by Scott Reeves
In the brief time Chris had been dead (or supposedly dead, Ed thought), his skin had taken on a grayish hue. He was hunched over, and he advanced on Ed with a gimpy shuffle, as if his legs or his spine were broken. He didn’t move at all fast, not the way Sherm had.
Ed slowly backed up as Chris advanced toward him. The dead man’s movements were slow, sluggish, and uncoordinated, almost as if he were being controlled remotely, and the distant operator was having trouble getting used to the controls. Yes, Chris certainly lacked Sherm’s speed, but he had the same absence, the same vacancy, within his eyes, as if what had made Chris Chris was missing. He had the same hunger in his eyes, too, the same animalistic gaze that seemed to say, You’re dinner, and I’m coming for you.
Ed continued backing up, not taking his eyes from Chris’s slowly advancing corpse. The dead man moved slowly now, but Ed wasn’t sure that wasn’t a ruse. He worried that if he turned his back, Chris might leap upon him in a sudden orgy of speed.
Ed stumbled over a chair and kicked it out of the way without looking behind himself. He felt the edge of a console press against his buttocks, and he began moving sideways, sliding along the edge, seeking the end of the console, his eyes fastened on Chris. He was beginning to think that Sherm’s fast movements might be preferable to Chris’s slow, shuffling, inexorable advance. With Sherm, there had barely been time to react. But with Chris, the dread had plenty of time to build in you.
He reached the edge of the console, and the sudden removal of the blockage threw him off balance. He went reeling backward, windmilling his arms as he tried not to stumble and fall to the floor.
But he needn’t have worried. Arms caught him from behind, wrapping around his chest and pulling him into a tight reverse bear hug. He craned his neck around to see the mutilated face of the brave yet ultimately hapless technician who had been Sherm’s second victim.
Ed pissed his pants, shivering as the warm liquid trickled down his thigh. He hadn’t seen this one coming either. Like all bureaucrats, he realized, he was woefully short-sighted.
Then the brave, dead technician’s teeth bit into Ed’s ear, ripping it from his head. He screamed, and then screamed again as the dead technician, that brave, hapless, dead technician whose name Ed had never even bothered to learn, spat out his ear and bit into Ed’s neck.
Then Chris was on him from the front, biting into the side of Ed’s face with savage hunger.
Ed’s last thought as he was feasted upon was that he had been right: if he could only count on himself, if everything was up to him, then Caldor was doomed. He died with a smile on his face, comforted by the fact that he had been right.
Andy Watson
Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12
5:00 PM Planetary Standard Time
Andy had been running for about ten minutes. He figured the best thing to do was keep moving. He dodged and weaved among the continuing carnage, seeking a way off the rooftop, racing around the huge starcruiser whose bow still rested on the rooftop, swarming with psychopaths.
When he had first begun his run, he had noticed a small building near the center of the rooftop. He had run for it. Stenciled across a white door on one side were the words, “Stairs.” But the door was padlocked shut, and he had nothing with which to force the lock open. He didn’t have time to stand around and try to figure out a way to get the lock off, so he kept running. Maybe he’d think of a way and come back for another try, on his second pass.
Eventually his luggage became too much of a burden and he tossed it aside. When and if everything calmed down, he would retrieve it. But right then, with the world seemingly collapsing around his head, he didn’t see much use for worldly possessions.
On he ran. Other than that first stairway entrance, he couldn’t find another way off the rooftop. Of course, there were plenty of transmat pads. The spaceport was lousy with the things. But they were the problem, spitting out a continuous stream of psychopathic people, adding to the chaos and violence. He wasn’t about to try using one of them to beam out.
He helped out where he could, pulling the raving loons off the seemingly sane people as he passed. But there were just too many who needed help. He couldn’t help them all when he could barely help himself. It was tiring work, dodging the psychos who leapt into his path one after another. No sooner had he banked to the right to avoid one, than another dove in from the left, grabbing at him and forcing him to veer right again. But he left them all in his wake. He had enjoyed playing football back on Molon, but this was ridiculous. He had also enjoyed cross-country running, but this adventure was quickly winding him.
Suddenly, to make matters worse, the robocops, who had gone ominously dormant a few minutes earlier, suddenly powered up and began firing into the crowds. They blasted at the psychopaths and the dwindling numbers of normal people indiscriminately, clearly out of control. Either that, or they were under control, which meant that the planetary AI had gone whacko as well.
He raced past the center of the rooftop and the riotous crowd began to thin out. Looking ahead, he saw why. The edge of the rooftop directly in front of him had no banks of transmats. Instead, there was a long, low building, probably a maintenance bunker or something of that sort. Since there were no transmats ahead, there were less people.
He sprinted ahead with renewed vigor, thinking that the thinning of crowds offered him safety and a respite from the violence. But he was wrong.
As he raced across the rooftop, the concrete ground around him began exploding upward, pelting him with flying bits of rock and dust. The explosions followed him as he ran, forcing him to continually jump and leap from side to side. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that one of the robocops had locked onto him, shoulder turrets tracking him as he ran, spitting beams of laser light at him.
By coming out into the relatively open space, he had made himself a tempting target.
