S.T.Y.X. Humanhive (S.T.Y.X. Humanhive Book 1)

by Arthur Stone

  They moved as stealthily as they were able, aided by forests, bushes, and occasional barns. One wooded suburb gave them a few miles without ever stepping out into the open. Last night’s conversation made Boiler wary of invisible snipers and sky drones. Even against a random monster his shotgun’s effectiveness was a roll of the dice, but its value plummeted when faced with squads of people and tanks and turrets. An enemy with a machine gun could saturate him with bullets from a safe distance, out of the reach of his shotgun no matter the ammunition he used. He wouldn’t even see a sniper, especially if disguised as a plant or hiding in a window.

  After their climb into a drain pipe that crossed under a railroad track, Fisher uttered a warning without turning around to face him.

  “There’s a field up ahead, with a big apple tree farm just beyond it. We charge across the field. Staying in the open for any length of time is too dangerous.”

  “I’m glad your nickname’s not Pickett. But there’s no way you can run on that leg.”

  “Then I’ll hop on one foot. We have to clear that field fast, no matter what.”

  “Let me carry the crossbow, then.”

  “No way. Never give anyone your last weapon, not even if you have no arms left to use it with, understand? Not even to your best friend.”

  Fisher’s self-esteem had evidently risen since the night before. Boiler hoped it was accurate. “Got it.”

  The more experienced of the pair waited at the pipe’s exit for a few minutes, scanning the area with his binoculars. Both then rushed through an oat field about a thousand feet across, leaving a trail of trampled grain behind. No one shot at them, and no monster rustled through the field. At least, not that they heard. Once they reached the apple trees, they stopped to catch their breath. Fisher had much more to catch. He was clearly exhausted from the charge across the field, limping much more than before.

  “Alright, Boiler, now we move through these trees and reach the road. That’s where the forest starts again, thank God. It’s a narrow wood and will take us a bit out of the way, but we’ll stick with it until we find the thicker forest to the West. That forest is partially located in a small stable cluster that has sat wild and overgrown for ages now. The cover of those trees will take us right to our destination.”

  “So what’s our destination?”

  “You’ll like it, I promise.”

  Once again, Boiler prayed Fisher’s self-confidence was accurate. He started out, then noticed something strange among the trees. It didn’t appear to be threatening, at least, just a circle of poles stuck in the ground, with a small, illogical pile of garbage in the center. On closer inspection, though, the pile made tragic sense. It contained charred wood and burnt bits of cloth and bone, both quite fresh. He found the remains of a hand, its fingers twisted, and the buckle of a belt gleaming from a pile of incinerated rags. The buckle was spotless, a striking sight against the polluted background of death.

  “Some kind of odd spectacle here, Fisher. Looks like someone really got toasted. Literally.”

  “Keep away from that!”

  Boiler froze, and his companion hobbled over and stopped near an apple tree. Someone had carved an upside-down cross on the tree, with the letters S-T-Y-X-UM underneath it.

  “Satanists?” Boiler theorized.

  “No one bothers being Satanist here, or anything else I know from the old world, really. No, this is worse. This is the work of the cult we call the Kildings.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Neither had I. Maybe they’re unique to this world. They call themselves the Children of Styx, after all, and they’re very secretive. Your best friend can be one of them, and you won’t even know it. He’ll smile and laugh with you, always help you out when you need it, and then one day lead you to a quiet corner of the world and...”

  “...offer you as a sacrifice?”

  “Something like that. Usually they nail you to an inverted cross and unleash an infected beast at you. He gobbles and nibbles you into non-existence, and they coat what’s left with gasoline and toss a match in the mix, leaving behind a scene like this one. They have other rituals, too, but this is their favorite.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “When do cults ever have a point that we’d understand? If we got them to explain it, I doubt we ordinary humans would be inclined to see where they’re coming from. They steal people and bring them to dead clusters, or places very close to dead clusters.”

  “Are dead clusters the black ones where everything crunches like glass under your feet?”

