The effect was immediate—the fungus shrank and fell apart into a mass of slimy goop that hissed and steamed. There was another effect he hadn’t anticipated—the second puffball, clear across the cabinet, also shrank and contracted down to little more than a hard nodule of the mycelium. Although it did not lose cohesion and fall apart, it also showed little sign of putting up another puffball. When Rohit tentatively opened the cabinet, there was no recurrence of the drone, nor any associated light-headedness.
I may have found our weapon.
He wasn’t even given time to get excited—at that instant, the power failed and he was left sitting in the gloom as the sun went down outside the windows.
25
The thing inside Jim Noble’s hazmat suit hummed to himself as he worked. What little remained of Noble was buried in there somewhere, somewhere deep, but he was long past caring, lost to the song. He knew enough to function, not to draw attention to himself, biding his time until…he wasn’t quite sure. But waiting is what he needed to do.
So he waited.
Kerry spoke to him from time to time, and he spoke back, most of the right words, mostly in the right order.
They’d burned the school—all of it, all the way to the ground. They’d also burned the Avalon mall, St. Peter’s church hall, three gas stations and two Tim Horton’s drive-ins. The fires no longer bothered Noble—the song had already been joined, the dance was growing faster than ever—smoke and flame did little to stop what was coming. His anticipation was growing and he had to calm himself—he could not give himself away now. His turn would come. The wait was almost over; he could feel it.
Soon.
It will be soon.
26
Rebecca lost the power to the cabin at the same time Rohit was plunged into darkness. The boys wailed in misery as their current game on the big screen went black. There was several minutes of rushing about, lighting candles and a fire, then the three of them sat around the old table eating the stew that she’d kept bubbling on the stove.
Her youngest, Adam, was still silent and withdrawn, replying only in monosyllables when she asked him anything. The power outage seemed to be the last straw for the boy, and after eating he curled back up in the corner of the sofa, as if believing he might be able to wake up and it would all have been a dream.
If only it were that simple.
Mark also sat on the sofa. He had his tablet on, playing a game with the screen light turned right down, trying to squeeze maximum use out of what battery power he still had. That reminded Rebecca about the phone—she should get it charged up from the car charger—just in case Shaun managed to get through.
But that means going outside.
She bit the bullet—it was going to be full dark in less than half an hour, and better to do it now than when she could barely see her hand in front of her face later.
“Where you going, Mum,” Mark said, although he never looked up from the game.
“Out to the car—need to charge up the phone, and I’ll check the radio—see if there’s any news on the outage.”
That placated Mark enough—he was back at the game before Rebecca reached the door. She had no real hope of good news about the outage—they were a common enough occurrence on the Rock in winter, but mostly unheard of after the snow had gone. And when she looked out the door and across the bay, where they’d normally see the lights of towns on the Carbonear peninsula, there was only gathering darkness and heavy, swirling cloud.
There was also the drone, the same low hum, growing ever stronger, but at least she could block that from her mind by getting in the car, turning on the engine and switching on the radio while the phone charged up.
The news was all bad, and there was not much of it, for many stations were broadcasting dead air. She finally found one in English on the long-wave that was faint, but audible.
“It is estimated that the scourge now covers forty percent of the globe, and its reach is expanding exponentially. None of our attempts to stop its march have met with any success. The great cities of the world are falling into anarchy and chaos, our farmlands and forests are dead and infected, and our people have become food for this invader. Governments are calling for calm in the face of the disaster, but as the song grows louder and the Blue Hills become closer and clearer, survival can be the only thing on the minds of anyone listening to this broadcast. May God be with you and yours, on this, our darkest day.”
Well, that’s cheered me up nicely.
Rebecca wished she still smoked—a cigarette and a drink sounded damn fine right around now. The phone beeped, and she grabbed for it.
Shaun!
But it was a reminder from their supplier to top up their minutes—it seemed the end of the world wasn’t enough to stop automated systems sending annoying messages.
The thought struck her as funny, and she laughed. Once she’d started, she couldn’t stop, although it quickly turned to tears and weeping that lasted until the phone beeped again, telling her it was fully charged.
She wiped her eyes, checked in the mirror that she didn’t look too teary or disheveled, and, humming loudly to mask the drone, quickly made her way back into the cabin. By the time Mark looked up at her entrance, she was Mum again, and ready for whatever might be thrown at her next.
* * *
Adam woke up soon after that, and they spent the evening playing board games—there was an old box in the dresser that had been there since Rebecca played them with her grandma, some twenty-five years before. She had to teach the boys the rules for most, physical gaming was a lost art to them. But they soon got into the swing of things, and they were quickly lost in the competitions, so much so that Rebecca even managed to forget about their situation for minutes at a time, carried away by older, more simple, pleasures as candlelight flickered across the rolling dice.
