by Arthur Stone
They were out of danger, so Boiler ventured a suggestion. “We could get a little nearer and I’ll try to kill it. One good shot to the head.”
“No, we have to go. There’s no way a single one of those things took out a whole herd of cows. Its friends will be nearby, and if you’re anxious to see how well an elite can swim, then you can do it without me.”
Boiler decided to trust the man’s experience. Heck, for all he knew, there was a creature out there that had learned to run on water. It wouldn’t surprise him. Nothing surprised him, these days.
Except when Fisher pulled a crumpled pack of tobacco from his pocket and stuffed some of it into a cigarette, then suddenly lit it with a motion of his finger. The fan leaned back and let a lazy, weary smile sweep across his face. “We barely made it, Boiler. But we damn well made it. Looks like we’ll live another day yet.”
“Where’d you get that from?”
“What, that we barely made it? Jeez. Can’t you tell how close that was?”
“No, not that. That self-lighting cigarette. Some kind of magic trick?”
“Not a trick. Just a little bonus the Hive gave me. Everybody has one.”
“Everyone can light cigarettes with their fingers?”
“No, I’m just unlucky. Everyone here has some kind of gift. What back in the old world we would’ve called a ‘supernatural’ gift. You might become absurdly strong, even though you’re skinnier than bamboo and clumsy enough to tie your fingers into your shoelaces. Or maybe your hearing will suddenly grow sharp enough to pinpoint a mosquito from a dozen paces away. Or perhaps you’ll become like a chameleon, invisible to the beasts even at point-blank range. And those are some of the more common gifts, believe it or not.”
“I saw a man who could run fast. I mean, really fast. Fifty miles an hour fast.”
“Nice. Could anything catch him?”
“Not that I saw. So why did you call yourself ‘unlucky?’”
“Why the hell would I want a portable lighter? Sure, I could turn it into a weapon, full-on D&D style, but that would take far too many peas. Way more than I’ll ever set eyes on.”
“So peas develop our abilities?”
“Yeah. And pearls. But we have trouble getting our hands on enough spores. No sense talking about peas. Without a whole horde of them, ten years could pass before I can light anything bigger than a cigarette. Worthless gift. Hey, look at how mad he is,” Fisher said, pointing to the pier and grinning.
The boat was moving at a rapid pace now, and Boiler had to turn to see the beast in the shallows. It had found its footing and was rocking back and forth, sometimes stopping to stare down its lost meal.
“Is that an elite?”
“That? Hah, no. Just a manmincer.”
“The manmincer I saw was a lot more—normal.”
“This one’s pretty far along, with little of its human form left.”
“Everyone keeps trying to scare me with stories of elites. Kind of wish I could see one, believe it or not.”
“Shut up or you’ll jinx us.”
“The manmincer I saw was still human-shaped. Or gorilla-shaped, anyway.”
“Like I said, this one was highly developed. Plus, it could have come from some animal instead of a human. What species is anyone’s guess.”
“Looks kind of like a kangaroo.”
“Like I said, who knows. Usually the ones that come from humans end up with arms that stretch longer than their legs do. But this one had shorter arms, so it was probably an animal.”
“Only ‘probably?’”
“Look, we all look like humans, but we end up with very different hivegifts. The beasts have differences, too, and they’re much more visible. I doubt you’ll ever see two identical peapods. Of course, they’re similar in the early stages. And much more humanlike, though slower. Then they start rocking back and forth, heel to toe. Soon after that, you can’t be sure. Even with this one with the tiny hands may have come from a human. Probably an animal, but maybe not, and who has time to formulate a scientific anatomical analysis? Maybe the edgers. But they’d rather spend their time analyzing our anatomy. And even if they do know more about the beasts, they’re not about to tell us.”
“So any large animal...”
“Smaller animals, too, as long as their initial size can support the infection. By the time they reach manmincer, they’re always over six feet tall, even if the host was originally a midget. An elite is much taller still.”
