by North, Geoff
“Don’t you have some kind of spray to use? Didn’t your scientist buddies develop a repellent for the little fuckers?”
The question was so ridiculous it actually made sense. The DSC would have undoubtedly been working on a way to kill the spread of something so vile. If they were weaponizing the swarm, surely they would have developed a counteragent—or as Roy had put it, a spray—to neutralize them with. HR was right. I would’ve made a shitty disease research scientist.
The puddle of black fluid from the deer was headed for them. The dead residents of Green Forest Haven were headed for them. Louie ran out into an open field, and Roy followed. “We have to keep out of the forests,” he gasped. “These things can travel faster than us now. Open ground... we have to stay in the open so we can see them coming.”
Roy had caught up to him. “Monsters. You and all the assholes you worked with. No better than the fuckers that dropped the bombs.”
Louie wanted to point out that Roy had a monstrous streak of his own, but there wasn’t time to argue. They had to keep ahead of the swarm, and that was going to be a difficult thing to do.
Tracy hid in the small space under the desk and waited. She had dove under there when the remains of Mrs. Brown rolled down the stairs from the second floor. The woman had always been large, but the thing she had become was a tank—a bloated, purple mass of dripping flesh. Mr. Combes, the comatose resident in room 207, had also put on an extraordinary amount of weight. He hadn’t moved from his bed in three years. Tracy watched from around the desk leg as Maureen Whitaker descended the steps behind Mr. Combes. The ancient spinster was Green Forest’s oldest resident. She had been a kind old woman, and she had been in her room on the second floor for at least a decade.
None of them were alive anymore, but there they were, lurching and jerking and stumbling for the front doors. They left a trail of blood and black goo. Tracy turned in the tight space and saw their bloated ankles and feet. They left the building.
Tracy started to cry. She was alone. All alone now.
Through the tears she saw a line of black creeping over the back of her hand. It travelled to her thumb and entered under the nail. Tracy jumped back and hit her aching head on the underside of the desk. It felt as if someone was jabbing spikes under all of her finger nails. The agony spread into her hand and intensified up her arm.
Twelve seconds later the swarm found her heart and put Tracy out of her misery.
End of Part 4
Thank you for reading this installment of As the World Ends.
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Other novels
CRYERS
Live it Again
Children of Extinction
Last Playground