Swarm

by Devon C Ford

  And then it came to him.

  He stopped the rising noise by raising his hands and calling for quiet, trying to sound more placatory as he spoke. “My friends. I know we have all suffered and lost many—husbands, sons and brothers—but I promise you their sacrifice will be paid for with the blood of our enemies. He reached into his inner pocket and pulled out the object that had been kept secret from everyone for more generations than they could count.

  “I will send The Swarm to kill them. The Three Hills were lucky last time and got their inner gate closed, but next time they won’t be.” He paused studying the crowd. At the mention of The Swarm he had gotten their attention again. Everyone now knew he had the power to control them. “We killed many of the newcomers at The Source,” he lied. “When The Swarm breach their walls, they will not stop them this time.” Lowering the beacon, he put it carefully, even though he knew it was useless, back into his pocket. The reverence with which he treated it was part of the show he knew he needed to put on to buy him some time, and he could see it was working.

  “Now if you give me some time I can instruct The Swarm.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and strode into his quarters.

  Pushing the door closed behind him he stood silently trying to calm his rising panic. His people had defied him, daring to openly question him in front of others, and he had been unable to stop it. The crowd had protected the one man brave enough to face him directly, a man he had previously thought of as one of his loyal followers, and it scared him.

  A knock at the door made him jump and almost cry out in fear. He pulled his pistol from its holster and held it out in front of him. The knock came again but this time he recognized the voice as Sanchez’s. Hastily hiding the pistol behind his back, he took a moment to compose himself before telling him to enter.

  ~

  An hour later he was feeling better. Two of his favorite concubines were sharing his large bath, letting their practiced hands run over his body as they soaped and massaged his tired muscles whilst another naked woman kept topping up the bath with buckets of warm water heated on the brazier situated in the corner of his sleeping quarters. His senses dulled from the heat; he was exhausted, and the attention he was receiving almost let him believe that everything was back to normal and that once he was refreshed and rested everything would continue as before.

  More to show off and as a symbol of his power he kept the pistol on a small table by his tub. He had cleaned the mud and dirt from it earlier, ejecting the magazine to carefully clean and replace each bullet before pushing it back into position. He didn’t know how to break the weapon down and clean it properly; if he had done so he would have seen the mud and dirt that was soiling the inner workings and cleaned it properly.

  Oblivious to anything but the sensual pleasure he was experiencing, he was unaware of the looks of disgust and loathing the three women were continually exchanging when he wasn’t looking.

  A discreet tap at the window, indiscernible unless you were waiting for it, made the women go wide-eyed with fear and exchange a look that changed from worry to determination. They gave each other small nods of encouragement. The plan had been agreed and now they were essential to ensure its success. Buckets clanged together as the girl filled them with water. Noisily she put one down and filled another then rattled them against each other. She clumsily carried both to the brazier, apparently struggling under the combined weight. Tanaka grunted with disapproval. The two in the tub sensually moved in and began nuzzling and muttering what they wanted to do to him in his ear; they knew from bitter experience his depravities and what would get his full attention.

  Groaning with anticipation and pleasure he didn’t hear the muted cry from Sanchez, who had been guarding the chamber as his last remaining loyal dog. He’d been more interested in the serving woman who had recently entered bearing him a tray of food and drink, before she unexpectedly reacted to his lewd comments and sat on his lap allowing his hands to run all over her. His excitement built right until the moment she drove a hidden knife straight into his heart, with an unexpected crunching sound as the rough blade pierced the muscles between his ribs. Choking in wide-eyed shock, Sanchez died without making a sound that Tanaka could hear.

  Her brother and her son, one of Tanaka’s bastards she had given birth to years ago when she was a favorite of his before being relegated to a serving girl and pleasure thing for the inner circle of his men, had both died in the attack at The Source. She wanted revenge and she was getting it.

  Tanaka heard the door to his chamber open and his senses, despite what was happening to him, shot to full alert. Nobody was allowed to enter his chamber when he was with his women, nobody. He pushed the girls off him. His hand searched for and grabbed the pistol from the table and he raised it toward the door. A woman stood in the doorway, a blood-covered knife in her hands, and she stopped in shock when she saw the gun pointed at her.

  He saw the blood dripping from the knife and knew Sanchez was dead.

  “You bitch,” he roared, tightening his finger on the trigger.

  Nothing happened. The gun didn’t fire.

  He pulled the trigger again and again unable to comprehend that it wasn’t working. His mind raced as he looked at the now useless lump of metal in his hands. Slippery with soap he tried to stand, screaming in rage until the woman behind him placed a rope around his neck and using all her weight, pulled him back into the tub to pin him against its edge and cut his shouts off as he gagged, unable to suck in breath. Water splashed everywhere as his arms tried to reach behind him and his legs kicked out. The gun slipped from his hand and fell into the tub as the two women still in there with him jumped on him, trying to hold him down. He tried to call for his guards—for help—but the rope bit too deeply into his windpipe and all that emitted from his throat was a raspy croak as he fought for air.

  No one in the compound reacted to the few screams of rage and shouts of women coming from Tanaka’s quarters. They were used to them and had over the years learned to ignore whatever noise, no matter how upsetting, came from their leader’s quarters.

