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guylane.com<br />
The shuttle rattles and roars and Charlie clings to the floor, terrified.<br />
He sees the Martian Cat cowering under a Hibernation Pod. He<br />
crawls that way and reaches out his arm, but the vibration is too<br />
intense, and he can’t connect. The terrific rumbling and roaring<br />
overwhelms everything as the shuttle departs the Martian surface. It<br />
goes on and on like this for minutes, seeming to shake the shit out of<br />
everything until, suddenly…<br />
…it becomes completely silent.<br />
The shuttle has departed Mar’s pitiful atmosphere and it now in<br />
Zero G gravity. Charlie become weightless. He drifts away from the<br />
hibernation pod, and starts laughing and crying at the same time –<br />
weightlessness does that to you, apparently – as he sees the Martian<br />
Cat drifts free, as do the nine defrosting cadavers that Maddy pulled<br />
out of their pods.<br />
“I’m free. I’m free,” Charlie sobs, feeling a great wave of euphoria<br />
washing over him. But just then, a shadow moves across his face and<br />
a tremor of fear washes over him.<br />
He turns, and gasps to see that Maddy is an inch away from his<br />
head, floating above him. She is surrounded by a hundred droplets of<br />
dark red blood that glisten under the lights inside the shuttle. They<br />
surround her like fleas around a mangy dog.<br />
She is breathing deeply, and holding out her bloodied hand. In the<br />
other, she holds the sleep wand. With her face smeared with Turner’s<br />
blood, she looks like a grinning psychopath, or like one of those<br />
freaky f**king clowns that keeps you up all night wondering why you<br />
ever went to the circus.<br />
Her fingers curl around the collar of Charlie’s jumpsuit, and she<br />
draws him towards her. Her mouth opens, revealing teeth stained<br />
with blood.<br />
Charlie freezes, unable to move. He starts to hyperventilate. Short<br />
sharp breaths. “I give in” he chants. “I give in.” It is like the last thing<br />
that he will ever say. He manages to raise one hand in submission as<br />
Maddy moves her mouth towards his neck.<br />
When her mouth touches the his skin, Charlie clams-up, unable to<br />
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