I pushed another ring of sonic energy away from my body with all the strength I could muster, turning all the offspring within twenty yards into goo. It was all I had. My severed arm still clutched the knife, buried in gelatinous mutant goo. I’m sure I was in shock, but I managed to find my arm and stick it back in place, letting the nanites reconnect the tissue.
I managed to push myself up and lean on an elbow. More concrete in front of me crumbled as another offspring from the roof landed. It was odd watching it happen with blurry vision and no sound.
I figured this would be the one that killed me, but it slumped and started melting where it landed with an arrow sticking out of its brain. A short, dark haired man was running towards me, and more arrows sailed overhead, biting into the offspring that kept coming down from the roofs. The dark haired man punched and kicked, melting offspring and husks with each hit. Another exterminator!
Down the street, eight humans with bows launched more arrows into the fray, and another exterminator joined the first, killing the ones that were hit with arrows, while Diane stood with the archers, killing any that tried to reach them.
Diane I thought, linking our minds once more. I’m sorry to do this to you. Like Xipe had done to me, I imprinted all of my thoughts, memories, and experiences into her mind. She instantly knew everything I knew. Her shock quickly became revulsion as she understood what I had done.
The stories about Xipe knowing how to stop the spread were true. Xipe knew how to change the nanites into anti-particles he called antites. They would neutralize and convert every nanite they touched into an antite, starting a chain reaction that would begin slowly, but would eventually spread across the world, wiping out the parasites and anything infected by them.
Oh, God, no! You could have stopped it. You could have stopped it! You were the first exterminator; our hero, but it was you who doomed us. You kept fighting when you could have ended it, and now it has spread too far.
One of the exterminators knelt next to me with a propane torch, but I shook my head. “I’m over the line. I can’t burn anymore,” I said.
“Dear God,” he whispered, looking past me to the river. An offspring the size of a whale was climbing out of the water, followed by a dozen more of various sizes, but all bigger than the ones I had just killed. I fell back and relaxed. There was only one thing left to do.
I can’t undo what I’ve already done, Diane. I am dying. My nanites are already cooling. It’s up to you now. You have to decide if you will kill us to save what is left of humanity. Save the world, Diane. Kill us all.
You’ve already killed us all, Crane.A year ago, maybe ten thousand people would have died. Now, it will be a miracle if that many live. She stood up and looked towards the behemoth that crushed the street and toppled the first building it lumbered into.
His body was failing. Was he seeing through Diane’s eyes, or his own? He couldn’t reason it out. Memories flashed through his awareness, blending with reality until he couldn’t tell what was real and what was fantasy.
“The others are coming,” a man’s voice called. “We just have to hold them off for a minute. Diane! Let’s go!”
She didn’t hesitate. It spread out like a soft breeze through the crumbling city, a ripple of pale blue light, so faint and fast that most didn’t even see it. Almost every living being it touched suffered. Most died instantly, but not all. Most of the survivors died later, unable to recover from large portions of their bodies suddenly melting away. Only a few were completely untouched; maybe one in twenty thousand.
I tried to wipe the sweat from my cheek, but my arm wouldn’t move. It wasn’t sweat on my cheek, anyway. My body was cooling, and my nanites flowed off of me like dry water. I was melting, just like the offspring I had killed. It didn’t hurt much.
With our minds still delved, Diane and I experienced each other’s final moments. She was still mostly human, so she was in agony as the alien portions of her body died and separated from her flesh.
Somehow, even as she was dying, she thought of the people hiding here in what she thought of as ‘the safe zone.’ She thought of her sister, Tina, who, that same day, became a mother to a healthy newborn child. It meant that there was hope for mankind, after all, and she felt happiness through her suffering.
My eyes might have been closed, or they might have melted away, but I knew that I wasn’t seeing the real world. The flitting bits of data flashing through my brain took me back to Tiffany Hudson’s house on our last day of high school.
Her dog attacked me on the back deck, but Xipe showed up and killed it. He saw that I was infected, too, but because I had resisted becoming a host or a husk, he implanted his memories and experiences in my mind, making me Earth’s first human exterminator.
He had already exterminated dozens of my neighbors, and had traced the last of the infected here, to Tiffany’s house. Now that I knew what he did, I had to finish his work, or let the alien plague spread across the Earth.
I didn’t think I could do it, but his voice in my head urged me on. Killing Tiffany’s little brother had been almost more than I could bear, but with the heavy consequences of failure impressed in my mind, I kept killing.
Her little sisters, her parents, even her visiting grandparents had to die. Even though they saw each other melt into pools of nanite sludge, they knew nothing of any infection. They only knew that I was killing them.
I found Tiffany last, cowering in her bedroom closet. We both wept when she saw the knife in my hand.
Xipe had reached the nanite tipping point, too, but we had stopped the alien plague that destroyed his world and countless others. He was the last of his kind, but he seemed eager to die knowing that I would carry on in his place, ready to create and use antites if the plague returned and couldn’t be contained.
