The Divide

by Jeremy Robinson

“A plane,” Salem says. “I think.” And when he sees our baffled expressions, he adds, “It could fly. But that’s not what’s important.” He points to the other side of the room. “It looks a little makeshift, but I think this is a laboratory, where they would conduct experiments and study the results.”

  Several computers are coming to life, their screens glowing blue. They stand atop long desks that are covered in an array of machines, devices, and equipment that I can no more describe, than use. “You’re not planning to use these computers…”

  As smart as Salem might be, understanding the technology to the point of finding what we need is unlikely.

  “That could take weeks,” Salem says. “Maybe months.”

  “Then what are we looking for?” Del asks.

  “Lew,” Salem says, standing on his toes to look over the dozens of desks, their equipment and the chairs strewn between them. At one point, this facility would have contained hundreds of people. Maybe more.

  How many of them worked at these tables, trying to find a way to stop the Golyats’ advance? How many of them left before the end, helping to found the first counties of New Inglan? How many of them died here?

  I don’t see any bodies. The space is fairly immaculate. Just a thin layer of dust.

  “Well, not Lew,” Salem says, “but evidence of him. If we can find where he worked, that’s where we’ll start.”

  We break into groups of two, scouring each aisle, trying to make sense of what we’re seeing and searching for signs of a man none of us have met, who is long since dead, yet remains the source of all our hope.

  Twenty minutes pass without a single discovery we can understand. Even Salem has trouble comprehending everything we’re seeing, though he remains confident he could figure it out. Should we survive the coming battles, I have little doubt Salem will spend the rest of his days in this place.

  Which means I will, too. I spent far too long apart from my son, and if I’m honest, I have grown fond of his company.

  I pause my search to look at the ceiling. For the past ten minutes, vibrations have shaken the mountain’s insides. The Golyats are above us now, and they don’t appear to be going anywhere. They’re either tearing Micha and his men apart, or raging at having lost track of them.

  While we saw three of them, there could be more—a lot more—and there’s no way to know if they’re coming toward us, or spreading out through Kingsland.

  “Hey, what about this?” Dyer stands at the laboratory’s core, surrounded by an abnormal amount of computer screens, some of them large and curved. She holds up a familiar looking book. It looks just like the one Salem found at the FEMA bunker, the one belonging to Lew, which led us here.

  Before anyone can reply, Dyer grips her chest with her blackened arm and collapses to the floor.

  50

  Salem and I reach Dyer at the same time, but only one of us tries to help her. She’s sprawled on her back, twitching, eyes rolled back. Her breaths come in rapid-fire gasps. Sets of three. “What’s wrong with her?”

  When my question gets no reply, I turn to Salem and find him flipping through the book Dyer discovered. “Salem, help me!”

  “I am!” he shouts back, and for the first time in my life, I hear anger in his voice directed toward me. “She’s becoming a Golyat. I don’t know how to stop it, other than cutting off her head.”

  When Shua arrives, sliding onto his knees beside me, Salem steps away, sitting in a chair that swivels. Shua’s gentle touch surprises me. He takes Dyer by the back of her head, lifting gently. “Listen, asshole, it’s not your time yet.”

  Dyer’s body spasms. I fear she’ll injure herself when she bites her bottom lip, but no blood comes from her mouth. Instead, there is a drawn out, “Fffffffff,” followed by a pained, “-uck you.”

  Dyer’s eyes roll forward and focus on Shua.

  “Careful,” she says. “Vee’s the jealous type, and I’m not really in a position to defend myself.”

  “Just hang in there—”

  “Oh, god. Vee, are those tears?” Dyer asks. “Is he crying?”

  I glance at Shua. He doesn’t bother trying to hide the tears.

  “I’ve lost too much family already,” Shua says. “I’m not going to lose you, too.”

  “Not sure you have much of a choice,” Dyer says, lifting her dead hand to her chest. She grips the fabric, and with a strength that defies her condition, she tears the garment away. Bare chested, Dyer looks down at her changing body, but instead of despair, she shows relief. “The girls still look good.”