He gritted his teeth and pumped his legs furiously, zigzagging wildly in an effort to outwit the machine’s tracking sensors. But it was sure to be a futile effort. Booming concussions threw him around like a rag doll. It was a struggle to keep himself running, and he knew that only an act of God could save him now. So as he ran, he touched the cross on his forehead and prayed furiously for just such an act.
Over the sound of the explosions ripping up the concrete around him, he could hear the rhythmic pumping hiss of pneumatics and the thumping boom of metal feet as the huge robocop lumbered in pursuit of him. The things were slow, but they were relentless, and their weapons could reach across great distances. The law on Caldor literally had long arms.
The presumed maintenance building up ahead was perched on the very edge of the rooftop. It grew rapidly as he raced toward it. A long, narrow concrete bunker about ten feet in width and fifty in length, with the long edge running parallel to the edge of the rooftop. There was a white door in the middle of the long edge, facing the spaceport. Letters on the door said, “Authorized Personnel Only.” And it was padlocked, of course.
Andy veered to the left and began running along the length of the building. The explosions climbed up the wall of the building and raked along the building walls, following along mere inches in his wake.
When he raced past the door, he heard metal shattering behind him. He risked a glance back and saw that the robocop’s fire had blown the padlock off the door of the building. There were huge craters in the building’s wall now, but it would make a perfect shelter from the storm.
“Thank you God!” he shouted. Now if only he could stay alive long enough to swing back around and duck inside.
He swerved away from the building and the roof’s edge, heading back toward the center of the spaceport. The robocop’s barrage followed, chewing up the ground at his heels, and the robocop itself clopped along in his wake.
Why wouldn’t the thing leave him alone?
By now his chest was on fire, and his legs were exhausted, threatening at every moment to collapse beneath him. He couldn�
��t keep this up.
People around him were being caught in the crossfire, the laser light shredding flesh and occasionally vaporizing an entire body. Andy knew he would feel guilty about that later, but right now there was no time for guilt. Getting back around to that building and surviving was all that mattered. Instinct had taken over, and instinct had no conscience.
That’s what gave him the idea. He instinctively sought out the most crowded part of the rooftop and raced toward it. He found a tightly packed throng of people tearing each other apart and dove into it, throwing himself to the ground and crawling madly between their legs. There was a chance he would be trampled, but it was a chance he had to take.
His ploy worked. With so many more targets to choose from, the robocop lost interest in Andy and blasted away at the crowd instead. As he crawled, the blasts receded behind him and no longer dogged his heels.
Apparently he was out of danger from the robocop at the moment. He stood and began running back toward the building that now represented safety to him. As he raced toward it through the thinning crowd, he was actually grateful that now he had only the psychotic people to deal with. He decided that they were so much easier to avoid than a constant barrage of artillery fire.
He reached the building with no further incident. He yanked open the white door and slipped into the dark interior, hauling the door shut behind him and holding it tight, his hands clenched around the cold metal doorknob. He let his head fall forward against the door and thanked God with all his heart.
Bin Jamin
Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12
5:15 PM Planetary Standard Time
Bin Jamin squirmed along through the darkness of the air duct. The girl, Samala, came noisily along behind him, huffing and puffing, breathing heavily. He enjoyed that. It was a cute sound. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine that she was breathing heavily due to sexual stimulation. She would be, soon enough. They always did. They tried not to, but they couldn’t help themselves.
The two of them had been threading their way through the duct maze for a good fifteen minutes now. He was leading her toward his special place, the one where he took all his girls. Used to be he would take them elsewhere, to a different special place. It helped to move the special places around every once in a while. But this was his current one. He hadn’t intended to bring her here quite so soon. But no matter. Plans changed, and he adapted. That was just the kind of guy he was. Adaptable.
But they had never come with him so willingly. She hurried after him as if she had the devil at her tail, rather than right in front of her. In a panic, she kept going on and on about Daddy, how he had changed into some sort of monster. Something to do with the transmat. Sobbing and whimpering, stopping occasionally to freak out.
He kept coaxing her on. It’s okay, sweetie. We’ll get out of these ducts and figure out what’s going on. You’re safe now. It’s all right. Come on, just a little bit further now.
Of course, she hadn’t seen anything. There was nothing going on. Her Daddy hadn’t changed. Probably just tried to touch her and she snapped. Some girls did that, he had heard.
But she came right along, tagging along behind him like he was some sort of savior. A trusted rescuer, like a robocop, or a firefighter, or something. He wasn’t sure he liked that. It was certainly a new twist, but he thought he preferred a little more resistance.
She was so upset that she hadn’t even yet had the sense to ask him what he was doing in the ducts. But he had a ready answer in case she did. I’m escaping just like you, sweetie. The wife went bonkers, and I didn’t have any other way out of the apartment. Play along with her fear about her Daddy becoming a monster.
They came around the final corner and he saw the light up ahead. His special place. The light seemed really bright, but that was just because it was so dark in the ducts. The light was actually quite dim, once your eyes got used to light again. There was motion in the light, a rhythmic alternation of light and shadows.