  “So you’ve seen one already.”

  “I barely crawled my way out of it.”

  “They do terminate the escapades of many a newbie. And many a veteran, too. Once the edgers tied up a veteran raider and left him in a dead cluster for a few hours.”

  “What happened?”

  “His body survived, but not his mind. A rare case—usually those places kill you. No one can stand them for long, and the closer you are to the Noose, the more dead clusters you run into. Beyond the Noose, there is only black. That’s the end of the world, we say. No one can pass through it.”

  “So the Noose was nearby, and I just bumped into a dark cluster once. Seemed to go on forever though.”

  “There could have been several in a row. They’re often grouped like that. But I don’t know what causes the borders out there to even exist. Those clusters never reset. They never change at all. You can throw a piece of meat into one of those places and it’ll sit there, fresh and moist as the wares of a butcher’s shop, for a whole week. Then suddenly it will turn into that fragile obsidian, just like everything else.

  “This place is a band with just a few dead clusters and a lot of very active ones. So both the edgers and the raiders keep themselves busy. If you head south, however, you run into a huge, impassable swath of darkness. Some of the edgers’ stables sit right along the edge of it, so that any newcomers trying to skirt around the dead clusters get themselves caught. In fact, it’s the most lucrative location those bastards have. Their victims just come right to their doorstep!”

  “What about up north? What’s up there?”

  “Another band of dark clusters, but there are some ways through. You won’t find anything good up there, either—in fact, you might run into atomites.”

  “...atomites?”

  “You’d rather not know. Let’s change the subject.”

  “You’re way too superstitious, you know that?”

  “The Hive will make you just as superstitious, trust me. Our best course is due west, with minimal variance. The further we get from the Noose, the fewer dark clusters there are, and the more roads are open to us. More opportunities, more places to explore.”

  “So why didn’t you stay there?”

  “Here you’re just meat, but out there, you’re meat which is also the primary source of spores. They’ll smile and assure you that you’re their best customer, and even give you a discount card, then swindle your ass right out from under you. In the Hive, capitalism gets even uglier than the kind you’re used to. Much uglier. But let’s keep moving. Bad omens here, no sensible raiders chat in the presence of evil omens.”

  * * *

  Somehow the woods had turned into a vast wasteland. The food situation here was dismal, so the next ghoul they saw was exhausted, moving at a crawl. Yet as soon as it spotted the approaching humans, its woes were forgotten, and it tried to leap to its feet—without success. Fisher circled around it, spit, and whacked its temple. The ghoul uttered a grumbling plea, begging to have some Fisher for breakfast. Then the beast tried to give chase, rustling through the old foliage and fallen branches, but it couldn’t hope to keep up.

  Once they had reached the edge of the forest, Fisher took out his binoculars and surveyed the area. Boiler followed suit. A ravine filled with wild bushes stretched out in front of them, exiting into what was either a wide river or a long lake, its banks covered in reeds and canes of all so
rts. The only visible building was a lonely little house to the left that looked uninhabited, with a long boardwalk onto the river-lake peeking out behind it. If they swam across, they’d land in a forest that stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions.

  “Something ate all the cows to the north,” Fisher remarked.

  Boiler followed his gaze and saw large bovine skulls and skeletons scattered around the pasture. “Can cows be infected?”

  “No. Only meat eaters can be infected. Some carnivores are exceptions, unsusceptible for the disease. Smaller animals like cats are unaffected—or die out too quickly to develop. That includes tiny humans. The worst is when a cluster brings in a birthing center. The mother and staff might turn, but babies don’t since they aren’t big enough yet. You can imagine what happens.”

  “I’m not sure I want to.”

  “Anyway, all the cows, horses, sheep, and goats are consumed quickly. Infecteds adore their meat.”

  “I thought we immunes were their top pick.”

