by Addison Gunn
Just as Miller took a step forward to intervene, Jennifer ripped her elbow out of the man’s hand and cracked it against his nose with a wet thunk. “Don’t you touch me!”
The man’s face burst with blood. Squealing, he faltered backwards into the crowd, which had instantly quieted—as did Miller.
Smoothing her rumpled Oxford with an open palm, Jennifer raised her chin. “We will get to the slips as soon as we are able. Now please, stop blocking the walkways and return to your living quarters.” When nobody moved she added, “Now.”
The grumbling crowd dispersed, including the man now gripping his bloody nose. Miller felt a mixture of contempt and sympathy for them as they slunk away like scolded children. They were right to complain: conditions were poor and worsening by the day. But it wasn’t Jennifer’s fault, no matter how much she put them off.
Meanwhile, Jennifer, red-faced, turned on Miller like a pit bull. “I asked how many, Miller. I don’t have all day.”
“You okay?”
She squinted at him. “I’m fine.”
“I think you broke his nose.”
“Serves him right. You have to be firm with them. They’re fucking savages.”
“These are savage conditions.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s no excuse. You don’t see me accosting people in the halls. My linens haven’t been cleaned in weeks either—you don’t see me bitching and complaining. My God, they act like they’re on vacation, not floating on a godforsaken death trap in the middle of the ocean.”
Miller had no response to this. He waited as Jennifer shook her head and looked down at her clipboard. When she looked back up, she’d collected herself.
She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could ask again, he said, “Sixty.”
A flash of panic crossed her face, but she masked it quickly. “I see.”
“There could have been more, but that was all we could save. Try not to look disappointed.”
Her face hardened at that and she clenched her jaw. “I’m not...” She stopped short and didn’t complete the thought aloud. “Have they been to the infirmary yet?”
“No.”
“Take them there.” She sighed and spread her palms against the back of her clipboard. “They’ll need to be inoculated against the influenza that’s going around. And it’ll give me some time to figure out where to put them.”
“Sorry to be such an inconvenience.”
“That’s not it, and you know it,” she snapped.
Miller shifted his weight; his boots squished with salt water. “Can’t you take them below? I’ve got to report to Lewis and Matheson. And I’m drenched.”
Jennifer tucked her clipboard under her arm and walked away. “Get yourself checked out while you’re down there.” And then she was gone.
Miller pursed his lips and watched her disappear into the bowels of the ship. Now who was acting like a savage?
AFTER DISMISSING THE shivering members of Cobalt, Miller gathered the Dunn Roven survivors and took them through the bowels of the ship toward the infirmary.
Wordlessly, he led them to the stairwell and down one flight to the lower deck, the able-bodied helping the wounded. It was slow-going: the elevators had been out of action for a week. He wanted it over with, but the people had begun to ask questions, and eventually—as they waited for the stragglers of the group to catch up—Miller found himself an unwilling tour guide.
“Can we get something to eat?” asked one man.
“Tomorrow morning,” he said, reluctantly slowing his pace. “I suggest you wake up at dawn and get in line at the Food Rations Distribution Center, here”—he pointed to a ballroom down the hall—“or on the third floor. There’s enough to go around, but you don’t want to be at the tail end of the first line and maybe miss your chance to get in line for the second meal. That’s been known to happen.”
“What about clothes?” asked a young man over the grim mumblings of the others. The man’s sea-sodden pants stopped at his shins. “Can we get new clothes?”
“We ran out of fabric a few months into the voyage,” Miller confessed. “There’s a patch-and-repair place over by the galley—a lady named Donna runs it. But unless you find somebody to trade with, no, there aren’t any clothes to buy. And besides, what good is money now anyways?”
They walked by a door labelled Writing Room; the line of people waiting outside pressed themselves against the wall to allow them to pass. Miller gestured at it. “If you need anything, you submit your request slips there. Those are the offices. Be nice to the staff. Everybody’s doing the best they can and you catch more flies with honey.”
