“Check your ammo!” I shout, and toss Pennies’ old pistol to Oleg. I’m breaking my own rules about guns in inexperienced hands, but at this point we don’t have the luxury for rules.
My best guess is that they’re working their way down the first escalator. Sneak grabs my arm. She’s signing frantically and I’m shaking my head. Her fingers become more insistent. She has a plan, but it’s too risky, and I shake my head at her. The others are watching, but don’t have a clue as to what Sneak and I are talking about. That’s when Sneak takes off up the escalator.
“Sneeeaaak!” I scream, but I know it isn’t any use.
She’s halfway up when the first glowing-eyed Zee comes charging down. I swing my repeater around. His arms are outstretched, but Sneak doesn’t slow down; she means to go through with this. I squeeze off a short burst, hitting the Zee in the chest and knocking him down. Sneak runs past him and he tries to grab hold of her. I’ve missed his head, and he’s back on his feet, giving chase. Another Zee reaches the top of the escalator, and I put one right between his eyes. Sneak disappears, but I can hear her trying to make noise as she goes. She’s leading them away, but I’m terrified they’re going to catch her somewhere in the darkness, and she’ll die all alone, unable to cry for help.
It’s hard to estimate how many Zees peel off to chase Sneak through the complex. The thought of racing after her almost hits critical mass, and another group comes pouring over the edge of the escalator. There’s so damned many, and by the time the first one reaches the clearing, all I can see is a river of Zees stretching into the darkness.
Jinx is lobbing grenades from his launcher. He’s timed the fuse to detonate right above their heads, cutting gaping holes in their ranks. The rest of us are waiting until they get closer. Reminds me of those pictures of how men fought hundreds of years ago, rows of them lined up with muskets.
“Wait for it!” I shout.
Twenty yards.
Glave’s got his pistol pointed right at them, his hand bucking with nerves.
Ten yards.
I can see the details of their glowing eyes and leathery skin now. One female Zee has a formal gown on. She’s got a net covering her matted hair, and it looks like she might’ve been wearing a wig at one time. They’re all wearing gold watches and expensive jewelry, and I can’t help but think of Pennies. And as much as I try, I can’t tune their horrible hissing out of my head. I stick the repeater’s butt right under my chin.
“Not yet!” I shout.
Ret looks over at me and gasps. “Azina...Your eyes...They’re glowing.”
-23-
Five yards.
Bron starts to turn my way when I give the order to fire. Suddenly, our little dead-end erupts with violent flashes of light and deafening gunfire. Zees disintegrate before us like snowflakes hitting wet ground.
Bron unleashes his 20mms, and the floor beneath us trembles from the concussion. The sound of pure destruction, rhythmic and exhilarating. Each round cuts through a dozen Zees. Heads torn clean off, bodies chopped in half.
But some other part of me feels a pinprick of pain as each Zee drops, as though someone were driving searing needles into my flesh. With each dying Zee, a flickering light has been extinguished and I’m distinctly aware of each one.
Bron sweeps back and forth, and it’s a miracle that anything can live through such an awesome hail of fire. His 20mms choke up. Bron’s arms are glowing red. He’s overheated. Two spring-loaded blades eject from his palms and he wades into the remaining Zees, arms swinging, and in the dim light all I see are two sunsets arcing through the air.
My repeater clicks empty. There’s no time to pop in another clip. Out comes the Katana. There’s a Zee going for Ret, and I bring the blade straight down on the top of the thing’s head. Its legs buckle, and it drops. Those pinpricks of pain are still there, and all I can do is ignore them, or we’re all dead. I move into the group and hack another dozen, and I realize they’re ignoring me completely. The patch of rough skin growing up my side has spread, and I’m aware that it’s made its way up to my neck.
Ret’s busy unleashing hell with his automatic shotgun. I can’t help but notice him swivel to watch me every few seconds, and I’m sure it’s my glowing eyes he’s looking at.