  While ‘the girls’ are not yet touched by the Golyat blight making its way through her body, the desiccated blackness has passed her shoulder, sending tendrils out toward her neck, down her ribs, and around her heart. She doesn’t have much more time.

  “Here!” Salem shouts, looking in the journal. “I found it. I mean, he found it. Lew. There’s a lot here, but…” he turns the page, reading quickly. “He was infected during the course of his experimentation. He was an old man by then. Close to a solution. He created an…inoc...inoculation. I don’t know what that means. But it prevented people from changing. At least the few he tried it on. But…it didn’t work on him. He was too advanced for it to save him. He says, “‘The inoculation failed to stop my transformation, but it did slow it down, hopefully long enough to finish my work on the Golyat solution. I’ve sent everyone to live outside while I finish my work. If I die before finishing, I will at least be trapped in the base and unable to hurt anyone.’”

  “Help me look,” Bake says. She’s standing at the lab’s wall, looking at a row of shelves behind glass doors. Salem and Del head for her. “An inoculation is an injection that protects your body. I don’t know how. But we need to find vials of liquid, and syringes.”

  “I don’t know what those are,” Del says.

  “Uhh, clear cylinder with a needle on one end.”

  Del opens one of the glass doors and reels back. “It’s cold!”

  “Refrigerators,” Salem says.

  The word is lost on me, but Dyer lets out a gentle gasp. “I bet this place has an amazing kitchen.”

  “Go help them,” I tell Shua. “I can’t read.”

  He gives a nod and transfers Dyer’s head into my hands.

  “Not going to screw this up?” she asks me.

  “Screw up saving you?”

  She rolls her eyes. “We both know I’m done. I’m talking about Shua, father of your child. A good father. And probably a good husband. You’ve had a shit deal for a long time. Doesn’t matter if you’re ‘married’ already, or what your birth order is. Fuck tradition. You can’t—”

  Her body goes rigid for a moment, teeth grinding.

  When she relaxes again, I say, “I know, and I won’t.”

  “Won’t what?”

  “Save you.”

  She smiles. “You little shitcake.”

  “Move!” Salem says, and all but bowls me over as he drops to his knees. He holds a small, brown glass jar in one hand and a strange looking device in the other, a long needle sticking out of the end. He stabs the needle through the cover, and pulls the back end out, sucking the liquid into the cylinder. When there’s none left, he withdraws the needle and positions it over Dyer’s heart. He shifts to the side a little, says, “Sorry,” and then jabs the needle in, squeezing the liquid into Dyer’s chest.

  She winces as the needle is withdrawn and says, “Well, that was horrible, thanks. But I don’t think—”

  Dyer’s whole body convulses, her arms and legs thrashing about.

  “Hold her down!” Shua shouts, leaping atop her Golyat arm before being tossed away. He sails fifteen feet, clears a desktop with his body, and tumbles to the floor amidst a torrent of metal, plastic, and shattering glass.

  The rest of us just stare at Dyer. How can we hold her down when she’s strong enough to toss us away? Before anyone can come up with a solution, she goes still. Del reaches for her neck, checking her pulse
the way she might slain prey.

  “Alive,” Del says.

  “Father,” Salem says, “are you still alive?”

  Shua groans and pushes himself up.

  And then the world trembles. The Golyats are raging.

  “We need to hurry,” I say.

  “We are safe,” Bake points out. “We have time.”

  “While we’re safe down here, people are dying up there. And not just the people trying to kill us. Salem, keep reading. The rest of us will keep—”

  “Holy shit,” Salem says, staring at the book. “He did it.”

  “You found it already?” Shua asks, working his way back to us.

  Salem shrugs. “I started at the back and worked my way forward. The last entry describes Lew’s final moments of consciousness. It’s…disturbing. The entry before is what we’re looking for, but he was too weak to leave. He never got to tell anyone.”

  “He can tell us now,” I say, and I motion for Salem to read.

