by Alex Scarrow
“Freya!” Mr. Friedmann jerked forward in his seat, snatched the flashlight from her hand, and panned the beam out through the windshield. “Shit! Look!”
She sat forward in her seat and stared at the ground where the beam of light rested. A carpet of tiny, pale crabs was emerging from the undergrowth on to the gravel of the rest stop.
“They’re here!” he whispered.
“OK,” she whispered back, aware that her heart was suddenly pounding in her chest. “We need to stay calm.”
The carpet of creatures slowly inched toward them, a shimmering, gleaming tide of scouting virals, like army ants on the march across a jungle floor.
“Grace says we should step outside and—”
“No way. No goddamn way!”
“And lie down.”
“No. No. Shit!” He glanced quickly at her. “I can’t. I can’t just…”
Just then, something drifted into the beam of the flashlight. A solitary, fluffy snowflake seesawing lazily down until it settled lightly on the hood of the jeep. Then there was another. And another.
“It’s snowing,” he whispered. “Virus flakes.”
The gentle flakes reminded her of that night so long ago. She’d been in her bedroom looking out of the window at the flakes descending on her cul-de-sac in King’s Lynn, knowing that however much it looked like a white Christmas come early, it was death descending.
“Grace says that’s a good sign.”
“Why?”
“These flakes are made for infecting.” She reached for the door handle.
“Freya!” Tom grabbed her arm. “What the hell are you doing?”
“It’s time.” She tried to pry his fingers off her. “Look…Grace is right. The snowflakes are a safer option. Safer than the snarks.”
He gazed wide eyed at the slowly advancing blanket of shining shellac. “I can’t.”
“Come on. We have to!”
He shook his head. “It’s suicide.”
“No. It’s not.” She twisted the handle, and the door unlocked with a dull clunk. “If we stay inside this jeep—if the snarks have to smash their way in—they’ll do it.”
She saw him glance at the gun sitting on the dash. “Really? You’re thinking of doing that?”
He breathed deeply in and out, through his nose. His eyes remaining on the gun.
“I want to go look for Leon. How about you, Mr. Friedmann?”
He didn’t answer, but he let go of her wrist.
“Are you coming?”
He shook his head. “This is…completely absurd!”
“I’ll go first,” she replied. She offered him a reassuring smile. “Show you it’s gonna be OK.” She opened the door, stepped out onto the gravel, and held out her hands.
“It is gonna be OK, right, Grace?” she whispered.
Yes. Once it enters your main arterial system, it will “know” you.
A single flake settled onto her palm and began to “melt,” breaking down into a small droplet of thick syrup. She gazed down at it.
“What’s happening? Freya? Talk to me!”
“It’s just saying hello,” she replied.
The droplet began to grow fine, pale threads across her palm, exploring its new terrain, millimeter by millimeter. She could feel her skin tickling where the droplet sat and knew another thread was growing downwards into her, overpowering skin cells and rendering them a compliant, malleable material.
Meanwhile, the crabs had come to a halt just short of the vehicle, fanning out, spreading around it as their hair-thin antennae twitched like cat’s whiskers.
“Freya?”
“It’s OK,” she answered him. “It’s gonna be OK.”
“I…I’m not ready to do this!” he barked.
She turned to look at him through the open passenger-side door. “You have to.”
“Dammit! I can’t!”
She could see his chest heaving. He was hyperventilating in there. Terrified.
“It’s OK. I’m scared too.”
It’ll be fine. Tell Dad…it’ll be just fine. I’m waiting right here for him.
Freya stared at the reddening skin of her palm, already beginning to soften into a gel-like substance. “Grace is waiting for you, Mr. Friedmann.”
“Really?”
Freya nodded. “I promise.”
Just then, she heard a skittering sound from across the road. She turned to see larger creatures emerging from the gloom, similar to the ones she and Leon had encountered in the Oxford overpass, the size of small dogs. She wondered if there were even larger ones out there beyond the reach of their flashlight, waiting patiently to determine how this encounter with survivors was going to go.
Tom turned the jeep’s headlights on and her suspicion was confirmed. Farther down the road, they stood there on spindly legs, bobbing and swaying gently, ready to charge forward and tear to pieces anything that presented a threat.
“Shit! Shit!” hissed Mr. Friedmann. He snatched the gun off the dash.
“No!” she whispered. “Don’t fire it! Please! Don’t!”
He had it gripped tightly in both hands, the aim wavering, undecided between the gathered creatures outside and himself.
“You pull the trigger,” she hissed, “and it’s over for you either way. Maybe me too!”
A trickle of dark-brown liquid rolled out from her clenched fist and down onto the pale skin of her wrist and forearm. “This isn’t the end, Mr. Friedmann. It’s a change! That’s all!”
She watched him agonizing over his decision, his lips drawn back, teeth clenched, the barrel of the gun arcing between himself and the open window like the pendulum of a clock.
A small string of liquidized skin began to sag from the heel of her thumb.
“Grace is begging!” she whispered. “She’s begging you. I’m begging you…please, don’t!”
