Dispersal

by Addison Gunn

  Perhaps a round of Texas Hold’em was in order, or he could fire up the karaoke machine they’d found stashed behind the bar. Surprisingly, Morland could sing Sinatra like Ol’ Blue Eyes himself; on previous occasions, his rendition of ‘My Way’ had bent Doyle in half with laughter. Whatever they did, relaxation was in order.

  The first thing he noticed, as he stepped into the bar, was Doyle, curled into a ball and lying on the floor beside his overturned bar stool. He was slick with sweat and visibly shaking, as if riddled with fever, his tears flowing into the carpet.

  Du Trieux stood over him, one arm hovering protectively above Doyle’s face, the other warding off Hsiung, who stood in the middle of the room in a white surgical mask.

  Morland stood behind the bar, palms pressed against the wood-grained countertop, as if he were about to clamber over it into the middle of the room. As Miller entered, however, he froze.

  “He should be in the infirmary!” Hsiung shouted.

  “Back off, I said. Just back off,” du Trieux hollered.

  “He’s going to infect us all!”

  “He’s not contagious,” du Trieux said.

  “How the hell can you say that? Look at him!” Hsiung shot back.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Miller asked. He was talking to du Trieux, but Hsiung wheeled on him with a look of stark panic.

  “He’s got flu!” she shouted. “The one that wiped out the second deck. This whole ship is infected!”

  “Trix?”

  “He’s in withdrawal,” she said.

  “Search him,” Miller said, closing the door behind him. He walked around the bar toward Morland, grabbed a dish towel, wet it from the faucet and tossed it to du Trieux, who caught it one-handed, already rifling Doyle’s pockets.

  Sure enough, she found the plastic baggie, which still held the last scrap of drug-paper. When Miller approached, she handed the baggie to him, then began removing Doyle’s Flex body armor and utility belt. “I didn’t realize he’d gone cold turkey,” she said, propping Doyle’s head up with his vest.

  Behind them, a humbled Hsiung pulled down her parachute hammock, then crossed the room and laid it over Doyle’s body for warmth.

  Du Trieux placed the wet wash cloth on Doyle’s soaked face and shushed him once, but he didn’t seem to hear. Engrossed in some sort of agitated argument with no one in particular, he thrashed back and forth in a twitchy state, then called himself a ‘wanker’ and told himself to shut up.

  Eventually, when his flailing and mumbling seemed to calm, du Trieux scooted back from him and asked Morland to toss her an ice bucket. Propping her back against the wall, she set it beside her and sighed; waiting for the nausea to start, Miller guessed.

  Pulling up a stool, he sat down and leaned the back of his head against the wall as Morland took up his favorite position behind the bar.

  Hsiung slouched on the floor where her hammock once hung, then pulled the surgical mask off her mouth. “I’m sorry. I thought—”

  Du Trieux shook her head. “You didn’t know.”

  Morland cleared his throat. “Now what do we do?”

  “We wait,” Miller said, and the room fell silent. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the noises outside, but it brought him no comfort. All he could hear was the howling sea wind and the rage of an untamed, resentful ocean.

  10

  SAMANTHA RAN THROUGH the forest at breakneck speed for as long as her legs permitted. She had no idea how long she ran, but when her left knee gave out and she crashed to the forest floor, her throat was raw, her lungs burned, her hands had gone numb, and she had no idea where she was.

  Night was falling. Overhead, the stars were peering down through a spider web of naked tree branches. The moon, a shard of a crescent, looked purple amidst the scattered clouds. The chill air prickled the sweat on her brow, her breath rising as a willowy mist. If she didn’t find shelter soon, she’d be dead within hours.

  She rooted through her pockets for the gloves she’d stolen, only to realize she had dropped one at some point. Sighing, she put the orphan glove onto her right hand, a white sock on the other. Buttoning her jacket closed, she also put on the hat and used the long johns as a wrap.

