Madelyn's Last Dance

by Ike Hamill

  Jacob looked back to Luke. The man’s head had been blown clean off by the close shot. Something dark streaked across the space from Luke’s neck to the guard with the gun. The man fired again, but the thing was too fast. It slithered up the guard’s leg and disappeared under his shirt.

  Jacob backed up. He was still blinking to get his vision back. One of the black things began to slither towards him. It was a small snake compared to the one that had sprung from Luke’s belly earlier. Jacob could have squashed it under his boot, if he dared. But the way the guard was tearing off his clothes and screaming, Jacob didn’t want the thing to get anywhere near him.

  He had his knife out—not that he thought it would do any good. The thing was fast. Jacob realized that he was backing across the line that marked the edge of the safe harbor. The little snake was giving chase.

  Jacob tripped.

  He lost sight of it as he fell backwards. Jacob pulled in his legs and tried to push himself backwards.

  Harper drove the butt of her rifle into the ground at his feet.

  Jacob kept crawling until he could get up.

  “You get it?” he asked.

  She nodded and looked up towards Luke’s body. The kid had run. The guard was on his back, tearing at his chest. Harper started towards him.

  “Wait!” Jacob said. He stepped wide around the spot where Harper had crushed the black snake. “Don’t get too close. I’m sure there’s more of them."

  # # # # #

  Jacob was right.

  They both saw the black trails leading away from Luke’s twitching body. The guard was still writhing on the ground. Luke and Harper dragged him back from the carnage. Another member of the roving patrol ran up and stopped several meters away.

  “Get fuel,” Harper yelled. “And a lighter. Incinerate that body.” She pointed at Luke’s corpse.

  Jacob pinned the guard’s arms down above his head. The man had already torn away his clothing and clawed at his chest. Harper pointed a small light and studied the wounds.

  “There,” Jacob said. “Above his navel.”

  Harper saw. There was a slit above the man’s navel. The man screamed and bucked as Harper picked up the knife and prodded the flesh around the wound.

  They both saw it at the same time. Something moved under the man’s skin on his chest.

  Harper didn’t hesitate. At a shallow angle, she drove the knife into the man’s skin. For the moment, the man held perfectly still. He knew that the knife was inside of him and that any thrashing would only make the incision larger.

  Harper stabbed deeper and then lifted the blade. The skin tented before it sliced. The man screamed again. The knife came out with the wriggling snake pierced on the end.

  “Good work,” Jacob said.

  Harper put the knife blade on a rock and stomped on the snake. The black slime stuck to the bottom of her boot.

  “Harp,” Jacob said. He motioned towards the man’s chest.

  She pointed her light and saw.

  “What?” the man gasped. His face was contorted as he craned his neck to try to look at his own chest.

  The fresh wound on the man’s chest was oozing blood. There was something else there. Harper used the point of her blade to spear the soft egg. It was the size of an acorn. Her hand shook as she withdrew it. The guard’s screams became hysterical as he saw the egg and the black shape inside it.

  “Hold still,” Jacob said.

  For a moment, the man did. He began to panic again after Harper crushed the egg and moved back to collect more. Harper worked for a couple of minutes as the man moaned and Jacob held him down.

  They all turned at the bright light. A person backed away from the rising flames. They had doused Luke with fuel and torched the corpse. A second later, they heard inhuman screeching from the flames.

  “I think that’s it,” Harper said. She gently probed the incision with her blade. “I don’t see any other eggs, but you should get over to the clinic to get patched up.

  Jacob let go. The guard jumped up and ran off into the darkness, away from the safe harbor.

  Harper shook her head.

  Jacob dragged an arm across his forehead and then looked down at his feet. He suddenly had the feeling that something was crawling up his leg. He did a little dance before he convinced himself that it was in his imagination.

  “One at a time, it’s dividing us up and either killing us, or worse,” she said. She gestured in the direction that the guard had run.

  “Let’s get back inside the perimeter,” Jacob said. “It’s not safe in there, but it’s even worse out here.”

  Almost in response to Jacob’s statement, they heard an anguished scream from the dark. They both knew the voice—it was the guard they had just tried to help. Harper pointed her light, but there was nothing to be seen. They hurried back inside the line that marked the safe harbor. A couple of people were trying to follow the snake tracks that led away from Luke’s body.

  Unfortunately, the trails seemed to disappear several meters away from the flames.

  “What happened to the kid?” Jacob asked.

  “What kid?” a woman asked him back.

  Jacob shrugged. He hadn’t gotten the kid’s name. They heard another shout from up near the buildings. It was followed closely by yet another scream.

  “This thing isn’t going to come at us with another big presence,” Harper said. “It sees that we’re ready for that. It’s going to take us out one at a time.”

  Jacob blinked and put his hands on his hips. “What, then? What do we do?”

  Harper was looking up at the sky.

  “We have to figure out how the thing works. We have to attack it at its source,” she said.

  “What’s the source?”

  “When I was up at Coffin Lake, the thing showed up on the consoles like a weather pattern. There’s always those low clouds with the dark shapes darting around.”

  “Someone hit one of them out of the sky,” Jacob said.

