by Alex Scarrow
Outsiders are a threat.
The message propagated quickly, spreading from one artery to another, the synaptic links of a brain lighting up like a Christmas tree. Its journey began at the cauterized end of the giant umbilical that snaked its way across 2,500 kilometres of ocean to north-west Africa. It travelled at the speed of chemistry, which is to say faster than the speed of cellular migration. Within eight hours it had reached the shores of a place that had been called Algeria, before. There, the message followed numerous paths: northwards, across the Strait of Gibraltar into Europe; eastwards along the Mediterranean coast of Africa; south into the beating heart of the continent.
The counter-reaction by Them was simply to protect the billions of innocent human lives shrunk down to fit into Their almost infinite biological universe. There was no knowing yet how many complete conscious entities had been incinerated in the three nuclear blasts. Not to mention how many Earth species might just have been lost from Their consolidated memory, the residual trace memories of species from ancient worlds.
They had followed mission instructions and permitted the native intelligent species to come together and decide the fate of those stubborn few of them left behind. That decision had been difficult and contentious – not to absorb them by force, but to convince them to join.
The detonation of three nuclear warheads had changed things. They were taking matters into their own hands. They now had no choice but to follow their encoded mission orders. Safety first.
Preservation is essential.
The reaction was immediate in the vicinity of the mass incineration of life. The other umbilical cords that had grown ahead of the island, running along the sea floor and sloping upwards as the waters warmed, surged forward towards the source of the threat.
Within a few hours of the apocalyptic blasts, those cords furthest forward had extended their reach and broken the surface. Inside, within their brittle, salt-resistant walls, unthinking automatons in their tens of thousands were hurriedly being fabricated from biomass. In many cases, their shells would still be as soft as shoe leather as they emerged into the outside world, hordes of glistening newborns programmed with very simple instructions now: not to scout for resources, not to map the lay of the land, not to detect further sources of carbohydrate fuel.
They were simply instructed to kill.
That same reactive instruction spread throughout the global network. They could only do what was best for the mission now; the majority-data was important, the minority-data represented a threat; a binary switch was unequivocally flipped, and would remain so until this job was done.
Then – and only then – would They return to their role as knowing and benign chaperones.
CHAPTER 44
Leon hurried down the road towards their parked truck, his torchlight picking out the way ahead through the mist. He carefully stepped over the shrivelled veins of several abandoned viral threads, an all too serious game of Don’t Step on the Cracks. To his eyes they looked like the roots and limbs of plants left to die and fossilize in a dusty old greenhouse. However, they might still contain enough of a thread of life within to alert the virus to their presence if he clumsily stepped on one.
The truck was right there where they’d left it weeks ago, two wheels up on the kerb, two on the road. He paused, waiting for the others to catch up as they cautiously picked their way forward in his wake. Before he got too close, he ducked down and shone his torch at the dark space beneath the vehicle.
That’s where they’d be hiding.
If they were lying in wait, that is.
Adewale came to a halt beside him. ‘Can you see any of them under there?’
There’d be glints of reflection of their shells if they were – like fragments of broken glass. ‘No. I think we’re good.’
He made his way forward again, torch aimed down at the road, picking out the thin, black, snaking lines, looking very much like crazy paving. A few more metres of careful steps and finally he reached the truck. He walked round to the rear of it, steadied himself with a ‘One, two, three’, then quickly lifted aside the green canvas awning.
His torchlight picked out nothing but the supplies they’d left in the back.
He let out a puff of air, and Adewale, beside him, hissed an edgy breath out of his nose. ‘It is like a game of dice.’
The others were now joining them around the truck. ‘Does it still work?’ asked Kim.
‘Don’t know,’ said Leon. ‘I hope so.’
‘Let’s just get in and get going!’ hissed Cora.
Leon nodded. He was surprised at how easy it had been to get to the vehicle, but the virals had to be out there in the swirling grey mist, somewhere nearby, waiting for the right moment to catch them off guard and swarm them.