I was still crying as I walked down the sidewalk in front of Tiffany’s house. Yes, for the killing I had done, but also for the killing I had not done. She stood in her bedroom window, watching me leave. Tears streaked her pretty face, and blond curls fell down over her soft brown eyes as she pressed her sludge covered hands against the window.
God forgive me. I couldn’t do it.
But as the last images flickered and vanished, I knew that no forgiveness awaited me.
The end
A note to the reader
Thank you for reading Apocalypstick. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it for you. Please consider taking a moment to leave a review and a rating on Amazon.com, or your retailer’s website, and if you did enjoy it, click the Like button. These tools help a book gain visibility so that others can find and enjoy it, too.
If you have any questions or comments, I invite you to contact me using any of the links below. I love to hear from my readers, so don’t be shy.
In Sincere Gratitude,
Greg Carrico
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I would like to acknowledge and thank:
http://keren-r.deviantart.com/, http://axeraider70.deviantart.com/,
andwww.obsidiandawn.com for the use of their brushes in the cover art, andwww.hellostranger.com/solarsister for the lipstick font.
Still here?
Alright, I guess I can give you a little peek at the first chapter of Children of the Plague. Enjoy, and keep an eye on my Facebook page for the official announcement of the book launch.
Sneak Preview of
Children of the Plague
by Greg Carrico
Prologue: Waiting for the Scream
Lanni leaned face-first against her flimsy bedroom door, waiting for the scream. The phony wood grain pressed shallow lines into her forehead and flattened nose, and she could just make out the ghostly scent of two-year-old paint.
She
relaxed her grip on the door handle just enough to let the prickling flow of blood return to her fingers. Each sensation was an anchor; something to cling to against the rising tide of pressure behind her eyes. Though they helped distract her from the dull, but constant pain she already felt, they were not an inoculation against what she knew would come.
Any second now…
Pain was seldom worse than the anticipation of it, but Lanni knew exactly what to expect, and it scared her. Her neck and shoulders leached tension from the thick air, making the pressure in her head even worse. She hated waiting almost as much as hearing her mother’s screams rip through the thin walls of their mobile home.
The continual sounds of her mother’s suffering weren’t easy to bear, but some of her screams were different; they reached right into Lanni’s soul. She knew it was crazy, but they had a physical, painful effect on her.
Alex, her twin brother, felt it too. They had both been plagued with sudden, odd headaches for weeks, but for the last two days, the pain had been relentless, and this morning, when the screaming started, it grew magnitudes worse. Now, with her mother wailing in agony only a few paces away, the pain was climbing to new levels.
They found the situation easier to deal with when they were together. Even though they didn’t discuss it, her pain was muted in his company, and she could tell it helped him, too.
At that moment, however, she was alone with nothing but the feel of her her cool bedroom door against her warm face, and the faint smell of paint to help her tune out the throbbing pulse in her temples.
Oh God, here it comes.
The long, moaning cries from the end of the hall settled into a quicker rhythm of higher pitched barks. It was the same pattern every time, and it meant one of the big screams was imminent. Even the already tense air knew it was coming. It coiled around her, tighter and tighter; a giant, invisible snake squeezing the air from her chest, until finally…
The scream.
It’s just a sound. It can’t really hurt me.
But thinking that, didn’t make it true. It did really hurt her. It bashed into her tender head like a Louisville Slugger. Even when the scream finally died down, the pain lived on, and it got worse every time. She didn’t know how many more she could take.
Where is that ambulance?
With luck, she’d have a two minute reprieve before the next bad contraction. That was more than enough time to walk a few feet down the hall to Alex’s room.
Despite an overwhelming sense of urgency, she couldn’t afford to give in to her fear, not even a tiny bit. She walked calmly down the narrow hall and tapped on her brother’s door. The ‘Barging In’ rule surely wouldn’t apply at a time like this, but sticking to her routine helped her keep a grip on her self-control, so she waited for him to answer.
“Alex?” she called. It was barely more than a whisper.
More than anything, she wanted to be out of the hallway before the next scream. She glanced nervously at her parents’ door, now only a few feet away, as though a monster was about to smash it down.
There’s no such thing as monsters, dummy. This is perfectly normal. All pregnant women scream and cry.
Something in those screams scared her, though, and whatever she tried to tell herself, it was not normal. She recognized the gasping and whimpering, already starting again, as the air coiled tighter around her.
Oh, no. Not yet…
“Alex!” She was louder this time, and a bit panicky.
Her father’s deep voice rumbled softly through the walls like distant thunder, muting her mother’s exhausted panting. But despite his almost magically soothing tone, her mother panted faster and louder. The snake was still coiling.
Screw the ‘Barging In’ rule…
She shoved the door open, but it bounced off of something on the other side and snapped shut again, knocking her backwards.
“Owe! Dammit!” a guy’s voice said. It wasn’t Alex.
The door opened about two inches, and a vertical slice of a wide, freckled face peered through the crack. It was Alex’s enormous friend from their football team.
“Jacob? What are you doing here?” She pushed the door, but neither he nor it budged. “Move. I need to come in.”
