Emergence

by William Vitka

  But.

  We are the superior beings.

  We will set things right.

  “Holy shit. You’re insecure and jealous? Your superior asses are jealous of humans. Why? Because we didn’t have to sacrifice our entire species to learn what we know? Because we’re better at this than you? We won at evolution and you didn’t?

  “You’re coming back because you think you’re the true children of the ‘strings’ or whatever. You think you know what the strings want. And humans are learning too much. You’re some goofy bitches.”

  You know nothing, cocky worm. Nothing! Do not think with even one beat of your tiny heart that you can possibly understand what we are doing.

  So close.

  And. You. Will. Die.

  Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! hug your kin Die! Die! Die! Die! you Die! Die! are Die! all Die! Die! going Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! to Die! Infect! Die! going Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! Infect! Infect! Infect! to Die! Die! Die! Die! going Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! to Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! going Die! Die! Die! Die! to Infect! Infect! Infect! Die! Die! going Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! to Die! Infect! Infect! Infect! Infect! going

  Chapter 24: Long Hard Times to Come

  Caleb staggers to his feet.

  Spry enough for a guy who almost had his neck torn out moments before.

  The young Svoboda checks Catarina’s bandage job. Smirks.

  There’s no sense of embarrassment in him, even though he’s standing, pale, scrawny, and shirtless in front of an attractive woman several years his senior.

  The area’s still cooking. Hot. Oppressive. The carapace of a parasite pops with a splortch somewhere unseen behind the wall of fire that circles the three.

  Jack grabs Caleb. “Are you okay? Did Three tell you anything?”

  Caleb shakes his head. “Wasn’t Three. It was the others. They’re close.” He winces. Pokes the bandages. “Oh, also, they’re dicks. They say they hate us because humanity screwed up the world. Which is true... Can we talk about this later?”

  “Quantum radio shit, huh?”

  “Yeah. Knocks me out. Messes me up.”

  “Gives me bastard headaches. Man... The start of school. Halloween night. All of that. Either Three or the other ones. That squawking makes my brain hurt so bad I can barely walk.” Jack pauses. “Guess we know the source of Dad’s migraines now. Grandpa’s too.” He lights a cigarette.

  Caleb and Jack are quiet then.

  Catarina shrugs. “Doesn’t hurt me at all.”

  Jack and Caleb eyeball her.

  “Well, hellooo, Mrs. Fancy Pants,” Jack says.

  Catarina tosses Caleb his shirt and vest.

  Jack says, “A question for you, dear brother of mine. What good were those red chemical sticks? They didn’t keep the parasites away at all.”

  Caleb arches his brow at his older brother. “Yeah. They did.”

  Catarina folds her arms. “No. They didn’t. We’ve been fighting em tooth and nail since you collapsed. Hell, one almost tore your throat out.”

  Caleb looks around for a second. Checks to make sure he hasn’t missed something. He points to one of the sizzling creatures in the fire. “You talking about those things?”

  Jack says, “Yes, Caleb. We’re talking about those things. The crab spider mosquito flower fuckers.”

  Caleb hoists his pack onto his shoulder. “Those aren’t the parasites. Those are just... Crab spider mosquito flower fuckers.” He smiles. “No idea about them. I told you there’s a lot of wildlife down here.” He walks to the farthest reach of the chemical stick’s red glow. The very edge before total darkness.

  He waves them over.

  Jack and Catarina approach. Their weapons ready.

  Caleb bends down. Picks up some rocks. He tosses them at the ground a dozen feet from where they all stand. A dry plop for each thrown stone.

  “Dude,” Jack says. “We don’t have time for this.”

  “Actually, we do,” Caleb says.

  “Caleb—” Catarina starts.

  “Guys, it’s more impressive if you see them.” He smiles again. That weird boyish look of confidence. “Trust me.”

  He hurls a few more bits of rock.

  Plop. Plop. Plop.

  Caleb points. “Watch.”

  Thin legs twirl up from the cavern floor. Slow at first. Then the legs whirl in a circle with terrifying speed. An insectoid tornado.

  Jack takes a step forward into the dark. Curious.

  Caleb puts a hard hand to his older brother’s chest and pushes him back into the red glow.

