Emily nodded, "When will it be here?"
"Soon," was the reply.
Emily thought she detected a hint of tiredness in her boy's voice. "Honey, are you okay?" she asked but there was no reply. Adam was gone.
•••
Emily dropped below deck and headed to the command room. Mac was going over a duty roster.
"Adam says the replacement transport is on its way," Emily said as she ducked into the room.
"Do we have an ETA?" Mac asked.
Emily shook her head. "He sounded really tired, Mac."
Mac stepped in closer and put a hand on Emily's shoulder. "Well, when you think about it, it stands to reason that he would be exhausted. I mean, he's learning all this new stuff. It’s going to take its toll on him, right? Nothing to worry about, I'm sure love." He smiled reassuringly at his wife. Emily knew he was just trying to make her feel better and that he had no more of an idea whether what he said was the truth or not. For all they knew, the mind-bogglingly complicated system their son was at the center of might slowly be killing him.
"Well, he said that—"
Emily's sentence was cut short by the sound of the sub's intercom demanding attention. Mac unhooked the microphone and said, "Go ahead." A voice, buzzing with either an edge of excitement or panic, Emily could not tell, crackled out of the speaker. "Topside lookout reporting, sir. We have movement in the jungle. Multiple contacts heading our way."
Mac pressed a button near the intercom and instantly a klaxon began to reverberate through the submarine. He turned a large black switch on the intercom then spoke clearly and without a hint of panic. "All hands to battle stations. This is not a drill."
Immediately the crew began moving to their emergency stations. Mac took Emily by the arm and headed out of the command room. At first Emily thought he was taking her back to her cabin but instead he took her to the ladder leading up to the deck and began climbing. She followed behind. Mac pulled himself up onto the deck. "Where?" he yelled to a young sailor standing in the conning tower with a pair of binoculars staring wide-eyed down at Mac and Emily.
"There," the sailor yelled back, while simultaneously pointing due west toward the border of the jungle. Both Emily and Mac shaded their eyes against a sun that was now just an hour or so away from setting.
"I don't see anything," Emily said to Mac, but almost as soon as the words had left her mouth, the trees near the edge of the jungle began moving, swaying as if they were being buffeted by a rogue wind.
"What the...?" Mac said.
From the edge of the jungle, a swarm of creatures moved out of the trees and began to walk, slither, and crawl over the open ground toward the submarine. There were long-limbed animals that looked like malnourished giraffes that stood a good ten meters tall; pig-sized bundles of limbs that would have been easy to mistake for sea anemones; much smaller multi-eyed rodents that dodged and weaved between the larger creatures’ feet; huge bugs that hopped ten meters at a time. There were, Emily estimated, a good two hundred or more performers in this weird alien carnival moving toward the sub.
More sailors joined Emily and Mac on the deck. They were all armed with automatic weapons; a few, Emily saw, had grenades too. Mac unslung his own weapon from his shoulder and held it ready. Emily pulled her pistol from the holster on her hip and chambered a round.
The creatures continued to advance. Their pace was slow, almost methodical, Emily thought. It was as though they were all out for an evening stroll together, with no sign of aggression between the various species.
"Get ready to cast off," Mac yelled. Sailors moved to where the mooring lines were attached to the sub. The lines would have to be abandoned because there was no way the sailors could get to where the lines were secured to the bollards on the quay.
"You sailors," Mac shouted at a group of men gathered nearby. "Get your arses into gear and grab that gangplank." He pointed at the metal bridge between the submarine and the shore. "Well move it," he yelled when the sailors did not budge. They jogged over to the gangplank and began unlocking the ties securing it to the sub.
Emily continued to stare at the advancing wall of creatures. They all seemed oblivious to each other, as though each species had reached some semblance of detente.
The sailors were getting nervous. While many had seen any number of the weird and wonderful fauna the red rain had produced, this was something new. And it was, Emily admitted, quite terrifying.
Abruptly, the front row of animals stopped about fifty meters from the submarine. As the slower creatures behind them caught up, they too slowed to a halt, all waiting patiently until the final straggler had joined them.
"What in God's name is going on?" Mac said. He directed the question at Emily, as if she would know.
"Don't look at me," Emily exclaimed.
"Hold your positions," Mac called out to the sailors poised at the mooring lines.
The animals did not advance any farther, even as others joined them. Then, in a bizarre ballet, they began to climb on one another, their tentacles and legs and arms and claws tangling with their neighbors.
"What in the world?" said Mac.
Seconds later, the creatures began to melt.
•••
Maybe melt isn't the correct word, Emily thought as she watched with an oddly detached fascination. Meld, that was what the animals were doing. Fusing together. Where one animal connected with the other a dim but discernible band of white light burned. Where there were spaces, smaller creatures climbed over the larger animals’ bodies and slipped into the gap, combining with the others. Emily's mind flashed back to the first day after the red rain, when she had left her apartment and encountered the spider-like aliens in Central Park. What she was seeing now was eerily reminiscent to what she had witnessed in the first days after the red rain had first swept across the planet. The creatures that had once been living, breathing human beings had fused with each other to make the huge tree-like structures that had in turn gone on to spew the red dust that had transformed almost every living thing on the planet.