  Tanaka fought viciously against the three women trying to subdue him, fists connected with faces and legs kicked out as he fought for breath and tried to free himself, but the women were resolute in their actions. Punches didn’t bother them as they had all been on the receiving end of one of his beatings more than once; bodies healed, they knew. It was their mental strength that kept them going.

  As soon as they were deemed old enough they were selected from within the community and told they were being given the honor to serve their leader. Tanaka was always keeping an eye on the young girls that grew up under his protection and told his lieutenants which ones he wanted them to pick. Their parents knew what was going to happen and did their best to prepare their daughters for it. They could not, under pain of death, prevent it from happening and were forced to accept their child’s fate. Being attractive and female was considered more of a curse than a blessing in the Springs.

  For years they had endured continued abuse at the hands of their leader, and it had hardened their hearts. They were going to kill him, now that his power was weakened, or die trying.

  Once she had recovered from the shock of not being shot the woman holding the knife still wet with Sanchez’s blood rushed forwards. The naked figures in the bath were writhing and twisting too much for her to see what was going on. A backhand swing from Tanaka momentarily knocked one of the women off him and she saw her opportunity. Lunging forward she stabbed downwards with all her might and with a scream of fear and rage, thrust the knife into Tanaka’s chest.

  Convulsing with pain he bucked and knocked the other woman off him. His eyes wide with shock and disbelief he tried to grab the hilt of the knife sticking out of his chest. This only made the wound more ragged as his uncoordinated hands ineffectually tried to pull at it. The water in the tub quickly turned red as the life pumped from him, pouring out of the wound. His strength left him r
apidly, and the girl holding the rope released her grip and stood up to watch his face.

  Four pairs of eyes—eyes who had all seen and who had all suffered so much because of him—watched as his movements became weaker and more uncoordinated. His own eyes betrayed the realization that it was the people, the people who he had treated as mere property and not important enough to be counted for anything in the society he had perpetuated through his leadership, had done this to him. With a final barely audible gasp of, “You…bitches…” the last Tanaka to rule the Springs died, naked in a bathtub of water colored deep red with his own blood.

  Chapter 28

  Home Sweet Home

  I shook Harrison and Tori’s hands as our two groups prepared to depart. Weber and one of the new soldiers called Redford, who Captain Williamson said was their best medic, were going with Harrison and his people back to the Three Hills.

  A few of the wounded were still critical and Harrison, after witnessing the apparent miracles they had performed in saving their lives, using equipment and knowledge lost to his people centuries before, gladly accepted the offer. Hendricks offered more of his people to help bolster their security as he could see most of his warriors were both wounded to a greater or lesser degree from the battle and were exhausted from the events of the day. Harrison insisted that they could look after themselves, especially now that what he calculated to be the bulk of Tanaka’s warriors were either dead or still trapped inside the bunker.

  He may’ve been too proud to accept the help of other warriors, but he gratefully accepted the offer of our medicines. His men needed it and the politician in him also knew that showing another benefit of what the newcomers could offer his people would probably inflate his standing and help the two communities in coming close together.

  “Cat is asking if she can talk to you. Shall I connect you?” Annie asked in my ear. Instantly panicking about what I would say I stammered uncertainly, “Yeah sure, Annie, patch her through.”

  I spoke to Cat, fighting back the unexpected urge to cry when I told her the basics of what went down. I knew, scientifically at least, that my body was reacting to the downer of the adrenaline leaving my system, but knowledge didn’t make the emotions any easier to deal with. I didn’t even care if anyone else was listening when I told her I couldn’t wait to see her again.

  Five minutes later I rejoined Hendricks and the soldiers who were all checking their gear and doing a final sweep of the area to make sure nothing important was getting left behind. The last of Harrison’s group were just leaving the clearing, and pairs of warriors carrying their more seriously injured on rudimentary stretchers disappeared from view as they entered the dense canopy of the surrounding forest.

  “All okay, lover boy?” Hendricks asked, grinning at me.

  Embarrassment flared on my face as again I wondered who’d actually been listening in on my recent conversation. I muttered a reply before turning and shrugging my own pack onto my shoulders.

  “Annie?” called Hendricks. “Are we clear to depart?”

  “Yes. I am now broadcasting on an open channel to save repetition. The drones have checked the route back to the base and it is clear. The pack of Dragons we encountered on our way here appear to have moved on and I cannot detect them, but please take care in case they evaded my surveillance. If you head southwest, I will give you further directions en route.”

  Knowing everyone would’ve had heard what she had said, Hendricks waved his arm in a circular motion above his head and pointed to the southwest corner of the clearing, calling to everyone around him. “You heard Doris; the route home is that way. Remain in formation and don’t shoot anything unless I tell you to, as it will probably only piss them off and get you eaten.” The new soldiers had all heard our story of the fight to escape from the Dragons in their nest and Annie had shown them via the screens in the bunker her footage of when we came across them on our way to The Source. From conversations they’d had with Harrison’s warriors when working together after the battle, they all now had a healthy respect for the terrain around them and what it contained. Metallic clunks of weapons being charged rippled down the line of men.

