by Peter Clines
“I was really hoping they’d send more,” Jamie murmured to Mike.
“Maybe you should get out of here,” he said. “There’s nothing more for you to do.”
“It’s our project,” Olaf said.
“I think you all need to leave,” said Black. “This is a combat situation now. Fall back to the door, at least.” He looked at Mike, then down at the two Marines taping a charge against the ring.
The view through the rings drifted and blurred. Just for a moment it was Site B again. Then it was the empty lot behind the remains of Site B. And then it was the sprawling desert and the charging creatures again.
“Jesus,” said Dylan. “What was that?”
“The fold’s unstable,” said Mike. “The other end of the tunnel is flailing around between different realities.”
Weaver looked up at him. “What?”
Black shot a glance at them and the two Marines went back to their explosives.
“Fuck me,” said Sasha. “They’re on this side of the canyon. They all just kind of lunged forward half a mile or so when it flickered.”
“Done,” said Dylan. Weaver pressed one last small clump of putty into a gap behind the last charge. They stood up.
“Let’s fall back,” said Black with another look at the approaching figures. Over two dozen were visible now, and more shadows moved in the dust cloud. “Sir, I need all of you to evacuate the building now.” Sasha hopped off the pathway down to the floor. Mike opened his mouth to respond and something changed in his peripheral vision. On the other side of the rings, the middle charge had vanished. The loops of tape were gone. There weren’t even any trails of sticky residue left on the carapace.
Jamie was about to hop down and saw his face. “What?”
“Problems.”
She turned and followed his gaze. So did Black.
“Son of a bitch,” said Weaver. “Where’d it go?”
“Fuck me,” Sasha said.
Black glared at Mike, then at each of the others in turn.
Mike looked at Dylan and Weaver. “Will two charges be enough there?”
They traded a look between them. Weaver shrugged. “It should,” she said. “Ten pounds’d take out that whole wall if you placed it right, and we’ve still got thirty-six on this thing.”
He looked at Black. “Do it.”
“When you’re clear. We’ll hold position until—”
“We’ve got time to get clear,” snapped Olaf. “Blow the damned thing and let’s go.”
The sound of feet rumbled out of the Door. It was the noise of a herd. A stampede. They were less than a mile away.
“Five minutes, sir,” shouted Duncan.
A healthy man could do a five-minute mile. Mike had no idea how fast a four-legged animal could cover the distance, but he was sure it was less.
“I’ve got another charge,” said Weaver. “A spare.”
Black looked at the approaching horde. “How fast?”
She didn’t answer, just pulled the last bundle from her bag.
Black grabbed Mike by the shoulder and pushed him down the ramp. “All of you,” he said, reaching for Sasha, “go now.”
Mike stumbled on the ramp, and his eyes fell to the floor. He caught the movement on the concrete. He watched for three seconds to be sure. His pattern recognition skills were very good.
“The roaches,” he said.
Black half-glanced over his shoulder. “What about them?”
“They’re all moving away from the rings.”
Dylan looked back. Black turned around. Jamie and Olaf took a few more steps down the ramp and looked out at the main floor.
The green cockroaches still scurried between tool chests and furniture, but they’d moved far back. The closest ones were almost ten feet from the base of the ramp. Even as Mike watched, their paths retreated a little more.
“Fuck me,” Sasha said again.
One of them stopped between the workstations and bent its antennae toward the rings. The tips gleamed like tiny fiber-optic lines. They bent forward, back, forward, and then the cockroach turned and raced away.
“What’s it mean?” said Black.
“It means we need to do this now,” said Mike.
The captain took in a breath and nodded. “You heard the man, sergeant.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dylan. Behind him, Weaver swept her tools and leftovers back into her bag. She let out a sharp breath that fell somewhere between a whistle and a hiss. It was the sound of something moving fast through the air.