I glance back to see a Zee in a cook’s uniform heading for Oleg. The old man is pulling the trigger on his pistol and nothing’s happening. I yank the knife from my boot and fling it through the air. The edge sinks into the puffy part of the cook’s hat, and the Zee’s dead before it hits the ground.
It takes us a few more minutes, and the last of them are no longer a threat. A number of Zees are little more than torsos, and Bron happily makes his way through the growing pile, finishing them off with the blade on his arm.
I hear another group approaching, and it sounds like this one’s even bigger than the last. We’re lucky that no one’s been hurt or killed, and I’m sure that luck won’t last another onslaught. “Jinx!” I shout. “We need to get through these doors.”
He slides his pack off and reaches in. “I have just the thing.” He smiles at me. It’s a charge of C4. Old world ordnance, but it gives a nice kick and should do the job just fine.
I scan the darkness above. Still no sign of Sneak.
Ret touches my arm. His glare is intense and questioning, but my eyes are back to normal, I can feel it. Either way, he knows, and you don’t need the brains of a Keeper to realize he’s not sure what to do about it. I run this crew, but if I become a danger, Ret’s my second and he won’t have much choice but to take me down.
-24-
Jinx pulls the trigger on his detonator and one of the doors blows off its hinges. The Zees are at the top of the escalator now and we hurry through the opening. When we’re all through, I realize the problem. Jinx’s heavy hand has taken the door clean off. Now we have nothing to keep the Zees out. Bron snatches the mangled door off the ground and sets it back in place, but it’s so bent out of shape it barely fits. Behind us is a counter, which Bron rips from the floor and jams against the opening to keep the door in place.
I should feel better seeing the barricade go up, but instead I have this sinking feeling, like we’re never gonna see Sneak again. Part of me wants to go out there and fight through the Zees to find her. The other part of me knows full well that would be suicide.
That’s when I notice Glave’s hand is covered in blood. He’s pulled it away from his tunic where there’s a deep red stain on the shoulder. Oleg takes a step backward.
“Check that wound, Ret,” I say. Personally, I’m not convinced it’s a bite. Glave could just as well have shot himself during the battle or been hit by a piece of shrapnel when the door blew.
Ret peels back Glave’s tunic, and the expression on his face leaves no doubt. Judging by the proximity to his head, he doesn’t have more than a few minutes before he begins to turn.
Outside, the first Zees have made it to the barricade. This time, it won’t be like it was in the movie theater. With the sheer weight of their bodies pushing against our makeshift door, it’s just a question of time before it’ll give way.
I see a glint off of Bron’s blade. He’s about to put an end to Glave.
“Wait a minute!” I shout. “Glave doesn’t have any symptoms yet.”
“Maybe not,” Bron says, “but you saw the others, Azina. It’s only a matter of time.”
Glave seems to agree with Bron. “I don’t want to turn into one of those things,” he says.
“You won’t,” I assure him. Glave may have less than ten minutes. It’s one thing to hack into a Zee like he’s nothing more than a bag of meat, and it’s something else entirely to kill a man in cold blood.
“I say we wait.” I look over. It’s Ret, and he throws a look that tells me I better know what I’m doing.
I don’t, but I’ll be the first to pull the trigger if I see the slightest sign that Glave’s about to turn.
We shift our attention to this new area we’
re in and my breath catches in my throat. It looks like the pictures of old train stations I’ve seen in Sotercity. Two sets of tracks are laid out in even parallel lines. I shift my light and see that the tracks stop before a steel vault on my right that must be a hundred feet high. Even from here we can see the massive vault door is open. We head that way. A single, sleek-looking train sits on the farthest set of tracks. As we get closer, I see that things are strewn about haphazardly. Wooden crates have been toppled over, their contents covering the ground. The cargo is all the same – clear cases housing small, shiny discs.
We’re looking at a scene that must have played out over two hundred years ago, and the sight of it is eerie and disquieting. The toppled crates paint an unsettling picture of how the complex’s main lifeline became the very thing that killed it. And all it probably took were a few dozen Zees breaching this train tunnel. The way things seem to have been dropped, it was something the complex designers hadn’t anticipated. Either way, at some point, all hell had broken loose.
