by Zack Parsons
Bottles stopped struggling. Sustained gunfire rattled in the distance. Something exploded, and a fresh column of smoke burst above the buildings. Dozens of the black creatures swooped overhead.
“Yeah,” said Bottles. “Yeah, that’s right. Like an ark man. Like Noah in the flood. We can save some fucking people from this shit.”
They did not escape the Fane unscathed. Marines and scientists died beneath falling rocks, trapped, unable to be rescued as Polly and Dr. Burns and the others ran headlong from the overflowing Mother. Spore grass spread like white fire, racing along walls and floor. The earth heaved, tunnels twisted, and fissures split the bedrock, crushing men and women beneath enormous chunks of stone.
The rolling cog of the airlock was broken loose, and they charged inside, scrambling over shards of rock, deafened by the percussion of huge boulders raining all around them. The inner airlock would not fully open. Rukundo and Captain Dryson and Polly pulled with all of their strength. Dr. Cochrane added his weight, and the airlock turned, opening just wide enough for a man in a bulky cooling suit to pass .
The young Gardener appeared at the door, machine pistol in hand. The sound of the gun firing was lost in the roar of the earthquake. Tufts of padding and coolant fluid sprayed from Dr. Cochrane’s body as he reeled and collapsed back into the airlock. Blood sloshed into the glass dome of his helmet. He arched his back, fingers twisting into claws, legs kicking out straight, and then he lay still.
Polly smashed the gun aside before the Gardener could fire again and pushed him into the lab. A spreading spider’s web of cracks decorated the shuddering concrete walls. Partitions disintegrated in falls of shattering glass. The floor heaved and rolled, and the white tiles broke loose like the scales of a fish. Electronic monitors were falling from their moorings. Smoke poured from burning equipment.
The lights, already reduced to emergency lighting, fell completely dark. The only remaining illumination was the spotlights built into the coolant suits.
The Gardener lost his grip on the machine pistol, and it went skittering away on the floor. Polly fought him hand to hand. She was well-trained but slow and inept in the suit. He utilized sweeping, flowing, martial-arts movements but was unable to land a blow with sufficient force to hurt her. Captain Dryson settled the matter by dashing open the man’s skull with the corner of a television monitor.
They found Sergeant Funkweed dead in a bathroom, arms bound behind his back. The Marine’s radio was beside him, fully deployed, its antenna routed through the main antenna running all the way to the rookery.
Dryson tried to tell her something, but there was no communicating amid the noise. He began to recover the radio equipment. It would take him several minutes. She pulled him away and toward the elevators.
It was impossible to account for who was missing or dead in the chaos, but a stream of scientists and Marines emerged from the collapsing tunnel system and followed Polly and Dryson back to the elevator shafts. It was the only way back to the surface. The elevators were not functioning. Though they were physically intact, it seemed the force of the quake had triggered a stoppage to prevent cars breaking loose in motion.
They huddled in the elevator room. Dust and smoke filled the corridors, making it impossible to see or communicate at all. She felt rooms collapsing as huge chunks of concrete tore loose and flattened the contents of the laboratory. Brakes screamed above them in one of the elevator shafts. Smoke puffed from the doors. Despite the safety stoppage, a car was falling from high above. A moment later one of the three elevators exploded out from its doors in a gory tangle of steel and human remains.
Polly expected the Mother to flow into the elevator chamber behind them, washing through the rubble and turning everything it touched into smoke. The quaking stopped. In the dreadful silence that followed, their respirators clicked over radios. The moving spotlights of their cooling suits created a high-relief collage of the ruin enclosing them.
“Everyone stay calm and stay put,” said Polly.
She took an account of the survivors. Dryson, Dr. Burns, Rukundo, and more than a dozen scientists and Marines had survived. Dr. Cochrane was dead. Polly presumed all those missing were dead.
“Help us,” crackled over the radio. “Help us, please. I am here with Mr. Sokov. We are trapped.”
“It is Dr. Roux,” said Dr. Burns.
“Leg is hurt,” moaned Sokov. “Fucking rocks have fallen ... ah ... on my leg.”
