by Warren Fahy
“I don’t know anything about that,” Dima said.
“He was mad,” Galia said sadly. “But they drove him mad.”
Nell pointed at the dormitory inside the hospital sector, which was located on the opposite corner of the map from where they were. “Maxim is trapped here on the second floor of this hospital,” she said. “He was trying to turn on the electrical plant up here.” She pointed to Sector Four. “His men were seconds away from pushing the button and feeding this place with perpetual power. Can you imagine what would have happened if they had succeeded?”
“What, Nell?” Kuzu asked.
“With light and steam and heat down here…”
“Yes?” Kuzu’s deep voice vibrated the air. Purple sparks flashed in his blackened fur like lightning in a storm cloud.
The others regarded him apprehensively.
“The Henders ecosystem would explode, swiftly multiplying until it found a way to spread to the surface, Kuzu,” Nell said. “And kill us all.”
“Oh.”
“As it is, they have already infested the sectors between Maxim and the power plant,” Nell said, pointing. “They’re the only thing now that is stopping him, thank God. He’s trapped and surrounded.”
Galia looked pale, staring inwardly, his shoulders falling. “He was a great man, a great hero. You have no idea.”
“He may have been. I’m sure he was,” Nell said. “But he might be the greatest villain in human history, Mr. Sokolof.”
“They have more blood on their hands than all the villains of the world,” Galia scoffed with a ragged grimace of irony.
“You still don’t understand, do you?” Nell asked. “If any Henders species reaches the surface, not one flower or insect will survive longer than a few more decades on any continent on the face of the Earth. The entire world will look.… like this.”
“I have bad news,” Nastia said. “It is believed, by Russian authorities, that the railway line we just set charges in was completed, after all. It may still connect all the way to Metro-Two in Moscow, and from there may well reach points throughout Eastern Europe. I believe I am authorized to tell you this now, considering our situation. It is a secret that the Russian government did not want to reveal, even to this small group, unless it was absolutely necessary. But now that Sector Seven has been breached, you must know. Unless we detonate charges in the train tunnel immediately—”
“Shit!” Bear said.
“They’re set to go off in less than seven hours now,” Abrams said.
“Those incendiary grenades have probably burned out, man,” Bear said. “Those things can move now! There’s nothing stopping them!”
Abrams exchanged the heavy lithium battery pack of the XOS suit with a fresh one. “There’s enough poison gas in that tunnel to choke a herd of wildebeests.”
“Like what?” Nell asked. “What kind of gas?”
“I threw in a cocktail of everything from tear gas to chlorine to tabun gas.”
“Great,” Nell said. “Tabun works only on mammals, tear gas probably won’t have any effect on Henders organisms, but—chlorine gas, you said? That’s good. That should work. But it buys us only a little time before it is dispersed and no longer lethal.”
“It’s a tunnel. It’ll take a while to disperse,” Abrams said.
“You guys killed a spiger, too,” Nell said. “That’s good. That should occupy the predators for a while and keep them from moving on.”
“Yes,” Hender agreed.
“How can we get to the charges in the train tunnel to set them off sooner?” Dima hissed. “With all that poison gas in the tunnel now?”
“Maybe we can rig explosives to one of our flying bots,” Abrams suggested. “And control it remotely from here?”
“Yes! We could use the tunnel we just came through,” said Dima. “That spiger left the door open behind us.” As he pointed, a sound like a battering ram shook the building, making them all jump out of their seats, coming from the bedroom.
“What is that?” Galia cried.
Abrams and Bear grabbed their guns and the others ran behind them. They opened the door behind the bed and heard a pounding and scraping sound squealing against the dented hatch on the other side.
“Fuck,” Abrams said. “That spiger followed us!”
A shattering blast hit the door, bending the thick steel.
“No way it can get through,” Bear said.
Kuzu laughed deeply. “Spiger’s stuck!”
Dima looked at Nell. “OK, so there goes any chance of sending an ROV from here.”
