Crawlers

by John Shirley

  Oh, god. Poor ol’ Deputy Dawg.

  She sobbed—but she bent, grabbed the shotgun, and almost fell over: It was heavier than she expected.

  She heard Ms. Santavo getting up behind her, hissing—then she stopped, as if seeming to remember. “Adair! Wait, you’re confused, you were hurt, we have to go to the hospital, Adair, come back with me!”

  Adair ran parallel with the embankment, then angled toward the creek, jumped onto a low, lichen-painted boulder. Panting, she looked around.

  Gray crags and round lumps of granite lined the creek here; most were little boulders, waist high and smaller, but there were bigger ones down toward Quiebra, and deeper brush, maybe places to hide.

  Quiebra was a few miles that way—the way the creek ran. That much she was sure of. Looked like rain clouds gathering, too.

  She jumped from one little boulder to the next, carrying the shotgun in her right hand, her left throbbing with pain at each impact, every time she landed on her feet. She almost lost her balance, carrying the shotgun. It took practice to get used to moving with it.

  She ran on, darting between big boulders, jumping along the tops of small ones, through slanting beams of sunlight flashingly alternating with wells of shadow. She ran through clouds of gnats, and she slapped away bluebottle flies.

  When she got to the cluster of big boulders, some of them ten feet high, it occurred to her that she’d gone the wrong way. The things like Ms. Santavo were mostly in Quiebra, weren’t they?

  So what. She had to get to Waylon and Cal. She had to warn people.

  Stupid girl, she thought.

  But she kept going, weaving in between big boulders, leaping along the smaller ones. The creek, smelling of frogs and minerals, seemed alive, seemed to rush along with her, as if it was encouraging her.

  Her breath was coming in short gasps; her feet and knees were aching. She had to rest, get her wind back.

  She paused on a low oval boulder, sticking partway out into the rushing water, and knelt, splashed water in her face, thinking, Maybe this is a nightmare, and if I feel the cold water, I’ll wake up.

  This was real. Ms. Santavo was homicidally crazy. And didn’t seem like she was Ms. Santavo anymore. So maybe the same thing had happened to Mom. Maybe what she’d seemed to see through the basement window . . .

  Adair shook her head. She couldn’t think about that. Not now. She turned her mind away, like stopping a downhill run, fighting the momentum of that thought.

  She had to focus on surviving, right now.

  The water felt good and she was thirsty, but she knew not to drink it. Like most California creeks, it was contaminated with some kind of parasite. Some amoeba that gave you cramps and dysentery for months. She glanced back along the gully.

  Parasites, she thought. That’s what it felt like. There were parasites in Ms. Santavo.

  And there she was, about sixty feet back, clinging to the side of one of the big boulders, her feet higher than her head, angled downward. Her feet were bare, and her hands were splayed: she was exactly like a gecko on a stone wall. Defying gravity—gripping, maybe, with those metal bristles Adair could just make out on one side of her torso, on her hands. Her blouse was torn open, her skirt was hiked up around her hips; the lines of muscles in the backs of her legs looked wrong somehow.

  Adair felt sick, looking at her.

  Then Ms. Santavo looked up, with a sudden exact motion of her head, staring right at Adair.

  “Fuck you, whatever you are!” Adair shouted. It didn’t help the situation—but it made her feel a little better.

  She turned and started up again, jumping from boulder to boulder, going as fast as she could, headlong. The creek was wider here, and she had to splash through some shallows. Running crazily to get away.

  At least she hoped it seemed that way. Around a bend in the creek, she picked a rock and jumped behind it: a big gray house-shaped rock. She waited, panting, her feet in an eddying pool of cold water that felt sort of good.

  She told herself to get calm. To quiet down. To wait.

  She pressed her back against the boulder and hefted the gun in both her hands, looking it over. She had fired rifles before, with her dad. Not shotguns. Probably it had a shell in the chamber. Ms. Santavo would have had it ready to fire. That red dot meant the safety was off, didn’t it? She couldn’t remember how to check.

  Something rattled along the embankment to her left.