I motion to Ret and Bron. “I need you both to inspect that tunnel and make sure it’s not blocked or crawling with Zees.”
The two of them turn to head off, and suddenly the right side of my body feels like it’s on fire. I stagger and sink to one knee, and Jinx grabs my elbow.
“Azina, this has gone too far. You need help.”
He’s probably right, but that voice in my ear is clearer now. The muffled quality from before is gone, and for the first time I can make out parts of what it’s saying.
It sounds like gibberish. “BACK DASH FORWARD DOT DOT LINE HORIZONTAL LINE UP LEFT.”
It’s some kind of code, and the logical side of my brain doesn’t equate it to a damn thing, but on some prehistoric, subterranean level, I know exactly what it means. What sounds like gibberish is a set of instructions broadcast to all Zees within range. It has something to do with us. Whatever’s sending that signal doesn’t want us to leave.
-25-
Oleg is anxious to make it into the library. I rise to my feet and pull him close to me. “I’ve been thinking about your Hive comment from before. Do you really think they could be communicating with one another on some mental wavelength we’re unaware of?”
Oleg seems annoyed by my question. I’m sure all he wants is to head into the library. I squeeze his arm to let him know this is important.
He sighs. “Ants give off a chemical signal called pheromones that identify them to their group. But that’s not to say instructions are sent via telepathy, per se. Even flocks of birds and schools of fish use a process called emergent behavior, where subtle movements made by individuals are picked up.”
I feel that hand on my shoulder again, nudging me forward. When I turn around, Jinx has his head turned to our makeshift barricade, watching it buckle. Beside him is Glave, and his face is bone white. I notice one of his eyes twitching, and for a moment I wonder if he can also hear the instructions broadcast over the Zee airwaves.
“Let’s make this fast.” I say, and we head inside.
We find row after row of shelves. Each one lined with hundreds, maybe thousands, of discs. There are words on each shelf from top to bottom, all in the old tongue, and I can’t make sense of it. Oleg, on the other hand, looks like a kid at Christmas. He’s already got a stack of discs in his arms, all the way up to his chin. I just hope he has some machine capable of reading these things.
“What are they?” I ask.
“Digital Video Disks. They were used to store vast amounts of information.”
“Like a book?”
“Yes, except each one of these can hold thousands of books.”
I shake my head. “They sure don’t look like much.”
From behind me comes a thudding noise, like a sack full of beef being dropped on the ground. I turn. Glave has collapsed to the floor. He isn’t shaking yet, not the way Pennies had, but it’s becoming harder to cling to the dim hope that he’ll pull through.
Glave looks up at me and whispers. “He’s outside with the others...”
“Glave’s losing his mind,” Jinx says. “Azina, we don’t have a choice anymore. We gotta waste him.”
“Not yet.”
Oleg’s standing there, his mouth hanging open, probably expecting Glave’s eyes to start glowing.
“Oleg.” I snap my fingers. “Take what you can carry ‘cause we’re leaving.”
I’m dragging Glave by the arm, and I see Bron waving at me from the mouth of the tunnel. Judging by the big, goofy smile on his face I’m guessing he and Ret have found something useful.
I hear a terrifying sound and the timing couldn’t be worse – the clang of the metal door being flung onto the ground. Our barricade has just given way. Ahead of us is the train tunnel and home. On our left is the parked train, and just over that, the now shattered barricade. We begin to run and I can just make out Zees pouring into the station. My first thought is that they look like ants, but maybe that’s because of what Oleg just said about emergent-whatever. They can’t come directly at us, since the train is in the way, but solve that problem by simply going around. Half of them stream off toward the vault and around the front of the train, and the others toward the tunnel itself.
Jinx lobs a few grenades to stall them. Fat chance, although it’s worth a shot. Up ahead, blinding flashes erupt from Bron’s heavy guns. Unlike before, he’s being careful, trying to conserve his ammo. For a second, I allow my mind to consider the trouble we’ll be in if his guns fall silent for good, and the thought terrifies me.
