The Dire Earth: A Novella (The Dire Earth Cycle)

by Jason M. Hough

  Blackfield expected this. Soldiers from all the other platoons of First Brigade lined the sidewalks around the property. They’d been given leave to taunt, albeit silently, to their heart’s content. This was not an opportunity soldiers passed up, and they’d turned out in force despite the hour and the festivities scheduled for the evening to come.

  They pointed, laughed, and snickered behind hands held up to shield the sound of taking glee at someone else’s punishment. They made rude gestures, pretended to copulate with each other and the trees—really anything, though they were careful not to show any skin. Orders were orders.

  Blackfield moved up and down the line as his twenty-four grunts made their first circuit around the perimeter of the course at a brisk, curt march. He called a halt at the seventh green and set them about fixing divots and patching up churned ground where golf carts had made turns entirely too fast the day before. The watchers lining the street threw bits of trash onto the course. Russell would have, too, had he been among them. He wasn’t, though, and so he kept his instinctual anger in check. When one of his own shouted an insult at the tormenters, Russell grabbed him by the earlobe and, with nothing more than a glare, set him to the task of fifty push-ups and instructions to catch up once finished.

  By the time the sun rose there were citizens along the sidewalks, too. Most were watching; bemused, intrigued. Kids joined in the taunts and shook the perimeter chain-link fence with white-knuckled fists. There were so many now that they formed a human wall around the small course.

  For the second circuit Russell drove his soldiers into a jog. Marching chants were only mouthed, as silent as the mocking versions coming from the line of observers. By the third circuit the novelty had worn off, though. The shenanigans of the day before were the stuff of legend by now and all of these bastards had missed it. They wanted a response to their jeers. They wanted a train wreck.

  It finally happened when they reached the seventh green again. A group of privates at the rear of Blackfield’s line stopped in unison and unleashed a barrage of thrown objects—rocks, clods of dirt, whatever they’d managed to pick up. It might have gone unnoticed, too. Russell had been focused trancelike on the backside of the female soldier he’d put on point. One of the rock throwers slipped, though. Wheeled his arms and flopped backward into the wet grass. A roar of laughter went up from the watchers and the watched alike.

  Russell stormed to the back of the line. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  The soldier slipped again before coming to his feet, eliciting another round of muffled laughs from the onlookers along the sidewalk, ten meters away.

  “Couldn’t take it anymore,” the kid said. Briar, by the name on his uniform. Russell barely recognized the spotty turd under the grass and mud splayed across his face.

  “You’ll take a lot more than that if you don’t get your shit together.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That goes for the lot of you,” Russell said. They’d huddled around to hear him. “Push-ups and sit-ups until we’re back around.”

  They mumbled agreement.

  “Now!” Blackfield roared. Action, then. They formed a line out of habit and dropped into a series of push-ups. He watched for a few seconds. Kicked a few boot bottoms to correct form.

  Satisfied, Russell Blackfield turned away. The others had continued the circuit and were almost to the north side of the property now. It was a shitty course as golf courses went. Nine holes, all short and flat. Easy for the retirees. The course’s proximity to the army base made it a likely spot for all sorts of shenanigans when the young recruits mustered up the courage to sneak onto it in the dead of night. Russell strolled across the gently undulating fairways, angling to meet his soldiers directly across from those being punished.

  Mushy grass slurped at his boots. Each step left more blades of cut grass on the leather. Flecks of green on polished black. Behind him the crowd noise grew, as if following him, taking on a more and more riotous tone. The sound made his gut feel hollow, despite himself. He tried and failed to laugh the edge of danger away. Something felt wrong.

  He glanced back. His troops were still at their push-ups, save one who just lay in the grass.

  The crowd behind the fence had swelled, and now churned. Most, he realized with instinctual dread, were not looking at his punished soldiers anymore.

  They were turned south, toward the base. He saw fists raised, though in triumph or anger he had no idea. He saw something else then, too. People running, soldiers from the base among them. Lots of soldiers.