  Her left wrist and the lower part of her hand hurt; it was swollen, blue in spots. The Santavo thing had cracked the bone. But her left hand only had to steady the shotgun; her right would pull the trigger.

  She got as good a grip as she could with her left and put the index finger of her other hand gingerly into the trigger guard, just a little pressure on the trigger.

  The creek hushed and chuckled—and then seemed to seethe more loudly, in warning.

  And there was another sound. From directly overhead.

  Heart percussing, Adair looked up—and saw the Santavo thing’s face upside down. Her mouth opened, exposing a glimmering wriggle in there—as she tensed to jump.

  Adair let out an involuntary squeak—but flipped the gun in her hands so it pointed upward, the barrel right along her own nose, and the motion pulled the trigger for her. The shotgun roared, and the barrel recoiled, to crack against Adair’s forehead at the hairline, just hard enough to cut her scalp, and the boom made her ears ring.

  Then blood dripped down, and it wasn’t Adair’s.

  She looked up to see that the upper half of Ms. Santavo’s head was missing—but she was still clinging to the rock, seeming frozen. She was dripping silver fluid and blood, all mixed together, and in the gaping concave place, like a broken-open melon, where the upper part of her head had been, was a nest of silvery things that writhed like maggots.

  “Reset,” Ms. Santavo muttered, her mouth dripping red and silver. After a moment, almost inaudibly, it added, “not applic—not applic—able—not—” Lips dripping fluid as they moved. Then the mouth quivered once more—and stopped moving for good.

  Adair tried to scream, but her throat seemed closed up—and instead she ran, hugging the gun to her, toward Quiebra, her own blood pumping from the scalp wound, streaming into her eyes.

  The world seemed to rush all wobbly, jerkily around her, past her: it wasn’t like she was doing the running at all. The sunlight drained away into the sky, seeming to flow upward into the closing clouds and rain loosed itself, slithered down to paste her hair to her head. Sometimes she ran partway up the hillside toward the road, then she’d lose her footing and slide down and change direction, run along the creek boulders, but blindly, hardly watching where she went.

  Adair fell again and again, slipping on wet moss, bashing both knees, cutting her elbows on rocky surfaces.

  At last, she lay with her left leg in water, the rest of her sprawled on a wet gravelly bank. The shotgun—she hadn’t dropped it till now, she realized with genuine surprise—lay near her. She was heaving there in a soft rain, letting the panic ebb a little.

  She couldn’t get up. Her heart and limbs were aching. Her breath seemed to cut its way out of her, it hurt so much. She lay listening to the creek. She heard the sound of cars and trucks. Now and then, she could just make them out, only a hundred yards away, up the embankment on the highway that paralleled the creek. Maybe someone up there would glance down and see her, if they looked between the trees.

  But if they did, maybe they’d be the wrong people. Maybe it’d be better if they didn’t see her. It wouldn’t be wise to go up to that road. She had to find people she could trust.

  And she felt a twisting in her heart as she admitted to herself that who she could trust probably didn’t include her own mom and dad.

  Finally, her breath coming more normally, strength returning, Adair got to her knees.

  She grabbed the stock of the shotgun and pulled it toward her. She cleaned the mud off it, as best she could with the hem of her blouse, and
then she hugged the shotgun again, almost lovingly.

  She heard something moving in the brush, some distance behind her. She looked—but saw no one. Then a quick movement caught her attention, and way back there she saw a hairy face with an empty eye socket.

  It wasn’t looking toward her, but it was hunting her, slithering along in the leaf-crackling dirt at the base of the embankment. It was after her, for sure.

  She watched it with a sickened fascination. The way it moved made her stomach twist. It was like it was pulling itself along the ground the way a climber would pull himself up a cliff. It mixed up horizontal and vertical. It moved on all fours, zigzagging up the steep embankment on the other side of the creek, maybe thirty-five yards back.

  And she saw that its hands were stretched out from its wrists on metal extensions that pulled it along with pistonlike movements; its feet were on pistons, too.