Dylan kicked himself away from the rings. He went off the edge and crashed to the floor in front of his fellow Marines. His body rolled to the side and the spear in his chest clattered against the concrete. His body armor bulged in the back where it kept the spear tip from bursting through.
Another blur of white shot through the rings. It hit the back wall with a crack and dropped to the floor. The next one tore through Olaf’s sleeve before burying itself a foot into one of the tool chests.
Mike grabbed Jamie and pulled her down. Sasha threw herself on the floor. Olaf lunged off the platform and landed gracefully in a crouch. Weaver dropped flat on the pathway and rolled until she dropped off the platform and crashed on top of Sasha.
Black turned, and a spear went through the meat of his arm and into his ribs. Nine inches of the tip tore through his uniform on the other side of his body. It was barbed and bloody. His knees buckled and he fought to keep his balance with five feet of spear hanging off his arm. He coughed up a mouthful of blood and spat out the words “Blow it.”
Then a second spear passed through his hip with a crack of bone. He roared once and then sagged on the pathway. The spears kept his body from falling flat, holding him up in a slouched position that almost looked like a yoga pose.
The sound of footsteps shook the huge room. Dozens of spears flew through the ring and the heat haze around it. They rained through the air.
Mike and Jamie huddled in the corner between the ramp and the walkway. He looked beneath the ramp and saw Sasha, Olaf, and Weaver in the corner opposite them. Olaf was staring at something out on the floor. The spears hissed above them.
Three more Marines were dead, skewered by spears. A fourth slumped behind a tool chest and grunted back screams while he held his shattered and bloody arm. Two others let off shots from their rifles. One of them was Costello with his big automatic weapon.
The sound reflected off the concrete walls. Duncan yelled something that was lost in the thunderous echo. Inside Mike’s head, pattern recognition kicked out the word “sharp.”
The rumble of footsteps turned into a clang of steel as the bugmen charged out of the Door and launched themselves off the pathway. Black’s body slammed into the floor in front of Mike and Jamie, kicked aside by the invaders. The captain’s chin and chest were dark with blood he’d coughed up in his final moments.
The bugmen hurled themselves at the remaining Marines. Their cloaks spread like wings, casting shadows across the room. Some had spears. Some had their claw-like hands stretched out. All three of their hands.
They were caught in midair by high-velocity rounds. Some were torn apart. Others landed with enough life to drive their spears into their killers. Across the main floor, the roar of weapons and the howl of monsters fought to be the loudest sound.
Costello cut down five of the leaping creatures before his weapon ran dry. The sixth punched its spear down through his throat. The jagged head tore out between his shoulder blades, and the bugman rode his body down to the floor. It wrenched the spear free and stalked away. Blood bubbled and spit out of Costello’s mouth for a few moments while he died.
Dark blood sprayed across the floor. Spears and talons impaled the Marines. The few survivors fell back. Mike counted five of them. Jim Duncan was one.
Weaver rolled to her feet and brought her rifle up. She marched forward and shot three of the bugmen in the back. A fourth turned and she put a trio of rounds in its face.
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Olaf leaped up behind her. Sasha grabbed at him, but he shook her off. He loped up behind Weaver, heading for Dylan’s body.
Duncan and the other Marines got a cautious crossfire going. Two more bugmen dropped. Then one Marine’s weapon clacked empty and a monster pounced on him. They went down in a swirl of cloak and screams. Another, Sann, tried to switch magazines. A spear went straight through her right eye and out the back of her skull, shattering her helmet as it did.
One of the bugmen pulled a spear from one of the corpses and hurled the weapon back at Weaver. It flew straight through her stomach and struck Olaf in the shoulder. She managed to kill the creature with two more bursts before she dropped her rifle and clutched at her gut.
Olaf bit back a scream. The spear hung from his shoulder like a rod on a puppet. He flailed at Dylan’s body, stretching his fingers. Then another shaft hissed in the air and punched through his chest. He slumped. The spears held him up, forming a tripod with his spine.
Jamie shrieked into her hand.
