by Alex Scarrow
Rex studied the two clusters of organic structure: the one on the desk and the one perched on the back of the chair. The “mouth” was little more than a fleshy purse, its rim a roughly circular loop of muscle material that flexed and puckered, the rest of it an envelope that acted as a resonating chamber. At the back was a central, thick stamen that curled and swayed from its fixed base like a sea anemone. He wondered if the glistening rope of cords winding down the side of the chair was linked to its mind hidden somewhere in the pool on the floor.
“But…I’m also much more than I was.”
Rex wanted to know about the identity she was using, the name. “You call yourself Grace. Is that the person you were before the outbreak?”
“Yes. Grace. Friedmann.”
Rex noticed Lieutenant Choi scribble something down on a pad. Maybe the last name was a new detail.
“Was it this…Grace’s body…you used to get aboard the Chinese carrier?”
“My body, yes. I can remake the way I looked once. It takes time and effort to do it though. It’s a real pain.”
He shook his head at how surreal this moment felt. While the disembodied voice sounded only vaguely human, the language it…she…used was as natural and real as any teenager he’d ever spoken to. He was looking at something that could only be considered an it, the ghastly aftermath of an explosion. And yet, in their brief conversation so far, the words she used, the expressions…this unrecognizable mess was becoming more human to him.
“Grace. Can you tell me more about the term we? You talk as if you’re part of a group.”
“We? Well, it’s everyone They have absorbed. Every human and every creature. We all exist together…on the inside.”
They? Rex made eye contact with Lieutenant Choi. “And what can you tell me about They, Grace?”
“They,” she replied. He wasn’t sure whether that was her answer.
“Can you tell me about Them, Grace? I’ve been informed that ‘They’ are something other than the people and creatures who’ve been infected. Are They the ones who did this, the ones who infected our world?”
“Yes.”
“Grace, you communicate with Them, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“What do They want?”
“To help.”
“To help?”
“Yes.”
“They’ve wiped us out, Grace. There aren’t many of us left. Can you assist me in understanding how They consider this to be help?”
“It’s really hard to explain that, Mr. Williams.” Again, Rex had a compulsive urge to laugh.
“Could you try?”
“We don’t have words for most of what I’d need to say. How do you explain the color green to someone who’s blind? How do you explain the smell of fried onions to someone with no sense of smell?”
The “mouth” organ was still. The speaker hissed softly for a moment. Then finally Grace spoke again. “How do you explain how awful Miley Cyrus is to a deaf person?”
Rex laughed out loud this time. This ghastly mess had just cracked a joke to ease the tension. He wanted her to know he appreciated that, a very human and thoughtful gesture.
“Mr. Williams?”
“Yes, Grace.”
“It’s better if I…show you.”
“Show me? What do you mean?”
“I can infect you…”
Rex took a small involuntary step back from the window. “No, I…I don’t wish to become infected.”
“The word infection—it’s not a fair word to use. I’m inviting you…that’s all.”
“Inviting me?”
“To enter my world, our world. Then, only then, you’ll understand why They are here.”
Rex shook his head. “Grace, this pathogen has wiped our world clean of…of life. I’m here representing one of two groups of survivors. We’re all that’s left of mankind. You, or maybe They, may wish to call that an ‘invitation,’ but it is what it is: annihilation. Even if we developed some sort of vaccine that wiped this virus out, chances are we may not survive the next few decades. The world’s ecosystem has been seriously destabilized. The development of species on Earth has been reduced to virtually nothing. Complex ecosystems don’t tend to survive that kind of a culling.”
He waited to hear her response to that. There was nothing forthcoming.
Finally, the “mouth” muscles flexed like an esophageal sphincter, pushing words out like portions of mashed food. “All the more reason for you to accept my invitation.”
“I said we might not survive, Grace. But you have to understand we’re going to fight to survive every inch of the way.”
“I can enter your bloodstream, absorb you, bring you into our world, and show you everything. Then I can let you return.”
“Return?”
“Exit your blood chemistry. Let your body re-form. Leave you…uninfected. Unchanged.”
“That’s absolutely not going to happen! I’m afraid I do not accept your…invitation, Grace. I can’t!”
“I accept.”
He turned to look at Lieutenant Choi. The officer nodded to confirm what he’d just said. “Yes. I will do this.”
Rex held his hand out to shut him up. “I’m not offering up bloody test subjects for some sort of—”
“I trust her,” said Lieutenant Choi. “We have spoken much. I believe we have become friends.”
“Jing,” replied Grace, “they will welcome you in…and I will return you.”
“To be clear, this is not happening!” snapped Rex. “I’m not prepared to use this man as a guinea pig.”
“You have to trust me, Mr. Williams.”
“No. Absolutely not!”
“I trusted you.”
“What?”
“I offered myself up. I came aboard the big ship, and I announced myself. I could have been burned alive.”
Rex turned his eyes back to Lieutenant Choi.
The Chinese man nodded, silently confirming that he was ready to sacrifice himself.
“You know, I could have passed your test. Then I could have infected the others quietly.”
“Why didn’t you? You had the perfect opportunity, more than a month out at sea, and no way for anyone to escape. Why didn’t you?”