“Not now, squirt,” he whispered, and closed the door.
Anger and disbelief overpowered her fear.
Squirt? Did he just close a door in my face? In my own house?
Her father’s voice grew louder as he tried to talk over her mother’s intensifying groans.
“Okay. Okay. You’re alright. Squeeze my hand. It’s alright,” he said in a continuous litany.
“Oh… Ohhh NOOO!” her mother cried in a trembling, high-pitched voice. “It’s bad, David. It’s so bad. I don’t want… Don’t… Please don’t let me die!” Every word sounded forced. She was struggling to keep up the fight; to live.
The door opened when Lanni tried it again, and she slipped into the smallish room, ready to punch Jacob in his big nose if he got in her way. Alex was at his desk, sketching on an oversized pad with colored pencils, as if nothing else in the world mattered. His haunted face was nearly as pale as his paper. He looked so much worse than he had just a couple of hours earlier.
“Look, pipsqueak,” Jacob hissed, standing up from the edge of the bed, “he won’t talk to you right now. You know how he gets, so just go back to your little lair and let him draw.” He grabbed her shoulders, and spun her around to face the door.
She had no hope of resisting him, but she defiantly planted her feet and made him push, anyway. At six-foot-two, with arms like a teenage Hulk, he had little trouble. He was only a year ahead of her, but even for an eighth grader, he was a veritable giant.
“What’s the matter with you? This is my house,” she said in disbelief. “Let go of me!”
“Just knock it off and get out of here, okay? I don’t want to hurt you,” Jacob said. Something in his tone sounded odd; less sure of himself than usual.
“Hurt me?” It was the last straw. Whatever his reasons were for acting like this, she had had enough of it. She kicked his shin with her heel, and stomped down on his sock-clad ankle.
“Ow! What the…”
As he reflexively hopped onto his other foot, she jammed her shoulder into his chest and shoved. ‘Distract and destroy,’ Sensei Rumiko always said. It worked. He stumbled backwards and fell on the bed.
Her racing heart pumped more pain into her head, but it didn’t keep her from noticing the rage boiling up in Jacob’s face.
“That’s right. Get up and grab me again, because I do want to hurt you!” she said. She felt like she was watching the situation unfold from a tiny room in her mind. She had every reason to be upset, but this lust for violence wasn’t like her. It wasn’t like Jacob to be so forceful either.
He jumped back up, looking like he wanted to tackle her.
Was this really happening? Couldn’t he hear her mother screaming and pleading for her life in the next room? Had the entire world gone crazy?.
“Jacob, get out of my house! You shouldn’t even be here.”
“Alex told me to come over,” he growled. “He said it was important, and I’m not leaving until he tells me to. So get lost, and quit bothering everyone!”
She gasped as his iron-like fingers clamped onto her right shoulder. As his other arm reached past her to open the door, she reached up and pinched the thin skin on his triceps, just above his elbow.
He jerked his arm back with an angry yelp, while Lanni took advantage of his distraction and grabbed his other hand. She twisted until his pinky was on top, and in a single, fluid motion, she rolled his fingertips towards the ceiling, and pressed towards his chest. He dropped to his knees like a bag of rocks, leaning forward to relieve some of the painful pressure on his wrist.
Lanni’s rage was in full swing. “Are you seriously making me do this?” she asked, red-faced with exertion and anger. “My mother could be dying, my twin brother is sick and no one kno
ws what’s wrong with him, and you still think this is the time to mess with me?” She pressed harder on his wrist, forcing his face closer to the floor.
“Lisa… Lisa-Ann! You’re… you’re gonna break my wrist!” he stammered.
“Yeah, I think I am,” she growled. “And it’ll serve you right. Are you ‘roid raging or something? You come into my house and push me around? Listen to that! That’s my mother!”
“I’m… Ow! I’m sorry! You can let go now. You made your point.”
She slapped the inside of his elbow, bending his arm and putting even more pressure on his wrist. “If you ever put your bigugly hands on me again, you won’t get them back.” She gave him a final shove, and sent him rolling sideways into the bed frame. “Now get out of here!”
Alex never even looked up from his drawing. It was the local high school mascot: a knight in full armor with his sword raised high, and a bold, red ‘S’ emblazoned on his shield. He could draw that one in his sleep, and that’s just what he seemed to be doing.
Jacob winced as he stood up, cradling his hand. “You know I let you do that, squirt. You’re getting pretty good, though.” He was embarrassed, and trying to sound tough, but the real anger was gone from his voice.
“Bye, Jacob.” She sat in the chair next to Alex, and watched his hands dance across the sketch pad. His talent for tuning out the world was epic, but as their headaches had grown more intense, his focus had become more than a little trance-like. His glassy eyes leaked at the corners, and if he even knew she was in the room, he showed no sign of it.
“I’m real sorry I grabbed you, Lanni. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s just… all this is really freaking me out. Alex is being weirder than usual, and your mom… is she having problems? I know she’s in labor, but she doesn’t sound good, and Alex hasn’t said a thing.”
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