Emily turned around to face her husband, his arms still encompassing her. "When did you get so optimistic?"
Mac laughed. "I've been striving to have a brighter outlook," he said.
Emily wasn't sure if he was making fun of her or not.
"No, really," Mac continued, sensing her incredulity. "Sometime, all this...this shit is going to end and we need to think about that day, because it's as important, if not more, than our day-to-day survival is. We need to be ready to just live again. I mean, that's what we're fighting for, right? A chance to start over. To have that normal life we want."
"And not make the same mistakes," Emily added.
"Yes," said Mac. "And not make the same mistakes."
•••
After the day's exertions and losses, the warmth of the fire, the constant thrum of rain against the house, and their full bellies gave more than enough cover to the weariness that snuck up on the travelers. Heads lolled, eyes closed, and breathing slowed, as one by one, they fell asleep. Emily, curled up on the double sofa, her head in Mac's lap, stared at the fire burning brightly in the hearth and felt her own eyes grow heavier and heavier. She tried to fight it, but her body could not resist the inexorable pull of fatigue, and a minute later, she too was asleep.
•••
Emily could not feel her heart beating.
Neither could she feel her lungs when she tried to take a breath. Those basic human sensations, hidden from our second-by-second perception until they stutter or fail us, had vanished entirely. In their place, Emily felt a new, alien sensation grip her body, like the pores of her skin opening and closing in a disconcerting asynchronous beat.
I must be dreaming, she thought. But that did not feel right; she was simply too aware of her surroundings, of the strange not-my-body impression that her brain was trying to process. She looked around. Her 'vision' was unlike anything she had experienced before; it felt as though she were receiving input from multiple organs at once. Organs which her human body did not possess, which might, she thought, account for the weird spectral glow that permeated everything within her field of vision.
She was standing on a brick path. Wherever this place was, it was dark and wet. She could feel the dampness against her naked feet. To her right, a stream of water ran quickly past, gurgling and foaming as it flowed into the darkness. Above her, was a tunnel, obviously man-made judging by the red brick it was constructed from. She looked down and, had she still possessed her lungs, would have drawn in a sharp breath of surprise. The body she now possessed was not human; it was tiny; a rodent-esque creature that lived in the cracks and fissures of this tunnel. It observed the world through six tentacles and the information it relayed now was, to Emily's human mind, an elevated sensory combination of sight and sound remixed into a greater awareness of her surroundings than she had ever experienced. But even though Emily knew she was probably miles away from where this creature's tiny body huddled in the shadows, she still felt a shudder of apprehension.
Mommy.
The single word was spoken as if by someone standing right next to the little creature.
Adam! Emily wanted to say, but the creature who now possessed her consciousness had no lips to form words. Not that it seemed to matter, because her son heard her thoughts.
Yes, Adam's voice continued in her head, there is not much time, my energy is low. The information continues to flow to me and I find it harder and harder to tear myself away from it. The universe is so very beautiful, the layers of information folded within existence are...exquisite. Adam paused for a moment. And so very addictive. I feel that I may not find my way out from the ocean of knowledge and understanding I am swimming in. Each time, it becomes harder than the last to surface.
Sweetheart, Emily thought, what do you mean? I don't understand.
There is no need for you to understand. I...I will be consumed by the knowledge soon, and after that...
Adam’s words trailed off.
What? What do you mean consumed?
There is no time for me to explain. The focus required to communicate with you is so very demanding and I am already depleted. You must listen. They are here...the Locusts. I have successfully identified the area they have claimed as their own. The energy buildup in the area is limiting my ability to see clearly, so you must find the entrance to their lair. And when you have found them, you must destroy them. Do you understand?
Yes, yes, Emily thought. But how? How are we supposed to destroy something so powerful?
When you have found a way in, I will send a weapon.
What kind of a weapon?
Adam ignored the question. You have the cube the last Caretaker gave to you?
He was referring to the cube the dying alien had given to her when Emily first entered the ship in New Mexico. The first time she had seen the Caretakers use the device had been right before she was captured by them in Las Vegas. She had no idea what the cube was, not exactly, other than the Caretakers had seemed to utilize it as a multi-tool, of sorts; able to analyze their surroundings and, Emily suspected, they had used it to transport her to their ship. She had left the cube in the safest place she knew of; the Machine, back at Point Loma.
Yes, I still have it.
You must take it to the Locusts' lair. You will need to find the energy reservoir they use to feed. Place it as close as you can to the reservoir. When you have done what is required, you must leave quickly. There will be little time available before events are set in motion that I will have no control over.
I don't understand.
You will understand, but now you must use the link I have created between you and the host creature you inhabit. Find the entrance to their lair. Do it quickly, because I do not know how long I will be able to sustain the link between you.
As quickly as she had sensed her son's presence, it was gone again.
Adam? she thought. But there was no reply. Adam was no longer there. Her son had sounded so tired, and yet...there had been an almost blissful tone to his words. As though he welcomed whatever heightened existence it was that he found himself enveloped in. Emily forced herself to abandon the thought. Adam had said that he was unsure how long he could sustain the connection between her and the creature she now inhabited; she needed to utilize the time she had and find the entrance to the Locusts' lair.
