by Baen Books
Kostya knelt to scratch her neck, and he smiled because Ludmilla had stopped to wait for him -- cocking her head to the left the same way she'd done ever since she was a puppy -- and for a moment he remembered how her brothers had died trying to rescue him. The dog whined then.
"You're right." Kostya stood and nudged her with a boot. "Today isn't the day to remember them; let's go find some metal."
Metals. Copper was the most important, and then anything else they could get their hands on. Kostya and the ones before him had already scavenged the south end of the peninsula, and when he and Ludmilla broke through the forest closer to the highway, he saw the city below -- like a bleached network of concrete, reclaimed by nature. Sadgorod. The city abandoned. Kostya once saw pictures of Pipryat after a reactor accident, and Sadgorod now resembled it, with weeds and vines growing through cracks, taking over. But it was nothing like the kind of wreckage crumbs left, he thought.
Ludmilla's ears flattened, and she bared her teeth with a growl.
"Just what I need," said Kostya. "Stay." He rechecked the safety, making sure the incinerator's spark plug would discharge, and moved forward. "Scan."
The heads up display flickered on and Kostya heard the servos on his shoulder kick in, sending a small rectangular panel upward to begin its slow spin. Instinctively, he ducked. Kostya's helmet shielded him and Ludmilla knew to stay near his feet during a scan, but he never liked the system, wondering what it would feel like to have one's eyes cooked. They reacted much the same way. Any crumbs in scanning range would secrete a titanium film as soon as the first microwaves hit -- so an area that one moment had absorbed waves suddenly reflected them, revealing their presence.
A blinking red dot appeared almost instantly, about ten meters ahead, moving toward his left.
"Contact," said Kostya. "Looks like a small patch of them, crumbs, on the eastern edge of sector seven."
Vanya's voice sounded louder. "No joke, crumbs, my warning panel just went nuts. Get them. Now. I'll bring out a three-man burn team, but it will take us an hour to equip. Out."
Amazing, thought Kostya: the pinecone himself would be coming topside. Vanya never came out from the hole unless he was really pissed, or really scared. "Stay," Kostya repeated to Ludmilla, and felt his mouth go dry.
He crept forward. The brush formed a tall barrier on the far side of the highway, and his boots scraped against the uneven pavement, now so broken that it resembled a wide strip of jagged rocks. He scanned once more, and saw the dot directly in front of him, about twenty feet away. Kostya hit the trigger. A stream of jelly burst into orange flame, hissing and cracking as it penetrated the shrubs and ignited dry leaves.
"We'll get them, Ludy, don't worry."
Ludmilla barked. Kostya nearly missed it when a brilliant shape leapt through the wall of flames, coming directly at him with a roar. He dove to the ground. Whatever it was missed, passing directly overhead, but after he rose to his knees and turned, Kostya saw it: a huge white tiger, the fur on its left shoulder singed. It readied to pounce again.
"Stay!" he shouted, seeing Ludmilla move from the corner of his eye.
Kostya shot a second tongue of flame, just as the animal prepared to leap, and engulfed it in a cloud of flaming gel. His jaw dropped. The thing didn't make a sound and sped past, plunging back into the undergrowth to cut a burning path.
"Scan," Kostya said again. The immediate area seemed clear, and after the panel retracted into his shoulder, he waited, giving the flames time to move away before waving a hand at Ludmilla. "Up!"
They found the tiger, dead, about a hundred feet away. Kostya's suit was a one piece unit that made it harder to detect his thermal signature, and which had been coated with carbon fiber -- something that wouldn't trigger the crumbs' scavenging sensors. Still, he never trusted the suit completely, and crouch-walked as if the area was infested, not straightening until he stood over the tiger. It was so badly burned that Kostya almost didn't recognize it. This was the way it had gone for the past decade, he thought, and the way it would probably go for the next one until the crumbs would one day swallow everything. Why should he and the others even bother? Once the metals were gone from the peninsula, the colony would have to move north into land they held, and Kostya knew that nobody doubted what would happen then, what chances they had of finding any of the crumbs' supply points. There would be metals there, for sure. All the metals they could ever dream of. But nobody knew where those points were, and nobody dared guess what would happen if they even managed to reclaim the world one day, because what could be done on an Earth with almost every species extinct? Some work had gone into preserving as much animal, insect, and plant life as could be saved, but was it even close to being enough?
