by David Wong
John said, “We didn’t do any of it on purpose. We’re just … not very good at things.”
“Or, it could be that just maybe, one can act on what one believes is his own agency, while in reality perfectly serving the purposes of another.”
He held up the honey bear.
“Where do you think this comes from, hmm? Do you think the bees toiled night and day to make this because they knew we were going to take it away from them and drip it into our tea? Of course not. Because we are a higher life form than they, we can make them serve our purposes, while letting them believe they are serving their own. You have been used like bees.” He glanced at me. “This was all but explained to you before.”
Another space suit walked in out of the rain, and went and got a cup of coffee from the coffee carts. I wondered how he was going to drink it.
Tennet continued, “Don’t get me wrong, I know why you think what you think. I have sons in their twenties. I was there myself once, believe it or not. Because you have no responsibilities, you get to sit back, in school or at your inconsequential service job, and judge the grown-ups on the impossible choices we have to make. Of course, if you were in our position, you’d never go to war, or lay off a factory full of workers, or enlist the help of one murderous dictator to stop another one who’s even worse. All moral choices seem easy when you don’t actually have to make them.”
Amy shook her head slowly and said, “You can’t talk your way into this being anything other than mass murder. And people are going to know.”
Tennet said, “What exactly do you think they’re going to know?”
“That the people in the town are just people. That this isn’t so clear-cut. They’re going to know.”
“Even if someone decided that the infection rate down there was something less than one hundred percent, and if they could go to a mountaintop and shout it to the world, it wouldn’t matter. Because the people want this. They want their neighbors to be monsters. It’s why we lust over news stories of mothers murdering their children, and run after conspiracy theories about a government full of greedy sociopaths. If the monsters didn’t come, we would have willed them into existence.”
John nodded and said, “Just so they have an excuse to sue the burger place.”
I said, “You’re … several steps behind here.”
Amy sipped her tea and said, “The people out there won’t believe it if they don’t have a choice. If they see it for themselves.”
Tennet calmly said, “I know you came here to try to take out the warlock jammer. As the villains in this story, that’s exactly what I expected you to do. This would be why we have an entire army protecting it.”
Amy said, “Speaking of which. The guys standing right behind us with the weird guns, do they know that you’re going to have them killed, too? There’s no way you can let all these people wandering around here in their space suits just go back home tomorrow, knowing what you did here. Somebody will talk, right? To their wife or their kids, or maybe they go online and blog about it. Maybe cash in on a book deal. Do they know you’re going to orchestrate something for them, just like you did for the town?”
Tennet said, “I like you. I do. But think about all of the assumptions you just made. First, you assumed that the men behind you could hear you. Second, you assumed that the men behind you have ears at all. Third, you assumed that the men behind you are even men. Would you like to know what’s under the hoods of these decontamination suits?”
The space suit back by the coffee turned toward us. He sat his coffee on the cart and approached our table. Tennet didn’t turn to look at him. Whatever was inside the space suit reached up and started undoing clasps around the neck of its red-tinted face mask.
Then, it pulled open a zipper.
The gloved hands then raised and grabbed the sides of its helmet, and lifted.
30 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
We barely had time to register the face we were seeing before the spaceman pulled out an enormous silver handgun, and pointed it at Tennet’s head.
Detective Lance Falconer said, “Freeze, shitbird.”
Tennet sighed and said, “And who are you?”
“Shut up. Call off the planes.”
“Infecting the whole world to prevent you from putting a bullet through my skull would be an incredibly selfish move on my part.”
Amy said, “Forget it, we don’t need him.”
John said, “He’s right, we just need to turn off the cell phone jammer. Then he won’t have a choice. It’ll blow the lid off the whole sha-rod.”
“STOP SAYING IT LIKE THAT.”
Tennet looked right at me and said, “Is there something you want to say about this, David? Before this man splatters my brains? I’ve been reading it on your face.”