“What about a room?” asked a woman with droopy eyes from the middle of the horde. “When can we get our cabins?”
“Each living quarter has about six people in it, which is pretty tight,” Miller explained. “You’ll be lucky to get a bed, quite honestly. We save those for the sick, elderly, and pregnant women. Everybody else is sleeping on the floor. We get, I don’t know, about twenty gallons of desalinated water for each room a day—so we all keep bathing down to a minimum, and the toilets use salt water now. Someone will assign you rooms once you get inoculated for the flu that’s going around.”
“Jesus,” gasped a woman on Miller’s left.
“There are three pools aboard,” he continued, “which are now hydroponic farms. Crew and personnel train and study in the old library, and a teacher’s set up a schoolroom for the younger kids in one of the bars, but space is limited and there’s a waiting list to get in. There’s also a dentist in the old hairdresser’s salon; no cleanings, just fillings and extractions these days. And the cinema is now the infirmary. That’s where we’re headed now.”
A rumble from outside the ship shook the air around them, and the lights overhead flickered and went out. Plunged into darkness, the survivors cried out and froze. After a few seconds, another crack of thunder boomed outside.
Miller snatched his flashlight from his utility belt and snapped it on. It blinked once or twice but came on when he pounded it. “Looks like there’s a storm. Generator must be down again. Move over to the right. Don’t clog the hallway. Come on, the infirmary is just this way.”
“Does this happen a lot?” asked a voice beside him.
Miller recognized the man with the short pants and nodded, although he realized he’d never see it in the darkened passage. “More than I’d like,” he said.
The guy wrapped his arm around an older shivering woman beside him, pulling her along.
“Maybe we should have stayed on the Dunn Roven,” he heard the woman whisper.
Miller came to the infirmary and pushed the door open. Inside was a flurry of activity. Flashlights flickered across the room as voices rose in volume, becoming louder as panic set in.
In the far left hand corner, just under the stage, a woman in labour heaved and puffed, accompanied by a midwife up to her elbows in birthing fluid and holding a flashlight in her mouth. Up on the stage, several doctors and nurses bustled around a crowd of people, all coughing and hacking.
As the Dunn Roven survivors stared in horror at the chaos, a doctor with a flashlight approached and scanned them with a critical eye. “Any of you have medical training?” When no-one immediately replied, he asked again. “Anyone?”
The woman huddled with the young man in short pants nodded. “I’m trained as a medical assistant,” she said sheepishly.
The doctor’s face brightened. “You’re hired. Come with me.”
“But...” She held tightly to the young man, obviously reluctant to leave his side. “My son.”
“You can meet up with him later, he’ll be fine. Come here. I need you to compress the bag valve mask on this patient. He’s arresting.”
“Go, Mom,” the man said. “Go.”
She handed her rescue blanket to her son and followed the doctor into the crowd. He led her to the right, where a nurse was performing CPR on an elderly man stretched out on a mat on th
e floor.
Miller saw his chance. “The rest of you stay here. Someone will be around shortly to check you out and assign you rooms.”
“That’s it?” asked a man, eyes wide. “You’re just leaving us here?”
Miller’s throat clenched and he nodded. “Yep.”
BACK OUT IN the hall, Miller hooked a right and made his way back toward the stairwell. He hated the infirmary. Maybe the whole first deck. No, in truth, he hated everything aboard this ship. Feeling more helpless with each step, he quickened his pace. He had to check on Cobalt, and he had to report to Gray and Lewis on what had happened to the Dunn Roven.
The memory of that huge, scaly dorsal fin when the lifeboat had first arrived—the survivors they’d lost—could only mean one thing. The yacht hadn’t been sunk by the weather; the sea life was on the hunt, and if his fears were correct, every vessel in the S-Y fleet smaller than thirty meters was in danger of the same fate.
4
SAMANTHA’S DREAMS WERE scattered and fierce, a cross between an unyielding urge to run and hide, quickly overtaken by a starved, airborne search for fresh meat.
