by Gary Gibson
Nadia pulled a walkie-talkie out of the glove compartment and handed it back to Oskar. ‘Check in with Casey and the rest,’ she said. ‘See about getting an update from base camp, see if the recon drones have spotted anything unusual. I don’t like the way those bee-brains were acting.’
I studied the map while Nadia navigated us past a number of abandoned vehicles blocking the road, before we accelerated towards an on-ramp that linked to an elevated motorway. Soon, we rose above the dark waters of a river that cut through the heart of the city. She slowed as we approached a row of vehicles that looked to have been arranged in a deliberate barricade across the motorway, carefully edging the SUV between an overturned bus and the edge of the bridge. I caught sight again of the river below, which, according to the map spread across my knees, was called the Pinheiros.
‘Hey,’ said Oskar from behind me, jiggling the walkie-talkie. ‘I’ve been trying to get through, but I can’t.’
‘Not at all?’ asked Nadia.
‘Nope.’ He turned the walkie-talkie upside down and poked at its battery compartment. ‘Don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. Maybe there’s some kind of interference.’
‘Christ,’ muttered Nadia. ‘Last thing we need is yet more problems.’
‘Problems?’ I asked. ‘Why do you people never talk about anything but things going wrong?’
Nadia pursed her lips and didn’t answer, which worried me even more.
Just past its apex, the elevated motorway was level with the upper floors of a multi-storey car park. Once we were past the blockade, I saw with a start that the building was crowded with thousands of figures milling around within.
I craned my neck to get a better look as we accelerated away from the barricade, seeing a mob of several dozen bee-brains working together to roll a single, huge lump of concrete and steel off the edge of a parapet. A car followed just moments later from the next storey up, and I watched as the rusted wreck went tumbling out of sight. Then the building was gone, lost in the distance behind us.
Nadia guided us towards an off-ramp leading down to the city on the far side of the river. I caught sight of hundreds more bee-brains forming a long, twisting column that wound through streets and across intersections. It looked as if its point of origin was the nearby Hive.
I felt sickened but also awed by everything I had so far witnessed. I trembled at the thought of all those people – former people, at any rate – crammed together inside that vast structure. I fought back a horrible image of being carried, kicking and screaming, deep within the Hive’s vast maw . . .
I pressed one hand against the dashboard in front of me, tasting sour bile at the back of my throat. My heart thudded spasmodically inside my chest.
‘You okay?’ asked Nadia.
‘I’m fine.’
She gave me a look as if she knew exactly what was going through my mind.
‘I think we should take a vote,’ she said suddenly. ‘We’re out of touch with the other team and we got unexpected attention from the locals. Do we keep going or not?’
‘Turn back,’ said Oskar without hesitation. ‘I’ve been having a bad feeling about this trip right from the start.’
‘Is that what you want to do?’ I asked Nadia. ‘Turn back?’
‘I’m just saying that having your communications conk out on you is far from being a good thing. And I’ve never seen or heard of the bee-brains reacting like they just did.’
‘I thought there was a risk of attack if we got too close to them. Wouldn’t that explain it?’
‘We weren’t close enough to trigger a reaction,’ she said, looking at me. ‘At least, not based on previous experience.’
‘Maybe it should be your decision,’ I said. ‘You’re in charge, right?’
She nodded. ‘I am. But that doesn’t mean neither of you get a say in the matter. We’re a democracy in here.’
‘You still have the aerial reconnaissance?’ I asked, meaning the drones.
‘They’re no use to us,’ snapped Oskar. ‘All the data in the world isn’t any use unless we can talk to base to get that airborne intel. You see?’
‘But they can still see where we are, using the drones, even if we can’t talk to them, right?’ I asked.
‘That’s still no—’ Oskar began.
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ Nadia said suddenly, and quickly pulled up by the side of the motorway, just past the exit sign for the off-ramp. ‘Oskar,’ she said, pushing open the door on her side and climbing out, ‘dig out the flares, will you?’