“Do you know where you are?” asked Polly.
Dr. Roux described their location. She could not place it. The Marines seemed to possess incredible situational awareness and immediately knew the room she was describing.
“I can get them,” said Captain Dryson. “It’s near where they stowed their weapons when they changed into these suits. Those might help as well.”
Mistrustful that he would be concerned with arming himself in this situation, Polly insisted on accompanying them. Two of the Marines remained behind to help Rukundo and the scientists get the elevator working again.
They backtracked over tumbled slabs of concrete. They passed from the jumbled angles of collapsed corridors into a tunnel of pale fronds and a carpeting of soft, fleshy spore grass beneath their boots. Ahead, the darkness was lit blue by bliss fruit gently swaying on long stalks.
“There’s something moving,” warned one of the Marines.
Humpbacked crustaceans scurried through the fungal undergrowth. They were the size of puppies, carapaces white with segmented shells displaying blue details at the hinges. Gently moving antennae beat the fronds ahead of them, and their eyes were iridescent yellow and white. They possessed short tails like an armadillo’s.
“They look like rats crossed with crabs,” said another Marine.
Their starting-and-stopping movement was reminiscent of rat behavior. When they seemed to detect the Marines, they scurried away in different directions, disappearing into impassable corridors and beneath furniture.
“Be careful,” said Dryson. “We don’t know if those things bite.”
“Does what bite?” asked Sokov over the radio. “What is out there?”
Rather than describe the animals over the radio, Polly attempted to comfort Sokov. They were getting close, and she told him that. The wariness of the Marines showed in their body language as they continued past some of the hiding places of the so-called crab rats.
“Ahead on the right is where they stashed their weapons,” said Dryson. The door he indicated appeared passable. “Give me two minutes, and we’ll salvage what we can.”
“Quick as possible,” said Polly. “If it’s blocked in there, you call it off.”
Dryson handed her the machine pistol taken from the Gardener. He clapped her shoulder and then led his men through the door, shoving aside wood already beginning to smolder in the heat. Every surface was smothered by spore grass, and the floor, thick with it, was increasingly treacherous. Her cooling suit’s shoulder-mounted spotlights only penetrated a few meters into the smoke and foglike spore clouds. Dryson and his Marines grunted with effort as they moved debris.
“I can see their guns. There’s another blockage inside. I think we can move it to get to them, but it’s going to take another minute.”
“Forget it,” said Polly. “We need to get Sokov and Dr. Roux.”
“Yes, get Sokov. Please!” It was Sokov.
“We don’t know what’s down here with us.” Dryson’s voice was strained with effort. “And we don’t know ... ah ... know what’s ... nmph ... what’s on the surface.”
“Something out here,” said Polly.
A shape coalesced out of the fog ahead. A human figure, moving awkwardly, not clad in one of the insulating suits. Polly snapped the machine pistol’s stock into place and raised the weapon to her shoulder. She realized she could not fit her gloved finger through the trigger guard, and she fumbled to tear off the insulating garment.
“What is it?” asked Sokov.
The figure loomed o
ut of the smoke. There was a pop of equalizing pressure as Polly found the release on the glove. She shucked it off and discarded it into the swaying spore grass at her feet. The heat was terrible, like holding her hand inside an oven. She pushed the thought aside and fitted her finger through the hot metal of the trigger guard.
She raised the weapon to her shoulder just as the figure came into view. Red-skinned, blistered, it was a nude woman. Polly thought for a moment it might be Holly Webber, restored to life by the Gardeners’ ceremony.
“Help me,” moaned the woman, and she collapsed into Polly’s arms. Polly lowered the unconscious woman to the floor.
More figures were emerging from the smoke. Shambling, burned raw, a steady stream of duplicates was approaching.
“What is happening to me?” cried a type two as he sank to his knees in the spore grass.
“Help me, God!”
Another scalded type three slumped against the wall, her skin peeling back and sticking to the hot stone. They were moaning and shuffling toward her.
“Get out here, now!” said Polly. “Some of the duplicates are emerging here. We need to move.”