“How much?”
“They say they can reach fifteen feet tall. Some will even say thirty. God forbid we ever bump into something like that. Want a smoke?”
“Nah.”
“Good. Best keep it that way. The beasts can smell tobacco from a serious distance away, making lung cancer the least of your concerns. But I can indulge a little here, out on the water.”
“Do they all ‘swim’ that badly? Or are the elites better at it?”
“Elites are better at everything and come in all kinds. But I’ve never heard of one catching up with a motorboat. Speaking of, it’s time to get this engine up and running.”
“I took some buckshot in the leg off my first shot at that lock.
It doesn’t hurt much, but I have to get it out.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got a scalpel. But we’ve got to put some distance between us and there. How you doing? Shit-free pants?”
“Didn’t have the time to shit.”
“I almost found the time. I’ve never run so fast in my life, and with a bad leg, to boot.”
Boiler sat in disquiet over his impending anesthesia-free operation. He turned his gaze back towards the cottage, where the beast had finally pulled itself up onto shore and was moving back to the field of cow bones. It had accepted its failure and was no longer paying them any attention. No other monsters were in sight. “I shouldn’t have listened to you.”
“What about?”
“No more beasts have shown up, so we could have taken that thing out in the water. Found a weak spot in its head armor.”
“No. Look, elites are more innovative than your worst nightmares. One could be watching from the undergrowth alongside the river right now, plotting our deaths, keeping unseen all the time. Just waiting for us to approach the shore. That’d make you happy, if I recall correctly, but you wouldn’t get to admire it for long.”
“Fair enough. So how do you find out what your hivegift is?”
“Yours might not have expressed itself yet. It will.”
“I’ve been here four days already.”
“I’ve never heard of someone having to wait more than a week. But some people’s gifts are unclear, and they have to talk to the healers to figure things out.”
“The healers?”
“Yeah. They can see everything about a person’s body, including what’s recently changed, and so help people develop their abilities. Hive healers are quite a bit different from the doctors of the old world. It’s their hivegift, of course.”
“Yeah.”
“Sometimes abilities develop on their own, without the healers’ help. But that requires intense fright. A potent dose of stress, during which a switch clicks in your body that makes your brain scour each and every system for anything new that might help.”
The motor kicked to life, spray rose from the back of the boat, and Boiler grabbed the sides to steady himself. They were moving fast now. Fisher raised his voice. “Now we’ll be there in no time. It’s not far.”
Chapter 23
The banks of the river were a study in monotony, like a black and white photo of an industrial skyline on an overcast day. Impenetrable thickets of reeds and cattails lined both sides almost without interruption, backed by a healthy deciduous forest. Even when there was a break in the reeds, nothing but the trees seemed to lie beyond them. No signs of human life here, either, except for the ubiquitous plastic garbage and glass bottles floating in the river, and a single half-deflated raft stuck under a clay overhan
g.
They moved very quickly. But then the motor began to sputter, and as Fisher tried to tend to it, it died out completely.
“Dammit! That’s all we’ve got.”
“The motor died?” Boiler said with agitation.
“It’s fine, but we’re out of gas. I forgot completely about the gas. That house had a gas can we had to grab, and I figured I’d get it while you nabbed those oars. But then the manmincer came and...”
“Do we still have far to go?”
“We’ve barely started.”
“There’s got to be gas around here somewhere. This world is full of abandoned vehicles.”
“This motor needs a gas-oil mix.”
“Are you sure?”
“Hell if I know what it’ll do if we just feed it gasoline. It might run for a while, or it might quit on us for good. Not worth the risk, in my book.”
“If we found a car, we could drain the oil out, too.”
“I don’t know about that. We’d have to climb under the car, right?”
“We can figure it out.”
“I guess we don’t have a choice. There’s a small town coming up. Little more that a couple of houses with a road leading through it, but a road means there might be cars. We’ll take whatever gas and oil we can find, since we don’t need to run the motor for long. How’s your leg?”