  “What the hell?”

  Kids leapt onto the flimsy fence and climbed desperately for the top. A pair of legs cartwheeled above the heads of those near the back of the crowd.

  Whole bodies, then, thrown into the air.

  And then he saw the van.

  The vehicle cut a path through the crowd at high speed. Even from here Russell could hear the high whine of the strained caps. The van forced its way forward, shoving bodies aside, bouncing as it undoubtedly rolled over others. Some of the onlookers had managed to hold on to the sides. One was even on the roof. A woman in business dress, screaming and clinging to a luggage rack for dear life.

  The van slammed into the perimeter fence of the golf course at high speed, bodies sandwiched between. Russell’s mouth went dry, positive the damn thing would smash straight through and run right over his exercising soldiers.

  Amazingly the fence held. It flexed and then rebounded like a bowstring, throwing the wayward van back a few meters. Lifeless bodies between remained plastered to the fence. Bloody ribbons in diamonds of wire. People were screaming now. Everyone was fucking screaming.

  A riot—that was the only word for it—rippled through the onlookers like a shock wave with the van as the epicenter. Some focused on pulling the driver out of the vehicle, presumably to beat the idiot senseless. At least half of them—and there were hundreds now, thousands perhaps—were doubled over in obvious pain, hands clasped around their skulls as if under a barrage of earsplitting sound. Some sort of anti-riot weapon? That was fast.

  A gate flung open to Russell’s left and people poured through like water through a burst dam. Soldiers from the base made up almost half of the throng.

  Blackfield shifted on his feet. He’d been too stunned to move before. Now he just felt trapped. A hundred meters away, his exercising warriors had finally stopped their push-ups. Now most were kneeling in the wet grass, arms clasped about their skulls, anguish visible on their faces even from here. Many of those rushing in through the gate had stopped and taken up the same pose. They were trampled by those crowding in behind. A soldier’s boot crushed the head of an old man who writhed in the churned earth.

  Russell glanced over his shoulder and felt a chill course down his back and arms.

  The chaos along the southern fence of the golf course was contrasted inexplicably by the shocked, frozen reaction of those on the north side. The onlookers there just stared in naked horror. His own troops had stopped, too. Watching. Baffled.

  “To me!” Russell shouted at them.

  A few raced forward, the fear and confusion on their faces held in check by a more powerful sense of duty. Or, perhaps a sense that some shit was about to go down and they were going to be a part of it. The others hesitated. Most would join when the shock wore off, Russell thought. They’d better.

  He swung back toward the chaos to the south. Insanity had pushed through Old Downtown like typhoon floodwater.

  “Must be that disease,” a breathless voice beside him said.

  Russell glanced to his right. Schmidt, his second in command, stood there gulping air, rifle held combat-ready.

  “Heard it was a flu,” Schmidt said. “But, holy fucking hell, look at ’em.”

  “Get your shit together,” Russell snapped. “Can’t be a disease. A disease doesn’t stop in a line. Look: South side, riot. North side, fine.”

  “Sir …,” the younger man whispered.

&nb
sp; “What?”

  “Look.” Schmidt jerked his chin toward the mass of people pouring in through the south gate of the golf course.

  Blackfield followed the man’s gaze. Many of those rushing through the gate were fleeing the violence. Citizens and soldiers in almost equal number. Some of those in uniform had spotted Russell and angled toward him.

  Behind them were others. These weren’t fleeing, they were giving chase. Their faces, every last man and woman and even child, were twisted in a rage so primal they looked like caricatures. One among them stood tall, walking instead of running though his face shared the same anger. Russell knew that face.

  Lieutenant Rockne.

  Their eyes met and the lieutenant’s lips curled back in a snarl. Despite the writhing violence all around he walked in a straight line toward Russell. The city behind was nothing more than a seething mass of death and pain now. Russell heard cars crashing, saw a body burst through a third-story window and fall into the sea of animals below. Animals, yes. “They’re all animals,” he muttered aloud.

