But there’s a way to slow them down.
“Get him into the enclave!” I shout. “Now, Sissy!”
“Not until he stops choking!”
I sprint to the doorway, unclipping the Origin grenades I’d taken earlier. Flip open the switch, depress the button. A beep-beep-beep immediately sounds, getting faster and louder. I throw a grenade down the stairway. I hear it clang, bounce. Then nothing, as if swallowed up harmlessly by the soup of bodies. Dark shadows now race along the curved walls, heads, bodies, claws.
A flash, a loud bang.
Followed by cries of pain. They’re blinded by the concussive explosion of light. And for a few, there is a different kind of pain. The pain of being punctured by Origin shrapnel deep into their bodies, of being rapidly re-turned by the Origin serum.
I toss the other—and last—grenade down the stairs. Go for broke, hold nothing back. Another flash, more screams. I spin around. No time to waste inspecting my handiwork.
Sissy hasn’t moved. She’s still pounding David’s back, and large gobs of vomit are spewing out of his lungs. White-green-yellow bile that’s rotted and gestated new bacterial life-forms, gushing out of his mouth. The stink of it horrendous. Eyes still closed, arms limp, legs splayed out lifelessly before him. If you told me this was only postmortem spasmodic vomiting, I’d believe it.
I yell at Sissy, “We have to get into the enclave now—”
Screams erupt again from the stairs. These are human screams, the shrieking holler of a newborn. The grenades worked. The shrapnel have re-turned duskers to hepers. A few of them, anyway, their skin embedded with Origin shrapnel, bodies bent over in pain, as they are transformed back to hepers. Only to be quickly devoured.
We have to move. I pick up David and cradle him to my chest, his head hanging limply as if in surrender. No more, no more, just leave me.
A dusker flies through the doorway, its feet scrabbling for traction on the marble floor made slick by David’s vomit. Its feet slide out from under it as it goes crashing against the wall.
More time. We need more time.
I set David down, leap toward the contraption the Ruler had used to confine himself. There—dangling from a cord, the remote control for the glass partition. I press the button as even more duskers streak into the suite, slipping and sliding, their claws skittering under them as they also slam against the far wall.
The glass partition drops down from the ceiling, quick and incisive as a guillotine. The duskers, realizing, clatter onto their feet, flash toward us. But the partition closes, clicking shut a second before they smack hard into it. It holds without cracking. They shake their heads as if to flick away the fresh pain in their concussed skulls, then back up to take another running leap. Their brutish bodies bludgeon the glass with even more force, the thump-thump-thump ringing in my ears. The glass bends and shimmers like a sheet of metal but holds. The duskers back up for another run when they are sideswiped by a torrent of bodies flooding through the doorway. Fast and swift, the bodies gush in, filling that half of the Ruler’s chamber to overflowing. Their bodies press up and squeak against the glass as their levels rise, a pale, coagulated sea.
Not that Sissy and I are spectating. On the other side of the glass wall, we’re sliding David into the enclave, being as careful as we can with his battered body, even in our haste. For a second, Sissy and I stare at the remaining space in the enclave, then at each other. It’s going to be tight. But we’ll manage. Somehow.
The duskers continue to pour into the other half of the suite. The glass will break soon. If not from the cumulative pressure of the dozens, now hundreds, of duskers, then surely from the sheer pitch of their strangled screams.
Sissy jumps into the enclave, cradles David in her arms. I squeeze into the remaining space, my head to their feet, lying in the opposite direction. The tablet in my hands. I check the screen one last time, then hit GO.
The enclave’s glass lid slides shut. We start to descend, quickly, the rectangle of gray light above us getting smaller, then altogether disappearing as it closes up. We’re in complete darkness as we travel down the black spine of the obelisk. Screams dart randomly at us, from unseen duskers on the other side of the column as they race up the spiraling staircase. The enclave shakes from side to side as if the whole transportation system is collapsing. We drop, suddenly, almost a free fall, and all I can do is clasp Sissy’s feet in my hands, press her toes against my cheek.