Weaver tried to move. She took a few awkward steps to the side, clutching at the hole in her stomach. Blood gushed down from the matching hole in her back. It soaked through her uniform and splashed out onto the floor. She winced, her face paled, and she dropped to her knees in the puddle. Her shoulders slumped and her chin dipped down to her chest.
Mike saw it all. The ants carried out instant replays and freeze frames and assembled renderings for him to review. They tallied the dead and the living on both sides. Twenty-two dead monsters. Fourteen dead Marines. All committed to memory forever.
Four bugmen were still alive. Two of them were wounded. They were stalking the last two Marines.
Less than a minute had passed since the first spear impaled Dylan.
Black had a sidearm. It was in a holster on his hip. He’d never drawn it. It was twenty-three inches from Mike’s left hand.
Why had Olaf been reaching for Dylan’s body? What had he wanted? The Marine’s rifle was still up on the pathway where he’d dropped it, right next to…
The ants showed him the image from three different angles. He’d seen it when the first spear hit and when he’d grabbed Jamie’s forearm and when they were in mid-dive for cover.
Dylan’s rifle sat right next to the remote for the charges. Mike looked up through the expanded steel and saw the two outlines a few feet behind Sasha.
Three fast shots rang out, another rifle burst, and one of the bugmen roared. Another one dropped. Its skull had been pulped.
Over by the tool chests, Jim Duncan screamed as a spear was driven through his shoulder and down into his chest. The creature twisted its weapon, shredding his insides, but Mike’s former student managed to bring up his rifle. The bugman’s cloak rippled, caught in nine small breezes. The two bodies slumped together.
Two bugmen left. One Marine. According to Mike’s count, the last survivor was Banner, first initial J. According to her patch, she was a sergeant with type O positive blood.
Mike pointed out the remote to Jamie. He spread his fingers wide twice and mouthed “boom.” She understood. He waved his hand to Sasha. The movement caught her eye, and he repeated his simple sign language to her. She nodded as well.
Somewhere out on the floor, Marine sergeant J. Banner fired off two bursts with her rifle and died screaming.
Two, possibly only one, bugmen left.
Mike used his fingers to mime running, pointed at himself, and then pointed to the far side of the main floor. He would run toward the tanks, away from the door. They could grab the remote and run.
He reached out and slid Black’s pistol from its holster. It was heavier than he thought it would be. He twisted up onto his toes, kissed Jamie on the forehead, and lunged to his feet.
There were two creatures left. One had its hood up. The other one glared at him with three mismatched eyes.
Neither of them moved to follow him.
He heard the sound of feet in sand. Something pushed the smell of the desert at him through the air. And another scent came with it.
All the roaches were gone now. He couldn’t see one anywhere. They’d all fled, following the primal instructions hardwired into their simple brains.
Mike turned.
Something else came out of the Door.
FIFTY-ONE
The ants leaped into overdrive. They counted and cataloged and quantified. They gave him more details than he wanted to know.
The thing’s arm stretched out and lashed around the first ring. It had half a dozen cable-like fingers. Each of them had seven knuckles. They wrapped all the way around the broad ring like tentacles. The hand was on the end of a long, stitch-covered arm. Mike counted two elbows on the limb.
A second hand reached out and slapped itself down on the opposite side of the Door. And then a third hand reached out of the rings to grab alongside the first one.
Jamie skittered away from the ramp and almost crashed into Mike. Sasha did the same and ended up near Olaf’s impaled body. She shifted away, but the thing on the pathway held her gaze. “What the fuck is that?!”
The slender figure dragged itself through the Door. It was tall, with too many joints in its legs and arms. Mike saw black, ragged armbands on each limb. It took a moment to identify the lines as stitches. He saw the coarse threads and his ants pulled up an image of the bugman’s cloak.
Its limbs didn’t bend. They coiled like snakes as they sought purchase in the world, dragging a bent torso after them.
The creature pulled itself through the Door and stretched up to full height on the pathway.
