Halfway to me, it stopped suddenly, shuffling awkwardly to a halt. It blinked stupidly at me for a moment, then tipped forward and landed face down with a slap. A hideous pink tongue, long and narrow, snaked out from underneath and fluttered greedily about the surrounding floor.
I wasn’t about to question its sudden interest in the carpeting. I took a long standing leap off one foot and landed heavily on the back of its “neck” with the other. I took the crowbar in both hands and brought it down again and again, like a blind golf caddy with anger issues trying to put the flag back in the hole. Another cloud of white specks ruined the Jemima’s expensive carpet.
“McKeown,” said Warden, dusting herself off. “I think we should split up from here.”
I leaned against one of the walls, wheezing, and held my chest in the hope that it would calm my heartbeat. “You don’t . . . watch a great many horror films, do you.”
“We will cover ground quicker that way. Every second may count if Jemima and Daniel are still alive.” She gestured up the corridor with her head. “I will head toward the bridge. You go the other way and check the lower levels.”
I banged the crowbar against the wall to dislodge a particularly sticky chunk of broken Zoob tooth, then frowned at her. “We heard a Zoob over the comms. The bridge is the most likely place they’re going to be.”
She produced my gun from inside her coat. “Good thing I asked to hold on to the gun, then, isn’t it.”
I considered this. “Can’t argue with that.” But I had a feeling she had some hidden thought processes going on, because she was actually proposing to put herself in danger, and I didn’t recall having seen any blue moons or flying pigs on the way here.
She double-checked the charge meter on the gun, and seemed about to turn around and head through the next connecting door before she met my gaze. “Does your nose hurt?”
I touched it gingerly and winced. “It didn’t until you brought it up, no.”
She nodded and shut the door behind her. I made for the narrow stairwell to the next level down, and only then did it occur to me that I’d yet again been handed the raw deal. We hadn’t been far from the bridge when Warden had suggested splitting up. So now I was having to search a larger section of the ship.
I made to do so anyway, it being hardly worth heading back and calling her out on it. But it didn’t feel like her usual brand of pettiness, somehow. There had to be a bigger plan. Not for the first time, I wondered if when she looked at me, she didn’t see a man, but some kind of giant chess piece with a target painted on its back.
The first room I checked on this level was the largest entertainment lounge, which I privately thought of as “the ballroom.” The omnipresent deep-pile carpet was interrupted by a black-and-white dance floor in the center, served by an alarmingly elaborate lighting system. The room’s perimeter was dotted with beanbag chairs, except for an area around the wall directly opposite the door, where the snooker table was set up, along with a row of bar fridges stocked with a variety of fizzy pops.
The wall coverings were a mess of vibrant colors from all my least favorite parts of the visible spectrum, and the entire ceiling was a domed, bulbous observation window, as if the decor was being harshly judged through the microscope of God. But besides every loose object having shifted slightly during our trebuchet jump into the Black, there were no signs of violence, nor indeed of the room having ever been used at all.
I turned to leave and try the next room when I sensed a noise. I say sensed because it came to me through the floor and the soles of my shoes rather than my ears. I hesitated, then “heard” it again. A dull, metallic thud.
I dropped to my knees and placed my ear against the cool tile surface of the dance floor, just in time to hear it again. It sounded like something heavy and blunt hitting something hollow and metal.
Then there was another sound just after it, a much softer one. It was so brief and strange that it took me a moment to identify, but I eventually concluded that it was either a small dog expressing disdain at his dinner dish, or the brief whimper escaping from the mouth of a terrified teenager trying not to make any sound.
I shoved myself back onto my feet—leaving another little sampling of nose blood on the tiles—and ran for the next set of stairs down, which led to a hallway connecting a couple of sleeping quarters. As I rounded the turn in the stairs, a symphony of crazy gnashing and murmuring reached my ears, and I was faced with what I can only describe as a wall of Zoobs.
