by SD Tanner
“How far underground are you?”
“Hard to say, but I’m guessing at least fifty feet.”
The bots continued their ungainly walk along the sticky floor, until one slipped through yet another thin veil of goo. With the walls a shining and almost transparent color, it was hard to tell one tunnel or chamber from the next. The best they could do was count how many doorways the bots were falling through to estimate how deep they were travelling.
Reaching another chamber, this one was different. Instead of the smooth walls, these had awkward shaped lumps. Ark marched a baby bot closer until it could use the stickiness of the wall to climb onto the lump.
Already knowing that Ark didn’t know any more than he did, he asked, “What is that?”
While he continued to manage the bot to climb up the wall, Ark replied distractedly, “I don’t know.”
Reaching the top of the lump, Ark focused the bot’s camera onto it, zeroing in on a reddish colored spot. Using the bot to reach out one leg, he prodded at the spot. The goo spread apart, revealing the white teeth and pink tongue of a mouth that was clearly screaming.
Instinctively jolting backward, he swore, “Fuck! Is that a person?”
It was a silent scream that never seemed to end. Nothing other than the mouth could be seen and Ark switched to another bot to scan the walls. There were a dozen lumps like this one and they now knew each was a person being kept alive inside of the nest.
“Oh, no,” Lexie whispered. “Why would they do that to someone? It’s so cruel.”
No one had an answer until Ark finally said, “They use us for food. The goo converts us into nutrients the critters can easily absorb. Disgusting though it is, I’m guessing this is their pantry.”
“No, no, no,” Lexie said defiantly. “You can’t leave these people this way, Ark. They must be in so much pain. You have to stop it. Blow it up!”
“Not yet, hon,” Ark replied steadily. “There’s no point in just killing the critters. We need to find whatever’s inside of here that’s controlling them and kill that, then all of this shit stops.”
Lexie sniffed unhappily and he wondered if she was crying. Patting her helmet, he said soothingly, “Easy, Lex, we can’t let them get to us. Ark’s right. We need to find out what’s at the bottom of this nest and then we’ll bomb the fucking shit out of it. Believe me, we’ll have our say.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Friends like these (Survivors)
Ryan and Binkin
His makeshift treehouse had an eight by twelve foot platform about fifty feet above the ground. With the densely packed leaves concealing his presence, anyone walking below would need to know what they were looking for to see him. Originally, so few people had lived outside of the walls of CaliTech, staying hidden from view had been easy enough. Since the arrival of the soldiers, preppers and survivors, there were several thousand people living inside and around the large site. Being located nearly a mile from CaliTech, he’d assumed he would remain alone in the huge forest, but recently a group had made themselves at home near him.
Only a hundred yards from his treehouse were a cluster of tents housing around ten people. Watching them every day had become an addictive pastime, making him wonder if he wasn’t pining for some company. Only yesterday, one of them had found one of his traps and freed his dinner. A part of him had wanted to defend his supper, but he was more amused by the woman’s concern for an animal she should have seen as a meal. Other people at her campsite called her Annalese and he thought the pretty name suited her. Despite being stern and practically minded, she swung her hips with a feminine sway that had caught his attention.
Binkin had been his only companion for the past two months and he absentmindedly scratched his soft ear. Annalese was opening a tin of food and tipping its contents into a pot on a camp stove. She was dressed in loose fitting jeans with a baggy sweater and he guessed she was in her mid-thirties. Her movements were always decisive and she spoke in a tone that made it clear that she didn’t tolerate fools. With her was a teenage girl, and she’d sent two of the men in her group to fetch water from the river, while the others had been told to tidy up their small patch of land. She kept the group organized and that was probably the only reason any of them were still alive. Having spied on her for several weeks, he felt as if he knew her and wondered if he was turning into a stalker.
He felt Binkin jerk his head away from his hand, emitting a low, threatening growl. Surprised, he glanced down at his greying head and whispered softly, “What is it, boy?”
Usually whenever he spoke to Binkin, he would look at him and wag his tail madly, but this time his old eyes stayed focused on something directly ahead. Moving the leaves from his line of vision, he followed his old mutt’s gaze. At first, he could see nothing other than the tops of the trees as they fell away against the incline of the hill. The horizon was blue and the sun was shining brightly on what appeared to be nothing more than a lazy afternoon. Studying the tops of the trees, he noticed their leaves were vibrating in a way that they shouldn’t have without wind.
Pulling his binoculars from his pack, he focused on the ground half a mile ahead of him. It was then that he saw the movement. Although the ground beneath the densely packed trees was always in shadow, there should have been patches of light where they parted. Now the entire ground was black, moving so consistently it appeared to be vibrating. No more than six hundred yards away, a swarm of critters was heading towards them at breakneck speed.
No longer bothering to hide his presence, he shouted, “Critters! Run!”
Grabbing Binkin and his backpack, he pushed them both into the small basket he used to haul stuff up and down the tree. Unhooking the rope from around a branch, he lowered the basket to the ground and after throwing his gun over his shoulder, he climbed down after them. Having heard him shout, Annalese stood watching while he grabbed his pack and ran towards her.