  “Doris?” Annie asked.

  Hendricks laughed. “Sorry, Annie, it’s what I called the sat nav in my car and it sort of slipped out. No disrespect intended.”

  “None taken, Jimmy. I detected the reaction your attempt at humor had amongst the men and understand why you did so. I will add it to my memory as it will help me further develop my study into how I should correctly address humans to achieve the most effective results.”

  “Comedy is all about timing not about analyzing every single word uttered,” Hendricks muttered to me as we set out, holding his hand over the mic on his radio. “I’m going to make that girl laugh involuntarily if it’s the last thing I do.”

  I was about to point out to him that Annie was not a girl, but a rapidly self-developing highly complex algorithm of code that had taken years, countless millions of lines of work and a vast memory and processer to develop. But I stopped myself as I guess I realized she was much more than that. She, hell, I didn’t even program her to be any kind of gender and gave her a voice I liked which just happened to be female, didn’t even exist in the physical sense of the word like we did.

  She was omnipresent, always there monitoring probably far more than I realized. We relied on her to keep us safe, perhaps more so than the trained soldier-types whose job it was to do just that and so much more. Her influence was everywhere, and we couldn’t function like we were without her.

  That Hendricks had referred to her as ‘that girl’ kinda summed it up for me. Even though you couldn’t see or touch her, she was as much a part of our community as any of us.

  “If and when you do, Mister Hendricks,” she said, demonstrating my point about omnipresence, “I will be the first to tell you, as I will consider that a major development in my evolution.” She paused. “And if you think putting your hand over the microphone would stop me hearing you, you need bigger hands.”

  “Did you just tell a joke, Annie?” Hendricks laughed.

  “Did I?” she immediately replied, this time with an element of surprise in her voice. “What I was simply informing you of was that your hand would need to be twenty-one-point-seven percent larger and have a minimum density fifteen-point-nine-five percent greater than current measurements to deaden a voice at the decibel level you emitted to be muffled enough to be inaudible to me.”

  “Annie, you just ruined it,” I admonished her. “If you’d just said yes that would have been funny, but you went and ruined it by explaining your own joke.”

  “Okay, David,” she replied sounding puzzled. “When I have spare capacity and am not actively monitoring you from three surveillance drones, while maintaining overwatch on the base and multiple other activities, I will dedicate some time to study this conversation further.” Her voice changed again. “Now please continue your journey otherwise the battery life of the drones may fall below acceptable operational limits.” Hendricks and I exchanged shrugs but complied as we knew we’d involuntarily slowed down as we talked to her.

  The moment I entered the forest the humidity increased dramatically and within a few hundred yards I was feeling like the out of shape computer programmer I was and not the bug killing, battle-hardened, steely-eyed tough guy I thought the experiences of the last days had made me.

  Keeping my head down I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and not tripping over any of the roots, branches or other stuff that littered the path, as I tried to keep to the pace set by Geiger. Hours later concentrating too hard on just breathing I barely noticed the daylight increasing, and I bumped into Hendricks’ back when he stopped as he emerged from the forest into the open area that surrounded our base.

  The ones behind me spread out as they hit sunlight and the new arrivals stared at the metal walls of the circular compound. I noticed a distant figure standing on the walls raising an ar
m in welcome. Hendricks returned the wave with a smile, recognizing Nathalie even from that distance.

  “Shall we go home, gents?” Hendricks asked politely. “I don’t know about you, but I could kill for a cup of tea.”

  Williamson’s bark of a laugh almost made me duck like there was more incoming. “Man, could you be any more British?”

  Entering through the gates we were greeted by the entire community standing waiting for us with a few claps and a low cheer. Slightly disappointed at the lack of a hero’s welcome after what we had been through, I remembered that, with everything else that had happened since, I had momentarily forgotten that three of our original group hadn’t made it back.

  Amir, who had been one of the first through the gates, took advantage of the near silence and spoke.

  “In the last days our community has lost people we cared about.” He spoke with a soft tone, deftly judging the mood of everyone. “The mission we all signed on for was one of rebuilding and repopulating our planet, our home. Those we lost came willingly, bringing their families with them in many cases, knowing the years of hard work and sacrifice that they would have to endure to ensure humanity’s survival. They did not expect to land centuries later than we anticipated in the middle of such turmoil and trouble.” He paused for breath and to pull a face of mixed concern and resolve. “I would ask for a minute of silence so we can all pay our respects to those no longer with us.”

  Saying no more he bowed his head and everyone followed suit.

  A minute later he raised his head and thanked everyone with a humility I didn’t know he possessed. I guessed, like me, he was more than a little tired.

  Despite that tiredness which seemed to make even blinking hard, I realized that Amir had just played another power game by being the one to speak first and get everyone to follow his lead. I scanned faces to find Hendricks’ but stopped when a hand touched my shoulder and made me turn.

  “Hi there,” Cat said, her soft, southern accent like music to my ears. Taking my hand, she led me toward a shelter that had been erected against the wall of a pod. Entering it I stopped and stared at the blankets on the large sleeping area made from a pair of inflatable mattresses. The shelter was lit with the soft glow from a few lanterns.