  “Let’s go up on the roof and see what we can see,” Harper said.

  Jacob nodded.

  They ran towards the nearest building.

  Chapter 42

  {Containment}

  “I THOUGHT YOU SAID that fire was a bad idea,” Caleb said.

  Ryan wrapped his chain around the trunk of the tree and handed an end to Caleb. They both pulled. Once the trunk started moving, it went easier. They hauled it to the pile and set it down.

  “Use your head, Caleb,” Ryan said. “I don’t want to start a fire in the neighborhoods—that would draw the Hunters into those areas. But we’ve been doing fires here at the airstrip for months.”

  Caleb nodded. They went for another tree.

  Niren caught up with them as they dragged the next trunk over. He held a fuel can in each hand.

  “You think this is enough?” Niren asked.

  “Yes,” Ryan said. “We only need a few hours of burn.”

  “Even with a fire, it’s still risky to be using an engine at night,” Caleb said.

  “I suppose we’re going to have to get lucky then,” Ryan said.

  Ryan and Caleb stood back while Niren doused the logs. He trailed some of the fuel away from the pile and then struck a match. The fire leapt out from the puddle. The whole thing seemed to go up at once.

  They watched for a second and then ran.

  # # # # #

  Caleb scanned the manual.

  “If we’re a hundred meters out, and each of these covers a hundred meters, we’ll need ten of them to encircle.”

  “We’ll grab twenty,” Ryan said.

  “That seems like overkill,” Caleb said.

  “Exactly,” Ryan said.

  Caleb stacked up two crates and lifted them with his legs. His tendons creaked and his muscles strained. He turned sideways to make his way through the door and climb the stairs. Caleb had never seen this armory before. He doubted that many people had. It was in a secret room under the courthouse.
The place was a storehouse of exotic weapons. Before that night, Caleb would have assumed that machines like that had gone extinct with the Civilian Guard.

  Outside, Caleb handed the crates to Niren, who loaded them on the back of the vehicle. The springs groaned as Niren set them down, and they only had half as many crates as they would need.

  “We’re going to have to run alongside,” Niren said. “This thing is built to be quiet, not to handle all this weight.”

  Caleb nodded. He went back inside and waited at the top of the stairs for Ryan to pass.

  He almost mentioned the weight issue to Ryan and then thought better of it. He would let Niren convey the bad news.

  Caleb’s next load was his last. He was sweating by the time he handed the crates over. His body was almost out of fuel. As much as he despised murder, they were going to have find more fuel before long. His body was efficient, but they had been expending a ton of energy.

  “You two look for stragglers while I drive north,” Ryan said.

  Niren nodded and was off.

  Ryan looked at Caleb. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Caleb said. He found a different trail from the one Niren had taken. He worked his way between houses, trying to listen for the sounds of people hiding. Instead, he found himself listening to the strained electric motor of the vehicle. They had packed twenty automatic turrets into that vehicle. It was packed to capacity with death.

  Caleb shook his head and tried to focus on his own hunger. The others seemed to be more ruthless with each passing hour. Caleb didn’t feel the same way and he was finding it harder and harder to hide.

  When Niren had first cured him, Caleb hadn’t even realized that he was dying. The infection of Hunters in his hand had been consuming him, little by little. With a whisper in his ear, Niren had conveyed what Caleb needed to survive. Just a tiny quantity of his blood, carried on his breath, had saved Caleb from a terrible death. It had also changed the way Caleb thought. There was a hunger in that antidote—it brought a greed for life. Niren had infused him with even more of that hunger when he had helped him heal after he tore off his own thumb. At that moment, Caleb almost felt like he shared a brain with Niren. Ever since, that feeling had been wearing off.

  Caleb wondered if it was too late to leave Ryan and Niren. He wasn’t the same as them. He didn’t have the same careless disregard for humanity. Movement caught his eye. He recognized the old man.

  Caleb veered off his path so he could sneak up through the darkness.

  He caught the man just as he put his hand on the door to his house.

  Some old instinct, awakened by the darkness, told the man that he was being watched.

  He spun with a speed that Caleb wouldn’t have predicted.

  “Caleb?” he asked.

  Caleb put a smile on his face and stepped out from the darkness. “Miller.”

  “What are you doing lurking around in the dark? You should be inside. Come on in and I’ll fix you some stew.”

  “Thanks,” Caleb said, “but everyone is supposed to be at the safe harbor. I’m going around, looking for stragglers.”

  “You’re going to get yourself killed. There’s bad business on the wind tonight,” Miller said. “I haven’t seen anything like it in years. Were you alive when Bethany murdered her family?”

  Caleb shook his head.

  “It’s a good thing you weren’t. That was a terrible thing to witness. Count yourself lucky that you don’t have to live with those pictures in your head. I smell the same darkness out tonight. Please, come in.”

  “Maybe just for a minute,” Caleb said, nodding.