Seemingly unsurprised by his sudden appearance, she said cheerfully, “You’re just in time for lunch.”
Staring in the direction the critters were coming from, Binkin was whimpering worriedly and he said. “We’ve gotta go. There’s thousands of critters on their way here.”
Clearly not believing him, she asked, “Aren’t you the guy who lives in the tree?”
Grabbing her by the arm, he stared intently at her face. “Listen, Annalese, I coulda left you, but I like you. They’re only five hundred yards from here and we have to go.”
Sharply pulling her arm away from him, she narrowed her eyes clearly ready to deliver what he knew would be a stinging response. She didn’t have a chance to speak before a distant screeching sound cut through the peace of the forest. The sound was that of many critters and they were creating a cacophony of loud static noises.
Annalese’s eyes widened in horror and she whirled away from him. “Chad! Get the others now! We’ve gotta go!” Grabbing him firmly, she pushed him towards the two trucks they had parked near their campsite. “We need to drive around the area and warn everyone.”
Having watched their camp for weeks, he glanced over his shoulder, giving her now familiar face a rare smile. “Nice to meet ya, Annalese. I’m Ryan.” Whistling to Binkin, he added, “And this bad-tempered old boy is Binkin.”
John
Christine had assigned him the nightshift and, although it was mid-afternoon, he was lying in his tent wondering what he had to eat. It wasn’t really his tent. The nightshift workers would rejoin their groups and they would be assigned to whatever tent happened to be free. After weeks of heavy use, the bedding stank of old sweat and the tent was lurching to the left. Staring above his head at the canvas stretched loosely over the frame, he wished he’d never left the city. They might have been held prisoner, but with so few people left alive, he’d lived in an abandoned house on the outskirts surviving on the food he’d found in the other properties. It had been far more civilized than the life he now lived and he often pondered whether he should leave, but the three square
meals a day kept him tied to CaliTech even if the work didn’t.
The flap to his tent was roughly pulled aside and the face of a woman appeared. “Get up! Critters is comin’!”
Her face disappeared as abruptly as it had arrived and he sat up, listening to the panicked movement around him. He didn’t understand why they were so frightened of the critters. As far as he could tell, it was the regular folk who’d gone crazy and killed anyone they could find. After that, the goo had trapped people inside of rooms and buildings. Once they were released, the critters hadn’t done anything to them. They’d allowed him to leave the city center and find somewhere comfortable enough to live. Admittedly, he couldn’t leave the outer limits of the city, but he’d never liked doing that even before they’d arrived.
Tiredly, he pulled on his boots, taking his time to lace them tightly. After that, he dragged his jacket from the floor and shrugged it onto his shoulders. The sound of trucks firing and revving reached his ears, but he figured he would walk to CaliTech, just as he did every day.
Another face appeared through the flap on his tent and a man said, “C’mon! We gotta go now!”
Waving the man away, he didn’t bother to reply, not that the man would have heard him. His head had disappeared equally as quickly as the woman’s had. Hearing the crunch of tires against the rocky ground, he finally stuck his head outside of the tent. They’d left their partially cooked meal on a camp stove and he climbed to his feet, happy to know he wouldn’t have to wait until he reached CaliTech to eat.
Crouching over the stove, there was a sizeable portion of a meat-based stew already hot enough to eat. It was meant to feed four people, and he scrabbled around the metal dishes to find a clean spoon. Since the murders in the city, he’d only had just enough to eat, and he was excited by having more than he needed. He was so intently focused on digging his spoon through the mush, searching for something he recognized as meat, he was surprised when a shadow fell over him. Assuming it was one of the campers, he flushed with embarrassment and guilt, while turning his head and looking up.
Above him was the molded face of a critter with a piped hole for a mouth. A string of gooey liquid squirted from it, landing in his eyes and then spreading thinly across his face. For a moment, his face merely felt coated in something cold, but then it began to absorb into his skin. A scream erupted unbidden from deep inside of him, but was cut short when a claw drilled through his chest bone.
Alice
While the truck hurtled along the road, she was being thrown into the people crushed on the backseat with her. They were following a vehicle, with another behind them. She hadn’t seen the critters that were coming, but she could hear them. Their screeching was growing louder with every passing moment, and she feared they would catch them before they made it behind the walls of CaliTech.
Like everyone else, she’d assumed they would be safe living near CaliTech, and for the past two weeks that had been true. She’d gotten into the rhythm of going into their site every night to assemble the little robots they believed were critical to their survival. With her dexterity and delicate fingers, her job had been to screw their tiny legs together, and now her nails were torn and she had blisters on several fingers. By the end of a long night, her vision would be blurry, and the small limbs would look like a pile of black crab legs in front of her. Her work had been painstaking, but in defiance of her parents who had called her spoilt, she hadn’t complained or quit.