  There was nothing around but trees. Fallen trees, leaning trees, standing trees, slender, broad, short and tall trees—but nothing else. No caves, no convenient hunting sheds or cabins. The ground was littered with branches and dead leaves and the occasional stone or mossy boulder, but nothing of use. The far cries of animals and the buzzing of invisible insects crackled all around her ears, chilling Samantha more than the dropping temperatures.

  Setting to work, she combed the surrounding few meters, collecting broken tree trunks and limbs from the ground. Stacking them side by side against a bowed tree, she eventually had a rudimentary lean-to. Scraping the nearby rocks and boulders, she stuffed the seams of her shelter with moss and lined the floor with pine needles. It was damp and smelled of earth and rot, but it was several degrees warmer and would have to suffice until morning. She dared not start a fire.

  Exhausted, Samantha lay down, covered herself with the pine needles and closed her eyes. It was a while before sleep came, but when it did, she sank deep and hard into slumber, Chris’s dying screams echoing in her dreams.

  “THIS CAN’T BE a good sign,” a man’s voice said.

  “We should send a party back to the commune and see what happened,” a woman replied.

  “Why bother? She’ll tell us.”

  Samantha felt a nudge on her knee, and dragged her eyelids open. She had thought she’d been dreaming the voices, but it clearly wasn’t the case. A man and a woman stood at the opening of her shelter carrying homemade spears and masked in mud, but she recognised them both: deserters from the avocado orchard.

  This could go one of two ways: very well, or very badly.

  “Binh,” Samantha said, sitting up and brushing the needles from her clothes. “Anita. Hello.”

  “Samantha,” Binh said. Smug satisfaction rang in his words. “Rough night?”

  “You could say that.” Sam stood and knocked the last of her makeshift blanket to the forest floor. She eyed them warily, taking in their appearance and stretching out her feelings to theirs, but hit a wall. She shook her head as if stung.

  Anita frowned, but Binh smiled.

  Either they had learned to refuse to commune with other Infected—which Samantha hadn’t thought was possible—or something else was wrong. Either way it left her feeling naked, exposed. Vulnerable. It had been years since the only feelings in her body were her own. “How’s the hunting this morning?” she asked, trying to seem nonchalant.

  “Horrible,” Anita said, frown deepening. “You scared everything away with your smell and this dumbass shelter of yours. Our camp is a good kilometer from here and even we heard you moaning and groaning half the night.”

  “You were shouting in your sleep,” Binh said.

  Samantha blinked. “That’s not true.”

  “Who’s Alex, then?” Binh added, raising an eyebrow.

  Samantha wanted to smack the smirk off his muddy face, but it wouldn’t help her situation. So far they didn’t seem hostile, but who knew how they would act if she got snippy? And why wouldn’t they commune? It had been a good few minutes.

  “An old friend,” she said, trying to push her feelings down.

  It didn’t seem to work however, as Anita smiled. “Interesting.”

  “The farms have disintegrated into chaos,” Samantha blurted, hoping the words would sting them—at least a little—jolt them into some sort of connection.

  They nodded, but nothing changed.

  “And what part did you play in it?” Anita asked, drumming her fingers on her spear.

  “No part. I barely escaped with my life.” The words felt foreign on her tongue, and untrue—despite their accuracy. Her jaw clenched and her palms grew moist. She didn’t understand why she was so anxious until she listened to what she’d said. I
t had been years since she had referred to herself in the singular. When an Infected was part of a commune, it was always collective ‘we’—a combination of all their wills and all their desires, felt as one. It was an intoxicating and empowering sensation that was now absent in Samantha’s mind and it left her vacant, sick to her stomach.

  How did humans do this? Be alone with their thoughts? No wonder they were so violent and self-defeating. It was horrifying. Samantha reached her hand out and rested it on a branch propped against her shelter, but suddenly felt weak at the knees. She forced herself to kneel to keep from falling over as the trees spun. Far away, yet standing right before her, Anita and Binh spoke in distant, echoing voices.

  “She’s starting to panic,” Binh said.

  “How much longer can you hold out?” Anita asked.

  “Her will is strong, not much longer.”

  “Let the others decide.”