He clicked into the radio. "Vanya."
"Go."
"I got them." Kostya crouched next to the tiger and saw that a wide section of its back had been picked clean, its flesh underneath pitted and raw. It took him a moment to locate them: tiny sparks of hot metal, now devoid of organic material, which Kostya hoped he had burned off.
But there was something else. He raised the tiger's left hind leg and saw a patch of sores, black and swollen, nearly the width of his hand -- so that Kostya shivered when he realized that this was something new. But he'd seen something like it before. The memory nudged him under layers of mental dust, from a part of his mind that held recollections of a former life, but then it disappeared before crystallizing, leaving only a vague feeling of dread.
He stumbled backward and flamed the tiger again.
"I'm waiting," said Vanya.
"White tiger," he answered. Kostya thought about describing the black patches too, but decided against it. "And some crumbs."
"Probably a Siberian. And everyone thought they were long gone, what a shame. We'll be topside in approximately forty-five minutes, but you'll have to change your mission."
Kostya felt his stomach tighten. "Perimeter?"
"What else?" Vanya asked. "Westernmost corner first then work your way east. The tiger had to break through somewhere, and we need to repair any tears in the fence before it's too late. Out."
How could the tiger have made it through? While he followed Ludmilla northwest through the bushes, he cursed, realizing that Vanya had been right, that the tiger had to have come from the north, somehow making it past all those crumbs. It made no sense. Crumbs controlled everything north of the perimeter line, for hundreds -- if not thousands -- of kilometers, making it impossible for anything living to traverse overland. It had been months since Vanya and the others lost radio contact with other survivors, and for all they knew, theirs was the last outpost of living organisms, maybe the only one lucky enough to have been established around an underground fusion reactor. So what chance did a tiger have out there?
"They all want me dead," he said. Kostya hoped talking would keep him from thinking, and Ludmilla stopped to look back, her tongue hanging out. "Because. You have to understand them, Ludy -- Vanya and the others. They think that I let them loose and they resent the fact that we gave them such a silly name. Our team leader, Anna, named them after her husband, her 'little crumb.' You would have liked her. She wasn't like Vanya at all."
Kostya had trouble remembering the woman's face now, but he'd never forget helping her suit-up for one of the early trips out, when the perimeter fence hadn't been finished. Anna's face had gone bone white. He'd told her it would be fine, just like taking a walk through the park, except this time she'd have an incinerator.
"It took them twenty minutes to pick her flesh apart, and she never stopped screaming, not even when I started screaming too because a pocket of them had dropped onto my leg," Kostya said. Ludmilla stopped again and barked. "You're right, let's keep our minds on work."
Kostya hadn't been to the perimeter in some time, and the idea of being so close made his palms clammy. Mindless collection. He imagined the hum as the crumbs scavenged, undermining the main fence so they had to move it back every so often,
each time embedding it deeper into the soil. Someday, Kostya realized, the fence wouldn't be enough to hold them -- one could only embed it so deep -- and his hands began to tremble.
Ludmilla pushed through a thick hedge and then whined. The fenceline rose from the sea, and Kostya traced it eastward, straining to locate any breaks or tears where the animal could have gotten through. It didn't take long to find. A large flap of fence rattled in a strong wind, but the electrified cables seemed unbroken, and Kostya guessed that somehow the tiger had pushed in, between the wires, its inertia enough to propel it beyond so it survived the massive shocks.
Ludmilla barked again, then growled.
"I know." Kostya didn't want to look, but couldn't not look either. "There they are."
Beyond the fence lay a nightmarish landscape, cratered and empty to form a kaleidoscope of broken ground in shades of grey and brown. Lunar, he thought, the Earth had become the moon. Kostya spotted them easily now, no need to scan. A film of crumbs scrambled over the ground for as far as he could see, their undulating movements making it seem as though they formed a shimmering blanket over the Earth. Alive.
