Micro

He’d cut a circle around Station Echo, gotten it out of the soil, squinted into the door of the tent. The tent had supplies scattered all around inside it. That looked unusual, so he decided to open the hatch and look inside. He pinched the hatch wheel between his thumb and forefinger, but the wheel snapped off. Now he couldn’t get the hatch open. “Shit.” He laid the station on its side on the ground, and knelt, and tapped on the hatch cover with the tip of his knife, but that didn’t work. The hatch was tightly shut and not even the tip of his knife would get it open. So he raised his knife over his head. He would split it open.

The KA-BAR blade, as tall to the micro-humans as a ten-story building, plunged through the bunker with a roar, driving shattered blocks of concrete through the room. The blade continued down into the earth, opening a gaping hole in the room. The edge began to saw raggedly through the bunker while rocking back and forth.

Rick clung to the bottom of the hatch, trying to spin it, trying to open it. He got the hatch open, and thrust out his duffel bag. But then the bunker began rising up into the air: he saw the ground below. The bunker turned completely sideways, until he was lying on the ladder. People were crowding behind him. He began reaching for the others. He grabbed Amar and pushed him out through the hatch, and saw him falling away. The bunker was rising higher, tilting. Peter Jansen got next to Rick. “Help me get the others out!” Peter shouted.

They managed to get Danny out through the hatch. They heard Danny scream, and saw him falling. Erika went next.

Inside the bunker, Jenny Linn had been pinned against the giant knife blade, her arm trapped between the blade and concrete. Karen King struggled to free Jen’s arm, while the blade moved sideways, threatening to crush them both.

“My arm,” Jenny whimpered. “I can’t move.”

A table slid up against Jenny, then a concrete fragment smashed the table and rammed into Karen. Karen kicked the concrete away, surprised at her strength, and worked frantically to free Jenny.

The bunker went down again, slammed against the ground, and the knife cut it in half, spilling Jenny and Karen out, revealing the sky above. Against the sky towered a man. A man they didn’t recognize. He opened his mouth and sounds rumbled out. He raised the knife high.

Karen picked Jenny up, and got her to her feet, watching the knife wave over them. Jen’s arm hung limply at a strange angle. “Run!” Karen screamed, as the great knife flashed downward at them.

Chapter 18

Fern Gully 29 October, 2:00 p.m.

The knife entered the ground between Karen and Jenny, driving them apart, and continued down into the earth for what seemed like a vast distance. Then it was withdrawn with a rumbling sound, shaking the world. Jenny was on her knees, holding her arm and moaning.

Karen scooped Jenny up with one hand, and began to run with her, heaving her across her back and sprinting at high speed. The knife plunged down again, but this time Karen had dived under a clump of ferns, still carrying Jenny on her back.

The ground thumped and bounced, and the thumping receded. The man was walking away, carrying the broken halves of the station in his hands. They saw him toss the pieces into a knapsack. He moved off, and was gone.

A silence descended. Jenny was crying.

“My arm,” Jenny said. “It hurts…hurts so much.”

Jen’s arm had been broken, badly. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you fixed up,” Karen said, trying to sound optimistic. Jen’s arm looked horrible, a compound fracture of the humerus, probably. Karen found a duffel bag lying on the ground nearby, and she opened it, and took out a radio headset, and began calling on it. “You guys? Anybody? I’m with Jenny. She has a broken arm. Can you hear me?”

Peter’s voice came on. “We’re okay. Everybody’s accounted for.”

They gathered under the fern, and placed Jenny on a leaf, using it like a bed. None of them had any medical experience. Karen opened the medical kit and found a syringe with morphine. She held it where Jenny could see it. “Do you want this?”

Jenny shook her head. “No. Too groggy.” She might need her wits, despite the pain. Instead, Jenny accepted a couple of Tylenol tablets, while Karen ripped up a piece of cloth and fashioned a sling. They helped her sit up. Jenny swayed, her face ashen, her lips pale. “I’ll be okay,” she said.

But she was not okay. Her arm was swelling dramatically, the skin darkening.

Internal bleeding.

Karen caught Peter’s eye, and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. Remembering what Jarel Kinsky had said about the bends. You could bleed to death from a small cut. And this was not a small cut.

Peter looked at his watch. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. They’d slept for two hours.