“What’s that up ahead?” the girl asked, her first speech in several minutes. “Light! Are we at the exit, finally?”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling in the darkness. “We’re at the final exit.”
He crawled the last bit of the way. The duct opened up into a small room, about five feet to a side. A huge fan along the far wall spun slowly, sending a cool blast of from on the ceiling of a wide cylindrical shaft that plummeted into the lower levels of the planet city.
A pile of smashed up wooden crates blocked the air duct to the right of the fan. When he entered the small room, he moved to the left, blocking the other duct. That left only the duct through which he could hear the girl approaching. When she reached him, he helped her out of the narrow duct and into the small room. When she was fully in, pressed up tight against him, practically in his lap, he thrust his right leg across the duct opening they had come through. All exits blocked.
He knew she realized right away that something was wrong.
“Get moving,” she said. “It’s too tight in here.”
He smiled at her, and she tried to pull back, but there was nowhere to go.
He went to work. She put up a good fight, and he enjoyed himself.
When he was finished with her, he rifled through her clothing, looking for a memento. In a pocket he found a holocube. He held the cube up to his eyes and looked inside. There was a recording of her having sex with the boy, the very tryst which he had witnessed so recently. The little tramp had been recording herself! When he twisted the cube, he could see the action from various angles. Wonderful! He had his recording after all, the one denied to him due to the absence of his Net interface! What a wonderful memento this was, much nicer than the stupid bracelet he wore on his wrist from his first girl.
Reverently, he placed the holocube carefully into his pocket.
Then he shoved her naked body past the slow-moving blades of the fan and watched it plummet into the shadowy depths of the cylinder, to join all his other girls. He threw her clothing in after her.
“Samala,” he sighed. It was such a beautiful name. He would remember it forever, along with all the other names.
Malfred Gil
Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12
5:15 PM Planetary Standard Time
Mal had reached the ventilation duct outside Samala’s bedroom. The grille was off. He stuck his head into her room and looked down, saw the grille lying on the floor next to her dresser.
Did this mean that she had escaped through the air ducts?
From the safety of the air duct, he surveyed her room. It was empty, with no sign of violence, other than the bedroom door itself, which lay against the foot of her bed, crumpled and twisted, as if it had been kicked in.
But there was no blood in the room, which was a good sign, he supposed.
He heard a sound in the other room. Someone moving about. He listened intently. Heavy breathing, punctuated with occasional animalistic growling.
“Samala!” he yelled, not caring if he was heard by whatever was growling out there. If she was hurt or cornered or something, surely she would answer. “Samala! Are you here?”
The sound of movement in the other room stopped, as did the growling.
There was no response from Samala.
He lay there in the vent, listening. He could almost feel whoever it was standing still in the next room, also listening. Then, the sound of sniffing from the other room, like the sound of an animal picking up the scent of prey.
“Samala!” Mal called out again.
No response. No sound of muffled female cries, nothing to indicate she was being held against her will in the other room.
Then Samala’s father appeared in the doorway. Mal had met the man a few times; they had never really gotten along. The self-righteous Jordan Vintron knew Mal was most likely fucking his only daughter, his sweet, precious daughter, and had not approved of it one bit.
The thing in the doorway looked like Jordan, but it mo
st definitely was not him. There was a strange absence about the thing in front of him, an absence of Jordan. It glared up at Mal with hunger and rage in its empty eyes. The blood red cross at the center of its forehead stood out starkly against the thing’s ash-grey skin.
The former father of Mal’s lover abruptly rushed forward and leaped up toward the duct opening. Seconds before it got there, Mal pulled his head out of the room and scrambled backward, which was no easy task in the narrow duct.
He continued backing away from the narrow square of light shining into the duct. The clawed hands of Jordan Vintron reached into the duct, feeling around frantically and swiping at the air, seeking Mal. But apparently the thing was too stupid to figure out how to climb into the duct.
Mal stopped moving backward and watched the futilely reaching hands, listened to the urgent growling and hissing as the thing vented its frustration. It was trapped in the apartment.
What would happen to it? Andy wondered. Would it eventually die of starvation, and then rise from the dead as he had seen the fat man do earlier?
“Enjoy your resurrection, you damn fucking Christian!” he shouted at the beast that had been Samala’s father.
In response to his voice, the thing grunted and growled excitedly and intensified its groping for Mal.
Safe for the moment, Mal’s thoughts turned to Samala. She had either escaped through the air ducts, or she had been murdered by her father. The ventilation grille on her bedroom floor would seem to indicate the former. He was somewhat surprised that she had thought of the ventilation ducts as an escape route. She could be so dense sometimes. A lot of people these days lacked any common sense. That was part of the problem with the world, as far as he was concerned.
But he would find her. She couldn’t have gotten far. He crawled off in search of her.
But he quickly realized that maybe he was the dense one. He had no idea which direction she might have gone. The ducts were a maze, and unlike him, she hadn’t studied the route from her bedroom to the nearest corridor. He had tried to get her interested, to show her the way he would be coming, but she hadn’t paid any attention. All she had cared about was that one day he might be able to visit her after her father had locked down the transmat for the night. She didn’t care what route he took, how uncomfortable the journey was, or how long it took him, just as long as he got there.