Each leg consisted of multiple limbs sewn together end to end to make a single long one. Each had three knees. Each arm had been rebuilt the same way, with two elbows leading back to a swollen, stitch-covered shoulder. A third arm was sewn into place under the figure’s right armpit. The torso looked like two bodies stacked one on top of the other, with another line of coarse threads where hips met shoulders. There were five nipples and two navels. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like there were extra vertebrae in its neck. Its head looked tiny on such an overextended body.
The ants pulled up various anatomical images and jammed up as the conflicting facts told Mike how impossible the creature was. Such a thing couldn’t move. Such a thing couldn’t live.
It swayed on the pathway for a moment as it looked around the room. It took a few slow, wheezing breaths and clicked like the bugman had that morning. Then it turned its face to them.
It looked like it had been human once. Its upper lip had been cut into a dozen thin flaps, like a mustache of fleshy tendrils. Its hair had been pulled out, leaving scars and scabs across a bald head. One of its nostrils had been slit open to the bridge of the nose.
The right eye was gone. Two beady orbs glared out of the raw mess of the socket. Its lips pulled back into a smile that showed human teeth. Regular, normal teeth in a monster’s face.
The remains of the croissant he’d had hours ago swirled around in Mike’s stomach. The ants spun and thrashed and fought in his mind, searching for a point of reference. The only stable part, the only part not flailing to find something logical in the illogical monster, was focused on the detonator. He didn’t look at it. He didn’t want to draw attention to it.
The slender monster looked back over its shoulder and made a sound that fell somewhere between an angry laugh and a bark. Another cloaked, lopsided figure with a spear stepped through the Door. Then another one. And another.
The monster focused on Mike and leaned forward. Its two right hands let go of the ring. It balanced on the left arm as it dropped off the pathway. It landed on Black’s corpse, and something crunched in the body.
As it stepped away, two more bugmen came through the Door to fill the space it had left.
The patchwork man loomed over them. Mike had seen that expression on kids in the cafeteria. And pets at feeding time. It plucked the pistol from Mike’s hand, passed the weapon between its long-nailed fingers,
and tossed it over onto the workstation.
The creature’s gaze passed over Jamie and then Sasha. It sniffed the air around them twice, and what was left of its nose wrinkled as it did. It looked at Olaf’s body, propped up by spears, and ran one of its spidery fingers across the dead man’s scalp. It moved on to Weaver, touching and examining her slumped form before it placed a clawed digit against her temple and toppled her body into the surrounding moat of blood.
“Well, well, well,” it said. The voice was wet and lispy as it filtered out between the slashed lips, although Mike wasn’t sure if it was the lips or a certain…prissiness the voice had. An attempt to sound proper and important. The voice was uneven, as if it hadn’t spoken—or maybe hadn’t spoken English—in years. “This is looking to be a wonderful day.”
It straightened up and wrapped its arms back and forth across its chest. Its head tilted back, and it glared down the ruined nose at them. It made a few clicking noises like the bugmen, as if settling back into a more comfortable language.
One of the creatures gnashed its teeth. Three of the ones on the platform turned to the rings. The sound of ripping tape filled the main floor again. The four charges were pulled free. One of them was torn in half, and the bugman sniffed at the exposed material. It poked at the white putty with a clawed finger.
The patchwork man made another noise, and the cloaked figures vanished back through the Door with the explosives.
The remote still sat on the pathway. It had been knocked aside, closer to the base of the rings, but it looked undamaged. Dylan’s rifle had moved, too, and the stock was close enough to the device that, at a glance, they might pass for a single object.
But there were no more charges on the rings. One vanished, four taken away. Weaver hadn’t had time to attach her spare. Mike wasn’t sure where it had ended up. Or if it had a detonator in it. He’d seen a short video on C4 once. He knew it needed a detonator. Fire or gunshots wouldn’t set it off. Maybe the patchwork man knew that, too.