  “What of the hunt?” one of them asked, Samantha wasn’t sure whom. A hand griped her under the arm and pulled her to her feet.

  The faraway voices echoed in her ears as she moved. She breathed in jagged gasps, clutching her ribs. The forest continued spinning. She wanted to vomit.

  “Grab her other side.”

  “We won’t be able to resist if we touch her.”

  “We’re past that now.”

  It did not happen all at once, but in a long slog, as if waking from anaesthesia: Samantha’s mind dragged itself from the pit of panicking isolation, and crystalized, jarring her from a deep hibernation.

  She communed with Anita first. In dribs and drabs she felt the woman’s impatience, her hunger to please, her fear. Her apprehension was directly related to Samantha, and although she wanted to ask about it, Sam also did not know where they were taking her, or what they planned to do with her once they arrived. It was best, Sam thought, to not poke the bear just yet.

  On her other side, Binh’s emotions were slower to come and less defined. He was either indifferent toward Samantha, or skilled enough to mask his true emotions. It would serve no purpose, Sam knew, to comment now. Instead, she watched as they first dragged, then helped, then led her to the east, deeper into the forest.

  The morning mist, which had kept the air cool and balmy, was now melting away into a wet humidity, making the earth smell dank and drearily of wet, rotten leaves.

  Soon they arrived at a camp site. Among the trees sat man-made huts of branches and bark, placed in a circle around a rock-lined fire pit, burning high and hot like a pyre.

  Infected, Regular and Archaean alike, milled about the camp grounds performing various chores and duties—raking, skinning, making baskets and cordage—but all came to a stop as Samantha and the others arrived. Soon their emotions came forth, filling Samantha’s chest to bursting. The general consensus seemed to be caution.

  When she caught sight of Bernard and Rose, two Infected who had fled after the rot-glider attack, she felt their apprehension acutely. Beside them, another couple gawked, feeling downright hostile.

  As Samantha sensed a familiar twinge of dread, Binh released his grip on her arm—she hadn’t even realized he was still holding her—and pointed toward an empty area just outside the inner circle of huts.

  “You can build your shelter there,” he said. “Don’t worry. You won’t be harmed.”

  “If you say so,” she said, swallowing the thickness in her throat. She set to work gathering branches, but the tension permeated her skin. Over time it gnawed at her, making her joints stiff and sore.

  Then again, it could also be because she had slept on the ground the night before. Keeping her paranoia in check, Samantha continued to work—clearing an area, stacking branches, gathering moss and pine needles. She was hungry, but dared not ask for food. Not yet.

  Binh could promise her safety until he was blue in the face, but with the Archaean parasite in your blood, there was no such thing as a guarantee. Samantha had seen first-hand what could happen and dared not test the waters so soon.

  Once her shelter was built and she had been given a helping of mashed pine nuts and fried frog, the bulk of the occupants of the camp approached and sat before her. Taking the hint, she did the same and, speaking slowly and clearly, told in painstaking detail what had happened at the farms, and all she had seen and felt. The anger, the suspicion, the mobs. The killings. The fire.

  After she was done, and the looks on the group’s face shifted from horror to contemplation, Binh cleared his throat and spoke to them all. “Let it be a lesson for all of us.”

  Sam would like to believe it was as simple as that, but knew better. “We must work hard to prevent the same from happening here,” she said. “Yes, you are Archaean and Infected as one now. But so were the farms.”

  “We are not the same as them; that’s why we left,” Anita said.

  “It didn’t randomly happen—understand,” Sam explained. “It wasn’t overnight. A gradual shift toward hate took hold so slowly, no one noticed until it was too late.”

  “We noticed,” Anita said.

  “We didn’t desert because we got bored, Samantha,” Rose said. “We knew what was coming. We felt it. The hive-mind was poisoned.”

  “But it wasn’t the whole commune,” Samantha continued. “Joseph poisoned them against authority, he whipped them into a frenzy. All it took was one angry man—and the entire dynamic twisted. How do you know someone won’t attempt the same here? The hostility is already apparent.”