I met Falconer’s eyes, then Amy’s.
I said, “I, uh, am not sure he isn’t right.”
Amy said, “David…”
I shook my head. “I don’t like it. I don’t. Amy, you know I don’t. But … Marconi … he was right. The fuse is lit and this, right here, this is our chance to snuff it out. There has to be a sacrifice. He said that.” I looked at John. “John, I’m telling you, he saw all this coming. Marconi knows his shit. And maybe if we’d been smarter, if we’d handled it better, we could have put a stop to it without anybody getting, you know, incinerated. But we just kept fucking up and … it has to end at some point. And preferably some point before an event that could be called an ‘apocalypse.’” I made air quotes with my fingers. “Guys … we have to grow up and see this through. This is our chance, to save the world. From itself.”
John looked at the ground resignedly, and I knew he agreed.
Falconer said, “Bullshit. They are not getting away with this.”
John shook his head and said, “They are, detective. They really are. Try to put that guy on trial. You’ll see. Your witnesses will disappear. Or maybe you’ll disappear. Hell, your suspect there will disappear. He’s just a pawn like the rest of us. Aren’t you?”
Tennet didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to.
Amy wasn’t listening to us. She was turned, looking over the town, as if to take it in for the last time. Thunder crashed. Rain drummed on the tent.
Amy walked out into the rain, looking up into the sky, her hands forming a visor over her eyes. A dozen gun barrels followed her.
I said, “Amy … you understand why we have to do this, right?”
She turned and said, “Do you mind if we continue this discussion under the table?”
“What?”
The spacemen outside the tent were suddenly alarmed. One of them was looking up at the sky, and trying to get the attention of the others. Radios appeared in hands. Black figures started running. I looked past Amy, squinting into the gray sky. There was, up there, a speck, a shape that I mistook for a bird for the second time in two days. The speck grew in the sky, taking on the shape of a tiny, thin, pilotless plane.
Amy got down on her hand and knees and scurried under the table. It hadn’t dawned on the rest of us what was happening. She said, “David! Get down!”
A pair of white streaks grew out of the bottom of the drone, zipping across the sky and down, rocketing off to our right. I turned just in time to see the black semi truck vanish into a cloud of smoke. The shock wave threw us to the grass, flinging me under the table on top of Amy. A huge piece of debris—I think it was a truck tire—whizzed past the tent, trailing black smoke like a contrail.
I was laying in the grass, my ears ringing, Amy’s elbow in my face. Her tea had spilled on my shirt.
Amy scrambled to her feet, threw her arms in the air and said to the sky, “YAY! YOU RULE, SHANE! WOO!”
27 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
Falconer wrestled Tennet back to his feet, his gun at his temple. Falconer said, “Well, that fucking settles that.”
Amy looked down at me. “You know this is the r
ight thing. Even if you don’t know you know it.”
John said, “Shit yeah, I’m on Team Amy now.”
I said, “Who the fuck is Shane?”
Tennet said, “That accomplished nothing. That pilot will be convicted of treason. But before he can even be prosecuted, They’ll get hold of him. There’ll be nothing I can do about it. Do you have any idea what They can do? Maybe They’ll inject him with Compound 66. That’s a serum that will turn a man into a cannibal. Let him eat his own children before they arrest him.”
Two dozen spacemen were on the scene now, guns raised, creeping forward. Falconer got an arm around Tennet’s neck and was using him as a human shield.
Falconer said, “Call off the planes. It’s over.”
The word “call” triggered something in Amy’s mind, and she dug into her pocket and pulled out her phone. “Hey! I’ve got bars!”
Tennet said, “You have absolutely no leverage here, detective. You shoot me, my men will cut you to pieces. The bombs will drop and nothing will change. I’m sorry your supercop fantasy isn’t going to play out like you wanted. But you have no cards left to play here.”