  “Nope. Cows, goats, horses, sheep, like I said. Anything that eats grass. Even an elephant would be quite the commodity for the beasts since it doesn’t eat meat. They’re not too fond of pigs, though, and some pigs can even be taken by the infection. We immunes come after that, then everything else. The weaker walkers, I mean. Smarter creatures can open cans of food, or at least loot meat from stores, and they don’t care if the meat is rotten.

  “Looks like this was quite the feast, then.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “With a whole herd on the menu. I doubt this was the work of just one beast.”

  “Looks like enough meat to grow a couple of elites, in fact.”

  “Which way are we heading?”

  “That house. There are always a couple of boats at the pier. We’ll take one down the river, which bends a ways to the west but then allows us to hop to a tributary a bit later. We’ll clear thirty miles in nothing flat. Trust me, I’ve done it a few times already.”

  “So you’ve taken both of the boats by now.”

  “Things in this world aren’t like things back home, Boiler. So I took a boat or two, what of it? The boats come back every cluster wipe. You can burn this house down and it’ll be back a month later, with little or no noticeable difference. That’s how things work here.”

  “There’s no way I’m getting used to that.”

  “Everybody has trouble at first,” he said, clearly focused on something else. “Huh—some of those bones look far too fresh. The more developed creatures are smart. They wouldn’t slay all the cows at once but would keep them alive to take out one at a time. Freshly killed meat is more delicious, after all. The others wouldn’t be able to get far, so they’d have no problem catching them to continue their delicious feast.”

  “Shepherds.”

  “Pretty much. We have to clear out of here fast, and that’s easiest by boat. Then we’ll be at our stable in no time. Worth the risk of running for it?”

  “You know better than me.”

  “Well, if my leg was in decent shape, I’d say we—eh, what the hell, let’s go. Unless something has changed, there are two boats behind that house, like I said. One is a canoe, its oars propped up against the wall under the canopy, and the other is a motorized boat that always has gas in the tank. It’ll take a little work to get started, so you grab the oars on the way while I head straight there. I’ll need to rip the lock off with my beak, and we’ll cast off and row away from shore then get the motor started once we’re in the water.”

  “That’s going to make noise.”

  “It’s pretty loud, but even manmincers just flounder around in the water. They hate being submerged and make terrible swimmers. Sure, they can awkwardly paddle out to an island to hunt you, but they can’t catch a boat. Just don’t get close to shore, where they might leap on board. Out on the open water, there’s nothing to fear from them—even elites won’t be able to catch us.”

  “What about edgers? We’ll be out under the open sky.”

  “We will, but there really aren’t any roads that run along this river. A couple of risky bridges, sure, and we’ll silence our motor as we approach them and try to row through the reeds. The two times I’ve been down this way, everything was quiet. But if something happens to me and you’re left on your own, keep moving west. I can’t tell you how to reach the nearest stable from here—it’s complicated—but there are other decent stables beyond it, and you might just make it. Alright, here we go.”

  * * *

  Boiler made it to the house far ahead of Fisher. The latter abandoned his design of moving quickly, having spent his strength on the run across the field. Previously he had exhibited a serious limp while running, but now he trudged along at a pace barely exceeding a casual walk. All the while, the pain contorted his face. Boiler remembered what that had been like.

  The oars were indeed up against the wall under the awning. The doors had been torn clean off their hinges, their own threshold now their resting place, and big horse flies swarmed the entrance, but there wasn’t time to figure out why. He wasn’t here to play detective. He just needed a boat.

  Both watercraft rested at the dock, and he dropped the oars in the motorboat. A cheap padlock held the boat in place, chained to the pier, and a couple of good blows with the ax Boiler didn’t have would break the lock. Fisher and his beak were still a few hundred feet out. He should have asked him for the beak and avoided this delay. Oh well.

  “Boiler! In the water with the boat, now! I’ll catch up,” Fisher yelled, something different about his voice.

  “How? It’s padlocked to the dock!”

  “Just find a way. Now!”