“Because I want to talk. I want to show you.”
“Show me what?”
“What life can be.”
* * *
Freya—
What the hell happened to you and Grace in Southampton? One second, we were all together. The next, you and Grace were gone. I waited for you two outside the holding pen. I know you got out. You must have gotten out.
I miss you, Freya. God, I really miss you. I wish I’d said something the night before it happened. Remember? We were scooched up beneath the raincoat? Right then I was going to say “I love you,” but it didn’t seem like the right time. The others were still missing, and let’s face it, the pen stank of human crap. Not exactly romantic. There are better places to say something like that, I’m thinking. But, damn, I wish I had. It’s funny, we were holed up together for a year and a half in Norwich, then we were at Everett’s castle. All that time, we could have, you know, gotten together. Why didn’t we?
Why didn’t I say something? Say hi to Grace for me.
Leon
Chapter 22
“Come on, what do you miss the most?”
Jake laughed. “You’re going to call me a totally shallow bastard…but I miss my personal grooming routine.”
“What?”
“No, seriously, mate.” Jake peered through the binoculars again at the road beyond the ragged gap in the bridge. “I used to shower every morning. A long, hot one. Then shave my scalp to a number two on the razor. Then splash aftershave all over and get into clean clothe
s.” He lowered the binoculars and turned to Leon. “I hate waking every morning and smelling like I’m homeless.”
Leon laughed. “You get used to it.”
“Not me, bro. I hate it.” He passed the binoculars over. “Your turn.”
The old man, Peter, was sitting outside the portable toilet, enjoying the fleeting rays of sunlight.
Leon changed places with Jake, so he was sitting beside the toilet’s scuffed window. Sentry duty down by the bridge was one of the regular jobs on the isle. The fishermen fished; the gardeners gardened; Jeffery Dunst, formally a marine engineer, kept the generator running with his small staff of helpers. Peter ran the “home guard,” which Jake and Leon had volunteered to join. They had this pair of binoculars, a walkie-talkie, a shotgun, a kettle, and a box of coffee and creamer containers. “What about you?”
Leon shrugged. “Where the hell do you start?”
He missed everything—the flicker of a TV set, the amber glow of streetlights, the smell when you passed a coffee shop, the warmth of clothes fresh from a tumble dryer, the soft whirr of his laptop’s fan, the ping of a new post or text. All of that vanished in a single week. Ever since then, pretty much, he’d been living the life of a scavenger. He recalled sitting down in that abandoned nuclear bunker with Grace and Mom and that guy, Mohammed. He and Mohammed had been arguing about Xbox versus PS4 zombie games. Mo was a PS4 guy, Leon Xbox. They had drifted on to that whole fantasy thing about wishing that a zombie apocalypse would actually happen. And then, how quickly their lives had become that stupid fantasy—how much they wanted boring normality to return.
“I miss waking up safely. Knowing the only tough decision that’s going to happen this morning is which cereal to pour out.”
Jake chortled. “True that.”
“Even with the safe places me and the girls stayed at—the castle, the Oasis—there was this constant feeling that it wasn’t going to last forever. It was one mistake away from collapsing.”
“I know what you mean.” Jake leaned back and planted a muddy boot on the corner of the old camping table. He crossed his legs and stretched. “It’s like…dude, we can scavenge cans of beans and dried pasta, but unless we start growing new stuff, it’s gonna run out one day.”
“Uh-huh.” Leon raised the binoculars and swept the outskirts of the small town at the end of the road.
“I sometimes think it’d be easier to just walk out there and say, ‘Come on, bitches, infect me!’”
Leon turned in his seat. “Well, that’s bullshit!”
“Really? What is this? Living?” Jake snorted. “It’s a holding pattern is what it is. We’ll go on like this until, one day, one of those little bastards gets over the gap, and then it’s game over.”
“Jake, we’re better off here than any other place I’ve stayed.” He gestured out of the window. “This is pretty good. This is the first really defensive place I’ve come across.”
“Yeah. Maybe. But that makes it our entire world, then. A thin beach and an island a couple of miles across, filled with golden oldies. Great. No offense, Peter.”
The old man sitting outside the cabin grumbled something sleepily.
Jake lowered his voice. “You know this community will shrink quickly as they die off.”
“For now, we’re safe. We’re alive. We’re getting fed. I’ll take that.”
“That’s what I like about you, mate.” Jake’s boots slid off the table as he leaned forward and punched Leon’s arm gently. “Always positive. OK, I’ll go with your fight-on-while-it’s-worthwhile approach,” he added.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not going to end my days as a lonely bloody hermit sitting on this chunk of rock.”
“What, you gonna go out in a blaze of glory at some point?” It was meant to sound flippant.
“You know what I’d like to do?” said Jake. “I’d take a gun, go out there, over the bridge, and wait for the little shits to come for me.” Jake shrugged. “Go down fighting.”
Leon peered back through the binoculars. There was no way he’d risk getting overrun by them. He still had nightmares—ones where he saw Mom’s face poking through the broken mesh window, those things crawling through her hair, her eyes wide and rolling as she hissed, “They’re inside me.”
