by Addison Gunn
“Blink again,” she said.
He did. The extract ran down his face. “It burns!”
Plop. Plop.
The whites of his eye turned orange as Morland grunted, pulling against the restraints.
“Okay everyone,” Samantha said. “Here they come.”
If Miller wasn’t watching it himself, he never would have believed it. From the corner of Morland’s eye, tiny legs, then the head of a wasp emerged—birthed from his brain in embryotic orange extract. It crawled out of his tear duct and sat on his eye, stunned and slick with oil.
“Holy shit,” Miller breathed.
With her bare hands, Samantha reached forward and plucked the wet wasp from Morland’s face, then slapped her hands together and squashed it with a splat.
“Blink again,” she said.
He did.
Plop.
Another wasp.
Samantha dispatched the next one, then another. Eventually the wasps stopped coming. Samantha leaned over Morland, took his neck in her hands and tilted his head to the side. The oil dripped from every orifice. Morland coughed violently, then hocked a chunk of phlegm-laced orange extract to the floor of the truck.
“Is that all of them?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
“We won’t know for sure,” Samantha said. “We can repeat the process tomorrow.”
“No, thanks.”
“It’s better than ending up an Exile,” she said, her eyes resting on Miller. “Now,” she added, standing to her feet and sniffing toward the front of the truck cab. “You want to explain to me what’s in those barrels?”
ONCE ALL THE parts were in place, it was go time. The preparations had taken two days, including planning and getting Lewis and his men in position. If even one part of the plan failed, the whole scheme was in jeopardy. There were too many pieces to the puzzle.
Back at the library, Miller offered Samantha his hand, which she took. Putting one foot onto the truck’s step, she jumped up into the driver’s seat and strapped herself in. Another Archaean, an older man wearing shreds of a three-piece suit, was sitting in the passenger seat. He grunted his greeting as Samantha adjusted the mirrors.
Her eyes met Miller’s, and for a brief second, her expression glassed over. With a concerted effort, she scrunched her lids tightly, then shook her head.
“Are you sure you can do this?” Miller asked.
Samantha’s face reddened. Gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles she looked away, through the cracked windshield. “Of course we can. We’re people, not animals. If we make a decision, we can stick to it.” There was a hitch in her voice, then she added, “Mostly.”
“If you can’t handle having the pheromones this close, I can get one of my men to drive the truck.”
“A deal’s a deal. We can do it.”
“This is important, Sam,” he reiterated. “I can’t have you and your kind wandering off into the streets. I need you to focus if this is going to work.”
“We understand our part.”
Miller frowned. “Right. And you’re sure the remainder of Swift’s Charismatics and communes will trail after us?”
Samantha pulled in a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I can’t guarantee anything, Alex. No one can. But given how much the pheromones affect us Archaeans, I doubt Swift’s weak-minded kind will be able to resist. You’ll get what you want, and then some.”
Miller sighed. “All right.” He stepped away from the truck so she could close the door. “I’ll be in the back with my men. Once it starts, get down in your seat until I tap the side three times. After that, get the hell out, pick up the rest of your people, and drive the truck as far away from the compound as you can.”
She tilted her head to one side and narrowed her eyes at him through the dirt-encrusted glass of the window. “You’ve said that three times.”
“After this we’re square.” He adjusted the heavy pack on his back and gave a half-hearted wave. “Good luck.” Turning on his heel, he marched toward the back of the truck.
“Alex?” she called, opening the door and leaning out to speak to him.
He turned to face her.
The look she gave him was one he couldn’t quite place. She was pale, face slack. Could that be fear, or sadness?
“Goodbye,” she said.
Miller swallowed thickly, unable—unwilling—to process the rush of emotions. “Yeah. Take care of yourself.” He moved quickly and jumped into the back of the truck.
Inside, du Trieux, Hsiung, Morland, and a couple of Lewis’s squad sat crouched on the floor, the barrels of pheromones in front of them.