And then gravity crushes me like a giant hand. We take a whiplashing sharp turn, moving horizontally now, the back of my head banging against the glass wall, then slamming forward again as we take another vicious turn.
A minute later, we’re inundated by hot spotlights. We try to stay calm, knowing this will soon be over. Then we’re off again, tearing through the dark.
And finally, the enclave slows down. Ahead, a sliver of light beams through, like a tear in a curtain, widening. Until it is large enough for the enclave to trundle through. Gray light washes over us. The enclave comes to a complete stop, and we bang on the lid, hands frantically slamming on the glass with claustrophobia-fueled intensity. The enclave lid slides open. We fall out. It takes a moment for our oxygen-starved brains to realize where we are. But when we do, Sissy and I, without a second’s delay, pick David up. And start running for the train.
58
WE CLIMB INTO the nearest car, the last on the long chain. David still hasn’t opened his eyes or said a word. But he’s breathing, quick, shallow inhales with even shallower exhales. Dark circles ring under his eyes.
The configuration of the tablet screen has changed. The tablet must have some kind of internal positioning system that sensed the proximity of the train and automatically switched over to that database. More buttons appear on the screen, red circles, blue squares, green ovals. But there’s only one button that matters, and it is the black rectangle MISSION. I press it. Something loud clacks under the long line of train cars. The lead engine car, already revved, lurches forward. We’re moving.
And it is like before, and it is vastly different from before.
It is the emptiness that is most different. Instead of train cars packed with Mission village girls, the train is now hauntingly empty, bereft of any internal movement or sound. Even in our otherwise empty car, Sissy and I sit perfectly still, the only movement being Sissy’s hand stroking David’s hair.
And it is strangely quiet. No sound but the faint rattle of the moving train. No screams, no wails, nothing from above or around or behind us. The train picks up speed and the doors to each car automatically close, yet still no other sound pierces the darkness of the tunnel.
Sissy takes my hand in hers. We grasp tightly, not with fear, for there’s none left in us. It’s all been wrung out.
Five miles from the Palace, we emerge out of the tunnel. The train will be in view of the Palace for only a few minutes before disappearing behind low-slung hills. We stare in silence at the Palace, so small in the distance, as it is overrun like a crumb swarmed by ants. Only the initial wave of the millions-strong horde had earlier reached the Palace. But now the slower yet immensely larger and denser waves pour over it. The obelisk tower begins to wobble, then sway. Just before we round the hills and the Palace is cut off from view, the obelisk tower topples like a matchstick snapped.
59
FOR HALF THE night, the world is ours alone. The train cuts through a desert that is as expansive and empty as the starlit skies above. The duskers do not give chase as we thought they would. Not initially. Perhaps the pandemonium at the Palace is too distracting and they have not detected the faint scent trailing us. Even hours later, the silver-glazed landscape is a motionless vacuum.
But in the hour when the moon begins to dim and the sky lightens to gray, we hear it. A rasping sound, like the rib cage of night rattling across the desert plains. The train by that point, especially with so little cargo, is traveling at a fast clip, so the sound of the duskers’ approach gains on us only gradual
ly.
The rasp festers into a deep rumble, and an hour later we see the first sign of not only their approach but also their sheer size. A wall of dust, almost as tall as that which rose out of the metropolis hours ago, lifts darkly from the land. Disjointed shouts cannonball out of the dark haze. Sissy and I sit against the bars of the train car and gaze dispassionately at the chasing winds. It is not that we are unafraid. We aren’t.
It’s only that trapped here in our only vehicle of escape there is little we can do. If they come, they come. If they reach us, they eat us. It’s that simple. They’ll cling to the caged walls, the swiftest few at first, then by the hundreds. Their aggregate mass will derail the train, and then their cumulative weight will crumple the cages inward. And then they will have at us, and perhaps by then we will be mercifully already dead, our bodies crushed under their weight. But there is nothing to do to avoid this end, or to delay it, or even to expedite it. If they come, they come. And so we lean back against the bars, my arm over Sissy’s shoulders, holding hands, David’s head cradled in Sissy’s lap. We don’t speak.