“Doesn’t even hurt now, surprisingly.”
“You flinched when I cut you to get the shrapnel out.”
“Wouldn’t you? How’s your leg doing?”
“It’s fine as long as I’m sitting down, but I don’t relish standing again. What’s our food situation?”
“One can of stew, one full bottle of water.”
“No way there’s only one can, you miser.”
“I’m frugal, sure, but not a miser. One of us has just been eating a lot.”
“Your cat?”
Boiler glanced sideways at him and rolled his eyes.
“Hey, I’m wounded, so I need a lot to eat. Alright, well, I guess we’ll stay on the lookout for food on our little excursion, too. But if we see anything that moves, we don’t risk it. Even the smallest towns can be dangerous places. Especially if some of the people kept cows, goats, birds, and other delicacies. So stay sharp.”
* * *
The town was indeed small, just eleven lots lined up, parallel to the river. Lush gardens sprawled out around the houses, all the way up to the dense, leafy forest. Perhaps more streets arced out into the forest, but it was doubtful.
Riverside, the town was served by a single pier with a solitary boat, but a garage likely meant to house a boat was located several lots down. Fisher whistled quietly.
“Looks like that might hold a pretty serious boat.”
“Yeah.”
“Meaning gas and oil. I don’t remember seeing that garage before, though, and I’ve been by this place twice now.”
“You probably just weren’t paying attention.”
“I should’ve been. Anything can happen in the Hive. The clusters are susceptible to a wide range of changes. Earlier this boat’s tank had enough gas to take us quite a bit farther, but not this time. Sometimes, though, you just don’t notice the little changes.”
“Looks like there’s a tractor back there, behind that house. See?”
“The road runs back behind the houses, so maybe there is more back there. Strange to have a tractor in such a forested area, though. But diesel fuel is the last thing we need. No shops in this town, not even a convenience store, so let’s look in that house with the big shed. People in these places always stockpile food and fuel. We’ll grab some and scram. What’s your plan for the grabbing part?”
“It should work.”
“Alright, I’ll be at the ready with the oars while you poke around with that gun of yours. With nobody to tend them, those bushes around the shed have grown wild, and they’re thick along the riverbank, too. Something might be using them for cover, who knows.”
“I just saw something run along the riverbank, too. Like a cat, but definitely not a cat.”
“Me too. Maybe a weasel. The infection doesn’t affect those vermin, so it doesn’t want to eat us, you can take it from me. Get going. No sense sitting around talking—we’re just giving them more chances to hear us.”
Fisher didn’t take the boat all the way up to the pier, instead stopping a few feet away from it. Boiler got his left foot wet as he took a step in the water, but the shallows were no deeper than a puddle. He climbed up onto dry ground and circled the bushes to make sure nothing was hiding behind them. But then he saw a runner, down by the now-visible tractor, engaging in its favorite rocking chair roleplaying game.
He pointed it out to Fisher, who whispered back.
“A low-level sporite. They’re not usually alone like that, so there might be more.”
“It’ll coming running when I make noise. And I won’t be able to get into that shed without making noise.”
“I’ll take him out, quietly. You stay close. If there are any more runners, we’ll have to take them out by hand. Reloading this crossbow takes too long.”
The man took a few steps forward, stood up by the wooden fence and propped his elbows on it, and took aim. The zombie was a hundred feet away, but Boiler still remembered how Nimbler had missed from a much closer distance. Still, he didn’t say anything about getting closer. His companion was more experienced than he was and knew what he was doing, right?
Fisher exhaled, stayed still for a moment, and fired. The crossbow clicked, and the bolt skewered the zombie right in the head, crippling its rocking chair imitation ability, immobilizing it for a few seconds, then dropping it to the ground.