Falconer repeated his demand, but Tennet went silent. Falconer threatened him with creative bodily violence. Tennet gave no reaction. Minutes passed this way, and I sensed the time bleeding away from the bomber countdown. I glanced nervously at the sky, then back toward the town.
And then, in the distance, came the crackle of gunfire.
19 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
We all rushed out, looking toward the sound. Down the hill and toward the highway, where the REPER barricades had stood since the morning of the outbreak. A pickup truck had crashed through the barriers and was laying on its side. REPER spacemen were filling it full of holes.
Then, a spaceman went down. And another. On the other side of the barricade was the Undisclosed angry mob. And they were armed.
Amy said, “I think somebody figured out that they are about to be bombed and remembered as zombies in their obituaries.”
John said, “There! See? It’s over. The word is out. You’re not going to be able to cover this up, doctor. Call off the planes.”
Tennet said, “You would be surprised what They can cover up.”
I said, “You call off the planes, and he’ll let you go. No charges. You get out of the country, change your name and go retire in Argentina like Hitler.” I looked at Falconer and said, “Right?”
Falconer said, “Yep. Absolutely,” in a way that did not convey an ounce of sincerity.
To the spacemen behind us, Tennet said, “On the count of three, if he does not release me, start shooting. If you can get him over my shoulder, that would be nice. But if you have to shoot through me, so be it. This is bigger than me.”
Falconer withdrew his arm from around Tennet’s neck, grabbed something small and black from a pocket and held it in front of Tennet’s face.
“Do you know what this is, shitbird?”
I didn’t, but Tennet nodded.
“And you know what happens if I push this button?”
Tennet didn’t answer. But he knew, and didn’t like it.
“Yeah, I know more than you fucking thought, don’t I?”
To me, Falconer said, “Look to your right. See that big-ass monster truck thing with the huge wheels? We’re all going for a ride.”
Falconer put an arm around Tennet’s neck and dragged him toward the vehicle that did in fact look like an armored monster truck. Amy and I followed. John took off the other direction, then came running back with the furgun. Through all of this, the spacemen kept their weapons trained on us, waiting for an order that never came.
To John, Falconer said, “Can you drive this thing?” and before he finished the word “thing” John was already behind the wheel. Falconer forced Tennet into the passenger seat at gunpoint, then took the backseat so he could keep his gun pressed to the back of Tennet’s skull. I went around and slid in next to Falconer, Amy jumped in beside me and slammed the door. John made the engine of the monster truck rumble to life, and a hundred miles away a seismologist saw the needle on his machine twitch.
Amy mumbled, “I cannot imagine the penis of the guy who designed this thing.”
John said, “Where to?”
Falconer answered, “Right down there, past the barricades. Inside the blast zone. Let’s see if that motivates this asshole to pick up this radio and call off the planes.”
With no hesitation, John rumbled down toward the area that was about to be bombed into scorched rubble. Somewhere, the ghost of Charles Darwin smiled and lit a cigar.
16 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
There was a road. John did not take it. He tore diagonally across the cornfield, tearing through broken cornstalks toward the mass of angry humanity at the Highway 131 barricade.
The spacemen were winning. There were a lot of them, and they had taken cover behind their vehicles, rattling gunfire into the crowd. We rolled to a stop just short of the mayhem. I heard a stray bullet ping off the grill of the truck.
To me, Falconer said, “Watch this.” He told John, “You see that button there, marked ‘loudspeaker’? Punch that. Turn that volume knob all the way to the right.”
John did. Falconer pulled the little black box from his pocket.
“Open the mic. Click the—yeah. Hold it there.”
Falconer reached up toward the mic mounted on the console and pressed a button on his little gadget. I could almost hear the noise the little gadget made. In the cab of the monster truck it felt more like an irritating vibration, like if you pulled a long strip of crinkled aluminum foil between your teeth. I saw Amy wince.