Oskar reached around into the rear compartment of the SUV, unzipping one of the numerous large canvas bags there. He rummaged around inside, then pulled out a flare pistol along with several flares of different colours. He pushed his door open and passed it all out to Nadia.
I got out as well, too full of nervous energy to sit in the car one moment longer than I had to. I stepped over to the rail at the side of the off-ramp and peered down at the conga line of former humanity snaking through distant streets. Even from a couple of kilometres distance, I could hear the massed shuffling of their feet.
I looked back, in the direction of the multi-storey car park. I could make out the distant echo of hundreds of crude tools hammering at its walls.
I turned back to see Nadia load a flare into the gun before aiming straight up and pulling the trigger. The flare shot high into the air, then exploded into a tiny white star, drifting in the wind before quickly fading.
‘Remember your training?’ Nadia asked, stepping back over to me.
‘A white flare means our comms are down, but we’re otherwise fine,’ I replied.
‘Very good.’ She nodded. ‘You were listening. Now all we have to do is wait and see if they send up an orange flare. If it’s orange, we turn around and head on home. White means we keep going.’
‘What do you think it’ll be?’ I asked.
‘White,’ she said immediately. ‘I don’t have any doubts about that, not unless something’s seriously wrong.’
She glanced to the south, and I followed her gaze to see a second white flare rise above the dark green foliage, on the far side of the wrecked bridge and the reservoir.
Oskar snarled something I couldn’t make out, and pulled his head back inside the car.
‘Onwards, gentlemen,’ said Nadia, and headed back to the SUV.
‘What about Casey and the rest?’ I asked, climbing back in. ‘We haven’t seen a flare from them, have we?’
‘Unless we missed it,’ said Nadia. Her shoulders rose and fell in a sigh. ‘Or maybe it’s just us who’ve got problems.’
NINE
We exited the motorway, and soon turned onto a broad highway that ran parallel to the nearby banks of the Pinheiros. I studied the map and saw we had already covered most of the distance to our destination.
‘Okay,’ said Nadia, glancing sideways at the map on my knees. ‘We’re almost there. Keep your eyes peeled, both of you.’
‘This place we’re going to,’ I asked. ‘Do we know what it looks like?’
Oskar reached into the envelope Casey had given him earlier, and pulled out some grainy-looking photographs before passing them over to me. ‘Aerial drone reconnaissance,’ he explained. ‘See that white building, about two storeys high?’ He leaned forward, reaching between the two front seats to tap at the picture.
I studied the photo, and then the map, comparing them. ‘If I’m reading this right, then Retièn’s labs are just seven or eight blocks from here, straight on ahead.’
‘Slight problem,’ said Nadia, nodding ahead. ‘Look.’
I glanced through the windscreen, and saw that part of a building had collapsed across the street straight ahead of us, blocking the avenue.
‘We’re going to have to take a detour,’ said Nadia, pulling once more to a halt. ‘No way I can get past that. I’ll hang a right, take a route down a side street, then come back onto this road.’
‘I really don’t like t
his,’ said Oskar quietly.
Nadia’s hands tapped out a staccato rhythm on the wheel. ‘Me neither.’
For a second I thought she was going to turn back. She glanced sideways at me, fixing me with her gaze, and I knew she was trying to make up her mind. Then she started us forwards again, first taking a right into a side street, then a left at the next corner.
Up ahead, at the next intersection, I saw a number of bee-brains milling about in a loose mob like a sleepwalker’s convention. Then I saw they were all carrying stuff out of the gutted shell of a shopping mall on the other side of the intersection. In their hands I saw pieces of broken furniture, desk ornaments, chairs, bricks, and pretty much anything that wasn’t too big or unwieldy to either carry or drag after them. It was like stumbling across a fire sale in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.
‘Oh hell,’ said Nadia.
I had left the window open on my side, to alleviate the tropical heat. A cool breeze swept past us and towards the bee-brains. Almost immediately, a number of the creatures came to a halt, their heads swivelling around to regard us. I closed the window again, afraid they were about to come running at us.
