by Eric Kramer
Sam laughed out loud as the huge door retracted into the wall without a sound. When he’d built the door, it had taken weeks of troubleshooting to get rid of the squeaks. It had never broken down or made the slightest sound when moved, and each time he opened it he still got a small wave of self-satisfaction.
He turned on his flashlight and stepped into a narrow metal room. Tes closed the reinforced door behind him. Sam shone the light up, revealing the dull sheen of sheet metal rising in a four-foot-wide shaft into the darkness. Eight-inch metal pegs poked out at regular intervals all the way up. This was another creation of his—the only entrance and exit. Sam had converted the elevator shaft, narrowing it using debris from nearby buildings. He’d lined the shaft with sheet metal after noticing that ants couldn’t climb the slick surface.
Post-humans were a different matter, but he was ready for them in other ways. Sam popped open a small panel next to the door, pulling down on a lever. The small click confirmed the door was now booby-trapped. If tripped, ethylene oxide scavenged from a sterilizer would explode, releasing an ultra-toxic vapor that would kill anything inside the shaft. Sam replaced the panel and climbed up, counting the ladder rungs. At twelve, he stopped and with ginger care unscrewed the rung, disarming the detonator inside. After replacing it, he kept moving, pausing twice more to disable one trap and set another.
After fifteen laborious minutes—two stories—Sam reached the inch-thick door sealing the shaft from the outside.
“Okay, Tes. Still got data coming from the Alamo?”
“I do, Samuel. You are clear.”
“I’m just going to double check … no offense.”
Sam opened another panel and turned on the monitor inside. A series of images popped on-screen—infrared, heat, motion, showing all areas of the roof and walls. No blind spots. He’d spent hours calculating video angles. Everything was dead still.
“Okay, Tes. Open it up.”
The heavy metal door rose with a quiet whirr.
The night sky came into view, a congealed starlessness broken only by the oily green of the moon. After watching Earth’s atmosphere mutate for almost two decades, Sam was beginning to suspect it was the result of terraforming complexes run amok … complexes like the ones that had terraformed the moon. Sam could still remember the awe he’d felt as a kid, looking through his telescope, watching the enormous machines move across the pale white-gray orb, leaving paths of brown and green in their wake.
I wonder what happened to the colonists up there.
Not that it mattered now. Sam clicked off his flashlight and climbed out, crouching low. He tuned his goggles, tightening the on-screen image until it was clear. After taking a second to run through his mental checklist, he scanned the rooftops and horizon in all directions. Nothing.
A decade ago, the last time he’d talked to another living human, he’d briefly shared a shelter with a man who loved to tell wild stories about post-humans who could jump from building to building, and others who could even fly. About some post-humans without stomachs, who would just vomit acid on their victims, then absorb the resulting mushy mess through their skin. About how they could graft to each other, sometimes getting as big as buildings. At the time, Sam had blown him off as a fabulist. Here on the roof, years later, surrounded by dark, Sam could see the things from the stories in his mind’s eye, just behind him … just out of sight. It was worse because he now knew they were real.
The guy had also told Sam there was a safe haven in South America. Some of the survivors had managed to build machines that surrounded the whole continent, keeping the terraforming rot at bay.
There’d been a million safe haven rumors, though. All false. Sam could remember being doubtful at the time … still a skeptic even after all he’d been through. Years change a person, though. He was a believer now, as far as the nightmares in the city went. The Alamo’s fortifications could attest to that. Two weeks after the talk about the South American refuge, Sam saw the guy again—he couldn’t remember his name—melding into the leg of a post-human. Actually, he didn’t recognize him, just his tattoo: an amazing full-color back piece of a roaring tiger. Sam never went looking for the South American safe haven. He had a dozen reasons why, but deep down he knew it was just a cover for his cowardice.
Shoving the memories back, Sam picked his way through neat stacks of boxes. He passed between dry pots of earth, his latest failed attempt to grow food, and stepped over the melted remains of a prison where he’d once held a post-human the size of a large dog. Everything on the roof was low to the ground, packed tightly together. He’d left no room for anything to hide, giving him a clear panoramic view of the city ruins from any position.
He took his time, but still quickly reached the north-facing retaining wall and pulled his goggles up from his eyes. The quality of the goggles’ image dropped off dramatically at fifty yards, pretty much useless for anything other than close quarters. Sam’s eyes adjusted, and he waited. Smelled. Listened. Post-humans had a distinct odor, which was usually the first sign they were nearby. He stayed there for five minutes, soaking up the moon’s murky green light and concentrating on sensing everything around him.
The crumbled buildings remained stoically immobile. Not a hint of life, not a twitch of movement. Just the flat, strange stale smell of the new atmosphere. Time to go down.
Sam pulled the goggles back down and removed the canvas cover from the elevator controls. After measuring the battery charge, he went through the checklist. A checklist for everything—another survival skill. Backup systems, emergency return, pulley grease, primary drive system. All checked out. He opened the small door and climbed in. After another quick scan, Sam flipped the lever, and the elevator eased down the side of the building, powered by the ultra-quiet Tesla drive engine that had flown Tes’s chrysalis.