“Let’s get out of here, and close this door, too,” Nell said.
They retreated to the living room again, and Nell waved them back to the map on the table. “OK, let’s look at this.”
“There must be another way,” Nastia agreed.
Kuzu sat next to Hender as the others gathered around the table. The large sel felt his energy surging as the symbiants that had migrated off the spiger into his fur now separated and multiplied at a rapid rate, colonizing his body. His skin could breathe again as they exfoliated it. He whispered to Hender in his own language. “Listen to me, Shueenair. Ferrell killed Andy and the other human. And he tried to kill me, too!”
Hender replied in Kuzu’s tongue. “You did not kill Andy, did you, Kuzu?”
“No! I would not kill Andy.”
“Are you lying?”
“You only ask that because they have lied to us so many times. They will try to kill us, too. This is their chance. But it is also ours! It need not be the last darkness. If you follow me now, the whole world will be ours.”
Nastia suddenly screamed, startling everyone.
Behind the couch where she was sitting, the hooded head of a ghost octopus reared up on the mechanical mule where a real mule’s head would have been. Dima used his dog whistle to back the mule away from the couch, but the muscles of the ghost had encased the robot’s legs and fought its firing servos for control.
Kuzu seized the opportunity and sprang over the couch, landing on the far side of the mule. With four hands working at blinding speed, he pulled two handfuls of magnesium flares from under the ghost and then, from a compartment in the mule’s side, grabbed an explosives pack like the one Ferrell had carried into the train tunnel.
The ghost on the robot’s back turned its snail-head toward Kuzu and shot ropes at two of Kuzu’s hands, immobilizing them. Without breaking his rhythm, Kuzu used two other hands to pick up a combat knife, unsheathe it, and slice the ghost’s ropes. Then he put the knife in another pack and slung it over one shoulder, backing away. He snagged his bow and quiver where he had set them near the stairs and shouted, “Shueenair!”
“No!” Hender replied.
The others watched, confused, as Kuzu’s fur flushed red.
“Then die!” Kuzu roared in English.
And the sel sprang down the stairway to the front door.
Bear jumped up and shot the ghost octopus on the mule’s back twice in the head with a pistol. It drooped and slid off the side of the robot as Bear followed Dima down the stairs after Kuzu, who was already gone, the front door wide open to the street.
Dima saw Kuzu on the front steps throwing a lit flare into the road in front of them, and Bear emptied his Glock pistol at the sel; but Kuzu became a shadow in the same instant as he darted up the street to the right, weaving against the flow of creatures.
The flare burned in front of the building and drew emerald swarms down from the tall buildings as Dima and Bear jumped back inside and slammed the door.
“Crazy mother!” Bear said.
Dima groaned as they both ran upstairs. “What in the hell is he doing?”
Nastia watched through the front window with Russian LOMO night-vision binoculars. She barely caught Kuzu galloping on four legs along the side of a building up the street, before she lost him.
“Ferrell tried to kill Kuzu,” Hender told Nell. “And he killed Andy, too!”
&n
bsp; “What?” Abrams said.
Galia bowed his head. “No,” he sighed.
“I can’t believe that,” said Bear.
“Hender!” Nell said. “Why didn’t you tell us before?”
“Kuzu just told me,” Hender said.
Nell took one of Hender’s shaking hands. “I’m sorry.”
“How do we know this one’s telling the truth?” Bear asked.
“Hender never lies,” Nell said.
“The other one lied!” Bear said.
“Because he thought we were trying to kill him!” Nell said. “Because one of us lied to him!”
“Someone must have gotten to Ferrell,” Abrams said. “With a bribe, or blackmail, or something. Jesus!”
“And a threat, too, probably,” Galia said.
“I guess you never know who it’s going to be,” Bear said.
“Sure you can.” Dima spit. “The American!”
“I’m surprised it wasn’t one of you bloody Russians,” Galia said.
“Hey, this isn’t the time or place,” Abrams said. “We’re in this together, right? And you’re all assholes.”