  “I’ll paraphrase,” he says, and then, looking at me, adds, “That’s when you—”

  “I know what it means,” I say, pride telling me to argue my intelligence, common sense telling me to suck it up.

  He scans the pages. “Okay…the transformation into a Golyat first occurred with a genetically engineered bacteria created to rapidly dispose of waste, of which there was millions of tons. The bacteria was designed to burn through organic and inorganic waste without producing harmful smoke or gases, reducing it all to a liquid slurry that could be absorbed by the ecosystem without harmful effects. After a week, it should have died out.”

  “But it didn’t,” Bake says.

  Salem shakes his head. “Most of it did, but there were rats living in all that trash. When they were exposed, most rats died, but some didn’t. They became hosts for the bacteria, extending its life long enough for it to mutate. For it to evolve. It only took a few years for the rats to spread the bacteria to other creatures, which in turn spread it to humanity, and that was the beginning of the end.

  “Lew says finding an antibiotic to combat the bacteria was so difficult because its various parts were something he calls ‘rare materials.’ It contains elements of bacteria gathered from the indigenous population of North Sentinel island, a creature he refers to only as ‘Prime,’ and a genetic modification called RC-714. ‘These are the elements that made the bacteria so resilient, adaptable, and gave the Golyats their emaciated form, fueling their hunger and making them able to grow so large.’”

  “Where is it?” I ask.

  Salem looks up. “Where is what?”

  “The antibi…anti…”

  “…biotic,” Salem finishes, and doesn’t bother asking me if I know what it is. No one here does. “I don’t know where it is, but he references a dart gun.”

  Now, that I understand. Poison darts are a useful hunting tool. “So we find the darts, shoot the Golyats, and what?”

  “I don’t know,” Salem says. “He never got to try them, but the antibiotic worked in the lab. The inoculation is similar, giving the human immune system the ability to identify and destroy the bacterial cells. But I think you captured the essence of what our next steps are: find the antibiotic darts, shoot one into a Golyat, and see what happens next.”

  “What happens next,” says a growling voice from behind us, “is that all of you die.”

  I spin around, machete in hand, to find my husband and twenty men standing between us and the exit. They look haggard and beaten. Many are bloody, but each and every one of them churns with fury. Since their number has been greatly reduced, I can only assume that these men have witnessed the horror that’s been brought to Kingsland—brought by us.

  “Micha, wait.” As much as I would like to put my machete through the heart of the man who killed my father, I lower it instead. “We can stop them. The Golyats. The people who made this place figured it out.”

  “And yet the Golyats now rampage through New Inglan.” He stalks toward me, weapon drawn, still drenched in the blood of Modernists.

  “They died before they could use it,” I say, and I motion to my son. “Salem knows how. He understands all this.” I motion to the equipment around me. It’s a gross exaggeration, but I need to convince him to try. I might loathe my husband, but if he and his men were taught how to slay a Golyat…

  “Consider the bastard spared, then.” Micha is nearly upon me. I raise my machete again, as Shua, Del, Bake, and even Salem prepare for a fight we cannot win. The twenty men spread out, closing the distance, sizing us up.

  Somewhere behind the crescent-shaped plane, something falls, clanging on the hard floor.

  While the sound makes me wary, Micha doesn’t notice. He’s lost in rage. Micha brings his sword up to hack at me, while I prepare to defend myself. As soon as our weapons clang, the attack will begin.

  But Micha doesn’t swing.

  While he might have missed the sound of something falling, he’s already attuned to the chattering teeth of a Golyat. Sword still raised, he’s an easy target. I could gut him where he stands. Instead, I say, “One of them got inside. We’ll need to fight together.”

  I can tell the suggestion disgusts him, but when I turn to face the sound, he doesn’t strike me down.

  “How can we kill it?” he asks, over the sound of shuffling feet.

  “With our ancestor’s solution: a special poisoned dart.” It’s a crude explanation, but accurate enough. “With what we have now, take off its head.”