A second runner leapt out from behind the tractor, its head twitching nervously as its bounced and crouched up and down in place. It looked around wildly, trying to discern where the deadly projectile had come from. Fisher crouched behind the fence, fiddling with his crossbow, while Boiler froze in place and pretended to be part of the landscape. A couple of times, he was certain the runner looked straight at him, but the pursuit he expected never came.
I guess those things don’t see very well.
Fisher stood up and leaned on the fence again, and that, the runner saw. It surged forward, flying straight at him. The first fence in the way, a hodgepodge of metal posts, was no obstacle. The ghoul leapt right over it and rushed across the next yard. In twenty feet it would be on Fisher, tearing into his ears and neck.
But then the crossbow twanged again, and the beast jerked to the side, spun partway around, and collapsed, slamming its head into the dark boards of the wooden fence, the last obstacle between them. Boiler had barely managed to see the bolt dive in, right between its eyes.
Fisher crouched down again and started reloading his crossbow. He was satisfied.
“Fast, quiet takedown, and with ordinary bolts. See anything else around?”
“No, but there could be, behind that tractor.”
“Anything back there would have come out by now. They always get excited like that when one of them gets shot from an unknown direction. And the second one growled like that when it was running at us, a signal to every beast nearby. Looks like nothing heard it, though. Place seems clear, so cover me. I need to get my bolts back.”
As Fisher went to work with his hunting knife, Boiler watched in all directions, on high alert for any sign of danger. But everything was quiet.
Charcoal, finally fed up with sitting in the boat, jumped out and strode over the Boiler, digging a hole in the sand right by his foot. The cat’s intentions were obvious.
Boiler protested. “Can’t you do that someplace else?”
Fisher responded to the request, which the cat had ignored.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m talking to Charcoal. He’s decided to relieve himself right here, practically in my face.”
“I bet that’s how he shows respect.”
“I’m not sure cats think
anyone else deserves respect.”
“Come on, let’s go take care of the other one.”
The ghoul near the tractor had a spore in its sac, which brought a smile to Fisher’s face.
“These weak runners don’t often have spores—most might as well be empties. Just fast, dangerous, sporesac-carrying empties.”
“So, I guess this might be obvious, but empties never have spores?”
“Sometimes more developed jumpers—the ones who can surge forward like that—have something like a fleshy wart on the back of their heads. That grows into a spore sac, eventually. Well, let’s get into that house and look for something to eat.”
“Sure you don’t want to go rinse your hands off in the river first?”
“Listen, ditch the clean freak attitude. You’ll live longer. It’s not like we can catch the infection from these things. But losing time—and thus increasing your chances of getting eaten—is a serious risk to your health.”
“Hmm. Do ghouls ever hide in houses?”
“Not often. They hate being cooped up.”
“What if they get trapped?”
“That can happen, of course, so don’t let your guard down.”
Fisher strode into the kitchen.
“Don’t even think about opening the fridge.”
“I know.”
“So you’ve opened one already, I see.” He laughed knowingly and gazed into a gap between a wall and a cabinet, pulling out a large bottle holding a clouded liquid. He opened it and swallowed a gulp.
“Backwoods moonshine. Want a swig?”
“I’ll pass.”
“Teetotaller?”
“Not exactly. So we have some oats here, but no place to cook them. And here’s a single sugar packet.”
“Maybe that’ll come in handy. Here’s some candy. I’ll take it along, too, even though it’s pretty stale. Let’s check another house out. This one sucks, and I’m famished.”
It took three more lots before they finally found some provisions to add to Fisher’s pack. Boiler had left his in the boat so it wouldn’t affect his aim and agility. Their searches were rapid, and they may have missed things. Too bad the fridges weren’t an option. - Even if something that didn’t spoil, like jam or canned food, was being held inside, neither of them wanted to grope through grime and mold to find Schrodinger’s morsel. And this cluster had reset quite a while back, as a skeleton he had encountered made clear. It had been stripped clean, and some of its bones scattered. Boiler had learned that was a clear sign a lot of time had passed.