  “The only hostility is what you brought with you,” Bernard said. “Are you poisoning the pond, Samantha?”

  “No!” she snapped. “Everything I did was for the good of the commune. Everything.”

  “How can you say that? You helped the humans blow up New York City,” Rose said.

  Samantha felt her face flush with heat. “That was different. The Exiles and the super-wasps needed eradicating.”

  “Is that what you’re calling it?” Rose blurted. “‘Eradicating’? It was extermination.”

  “You weren’t there!” Samantha said, her chin rising in the air. “You didn’t see them. They weren’t people anymore. They couldn’t commune, or speak—their minds were nothing but wasp’s nests—literally. We did them a favour.”

  “You say ‘we’ as if the commune had any say in what you did,” Anita said. “We’ve heard the stories. You made the plan with your human friends and the commune suffered catastrophic losses. Just like at the farm.”

  Samantha clenched her teeth. “Of course the commune had a say—to help the humans was a unanimous decision. We voted.”

  “Voted?” Binh gaped. “Any commune with you at the helm is at your disposal. You are not a true Archaean, Samantha. Your will is too strong. Your temperament is too harsh. You twist our emotions to suit you. You are no better than Joseph.”

  Anita, sitting beside him, looked aghast. “Binh!”

  “You are not part of a commune,” he insisted, standing. “You command a commune. That is why we fled the farm. That is why Joseph rallied the rest of them against you.”

  “You cannot possibly defend what he did,” Samantha said.

  “We do not defend it, we understand it,” Binh explained. “Know this, Samantha, because we won’t tell you again: if you try to command this commune, if you push your will on us, if you attempt to take control at any time—we will turn on you as Joseph did. We will not only excommunicate you from the hive-mind, we will extinguish your life.”

  Samantha’s mouth dropped open. “Threats are unnecessary. I am not here to stage a revolution.”

  “This commune is one. Do not jeopardize it or you will suffer the same fate as Chris.” With that, Binh moved off.

  Over the next few seconds the rest left, back to their camp duties and assigned chores. Samantha sat in the mouth of her shelter, unsure if she was hurt or angry. She was both. Angry that they had threatened her life, when all she had ever tried to do was build a strong and peaceful community. Hurt because perhaps, in the depths of
her mind, she knew they were right.

  She was not Archaean. She could never submit to the will of the hive-mind, not fully. She knew what it could do. She knew the evil of which it was capable. She did not trust it. How could she relinquish her free will to a mob that was so easily corrupted? And in refusing to do so, she was not truly one of them.

  She eyed the fire at the center of the camp, the others milling about, and then she knew.

  She knew exactly what she had to do.

  11

  THE TEVATNOA RAN out of surgical masks within a few days. By the end of the week, half the ship had fallen ill with an influenza so contagious, two entire decks had been quarantined.

  When Cobalt, including Doyle, finally emerged from the Crow’s Nest after three days, Miller was alarmed to note the ship’s rapid deterioration.

  Crowds remained wrapped around the railings of the vessel—that had not changed—but now they were suspicious and paranoid, with masks, towels, or strips of fabric covering their faces and noses. Fear had taken hold. For every cough, sneeze, or sniff out of place, one more person was dragged to the quarantine area kicking and screaming. Rumour had it the death rate, once infected, was as high as seventy per cent.

  Miller could hardly believe it. Just when he’d thought conditions aboard couldn’t get any worse, they had.

  Doyle squinted into the obscured faces outside the Crow’s Nest, then pulled his bandana up over his mouth. “What do we do, boss?”

  Miller stopped himself from shrugging. “I’m certain the labs are working on a cure.”

  Morland raised an eyebrow, then pulled his gas mask from his pack. “I’m not taking any chances.”

  Hsiung put on her surgical mask. “I’m starved. Anyone want to brave the rations line with me?”

  Du Trieux covered her mouth and nose with a handkerchief. “Oui.”

  “Meet back here in an hour,” Miller said, securing his own bandana. “I have a sneaking suspicion we’re about to get busy.”