  He let the old man open the door and show him inside. The kitchen was modest, but clean. It was clear that the old man didn’t spend much time there. The smell of the stew came from deeper in the house. Caleb wondered if the stew would satisfy the hunger that he was feeling. Maybe it would, but it wouldn’t take care of the immediate need. Just seeing Miller move around like a rabbit that fears the darkness of a passing cloud, Caleb felt the hunger rising. He understood why Niren and Ryan thought the way they did.

  The three of them were predators. They had evolved. Miller might as well have been a completely different species.

  As soon as the old man closed the door behind himself, Caleb did his best to explain this to Miller.

  Caleb explained it with his fingers and his teeth.

  # # # # #

  They met back at the road that led into the safe harbor. Niren was standing by the vehicle when Caleb arrived. Ryan was the last to join them.

  “Everyone good?” Ryan asked.

  They both nodded.

  “Good,” Ryan said. He pointed to the east. “I’m going to circle the safe harbor and meet you over by the wreckage of Building Three. I want you two to do some recon. I want to know about those shots and that screaming. Take care of any runners you see.”

  “Why move the vehicle,” Niren said. “Shouldn’t we at least unload half of the crates here?”

  “No,” Ryan said. “I’m expecting them to come through here. I don’t want them to figure out the plan until we’re well underway. I’ll deploy some crates as I move. Building three in twenty minutes. Got it?”

  They nodded. Ryan kept his speed low so the vehicle didn’t make too much noise. He pulled off.

  Caleb looked to Niren.

  “Who is he expecting to come through here?” Caleb asked.

  “The other Optioners,” Niren said. “If you see them, you better hide. You circle west and I’ll take east.”

  With that order, Niren was off.

  Caleb moved down a dark path. His eyes adjusted quickly, but he was hardly paying attention. Niren and Ryan were always three steps ahead of him, and he was always playing catch up. He felt disoriented. From the north, he heard more shots and yells. It sounded like they were waging war in the safe harbor. With Ryan’s plan still underway, the real war hadn’t even begun. Whatever horrors those citizens faced, they would probably welcome them compared to what Ryan was about to unleash.

  Caleb stopped and sniffed the air. He smelled the bear. Cold sweat broke out on his skin. He changed his mind—if the people had been facing that bear, then Ryan’s campaign of terror might not be so bad after all.

  # # # # #

  Caleb and Niren caught up to Ryan about the same time. He was in the midst of setting up a turret.

  “These two crates need to go on that ridge and then near the broken down cabin. Do you know the one that I mean?” Ryan asked.

  Caleb looked to Niren. For once, the young man appeared rattled.

  “I know it,” Caleb said.

  “Good. I’ll be right there,” Ryan said.

  Caleb and Niren picked up one crate each and slung them on their shoulders. When they were away from Ryan, Caleb whispered to Niren, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Niren said. He seemed like he was back in control of himself.

  They set the crates down when they got to the top of the ridge. Based on Caleb’s estimates, the guns could be set two-hundred meters apart and they would cover the circle easily. But Ryan had doubled the number of guns. The ridge was somewhere in between one and two-hundred meters from the last location. Niren pulled the turret up from the crate and set the angle. Once activated, the thing would aim at any movement within the arc. Niren looked east and then set the activation distance.

  “That’s overkill,” Caleb said.

  “Better that than the other way around,” Niren said.

  “It’s going to take us a few minutes to get to the cabin. You want this thing shooting at us while we’re trying to set up the next gun?” Caleb asked.

  Niren nodded. “Yeah. Okay,” he said. He made two adjustments.

  They moved on to the next location. Caleb assembled the turret, but let Niren make the adjustments.

  “What did you see on your recon?” Caleb asked as they headed back to Ryan’s position.

  “I saw them burn a man,” he said.
>
  “Oh?” Caleb asked. After what Niren had personally done to several people, he wondered why a burning would make such an impression on him.

  “For some reason, it reminded me of my brother.”

  “He would have been proud,” Caleb said. “He died trying to become what you had already achieved. If he had known, he would have been proud of you.”

  Niren nodded.

  Chapter 43

  {Engineering}

  “WAIT,” HARPER SAID. SHE caught Jacob’s shirt as he started up the stairs.

  “What?” he asked.

  “That sound,” she said. She began to walk around the stairwell. Jacob came down the stairs and followed her. As he got a little closer, he heard it too. There was a hum coming from behind the steel door.

  Harper pressed on it. Something scraped, but the door didn’t open.

  They both pushed on it. After a few centimeters, they met firm resistance. They both had to push to get it to scrape open any farther.

  “Wait!” someone said from the other side. Brook’s face appeared in the gap. “Oh. It’s you.”

  She moved out of the way and they heard another scrape. After that, the door opened.

  They saw Amelia crouched on the floor. She was using some tool on the black box in front of her. The tool was the source of the sound. Jacob closed the door behind himself.

  “What is that? What are you doing?” Harper asked.

  Amelia glanced back but didn’t answer. She returned her attention to her work.

  “It’s one of the dark things they knocked out of the sky,” Brook said. “She’s trying to reverse-engineer it to determine what it does.”

  “It’s a mobile organic fabricator,” Amelia said.

  Brook nodded. “Sorry, she knows what it does. She’s trying to figure out how it does what it does.”