Nearing the ground, the elevator slowed to a halt with a soft bump on a rubber mat. Sam exited with the airgun drawn, his right eye goggle’s optics slaved to the air rifle’s scope.
“Find me that nursing ant, Tes.”
After a moment’s pause, a red dot marking the nursing ant’s location lit up on his screen.
“Sensors are quiet, Samuel. I’ve still got great signal strength from the Alamo.”
Sam moved down the street, staying off the main road and away from the crumpled forms of fallen bull ants. Experience had taught him never to assume anything was dead—even when it was in pieces. The nursing ant was by itself, lying propped up against a wall. Sam crouched six yards away, gun aimed at its head, and mentally counted to twenty while watching for movement.
“Anything?”
“No signs of life. Also, looks like everything we’ve passed is dead,” Tes said.
Sam approached the ant with caution, taking his time, until he was close enough to touch it. He poked it with the rifle’s barrel. No response. Sam unslung his backpack and propped it against the ant’s body.
“Big one, Tes. Gotta be at least five feet long.”
The ant’s pincers contained the prize—the masticated food the ants made and fed to their larvae. High in protein and carbs, rich in fat.
“At least thirty pounds of food here.”
Sam reached into his backpack and grabbed an elastic bag. Stretching it open, he stuffed it until it brimmed with the dense green sponge. The sack closed with difficulty; the seals were old and worn. Sam crouched down and set up a small pump and hose next to the carcass. He connected it to the sponge-filled sack and turned the pump on, aspirating all the air and condensing it down to the size of a brick. He capped it and put it in his backpack, reaching for another empty set.
“If possible I’d like to make three or four trips, Tes. There’s enough hemolymph here to keep us off the streets for months.”
He took a long, hollow auger and shoved it through the ant’s thorax, attaching it to the pump. The pump whined low as it sucked the liquid contents out of the ant, filling the containers until they looked like five watermelon-size
d grapes, stretched taught. He paused, studying them with a practiced eye.
“I’ll just get the raw stuff now. We’ll process it back home. This is all about getting as much as possible.”
Sam exchanged the full bags for empty ones, shifted the auger to a new site, and restarted the pump. While those were filling, he grabbed a net and a flat panel with a glistening bottom out of the backpack. He unfolded the panel into a large square and laid it on the ground. After placing ten hemolymph bags in the net bag, he set them on the square.
“Okay, Tes. Take it back. I’m going for that bull up the street.”
“Sensors are clear. I’ll deposit these on the roof for now.”
The square lifted, the air underneath it blurring. It took off without a sound, weaving among the dead ants, angling towards the elevator. A sub-screen on Sam’s display opened, tracking the hemolymph’s progress.
Sam approached the next ant, and the same ritual repeated, the AI and human working with little further communication as the globes of hemolymph piled up on the roof.
After three hours, Sam had worked up to where the post-human had met its end. He could see residuals of the thing scattered around him, but none were big enough to pose a threat. In his experience, post-human flesh needed to be about the size of his fist to have enough life to begin to re-assimilate. The ants appeared to have somehow known this, as they had vaporized it through the sheer savagery of their attack.
The bull ant he was currently working on was missing half her abdomen, but it still had a great deal of fluid. It was just taking a little more work to get it all out; Sam had already repositioned the auger twice and was about to do it a third time when section two pinged.
Tes was immediately in his ear.
“Samuel, large presence, over the thousand-kilogram minimum, seventy yards as the crow flies at nine o’clock, two-forty yards from your position if it takes the main road.”
Almost simultaneous with her voice, a rolling tide of flesh-rot hit him, making him retch.
“Seems closer than that. How’d it penetrate this far without the sensors picking it up? I’m getting my mask out and moving to the elevator.”
He reached into his pack, pulling out a respirator and strapping it on below the goggles. Sam pressed a button under his chin, felt it suction lightly to his face, and cool air started circulating.
“Okay, I’m—”
“Cease verbal, Samuel. Dorsal heat patterns changed. It is accelerating. It is on you. Text only. You cannot make it to the elevator. Find an alternative, now.” Fear and concern saturated Tes’s voice, and his heart jumped into his throat. She didn’t get worried easily.
Sam keyed in a command, switching to text response. He flexed his gloved hand, testing the controls while jogging towards the office building, not caring about stealth anymore. Using the ant bodies as cover, he zigzagged down the street, trying to keep from imagining a wounded ant biting his arm off. If it came to it, being killed by an ant would be a mercy compared to the alternative.
“I would not advise that, Samuel. It is forty seconds from rounding the corner. You are ninety-five yards… What are you doing?”
Sam paused in front of an enormous bull ant and pulled out his knife. Without stopping to think about it, he slashed his forearm, letting the blood drip all over the insect.
“You’ll compromise the Alamo, Samuel.”
Sam grabbed a clotting bandage, wrapping it around the cut. He pulled the synthskin sleeve down over the bulk. The shirt responded, compressing down hard on the cut to staunch the bleeding.
Sam ran.
“Hide in a bull ant, Samuel.”