  “Noted,” Jack says. Grim. Still holding the Colt at the ready.

  There’s an explosion of dust as the thing breaks through the maelstrom of its own hundred twirling legs. Dirt and dust fly high.

  Jack sees a thick, dark, living tube. The head’s similar to a lamprey. Eyeless. All teeth. A sucking mouth. Along its segmented body are striations of color. On each singular segment, ten legs whip and twirl. Long, strong, freakish appendages.

  The monster emerges fully. It prowls. All twenty feet of it. In the dark.

  Jack notices a stinger on the beast’s tail.

  It turns toward the three humans. Detects either movement or heat or heartbeat.

  It charges.

  Jack raises his gun. Catarina her sparkling flamethrower.

  Caleb holds them both back. Just wait. Watch.

  The tartarean insect rushes them. Then slows as it approaches the red glow of the chemical stick. It halts a few feet away. Refuses to cross the blurry line of light where darkness bleeds into red.

  Caleb folds his arms. He’s satisfied. “That is a parasite. A kind of burrower that can piggyback on larger creatures and influence em.”

  The squirming horror chitters on the other side of the light. It paces back and forth. Annoyed at having been duped. Annoyed that a warm, delicious meal is so close but so far. Pulses shiver down its body, setting off its legs in order, making them dance. A Slinky centipede.

  Catarina says, “Any compelling argument for this thing’s existence?”

  Caleb says, “Nope.”

  Jack grins. “Good.”

  Catarina lets loose with her flamethrower. Jack lets loose with high-caliber thunder.

  Bullets impact the parasite’s side. Blow off limbs. Chunks of its head. Flames eat up its legs and the flesh around its all-teeth mouth.

  The parasite curls in on itself. Mewls like a wounded animal. It sizzles. Pops.

  When its legs stopped shaking, Caleb says, “Now we just need to avoid the pale things.”

  They march.

  * * *

  An hour passes. A hard hour of climbing and crawling and shoving their tired bodies through rocky edifices. Down, down, down. Impossible to tell how far they’ve gone. For the first time in their lives, not even the distinct rumble of a subway train is heard.

  Pure, horrible silence. Punctuated by the chufs of their footsteps. Their grunts of exertion. The cries of odd unseen creatures that call out around them.

  Caleb’s in the lead. Catarina walks the middle. Jack covers the rear.

  The Tribe tapes chemical sticks to their legs and their packs. It makes them look like broken Christmas ornaments. But it keeps the real parasites at bay.

  Still, the monsters make themselves known. Out in the dark that surrounds them. Pulsing their hundred legs. Flashing their bioluminescence.

  The Tribe gets the distinct impression that they’re being watched by something other than the plants and the parasites. Something new. Something pale and naked and skinny.

  Watched?

  A better word is: stalked.

  Catarina glimpses one while she squeezes through a tight section of the cavern. The thing stares from high above. Outside the reach of the red chemical sticks’ glow. Its body clings to the stone. Affixed there like a gecko. It glares.

  She sees the outline of its shape. Its enormous eyes are huge orbs crammed into a mammalian skull. />
  She blinks.

  It’s gone.

  Jack hears the scratching noises of the pale things’ movement. He draw his machine. Realizes a moment after pulling the Colt that firing it could be catastrophic. Not only because it might deafen them in these close quarters. Or ricochet fatally around. Or bring unwanted attention. But also because it’s possible there are a few shaky rocks up there in the dark. And if those fall from the sound vibrations, this whole endeavor will be doomed.

  It’d be a stupid way to die.

  No bang bang here, Jack thinks. He holsters the Colt.

  The Tribe waits, sandwiched between walls of rock and Stygian darkness above. They listen. Hope for another sign of the pale things.

  Nothing. Just claustrophobia and stone. A few growls.

  Jack looks to Catarina and then beyond her to Caleb.

  The boy nods. Keep moving.

  Caleb and Catarina slink forward.

  Jack, bigger, makes slower time. But he manages. All while keeping an ear on the hesitant creatures’ steps behind him.

  He wonders why nobody else hears the bastard following them. Is it the hyper-sensitive Red that alerts him? Or is it a matter of distance and the way sound travels in this weird cavern? Maybe they’re ignoring it. Maybe Caleb and Catarina just want to move.