  Those fleeing rushed straight past the line formed by Russell and his men. Most kept going, but many of the soldiers among them slowed, stopped, and fell into a loose formation.

  Lieutenant Rockne came on, leading the pack like a wave toward the north side of the fairway.

  “That’s far enough!” Russell shouted. The words changed nothing. “I mean it! Don’t make us—”

  Rockne dropped into a low run. Sort of a half gallop. Those at his back surged along with him. There were so many now, and still they poured from buildings. Bodies lay everywhere, trampled like garbage. Far more dead than alive, Russell thought.

  And all south of this spot. It was like he stood at a glass wall, safety on this side and hell on that. Only there was no wall, and when the monsters came …

  “Move back,” Russell said. “Back! Back! Now!”

  He turned with his men and ran, the throng of diseased fifty meters behind and closing. A crowd ten-deep had formed along the north edge of the course. Many broke and fled when they saw the soldiers doing so, but a lot of them remained. Frozen by fear or perhaps, perhaps, ready to fight. Maybe they thought they could actually help. Those directly in Russell’s path broke and ran when they realized he wasn’t stopping. He ignored them all and made for an office complex across the wide street. The front doors of the building were open wide, two janitors standing just within watching the carnage with stunned expressions.

  “What are we doing?” Schmidt asked over haggard breaths.

  “Moving to a defensible position, what do you think?”

  The janitors turned and fled inside as Russell reached the doors. Inside was a bare-bones lobby. Two desks on either side of a hallway leading back. He went behind one desk and flipped it on its side, crouching behind it. His men took up similar positions around him and in the hallway. To his surprise their numbers had swelled. Many of the soldiers fleeing the madness had found their wits, apparently, and fallen in with his squad. Fifty or more to go with his meager eight.

  They filled the lobby, pushing back behind the overturned desks or in the hall. Only Russell’s men had weapons; the others were all dressed simply. Olive tees and camo pants. Base garb.

  A deep rumble began to build from outside the glass doors. Not a second later the stampede hit, smashing into the front of the building like a rogue wave. Floor-to-ceiling panes of glass along the building’s façade shattered with the press of bodies, spraying shards across the black tile floor.

  Lieutenant Rockne was first through the doors.

  Russell Blackfield didn’t hesitate. He’d already raised his gun, subconsciously, and now he dipped his head to the sight and fired twice. His superior officer took both rounds to the chest and kept coming. Someone else fired now, clipping him in the shoulder and sending him spinning, sprawling.

  Rockne tried to rise, failed, and died.

  The room erupted. It was as if the killing had finally made it all real, finally broken through some collective fog within which rules still applied.

  Russell shot two more of the less-than-human creatures before the crowd became a confused mess. A writhing sea of clawing fingers and thrown fists. Behavior proved the only way to tell the sides apart. The infected were vicious. Utterly rabid in their desire to inflict damage on those still sane, most of whom were unarmed and cornered. They fought without a shred of dignity or even apprehension, and they were winning.

  “Schmidt!” he shouted without looking.

  “Sir?”

  Russell whirled on him. “See if there’s a way out the back.”

  “What? Leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “But … defensible—”

  “Fucking go.”

  The man nodded once and bolted down the hallway, staying close to the wall.

  Blackfield rose from his crouch and took aim at the nearest savage combatant, firing a bullet into the thing’s side just below the armpit. It toppled awkwardly, trampled almost instantly by a replacement. There were too many, and still more poured in.

  “Schmidt!”

  No response. Russell took aim again, stilled his finger just before shooting as a plain-clothed man tackled the diseased one he’d been about to kill. All around people were screaming and shouting. Some howled, a high, baying sound Russell didn’t think could come from human lips.