It was a moment of complete nostalgia that threatened to overwhelm her emotions; her grandma’s presence felt almost close enough to touch. But that was all too quickly shattered; the golden moment ended when something hit the roof of the cabin, hard enough to shake the frame of the dwelling and rattle the windows.
Adam immediately left the table and went to huddle up in the corner of the sofa again, his head buried in the cushion on the corner. Mark stood to be at Rebecca’s side.
“What is it, Ma?”
They waited for a recurrence—but none came. Outside the windows there was only blackness, but as Rebecca turned she saw a flickering from the kitchen, a dancing aura of color outside the window. When she rose to investigate, Mark came with her, taking her hand and walking by her side.
The kitchen window looked south, over the rocky cliffs that ran away into darkness. The dancing light came from the rough vegetation that topped the rock—shimmering and cavorting as if alive in a rainbow of swirling color that spun around three tall ovals that could only be more of the puffballs. As Rebecca and Mark watched, a breeze blew. The middle of the puffballs opened out, spreading thin wings that spanned several meters across, and with the next gust took flight, soaring up and over the cabin, as smooth and quiet as a manta ray cruising through black ocean depths.
27
“I’m not going to make it.”
Shaun agreed with the prognosis. The brown filaments at Wozniak’s injured side were now knitted around the wound, through flesh and clothing and even into the fabric of the seat, effectively sewing the man to the chair. The booze seemed to help when applied both internally and externally—Wozniak was certainly more aware and awake than Shaun might have expected. But it had become increasingly obvious that the infection was winning in the war for his body—and his mind.
“I can hear it, you know?” Wozniak said, tapping at his skull. “I can hear it singing to me—and see it too—Blue Hills and a high plateau, and the gardeners tending to the crop under a purple sky.”
He turned to Shaun, and repeated himself, as if trying to believe it.
“I’m not going to make it.�
�
“So what’s the plan?” Shaun asked. He was sitting as far back in his chair as he could, keeping distance between himself and the pilot. For all he knew he was already infected himself.
But it’s not as if I can get out and go somewhere else.
“I’m not going home,” Wozniak replied. “I can’t bear the thought of them seeing me like this. But we can get you close to yours. I diverted our flight path a while back, and we’ve just about got enough fuel to make it—I’m heading for Gander—then you’re on your own.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“I don’t think you’ll have a choice by then. But first, let’s just concentrate on getting that far. Pass the Scotch—that blasted singing is getting too loud again.”
Wozniak had already drank enough to floor a horse, but he seemed lucid and almost calm—far calmer than Shaun would have been under the circumstances.
“Got any smokes left?” the smaller man asked as he passed the bottle back. “I’m ten years and more quit, but one now isn’t going to make any difference to my life expectancy.”
“We could land—look for help?”
Wozniak waved at the view out the window. It was almost dark outside. Few of the towns and cities they passed still had power, and what little they could see of the land below was punctuated with fires.
“I think we’re better off up here, don’t you?”
Shaun lit up two cigarettes and passed one over, taking care that he didn’t come into any contact with the other man.
“Maybe you should get in the back and close the door,” Wozniak said. “It might be safer that way.”
“I said, I’m not leaving you.”
“It might be your funeral,” Wozniak replied.
“And it might not. I sat in a car with an infected friend yesterday morning and I’m still here. I’m not about to abandon another.”
“You know, I think we could have been at that—friends, I mean, in another lifetime.”
Shaun nodded.
“Just hold that thought—they might have figured out a cure by now—there might be help at the airport—maybe…”
“Ifs and buts, maybes and possibilities… it doesn’t make any difference,” Wozniak said, and tapped his head again. “I’m too far gone. I can feel it in here, singing and whispering. It wants me to come over there and make you join us—that’s how it thinks of itself, a huge collective. Looks like the commies have finally won.”
He laughed, coughed, and spit up blood on the controls in front of him.
“Not long now. Best give me more Scotch—it’s the only thing keeping me going.”
* * *
He lasted almost another hour—about as long as the last of the Scotch. Shaun had been staring out the window at the black night beyond, his mind racing with worry.
“We’re over the St. Lawrence Bay,” Wozniak said softly, the first time either had spoken for twenty minutes. “I’ll be descending—then the fun will start.”
“More fun? Wonderful.”
Wozniak laughed, and spat up more blood.
“We have to hope that the runway is lit at the airport—if not, we’ll be going down blind, and that’s not going to end well.”
“Great. Something to worry about. I needed that.”
Wozniak smiled thinly.
“Buckle up. It could be a bumpy ride.”
They started their descent in almost pitch darkness. There were several communities below them as they reached the Rock, places that Shaun knew well, but there was no light from any of them, and Shaun’s worries grew as they approached Gander. He almost let out a cry of relief when he saw the landing strip lined up straight ahead, leading them down.
“We’re going to make it,” he shouted.
“Well, one of us is,” Wozniak said, and coughed. A sheet of blood ran down his chest, and he slumped alarmingly before an effort of sheer will got him back upright.