The battleship that had attacked the Jemima must have been some Zoob attempt at organization, because there had to be at least fifteen of the little brackets, and as I watched, another one joined them from the open doorway that led to the airlock. Every single one was wearing some kind of body part that didn’t belong to them. Mostly human, but I saw one with an orange furry trunk that must have come from a Magnerian bipedal mammoth.
Judging by the look of their bloodshot eyes and dull green pallor, most of them were rather badly malnourished. That was also given away by the fact that they were all stacked up outside one of the cabin doors, taking it in turns to hurl themselves violently at the small section of door that wasn’t concealed by writhing green flesh.
The internal doors were only a light alloy. It had already bent enough that there was a clear gap, widening further with each impact. It didn’t take a genius to guess why they were all so interested in this particular door. Through the gap, I saw a momentary flash of hot pink hair, desperately pushing some kind of barricade back into place.
The Zoobs were so excited at the prospect of getting inside the cabin that none of them paid me the slightest attention. That gave me some advantage, but bravely leaping into the fray like Errol Flynn, brandishing my crowbar like a sword, immediately felt like an incredibly bad idea. Individual Zoobs apparently weren’t hard to deal with when they didn’t have the element of surprise, but there were enough of them here to bite off all my limbs before I could wind up for the second blow.
I hopped from foot to foot, trying to think, as the Zoobs hammered the gap larger with each passing moment. That made the pain in my broken nose flare up again, which was even less conducive to thinking. I blocked one nostril and blew something red and lumpy out of the other, letting it splat upon the floor.
The Zoob that had backed off a little to make a run at the door suddenly froze and spun around to face me. A couple of other outlying ones did the same. Then three bouncing balls of green toothy death launched themselves in my direction.
I leapt back into the stairwell, in need of a choke point, and readied my crowbar for a swing. But they weren’t even looking at me. Instead, they collectively fell upon the little blob of blood and snot near where I had been standing. They crawled all over each other like puppies fighting over the last free nipple, desperately slurping at it with their long, waggling tongues.
And that made quite a few things fall into place. Blood. That was all they wanted, nutritionwise. Maybe it was the only part they could digest. That would certainly explain why they didn’t eat all those dried-up body parts, but mainly used them for accessorizing.
Apparently they were happy to forcefully take it from prey, but if any of it was lying around freshly liberated from a body, then that took priority. I’d been leaving a steady supply of drips from my broken nose since the moment I’d come aboard. There must have been a few on the carpet upstairs that had made the second Zoob hesitate.
The moment I realized this, I also realized, without a shadow of uncertainty, that Warden had figured this out around the time she had suggested splitting up. Because with my broken nose, I was a walking rally point for every Zoob I ran across. I made a frustrated burbling noise that sent more blood flying.
On cue, a growing separatist faction of the besieging Zoobs leapt for it and started slurping away. Now I had a plan, although not a plan I relished, because it hinged on the ever-unpleasant element of self-sacrifice.
I scooped up a decent amount of bloody m
ucus with my thumb and forefinger and flung it vaguely in the direction of the Zoob mass. Thickened by snot, the blood flew across the room much more efficiently, so this solution was unfolding ideally, broadly speaking. I threw more out, and after narrowly avoiding having my bloodstained fingers bitten off by a leaping Zoob, I felt I had the undivided attention of the mob. The cabin door was forgotten completely.
I started backing up the steps, flinging more donations to the floor as I went. “Kids?” I shouted, over the burbling and slurping. “I’m luring them away! Just . . . make your way to the bridge as soon as it’s clear. Warden’s there.”
A pair of eyes appeared at the ragged gap around the misshapen door. “Okay!” called Jemima.
The Zoobs were packed so closely together on the way up the stairs that they looked like a giant, writhing caterpillar. I had to keep swinging my crowbar to keep them from getting too close, even while I was dangling drippy enticements from my other hand. By this method I managed to get them up to the entertainment level of the ship.