“Kuzu said you’re going to kill us,” Hender said. “Kuzu said that’s why you brought us here. Are you going to kill me?”
They turned to the sel as the colors on his coat muted to blue and black, fading almost invisibly into the couch as they looked at him.
“No, dude, we’re not gonna kill you,” Abrams said, reaching out to shake his hand.
Hender reached out and took it uncertainly.
“Never, Hender!” Nastia said, extending her hand, too.
“Please help us, Hender,” Nell said with a reassuring squeeze of his other hand.
“Da! We all need each other now.” Dima took his fourth hand as he became visible again.
Hender shook the four humans’ hands. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,” he said to each.
“So what can we do, then, Nell?” Bear asked. “How do we get out of here?”
Nell pointed back to the map. “If we can get through this part of the city to the farm—less than two hundred yards away—we should be able to make it to the palace from there unharmed.”
“Oh, man,” Bear said, shaking his head.
“Through that shit?” Abrams asked. “I don’t know.”
“And from the palace we can send an ROV down the passageway I took to the train tunnel and detonate the explosives to seal it off. We have to try!” Nell said.
“That’s crazy,” Bear said.
“Do you have a better suggestion?” Dima asked.
“Is that possible?” Nastia asked. “Can you send a robot that far through solid rock by remote control?”
“Yeah,” Abrams said. “The Dalek can drop signal boosters along the way. If it can get through the ghosts, it can definitely go the distance.”
“But what then?” asked Nastia.
“Well,” Nell said. “If we can get to the palace … there might be a way we can escape from there.”
“How?” Abrams asked.
“By gondola. Through Pandemonium.”
Abrams laughed at her dark humor.
“She’s not joking,” Galia said.
“Pandemonium?” Abrams frowned.
“It’s another vast chamber that adjoins the palace,” Nell said, motioning with her hand off the edge of the table. “That way. It’s not on this map, but it’s where the ghosts come from. Stalin built a gondola that crosses the giant lake there. It may be our only way out.”
“Shit,” Bear said. “That’s crazy!”
“We tried to fix it,” Galia said. He shook his head. “But it would be very, very risky.”
“Then it’s true,” Nastia muttered.
Nell looked at her. “What?”
“There were some cryptic lines I came across by Trofim Lysenko in a letter to my grandmother. They referred to ‘monsters marvelous and fearful to behold in the depths of the Earth.’”
“He was right,” Nell said. “We found his journal, I think, in a drawer of Stalin’s desk. He may have been sent here to help set up the farm. I’ll show you, when we get there.”
“You say you fixed the gondola, Mr. Sokolof?” asked Abrams.
“The motor runs. But the pylons … one of them has partially collapsed over the lake.” He shook his silver-haired head grimly. “And the creatures there pose an even greater danger. We decided it was too risky to give it a trial run.” Galia eyed the others now with large, sunken eyes. “What about Maxim, then?”
“I hate to break it to you, friend, but there’s no way Maxim Dragolovich is getting out of here,” said Abrams. “I mean, I’m sure you’d love to have his head on a flaming pike, but we can’t risk it and we don’t have time.”
“He wants to rescue Maxim Dragolovich,” Dima said. “I want his head on a flaming pike.”
“Oh, sorry,” Abrams said. “Either way.”
“Hender.” Nell turned to the sel. “What do you think? Is there any way we can get to this gate? It leads to the farm, where we should be safe. We just need to go two hundred yards up the street outside. The others have armor. I have this jersey. Can we make it?”
Hender frowned, looking at Nell, and he shook his head. “No. The others will make it, maybe. But you won’t make it, Nell.”
“We have less than six hours before they seal the way we came in,” Abrams said. “And then flood this place with mustard gas, or whatever they’re planning to do.”
“We can’t go back anyway,” Bear scoffed.
“I agree,” Nastia said, pushing her bobbed black hair back from her tense brow. “I don’t trust them, either. They might not even open that door for us, anyway. They let me know secrets I’ve been trying to find out for twenty-five years. That alone makes me nervous. They may have lured us all here just to seal the city and exterminate the hendros. And us along with them.”