  Something was making Fisher nervous. Boiler glanced left, and his heart rate understood even before he did. A monster was racing across the mass cow grave, leaping like a tail-less kangaroo. The resemblance—its backward knees, its jumping form—was striking. There was nothing human about it, but like other monsters, its muscles had grown rapidly and asymmetrically. It was six feet tall, maybe more, and its head was little more than a mouth with a massive jawbone, with teeth sufficient to down small redwoods.

  It moved at such speed that, to escape it, even a fit human on a bicycle would have to pedal fast enough to wear the soles of her shoes out—when traveling downhill.

  The cat’s experienced eyes grew threatening as it arched its back and hissed. Boiler drew his shotgun and took aim, but lowered it a split second later. The creature was a thousand feet away, still, and his gun could barely hit something a few hundred feet out.

  “Fisher, hustle it up! Now. Run for it!”

  “The boat! Get in the boat, Boiler. Push off, now!”

  A quick estimate of the beast’s arrival time made Boiler realize the beak wouldn’t beat it by enough of a margin. Even if he freed the boat immediately, they’d only have enough time to push it fifty feet or so out into the water. What about the butt of his shotgun? He didn’t care that it might damage the gun, but he did care that it might not work. Well, bullets were better than gold in this world, but living was better than both. His first round was buckshot, and the lock held. Something metal grazed his leg and dispatched a jolt of pain up his spine. But the second round, a slug, did the trick. He prepared to push off. He refused to hurry, though, since he doubted the half-lame Fisher would be able to outswim the bigger fisher on his tail if he did. The monster wouldn’t even have to swim, just run through the shallows.

  He sat in the boat, heaved Charcoal into the front, and pushed the paddle into the mud so it would be ready to go. All the while, he watched Fisher’s progress.

  Incredibly, the man made it. He ran straight for the boat, his limp almost imperceptible now, but the marsupial zombie was faster by an order of magnitude. Fisher made it to the pier.

  “Push off!”

  Boiler complied with his oar as Fisher slammed into the boat, giving it a bit of a jump start.

  “No time. Drop the pad
dle and shoot! I’ll handle the boat. Shoot that thing!”

  Boiler pressed the butt of the shotgun up against his shoulder. The creature was roaring and charging at the pier, apparently intending to leap into the boat. They had no chance of pushing out far enough.

  “Fucking shoot it, or we’re both dead!”

  “Shut up, I know what I’m doing!”

  “Shoot!”

  Heavy pawsteps shook the pier as the creature neared its target and prepared for its long jump. The beast had no visible nose besides a single hole shielded by angled bones on either side. Its shockingly intelligent eyes mounted on the hypertrophied jaw zoned in on Boiler, identifying him as the most threatening. It took aim, plotting its jump to land right on Boiler’s head.

  The shotgun kicked. The creature jerked, its pace interrupted, but it ran on for the last few feet. The gun kicked again. The second round, a slug, struck the beast in the top of the head. Unable to power through this second assault, it fell into the shallow water next to the pier, but before a second had passed it oriented itself back towards its meal, slamming into the old, rotting boards and breaking them into large splinters. It kept coming. At least its progress was slower, now that the water was waist-deep.

  Boiler shot again, and the beast shuddered but didn’t stop. This is it. He had one round left. With only twenty feet between the monster and the boat, he wouldn’t have time to reload.

  But the water was getting deeper, reaching up to chest height now, and the beast’s speed was noticeably slowing. The final shot shattered the creature’s front teeth. It fell headlong into the water and then surged up, roaring like a carnivorous woodchipper.

  “Fire!” Fisher screamed, working the oar as fast as he could.

  “I’m out!”

  “Then paddle! Let’s go, let’s go!”

  Boiler obeyed, and the boat’s speed grew as the beast began to lag. The river was soon too deep, and the kangaroo’s jumping days were done. “Let’s see how well that thing swims,” mumbled Boiler unwittingly.

  It swam poorly. In fact, it didn’t swim at all. Perhaps it had never encountered water before. Its thrashing claws generated nothing but a violent spray above its head.