Page 4 of Dweller of the Mists

He prayed to the gods that she did not intend to stay long

Chapter

Four

Noelle squinted at the campsite. Or what remained of it. Bits of metal were broken and submerged in the swamp that may have once been various tools and some kind of boat supplied by the Corp. Farther back, balanced on a higher rise made of layers of dry mud overlaying a massive root system, she could just barely make out the trailer peeking out from the growth of long vines and strands of lichen covering it from above and the large climbing brush rising up along its sides. Visually, the trailer was more of an impression with hints of metal through the overgrowth. Given a year or two more, she had little doubt that the swamp would have consumed it entirely. As it was now, she was uncertain if she could have found it without her comm.

“Well, this is it, Noelle,” she murmured to herself. “Just pray that nothing has decided to make a cozy nest out of it inside.”

Gods, please let it not be so.

Picking her way up toward the side of the trailer, she yanked the vines free and brushed away the mossy strands. Gradually, she cleared one window and then the other before finally working her way down and finding the door. By then her hands were aching, her gloves not entirely saving her fingers from thebite of the thick vines as she struggled to pull them free. More than that, however, she was exhausted. She eyed the cleared door unenthusiastically.

“Almost there. Just have to get the door open and then I can find a spot to crash for several hours.” Her stomach growled in reminder that she hadn’t yet eaten since being awakened from cryosleep and pushed into a life pod. She pressed her hand to her belly and grimaced. “And maybe something to eat.”

Squaring up with the door, she eyed it critically for a long moment and ran her hands along it to find the best hold. Thank the gods it was slightly ajar. She would have likely been screwed otherwise. Securing her grip, she threw all of her strength into prying the metal door in front of her the rest of the way open. Thankfully, it was open just enough that it gave her a good hand hold as she wrenched back on it. It screeched loudly but gave inch by inch until she finally had a big enough gap to squeeze through.

Brushing her hands off on the form-fitting jumpsuit covering her TRS, she looked around curiously as she walked toward the center of the main room. Dust clung heavily everywhere within the camp trailer, and she could see spots where mold and bits of the swamp were beginning to invade what had once been a sparse but immaculate interior. Even plants had begun to take root and grow within the patches of dirt that had either blown in or, more likely, flooded in when the water rose. It probably did so seasonally. It wouldn’t surprise her in the least if there were a kind of monsoon season. One thing was for certain: the fog had absolutely no qualms against seeping into the camp trailer. It curled around her feet and calves as she walked through the central room and coiled against the walls like smoke rings from a sleeping dragon.

“Creepy,” she muttered as she brushed aside what looked like trailing strands of lichen or moss except that they bore pronounced feathery pink leafy segments.

She wondered, if the exploratory team stationed there had remained stationed within the camp, how long they would have been able to keep out the encroaching swamp. The amount of growth was impressive and lent an alien eeriness to what was left of the camp.

And it was certainly creepy. It was as if it were slowly wiping away and devouring any and every trace of human presence that had once been there. That was the nature of a swamp. It overtook and consumed everything eventually, but on Xal, it just seemed all the more foreboding.

She shivered and sidestepped a thicker mass of the fronds but froze in place as a melodic—but entirely alien—song drifted inside the unit. It was beautiful and yet the sound was so completely inhuman that it made her skin prickle disconcertedly. She swallowed nervously but shook the feeling away and doubled back to close and lock the door firmly behind her. Although she was worried about being trapped inside without fresh air and in the company of various unknown mold spores floating around, she was more concerned with being eaten by some manner of alien creature. If nothing else, the song of alien lifeforms becoming alert as the sun sank just reminded her of the fact that she wasnotalone there and that many predators took advantage of hunting at night.

Don’t think of that,she scolded herself.

Giving her head a little shake to refocus, she continued forward and walked between a refrigeration unit and a small table with two chairs, one of which was tipped over. Several shelves stood nearby against the wall, laden with sealed clear containers. Each was filled with the familiar sight of the silvery field ration packets. She shook her head in wonder as shepassed the shelves. Whoever had been stationed there had not been there long enough to even make a significant dent in the supplies. That meant that they hadn’t gone out into the swamp to forage for dwindling supplies. It made their disappearance even more disturbing. Surely there had to be some clue as to what they were working on and what happened to them in the laboratory.

She didn’t even glance in the direction of the sink as she made her way into the laboratory space. It was just as empty as the rest of the housing unit. But more than that, it was to the point of appearing frozen in time, making it all the more eerie. Noelle ran her fingers absently along shelves storing all manner of testing equipment. Tubes coated thickly with dust and some with a moldy residue forming within them from the environment were at eye level. There were a few sealed vials containing samples, but she couldn’t make out what they were just by casually looking at them. Just beyond them, the light frame of the data processor sat on a long metal table. She hurried over to it and ran her fingers inquisitively over it, hopeful that there might be some small reservoir of energy left. Her face fell in disappointment when the machine did not even so much as hum from the system when she hit the power button.

Well, fuck.