He quickly pushed the image back into the dark corner where it belonged.
“In that case, you’d better make sure you keep the last bullet for yourself, Jake.”
“Maybe it isn’t so bad.”
Leon felt his body go rigid. It took him a few moments to realize that it was anger. Rage. He felt an intense urge to lean over and punch Jake for saying something so goddamn stupid. They were alive right now. Sitting here, with mugs of cooling coffee, talking crap, because they’d survived the outbreak and its aftermath.
Dumb shit like “I give up” or “Maybe it isn’t so bad” is what losers say, MonkeyNuts. Set him straight, Son.
“I mean, I’ve seen it happen up close,” continued Jake. “My big sis. I saw her die.” He sighed. “You know what the last thing she said to me was?”
“No. Jake, it’s not really—”
“She said, ‘It’s OK, bro. I’m OK.’”
Tell him to shut up. Now.
“I mean, I think she was trying to tell me she felt good or something. So, you know, maybe it’s not so—”
“For Christ’s sake, Jake! It’s death! The worst goddamn kind of death!” he snapped. He hated the brittle tone in his voice.
“Whoa, mate! Chill!”
He let a second or two pass, let his voice settle. “I have plans to see my sister again and my…friend again. That’s my plan. That’s my goal.”
“Your one true love, huh? What’s her name again?” He knew Jake knew. Jake was just teasing him.
“I know I’m gonna find them again. Things are going to get better here. Lawrence is a good and stable leader. We’ll get shit figured out. Maybe one day soon get a radio mast set up and reach out to the others.” He turned to Jake. “I’ve got good reasons to live, to fight on.”
Jake shrugged. “You’re saying I haven’t?”
“Well, if you’re talking about going down fighting…maybe not?”
Peter stomped into the cabin, bleary eyed from his snooze. “What’re you boys squabbling about in here?”
“Nothing, Peter. Just talking, mate,” said Jake. “Just…shooting the breeze.”
Leon felt his sudden anger wheeze out of him like a punctured tire. “Shit. Sorry, Jake. I just…”
“Hey, don’t worry about it, mate. I was just messing with you.”
“Well, you two young idiots aren’t down here to goof off!” grumbled Peter. “You!” He pointed at Leon. “Get back to looking out there! And you…put the bloody kettle on!”
Leon nodded. He raised the binoculars back to his eyes and resumed scanning the world beyond the bridge.
As he panned, he saw something move. “Shit!” He jerked the binoculars back until his view settled on what he’d spotted.
“What is it?” hissed Peter.
“Scuttler,” he replied under his breath. “I think I just saw a…”
He adjusted the focus and the patch of crumbling road he was staring at sharpened up. There it was.
Movement.
“Small scuttlers,” said Leon. “Really small.”
“How many?” asked Jake.
“About…six…seven…”
“Mind if I take a look?” Peter shuffled forward and took the binoculars from him as Leon pointed out where they were.
“About seven yards back from the end of the bridge.” Leon watched him squinting into the eyepieces. “Is that what they normally do, Peter? Come up to the edge like that and sniff around?”
“Bugger!” he grunted, studying them silently awhile lon
ger before finally lowering the binoculars. “They’ve never come right up to the edge like that before.”
“What?”
“I think they’ve finally figured out we’re here!”
Leon took the binoculars back off him and peered into them once more. He adjusted the focus until he had the fidgeting of their movement in clear view again. He could see something like twenty or thirty of them now, all perched on the crumbling lip of the broken bridge, hair-thin antennae and legs flexing in the air like the whiskers of a rabbit.
Chapter 23
Rex Williams and the others watched through the observation window as Lieutenant Choi entered the room from the positive-air-pressure antechamber. He hesitated in the doorway for a moment, looking at the window and the faces of a dozen observers crowding the glass to look in.
It was too late for Lieutenant Choi to turn back now that the inner door had opened. Too late for Rex to ask if he was sure about this. He’d now been exposed to the virus.
Lieutenant Choi sniffed the air. “There is a distinct smell of”—his voice sounded tinny over the wall speaker—“soy, rice vinegar…rich, like tamari.” He went carefully into the room, stepping on parts of the smooth, tiled floor, avoiding the ones crisscrossed with veins and bacilli-like fingers of growth.
“Hello, Jing.” The girl’s voice sounded odd to Rex—thicker, with more layers to it, like the beginnings of a chorus. “It’s good to finally meet you in person.”
Rex had to admire the man’s calm demeanor. Choi dipped his head politely, formally, addressing his reply toward the glistening flesh on the small desk. “And it is a pleasure to meet you as well, Grace.”
“I can see you’re concerned, Mr. Williams,” said Grace.
Rex glanced at the glistening, pale object encased in a purse of deep red muscle tissue. It was nothing he could ever describe as an “eye,” but clearly it was the organ she was using to view events in the room and the observation room beyond the window.
“I promise,” continued Grace, “Jing will be unharmed. He’s my friend.”
“We’re taking you at your word, Grace,” replied Rex.
“What do you need me to do now?” asked Lieutenant Choi.
