by Alex Scarrow
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 around 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 around his forearm and consolidate his grasp.
“Just say yes, Leon. Please! Say yes first…then I’ll do it!”
Leon dropped his flashlight 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 kerosene 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 kerosene 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 hair, his eyebrows, burned the tip of his nose.
“NO!” Jake screamed as the flame reached him and ignited the kerosene spattered over his face. His head was instantly engulfed with flames and his last human word morphed into an inhuman, multivoiced scream.
The tentacle loosened its grip, and Leon jerked his hand free and turned…
To see the few yards 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 toward 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 onto 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 a dozen yards 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 humorlessly.
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 U.S. Navy ships began to maneuver themselves away from the waterfront 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 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 gray 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 little 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 d
entist is ten times worse.”
“She never much liked the dentist.” Tom smiled. “If it’s a choice between having a tooth taken out or being turned to human mush? I’ll take the first one.”
Freya could see where Leon had gotten his dry humor 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.”
You entirely sure?
She only had Grace’s word for that. Freya’s infection had been slow and stealthy—more to the point, in complete isolation. She wondered if the virus inside her was making assurances it couldn’t guarantee. What if the rest of the virus had a very different opinion about her? What if the scuttlers decided they were just meat to be chopped up and digested?
She tossed that thought to one side. Grace had been so clear; preservation where possible was a core instinct, a cornerstone of the virus’s behavior, its purpose.
Freya? Grace’s voice. Don’t be a threat to Them. Trust Them. Trust me.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” said Tom. “You know, I’ve got a pretty well-developed fight-or-get-the-hell-away reflex.”
“All the old army training?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you want to see Grace again?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to see Leon again?”
Now here she was, making a promise she couldn’t guarantee—Leon. By now, the virus must have found him. But had he surrendered? Or had he run? Or worse, taken his own life before it had reached him?
“God yes. Leon? More than anything.”
“Then give me your gun.”
Tom looked down at the sidearm tucked into his belt. “What are you going to do?”
“Throw it away.”
“What?”
“No gun, no threat. When They come, we lie down and let them know we’re OK with Them.”
The last stain of daylight was fading fast, and she saw floodlights from the various logjammed ships in the bay switching on, their sharp beams crossing each other, the water churning and boiling around them. She sensed all was not going well for their escape attempt, that the virus had figured out a way to scale their sheer metal hulls.
“Shit,” muttered Tom.
Chapter 46
The marine sergeant poked his head through the doorway and glanced in both directions down the passageway. “The way ahead’s clear, sir.”
Trent had insisted on hearing the helicopter’s engines starting up and the blades turning before he committed to making a run for the roof. He wasn’t going up there to wait in the open for some dull-witted pilot to go through a pre-takeoff checklist.
The two marines beckoned to him that it was time to go, and as Trent left his luxurious presidential office, he glanced quickly back at its grandeur with a hint of regret. If there’d been more navy, army, air force—more nukes—at his disposal, he was sure he could have commanded the great “take back” of planet Earth from there.
They hurried down the passage. Red lights were flashing on the walls and warning fire bells blasted his eardrums as he ran past them. He could hear the rattle of gunfire echoing from the other buildings around the courtyard, voices raised in alarm and panic. Less than an hour after the nuclear detonations had been confirmed, the virus had arrived on the island, emerging from beaches and coves all the way along the northern coast.
He was certain that had been the virus’s intention all along. In which case, he was glad he’d fired those three nukes.
“Which way now, Sergeant?”
“We’re turning left up ahead, and then we’ll see the emergency exit that leads out onto the roof, sir.”
“Good. Lead on.”
The passage had doors open wide on both sides that led onto the public radio broadcasting suite and telephone system monitoring stations.
Of course this morning’s preemptive strike had been the right move. The pilots had reported a huge structure coming their way. What the hell was he supposed to do? Give up? Broadcast to everyone to make their peace with God?
He’d made the call—a very calm and logical one; they had a clear and vulnerable target sitting out there and the means of taking it out.
This isn’t my fault. I did the smart thing!
The marine sergeant in front of him held out his hand to bring them both to a halt. He peeked around the corner, then looked back at them. “Gonna go check ahead. Stay here!” he bellowed above the shrill blast of the fire bells.
I did what I thought was for the best, for Chrissakes!