Then I see something emerge through the doorway. The Hive leader. I know it’s him because his skin is blood red and he’s a full foot taller than the others. The right side of my body feels like it’s going to burn through my clothing. That hand that had been nudging me forward all this time is now pushing me backwards. He wants me to stay and I feel like I’m fighting through violent gale force winds. I look down and see Glave. His free arm is swinging wildly, trying to snag Oleg’s cloak. The skin on his face is brown and wrinkled. He’s turned. No doubt about it and I know there’s no use avoiding what needs to be done any longer. I put him to rest by sending the tip of the Katana through his skull and into the concrete floor. Nice and fast. He deserves nothing less.
Jinx and Oleg are ahead of me. A sea of mangled Zees lies before Bron and Ret. Some of them aren’t quite dead. The torso of a man in a business suit pulls itself toward them. It’s nearly a foot from Ret when he notices it and turns the man’s head inside out with the shotgun.
Oleg and Jinx reach the edge of the track and jump. Oleg lands awkwardly on his ankle and half the discs in his arms spill to the ground. He stops to gather them back up. Jinx grabs him by the collar and pulls him along.
I haven’t even made it to the edge yet. I feel like I’m running in slow motion and for a moment I’m sure this is a nightmare and I’ll wake up any second.
Ret and Bron retreat into the tunnel. They climb onto some contraption I’ve never seen before. A kind of device on wheels, with a teeter-totter. Looks like something people use to get water out of the ground. Except here, pumping the lever makes the wheels turn. It’s taking time to build up momentum; Jinx, Oleg and I will have to jump on while it’s moving.
I finally reach the tracks and jump down. My feet hit the gravel running. Then, I realize Jinx isn’t going to make it. There’s a Zee right on his heels. I swing my repeater around, pop in a fresh magazine and squeeze the trigger. Oleg’s a few feet away and so I’ve got to aim carefully. One round hits the Zee’s chest and the rest ricochet off the walls. My next burst is lower, and it chews up his legs. He tumbles to the ground, but that’s good enough for now. Oleg makes it to the cart and slides onboard with his few remaining discs.
Jinx is tired and slowing down, the pack of Zees are closing the distance. I pull out the Katana and swing left, hoping to cut them off. I can see Ret ahead, pumping that lever furiously, screaming at me to run. His face is filled with frustration. He doesn’t und
erstand why I’m so slow. “Run, Azina!” I’m almost certain he’s about to jump down and help me, but he can’t stop working that lever or he’ll risk everyone’s life. The pain in his eyes is heartbreaking.
I don’t need to look behind me to know the Hive leader is doing his best to get inside my head. There are two of me now. Azina the Merc, running for her life and racing to stop these bastards from cutting down her friends, and Azina the Zee, eager to be a good drone and do whatever Papa Zee says.
Three of them grab hold of Jinx and I don’t think I can get there fast enough. Jinx curses and flings his grenade launcher to the ground and tries to shake them off. I swing at the Zee closest to me and watch the blade cut an almost invisible line through the back of his skull. It’s a killing blow. I know it even before his legs give out and he collapses. Then I realize it’s already too late; the Zee on Jinx’s right has its teeth buried in his forearm. Jinx shrieks and falls.
The others look on in horror, unable to do a damn thing but build up enough speed to get out of here.
I get to Jinx a second later. I know he won’t make it, not with the horde so close behind us. There’s only one thing to do. I swing down and then up again, killing both Zees. Even for me, the movements are seamless and beautiful. I don’t have the heart to hear them tearing Jinx apart, and I save the final blow for him. When I turn, I can see Ret and the others shouting, but their voices sound muffled and distant. It’s the other voice I hear now, the new voice, but my legs are still running.
Seven Zees.
That’s how many it takes before I crash headfirst into a patch of gravel. They aren’t biting me. Just holding me in place. My face hurts like a bitch and my vision’s a blurry mess, but it’s enough for me to make out hundreds of them leaping over us as they give chase to a small group of men on a strange cart. I watch as they become smaller and smaller before disappearing.
Hive Page 6