Emily commanded the creature to leave the shadows. She looked around. She was underground, that was for certain. It took her a few more moments to realize she was in a sewer. Ahead of her, a stream of light flowed down from above. She ordered the creature to move toward it. A portion of the tunnel, and the house that had once sat atop it, had collapsed, completely blocking the sewer. A hill of rubble reached up to a hole in the sewer's roof. Emily mentally nudged the creature to climb upward. It scrambled out of the hole and into the remains of the home's kitchen. It then moved from the kitchen out into the front room, leaped up onto the sill of a glassless window and dropped down into a pile of bushes.
Unlike human sight, the creature whose body she now controlled possessed senses that seemed keyed toward detecting multiple energy emissions of a different kind because the red jungle that surrounded her now seemed to glow and thrum with vibrant energy. Each plant, tree, building, life form (and there were many of them moving across the floor and within the branches and roots) appeared as a pattern of energy that to human eyes would have been nothing more than a jumble of swirling colors and indecipherable patterns. But through the lens of her host's mind, Emily understood that these shifting waves of light were indications of the energy's vitality and power. She ran forward, ducking under roots and over rubble, but saw no hint of where the entrance to the Locusts' lair Adam had spoken of might be. She slowed her host to a stop, looked left and right but saw nothing. There must be a way to figure out where the lair is, she thought, a clue that she could use.
The sky above Emily's host was sullen, swollen with rain clouds, and growing darker still as day's end approached. It wa
sn't like she could just ask the creature she occupied where it lived, it had no way to communicate other than through the images and emotions it experienced. To her host's right, the gnarled roots of a Titan tree dug deep into the ground, the twisted trunk rising high into the air, towering above the rest of the jungle.
That was the answer. Up, she needed to go upward.
Emily commanded her host to head up the tree, hoping that the creature was capable of climbing. It was. In fact, the higher the creature moved up the Titan tree's trunk, the more at home it appeared to be. Up, up, up it scrambled, until the canopy of the rest of the jungle lay meters below it. It clambered out along the longest branch Emily could find. Below her, the canopy of the jungle, its undulating waves of fronds and branches and leaves spread out like the surface of a roiling red ocean frozen in time. Sheets of rain fell from the gray sky. To the south, she could see the remains of SeaWorld, the bridge they had crossed running like a scar across the landscape. To the east was nothing but more jungle. To the west...
About five kilometers northwest of where she perched, the jungle had been laid bare. The trees and foliage were gone, as if they had never even existed. The eviscerated carcasses of tract homes were clearly visible, their bleached wooden skeletons unmistakable, even at this distance. The welt of deforestation was a perfect circle, about a half-kilometer in diameter, but expanding outward from a center that, to Emily's host's senses, was painfully bright. At the circumference of the welt, the border glowed bright white in a ring of energy as bright as its center. And the circle was growing, expanding, albeit by a small amount; the movement was still perceptible as the ring of white gradually increased in size, revealing more of the skeletal remains of humanity's existence from before the red rain.
Emily memorized the position of the welt, marking it in relation to where it lay to the ruins of SeaWorld. She ordered her host to climb back along the branch, then down the trunk toward the ground. Her intention was to try and get closer to the energy source. She would investigate the area and report back to Mac with as much information as possible. She and her host were halfway down the trunk when, with a suddenness that made her gasp in surprise, the connection between her and the tiny creature snapped, and Emily was jolted back to reality.
•••
Momentarily staggered, Emily's head swirled at the sudden disconnection from her host. Her own human senses flooded her mind, blinding her with light and sound and feelings. Her body momentarily forgot how it was supposed to function, but then her lungs inhaled, and her heart began to beat.
"Emily! Emily, are you okay? Speak to me." Mac's voice was distant, indistinct beneath the thumping of Emily's heart. "Love, wake up. You're having a bad dream."
And then she was back.
Emily opened her eyes and saw Mac leaning over her, concern stitched through every muscle of his face, his eyes gazing down at her, deep pools of worry. She lay in his arms. On the periphery of her vision she saw the equally worried faces of the rest of the team, and Thor standing at wary attention nearby.
"I'm...okay," Emily said. Her lips felt dry and cracked. She croaked, "Can I get some water, please?"
Mac handed her his canteen and she drank deeply. When she was done, she sat upright, touched her husband's cheek lightly with her hand and reiterated, "I'm okay."
Gradually, the worry melted from Mac's face. "Must have been a hell of nightmare," he said, placing his own hand on Emily's.
"It wasn't a nightmare," Emily said. "It was a message from Adam. I know where the Locusts are."
CHAPTER 13
"All set?" Mac asked.
Emily nodded. A half hour had passed since she had awoken from her vision and quickly explained to Mac and the team what she had seen. Mac had had questions, which she had answered to the best of her ability, but eventually she had said, "It’s going to be much easier for me to just show you where the lair is."
They picked up their packs and headed out, Thor trotting happily in the lead.