A glint of light caught Kostya's attention. Far beyond the fenceline, miles away, he saw the flash again, the late morning sunlight reflecting off something, and he zoomed to the maximum setting his goggles allowed. At first he couldn't make it out. The crumbs sent up clouds of dust as they collected grains of material, passing them from one to another for deposit in underground sorting stations.
He saw the flash again though, and a strong wind cleared the air for a moment to give him a better view. "I'm at the fence, Vanya. We need to go to a secure channel."
Vanya laughed. "Why? Are you afraid the reactor operators might find out that the crumbs are at the gate?"
"I'm going secure," said Kostya, ignoring him. A few moments later Vanya clicked in.
"What's so important?"
"Do you remember the fighter base, southwest of Artem?" asked Kostya.
"Sure," Vanya said. "It's long gone now."
"Not all of it. I can see one of their storage bunkers. The crumbs have mined everything around it so that it's raised on a mound of earth, but something is keeping them away from the structure itself."
The radio went silent. Kostya could almost hear the man think, and was about to ask if something was wrong when Vanya responded.
"That's impossible. There's plenty of metal in there, and if it's weapons storage there will be nitrogen-based chemicals too, things they would never ignore. You're seeing things, Kostya. We'll have the psychiatrist take a look at you once you repair the fence."
"Listen. The tiger made it through them without any defenses. Now we see a bunker that hasn't been touched, stayed there for all these years. There's something going on. It's important."
"So what?" Vanya asked. "It's not like anyone can go out there. Let it go, Kostya, it's that kind of curiosity that got us here in the first place. You and the other egghead geniuses, nothing more than a bunch of murderers."
Murderers. It was one of the more tame insults and Kostya took a deep breath, willing himself not to get angry. "We can go out. I can. I'll just need a harness cart and incinerator gel. Trust me on this one, Vanya, if there's something out there that they're afraid of, we've got to try and get it."
Kostya fought to contain his frustration, one that he had felt ever since Vanya -- who seemed to enjoy the fact that he, an uneducated security guard, wielded so much power over scientists -- had assumed control of technical personnel. If he pushed too hard, Vanya would freeze up, wouldn't budge no matter how much sense Kostya's arguments made and then would turn the logic into a reason for instituting greater controls over scientific teams, calling on the chief administrator to approve more oversight of their work, because if Vanya couldn't understand why something had to be done, it must be something bad for their little colony. Sense had little to do with Vanya.
It took the man more than a minute to respond. "You've finally gone nuts, haven't you? I'm coming out now, hold there and don't do a damn thing. Vanya. Out."
#
It hadn't taken long to convince him -- once Vanya saw the bunker for himself -- and now that it was time, Kostya felt alone. The burn team formed a semicircle behind him, ready to flame any crumbs that tried to make it through and Vanya stood to the side, commenting to nobody that the dust had gotten thicker. Kostya no longer saw the bunker's glint.
"Remember," Vanya said. "We'll switch off the power until you get out, but move quickly. If those things start coming, we'll flame and I don't care if you get torched or not."
"I understand," said Kostya. He shrugged into the harness cart -- a small, four-wheeled powered wagon, attached by a carbon-fiber line to a backpack harness. He picked up his incinerator. A long hose ran from it to the cart, upon which sat a pump and two huge tanks of gel, and Kostya prayed that it would be enough to get him to the bunker and back. But just as he was about move out, Kostya froze. What the hell was he doing? It almost made him laugh that he had gone so far in preparations, to the point of moving into the land of crumbs, before self-preservation instincts kicked-in, warning that he was committing suicide, and of course Vanya had agreed with the plan because what did he care if a know-it-all, bio-weapons scientist died at the hand of his own creation? They'd laugh about the way he had died, referring to "Kostya the fool" as they got drunk, not "Kostya the hero." But Kostya willed his hands to stop trembling and ignored the twinge of pain from his leg when the logical side finally took over, reminding him that he was dead anyway, and it may as well come to him now rather than later. When he was ready, he nodded.