  Doesn’t matter, Jack thinks. Doesn’t matter one goddamn bit. Just keep your ears open and one eye on it.

  He turns his head to look. Sees the shape standing there. Outside the reach of the chemical sticks’ glow. It’s little more than an apparition. Dim outline in red. Tall and thin. Spindly. Its gaunt chest rises and falls in a jerky, palsied way. All the skin is tight against bone. A skeleton dipped in candle wax.

  The shape inhales. Exhales. Ragged breaths. A sick sound. Thick, phlegm-filled lungs being pumped full and then released.

  Its eyes are their own horror. Huge. Orbs of pure white with a black hole of dark pupil in the center. The pupils expand and become manhole covers. Dilate the way the eyes of something used to darkness would.

  They speak in a terrible, silent way, I’m hungry.

  Jack grits his teeth. Lowers his head. Stares the pale thing down the way an animal might. He doesn’t know if the light will keep this particular subterranean creature at bay.

  He slides back between the rock. Toward Caleb and Catarina. The dome of red light moves with him.

  The pale thing moves along with the light’s outermost reach.

  The monster is less hesitant now. Despite Jack’s hope that his combative stance will make it afraid. Or at least make it back off.

  It walks. Slow. Calm. Forever staring at Jack from the darkness.

  The situation makes Jack nervous. When Jack gets nervous, he gets angry. “Better stay on your side of the lawn, asshole.”

  Caleb and Catarina make it to the other side of the fissure. They taunt him.

  Catarina says, “Come on, big boy. We’re through.”

  “Yeah, Jack. Move your butt,” Caleb says.

  Jack turns toward his Tribe. The hint of red glow on the other side of the crack. He hopes he can take his eyes off the pale thing without getting his dick bitten off. “I don’t mean to alarm you fine folks, but I may have a situation on my hands.”

  He turns back.

  The creature waits just outside the light.

  Caleb says, “What kind of situation?”

  Jack grunts. Tears his shoulder open against an unseen sharp point. “Uh... A pale thing kind of situation.” He feels a trickle of blood.

  The creature perks its nose up. Sniffs the air.

  He can hear Caleb and Catarina scramble on the other side of the fissure exit. He sees their red-bathed faces appear between the stone walls. He gauges his distance from them. About twenty-five feet. Far given his current speed.

  Not so good.

  He looks again to the creature.

  It enters the protective dome of red light.

  Confident sonuvabitch.

  Jack shouts, “Definitely have a situation.” He increased his fervent efforts to push himself through the tight walls of the crack. So does the pale thing. Jack ignores it. Focuses on the faces of his Tribe.

  Caleb flips on a flashlight. Shines it toward Jack. Blinds him.

  He rakes himself against another sharp outcropping. Draws more blood. “Fuckin hell. Trying to destroy my retinas?”

  “No. But you better hurry,” Caleb says. “And don’t look behind you.”

  “Why would you even say that? Now of course I’m gonna turn around.” Jack follows Caleb’s bouncing beam of white light.

  Behind him isn’t a single pale thing, but dozens of pale things. A vile congregation of skinny monsters amble forward. The pupils of their huge eyes shrink to pinpricks as Caleb’s light hits them.

  Some walk in a line through the crack. Some slither around the legs of others. More crawl on the walls above.

  It’s an infestation.

  They sniff at the air. Smell Jack’s blood.

  “Hurry,” Catarina yells.

  Jack says, “Really? Really? What do you think I’m doing? Ordering a pizza?” He unholsters the Colt out of instinct. Watches one of the pale things crawl close to his feet.

  He sneers.

  The thing opens its mouth. The heat of its horrid breath hisses out. It unhinges its jaw. Shows Jack just how big a meal it can devour with knife teeth: a man-sized meal.

  Jack cocks the hammer on his machine. Levels it.

  He gives the skinny shit a second to see what the creature will do. It hesitates at the sight of the gun. Like it knows what the Colt is. Jack wonders about their origin. Maybe subhumans who used to be, or could’ve been, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters.

  Except they ain’t anything like that anymore.