‘Nadia?’ asked Oskar. ‘Why the fuck are they looking at us?’
‘I don’t know.’ She grabbed the map from my lap and studied it closely, her lips pale and bloodless.
More of the creatures appeared, stumbling to a halt before raising their chins apparently to sniff at the air. ‘Why are they acting like that?’ I asked. ‘Is it because they can smell us? Is that what it is?’
‘I don’t know. All I know is, they follow scent paths laid down by patrol leaders,’ said Oskar, without bothering to explain what a ‘patrol leader’ was. ‘Those are the ones you really have to avoid.’
‘I don’t know why they’re looking this way,’ said Nadia, ‘unless . . .’
She looked up, her eyes wide, and never finished her sentence. She slammed her foot down, reversing the SUV hard enough that its rear fishtailed wildly.
Oskar gasped and swore behind us, while Lucky let out a low, grumbling whine from somewhere deep inside her throat.
‘Fuck this,’ said Nadia, her voice high and tight and sharp. ‘Check your guns. Both of you.’
‘Are you expecting trouble?’ I asked as calmly as I could.
‘Something really, really doesn’t feel right,’ she muttered under her breath.
She hit the brake, spinning the wheel at the same time so that the car was spun through ninety degrees. Suddenly we were facing back the way we had come. I twisted around in my seat to look through the rear window behind Lucky, and saw some of the bee-brains take a few faltering steps after us. After a moment they began to run, their skinny, scarred legs pumping with furious motion.
‘I fucking told you something was wrong,’ Oskar yelled from behind me.
The SUVs tyres screeched as we emerged back onto the main avenue. I felt a deep shiver of shock at the sight of hundreds of bee-brains that had appeared from nowhere in just the last few minutes. It looked as if the conga line I had sighted earlier had moved to cut straight across our route back to the stage. Most carried or dragged pieces of junk, just like the bee-brains encountered moments before.
Nadia was forced to slow down to avoid a pile of twisted wreckage scattered across the road. Hundreds of bee-brains turned to watch us. I saw again how bruised and battered they all looked, how wrinkled and scarred.
They dropped what they were carrying, and started to walk, and then to run, straight at us.
‘Fuck,’ said Oskar in a high voice.
Nadia hit the accelerator once we were past the obstruction, aiming straight at a cluster of the creatures directly before us. I yelled and put a hand up before my face as we ploughed straight into them, the vehicle bumping and bouncing over their bodies. Hands reached out, sliding against the glass of the window nearest me, and I took a tight grip on my rifle. The thing that made it worse was that the creatures were entirely silent, like something out of a particularly unpleasant nightmare. Their mouths opened and closed, but no sound emerged.
I saw to my horror that thousands more were pouring into the street between us and the bridge over the river, sweeping towards us in a vast tide of flesh.
‘I think,’ said Nadia, her face shiny with perspiration and her voice trembling, ‘we’re going to have to call this one a wash. Oskar, fire off a red flare. Let the others know we’re in trouble.’
‘Seconded,’ said Oskar, grabbing hold of the flare gun once more.
‘But first,’ she said, as if to herself, ‘we’re going to have to improvise a little.’
Nadia turned the wheel, sending us down another side street. There were bee-brains here, but not in such great numbers. The map was still spread out on my knees, and by the look of things we were now definitely outside the recommended routes. I reopened the window on my side and started to pick off the fastest and strongest of the bee-brains running towards us with my rifle.
Their heads snapped back in the moment before they went tumbling to the ground and I was suddenly very, very glad for all my recent marksmanship training. They’re not human, I reminded myself, each time I looked into their blank and mindless eyes.
From behind me, Oskar cursed and muttered as he did the same thing from his side of the car.
‘Conserve your ammunition,’ said Nadia, ‘in case we really, really need it. There’s a lot more of them out there than we’ve got bullets.’
‘Something’s fucked up,’ Oskar shouted, gripping the back of Nadia’s seat with one hand and practically spitting his words in her ear. ‘We should have been able to see all this with the drones. Why the hell did they send up a white flare, when they knew there were this many bee-brains waiting for us?’
