THE ARK

Consciousness was slowly returning. He was feeling very foggy and his head was clearing far more slowly than he would normally expect. His mouth was extremely dry, his stomach was feeling queasy and his body ached all over. He struggled to open his eyes but they were too heavy. Worst of all was the breathing. With every breath he took, it seemed like additional air was being forced into his mouth and nose. He could not remember where he was, but there was the soft hum of electrical equipment nearby.

He tried to stretch his arms but there was something hard and metallic near his sides which greatly limited his movement. He reached to his face and felt an object covering his mouth and nose. Instantly he felt the panic starting to build. Forcing his eyes open, he was briefly blinded by the light that he had long since last experienced.

He realized that he was flat on his back and in a very small container. His immediate thought was that this was a coffin and that he was in a grave. There were glowing lights on the walls and there was a partially transparent lid just inches above his face.

With each second, the panic increased and he felt his breathing becoming very fast.

He knew that he had to force himself to calm down and control himself, but the panic overtook those rational thoughts.

Suddenly the revelation of where he was hit him, and he remembered how to escape. He whipped his head to the right with so much excess force that he struck his scalp on the console next to him, and blood started gushing from the jagged head wound. He reached for his head and felt the sticky fluid as it ran over his fingers. At that second, he knew one thing, when this alert was cleared, he would never lay in here again.

Ignoring the pain, he located the three green buttons and slammed his hand into the largest of them. For a moment he thought he heard a sound and then the large green button began blinking red. The LED readout below the large button now displayed three words, “Door Mechanism Failure”.

Looking up, the horror increased as he saw that the curved transparent lid did not open as it should. He frantically started hitting the now red button repeatedly with increasing force until the button cracked and became jammed in the console.

He threw his legs up, hoping to push with his feet, but he did not have the needed clearance in this confined space. Instead, his knee smashed into the lid and the pain shot through him. Using his lower legs and knees he pushed with all his strength, but nothing happened. He placed his palms against the transparency and pushed with his arms and legs. His right hand left smeared bloody handprints on the clear surface. His last rational move was to press one of the other green buttons. He was desperately hoping that it would send him back to sleep. He heard a new sound and knew that the sleeping drugs would end the nightmare he had awakened into. The terror started to fade, but only briefly. Moments later, there was the clear sound of an alarm beeping. He looked at the display, with all his terror returning, and saw the message “Check IV Flow”. He located the IV tubing where it attached to the wall of his chamber and followed it the catheter in his arm. The problem was obvious. With all of his thrashing, the catheter was mostly pulled out of his arm and was kinked and twisted. Frantically he attempted to straighten the thin walled catheter, but in the process pulled it the remainder of the way out of his arm.

He grabbed the catheter and tried forcing the blood covered tube into the hole in his arm from which it had come. However, it crumpled into a ball as he tried to force it against his skin.

By now, the horror had escalated and he was breathing over a hundred times each minute. As his terror peaked, he began screaming uncontrollably.

In a desperate effort, the man fought to turn over, thinking that if he could get his legs underneath him, he could push against the lid with his back. The space was much too small and he fought to turn his overweight, sweat soaked frame, first to its side and then face down. As he made his last movement, he collapsed face down on the small mattress and was instantly unable to breathe. It felt as if someone was strangling him. Now extremely nauseated and shaking uncontrollably, he began clawing at his throat, and he felt the two hoses that connected to the mask on his face. After rolling over, they were now tightly wrapped around his neck and he could not get them loose. The more he fought the more they seemed to tighten. Unable to move his head due to the python like coils around his neck, he frantically kicked out in all directions. At once, he felt a tremendous pain in his left leg as it violently connected with an angled section of the wall. As he continued kicking uncontrollably, he realized that the left leg was not striking anything and that the pain was tremendous with each kick. There was also the sensation of fractured bones rubbing together just above the ankle. There was a part of his mind that knew that he had to stop kicking. However, that part was not in any way in control. His head was pounding from the lack of blood to his brain and there was a growing pain in his chest that moved up into his shoulder. He tried to scream but nothing came out. His strength was fading as he fought to get his arms and legs underneath himself to push with his back, but his strength was fading too quickly and he collapsed again. His face landed looking off to the left wall and he could see out of a small window at floor level. His view was filled with that of hundreds of identical containers, aligned in neat rows. Each of them he knew, contained another member of his team. He hoped desperately to see just one of those containers open, as his should have. As his consciousness faded, he knew he would not have the time needed to see that happen.