Now, as each new layer of creatures formed, the one below began to shift, stretch, reform, taking on a new shape. A crackling, popping sound reached the human watchers. To Emily's ears it sounded like fresh cut logs burning in a fireplace.
The sailors and soldiers on the deck muttered nervously but held their positions.
Petter climbed up on deck and made his way over to where Emily and Mac stood. He said something under his breath that was probably a curse.
"Christ!" said Mac. "What the hell are they doing?"
Emily was about to say that she had no idea but at that very moment she recognized the shape the lower level of animals had transformed into.
"Oh my God. It’s the Machine. They're recreating the Machine," she blurted out.
"What?" said Mac. He turned to look at her, flabbergasted.
"That bottom part," she pointed at the transformed lower section that just ten minutes earlier had been a row of beasts. "It’s the same shape as the body of the vehicle we traveled to Svalbard in."
Mac looked again and brought the binoculars up to his eyes. "You're right," he said after a brief pause. "Bloody hell!"
Emily turned to look at Mac. He was watching her intently, an expression of utter disbelief on his face that probably mirrored the one she thought she wore. "This is Adam's doing," Emily said. "Somehow he's commanding those creatures to become a copy of the Machine. A living vehicle."
A slow but continual flow of animals emerged from the jungle, adding themselves without hesitation to the self-assembling craft. Over the next hour, everyone on deck watched with a morbid sense of fascination as the unmistakable outline of the twin of the vehicle Emily, Rhiannon, and Thor had traveled in gradually formed in front of their eyes. By the time the sun set below the horizon, the Machine’s multiple legs and the lower section of the main body was already clearly defined. As darkness settled gently over the remains of New York and its boroughs
, the white glow of the constant fusing of one creature after the other created an otherworldly light show in the darkness beyond the Vengeance.
"Let’s get some of these men below decks," Mac said to Parsons. "Pull anyone who isn't part of the security detail," he ordered.
Gradually, the men began dispersing below decks until only three two-man security teams were left.
"You and Emily should get some rest," Petter said, joining Mac and Emily in the sub's conning tower. "I will watch over the Vengeance through the night."
"Are you sure?" Mac asked.
Petter nodded and smiled. "I would not have offered if I was not."
•••
The following morning, a fiery red sunrise greeted the first humans to set foot in New York since Emily had left. Was it really only three years ago? Emily wondered, as she stared out across the water.
Mac joined his wife on the deck of the Vengeance carrying two cups of weak but hot coffee, a shield against the day's early-morning chill. Rhiannon was asleep in the cabin, Thor standing watch over her.
"Not much left to go," said Mac, offering Emily one of the cups of coffee. He was referring to the automaton that now stood almost three-quarters complete on the shore.
"Thanks," Emily said, as she took the coffee. "If I had to guess, I'd say it'll be finished before this afternoon."
Sipping at their coffee, they watched new animals make their way from the jungle then add themselves to the slowly growing mechanism assembling itself before their very eyes.
"Do you miss the place at all?" Mac asked, nodding in the direction of Manhattan, after the silence between them had stretched into a minute.
Emily considered the question before she answered. "You know, I haven't really given it that much thought, been kind of busy for the last few years. But who doesn't miss their old life? I mean, it was all so easy by comparison to this one. We had no idea just how good we had it. So, yeah, I miss it, but you want to hear something weird?"
"What?" said Mac, taking another sip from his mug.
"I'm kind of glad it happened, now. I mean, it’s not like we can go back. So, we get this second chance, a chance to make things better. To do the right thing. I'm grateful for it. Is that wrong of me?"
Mac put his free arm around his wife's shoulder, leaned in and kissed her on the top of the head. "It is what it is love, and no amount of wishing is ever going to take it back to how it was. Which is probably for the best, like you said." The silence returned between them; not an uncomfortable one, but the type of silence that makes the moment better, purer.
Eventually, Mac did a slow one-eighty turn, his eyes taking in the landscape that, despite his knowledge of the history of desolation and death that lay broken and decayed beneath its red covering, was stunning and beautiful in its own alien right.
"Always wanted to see the Statue of Liberty," he said eventually, pointing with his mug, his eyes lingering on the red outline of the statue across the water from where the Vengeance was moored.
Emily turned and looked across the river too.
"You know," she said, "in all the years I lived in Manhattan, I never visited it. The statue."
Mac looked at her sideways. "You're pulling my leg, right?"
Emily shook her head slowly, smiling.
"Wow! Really?"
This time she nodded. "Really."
"Hmmm!" Mac said, then, nonchalantly added, "Want to take a tour?"
Now it was Emily's turn to look sideways at her husband.
"Now you're joking?"
"Nope," Mac said. "I mean, it’s not like we'll ever get the chance again. And besides, we'll probably be the last two humans who ever get to see it. So, you up for a bit of exploring?"
"Okay," said Emily, surprised at how excited she felt. "When?"
"No time like the present," Mac said, through his Cheshire Cat grin. "I'll go make the necessary arrangements."