‘Shut up,’ Nadia snarled over her shoulder. ‘Soon as you’ve got a clear shot, fire that fucking flare.’
‘It’s you,’ said Oskar, turning to me now. ‘You’ve jinxed us all. Right from the beginning.’
‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’ I said.
‘Oskar?’ said Nadia, without looking around. ‘I swear to God, you will shut the fuck up right now or I will make you walk the rest of the way back. You got that?’
She swerved to avoid a tight knot of bee-brains. I pulled the map back across my lap from where it had fallen and studied it with shaking hands, tracing my finger along the length of the Pinheiros. There were multiple bridges spanning it at different points. Some looked as if they were closer than the elevated motorway Nadia had taken us across, although they were certainly a long way away from any of the designated safe routes. If we could get to one of them, maybe we could make it to the other side of the river.
I told Nadia my idea. ‘Sounds good,’ she nodded.
‘It’s taking us off the safe routes,’ said Oskar, his voice full of alarm.
‘The safe routes, as you may have just noticed,’ said Nadia, her voice terse, ‘appear to be wildly inaccurate. So I don’t think that’s going to matter a great deal, do you?’
Nadia swung across the road, sending more bodies flying. I saw one of the creatures, her back broken and her mouth wide with pain, flailing as she struggled to pull herself upright on useless legs. Others crawled or moved weakly. Then they were gone behind us, Nadia slaloming the vehicle from side to side to catch more bee-brains as they lurched into our path. Every time we turned into a street too densely packed with bodies, both myself and Oskar picked off any that got too close until our ears sang from the thunder of bullets.
We swerved around yet another corner that was partly blocked by fallen masonry, but was miraculously devoid of bee-brains. I stared at the map, unable to figure out where the hell we were any more. Nadia slowed again to negotiate her way past the debris.
Lucky howled softly in my ear, so close that my neck was damp from her breath. I turned to try and reassure her just as something enormous fell out of the sky, slamming into the bonnet of the SUV and starring the windscreen’s armoured glass.
Nadia sent us accelerating backwards at speed, to try to get out of range of whatever had collided with us, but she miscalculated; the SUV hit something that sent its rear bouncing high into the air fast and hard enough that the car came back down on its side. As the car rolled, I caught a momentary glimpse of an enormous chunk of masonry, not much smaller than the car itself, slowly rolling to a halt.
I wondered distantly where it had come from. My seatbelt was the only thing keeping me from collapsing on top of Nadia, who was now beneath me. I coughed and swallowed, tasting blood. I had bitten my tongue.
Lucky whimpered mournfully from behind me. When I turned to look, I saw she was half-standing on her owner, who was struggling to be free of his own seatbelt.
For a moment, I feared the worst; I had seen Nadia’s head slam into the dashboard, and she wasn’t moving. Then, without warning, she groaned and tried to sit up, her hand reaching for the wheel.
‘Forget that,’ I said, swallowing blood. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
‘Can’t walk home,’ she said thickly. She pressed the ignition, but nothing happened.
I tried to push open the door on my side, but it was jammed. The only way out, then, was through the open window next to me. I pulled myself up and out of the SUV, crouching on top of the door so I could take a look around. I glanced towards the huge chunk of masonry, and then moved my gaze up, until I saw nearly a dozen figures milling around on top of a neighbouring building.
Had the creatures been deliberately aiming at us, I wondered, when they pushed that huge chunk of concrete and rebar off the roof and on top of us? For creatures that were supposedly brain-dead, it struck me as pretty smart.
I leaned back in through the window. ‘Get up here,’ I shouted down at the others. ‘We have to get the hell away from here before they overrun us.’
Oskar stood upright inside the SUV and managed to crawl out beside me before helping Lucky scramble up onto the side of the car. The hound dropped down onto the road with a low growl. I reached back inside and grabbed hold of Nadia’s hand, ignoring the throbbing pain in my shoulders and back as I helped her climb out.