The three meals a day had been quite the motivator, but it was more than just the food. People around her had acted as if what they were doing was right, and they’d moved with a confidence she found catching. Her life was regulated by the work, and she went to sleep every morning after her shift feeling normal for the first time in months. When the woman had shouted from the truck that the critters were coming it had jolted her from her growing complacency. Nothing was safe, and a familiar sensation of fear filtered through her body, making her fingers and toes tingle as her heart rate began to climb.
Sitting crushed in the back of the truck, she asked nervously, “Where are they? Why are they coming here?”
A man she didn’t know replied, “It doesn’t matter. We’ll be safe in the building.”
“How do you know that? Maybe they won’t let us in.”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
His question was a naïve one and she saw their situation very differently. CaliTech was a secured site with armored soldiers and weapons and they were only desperate slaves to be used and then discarded. They were lucky CaliTech bothered with them at all, and she’d often wondered what they would do when they didn’t need them as a labor force. For all the camaraderie while they were working as a team, she very much doubted they would risk their skin to save hers.
The main gates loomed ahead of them. Both were wide open and several large military vehicles were driving through them. On top of the trucks, men wearing helmets and goggles stood behind large guns mounted on the roofs. The screeching behind her was growing closer and the gunners swung their weapons to fire. They were going to shoot them rather than let them inside of their site. Screaming in fear, she dropped into the space behind the front passenger seat, waiting for their bullets to rip through their flimsy truck and into her body.
CHAPTER THIRTY: Breached (Hood)
Large screens hung from the ceiling of the open floor of the main building, and the usual maintenance and production work on the Navigator gear had been suspended for the event. While Ark moved between the cameras on the baby bots, hundreds of people were standing or sitting on the workbenches watching the screens closely. After cheering the bots into the nest and slapping one another on the back for a job well done, the room had grown deathly quiet. The sight of the silently screaming man or woman buried under the goo had brought everyone back to reality.
Slowly, softly spoken voices began to rumble around the room, and he heard the sharp sniffling of someone crying. It was a terrible sight and Ark quickly moved the camera to another view. There were children in the audience and they didn’t need to know what fate could await them.
Screaming pierced through the walls of the room, and he briefly wondered if it was coming from the screens above his head, but the baby bots didn’t have microphones. Ark had said they wanted them, but needing to reduce their weight and simplify the design, the engineers had abandoned the idea.
The screams were turning high-pitched with terror, and he forced his way through the people, heading for the main doors. Ark had given him a dozen earpieces to share with his teams, and he pushed one into his ear shouting, “What the hell is going on out there?”
“No need to shout, Hood,” Ark replied. “Amber and Dom are checking the cams on the walls.”
Reaching the main doors, he was met by Spike and two other capable leaders from his team. Heaving the main doors open, the screaming cut across the production floor, making all heads turn towards them.
Now outside, he heard the sound of static screeching and tried to guess how far away the critters were. “Screw the cams, Ark. We can hear critters and people screaming out here.”
“The navs are on the roof. They’re scanning up to three miles out.”
“It’s not three miles away.”
Leon’s voice came on the radio. “Ark, do you need us to head back?”
“Stay in position,” Ark replied. “It’ll take you at least forty eight hours to get back here. There’s nothing you can do for us.”
Ark was their battle commander, but he’d never worked with him and wasn’t sure he wanted to follow his orders. Right now, he needed to call his troops to arms and get them outside of the site.
Before he could decide whether to take matters into his own hands, Ark said steadily, “Hood, pull your squads into formation. Position them around the walls of the base. Pick two of your best to go outside of the gate.”
At least they were seeing the problem in the same way and he asked, “Do you have any navs to send with us?�
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“No, they’re all at the nest. Like I’ve said, we’re short.”
In their first week at the base, all he’d done was select twenty men to be trained as Navigators and included himself amongst them, but they’d only had two days with Donna learning how to walk and run in the gear. With so little training, they couldn’t use the suits well enough to take them into battle. Leon and Tank had also shown them how to use the laser guns, but they were heavy and could only be used by someone wearing the Navigator gear. When used in anger the gun overheated like an old clunker and he was told there a risk they could explode. Considering how important CaliTech was to their survival, he thought it was poorly defended and he would need to rely on tried and true tactics.
Running around the outside of the main building, he cut across the lawn to his truck. Several hundred of the people at Fields Landing had elected to go to island, taking most of the children with them. There had been some heartbreaking scenes on the docks as newly formed families separated, with promises to find one another again. Only those looking for a fight had decided to join him and five hundred armed men and women had followed him back to CaliTech. The vehicles holding their guns and ammo were parked along the walls and their tents were pitched next to them.
Spike appeared at his side just as he was clipping on his body armor. “What’s the plan?”
“Ark wants two squads to go over the wall and check it out.”
“Yours and mine?”
Within minutes, two armored vehicles were idling next to the gates, each with five heavily armed soldiers inside and a gunner at the turret. At least the people had stopped screaming, but the noise had been replaced by even louder critter screeching and vehicles speeding towards the site. They were obviously trying to outrun the critters and he hoped they would. The gates opened in front of them, revealing the familiar forest and scattered tents. Usually people would have been moving around outside of the gates, but today most of them were inside of the main building, watching the baby bots they’d worked so hard to build.