By the time we returned, the bodies of my parents had spent nearly a year in the storage compartment. They were next to the meat, and bagged like leftovers.
On the day we landed, the ship rose and fell with the waves. Designed for either solid ground or a liquid sea, we hadn’t been entirely sure which would be the case. What we had been sure of was that we would never return home. We were wrong.
We few survivors didn’t rush for the doors. We didn’t scramble off. In fact, when our rescuers boarded, we were all sitting or lying on the deck. A nurse lay flat on her back, and was screaming at the top of her lungs. I felt dazed. The surviving pilot sat on the floor, rocking. I was nearest the hatch, the one I had passed through only once, two years before. Smelling the salty sea air, I wondered, after the hell we’d been through, if we had made it back to Earth only to sink and drown in whatever ocean was out there.
When the door opened, I looked up and saw the first man, concealed in a white hazmat suit, with a gun in his hand. Our rescuers came prepared to defend themselves from us. He stopped and looked down at me; I saw his shoulders fall. He holstered his weapon and asked, “Can you confirm that this is the Phaeacia?”
Was he fucking serious? I stared up at him and nodded.
“So, you’re confirming that we are aboard the Phaeacia?” he asked.
I glanced around. It was shadowy, the nurse’s screaming echoed off the hard surfaces, there were people scattered about in little mounds, and lights on panels glowed. In between the screams, when she took a breath, I could hear the hiss of an unseen radio. I held up my hand, and said, “This is the Phaeacia.”
He stepped past me, and a second man, dressed like the first but without the gun and holster, came to me. He looked down, began to kneel but then stood again before his knee could touch the floor. “Can you walk?” he asked.
I just wanted out. We’d been trapped aboard for years, trapped with an unseen killer. It was swift, invisible, still unidentified, and merciless. Entire families had disappeared into body bags. People had died horribly, some with grace, but most without. Imprisoned with fewer and fewer survivors, we had little hope, as we hurtled back toward Earth.
“Can you hear me?” he asked.
I looked past him, out the door, and up at the sky. It was so incredibly blue. I hadn’t seen a clear blue sky in so long. My mom wouldn’t get to see it. I looked back toward the infirmary, and then toward the galley, where my parents were in the refrigerated compartment.
The man bent over, his head quite close to mine. I could see his glasses inside his hazmat hood.
Was all this happening? Did we actually land? Were my parents truly dead? Was I really alive? Looking up at the man, I wondered if he were real. Falling forward, I slapped the hard, cool floor. I pounded on it and then sat up. The nurse screamed again. I bit my wrist, hard, as she kept screaming. Putting my forehead to the floor, I pulled my own hair.
“Can you walk?” he asked again. “Are you sick? Who are you? Are you Celestine Tolland?”