‘Come on, everyone,’ urged Cora. ‘Get in! Get in!’
He watched Finley, Kim and Howard climb up, Adewale holding out one of his big hands to help them. Cora clambered up into the cabin on the driver’s side and Leon was just about to pull himself up when he saw the silhouette of a lone figure picking its way down the bridge road towards them.
‘Hang on a sec!’ he called to Cora before she could turn the engine on.
Leon wondered if it might be Peter or Dereck. One of the old men might have had a change of heart.
He hurried forward, holding a hand back at Cora to indicate he wanted her to wait.
‘Hello? That you, Peter?’
The figure stepped nimbly over a thick root. Clearly not an old man, by the way he moved. Leon snapped on his torch and shone it at the figure.
‘Hey, Leon.’
Jake.
Jake stopped dead in his tracks.
Leon ran his torch beam up and down him. ‘Jake . . . is that you? I mean, really you?’
‘Yeah, Leon, it’s me.’ He stopped where he was, just three metres away. Close enough to talk without shouting, but still a wary distance between them. ‘But I’m not going to try and tell you I’m virus-free, because I’m not. Yeah, I’m infected.’
‘OK.’ They stared in silence at each other for a moment. ‘You know we can’t take you with us?’
‘Duh.’ Jake smiled. ‘I’m not here trying to blag a lift.’
‘You’re a fool,’ said Leon. ‘You didn’t have to do it.’
‘You sound really pissed off with me.’
‘I am. I . . . we needed you.’
‘I’m so glad I did it. I see what Camille means now.’
Glad? The word made hairs on Leon’s neck stir.
‘Leon, there really is nowhere to go, mate. Nowhere.’
‘That’s up to us to find out.’
‘Something happened, I’m not sure what, but now They feel threatened by you. Time’s up. Time to join us or . . .’
‘Or what?’
Jake shrugged. ‘What do you think?’ He turned to look back over his shoulder to the bridge and the community beyond. ‘It’s all kicking off over there. You obviously guessed we were coming tonight. The virus will try its best to preserve as many of you as it can. If you don’t fight, if you don’t run . . .’
‘Is that what you’re asking us to do? Lie down and let ourselves get infected?’
‘Infected. It’s a shit word for how this feels. And I know it looks horrific. I know! It’s not an easy thing to ask. But . . . can you trust me, Leon? Can you just hear me out?’
‘No way.’ Leon backed up a step. ‘There’s no way I’m dying that way.’
‘It’s not death, Leon. It’s life.’
Leon pointed at the dried-out network of lines criss-crossing the road. ‘That’s not life. The creatures, those roots . . . that’s not any kind of goddamn life!’
‘Those things are, like . . . they’re just the infrastructure. But what’s inside is life. Life 2.0. It’s the future of life.’ Jake closed the distance by several steps.
‘Jake . . .’ He backed up. ‘I told you . . . if you came back, there’s no way we could trust you.’
‘Leon, please! Just listen to me for a second. This is a new beginning!’
‘You sound like that girl, Camille. Except she wasn’t a girl, was she? She was a viral impostor.’
‘She was – is – a “girl”. So am I. I’m human still. I’m Jacob Sutherland. But I’m a lot more than that now.’
‘Leon!’ Cora called out across the dark. ‘Get back here! WE GOTTA GO!’
‘Time’s up, mate. This really is the last chance.’ Jake took another step forward. ‘After this, if you run, They’re going to hunt you down.’
‘That’s what the virus has been doing since the beginning. Hunting us.’
‘No, Leon. There’s a difference. Getting infected is getting invited, absorbed. That’s the important bit. But getting hunted down by these stupid-ass crabs means you’re gonna end up as meat chunks. Dead. That’s it, mate. Biomass material. Bits and pieces to be used to make more of them.’
‘We’re running and we’ll fight for as long as we can.’