Freya sensed the invasion of the virus in her bloodstream.
She could feel a reassuring warmth spreading throughout her body. Grace was no longer whispering. She imagined Grace had other things to do… Maybe somewhere deep inside her body, a simple negotiation was taking place—Grace explaining to the invaders that this body was already taken.
“Freya! I’ve got to go now. I’m gonna get out of here!”
“Don’t…” She felt light-headed now. Freya could feel herself beginning to slide into that warm bath, felt the world drawing back from her. She tried to plead with him again, vaguely aware that her words were slurring like they used to, that the strength was ebbing out of her legs. That she really needed to sit down.
She slumped to her knees. “Please don’t…” she pleaded again. “Please, put the gun down, come out here…join me…”
The world around her felt like a movie screen shrinking in size, receding, leaving her with the sensation of floating in a dark and empty auditorium. She settled back until she could feel the coarse bite of the stones against her shoulders.
Now she was seeing stars and tumbling snowflakes glowing brilliantly as they descended through the headlight beams toward her. There was something so beautiful about how elegantly they danced.
She heard something moving, the whine of unoiled hinges, the rasp of footsteps on gravel. She was dimly aware of something flickering across the headlight beams, then of his face appearing, looking down at her.
So far away, as if he were looking over the lip of a well and she was at the bottom staring up.
“Please…don’t…” she whispered, aware that her voice was changing somehow, weakening, becoming softer, becoming someone else’s.
“Please…don’t…die…Dad…”
The world was a dwindling round window, shrinking, shrinking, the soft hiss of the trees, the skitter of spindle-thin legs shifting impatiently, her own labored breathing—the world
slipping away and becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Fading fast. Fading. Fading.
Then her window on this world was finally gone. Darkness. She knew They had control of her eyes and her optic nerves now. But not her ears. Not yet.
She could still hear Mr. Friedmann’s panting breath.
“Please…” she slurred. Her lips felt numb, ungainly, cumbersome, making her sound stupid.
“Please…”
Her ears began to fill with the dull roar of internal traffic, the superhighway of cells racing through an arterial motorway system. A city alive in rush hour.
The last of the old world was leaving her. Or she was leaving it.
She thought she could feel some movement beside her.
Then a male voice. Mr. Friedmann’s voice. His words were indistinct. Muffled. He no longer sounded frantic or frightened.
Just resigned. And—as the last portions of her mind fought to hold on and understand what was happening out there—she thought she could just about figure out what he’d said.
“This. Is. Completely. Nuts.”
Chapter 48
Three Days Later
Rex Williams woke up for the second morning in a row with no one there beyond the thick glass to observe him. The light still fizzed softly from the ceiling of his room, the monitor still flickered in the observation room beyond. There was no one on duty.
Again.
The last piece of information he’d received had come from the pleasant young navy ensign just before she’d handed over her watch duty to someone else. There’d been reports of floaters over North Island. Not revelatory news—the spotter planes had been shooting those damn things down for the last two years. But coupled with two days of no-shows through the observation window and, more importantly, no meals slid through the hatch, Rex felt it was fair to say he might end up dying in here.
There was water still available from the tap. The toilet still flushed. And, of course, the power was still on. But for how much longer? And when it did stop, the flow of filtered air would cease. He’d die of suffocation within a few hours. He was getting a little concerned.
If only he could see what was on the monitor. The internet still worked in a limited way for those on North Island; there was still enough of a digital infrastructure for the news station to post sketchy bulletins.
Rex had been thoroughly debriefed on his return. Treated with a wary skepticism as he laid out everything he’d seen, felt, and heard. He’d known going in that this would happen. That on returning, they would have to consider the prospect that he might be some form of manifestation of the virus, not to be trusted. During his short absence the shape of the crisis committee had changed. Now it was being jointly led by the deputy PM and Captain Xien.
They’d allowed him to record the announcement he wanted broadcast publicly. Filmed him through the thick glass as he explained to the camera that the virus was intelligent. That it was not a malignant force, and that it was interested in discussing terms by which both “civilizations” could live alongside each other.
Whether they’d actually broadcast it, he had no idea, but he doubted it.
Maybe Grace had fooled him, then. Convinced him to allow her to be freed and taken to the approaching island so she could rejoin Them. And now here he was, locked in a clinically clean “dungeon,” waiting for the power to fail, the lights to go out, and to die alone in the dark.
So…it’s come, then. The virus must be here.
He could only imagine the horror of what was going on in the world outside. That enormous floating scab picking its way down Cook Strait, drifting into Wellington Harbor, and unleashing on the inhabitants whatever hordes of nightmare creatures it had stored in its bulk below water.
Rex closed his eyes against the glare of the ceiling fluorescent light. If his luck was in, the power would trip out and he’d suffocate in his sleep.
Something woke him.
He wasn’t sure what exactly. The light was still on. There was still power. He turned his head on the pillow to look left at the window, hoping to see someone in the observation room. But there was no one.