The sergeant disappeared around the corner, leaving Trent and the marine private with the deafening ringing coming from a speaker on the wall above and the flashing red lights along the low ceiling.
The marine looked quickly back at him. “Stay down.”
Trent nodded, holding back an urge to reproach him for forgetting to add the “sir.”
You gonna let that go, amigo? Let a lowly pissant grunt disrespect you like that?
Trent’s wandering mind was jerked back by the loud, echoing rattle of gunfire. The dimly lit walls flickered back staccato images of the sergeant’s silhouetted figure from around the corner. A moment later, he heard the man scream, another couple of shots, both projecting a haunting shadow image on the corner walls: a man down on his back, a hand held up defensively, something spindly, tall, with many legs and appendages rearing up to deliver a fatal blow.
“Back! Back! Back!” yelled the private. He swung around and shoved Trent hard with a clenched fist to his chest to get him reversing the way they’d come. He staggered backward, nearly falling over.
“What the fu—!”
The way they’d come only moments ago was blocked. The private let rip with half a dozen rounds right over Trent’s shoulder. The nearest creature exploded, showering them both with shards of skeleton armor and dabs of sticky gunk. Trent fell backward onto his ass; his peripheral vision registered another half a dozen flickers of gunfire just above his head.
Another creature, its body the size of a basketball, with spider-thin legs that lifted it up to the height of a man’s head, lurched backward from the impact of the rounds, spattering the floor, the walls, and Trent’s crisp, expensive white shirt with more strings of gore.
Behind the creature, filling the passage as they spilled out of an open doorway like toothpaste out of a tube, came more and more of them. The marine stepped over Trent and continued to fire shorter bursts as he advanced several steps toward them.
Finally, he was out of ammo. The gun was tossed aside as he reached with the other hand for his sidearm. He wrenched it out of its holster, and just as Trent thought he was going to fight on until the last round, he turned it on himself.
One flicker of muzzle flash and he dropped heavily, boots sliding in the gore on the worn carpeted floor.
Trent was alone…
And the creatures advanced slowly toward him. He felt himself let go, the warmth running down his leg, and he was vaguely aware that the shrill sound filling the corridor was his own screaming voice.
His eyes widened as he caught the gleam of the flashing red light on the serrated blades, the barbed spines, the lobster-like claws.
“NO!” His shoes scuffed and skidded in the blood as he tried to shuffle backward. The nearest creature began to raise its body high on its thin legs as it drew closer.
The creature had a pair of pincers—a powerful-looking cutting implement, industrial shears that jarred open like a spring-powered trap, ready to close again.
On him.
Chapter 47
Freya gazed up at the night sky.
It was completely dark. The sparsely placed, o
ld, fizzing streetlamps had winked out an hour ago as the power failed, leaving Havana illuminated only by fires dotted across the city, taking a steady hold in the absence of any firefighters.
Above, she could see stars. It was a clear sky, a perfect tropical night, if a little chillier than one would expect from a country like Cuba. But then, of course, everywhere was colder these days. She’d overheard someone in the warehouse theorizing that the complete absence of human activity and all of the world’s animal life would explain the radical drop in global temperature. She vaguely recalled from her school days that 1.5 billion farting cows added up to a third of the world’s methane emissions, so that kind of made sense.
The distant sounds of gunshots had died away. There were no more signs of life in the city. Every now and then, she heard a scream come from the stepped hillside of fancy houses and private gardens, the virus working its way systematically out into the suburbs.
Toward them.
She panned her flashlight out through the windshield at the gravel of the rest stop. No sign of them here just yet. She snapped it off and settled back in her seat. Mr. Friedmann was beside her, silent. He’d withdrawn into himself. She wondered if he was the praying type.
Will I be safe, Grace?
You will, Freya. I promise.
But you said the snarks are just dumb-ass “machines.”
They are, but they know blood chemistry. They know “friendlies” when they taste them.
I don’t want to end up as crab food!
You won’t.
She gazed at the logjam of ships in the distant harbor. One of them seemed to be burning. Shafts of light from another’s floodlights swept the water around it.
This is happening everywhere, isn’t it, Grace?
I think so. Everywhere.
They’re finishing us off?
Finishing what They came to do, Freya.
“Saving” us all, right?
Grace didn’t reply immediately. Saving those They can.
And Leon?
The pause was even longer. We will soon pass inside. Then we can try and find out if Leon’s with us.