Du Trieux blinked at Miller as he crouched near the door and propped it ajar. “All right,” he said. “Open them up.”
The truck roared to life and grinded into gear.
As the others worked to open the barrels, Miller kept his eyes focused outside the truck, and surveyed the ruins of the city. Old hotels. Crumbling storefronts and cracked and broken stoops. Dirt and gravel roads weaved across the ground, surrounded by mountains of mushrooms and strange alien animals. As the truck pulled away and picked up speed, a city he hardly knew as Mid-town rushed by.
One way or another, all this was going to end.
4
GETTING THE SUPPLY truck was one thing. Getting it from Mid-town to Astoria proved to be something else. The roads, such as they were, were far more dangerous than any of them had thought possible. They had expected it to be bad; what they got was nothing short of impossible.
Once the barrels of pheromones were opened, Infected from across the city flocked toward the truck like locusts. Men, women, children—hordes of them—starved, withered, desperate, and volatile. Entire communes emptied the subway stations and flooded the streets like rats to the Pied Piper when the truck drove by.
With every bump in the road, every U-turn, every time they had to double back or move a pile of cement debris blocking their path, it slowed the truck and brought the advancing horde inches from grabbing hold of the open tailgate. More than once, they did—leaving Miller and those riding in the back no alternative other than to knock the Infected off with the butts of their rifles, or shoot them down.
In some areas of the city the truck took fire as some of Swift’s armed groups tried to shoot out the tires, and Miller and the others had to hang on for dear life, hunkered down behind the barrels while the vehicle bounced over the treacherous, rocky terrain.
Then, the animals got into the action, following the truck, too. Thug behemoths, terror-jaws, scurrying packs of rat-things, even titan-birds high above. Traveling in small groups, the creatures chased after the truck and mowed down Infected and Exiles to clear a path to the vehicle.
“Pick it up! This is getting out of control!” Miller shouted.
Samantha screeched back from the driver’s seat. “No shit, Sherlock!”
Eventually, after they’d ploughed through a commune blocking the road, they managed to cross the Queensboro Bridge toward Astoria. By then, the flock behind them had reached the thousands.
Miller had no idea the pheromones would be that powerful. He’d figured on a few hundred, maybe. But this?
It was awe-inspiring and disturbing, all at once.
There was no room for doubt now—they were committed.
THE TRUCK LURCHED forward and sped down the rocky roads of Astoria, winding around debris and crashing over and through pot holes and craters. At this speed, on roads this bad, they’d be lucky to remain upright.
Coming up 14th Street, the truck spun a hard left onto 12th Avenue and drove full throttle toward the compound’s barricaded front gate.
“Here we go!” Samantha bellowed. Slamming on the brakes, she yanked the truck hard to the right and skidded the vehicle across the gravel to an abrupt stop.
Miller and the others inside were tossed against the wall. The barrels, open and exposed, spilled pheromone packets—which looked like tea bags—spreading them across the back of th
e truck along with the people.
The truck immediately took on fire. Bullets whizzed straight through the side of the vehicle—through the gaping fungus-covered hole on the side. One of Lewis’s men took a bullet to the head and died in an instant.
“Go, go, go!” Miller shouted. Rolling the barrels out of the truck, they all spilled into the street and rolled the cylinders across the area in front of the entrance, scattering the pheromone packets far and wide.
Miller pounded his fist on the side of the truck three times. Gravel spit at his face as it quickly accelerated and roared away down 12th, fading from view.
He and his squad crouched behind the barrels in front of the compound’s gate. Miller raised his M27 and took out two guards at the entrance as bullets pierced the air around him. The shooters stood on the towers at the ends of the wall. They’d fortified the entrance since their last attempt to enter.
Behind him, a handful of Lewis’s troops, who had been lying in wait for the truck’s arrival, rushed the gate and took up defensive positions amid the rubble and mortar craters.
When Lewis’s second line came, a rattle of machinegun fire ruptured the air. The advance was stopped cold, the majority of them dead before they reached cover.