  She was afraid to move; afraid that if she did, it would see her. It would be wary of her now. It would have found the Santavo thing. It would be careful.

  The thing zagged down the slope, and she vaguely remembered having run up that same part of the embankment, blindly, partway back. It was following her trail somehow.

  Soon it would trace her to this side of the creek.

  It went behind a boulder—so that she was out of its line of sight for a moment. She got up, slowly, each movement bringing a new ache.

  She made up her mind. That fucking thing was going to have to work at it, if it wanted her.

  Then she moved at an angle, into a patch of died-back blackberry brambles, and up the hillside, into thickening shadow.

  December 13, late afternoon

  The guard was a black-bereted, dress-uniformed man getting soft around the jowls in middle age. Hispanic guy, name tag said RODRIGUEZ. He knew Stanner by sight, from scores of visits here, to the big black cube that was the West Coast NSA headquarters.

  “What the hell do you mean I don’t have any clearance?”

  The guard looked back at Stanner with an expert combination of blankness and crystal-clear rebuff. “That’s right, sir.”

  They were standing on either side of a metal desk; cameras were mounted near the ceiling; a steel door was closed behind the guard; several screens were built into the desktop, which also held a computer monitor.

  The guard glanced at it, in a way that said to Stanner that he was waiting for someone.

  When he looked up again, he had an even more neutral expression. “If you’d like to wait, we’ll see if we can get this cleared up, sir.”

  “Tell you what, Corporal Rodriguez, how about if you get me Captain Gaitland on the line.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, sir, he’s . . . in the field.”

  Stanner had a watery feeling in his gut—and the last time he’d had that, in Yemen, he’d been arrested by the Yemeni secret police. Someone was coming, all right. There would be clarification; all the wrong kinds of clarity.

  “Okay,” Stanner said evenly, “I’ll go get my DIA pass from my car. That should clear it up.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, sir. If you’d just wait here . . .”

  Stanner very conspicuously dropped his leather satchel onto the desk, so it looked as if he was coming back.

  “I don’t want any more goddamned misunderstandings,” Stanner said in a flat tone of official displeasure. “I’ll go get my full credentials.”

  He turned and strode through the door before the guard could hit the emergency lock-shut. He’d decided not to say, “Be right back,” because that would only make the guy wonder if it were true, satchel or not.

  And he wasn’t coming back. They were going to take him into custody, if he let them do it. He could end up in Leavenworth, or worse, on some trumped-up beef, if they wanted to keep him out of the way.

  Why, though? Why the loss of his clearance? He’d been acting under orders, with clear permission to investigate the “repercussions” in Quiebra. He’d handled the satellite recovery according to orders.

  But he knew what it was: Gaitland had tried to warn him. And Bentwaters. And since he’d outranked Gaitland he hadn’t waited for his orders in writing.

  And he’d deliberately not checked his E-mail or answered his cell phone or his hotel phone for two days. He had suspected he was about to be pulled off this thing. But he couldn’t let himself be cut loose from it till he was sure Quiebra was going to be all right, in the end. He couldn’t retire not knowing for sure.

  Maybe he could just back off, and the heat would ease up.

  No. These people in Quiebra were American citizens, at risk. He was supposed to protect them, not play God with their lives.

  Fuck Facility Central anyway. He needed to know.

  He kept moving at a brisk walk, which became a trot, till he was jogging toward the SUV, hitting the unlock button on his key-ring tab as he went. The car chirped in response, and he took the last three steps with long, fast strides, opened the door, started the car, and drove away, slamming the door en route.

  It was a misty late afternoon. He hoped it’d rain; that would make a tail’s work harder. More likely one would be waiting outside the gates.

  Stanner saw that the guard at the parking lot checkpoint was in his glass booth, answering the phone. Probably getting the word to put down the barrier, to keep Stanner in the lot till they could take him into custody.

  But before the barrier could come down, Stanner had hit the street. He was driving away at twice the speed limit.