An hour passes and their approach has grown thunderous. Many thousands are racing on the tracks themselves, and the train car glides along less smoothly, juddering from side to side. They are drawing close.
Dawn catches everyone by surprise. As if we have forgotten the natural and unbreakable sequence of time, the inevitability of the moon’s death and the sun’s rise. Only when the dark sky becomes glazed over with a pearly gray do Sissy and I stand up, pillowing David’s head with my shoes.
The front edge of the horde is about a mile away. But they’ve stopped gaining on us. The duskers’ disintegration in those first timid dawn rays is barely perceptible at first, their pace dropping off only a notch. Muscles less robust, lungs just a little less stout. But as the darkness cedes to gray, and the gray to violet, their bodies begin to drastically wilt, their energy flagging even more. Still they press forward, our odor egging them on, the sight of the fleeing train taunting them.
The moon fades; the awakening sun burns crimson the edges of the horizon.
And when the rim of the sun breaks through and splashes its rays over the land, there is a collective scream from the moiling masses. The sky rips open. More light, the color of blood, gushes out. A critical threshold is suddenly, viciously passed; they begin to melt. Within the half hour, a lake, a mile wide, yellow and sticky, shapes itself in the desert, at first chunky and moving, then, a half hour later, liquid and still.
Sissy and I lie down on the floor of the train car. She places her head on my shoulder, wraps herself against my side. The rising sun casts long shadows of the bars slantways across our bodies.
I feel something wet trail down my chest. Sissy’s tears. She doesn’t shake or sob, but the tears continue to flow for many minutes. Later, after her tears have dried under the sun, I will see the residue of salt crusted on my chest, thick and jagged like a scar.
We gaze up, through the bars of the train, at the sky. A fatigue that feels heavy as death settles on us. By the time the sky deepens into the pure cobalt blue of the afternoon, we have been asleep for hours. The train cuts through the vast desert, unseen and unwitnessed, toward the eastern mountains etched in the far distance.
60
ON THE THIRD day of the journey, David dies.
He held out longer than we expected. But his death still shakes us hard, Sissy especially. We had done what little we could on the train, cupping him with our bodies during the cold nights, or wringing our damp clothes for a few drops of water into his parched mouth. But it is not enough. The cruel irony, that his death, after days and nights submerged in a watery prison, would be caused by dehydration.
In those first few days on the train, Sissy hummed to him the same lullabies she sang when he was a baby. She brushed his hair back, over and over, the way she used to comfort him whenever he sobbed as a toddler, after he’d stubbed his toe, or scraped his knee.
He never really came to. There were only a few moments of lucidity, when his eyes opened but for a few seconds. He’d stare with unresponsive and glazed eyes, at the desert, and, later, at the brown blur of forests. But never at us. Then he’d close his eyes and not open them again for hours.
Nightmares raged behind those closed eyelids. He shouted, random, nonsensical words. Sometimes he whimpered. Or begged. Sissy could only cradle his head during those fraught moments, her face racked with grief, her hand trying to stroke away his dreams, away her guilt. When he flailed his arms, lashing out into the night, she did not dodge out of the way but let his hand smack into her face. Her penance to pay.
He spoke to us but once. On the morning of the third day. We were leaning against each other, bracing against the cold wind of the lower mountains. David was lying across our laps, his head in the crook of Sissy’s elbow. The dawn sun was lilting orange rays on our skin, and the whole world was lent a softness, despite the cold.
David’s eyes opened, and for the first time he met my gaze, then Sissy’s. His eyes were weak but clear.
“You came back for me,” he whispered.
Then he closed his eyes, his eyelids falling heavily and with a sigh. A single tear fell down his face.
His eyes never opened again.
61
WE KNOW WE are nearing the Mission. There are telltale signs. Splotches of encrusted yellow dotting the rails, like desiccated bird droppings, then larger sheets dangling off nearby tree branches like hung laundry. The remains of the duskers who’d attacked the Mission nights ago. The train slows; an hour later we round a bend in the mountain, and the bridge to the Mission, still lowered, comes into view.