Miller spotted the gun mounted on the edge of the wall to the left, but he couldn’t see who was manning it. Pulling the pin on a hand grenade, he tossed it toward the tower. Over-shooting by several meters, the grenade flew over the wall and exploded in the air, someplace inside the compound. He heard a voice, some asshole laughing.
A head popped out behind the machine gun: Kimball, the jerk who’d interrogated Miller after he’d returned from meeting the Archaeans and Samantha for the first time. The asshole who’d manned the assault on the freighter.
Kimball stood to the side of the machine gun, a shit-eating grin on his face as he re-loaded a magazine. Without hesitation, Miller raised his M27, aimed, blew out his breath calmly, then shot the prick straight through the face. Kimball dropped.
With a sickening sense of satisfaction, Miller lowered his rifle. His only regret now was that Doyle wasn’t around to witness the shot. He didn’t have long to revel in his ego, however—just then Morland stood, ready to advance on the deteriorating troops inside the compound gate. Miller heard the undeniable sound of mechanized footsteps.
“Morland! Get down!”
The big guy barely had time to take cover behind a mound of rubble before four exoskeleton machines stomped through the gate. They ripped through the scene with double-barrelled submachine guns, pinning Miller and the others to the ground.
A shell erupted from an under-slung grenade launcher and blew up in front of Lewis’s position, scattering shrapnel and rubble over the Northwind guys’ heads; if they didn’t take out the suits quickly, they were toast. Miller chanced a look behind him and caught sight of the advancing stampede of Infected, who had finally caught up to the pull of the pheromones.
Soon, every inch of the gate would be swarmed with parasite-ridden people and animals, bringing chaos in their wake. If Miller was going to do something, it had better be now, or he and Cobalt would be swallowed by the rush.
He heard du Trieux holler in protest. Just left of the gate, she was scrambling out of the way of one of the exoskeletons. She dove out from behind a barrel of pheromones and crouched next to the wall. Bullets hit the dirt at her feet; cornered, she had no other choice but to close on the mechanized suits.
To Miller’s utter astonishment, she vaulted off the barrel on one leg and catapulted herself onto the closest exoskeleton suit’s arm. Clambering up the suit like a spider, she skirted around to the rear of the arm that held the machine gun, dodged the driver’s attempts to snatch her off with the other arm, and crawled up the spine of the suit, toward the top. Then, bracing herself on the driver’s shoulders, she jabbed her pistol into the suit’s helmet ventilation fan and fired a single round into the driver’s head.
They both dropped like a bucket of bricks.
Taking her lead, Miller got up, pushed off the barrel with one leg, and jumped onto the arm of another exoskeleton suit. For a brief second, Miller locked eyes with the driver. The soldier glared back, looking utterly shocked and horror-stricken at having a man attached to his machine.
“Get off!” the driver bellowed. “Get off me, you dumbass!”
Instead of reaching over with his free hand like the other driver had, this operator shook his arm as if trying to dislodge something sticky.
Just as the horde of Infected and parasitic animals thrashed the gate entrance and scrambled toward the barrels in a living tsunami, Miller gripped the exoskeleton’s arm with his arms and legs, holding on for dear life as it bucked and jostled him. The heavy pack on Miller’s back crushed his spine with every sway, until the pack shifted and he lost balance.
Slipping, Miller rolled sideways on the mechanical arm. His hands fell loose and he hung, upside down, gripping the submachine gun with his thighs.
Locking his feet at the ankles, Miller reached up and grabbed the underside of the mechanical arm just as the driver stretched over to grasp at him with his other hand and narrowly missed.
Miller held tight with all four of his limbs and twisted to one side. Using the force of the pack and his body weight, he wrenched the submachine gun free of the suit with a loud crack, and then fell to the ground.
In the dirt—surrounded on all sides by Infected, animals of all sizes and shapes and Exiles, clogging and complicating the scene—Miller scrambled to his feet, the submachine in his hands.