"Northwest?" Mac asked.
"Yup!"
Petter spoke, "How far do you think?"
"It looked like a couple of kilometers at most, but it’s hard to be sure because of the difference in scale, the creature I inhabited wasn't much bigger than a mouse. All I know is that it is in this direction." She sliced the air with her hand like she was performing a karate chop.
"How can you be so sure?" Petter asked bluntly.
"I can't explain it," Emily replied, "other than I just know. It's like...a little beacon pulsing in my head. It's the same thing that happened to me when I was looking for Adam, and it led me right to him."
Petter tipped his head in acknowledgment, apparently satisfied with the description of her psychic GPS.
It was slow going. The terrain was dense with vegetation, mud, and the ruins of tightly packed tract homes which made it even more difficult to keep a straight path.
"At least it's stopped raining," said Mac, as they diverted again, their path ahead blocked by a thicket of red vegetation that had sprung up between the ruins of two homes. While it had technically stopped raining, water still fell from the vast canopy overhead, and the ground was still muddy and treacherous. Several times they had to double back and try a different route because the way was either blocked by dense thickets or collapsed and rotting buildings. So, what should have been a two- or three-hour trek, turned into five exhausting hours, but eventually they found what they were searching for.
"Heads up, we've got company at two o'clock," said Billings, pointing to a glowing white light that permeated through gaps between the trees and bushes ahead of them. Mac dropped to his knee and brought his rifle up; the others did the same, dispersing to whatever cover they could find.
Emily remained where she was. "Guys, it’s okay. I think this is the edge of the ring I told you about in my vision." She stepped forward, climbing over a fallen tree.
"Emily," Mac hissed.
Emily ignored him, pushed aside a large bush and stepped through the space. After a few seconds elapsed, she turned back to face the men. "I'm right, come on and look at this."
The soldiers moved from their positions and joined Emily and Thor, who had already slipped past the bush to join his mistress.
"Jesus!" Mac exclaimed. Ahead of them lay a stretch of ground between where he and the team stood and a convex line of bright light that ran horizontal to the ground; the light pulsated from bright to blinding every four or five seconds. The ground between the humans and the light was covered with the same spread of vegetation and detritus that they had labored through for the past couple of days. But on the opposite side of the light's boundary, the ground was barren of all life, leaving behind only a layer of gray dust, all that remained of the vegetation and trees that had grown there. Scattered across the circular welt of dead ground were the husks of destroyed homes, rusting carcasses of automobiles, and other remnants of humanity's lost civilization, apparently immune to whatever this effect was. It was a jarring scene, to see so much land without even a hint of what had been a ubiquitous land of red for so long now.
"It's...it's like the light is eating everything in its path," said Petter
"That's exactly what it’s doing," Emily said. "A couple of days after the red rain fell, every plant, animal, human was...transformed. I watched it happen, and it was similar to this except plants, trees, animals...humans, they were all changed to what we have now. But this is different, everything is being consumed. Look, the ring of light is slowly expanding."
The group watched silently for several minutes.
"Look at that branch." Emily pointed at a meter-long tree limb that had fallen perpendicular to the expanding line of energy. As they continued to watch in disbelief, the light moved centimeter by centimeter over the branch. Everything seemed normal this side of the light, but where the light touched the branch, it glowed just a little bit brighter, and on the opposite side, the branch had become a gray husk, that crumbled to nothingness under
the light breeze that blew in from the west. "It’s consuming everything in its path. That's what the Caretaker warned me would happen; it’s converting everything to some other kind of energy."
"Okay, but where's the energy going?"
"To the Locusts. Adam said they have a storage facility for the energy they’ll collect."
"But why would they go to all this trouble?" asked Petter, "to first convert the life on this planet to this..." he waved his hand around at the red jungle, "only to suck it dry later?"
Emily considered the question for a second. "It makes sense, when you think about it. The Locusts sent the Caretakers ahead of them, had them do all the hard work of subduing the population and converting them to an easily consumed form of matter. The new life the Caretakers left behind is self-sustaining, and wouldn't put up any kind of a fight when the Locusts finally showed up. They could've taken a million years to get here and life on the planet would still look pretty much like it does today. All they would have to do is start whatever the harvesting process is and convert everything into the energy they require. If they store it away, they could live off it for millennia."
Petter nodded slowly. "That sounds...plausible."
"The question now is," said Emily, "if we cross that line of energy will we still be in one piece when we get to the other side?"
Before Emily could let out more than a gasp of surprise, Mac took five long steps, hopping over the white line of energy.
Emily started to go after him, her sudden anger almost at boiling point that he would put his life at risk so quickly, but she stopped again as Mac put up his left hand.
"Hold on just a second," Mac said. "Give it some time."
Emily's anger faded almost instantly, replaced by a burning fear. "Are you okay? Is something wrong?" she blurted out.
"Not that I can tell," Mac said, "but we don't all want to jump across the line and find out there's a delayed effect, do we?"
Extinction Point: Kings (Extinction Point Series (5 book series)) Page 13