•••
Ten minutes later, Emily and Mac were skipping across a kilometer or so of gray Hudson River water in the sub's Zodiac.
"My God," Emily sighed, as the boat drew closer to Liberty Island. "She’s still so beautiful." There was no mistaking the emotional impact of the massive statue, even though only the outline of it remained visible behind the blood-red covering of vines and vegetation. The sheer power of what that landmark once stood for still undeniable.
In that moment, staring up at the monument to ideals that had been left in her and the Earth’s other survivors’ hands, it hit Emily just how much her life had changed since that fateful day the red rain had fallen. She had lost so very much that day, but gained so much, too, despite the end of the world ruining any chance she would have had for a nice, ‘normal’ life. She had not given it much thought over the years since she had left New York, but now that she was back, it hit her like the proverbial sledgehammer. She had gone from being a journalist riding her bike through the streets of the city that now lay in ruins just across the water, to travelling to the farthest northern reaches of Alaska and then back again in a submarine, of all things. She had done things on that journey north that she profoundly regretted; the death of little Ben, Rhiannon’s younger brother, a scar that would remain with her forever. But, she reminded herself, there had been no other choice she could make back then.
And on the journey that led her to this moment in time, she had taught herself how to drive a car, then a snowcat, and, eventually, with Mac’s help, a helicopter. A freaking helicopter! She had battled monsters that had once been human and humans who were little more than monsters. She had made and lost good friends. She had fallen in love, married, become the mother of a fantastic kid whose chance at a normal life had been so unfairly snatched from him, only for Adam to become the powerful being who held the very future of this world in his hands.
Emily realized none of these things would have happened had the Caretakers not found this small, blue planet that she called home, forcing her to become something so much more than she had ever dreamed she could be. But her achievements, in the face of so much adversity…well, their magnitude had caught her off guard.
"She's magnificent," Mac said, staring up at the statue, breaking Emily’s moment of self-assessment.
Emily looked up at the statue, then back to Mac. "She certainly is," she whispered, allowing her eyes to drift back to the statue as Mac swung the boat parallel to the shore, looking for a place to land.
They moored the Zodiac at the end of a dilapidated wooden jetty on the southeast corner of the island, grabbed their weapons and backpacks and walked to shore.
The island was covered in waist-high grass and the occasional small tree. The base of the plinth the statue stood on, easily twice as tall as Mac, was now a wall of crimson. Here and there, the wall had crumbled, revealing the original stone beneath the covering of red lichen.
A broken path, cracked and overgrown in places but still visible, curved around and behind the statue. Emily and Mac followed it until they came to what had been a souvenir shop and perhaps a restaurant, it was hard to tell, the place was so overgrown. The glass walls of the building, shattered long ago, lay in shards and pieces on the ground, the souvenir shop's merchandise broken, rotted, and rusted, strewn across the floor.
Mac knelt, picked something up from the ground, brushed the dirt and pieces of lichen still clinging to it away, and looked at it for a few seconds before handing it to Emily. It was a small ceramic replica of a plaque that Emily knew was somewhere on this island. Inscribed on the ceramic was the poem The New Colossus written by Emma Lazarus.
Emily read it silently, tears forming slowly at the corners of her eyes.
"A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles," said Mac, reading over her shoulder. "Never truer than it is today." He caressed Emily's shoulder.
His wife smiled at the inference. She wiped her tear away with her sleeve, then placed the ceramic plaque in her jacket pocket. When she spoke,
it was with reverence, as though she stood in a great cathedral. "It’s easy to forget what this stood for; the promise that it held for this country, for the world. And now, it's buried beneath all this red shit. It's just not right, is it? Christ! I just want to burn it all down."
Mac looked lovingly at his wife, while she stared up at the statue.
He touched her hand.
"Mmmm?" she said, her eyes unable to leave the colossus.
"Don't move. I'll be right back." He was gone before she could say a word, his broad back disappearing along the path that had brought them here. A few minutes later he reappeared, an object held in each hand. "Here," he said to Emily, holding both hands out to her.
Emily looked at the objects he held; one was the Zodiac's spare red plastic jerrycan of gasoline, the other a flare gun from the boat's emergency kit. She had learned from their experience clearing the ground around Point Loma that the red vegetation was particularly susceptible to fire, and Mac must have sensed what she was thinking.
"The gas is to make sure we get the job done right," he said.
Emily nodded and took both items from him.
"I'd suggest we get a little closer to the statue," Mac continued. "Just to be sure."
Wordlessly, the two humans walked to the base of the statue until a metal security fence blocked them from getting any closer. Emily pulled the cap off the spout of the gas can and began to shake its contents over the bushes and tall grass covering the ground and building. The vegetation was so thick and ubiquitous it formed a continuous sheet of red, beginning at the base of the statue's steps, rising upward to completely obscure the stone woman's message beneath its ruby-red feelers. If the fire is going to take, Emily thought, this is the place to start it. She emptied the entire contents of the gas can out, then tossed the empty container away.
"Best we put a bit of distance between us and here," said Mac. They walked back to the path.
Extinction Point: Kings (Extinction Point Series (5 book series)) Page 7