“Jesus, your hand,” said Dryson, appearing in the doorway. Polly’s hand was red, as if she had held it under a scalding hot tap. He was even more horrified to find the duplicates approaching like the sorry procession of victims of an atomic attack.
“We can’t help them,” he said.
“You don’t have any fucking idea,” she snapped at him. “We need to get to Sokov and Dr. Roux before the whole place is overrun by these people. They will just keep coming and coming by the thousands.”
“We’ve almost got the elevator working,” said Dr. Burns. “There was an override and—”
“Just get it going, and don’t tell us about it,” said Dryson.
They rounded a corner, shoving aside the pitiful duplicates, and reached the door behind which Dr. Roux and Sokov were trapped. A single, flat slab of concrete had fallen from above and speared deep into the flooring. Dr. Roux reached her arm out of the door.
“In here,” she said. “I see you.”
“Get them out,” said Polly. “I’ll cover you.”
Blisters were already forming on the backs of her fingers and hand. The metal of the gun was so hot, it seemed even worse than the baking air. More of the duplicates followed her light, faces and horrifying bodies emerging from the fog, pleading as she shoved them aside. There was something else. It was smaller than a man, moving cautiously among the staggering duplicates.
“Hurry it up,” she urged.
There was more than one of these hunched creatures coming toward her. Their long strides and strange silhouettes filled her with fear. She took aim as best she could through the helmet.
“We’ve got it!” shouted Dryson. “On your feet, Sokov! Come on.”
It was too late.
The first of the creatures emerged from the spore fog. Her first impression was of a skeletal man with chalky white flesh. But it was smaller than a man and walked hunched low. It was propelled by over-articulated legs with reverse knees and long shins that flexed behind its body. Its forelegs were clawed and equipped with a bony protrusion behind the hand that resembled a knife’s blade. Its elongated oval face turned toward her. Its huge eyes, separated by a bulging snout, were blue but reflected yellow in the light.
“Shit,” she said, and she began firing.
The creature’s head snapped back, and its brains painted the wall. Pink folds and blood slithered in strands from its shattered skull and dripped into the spore grass as it fell. The others bounded toward her like insects, faces splitting open to reveal bony plates that clicked and chattered in their lipless mouths. She fired again and again, actually stepping toward them, punching bloody holes in their bodies. They toppled and skidded across the floor. Some flailed in the grass, their blood spurting out and darkening the vegetation.
Screaming. The panicked screaming of Dr. Roux. Polly had no time to look back. She fired the last of her bullets into one of the creatures, and it dropped at her feet. She grabbed the hot barrel in her gloved hand and swung the machine pistol like an axe, shattering the skull of the next creature to step into range. Behind her, a Marine shrieked in pain.
There was another approach to the room, and the creatures were swarming in from that direction. Dryson and his men desperately struggled to tear off their gloves and brandish the machine pistols they had recovered. As she watched, one Marine fell beneath one of the creatures as it punctured his suit with its bladed forelegs and opened his belly up in a gush of coolant fluid, blood, and entrails. Red spurted from his mouth and filled his helmet. The creature began devouring the man alive.
Polly had no time to help Dryson or his men. She smashed aside another of the creatures. It thrashed in the ever-thickening grass. She stomped her boot down and crushed its head beneath her heel. Another creature pushed her aside, running for the Marines. Dryson turned just in time to see it and blast it with his gun. Another creature stalked past Polly, paying her no heed in the same manner that they moved past the scalded duplicates moaning in the corridors.
“Get them out of here,” she cried. “They won’t stop coming. You have to retreat.”
Dryson and his men were already moving, leaving behind two of their own amid the mounting carnage. Polly got to her feet and clubbed another of the creatures as it bounded past. It screamed with surprise at her attack. She smashed its jaws and face until the horrible clatter of its jaws ceased.
Polly fell in with the Marines just as one of the creatures leaped over a dying comrade and threw itself into their midst. Its bladed forelimbs sliced open Dryson’s throat, missing his neck but opening his suit up. Blue coolant fluid arced under pressure like a severed carotid, and Dryson choked into the microphone and lost his footing.