She glanced around the room morosely, her eyes falling on a cushioned sitting bench wedged into one corner with a stack of blankets resting on it. Had someone been sleeping there? The blankets were perfectly folded as if someone had risen from sleeping mere hours ago rather than years. If one could overlook the moss and dust covering the fabric among a scattering of dead leaves and flowers from old vines. Regardless, it didn’t look all that comfortable to her.

Licking her lips, she scooted past it and headed farther into the trailer until she reached the sleeping quarters. Therewas no door, but a privacy curtain effectively separated the room from the lab. Noelle pushed it aside and stepped past it. Motes of dust flew into the air from the disturbed fabric. She coughed in reaction, her eyes momentarily dazzled by the tiny motes catching the light with a colorful shimmer that seemed particular to their composition on Xal. They filled the small space of the bedroom with a rainbow of color floating over a bed.

An actual bed! Not a cot or an uncomfortable bench, but a solid bed with a decent mattress—decent for what the Corp supplied at least. She nearly groaned with gratitude as she hurried toward it. The bed was set up by the window, the bedding neatly smoothed into place. It was also left perfectly orderly as if the occupants had simply gotten up to start their day and disappeared. In this case, however, it looked inviting. Bending over, she lifted the outer blanket and gave it a brisk shake before smoothing it back into place. With a tiny sound of excitement, she unzipped her jumper and set to work peeling off her TRS. The environmental controls weren’t working but the blankets looked thick and warm. She couldn’t wait to sink into it. She could deal with the musky, damp smell of the trailer—it just reminded her of her grandma’s house anyway. Anything was worth having a comfortable place to lie down.

But first—she was thirsty after traveling all day. Making her way back to the kitchen, she glanced around for any hydro pods, but to her disappointment she came up empty. There was an as of yet unused water filtration system sitting at one corner as if it were just recently unpacked before the camp had been abandoned. It was even still sealed with security tape. Noelle recognized as they were usually included in camp supplies for emergencies, but she had never had to use one since they always had enough hydro pods to weigh down a small freighter. The idea of drinking the swamp water, even filtered, turned her stomach, but there was no helping it. Breaking the seals,she pressed the power button and sighed with relief when it started up. She didn’t have a clue if anything else in the trailer worked, but at least the filtration system ran on a self-containing generator in case of power failure. So did the pump system that delivered water into the trailer. She just prayed that it also worked so she wouldn’t have to go out and haul in water by hand.

With considerable reluctance, she moved over to the sink and touched the tab on the spigot. Murky water gushed from it. It smelled funny and had a strange color to it, but at least it was water. She rinsed the small basin sitting inside the sink and then let it fill before transferring it over to the filter system. She was a little nervous as to the result when she put the cup beneath the system’s spout, and that uncertainty didn’t improve any when clear water with the faintest pink luminous tinge filled the cup. She lifted it skeptically and took one of the test strips from the closed cup on the counter beside the filtration system and dipped it into the water. Her eyebrows rose as she read the results. The water was clean and safe. It just looked strange.

“Okay,” she mumbled to herself. “It’s not like I have any way to issue a complaint to Corp at the moment. What am I going to do—die of dehydration? Considering I like living a little much, I guess it’s bottoms up.”

She wrinkled her nose as she tossed the contents back. Surprisingly, the water had a slightly fruity aftertaste that gave her pause. Questionable appearance and source aside, it wasn’t too bad. She immediately poured another tall cup and proceeded to sip it as she made her way back to the sleeping quarters. Sinking on to the bed, she studied the room once more while she drained the cup and set it on the small table beside her.

“I think I could sleep a year. At least the mattress isn’t too bad.”

Lifting the edge of the blanket to cover herself, she froze and cocked her head to listen as the rhythmic, pulsing song rose once more, hauntingly but closer and louder than before. Below it, however, there was a deep rattling, hissing sound that rumbled far closer, threateningly from the other side of the trailer. She jumped up from the bed and stared at the far wall, her breath quickening. The threatening sound gradually faded, leaving only the eerie song. She turned toward it and swallowed. There was something out there—more than one something—and whatevertheywere, they sounded a lot bigger than a harmless little frog, and one sounded as if it crawled from the darkest depths of the underworld. At least the other one, despite the eeriness of its song, didn’t make her skin crawl.

Inching toward the window, Noelle pulled back the curtain and peered out into the night. The fog had rolled in thicker since sundown, and the swamp beyond the trailer was mostly concealed by an impenetrable blanket. Only the faint glow of motes dancing in fluttering sways with the breeze were visible. And something else.

She squinted at it. They were a large cluster of glowing pinpricks like a small field of stars moving. It was far too uniform to be a swarm of insects, each one maintaining the same distance as they moved. Which meant it was part of something larger.

Her eyes widened and her mouth went dry as her eyes continued to follow the movement of that luminous galaxy of lights as it moved closer and closer. What was worse was that it seemed to be intentionally creeping up on the trailer as if aware of her presence within. It was moving so intentionally that it often stopped and dropped low, its lights nearly disappearing before beginning to crawl toward her once more—slipping closer with every beat of her heart. She backed away from the window and dropped the curtain, suddenly feeling hunted. Had sheattracted the attention of predators after all? She thought she had done so well all day but now she wasn’t so sure.

---