  “Good boy,” Jack says. He keeps sliding toward Caleb and Catarina. “You and your pals just stay put. Don’t get any closer.”

  The thing sits on its haunches. Its enormous eyes lock on his.

  “Good boy,” Jack says again. Gun trained on it. He gains some ground on the horde. Little farther and he’ll be out.

  He’s less than ten feet from the fissure mouth. Ten feet from salvation.

  His brain suddenly remembers a scene from Jurassic Park.

  He hears something above him.

  Where the big bad hunter thinks he’s got the drop on a pack of velociraptors.

  He hears Catarina scream his name.

  But it turns out one velociraptor is just baiting the poor bastard while another is flanking to eat his head.

  Jack snaps his hand up. Sees a pale thing jump at him. Fires.

  The gun shot is deafening.

  A heavy .45 slug soars. It hits the pale thing in the neck. The bullet tears its head clean off. The skull falls past the elder Svoboda. Rolls back and forth spurting juice. Jack stomps on its cranium. Pops its eyes like rotten melons.

  Rocks above rumble. Small stones pelt Jack.

  He retrains the Colt on the stalking creature that tried to trick him. “Bad dog.”

  The pale thing attacks. Its distended jaw clamps around the Colt, catching Jack’s hand in the process.

  Jack pulls the trigger. The beast’s teeth rest between the hammer and the bullet in the cylinder. All the hammer does is clack uselessly.

  Lower teeth from the monster’s mandible cut into Jack’s wrist.

  Jack refuses to let go of the gun. “Get off me.” He bleeds. Lets out a war cry. Punches the inhuman freak. He starts to pull it along like an angry mutt on a leash.

  He’s five feet from Caleb and Catarina. More small rocks hit him. He’s gotta get out of the cavern before anything larger drops. “Goddamn diarrhea shit-cock.”

  The pale thing’s teeth go deeper and deeper into his wrist. They hit bone.

  Eyes tearing, Jack says, “Crowbar.”

  Caleb reaches into the tight cavern. Hands the tool off to his brother.

  Jack grabs it. Bangs it against the skinny horror chewing
at his wrist. “Let go, you rotten afterbirth.”

  He brings the curved steel down on the slender thing’s head with a heavy thump.

  The monster responds by biting down harder.

  Jack’s blood rains to the dusty ground.

  Jack screams. “Let. Go.” He brings steel down again. Then flips the curved end so it’s nestled between the eyeball and the eye socket of the creature. He wrenches the tool. Like he’s opening a packing crate.

  The pale thing shakes Jack. Tries to yank him back into the horde.

  Jack twists the crowbar. Dislodges the thing’s eye from its socket. He flicks his wrist. Sends the crowbar flying back toward Caleb, who ducks as it comes to a skidding halt.

  Jack wraps his fingers around the pale thing’s eye. Arteries and veins inside the skinny thing rip and burst as Jack yanks the ocular orb from its skull enclosure. The sound of celery snapping. An explosion of dark blood.

  He throws the eyeball into the mass of creatures. Grabs the other eye. Digs his fingers between the spongy flesh and the bone that holds it.

  The pale thing keeps its teeth clamped down on Jack.

  Jack says, “Catarina, on three, you throw that Super Soaker into the cavern. I’ll count.”

  “You got it,” she says.

  Jack grunts. Begins to free the thing’s second eye. “One.”

  The pale thing starts to die. Starts to lose enough blood that Jack can unclench its jaw.

  “Two.”

  Jack frees the second eyeball. He hurls it like a chew toy at the other creatures. He separates the pale thing’s malicious mandibles. Pries the teeth apart just enough so that the hammer of his machine can hit his heavy .45 bullets.

  “Three.”

  Jack fires down the monster’s gullet. Makes a giant hole through its back. Hot gore splashes his face. He pulls the Colt free through the bloody fabric of its ruined face. Tracks the Super Soaker Catarina threw. He watches it twirl between the dozens of other pale things who walk forward.

  He fans the hammer of his Colt. Fires to hit the tank of the Super Soaker and let loose a downpour of napalm. The toy spills Jell-O-tinged gasoline all over the cavern.

  The pale things stop. They feels the flammable rain.