  One of the creatures barreled low into the midsection of the soldier at Russell’s right, driving him into the lobby wall. Air rushed from the man in a muffled hoof and he went down, screaming. Russell lifted his rifle only for the movement to catch the creature’s attention. It leapt off the fallen man and onto Russell in a single motion, driving him backward as they fell together. Its knee met Russell’s groin when they hit the floor, filling him with an electric, all-consuming pain. Somehow he’d kept the gun and raised it enough to fire. The earsplitting crack drowned out all other sound for several seconds. His bullet hit the diseased animal in the leg just above the knee, exploding out the back in a splatter of blood that reached the ceiling above. It cried out and took a wild swing at him. Russell turned with the punch, using the momentum to his advantage, throwing his attacker into the shins of someone standing nearby. Russell sat and fired at it again, riddling the thing’s back with small red circles.

  His balls felt at once on fire and frozen solid. “Fuck this,” Blackfield growled. “To the roof!”

  Most of his soldiers and a few civilians heeded the call for retreat. By now bodies clogged the entrance to the building, stemming the tide of murderous freaks.

  In the middle hallway Russell found a pair of elevator doors closing, the car full of terrified faces staring at him before the two barriers slid together. He kept moving, aware of a growing entourage behind him. The stairwell door pulled open easily. He took the steps two at a time, ignoring the pain from his groin, for three flights. At the end he vaulted a waist-high bar meant to prevent unauthorized wags from reaching the roof.

  Outside the sun shone brightly on a gravel-covered roof. Plumes of oily black smoke rose from a dozen fires in Old Downtown. A few people stood about the perimeter, watching the calamity below. They whirled in white-faced terror when Russell pushed through the door, then relaxed upon seeing him.

  _

  By evening all the easy prey had fallen to the grinding, animalistic machine of the diseased. The streets below, while still rife with violence, nonetheless became preferable to cowering on a rooftop devoid of resources. “Time to move,” Russell said, and ordered the surviving soldiers back down the stairs. They’d march, he decided, until they found answers.

  _

  If Russell Blackfield allowed his eyes to defocus, to look beyond the immediate dangers, the city resembled a volcano.

  Still distant, the glorious space elevator could just be seen, marked by a few climbers visible between the tiny gap that separated skyscrapers from the clouds they reached for. The huge buildings were tallest near the alien cord’s base, and
tapered away rapidly. Fires small and large dotted the scene, like the glowing embers spat out by an eruption. Only this eruption was happening in reverse. Violence and destruction had begun at the edges and were creeping ever inward toward the peak.

  A long row of sulfur-yellow streetlights marked the road to Nightcliff, wrapped in glowing orbs of smoke from the scattered flames. Flames that no one fought. The two-kilometer stretch of road, when he viewed it at the exclusion of all else, resembled a carnival. Vague human forms gyrating and dancing around the flames, the crackle-chatter of fireworks and celebratory gunfire. Except the people weren’t dancing, they were killing each other. They were robbing newcomers and neighbors alike, they were banding together for mutual reasons and turning on each other when those reasons became nothing but well-intentioned dreams.

  The sporadic gunfire was anything but celebratory.

  Cars clogged the wide street. Every make and model imaginable. Most pointed straight along the path of lights, as every idiot in the north apparently thought when they arrived in Darwin they could just drive up to the Platz mansion and ask for a lift to the safe haven above. They were moths, Russell mused, drawn to a long, thin flame that stretched all the way to the moon.

  Not literally, he knew enough to know that. But the moon indeed loomed large above them. That little astronomical event was supposed to have been cause for a party, something the city had been promoting for weeks. “See the great Darwin Elevator silhouetted against the full moon,” the Hoc-casts said. Nothing quite like having your big party canceled due to the end of the fucking world.

  A crash of metal on stone whipped his attention back to the immediate surroundings. Somewhere ahead a delivery truck had barreled out of a side street and slammed into an abandoned city bus. Russell didn’t need to see the driver to know he’d lost consciousness in the impact, if not more, for even from here the sound of the horn could be heard above the riot.

  Twenty people swarmed out of the same side street and converged on the vehicle, tearing open the back doors. When they swung open Russell saw half of the logo for a popular grocery chain on the door facing him, and understood.