“That’s crazy talk,” Abrams said. “Someone must have bribed Ferrell. Unless he just went nuts.”
“We have to make it to the farm, Hender,” Nell said.
Hender bowed his head and closed his large eyes. “Let me think.”
The others looked at one another as the sel rose from the couch and sat on the carpet before the fireplace, holding four hands up at them as he folded his three-jointed limbs against himself like an Egyptian scarab. His coat began pulsing pink in slowing waves until his fur turned black that pulsed yellow about once a minute.
Bear whispered: “What’s he doing?”
Nell shrugged, having never witnessed this behavior. “I don’t know.”
05:15:40
Kuzu sprang on four legs, leaping like a Hindu Sagittarius clutching a three-handed bow. He blended into the façades of the buildings as he crossed the city, throwing flares down side streets to create diversions and downing two young spigers with his bow to draw off predators.
The nants on the sel’s body now counterattacked insect predators, provoking them to spray warning pheromones that further protected him. Kuzu felt his energy increasing with each stride as oxygen enriched his copper-based blood. The memories and reflexes of his entire life’s experience returned to him as he ran and leaped and bounced off walls, swinging from lampposts, flipping, skidding, rolling, cutting, spinning, and sprinting with a practiced, inspired physicality that would seem mystical to all but the most skilled human athletes. Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson practiced moving for twenty years to reach their astonishing level of prowess. Kuzu had practiced for ninety thousand years. What he could do was magic to human beings.
He chose the most direct route to the hospital and followed the city’s map imprinted in his mind’s eye. Memorizing terrain was an essential skill on his native land. As he passed each cross street, Kuzu noted the star-shaped tower in the center of the dark city. Its glowing statues of humans peered over the streets like blind sentinels. The sides of the Star Tower were illuminated by masses of wasps and drill-worms in colorful nurseries
whose steady, humming drone filled the air. The skyscraper had been turned into a giant hive, and it pleased Kuzu.
When Kuzu approached the door to Sector Two, he found a crushed truck stuck in the half-closed gate. He jumped onto the vehicle’s roof and crawled through the gate, noting that the truck’s windshield had been gouged open by spigers. The cab’s doors were open, and there was no trace of humans except for their guns and some clothing scattered on the street ahead. He picked up a Kalashnikov and slung it over one of his shoulders.
Then he padded up the street on three legs in the dark, his eyes attuned to the meager light emanating from a side street up ahead on the right. He turned the corner to the open gate of Sector Three just as a horde of brown rats stampeded in the other direction. The large sel stretched and blended against the wall as the squeaking mammals passed him, chased by a wave of glowing Henders rats that launched over their mammalian counterparts, tackling them to the ground.
As the massacre of the mammals ensued, a cloud of bugs arrived, spraying an attack pheromone that signaled a feeding frenzy, and carnage rained from the sky over the screaming rodents.
Kuzu glided on four feet along the south wall and through the gate, sneaking down the street until he jumped onto the roof of a crashed limo and leapfrogged to another, as if between stones in a river.
He launched through the air and landed on the hospital steps, which were illuminated by a dimly burning light in the foyer. He slipped invisibly up them and through the wide-open front door.
Kuzu crept through the lobby and charged up the stairs, using two feet while pulling on the wide stair rails. As he slung himself to the top, wasps whizzed down over his ducking head and under his belly.
The small room at the top got to a hatch, also open, which led to a room filled with counters, a large broken window on one side. According to the map, Maxim was inside the far door on the left.
Kuzu streaked to the door and cranked the hatch wheel, camouflaging his fur as his symbiants stirred up repellent to fend off the flying predators pouring through the broken window behind him. He sensed someone trying to stop him from opening the wheel on the other side and heard a shout through the steel. He gripped four hands and cranked with all his strength, pushing the door open and throwing two men backwards at the same time.