"Cut the power," said Vanya, and as soon as one of his men gave the signal he shouted. "Go!"
Kostya pushed through. The crumbs must have noticed the change because a tide of them moved closer, resembling a low wave about to roll over Kostya's feet. At first his cart got stuck in the wires. Kostya cursed and gave up trying to free it, swinging his incinerator to shoot a sweeping burst of flame, and he sighed with relief when the closest line of them erupted into a cloud of sparks.
"Go!" Vanya shouted again. Kostya looked back and saw that one of them had untangled the cart, while Ludmilla barked wildly, her handler barely able to hold her back, and Kostya fought the urge to retreat inside the fence to safety, to wrap both arms around Ludy and take her for one of their rare walks on the beach. The crumbs never went into the salt water; they avoided it, the same way they had avoided whatever was on the tiger. At first he and the other scientists thought it was the potential for corrosion that kept them away, but later they discovered that it was a combination of things, strong current and communications problems, that made the ocean a crumb-free zone. Kostya shook his head clear; thinking wouldn't help him to the bunker so he pushed forward, determined to make it if for no other reason than to show Vanya, all of them, that they had been wrong and that getting there and back was possible. And just before Kostya's headset cut into static -- the crumbs' radio communications overwhelming his own -- Vanya sent him a final message. "Don't stop. Keep moving and shoot a quick burst into the air so we know when you get there. Don't stop."
He moved in a blur, the sight of them on all sides making Kostya shake again. Seven miles is no detour, he reminded himself, laughing mentally at the old proverb. For a mad dog. The things moved around him, sensing the metal of his cart and trying to push in, and it was all he could do to hose the area clean with flame. Sometimes he lost sight of his destination. The uneven ground folded and dipped, so that he would have to fight his way down a gentle slope and up the other side, thanking God once he reached a point where he again saw the bunker. By the time he arrived, Kostya had emptied one tank and had already worked his way through part of the the second.
"Vanya," he said, "Can you hear me?" The area at the bunker's base was higher than he originally thought, but free of crumbs, and Kostya supposed the slight altitude increase might make radio communications possible. "Vanya."
Vanya's voice came intermittently through the static. " . . . can't see you, Kostya, but can hear . . ."
"I made it. Don't want to waste gel on a signal. Out." There's not enough left for the return anyway, he realized, and pushed the thought from his mind.
The bunker sat high on a mesa-like section of ground, which was only as wide as the structure itself, leaving a narrow strip of dirt in front of the main door. Getting up the steep slopes with his cart was difficult. But getting the door open proved even harder. Rollers, fused to their axles with rust, screamed and Kostya had to lean almost horizontally to force the panel far enough for him to enter. He held his breath. The bunker's darkness seemed dangerous -- held something that even the crumbs wouldn't approach -- and when he stepped through the doorway it took his eyes a few moments to adjust, moments in which he nervously fingered the flame unit's trigger.
Ammunition. Row after row of it stretched into the gloom, a narrow shaft of light piercing the shadows to highlight a beam of fine dust. The dust was everywhere, he realized. White powder coated the floor and shelves, and every movement seemed to raise clouds of it, as though the material was weightless. Something tugged at the back of his mind again, that same sense of unease that had come with seeing the tiger. He knew what this was. It wasn't right, there shouldn't have been that much dust and the color was just . . . When the realization hit him, Kostya nearly panicked.
On his left side stood metal shelves that rose from the floor and ran to the ceiling, within which rotting wooden cradles held bomb after bomb, their noses painted a brilliant red. On his right side rested stacks of plastic crates. Kostya reached out and lifted the top off one and saw three artillery shells nestled inside, their skins painted flat olive green. A symbol had been stenciled on their sides, and Kostya flicked on his helmet light so he could see more clearly, wiping a thin layer of dust off to reveal words.
He yanked his hand back, and nearly jumped when the lid slammed shut. It was too late. Kostya felt a sense of terror when he saw that the bunker's dust had already attached itself to his suit, turning the black fabric dull grey. This, he thought, might be even worse than crumbs.