She awoke after the rot-glider attack, stitched, bandaged, and propped up in bed with pillows. The pain in her shoulders—a low throb which pulsed through her body with every heart beat—dulled only when she allowed her mind to wander inside the hive-mind and pull contentment from the masses, but she dared not linger there for long.
Finally able to take to her feet, Samantha dressed, braided her hair, and exited the communal bedroom in search of food. She found the farmhouse kitchen bustling with activity.
The space was crammed wall-to-wall with people. Dirt, sweat, and an acrid stench of rot flooded Samantha’s senses. She gripped the wall for balance, her fingers brushing against peeling wallpaper, and strained to listen.
“They were spotted to the west,” someone said from beside the oven.
A voice from near the deep sink chimed in: “...living in some sort of camping ground in the forest.”
“But they wouldn’t come,” said a voice near the table and chairs. “Kept running off before we could re-commune.”
“...I don’t understand their hesitation.”
Samantha cleared her throat, taking in the confusion from the group and zeroing in on the source. A man, Aaron, stood by the kitchen door. He was covered in mud from head to toe, and his frizzy hair, normally pulled back into a hasty pony-tail, splayed far and wild around his head, haloing him in a wreath of curls.
“We should send more,” someone said, before the horde took over the conversation.
“...bring them back by force...”
“...not safe for them...”
“...we have no choice.”
“Wait,” Samantha said, broadcasting a sense of ease to the multitude in the kitchen. “How many fled the farm?”
“Three today. Five yesterday,” Aaron said, running his palm over his arm. An orangey patch of lichen had accumulated in the crook of his elbow and he scratched at it, drawing blood.
Sam saw three others scratch the insides of their elbows.
How long had she been in bed for? Long enough for the hygiene regiment to become lax, allowing the Regulars to sprout fungal skin growths again. “Where are Chris and Joseph?” she asked.
“Joseph is at the yucca-flax farm,” someone said.
“Why did he leave?” Sam asked.
“Some emergency,” someone answered.
“Chris is in the greenhouse, trying to save the melon-berries.”
“Bring my husk-mutt around,” Sam said. “I’m going to see Joseph.”
“But what about the deserters?” Aaron asked, still digging into his arm.
“Leave them,” Samantha said, sounding as resolute as she could muster. “Help Chris with the melon-berries and care for the livestock. Plough and re-seed the field. We still have time to harvest a crop of alfalfa-barley before the season turns.”
A HUSK-MUTT WAS a four-legged predator, smaller and faster than a thug behemoth, tamer and less volatile than a terror-jaw, and fast. Riding it made Samantha feel especially strange, as if she were holding the reins of a giant bristled iguana. The beast swung side to side in slither fashion, rather than up and down like a horse, and although the Archaeans had tamed a handful of the beasts as a faster alternative to the behemoths, the motion made Samantha feel as if she weren’t getting anywhere.
Holding onto the ridge of soft bristles lining the mutt’s spine, she gripped the leathery torso tightly with her thighs and turned the beast eastward with a flick of the reins. Passing the forest to the west, and bypassing a string of communal farms all connected via dirt roads and footpaths, she urged the beast on, trying to maintain mental control as her shoulders throbbed.
Communing with these particular animals was an acquired skill. Half a dozen Regulars had been killed in the initial stages of domestication of the husk-mutts, until the Archaeans recognized that it was a task best done by them. This had proven to be true of all the new animals, for whatever reason; it wasn’t unheard of for a Regular to be able to do it, but it was rare.
This helped solidify the Archaean’s ruling position. Each commune farm had three to five Archaeans living amongst the Regulars to maintain control and order.
Reaching her destination, Samantha pulled up the reins and slowed the husk-mutt to a stop. The farm, raising the yucca-flax they hoped to turn to the production of cloth and fabric, sat at the northern tip of the commune at the edge of a forest, beyond which lay the remains of Connecticut.
Flinging her leg over the beast, she slid off its back and pulled up her bandana.
