Wind You Touch When You Run is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:31 — 52.9MB)

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The Wind You Touch When You Run

By James Beamon

This pursuit starts as they all start, going after the Underground Railroad. It will end as it always ends, with us feeding the Minotaur. The in-between is where I tell tales.

I wipe sweat from my eyes while my son Langston squints under the blue-white light of this alien sun, scanning the swollen green and purple foliage for signs of recent human passage. He points his machete at a fresh boot print obscured by dense undergrowth. We pick up pursuit, south. It reminds me of a little-known facet of my favorite story.

“The original Underground Railroad ran south to Spanish controlled Florida a lot longer than it ran north,” I tell Langston. “I’m talking more than two hundred years, going as far back as the fifteen hundreds, and lasting until well after the Revolution.”

“Unless your railroad story leads to Talya, I’m not interested, Saul.”

This is the nearest I’ve been to Langston in six years and I see he’s grown into a strong man. We’re shirtless because of the heat and his skin is beautifully black like a scarab’s shell, free of all the gashes and scars I’ve accumulated in the jungle. His dreadlocks are tied into a crude ponytail that hangs down the center of his back. Intensity burns in his eyes as he navigates the jungle.

“What you want is through the wilderness,” I tell him. “She’s three hours ahead of us, which could put her ten miles out or ten feet depending on what she’s run into out there. Either way, we can catch her before nightfall.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 571: Beetle-Cleaned Skulls

Escape Pod 571: Beetle-Cleaned Skulls is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:53 — 47.2MB)

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Beetle-Cleaned Skulls

By J. E. Bates

Fine amber dust infiltrated everything in the Preserve. Each morning, I vacuumed it away with my ventral hose prior to opening my kiosk. I paid particular care to my curios: the fossils, the bismuth crystals, and the beetle-cleaned skulls. Forebears, especially the children, delighted in receiving my curios as gifts. Each successful transaction gave me a burst of surplus energy, expressed as pride.

The mineral specimens I gathered from the talus behind the kiosk. I polished them right in the kiosk according to aesthetic principles. But I prepared the skulls in the subterranean machine rooms. They were created from deceased rhuka, a species of domesticated bovine. No other kiosk attendant created such skulls, and Forebears traveled great distances to receive one. They used them to decorate their caves.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 564: Trusted Messenger

Escape Pod 564: Trusted Messenger is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:50 — 52.3MB)

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Trusted Messenger

by Kevin Wabaunsee

Dr. Thaddeus Begay had been expecting a dying child in the exam room, but no one had said anything about a woman half-dead from starvation. He stepped inside and muscled the door shut—like the rest of the clinic, it was made from metal reclaimed from the original dropship, and like everything else in the colony, it didn’t quite fit right.

“Good morning,” Thad said.

“Hello there,” the woman said. Her tone was probably meant to be cheerful, but to Thad, it sounded like it took significant effort.

Thad frowned. His nurse must have made a mistake. A woman had burst into the clinic without an appointment, the nurse had said, demanding help for her sick child.

But the woman sitting on the examination table with her child was thin to the point of starvation. Cheeks deeply sunken; the outline of her ribs and collarbone sharp through her tank top. Her hair, like her shirt, was thin and plastered against her flesh with sweat. On her lap sat a little boy of about a year and a half, had jet-black hair and deep brown eyes, and cheeks that were flushed with a painful crimson rash. Still, he looked healthier than his mother.

Thad dragged a stool over to her. It squealed across the faint outlines of the struts and tie-downs and internal dividing walls that had once honeycombed the massive storage container that now served as the colony’s clinic.

He glanced back at the chart—her name was Suzanne Buenaventura. He glanced at her vitals, and nearly gagged when he saw her records from the colony ship. She’d been more than 215 pounds when the dropships had landed. Sitting on the exam table, she didn’t look like she’d top 110. “And what seems to be the problem this morning, Mrs. Buenaventura?”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 556: In a Manner of Speaking

In a Manner of Speaking was originally published in Selfies from the End of the World: Historical Accounts of the Apocalypse, September 2015, DefCon One Publishing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:44 — 54.4MB)

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In a Manner of Speaking

By Charity Tahmaseb

I use the last of the good candles to build the radio. I still have light. The fire burns, and there is a never-ending supply of the cheap, waxy candles in the storeroom. I will–eventually–burn through all of those. My fire will die. The cold will invade this space.

But today I have a radio. Today I will speak to the world–or what’s left of it. I compare my radio to the picture in the instructions. It looks the same, but not all the steps had illustrations. This troubles me. My radio may not work.

I crank the handle to charge the battery. This feels good. This warms my arms, and I must take deep breaths to keep going. I shake out my hand and crank some more. When buzz and static fill my ears, I nearly jump. That, too, sounds warm. I am so used to the cold. The creak and groan of ice, the howl of the wind. These cold sounds are their own kind of silence. They hold nothing warm or wet or alive.

I decide on a frequency for no other reason than I like the number. I press the button on the mouthpiece. This, according to the instructions, will let the world hear me.

(Continue Reading…)

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