He heard a crackle of something over the intercom. The speaker was still on, of course, quietly filling the silence of his room with the soft hiss of nothing happening.
Then again. Something clacking.
“Hello?” called out Rex hopefully. He stared at the small wall-mounted speaker as if looking at its grille would tell him more. “Hello? Anyone out there?”
Another clacking sound. Then something that sounded moist, like a wet towel slapping and dragging gently against a wall.
He sat up on his cot, half-terrified and half-relieved. “I’m in here!” he shouted.
He thought he saw a shadow in the observation room, something tall lurching just beneath the ceiling light, casting a momentarily splayed outline down across the wall and onto the desk. Something big, misshapen, inhuman.
The noise ceased. The double-door entry was a pressurized airlock that needed someone able to read the instructions to turn the…
Clack.
He could see the blurry shadow again. Tall. Limbs flexing and curling from a mound near the top, a Medusa-like crown of writhing snakes mounted on top of a twisted totem.
Clunk. Hissss.
Rex’s heart jumped. He pulled his bare legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his knees. That was the outer door. That was air pressure equalizing.
Clack.
Much clearer now. Not just coming out from the speaker—he could hear it transmitted through the inner hatch too. Something fumbling just behind the door. Right outside.
“Oh God, help me,” he whispered. He knew this was the virus coming for him. As such, he should have been thinking of it as a rescue, but his heart was pounding in his chest as he listened to the form shuffling around outside.
Click. Clunk.
The heavy door swung slowly inward, revealing something that filled the doorway.
Amid the contortions of bloody skin, purple muscle, and pale shellac, amid the confusion of human and animal and crustacean, he saw something emerging from soft tissue. It formed like sculptor’s putty manipulated by an invisible artisan’s hand.
A face he recognized. The face managed a wet, rigid smile of barely firmed-up flesh and unready sinew and spoke with a voice that sounded like a witches’ quartet. “There you are.”
“Grace? Is…is that y-you?”
“Yes. Come on…join us.”
Part III
Chapter 49
Three Months Later
9/29
Freya,
Even though winter’s pretty much starting to kick in again, the virus seems to have stepped things up, instead of going dormant. We’ve been constantly fighting bugs all the way down the coast.
Big bastard ones.
It’s like the virus has decided we’re a nuisance that needs to be cleared out of town once and for all!
We’ve been upping our meds, twice what we were normally taking. We’ve all been scratched, cut, spiked, God knows how many times now. So far, thank God, I think we’re keeping the infection out. I wonder whether the virus actually wants to infect us anyway.
Maybe we’re just food now. Or sport.
10/7
Freya,
It’s getting freezing cold again. October and it’s started snowing heavily already. We’re staying warm though. We’ve got a space heater—one of those big cylinders on wheels that looks like a jet engine. A couple of minutes of that every hour and we’re good for a while.
Oh, and we found a lighthouse!
It’s perched on a large cement “plug,” on top of a rocky outcropping in the middle of the English Channel. We found a battered, old tugboat and a couple of motorboats pulled up and stored in the lighthouse’s bas
ement floor. Cora’s worried that in a storm the tugboat might get smashed to pieces, which is a good point. But we haven’t had any stormy weather in years, have we? Not since before the outbreak. Which makes me wonder if Finley’s right that the world’s climate has been “equalized” by the virus somehow.
If so, then I guess you’re not tanning yourself on a beach right now.
It’s not bad here really. We live mostly on a floor about two-thirds of the way up in the lighthouse. For some reason, it feels warmer than the other floors, but also, the higher up you go, the less damp it is.
10/15
The virus can get across the sea. We know that. I guess you must know about that too by now. I often wonder whether it’s continuing to develop, getting smarter all the time while we sit here and shiver in our ivory tower.
Don’t laugh, but I wonder if one day a helicopter will come over and land on the roof and virals will emerge with guns and stuff. Why not? The virus seems to have access to the minds and memories of everyone it’s turned to mulch. I’m guessing that more than a few helicopter pilots got turned into slime.
Seriously.
Crabs, growth roots, spore clouds—none of them seem to have anything like human intelligence. What does that mean? Are they all linked? Or is it like a whole new ecosystem or something? How do you reason with an ecosystem? Who’s in charge?
It’s questions like that that we discuss each night over the cooking stove.
November
Cora died today. You met Cora, by the way. She was that nice lady who brought over something for us to eat in the compound at Southampton. Remember her? She slipped on an icy rock outside the lighthouse. She just slipped and fell into the sea. Kim saw her go in from a window halfway up. By the time we all made it down to the bottom, she was gone.
No sign of her. She was gone beneath the slush and ice.
The sea is freezing cold here now. I mean, completely freezing. She would have lasted a minute or two at best, gone into hypothermic shock and drowned. The sea just took her away quickly and quietly. No fuss, no muss.
Sounds really wrong to say this but—I think Cora was the worst person for us to lose. I mean, it wouldn’t be good if it happened to any of us, but it’s particularly bad it was her. She was the heart of our little group I think, the Survival Mom.
