False Hope by Lisa Fox

False Hope by Lisa Fox

The queue of vehicles leading to the Mobile Apothecary snaked through the hills of the Ganymede Moon. Aside from the amber-hued gas spewing from the Oleg Mine accident site, the convoy seemed the only sign of life in the colony.

From the service window, Malven Roberts peered outside. “They just keep coming. Ants to a picnic.”

Bumper-to-bumper, drivers waited hours for a ration of elixir to counter effects of the contamination. The air was thick with the dust of a moon that crumbled beneath them. With his classification, Malven was only told so much, but he’d lived long enough to know disaster when he saw it. And bullshit when he heard it.

The floor vibrated with another aftershock as Ilya Kruz, the Chemist-at-Large, crushed green and black granules with a mortar and pestle.

“Mostly Tan autos, now,” Malven said. “Some Blues and Greens.”

“Mmm-hmm. Reds are long gone.” Ilya doled the antidote into vials aligned on the counter near the window. Vials on the left were reserved for the government, military, and healthcare workers who had not yet been evacuated. Those on the right were for the Tans – non-essentials who comprised most of the colony’s population.

“Better get moving if we want to get this line down before closing,” she said.

Malven pursed his lips. He bagged three vials from the right side and placed the package in the suction chamber; it traveled through a tube into the waiting vehicle.

Malven mostly avoided looking at the Tans – their sunken eyes, their sagging, mottled flesh that hung like cobwebs from protruding bones. A few days after the blast, he was unable to recognize even the most familiar customers, those souls whose names and lives he once knew obscured by waxen masks.

He glanced over to Ilya’s pack, resting by the door. A blue boarding pass jutted from the half-zippered bag. “Your last shift,” he said. Chemists were Blue Class C; Ilya’s shuttle to the space station was scheduled to leave that evening. As a Tech, Malven was Blue Class H, with 48 hours until his evacuation.

“You’ll be fine,” Ilya said. Malven noticed a new streak of white in Ilya’s black hair and the hint of a boil rising on her neck. “Just keep the line moving.”

The ground rumbled. Horns blared a wail of desperation as Malven and Ilya steadied themselves. A red light flared beneath the window like a pustule – a customer request for Chemist counsel.

Ilya sighed. “Another Tan.”

Malven busied himself, assembling vials as Ilya pressed the intercom.

“Your question?”

The woman’s words sputtered in a wave of hysteria. “Help! He’s stopped breathing!”

Malven peered into the car. In the passenger seat, a man sat, rigid. Blood trickled like errant tears from beneath closed eyelids. In the back, a little girl snuggled under a blanket, a pool of black seeping into the upholstery beneath her blond curls.

The child was as old as Malven’s granddaughter, who anxiously awaited his return to Earth at the end of his contract. Malven bit his lip to restrain the sob rising in his throat.

“Ma’am. Calm down.” Ilya seized the vials from Malven’s hands and thrust them into the airlock. “Go directly to the hospital.”

“I tried!” the woman shrieked. “I couldn’t get past the bodies! Couldn’t get to the door!”

Horns blasted; the car behind the woman accelerated, nudging it forward.

“Ma’am. You need to drive. Go now,” Ilya said.

Malven shook his head. They couldn’t risk another crash at the service window – last time, The Guard arrived just before the angry mob broke through. And now, The Guard was gone.

The woman screamed and slammed on the accelerator. Tires squealed, protesting the hot pavement.

Ilya exhaled as the next car approached.

“Tans are getting worse,” Malven said. “Upper echelon’s responding a lot better to the treatment.” He rolled up his sleeves, revealing few blemishes. “Us included.”

Ilya reached past him, pulling vials from the left. The next driver was a Blue.

“We’re almost out of serum,” she whispered. “Tans get placebo.”

Malven’s eyes opened wide. “You mean, they get nothing?”

With a massive bang, the ground rocked. Ilya and Malven fell.

Ilya pushed herself up, her expression hardened. “We give them hope.” She brushed her hands on her lab coat.

Malven scrambled to his feet, glaring at Ilya. She’d betrayed him, betrayed all of them. Amid the chaos, she’d forsaken her oath to heal, drawing Malven into a lie that served no purpose other than crowd management via a well-contained queue.

“False hope,” Malven said.

“Better than no hope at all.”

“What about Charles?” Malven pressed, recalling the way Ilya’s palm lingered on the glass as she passed rations to the mining foreman who’d struck her fancy. “You gave him the real thing, didn’t you?”

She turned away. “I needed him to live.”

More false hope.

“Why do you get to choose?” Malven challenged.

She shook her head. “Does anyone, really?”

An alarm boomed, loud as a foghorn. The cacophony of vehicles, shouts, and cries outside rivaled its volume as metal shades dropped over the window.

Curfew.

Ilya squared her shoulders, her gaze fixed on a supply shelf. She retrieved the mortar and pestle. “You’ll need more vials for tomorrow’s rush. I’ve got some time before my flight.”

Malven scowled. What was the point? Tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed. Hell, tomorrow wasn’t even likely. Here they stood, waiting for the moon to implode.

His silence an admonishment, Malven stormed toward the door. Ilya’s boarding pass still poked through her bag, tempting as forbidden fruit. Malven glanced over his shoulder at the chemist occupied by crushing granules, the sound like grinding bone. He knew he was no better than Ilya – no better than any of them, Red, Green, Blue or Tan.

But he needed to live. His granddaughter was waiting.

Malven inhaled, his breath deep and deliberate. From his pocket, he retrieved his Blue Class H pass, slid it into Ilya’s bag, and pilfered his ticket to salvation.

—

Lisa Fox is a pharmaceutical market researcher by day and fiction writer by night. She thrives in the chaos of everyday suburban life, residing in New Jersey (USA) with her husband, two sons, and their couch-dwelling golden retriever. Her work has been featured in Metaphorosis, New Myths, Luna Station Quarterly, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Defenestration, and previously in Theme of Absence. She won the 2018 NYC Midnight Short Screenplay competition and in 2020 had short fiction nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions.