S.T.Y.X. Humanhive

by Arthur Stone

  At last he risked shifting gears. With the engine no longer screaming like a boiling mammoth, normal communication was possible once again.

  “Boiler, we need to stop. We didn’t tie Lily tightly enough.”

  “Hold her! Use your hands, your feet, your teeth, anything! We cannot stop. That monster is still close.”

  Even worse, the same kind of beast, or one even bigger, could be up ahead of them. Boiler had realized by now that nighttime drives were much more dangerous than daytime drives. Roaring engines excited the monsters enough, but in combination with beaming headlights they made a truly mighty aphrodisiac. This world had no streetlights, city lights—not even decent reflectors, so headlights were the epitome of nocturnal luminosity. They were a beacon, summoning the most dangerous monsters in the world to their midnight snack. The ideal course of action was to stop and wait for dawn, but that would be insane with car-destroying monsters nearby seeking to reduce the vehicle and its contents to scraps.

  So they had to keep going, as far as possible. Once they had cleared a few miles, they could think about what to do next. Boiler realized he much preferred walking. He was starting to feel nauseous.

  They emerged from the forest.

  “Boiler, stop, look, there are people there!”

  Just go die in a hole, will you! He observed what he could, shut off his lights, and slowed down. The road was wide, with nothing in their way, and about five hundred feet past the upcoming intersection the woods resumed. There he could turn on his lights again, hit the gas, and look for a new escape vector. Who knows what kind of people these are, or what they’d do with us?

  “What are you doing? Those people can help us. Lily needs attention right now!”

  “Enough about Lily! The only thing that can help her now is a shovel!”

  Boiler jerked the wheel, taking the car down a small side road.

  “Where are you going? Aren’t you listening to me?”

  “You’re not listening to me! I’m tired of yelling it over and over again, but you don’t remember a word of it. Look, I’ll explain it to you as quick as I can. Even during the daytime, the people in this area who drive around in vehicles like that are no champions of human virtue, and I doubt the people at night are any better. It’s not just the people with this nightmare disease who are dangerous here, Arthur, it’s also people like us. They might be even more dangerous.”

  His explanation did nothing to halt the man’s hysteria. “Stop the car, this instant. We have to go back and see them. This is my car, and I demand it. Turn us around!”

  Suddenly Boiler’s head was being beaten by a series of blows. He braked so hard that Arthur and the undead woman were nearly thrown into the front of the cabin. Boiler opened the door, drew his sawed-off, and took aim at his companion. All traces of composure in his voice were gone. “Are you looking to die? I save your life multiple times, and even that of your corpse bride there, and you start hitting me?”

  The man dropped to his knees so fast that they audibly knocked on the pavement. He folded his hands and spoke through gushing tears. “Boiler, I just have to. Please. Let’s go back. I beg you!”

  Boiler felt sick at the spectacle. He slowly lowered his shotgun and let out a heavy sigh. “You know just as well as I do that there’s nothing anyone can do to help her.”

  “But I have to try, Boiler. At least let me go back on my own. I have to. We’ll make it, and those people, they’ll help us…”

  Boiler knew the two of them would not make it far. And if they reached those people in that convoy, help would not be what they received—even a toddler could see that. But that toddler would also see that arguments from Boiler at this point would be useless. Arthur had made his decision and would not back down. Sometimes, the pressure of circumstances like these could drive an idea into someone’s head so deeply that no matter how weak-willed that person was, virtually nothing could make them abandon it.

  The compassionate thing to do would be to knock him out and tie him hand and foot. And the compassionate thing to do for Lily would be to bash her head in. He could leave her corpse on the road and bring Arthur with him, away from this place. He’d come to, reconsider, and abandon this fit of hysterical idiocy. Right?

  No, he wouldn’t. He refused to entertain any other options. And what made Boiler his comrade’s keeper?

  “Well, fuck you, then. It’s your life and I’m not going to force you to do anything.”

  “Thank you, Boiler. Thank you!”

  “If you do reach those people before the monsters reach you, you don’t say a word about me, got it? You saw no one else. It’s just you two.”

  “I understand,” Arthur said, his voice sounding almost normal again as he wiped away his tears.

  “Go as fast as you can, and don’t slow down unless you have to, especially if you see bushes or trees along the road. Do you remember the way back?”

  “Yeah. You only turned that one time, I think.”

  “The road where we saw those headlights runs perpendicular to the one we were on. They went over the bridge, we went under it. There were ramps up to their road, so you’ll have no trouble getting up there. Maybe you can catch them. Well, good luck. Keys are in the ignition.”

  “So I can go?”

  Boiler bent down and looked in the window.

  “You coming with me, cat?”

  The animal hopped out without a moment’s hesitation, sat at Boiler’s feet, and gazed up at him with a sagely look full of understanding. Boiler sighed at his curse of compassion and handed his gun and last bullet to Arthur.

  “Here you go. Take this weapon.”

  “What about you?”

  “There’s only one bullet, so it won’t help much. But it might help you. If something jumps on the car, you might be able to knock it back to the pavement. Or shoot yourself and avoid a painful death.”

  Arthur didn’t thank him or say goodbye. He nodded ever so slightly, climbed into the car, and whipped it around and back the other way, where they had come from. He was a good driver. The cops should’ve let him take the wheel. But his skill with cars was unlikely to save him.

  Boiler sighed the third time and complained to the cat, who was listening attentively. “I didn’t just give him my shotgun. I left the ax in the car, too. I’m such an idiot.”

  Declining to answer, the cat commenced carefully licking the end of one of its paws.

  After watching the fading lights of the automobile for a minute, Boiler turned and walked the opposite way, down the dark road. He didn’t know if this way was taking him west. But he knew for sure that he could not stay where a car engine had just been.

  Or else that strained fuel-fed rumbling sound would soon be replaced with a contented meat-fed one.

  Chapter 18

  When he woke, Boiler had to ask himself where he was. From the inside, it seemed a very strange place, but a moment later, it came back to him. He remembered how he had walked at least an hour down that first road, then turned onto a different road to mix up his trail. He was worried Arthur would tell someone about him, prompting certain unsavory types to launch a zealous pursuit. But soon, he had to stop. A narrow canal lay ahead, and the bridge across it was out. The rusted carcass of an armored personnel carrier lay near the break point, its wheels completely gone and most of its non-metal parts in advanced states of decay. Perhaps it had burned. It was not the best shelter, but it was better than what he had seen so far, so it would do for tonight. His desire to sleep was overpowering, and he found himself thankful to whomever had hacked the hatch off for him as he dropped through it.

  The rays of dawn peeking through the fire-poked holes revealed nothing but rust. The whole vehicle had been burned out, and by the looks of it, a very long time ago. These reinforced boxes only looked formidable when healthy—when death came for them, this was their undignified end, a miserable shell of scrap.

  The cat finished its routine grooming session, got up and looked around, and
then stared at Boiler with a meaningful meow.

  He sighed. “And how do you expect me to help, Charcoal? I could eat a horse. But our bag is in the car, along with the ax. I fucked up by forgetting them, I admit it. But cut me a break. We had just taken a car ride with a zombie in the back seat and a peapod—or maybe a pearlmaker—running after us. I can lose my nerves too, you know. So let’s get out of here and have a look around. Perhaps there’s some clean water, at least, and if we get lucky we’ll find a bite.”

  They scaled the rusty frame of the once-threatening scrapheap, and Boiler looked around. The road was narrow and lined with concrete walls, clearly constructed many years ago and now in total disrepair. Nature was slowly reclaiming the whole construction, and everything that could be bent and twisted, was. In the distance, he some trees lay fallen on the road, long dead but never cleared.

  This was obviously a stable, its size unknown but is age considerable. Those trees and this APC alike were relics of the past.

  But the bridge that once crossed this canal was different. Its destruction looked intentional, its undermining the work of human hands.