By then, pain and blood loss were clanging numerous church bells inside my head, but I was managing to hold together the threads of a plan. All I had to do was get the Zoobs into the ballroom, hold them until the kids could get past into the bridge, then lure them all onto the umbilical and seal the inner airlock door. How I proposed to do that without sealing myself outside the ship with them was a bridge I could cross when I came to it.
There were already blood splats up here that I had left on my first way through, so I followed them backward into the ballroom and didn’t stop moving until I was in the middle of the dance floor, standing over the little offering of blood I’d left there earlier. Gratifyingly, the little wandering Zoob dinner party followed me in, their enthusiasm for what must have become a rather samey series of meals undiminished. When I was fairly certain they were all in, I stamped my foot on the dance floor three times. I could only hope that the kids would guess that I was signaling them to move.
The Zoobs looked like they had almost polished off the last of the blood I’d left, and one or two of them had given up on getting a share of what remained and were making wayward glances around. They were in need of fresh encouragement. I reached for my nose.
Nothing came out. The reliable blood dispenser had dried up. Ah, I thought. Here, of course, we discover the glaring flaw in the plan—that it hinged on the use of more blood than one man should reasonably be able to produce while remaining upright.
I blew as hard as I could, but what came out was mostly snot. I flung it anyway, and it landed on the face of one of the nearer Zoobs. It made no attempt to consume it, and gave me a slightly reproachful look.
One by one, the crowd was realizing that there weren’t going to be any more free samples, and that it was time to take the initiative and go to the source. One of them made an opportunistic leap, but I’d seen it coming and deflected it with a crowbar swing. It rejoined the mob, unharmed.
I had to move. But the Zoobs were fairly decisively blocking the way to the only door. Maybe there were vents or maintenance panels I could make an escape through, but I needed time to look for them. I glanced away, realizing as I did so that the Zoobs were waiting for me to do that, and saw the snooker table.
I darted toward it, just as the space I had been occupying was pelted with fanged green missiles. I reached the table at a full sprint, planted my hands on the baize, and used my momentum to swing my legs over and vault cleanly across. I crouched when I hit the floor, and as I rose, I smoothly tipped the table onto its side, reflecting briefly on the irony that this would not have been possible had it been bolted down.
One of the Zoobs had been close enough to be caught underneath what was now the snooker table’s underside and burst messily, spraying spores in my face that I hastily swatted away. The rest started hurling themselves at the makeshift barricade, bouncing off with a series of dull thuds, like angry fists upon a wooden door in the middle of the night.
Sitting in extremely temporary cover, I gave the surrounding room a proper once-over. Accordingly, I couldn’t see a single panel or vent that might represent an exit. Just big, solid, nicely decorated walls. Packed with beanbags and fridges full of fizzy pop.
The Zoobs didn’t seem capable of clearing the top of the snooker table barrier with their pouncing leaps. But I doubted it would take long for them to figure out that I was glaringly vulnerable to being flanked from both sides.
So I stood up, peering over the table, and made a few token crowbar swipes to keep the frenzied horde focused. I felt like a castaway at sea discouraging sharks away from the lifeboat, except that the entire ocean was sharks. I needed a plan. The idea to create some kind of improvised pressure cannon from fizzy pop and snooker balls flashed briefly into my mind, and I dismissed it just as quickly.
I hit one of them with a halfhearted crowbar swing, and it flew sideways. That was mistake one, because it bounced off an artfully angled section of wall and landed near one of the fridges behind the barricade. A moment’s terror passed as its blank, cyclopean gaze briefly met mine, then instinct took over. I darted out of cover to swat it back toward its fellows before it could react. That was mistake two.
Because all the Zoobs that had been making a frontal assault on the snooker table started streaming sideways toward me. I hastily dashed back into cover, hissing Pilot Math as I went, but the mistake was already made. A wave of Zoobs moved into sight from around the table. They seemed to have difficulty pouncing accurately when they were all packed together and interfering with each other, but it would hardly matter if they could just steamroll me en masse.