It is daytime and our earlier fear, that we might arrive in the dark hours of night, hand-delivered into the lap of whatever hardy duskers might still be roving about, is put to rest. So, too, is the apprehension over the duskers. None have survived.
The cobblestone streets are empty. Everywhere we look, windows and doors to the empty cottages have been smashed apart and left gaping like stunned eyes and shocked mouths. Sunbeams shaft into them. We enter the nearest one, and go from room to room, piling on layer after layer of clothing over our shivering rib cages and concaved stomachs.
Even the Vastnarium, where we feared some duskers might be holding out, is empty. The back wall has been smashed down and ground to powder, probably from the outward pressure of a panicked horde seeking shelter from the sun. Inside, layers of desiccated yellow, a foot high on the floor, an inch thick off the walls.
Evidence of their mass demise is everywhere in the Mission: on the meadows, at the farm, along the fortress wall, everywhere there are desiccated crusts of yellow. And there is not a human bone to be found anywhere, not a strand of human hair, not a stain of human blood. Everything devoured, licked up, wiped from existence.
Death has run roughshod through this blighted village, no respecter of species. Nothing moves in this village; nothing sounds. No shuffling girls, no morning chimes, no singing choirs, no midnight screams. There is only the sound of cold wind fluting between the ribs of this ghost-town carcass.
At the laundry deck by the stream, we cup our shaking hands into the ice-cold water, drink in gulp after gulp. We raid the kitchen, gorging ourselves on the nibbles of food we find scattered amidst the carnage. Pickles in cast-off jars, cucumbers snapped in half, trampled-on loaves of bread. We can’t get enough; if it’s edible, it’s in our mouths.
Afterward, still unable to stop shivering, we sit before the fireplace of a nearby cottage. The fire is soothing; the combination of food, water, warmth, and a comfortable sofa conspire to lull us toward sleep. But Sissy’s hand in mine tightens with realization.
“David,” she says. “We can’t leave him out there like that.”
We head back outside, trudge to the train station, shovels in hand. He is in exactly the same position we left him, lying in the empty train car, only seemingly lonelier. A stab of guilt digs and twists in both of us. We’d wanted to
carry him with us when we first arrived, but we were too weak at the time. Now, we dig a grave. Sissy chooses a spot next to the train tracks, in the vicinity where Jacob had leaped out of the train, where he had met his unspeakable demise. The boys would have liked this, to be buried next to each other, if not in fact, then at least in spirit.
After we shovel the last pile of dirt, we stand silently. Thin wind whistles through the bare branches of the forest.
Sissy’s lips tremble. “I’m sorry, David. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”
And she turns to me, buries her face into my jacket, and screams right into my heart.
62
WE WALK ALONG the fortress wall, scanning the landscape. Nightfall has begun, and the bleeding dusk skies sag under the weight of fresh darkness.
“How long,” Sissy asks, “before they come?”
We stare down the steep mountain slope, past the rocky outcropping, and into the dense forest canopy. The Vast stretches beneath us in the far distance, a threadbare, endless carpet.
“A lot of them perished in the desert,” I say. “Maybe over a million. But there are millions more. And they will come. Give them three consecutive days of heavy rain and cloud cover and they’ll make it here more or less intact. It depends on the weather.” I stare somberly at the darkening horizon. “And even if it doesn’t rain for weeks, if we have sunshine every day, still they will come. They’ll build more dome boats, or repair the broken ones. Or they’ll build a dome train. Whatever the case, we don’t have more than a fortnight.”
We walk down the length of the fortress wall, our minds preoccupied. “We find two working hang gliders,” Sissy says after a while. “Clair mentioned there might be some operable ones. Then we fly east.” She stares a long time, her face turned away from me, eastward. When she speaks, her voice is filled with self-recrimination. “You were right, Gene. We should have all listened. Back when we had a chance. We should have all kept heading east with you. If I hadn’t been so obtuse, we’d all still be alive.”
The Trap (The Hunt Trilogy) Page 24