  Boiler abandoned his perch and approached the edge of the bridge, unsurprised to see another armored personnel carrier jutting out of the grimy water. This one was rusted enough, but some paint survived, and there was no trace of fire. Judging by the debris stuck to the exposed part of the vehicle, the water level often rose here. Perhaps not quite to flood level, but close.

  He had never seen a model of vehicle like this one. It was obviously foreign. His brother had been into military models and wargames, so Boiler recognized every American armored vehicle there was, even in the burnt shell stage of its life cycle.

  "Alright, Charcoal, let’s figure out where we’re heading. If this Sun is to be trusted, we’ve been moving west. But some vandals took down this bridge, and I don’t want to go swimming through dirty water again anytime soon. Since you seem like a reasonable cat, I’m thinking you don’t like water very much, either. So it’s agreed. We can’t stay here, but we might be able to catch something to eat from the water, so let’s follow this canal until we can cross without getting our feet wet. Good idea? Right, I thought so. Off we go!”

  * * *

  So far, what Boiler liked best about the stables he had seen was that they were free of ghouls. That made sense. No monsters could expect to find fresh food within, and he doubted they were interested in investigating historical artifacts or ruminating upon the storied decay of civilization. You couldn’t relax your guard entirely in stable clusters, but you could take a few liberties. He walked along, analyzing the world with all his senses, still using trees, bushes, and tall weeds for cover but skipping his usual frequent, long stops. The canal aided him with impenetrable walls of rustling weeds now and then, protecting Boiler from even the most perceptive monsters, at least from that direction.

  The bad thing about stables was that they held nothing of interest. Everyone who dreamed of touring the Chernobyl zone would have had a blast here. Ruined buildings, sagging power lines often touching the ground, weeds and small trees poking up through the pavement, rusted skeletons of cars. Anyone looking for a bite to eat could forget about it. Even if by some miracle you happened to find a can of food, you’d pause and wonder how long it had been since it was packed. You took so many risks here already—would you really add food poisoning to the list?

  Still, it was the stables that Boiler was most interested in. The locals lived in stables. People like Nimbler came to them to trade and conduct other business. Boiler could settle in such a place, too, if he could just find one. Whenever he was inside a stable, he paid much more attention to everything. If there were any signs that people lived here, he would find them. In one place, he found a trail of interest, only to conclude it was made by a bunch of wild pigs or boars. Not his slice of bacon.

  He walked a couple of miles along the canal yet still hadn’t found the end of the stable. Decent size for a cluster. Then he saw something up ahead that looked like a village or town that had been abandoned long ago, but there was something strange about it. The leaves of the trees were blackened, as if someone had covered them in soot—and everything else in the town had the same look to it. Even the grass glistened black.

  The canal ended here, abruptly. In the land beyond, otherworldly blackness reigned. There was a ruler-straight border between the two places, normal green life on one side and dark ashy gloom on the other.

  He didn’t want to step over the boundary, as he had no idea what devilry was at work opposite him. But it was either that or backtrack two miles.

  “Come on, Charcoal, let me carry you. I don’t know what’s wrong with this grass, but if it’s poison I don’t want you getting it all over your paws. If I know you, you’ll be licking them clean as soon as we stop.”

  The cat had followed him like a devoted puppy, never complaining about lack of food or other hardships. He obediently allowed himself to be picked up.

  “Boy, Charcoal, you could stand to lose a few pounds. It’ll be good to have you around if a famine hits. Alright, let’s go.”

  The grass shattered like fine crystal under his boot, as if he were walking on light bulbs. He continued. The situation seemed safe, just unfamiliar—until the sky and ground suddenly switched places, and Boiler’s face crashed into the latter, the disgusting crunchy blades jamming into his mouth. Gripped by utter confusion, he stretched out his arms, closed his eyes tightly for a moment, and opened them again. Now he could orient himself once again, but he could also tell that his inner ear was so screwed up that if he took another step, he’d collapse right to the ground once more. It was as if his mind was sober and sharp, but his body stone drunk.

  Could he turn around? No. That ordinary cluster was just a stone’s throw away, but with this unknown force having seized him, the last thing he wanted to do was retreat and lose time crossing the canal.