I swung the crowbar wide and low, and it didn’t decelerate even as it hit every Zoob in the front line. It was like pushing inflated balloons around; they must have been boneless and mostly hollow. None of them seemed hurt. They just rolled with it and came back for more. It seemed like they had to be trapped and crushed to cause any lasting pain.
Speaking of which, I discovered that the Zoobs had actually been smart enough to flank my cover on both sides when one of them pounced me from behind and started chewing on my shoulder.
The padding in my flight jacket took most of the damage, but I could feel a dozen little points prickling my skin. I couldn’t give it the chance to get a few more chomps in. I reeled, made another decision on instinct, and did a desperate forward roll into the bank of refrigerators. I landed on the Zoob, crushing it between shoulder and metal, and felt its “jaws” loosen.
But my victory came with the snag of leaving me sprawled on the floor on my back, and the Zoobs closed in like the tide. The light was being blotted out by a cloud of quivering round shapes all around my vision. The gibbering was reaching fever pitch, and I couldn’t tell if it was coming from them or me.
I kicked with both legs and swung my crowbar around and around, like a baby refusing to be changed, but their numbers were too great. Something green and bulbous wrapped itself tightly around my shin, and the icy-hot sting of pain made me gasp.
Pain and sweaty hands worked together to make the crowbar fly out of my grip as I swung it wildly, and I didn’t even hear where it landed. Their excitement was a pounding wall of frenzied noise. I felt a hundred sharp points, arranged in a circle, digging into my scalp, and blood traced a hot line from my forehead to my mouth.
I spat. In that final moment, I thought of Warden, and felt sick at the unfairness of it. I’d sometimes pictured myself bravely sacrificing my life to save another, but my preference had always been that it be someone I actually liked.
Chapter 26
The sound I heard at the moment of death was a lot like a catastrophic shattering of glass. Instantly, the gibbering stopped, and the hideous, squeezing pain disappeared from my head and leg. I felt cold all over, along with a sensation like I was being lifted up from the floor.
It wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined death. I’d always thought it was more of an ascending-tunnel-of-light, golden-angels thing. I at the very l
east assumed that it would be peaceful. This was the very opposite—I was freezing cold, something was roaring in my ears, and what felt like gale-force wind was blowing all around me. It was almost exactly like being caught in a depressurization event.
I opened my eyes to find them watering. I was alive, still in the ballroom, and caught in a depressurization event. There was a jagged hole in the plexiglass roof, only about three feet wide, but greedily sucking every drop of air, as fast as the life support system could replace it. This was the same kind of plexiglass that protected Ritsuko City from asteroids. Only a few inches thick here, but whatever had managed to punch through it deserved some kind of prize.
Zoobs and beanbag chairs were flying around the room like the balls in a bingo machine. I’d had the presence of mind to grab my snooker table, but soon I was upside down, feet stretched toward the raging hole. And in that position, I could see what it was that had saved my life.
It was Carlos, Henderson’s bodyguard with the completely ridiculous physiology. He was still standing directly underneath the hole in the ceiling and had managed to stay in place by digging all his fingers into the dance floor, right up to the knuckle.
Still upside down and clinging to a snooker table, only two legs of which were retaining any kind of attachment to the floor, I caught Carlos’s gaze. As neither of us was able to move or be heard over the wind, we communicated by look alone. He was almost impossible to read, but from what little I could glean, I was half tempted to let go there and then, and take my chances with the vacuum of space.
But before I could make my mind up, the growing cluster of beanbags and various other loose objects hovering around the hole in the dome crushed together tightly enough to form a rigid, temporary plug. The gravitons in the internal atmosphere reasserted themselves, and everything clattered to the floor. The snooker table tottered and landed back upright on its legs, with me tumbling around the side and ending up underneath.
Will Save the Galaxy for Food Page 28