  I swear, sometimes it seems like American intelligence can’t do anything right, he thought disgustedly. The Black Beret hadn’t even been told I was to be held, till I was already on to it. They should’ve had it all set up. It’s a wonder that sorry son of a bitch Ames didn’t walk away with the entire Company files. What’s it been since then—years?—and they haven’t learned dick.

  He realized he was already thinking of the military-intelligence complex as they—not as we. He snorted and checked in his rearview.

  If they had a tail on him already, he couldn’t spot it. Could be they were getting better. He’d lost the guys following him three times in the last two days, and it hadn’t always been easy. When the sky was clear they could spot him with satellites.

  He regretted losing his satchel. He’d had it for fifteen, maybe eighteen years. There was nothing much in it he needed; there’d been some statistics about break-ins down in Silicon Valley. Big computer-chip thefts weren’t uncommon—the Russian mafia routinely sold stolen computer chips in bulk—but there’d been quadruple the usual number in the last few weeks. Chips and other cybernetic hardware taken; enhancement gear, most likely.

  Then there was the bank. That big Quiebra bank job. The one no one knew about.

  There’d been almost nothing about that in the media. Usually a bank job that thorough would’ve had reporters crawling all over the place. Not this time.

  Theoretically, some of the liberal Democratic senators, and even a few Republican men of conscience, had put the stops on Project Truth—the CIA/Reagan administration term for a structured program of disinformation, using reporters, in the early 1980s.

  After 9/11, the Justice Department was given carte blanche for reinstating control on the media. Ashcroft had gutted the FOIA, and the Pentagon proposed the Office of Strategic Influence under Brigadier General Worden—big taxpayer money for true and untrue propaganda. Money for lies, sometimes, to be spread internationally, to every medium, in aid of the war on terrorism. Publicly, the government had decided the OSI wasn’t necessary—but it existed nonetheless. The first lie put out by the “nonexistent” OSI was that the office didn’t exist. Irony as usual dogging intelligence.

  Driving down the 101 to the Bay Bridge, slowing to not attract attention, Stanner reflected that he didn’t really blame the government much. After 9/11, the siege mentality was to some extent really justified. There was a sense that a major part of the world ranged against America—and t
hat sense wasn’t entirely wrongheaded.

  Still, who was to say the Pentagon wasn’t pulling strings on the media the same way Project Truth did, in the case of that bank in Quiebra? Certainly they went to great lengths to protect the Facility. Stupid to think they wouldn’t, really. They’d kept the satellite crash pretty quiet; he’d helped them do that himself.

  He thought about Shannon. Where was she? Was she safe? Would they use her to bring him in, if he didn’t come in on his own? Maybe he should warn her. God, would she be pissed off.

  Dad, how dare you drag me into your paranoid little world?

  He looked into his rearview mirror. Was that dark blue Ford Taurus following him? Maybe. A man and woman, looking ever so disinterested—but changing lanes, not long after he did, only a few cars back.

  He looked back at the road, had to swerve to stay in the lane. Shit. They might realize he’d been watching them.

  Fuck ’em. Let them follow till he got to the East Bay. He’d lose them in Berkeley. There were all those blocked-off streets he could use to throw them off, then he’d go over the hills, through Tilden Park, down into the back roads to Quiebra. He had a stop to make in Quiebra, before he went to the next level.

  Somewhere in his Palm Pilot he had the home address of that Filipino commander in the Quiebra PD. Commander Cruzon.

  The guy had been “out sick” the last week, when Stanner had gone to see him at the PD. This time he was going to Cruzon’s house. They were going to compare notes. Whether the little son of a bitch wanted notes compared or not.

  Bentwaters. The bastard had better come through: He needed to get that EMP transmitter design.

  But he’d take something along, next time he went to see Bentwaters. Like a silenced machine pistol.

  He wondered, as he drove onto the Bay Bridge, when he’d unknowingly crossed the line from the Same Old Bullshit to being in SDS: Serious Deep Shit.

  December 13, afternoon

  Lacey looked at the little green screen on her cell phone. The phone seemed to be in touch with its server. The battery showed a full charge—and she hadn’t used it much since she’d charged it. But she’d tried four times, and the call just wasn’t going through.