Jake nodded his head slowly. ‘I was really hoping I could convince you . . . but I’m wasting my time, aren’t I?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then I’m just going to do it.’ Jake turned to his side as if he was whistling for a dog. Immediately they appeared, clambering over the sides of the bridge. Through the handrails. Crabs, big ones – monsters designed to move quickly and kill efficiently.
Shit. They must have been hiding right underneath the bridge.
Jake stepped forward and held his hand out. ‘Take my hand!’
‘Screw you!’ Leon backed up.
‘Take my hand, mate! Please!’ He glanced at the creatures pulling themselves over the railing on to the road. ‘Those crabs don’t do invites. They just kill!’
Leon stared at Jake’s hand, just a metre or so away from him, fingers splayed, desperately beckoning him. He shook his head. ‘I’d rather die.’
Jake grimaced. His arm straightened out and his hand seemed to explode. The skin of his palm burst open and out of the jagged wound uncurled a loop of tendon. It happened so fast. It uncoiled like a cracked whip, lashing out and curling round Leon’s right wrist.
Leon tried tugging his hand back, but the hold was too firm.
‘Don’t fight me, mate!’
Leon jerked his hand again. But realized another tendon was beginning to protrude from the opening in Jake’s hand, and uncurling, ready to wrap round his forearm and consolidate his grasp.
‘Just say yes, Leon. Please! Say yes first . . . then I’ll do it!’
Leon dropped his torch and reached deep into the pocket of his anorak. He felt the plastic sports bottle, liquid sloshing around inside. He whipped it out, thrust the neck of the bottle into his mouth and wrenched the cap off. He filled his mouth with paraffin until his cheeks ballooned.
Jake’s eyes widened as Leon threw the bottle at his face, reached into his anorak and pulled out the lighter.
‘Leon! Shit! No . . .’
Leon spurted the paraffin out across the short space between them in a messy cloud of droplets over his left hand which was held up, thumb poised on the lighter.
He flicked.
The aerosol cloud of liquid erupted into a plume of flame that singed Leon’s fringe, his brows, burned the tip of his nose.
‘NO!’ Jake screamed as the flame reached him and ignited the paraffin spattered over his face. His head was instantly engulfed with flames and his last human word morphed into an inhuman, multi-voiced scream.
The tentacle loosened its grip and Leon jerked his hand free, and turned . . .
To see the few metres he’d put between himself and the truck were now filled with a wall of large crabs.
They closed together, squeezing out the gaps between them. No longer acting like mindless arachnids scrabbling to be first to a prize, they acted as one, like trained footmen.
The screaming behind him intensified as the flames began to dwindle, and Leon realized Jake was shouting an order.
The creatures began to advance on him.
He opened his mouth to yell for help, but nothing but a throttled gurgle came out.
Crap. This really is it. Game over.
In just a few seconds he would feel the sharp teeth of one of those claws biting into his scalp, cracking into his skull, then compressing until his head burst like a watermelon.
There were too many to fight. He closed his eyes and began to crouch down to a kneel.
I’m ready. Let’s do this.
Light blazed through his closed eyelids. He opened them to see the dazzling glare of twin headlights hurtling towards him like a high-speed train, throwing the creatures’ advancing battle line into a momentarily frozen silhouetted image.
The truck crashed into them, rolling them over and squashing their bulbous bodies so that they erupted like ripe and swollen boils probed by a needle, spraying gobbets of liquid into the glare of the headlights.
The truck screeched to a halt directly in front of him. Close enough that the growling engine and the radiator grille were just an arm’s reach away.
‘GRAB HOLD!’ screamed Cora.
Without thinking, Leon reached out, wrapped his fingers through the vibrating grille and stepped up on to the front bumper.
Then with the sound of gears grinding painfully and a lion’s roar of complaint coming from the engine just beyond the rattling, shaking metal grille, he felt the blasting hot air of the engine on his face as the truck lurched into reverse, bouncing back over squirming bodies.