  He crept forward, shutting his eyes now and then. Even a few seconds helped re-stabilize him, foot by foot, preventing him from giving into the constant pressure to fall over to one side or the other. Which would also cause him to hopelessly meander, in no particular direction. He had barely over a hundred feet to go, but by the time he made it and collapsed onto the green grass, he felt exhausted. Mentally, he had spent hours in that confused, disoriented state, the world flipping back and forth and inside out like it was trying to buck him off.

  He sat down, shaking his head. Charcoal sat nearby, licking himself intently, revolted by the black grass soot on his paws.

  “Stupid cat. I warned you about doing that.”

  He doubted poison had anything to do with that crystalline plague. But he didn’t know for sure. Boiler had encountered something truly inexplicable, beyond fathoming even in this remarkable world.

  “Well, kitty, you ready to go? Come on, then. I don’t feel like moving, either, but I’m not about to spend all day sitting next to whatever that place is.”

  * * *

  The dark cluster soon blocked their path west. To go around, they had to trek south, since the route north was also blocked by the nauseating black glass. Eventually, though, the cluster boundary turned, allowing them to continue west once more.

  As they saw more of the dark cluster, Boiler became convinced it was completely uninhabitable. Inside there were no birds, no butterflies, nothing that moved. That poison or whatever thrived there—if it was indeed alive in any sense—but regular life ignored the cluster entirely.

  Too bad Nimbler wasn’t here to offer an explanation. He hadn’t mentioned anything about black glass clusters.

  At once the stretches of wild grass turned into a field of grain, and within a few minutes, Charcoal had caught a mouse, crushing and consuming it whole while purring contentedly, and then pretending as though none of it had actually happened. Perhaps this was an attempt to keep Boiler from remembering the mouse and sharing less of a tasty meal with him later. Boiler felt no hostility from this fai
led deception. He didn’t even mutter “greedy animal” tunes under his breath. Hunger had not grown strong enough to make him jealous of small rodent snack breaks.

  They exited the field to find themselves on a road. The pavement was unfit for a highway but did not smack of a stable cluster. Most significantly, somebody had come this way recently. So it was a dangerous road, but Boiler walked down it a little ways to investigate an abandoned car.

  Someone else had been there first. The doors and trunk were open, and all kinds of jars and bags from inside were thrown out onto the road. They weren’t filled with worthless junk, though. They were filled with food! This someone had pulled everything out of the car, perhaps intending to organize it, or perhaps with less cogent purposes.

  Boiler grabbed three cans offering condensed milk, peas, and sweet corn. Not exactly delicacies, the anonymous donation would nevertheless help ward off his stomach cramps.

  The car didn’t have a can opener. Or any kind of knife. In fact, it contained no tools at all. Who drives around without tools in their car? What if the guy got a flat? Guess it’s back to the Stone Age. At least there was plenty of stone around. Or pavement, anyway. He pressed a jar of corn against it, rocking it back and forth. Soon he had the right rhythm and amplitude going, and the task proved an easy one. Except that he had to keep looking around, watching for signs of danger and listening intently for any cars approaching from the distance. This time, he had a line of thick bushes behind him, an easy and safe hiding spot if he needed one.

  The metal of the can was soft and wore down quickly, and he gently pried the lid off with a stick. Time to eat.

  Charcoal wrinkled his nose but started chewing the canned sustenance nonetheless, as reluctantly as if he were doing Boiler the greatest favor of his life. And when it came time for the condensed milk, he stared at Boiler in chastisement. I’m disappointed, human. The order in which your fluffy gray deity consumes its courses is of paramount significance.

  Walking was more enjoyable without the continual stomach growling. Boiler stuck to the road even though it led south. After all, it was still lined with those convenient bushes. So far, most of his meetings with humans had ended in violence, so he had learned to be cautious. None of the ghouls had managed to inflict a single injury on Boiler so far. Every wound had been suffered at the hands of his own kind, so he dreaded them the most.