The farm was thick with insects. Locust-armadillos clouded the air, heavy and unruly. She swatted them away as she walked, her feet crunching beneath her. The ground swarmed with fallen and burrowing bugs. Airborne, the insects moved in a massive flock, like birds trying to hide their numbers.
They were silly-looking things, she thought, sort of cartoonish and twee—as if an armadillo had shrunk and grown wings. And they weren’t particularly aggressive, but they were armored—she assumed to help keep them from being a meal for everything else. Swatting didn’t do more than bend their wings and knock them aside, but it was the better than walking straight through the onslaught.
In front of her, down a gentle slope and past the decimated yucca-flax field, a ring of Regulars and several Archaeans walked around the farm’s greenhouse. They wore face masks and pushed motorized smokers; Joseph had built a fleet of them a few months before from old lawnmowers.
Catswort extract and lemon oil was pumped through a quarter-inch copper pipe, wrapped around the mower’s extended muffler to heat it up. When the mower was turned on, the foggy exhaust served as a natural insect repellent, causing little to no harm to the crops. The method had been effective at keeping down the locust-armadillos at first, but now, near to the end of autumn, the situation seemed to have worsened.
Normally—if there appeared to be an increase in the insects’ activity—Joseph would enlist three Regulars to fog the area around the greenhouse in a constant loop. As far as Sam could tell, there were now at least ten on a constant rotation, jumping in and out to refuel and refill liquids as necessary.
The whole field stank of citrus and herbs. The cloud of repellent extended far beyond the greenhouse, and several feet into the field itself. Surrounding that haze—hovering the misty circumference—was a barrage of locusts, barely kept at bay, waiting for a break in the fog.
Samantha spotted Joseph standing by the barn at a makeshift ethanol refueling station. With how low supplies were, she was surprised he’d authorized the fuel. Making her way through the field of destroyed yucca-flax and wading through the bugs, she stopped wondering. If they’d lost this crop, as well as what was in the greenhouse, there would be nothing for the hundred-plus Infected living here to do; there would be no fabric to weave during the long winter months.
“It’s fine,” Joseph reassured her as she planted h
erself in front of them. “The fuel reserves are enough to see us through to the end of the season.”
“If we last until nightfall,” an Archaean woman added. “They should dissipate in the dark.”
“And if they don’t?” Sam asked. “We’d have used all our fuel and lost the crop anyway.”
“Seemed a risk worth taking,” Joseph said, looking up from his work. He snapped the cap back onto his canister and gave the go-ahead for the Archaean to rejoin the smoker parade.
The Archaean, Susie—an especially busy blonde with an exceptionally loud voice—reached up from her mower’s handle bar and touched her shoulder. “You should be resting.”
“They’ll heal.” Samantha felt undeniable annoyance from Joseph at the remark, and wondered if it had originated from him or Susie, but she supposed it didn’t matter.
Just then a Regular approached to refuel, and Susie moved off to give him room. As Joseph refilled the fog solution for the Regular, Samantha brushed a locust from her sleeve and watched Susie push her smoker back into the revolving line. The ground was littered with fallen and burrowing locusts and the wheels of Susie’s mower crunched and popped over the tiny corpses as if rolling over a path of gravel.
Looking down, Samantha spotted, among the tiny bug corpses, a smattering of holes. The earth was littered with them—tiny burrows all leading directly toward the greenhouse.
The moment the realization hit Samantha, Joseph’s head popped up.
“What is it?” he asked, urgently.
“They’re burrowing toward the greenhouse.”
Dropping the can of repellent fluid, Joseph pushed through the rotation of mowers toward the greenhouse door.
On his heels, Samantha called, “Wait! Don’t open—”
Throwing back the doors, Joseph stepped into the greenhouse—and into a swarm of locust-armadillos. Every square inch of air in the shed teemed with them. Like an avalanche, the bugs gushed from the pen—brushing right over the top of Joseph and Samantha—and filled the air around the smokers, thousands of them dropping to the ground as soon as they hit the repellent. Overwhelmed, the circle of smokers broke and scattered, spreading the bugs farther and wider.