CHAPTER 45
There was an old sun-bleached wooden bench that had once been painted a cheery yellow but now only showed flakes tucked into the grain and the knots of the wood. Freya was sitting on it and watching the end of the world, or what was left of it, unfold before her eyes. The jeep was parked up a dozen metres away on a patch of gravel beside the winding road. Mr Friedmann had driven them up here, into the hills overlooking Havana.
It was so pretty up here. So peaceful.
‘And so it begins,’ she said as Tom Friedmann sat down beside her.
There were several thin plumes of smoke rising from the buildings, and now that the last of the day’s light was draining from the sky they were beginning to see the flicker of flames here and there, the sporadic faint blink of muzzle flash. It was quiet enough to hear the distant rattle of gunfire above the soft hissing of the trees around them.
‘You think this is it? All over?’ he asked.
‘I would say so. If those were nukes we saw going up . . . I’m guessing the virus is pretty pissed off with whoever’s left. No more Mr Nice Guy.’
He laughed humourlessly.
She looked at him. ‘It all makes sense.’ She nodded at the distant city. ‘We’re like the dinosaurs. Too big, too inefficient, too clumsy, too wasteful, and now it’s our time to go.’
They watched as a dozen or more US Navy ships began to manoeuvre themselves away from the quayside and out into the middle of the bay. ‘They were never out to destroy us. They were trying to archive us.’
‘Just like copying all those old tapes and vinyl records to digital, eh?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Exactly like that. So they can exist forever online and not fade away.’
‘Making us museum exhibits.’
‘No.’ She looked at him. ‘Come on, you’ve glimpsed it. You spoke to Grace. She’s alive. She’s never going to die. You’ll be with her . . . and everyone else. Maybe even Leon too.’
‘That’s what we’re doing, then? Giving up?’
‘Even if we had a chance of escaping . . .’ She nodded at the distant grey ships getting in each other’s way, churning up boiling wakes of white foam behind them. ‘Even if we had a choice to be aboard one of those, I think I’m ready to choose this.’
‘Choose this?’ He looked at her. ‘Is this really a choice? What if I want to fight back, or run? What happens then?’
‘They’ll catch you eventually.’
They sat
in silence for a while, watching the winking lights of flames sprouting up here and there, the staccato flicker of gunshots.
‘We saw this back in England,’ said Tom. ‘I was much closer. It was horrific.’
Freya nodded. It was. She’d never been so terrified as she had been that night.
‘How do things go for us?’ he said. ‘I’m presuming They’ll get up to these hills soon enough?’
‘We’re infected. We have a bit of their chemistry in us already. I think They’ll figure that out as soon as They make direct contact with us.’ She looked at him. ‘Hopefully.’
‘And what? They’ll just leave us alone?’
She didn’t know. A part of her was listening to Grace’s voice assuring her everything was going to be OK. Everything was going to be just fine.
‘Grace is saying, if you run or try fighting back, the creatures will instinctively react, they’ll be thinking about killing you rather than preserving you.’
‘Grace is saying that?’
‘Uh-huh.’ She cocked her head and listened for a moment. ‘She says when the snarks come we should stay put, stay calm. We just let them reach out to us and do what they need to do.’
‘What? Swarm over us?’
‘I guess.’
He was silent for a moment, then she heard him whisper, ‘Screw that.’
‘Remember how it felt in the car? A sting, one little sting . . . that’s all. Then they do all the hard work. You just sit back and rela—’
‘You’re not doing a great job at selling this to me, Freya . . .’
Freya laughed.
‘What?’
‘Grace just told me to tell you you’re being a total wimp. She said going to the dentist is ten times worse.’
‘She never much liked the dentist.’ Tom smiled. ‘Toss-up between having a tooth out and being turned to human mush? I’ll take the first one.’
Freya could see where Leon had got his dry humour from. ‘Come on, you’ve been inside once before. It’s not as bad as that.’
‘It feels like a surrender.’ He turned to her. ‘It pulls against every instinct I have inside me. Like giving up. Like suicide.’
‘Trying to run . . . fight, that really will be suicide, though.’