We let Karl get himself together as best he can. Marshall knocked out his tooth, but beyond that, there weren’t many facial wounds. Nothing we couldn’t blame on what happened earlier when we caught him. But I know his torso and legs are on fire. Marshall did a number on him, and we didn’t do anything but watch. We let him clean his face, and put on a strong face so his family didn’t worry, but it’s obvious something happened in the back. Karl sits stewing, trying to regain his composure as the three of us discuss the best way to get the rover.

It’s not on a direct path, but it isn’t as if we’ve been able to take a direct path at any point. The other thing is that the rover may not work. If the rover doesn’t work we’ve put everyone at risk. The reward however, is that we’ll be able to reach the beacon much faster. We’ll leave it up to the group to decide on this one since their lives will be at risk as well. We’ve formed a sort of an informal triumvirate but we can’t make all the decisions on our own.

Karl rushes over to his family when return from the back. Marilyn gives us a look that only reveals that she knows what we’ve done. Marshall gives her a small shrug that most people wouldn’t notice. Thore refuses to look her way, but my eyes are stuck on her. We’ve done something wrong, and only the eyes of Karl’s wife can make us feel guilt. Unfortunately, Thore is the only one who feels guilt. It’s clear Marshall will do whatever to survive, but I’m surprised with myself. Do I feel guilt? Yes, but it’s as if I stole a candy bar, not allowed a man to be beaten for information. I simply take my gun from the table and take a seat with Aaimina and Niko. They don’t speak to me but Aaimina leans her head on my shoulder, aware that something is bothering me.

Thore watches outside the window as rain begins to lightly tap on the windows and thunder echoes in the distance. Even if Karl and his family wanted to leave, it seems as if we’re all going to be trapped her tonight for the time being. I used to love the rain, it always seemed to feel so simple, so sweet. But tonight, I can’t stand the rain.

Even sober, Niko seems to talk a lot, but his thoughts are more morbid. “Do you think the grubs will eventually just die? I mean, they’re dead but they have to decompose, right,” he looks directly to me.

“I don’t think they’ll decompose. They aren’t really dead. This isn’t a plague of movie monsters crawling out of graves and running through the streets like professional athletes. They’re still alive, very much alive.”

“How can you say they’re alive,” Aaimina asks.

“Because they are. They still bleed when they’re hurt. They react to pain. They more insect than alive. They aren’t human, but neither are Qhex, and we wouldn’t say they’re dead. Perhaps the grunts and growls they make are some kind of language that our translators can’t pick up. I’m sure half us are probably speaking different languages,” I tap the small metal device behind my ear, “but I’m sure we’re all wearing translators and we don’t have a problem.”

“You are so old,” Niko laughs, “why don’t you just get an implant like everyone else. You’ve still got a wrist comp, and physical translator.”

“That is old,” Aaimina jokes.

“My wrist comp is still fully functional, but only the translation part of your implant is working. Sometimes, we don’t need to fix what isn’t broken,” I smile.

“What if it were a fungus,” Marilyn inserts herself from across the room as the thunder grows louder. “Fungus,” she repeats herself when the thunder has subsided.

“I don’t believe so,” I respond. “If it were a fungus, we’d likely see animals infected as well. Have you seen a single animal since you’ve been here,” nobody answers me. “I think the animals were eaten first. We haven’t seen a street cat, a stray dog, or anything of the sort. Where are the animals? If they were infected with the fungus, they’d be wandering around too.”

“A symbiote,” Aaimina suggests.

“No, that’s absurd. If it were some sort of symbiote they’d have a main hive, and wouldn’t travel far from it. We haven’t noticed any hive like structures. Although, if they were underground, we wouldn’t notice. But, we haven’t noticed any of them digging or trying to get underground.”

“Then a parasite,” she counters.

“I don’t think so. Parasites want to keep the host alive, and while they sometimes change the host, they don’t do so much as adding an exoskeleton.”

“It’s not science,” Marshall speaks as lightning strikes and clashes outside. “It’s just evil. The kind of evil that men make when they try to play God.”

“That sounds nice, but even if this is man made, there’s something. It may not be a fungus, parasite, symbiote disease or anything like that, but it’s something. Science has the answers, we just haven’t found it yet. With time, we can find an answer and maybe even reverse it. There was once a viral disease called rabies. Humanity couldn’t find an answer to cure it or prevent being infected. But we managed to eradicate it. Do you know how they did it? They killed everything with rabies because it couldn’t survive without a host.”

“Science truly is a marvel,” Thore speaks without looking away from the window. “But Marshall is right. Sometimes, things are just evil. People look at tyrants, murderers and dictators as things that always fall when good is presented before them. It sounds like a wonderful world, but the fact is we always have more of them popping up. Do you know why? It’s because the people who make efforts to remind us how good they are the true evil. People do not simply set out to commit evil deeds, because if they did, it would be easy to stop them. Whatever this is, someone probably made it in a lab, because they thought they were going to bring forth some kind of good dead. But they were meddled with things beyond the understanding of mortals. They were so sure they were doing good, they didn’t stop to realize what they had done was create an afront to God. We are the cruelest creatures, we are our own monsters.”

Marki, Marshall, and Thore; I was unaware so many people still believed in God. I thought the notion of religion was something only talked about in small groups of cults. But it seems when faced with what might be the end of human life on this planet, people are more open with their beliefs. I wonder if they all pray to the same God. I wonder if Marki is with her God, tormented in Hell or her energy has simply returned to the universe as part of the life cycle. No matter the answer, it has to be better than this.