“See you on the other side, pal,” he said, and put the plane into a steep descent that felt too fast, too soon. Shaun could only hold on and pray as they plunged out of the sky.
They hit the ground hard, too hard, for something seemed to lurch and tear in the undercarriage. They bounced, and on the second touchdown Shaun’s side of the plane collapsed. The wing scratched along the tarmac in a shower of sparks, then was torn off completely, the force of it turning the plane in a slow spin that was taking them, careering, still too fast, toward the end of the runway.
It was only a retaining pile of sand that stopped them from carrying straight on, toward the road that bounded that side of the field. But the sandtrap did its job and the plane finally came to a shuddering halt.
“We did it. We’re down,” Shaun said.
But Wozniak hadn’t made it with him. The man sat hunched over the controls. Fresh blood—brown and watery—ran down from his mouth, and his torso was too thin, sunken at the chest. He was clearly dead—but as Shaun undid his seat belt, Wozniak’s mouth opened—and the drone-like singing started up, loud and ringing in the confines of the cockpit.
Shaun fled, through the cabin and out the door, almost falling face-first on the tarmac in his haste to escape. There were lights in the distance, a possibility of human contact.
He headed for them, and he didn’t look back.
* * *
Any hope he had of finding company was quickly quashed. He reached the main building with no mishap, and the sight of lights inside got his hopes even higher. But the whole facility seemed to be empty. Thankfully there were no bodies, no sign of infection, and the hum of the generators told him that someone had at least switched on the auxiliary power at some point. But after five minutes’ exploration he was forced to admit that the airport had been cleared. And it had been done forcibly, for there was blood on the floor, and spatter on the doors, in three different places, and it looked like there had been a prolonged bout of gunfire, judging by the holes in the walls and the spent casings on the ground.
They’d left in a hurry too—the vending machines hadn’t been emptied. Shaun took the opportunity to stock up, filling his pockets with candy bars—empty fuel, but fuel nonetheless. He also raided the shop on the concourse for fresh smokes, taking two hundred Marlboro and a pack of lighters from behind the counter.
The empty quiet of the building was starting to prey on his nerves, and his worry for Becky and the kids was, if anything, stronger now that he was so much closer to home. He left the concourse and headed for the parking bays out front of the terminal, in search of a ride that would get him up the coast to his family.
This time his luck was in—the parking lot was bare save for three pickups, but two of those still had keys in the ignition. He was just about to get into the one with the most fuel when he heard the drone again—faint, as if far off, but insistent, demanding his attention. He stepped up into the pickup and reached to pull the door closed. Something hit the roof of the truck, hard, and slid off. As the door shut with a click Shaun was aware of something—several things—fluttering across his field of view. At first he took them for crows, but they soared rather than flapped, almost like black scraps of paper, and moved silently, gliding with the wind, off to Shaun’s right and out of sight in the dark. He sat there for several seconds, lighting up a fresh smoke, and only drove off when he was sure he wouldn’t be impeded.
It was more than a two-hour drive to Becky’s mum’s place up on the peninsula—it was going to feel like the longest two hours of his life.
28
Rohit and the three other survivors sat huddled in the cafeteria kitchen. Irene had soup bubbling on the propane stove, and they had enough candles to give them light for the night, but Rohit knew that, come the morning, decisions were going to have to be made. They had only a small supply of fuel and precious little food—the cafeteria was due a delivery, but nobody was holding their breath waiting for one.
The students persisted in attempts to use their phones, but they only succeeded in running down t
heir batteries. Nobody got a signal, nobody took a call or a text.
The rest of the world could be gone, and we’d never know it.
There was also the infection to worry about.
At the moment the lights had gone out up in the lab, and before Rohit found his flashlight, the cabinet’s battery-powered fail-safe had kicked in, thinking an emergency had occurred. Air swirled and sucked behind the glass as it was vacuumed away—and something responded—fluttering and knocking like a trapped bird. Rohit’s flashlight beam caught it just before it too was sucked away—the remaining puffball, opened out with wings extended, slapping twice on the glass before disappearing from sight.
Flight. It has taken flight. What in hell’s name did the Chinese make?
At least they knew how to defend themselves—at least partly. Rohit had fetched two gallons of ethanol from the lab and swabbed down the area immediately around the main door before they had all adjourned to the kitchen.
Thinking about that reminded him it was time to check on the situation, for the power had been out for almost three hours now. He left the others huddled around the stove—no one remarked on him leaving—and went through to the main cafeteria.
He saw immediately that the situation was even worse than he could imagine.
It wasn’t dark outside the main windows that looked across the parking lot—the view was filled with dancing, shimmering aurora of light—greens and blues and yellows that in other circumstances might even be beautiful. It could only be coming from one thing—the infection. As Rohit walked toward the doorway he saw that it too was giving off the luminescence—only from the outside though, for it seemed that the ethanol was indeed keeping the thing at bay.
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