Pulling back on the drum loader, he injected a grenade into the chamber and launched a shell straight into the face of the unarmed exoskeleton, blowing it to pieces.
Miller swivelled around, reloaded and launched another shell into the exoskeleton standing by the gate entrance.
On the opposite side of the horde, du Trieux was doing the same. She hit the fourth and final exoskeleton in the chest and sent pieces of it careening backwards.
With all four exo-suits out of the way, Miller raised his arm into the air, and swung it toward the entrance.
Then, in a rush, Cobalt and the remaining Northwind troops rose from their defensive positions and swarmed the compound gate.
5
MILLER BROKE THROUGH the compound barrier and shot down two guards behind the gate without hesitation. The massive submachine gun in his arms felt heavy and was difficult to maneuver, but the mere sight of it rendered some of the guards dumbstruck. They gawked in pure terror as he showered the entrance with rounds.
Sandbag bunkers had been constructed in a ring around the compound gate. Each foxhole was manned with a handful of the stunned soldiers, as well as a gunner behind either an M203 submachine gun or a rocket launcher. Some returned fire, but the majority of the men did not, stunned by the onrushing swarm. The Exiles, Infected, and parasitic animals poured through the gate like a flood of destruction, climbing over the sandbags and swallowing the area like a disease.
Several of Harris’s men ran. Others took aim, but with too many targets and no apparent leadership, they were quickly overpowered and consumed by the horde of bodies.
Du Trieux was to Miller’s left with the other commandeered exoskeleton gun. She wasn’t hesitating at all. Laying waste to anyone who crossed her path, she mowed down the stunned bunkers, screaming in a mix of fury and anguish.
The other two members of Cobalt pushed past him with a body of Northwind troops, making a mad dash toward the refugee storage facility. It was only then that du Trieux released the trigger of her gun and tossed the empty weapon to the ground to follow.
With plans of his own, Miller dove through the multitude and pushed his way toward the cove. On his left were the abandoned shanties and camps, desolate and swarming with wasps. On his right, a chain-linked fence surrounded an area full to the brim with Exiles from inside the compound.
The mindless bodies of former Schaeffer-Yeager employees and city refugees hammered and crowde
d around the flimsy barrier, straining to break free of the barricade. It held for now, but it was a matter of time before they broke through and added to the mayhem.
Picking up speed, he ran down 27th Avenue, then sprinted to the right up 9th. Ahead, the darkened cove sat quiet and ominous. Many of the windows had been boarded and blocked by corrugated steel or overcome by fungal blooms. A small band of guards stood at the front entrance behind sandbags, watching Miller approach. They debated among themselves and two ran off. A third shot at Miller and grazed his arm, sending him back a few steps but only slowing him for a moment.
As Miller’s legs picked up speed, he carefully activated the submachine gun’s drum loader and injected a grenade into the chamber. Barely slowing his steps, he launched the shell at the building’s entryway.
The guards took off running, deserting their post. The blast hit, sending sand and debris in all directions. Miraculously, no one was hurt.
The doorway was wide open. Faced with no opposition, Miller ran forward, hurdled over what was left of the sandbags, and entered the cove unabated.
Inside the darkened entry hall, two groups of Shank soldiers stood in clusters, jumbled and in disarray around the elevator and stairwell. They stopped shouting at each other long enough to stare at Miller.
“The compound’s lost,” Miller barked at them. “Get the survivors to the ships. Go!”
A handful ran past him, back out the door. Two others stood in a state of befuddlement, still uncertain what to do. Miller raised his submachine gun at them and took aim, waiting only a heartbeat for them to decide. They ran after the others.
Once satisfied that the entry was clear, Miller dropped the submachine gun in the corner and yanked open the door to the stairwell. Bounding up the steps, his breath echoing through the gas mask and reverberating off the walls in his own ears, he snapped a fresh magazine into his M27 and unlatched the safety on his Gallican, sliding a round into the chamber.