Ahead of him, gleaming in the goggles’ artificial brightness, the elevator waited three feet off the ground. Beyond it, at the corner of the office building, a fleshy protrusion emerged onto the street.
He jumped, the gel pad at the base of the elevator softening his landing.
Tes immediately began hauling him up. Sam watched as his altitude ticked, afraid to see what was coming.
At the fourth floor, right as he was passing his prism-filled windows, the thing stepped into view, yards away from him.
Tes froze the controls, leaving him suspended against the side of the building, swaying gently.
The post-human was enormous. Hundreds of bodies, maybe thousands had grafted themselves into it. Innumerable legs, spread haphazardly under its enormous abdomen, allowed it to move with a surprising grace as it turned the corner onto the main road. The thing had no head of its own—just a solid mass of heads fused together. Impossible arms, altogether too long and thin, reached out and gripped buildings on either side of the street, pulling it along. For such a large creature, its speed was obscene.
Sam twitched, fighting to calm the terror threatening to take over his body. Deep, primal fear. Uncontrollable. It took everything in him to remain quiet and still.
Nothing to do now. It was out of his hands.
God, protect me. Let it pass by me. Please.
Sam opened his eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d closed them. He looked up.
An enormous mottled mass of flesh, bone, eyes, hair, and teeth regarded him from a yard away. Sam became aware of the sound of hundreds of distorted windpipes struggling to breathe. Time froze. The smell of the post-human seeped in, despite the respirator’s air-tight seal. Sam fought the urge to vomit.
“It’s probing ahead, Sam. It’s not looking at you. Stay still.”
That’s the first time she’s ever called me Sam…
A fused head, one staring right at him, screamed. The sound built as the scream continued, building and building in volume until the head’s bulging eyes bled. Still, it screamed in a violent crescendo as its gaze bored into Sam.
I’m done. It sees me.
And then, like it never existed, the post-human disappeared. Sam blinked.
“No, Samuel. No can do. It found your blood. I think your diversion is working. We have to wait.”
Feeling foolish in the midst of his abject terror, Sam remembered he had telemetry, and switched his goggles’ view to the cameras on the office roof. He flipped through the images, until he could see the post-human, which looked for all the world like an enormous grub with a fur of human legs and thin spider arms, poking at the blood-spattered bull ant below. At the corner of the image, Sam could see himself, huddled in the elevator.
“I do not know how it did not see you, either, Samuel.”
How does she do that??
“It’s leaving.”
Sure enough, the huge creature flowed down the street, appearing satisfied with Sam’s diversion.
Sam let out a huge breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, and for a moment his vision went blurry.
“We. I am in your backpack, remember?”
“I know. I need a bigger jar to hold all the favors you owe me.”
In the distance, the creature disappeared into the thick darkness.
“It is in section six, moving quite fast. I am unsure how it made it this close without picking up on the sensors. It was right on top of us. It is possible it has been there for weeks, incubating. I am reviewing old data,” Tes said.
Sam toggled the text control, switching the mic back on.
“You do that. I’m leaving the hemolymph on the roof for now. It’ll be safe until tomorrow night. I need to crash. That was too much.”
The elevator clicked into its retaining clamps at the top of the office. Sam stepped out on shaky
legs, the relief and tension from back on friendly ground almost overwhelming him.
“Roof clear?” His voice was paper dry.
“According to sensors and imagery, yes.”
Sam climbed back into the elevator shaft and triggered the door. The heavy permasteel eased down, sighing as it pressed into the rubber gasket, sealing them in. Sam worked his way down the shaft, checking entry triggers, disabling traps, re-enabling others. Coming down was a more difficult process than climbing up and, for the thousandth time, Sam mentally promised himself he would rebuild it.
Finally, he reached the bottom, muscles shaking from the effort and the post-terror adrenaline crash.
“Open the door, Tes.”
“Disable the ethylene oxide first, Samuel.”
“Oh, wow … completely forgot. Okay, done.”
The door hissed open, and a kaleidoscope of refracted light entered the shaft, illuminating it and immediately lifting Sam’s spirits.
Home.
“Do you think we should attempt another trip tomorrow?” Tes asked.
Sam walked in and dropped the backpack to the ground, slumping into a chair as the shaft door closed. He pushed up the goggles, letting them slide until they fell onto the back of the chair.
“No way. We’re done. At least until we figure out how something that massive got so deep inside our sensor network. We’ve got three months of hemolymph there, if we cure it well.”
“Samuel…”
“You back in your body yet? Grab me some lymph to drink. My legs are killing me … I need more exercise.”
“SAM! The library!”
Tesla chrysalis weapons systems had cutting-edge AI, with built-in emotional inflections designed to better communicate, even though most of them were nonverbal. Sam had never heard that tone in Tes’s voice before. He bolted up, whipping around in his chair towards the shelves of books.
In between the first rows, a huge bull ant stood watching them, her knotted, scarred exoskeleton a black hole that swallowed the refracted light playing across it.
“How…?” The question froze on Sam’s lips. His eyes shifted left, to where his gun lay twenty feet away, and then right, to his panic room, fifty feet away. The ant would be on top of him before he’d make it three steps.