A Marine shot the creature, but not before it droves it bony blades into Dr. Roux, spearing her in her midsection and pulling down as it withdrew the protrusions. Polly caught the young woman as she fell. Her body was limp.
“Maman,” gasped Dr. Roux. “Désolé. Maman.”
Polly took hold of her reaching hand. Dr. Roux’s glove was sticky. She was missing fingers.
“Maman,” Dr. Roux whispered, and she turned her awkward helmet to look at Polly. Her smile was dreamy. She died.
“Let her go,” said Dryson. He held his damaged throat with one gloved hand and fired his machine pistol on full auto. The muzzle flash was blinding in the narrow corridor. His men, only two now, both injured, were firing alongside him. “Take Sokov, and get out of here. Get the elevator going.”
She did not linger. She scooped up a dead Marine’s weapon in her badly-burned hand. There was no time to argue against Dryson’s bravado. He knew the sacrifice he was making. She lifted Sokov beneath his arm and helped him limp back to the elevator. It was not long before screams and static burst into the radio. The guns fell silent.
Dr. Burns and the others were already loaded inside the elevator. Polly heard them coming after her and piled into the elevator so hard, she knocked over poor Dr. Nandy. Rukundo, operating the controls, knew to close the doors. The scientists quailed at the fleeting glimpse of the creatures swarming into the corridor and running at the elevator. And then they began to ascend.
Out of one hell and into another.
The offices were in turmoil in the aftermath of the earthquake. The elevators refused to descend to ground level, and the stairwell was full of panicked workers, stampeding over one another. Patrice escorted Bishop, Bethany, Misha Rosen, and the crew from World Insight through the chaos.
Employees pleaded for help. When they got in the way, Patrice shoved them aside or hit them with slaps and told them, “Get!”
Bishop knew it was all caught on tape by Misha’s cameraman. He operated under the belief that nothing Patrice could do to his cowardly office staff could be more harmful to his company’s reputation than the interview.
The floor security offic
ers in their PitSec uniforms were milling uselessly around the security station. Patrice bristled. Bishop bullied his way into the security station alongside Patrice to get a better feel of the situation. Officers working the camera monitors were speechless with shock at the scenes unfolding across their screens.
Two of the hyperbolic towers were partially sunken into the earth, and steam emerged from fissures in the surrounding structures. The cameras did not cover the Undercroft, but the monitors displayed confusing scenes of strangeness and violence throughout the lower levels of the building. Spore grass was covering most surfaces in the lobby. Duplicates wandered in a daze. Flake employees lay convulsing on the floor. The main cafeteria was filled with obscuring smoke. Inhumanly large figures moved through the billowing gray. The PitSec motor pool was partially collapsed, and gunshots could be heard over the ambient microphones.
“The loading docks are clear,” said Bishop, but as he tapped a finger on the monitor, a black mass surged up from the tunnels. He thought it to be liquid until it rushed past the camera and he saw it was thousands, perhaps millions, of individual birdlike creatures, half as large as a man, swarming out and into the open air.
“The roof,” said Bishop. “We evacuate by helicopter. It is our only possible option.”
Patrice agreed.
“Get Milo on the telephone,” Bishop instructed Bethany. “I want to know how he allowed this to happen and what he intends to do to make it better.”
Milo never answered. The phalanx of PitSec men beat a path through the office and to the spinal elevator. Bishop had an override to the safety lockout, and, despite aftershocks, he was able to disengage the lockout and get the elevator started to the rooftop helipads.
“My God.” She pressed against the glass wall of the elevator. “Look at that. Harvey, get a shot of it. Do we still have the live feed to New York? Are you getting this, New York?”
Bishop and the cameraman both leaned against the glass to see what she was referring to. One of the partially collapsed cooling towers was breaking apart, shedding avalanches of concrete onto the crowds of people escaping from the building. Something was arising from the dust surrounding the fallen structure. It slithered up from beneath the building as a bolus of immense, headless snakes.