  When the lone Golyat steps out from around the plane, I realize that might be easier said than done.

  51

  “I want its head!” Micha shouts without taking the time to assess the situation. His shortsightedness is displayed once more when he adds, “And then the Modernists’ heads!”

  Hearing the term ‘modernist’ spoken with such disgust now sounds off. Antiquated. The term isn’t even accurate. Plistim and his followers aren’t obsessed with modern technology, they’re committed to undoing the sins of our ancestors no matter the cost, even if that includes breaking the Prime Law, and using any resources available.

  Micha’s men form a wide arc, but they don’t rush into the fight.

  Who could?

  The Golyat is no bigger than Shua, but it is far from a man. While it lacks the emaciated form of its larger brethren, the creature’s skin is pitch black. Its black eyes and blacker pupils shift from one person to the next, rather than fixating on a single target. While its stomach burns bright, it stalks toward us, into the empty space between the makeshift laboratory and the giant, black, flying vehicle.

  Teeth chatter.

  The glow blossoms.

  Stomach juices roil.

  And then, it stops, almost as though it’s fighting itself. It sneers, cracking open flesh on the sides of its nose, which is when I notice it still has a nose. Fists clench as its muscles twitch.

  It’s fighting against something.

  “What are you waiting for?” Micha shouts, pushing his way to the front of his men. “Cowards!”

  I think his men are simply being realistic about their odds of walking away from this fight. The Golyat might be small, but its movements are fluid, and something about it feels almost intelligent. At the least, it is not driven by pure instinct, and from what I can see, it appears to be resisting those instincts.

  What are you? I wonder. Why are you different?

  The answer comes to me at the same time Micha charges, and his men follow, somehow more frightened of my husband’s wrath than a Golyat’s hunger.

  The Golyat’s fearless eyes snap up, watching the incoming men.

  Its mouth twitches, separating lips—it has those, too—to reveal black teeth.

  He’s trying to talk.

  “Stop!” I shout, but I’m too late.

  Micha leaps into the air, plunging his sword ahead of him. The blade slips through the creature’s ribs and out its back.

  Before Micha can withdraw the blade a
nd strike again, the Golyat grasps his wrist and squeezes. With a snap and a scream of pain, Micha is separated from his weapon and then tossed aside. His men, emboldened by my husband’s apparent wounding of the beast, charge headlong into their collective doom.

  As the Golyat turns to face the men, the two halves of Micha’s sword protruding from the creature’s body bend toward the floor and then fall away. They clatter to the smooth concrete just as the first man does. I barely see it happen. One moment, the first of Micha’s men to reach the Golyat is swinging a sword, the next he’s in two halves, sliding in different directions, streaks of blood and gore forming a V.

  The rest of the men, either numbed by horror, or simply not seeing what happened, press the attack.

  Swords and spears whoosh through the air, some of them connecting, most of them not. Men scream out throaty battle cries and then high pitched shrieks. The Golyat battles with a savage disregard for the pain it’s inflicting, and something more—skill.

  For every blade that touches the creature’s body, many more miss, and not because Micha’s men aren’t experienced fighters. If they’re here with Micha and survived the Golyats above, then they are well trained. Some of them are probably veterans of the Cull. But the Golyat ducks and dodges faster than the men can attack, counter attacking with deadly force. Each strike is measured, brutal, and efficient. Every man that drops to the floor, does not get back up.

  While I cannot identify the fighting style, I know that’s what it is. In some ways, it reminds me of how Shua fights, but with less flair, and more power.

  “Vee…” Shua sees it, too.

  “I know.”

  “How?”

  I shouldn’t have an answer to this question, but I’ve known since first noticing this creature was different from other Golyats. I look at Salem, who is glancing between me and the battle. “It’s Lew.”

  Salem’s eyes lock on me. “Lew?”

  “The inoculation didn’t just slow the transformation,” I say. “It left some of him intact. I think he remembers. Maybe not much, especially after five hundred years, but he isn’t a mindless predator.”