But the effect on the spacemen was immediate. They flinched, or fell to a knee, or dropped their guns. Some collapsed entirely. The longer the tone played, the more debilitating the effects.
Several of them turned their guns on the truck and opened fire, bullets plinking off the armor and leaving white bird shit–like pockmarks in the bulletproof windshield. Then the spacemen charged the truck. One of them climbed the front bumper, and I realized he had found the loudspeaker on the roof. Others reached the doors and clawed at the handles. I flinched at the sound of something crashing against the window next to me, and saw a spaceman rearing back for another blow on the glass with the butt of his rifle. He slammed it again, and made a crack. Amy ducked.
Meanwhile, the guy on the hood was going after the loudspeaker, smacking it with the butt of his own rifle. But none of the men had a fraction of their usual strength. Falconer kept his thumb on the death buzzer, and the spaceman collapsed onto the hood, landing right in front of the windshield, his faceplate shattering with the impact.
Amy gasped.
Two open, dead eyes looked back at us. The eyes were different colors, one brown, one blue.
The rest of the face was gone. What was left was a skull, held together with pink tendons and ribbons of fraying, decaying muscle. Running all through the skull, twitching between the gaps in bone and sinew, were ropes of something that looked like spaghetti, twisting and pulling and, I was sure, reaching down through the ruined body of the former man inside, operating him like a puppet.
The spaceman outside my door had also collapsed—the ground around the truck was now littered with them. Falconer let off the buzzer. The battle had gone silent.
The mob on the other side of the barricade was frozen, baffled by what they were seeing. They weren’t even celebrating. Even if it meant winning the battle, this was a group of people who absolutely did not feel like seeing any more weird bullshit today.
Amy opened her door and yelled to them, “We’re the good guys! Don’t shoot!”
John said, “Look! What the hell?”
Something was going on with the face of the dead spaceman on the hood of the truck. One of his eyes was twitching. Then the eye started pushing forward out of his skull, oozing out like a snake. The other eye did the same
.
Amy said, “What? What is it?”
Out from the spaceman’s dead skull crawled two spiders, each as thick as a bratwurst, each covered in tiny legs, each ending in a single, lidless, human eye.
From outside the truck, I heard glass breaking. Faceplates on dead spacemen were cracking and bursting open. Out from each crawled a pair of the eye spiders.
John yelled, “OH FUCK! TENNET TELL THEM TO BOMB THIS! RIGHT HERE! NOW! SHIT!”
The spiders raced through the grass, toward us. And there was Amy looking right at them, out of her open door, because she couldn’t see them.
I lunged across her and pulled her door closed right as one of the spiders leaped, wedging itself into the gap at the last second before I could get it all the way closed. Amy screamed, because now she could see it, now that the thing was writhing in the gap of the partially closed door a foot away from her face. Its legs were thrashing as it frantically tried to press its way inside, the single, human eye twitching, looking all around the cabin of the truck.
The hood man’s eye spiders had crawled onto the windshield. Others had joined them, the skittering parasites hopping onto the truck, running across the hood and windows. Soon a dozen disembodied human eyes were staring in at us, hungrily looking for new skulls to occupy.
They skittered over to Amy’s door, toward that few inches of gap the first spider was holding open with its body. They crowded around and started forcing their way in, a mass of disembodied eyeballs on black parasite bodies. I pulled with all my strength, trying to crush the little bastards. But they were too well armored and I wasn’t strong enough.
One finally pushed its way in, flipping onto Amy’s lap. She shrieked. Another followed it. Then it was a torrent of the squirming creatures, pouring into the cab of the truck.
One leapt at John’s face. He caught it, cursing.
Falconer, who couldn’t see the invaders but who could easily guess what was happening, yelled, “OPEN THE MIC! OPEN THE MIC AGAIN!”
John, fighting with the parasite trying to burrow into his face with one hand, found the loudspeaker button with the other. Falconer pressed the button on his gadget. The hum filled the air. The spiders shrieked.