by David Coy
Lin Fong turned with his hands on his hips and looked down at the squirming mass of bodies and Brunigea tendrils.
“Perhaps,” he said. “I’d have to extricate one and see. That can be tricky. These are undomesticated Brunigea.”
Lin Fong knew Kropp was right. Now two days of work had been wasted. He should have stopped yesterday when the endorphin levels dropped to zero. His lab coat suddenly felt like lead.
“Undomesticated Brunigea are very aggressive,” Kropp added knowingly.
“Yes.”
“They are parasites, you know?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, stop your tests. This is a dead end. Jacob wants results. Get one of the subjects out and see if you can revive it. Erhlich needs more in the plasticizing lab. He’s still prototyping. He needs them more than you do. We don’t have an inexhaustible supply.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get on it right now.”
* * *
Betty was aware of being moved and thought one of the dulling lovers had pushed her away. There was more rough movement and she felt real hands on her weak arms and legs. There was a buzzing sound, and she felt rain on her back and down her neck. Slowly, the despicable touching faded, and she felt rid of it at last. She felt herself being moved roughly; and this time when she opened her eyes, she could see lights above that made her squint. She saw movement in big flashes of white. She felt a pinch in her arm and saw a bright line of green tracing up to a round thing next to a bright light. The light felt good. There was pressure in her nose and then something went in it and down her throat. She tasted plastic and wanted to gag.
As her eyes drifted closed, the lights changed to bright lines of jagged radiance, then faded to nothing.
She slept.
“Betty? Betty can you hear me?” a voice said.
She tried to swallow, but it was too difficult. Something was blocking her throat. Her hand wanted to rise and remove the thing, but her hand couldn’t move. She was strapped down. She felt anger.
“Can you hear me?”
She nodded her head just slightly.
“Let’s get this tube out of here, shall we?” the man said. She felt the tube slide out of her throat and smelled the clean scent of the man’s hands. She finally swallowed.
“What . . . ?” she asked.
“A question? That’s good.”
“What . . . did you do to me?”
“Wasn’t it fun?”
“No.”
“I’m glad you can speak and see and all that. That’s good,” the man said.
“Is it?”
“Oh, yes. It means I still have a job.”
“You hurt me. You said you wouldn’t . . . ”
“Well, it was supposed to be fun,” Lin Fong said.
“It wasn't.”
“Well, maybe next time,” he said to her, then to someone else, “Syringe.”
“What are you doing?” she asked weakly.
“My job,” Lin Fong said.
She felt a pinch then a warm glow, then the world drifted into darkness.
When she awoke the next time, all was confusion, and she the center of it. There was no right or left to the world and no up or down. She felt a sensation of weight that shifted from place to place like a roller going over her body. When she turned what she thought was her head, she saw flesh where no flesh should be. The out-of-place flesh was welded to her by a purple seam. Above her and below her were arms and legs that felt like hers but didn’t look like hers. She heard noises—gurgling and wheezing and somewhere someone was trying to speak. When she opened her mouth to respond, she felt one hand open as if connected to it. She felt her fingers moving in rhythm with her tongue. No words came out. She heard voices, but the sounds had no meaning. She tried to move but the limbs would not obey.
Much later, the world began to move. She recognized the smooth walls of the monolith’s interior and watched them glide past. Then she saw freshly scraped ground. Soon her confused senses picked up the unmistakable scent of rotting flesh.
12
They had been leaning on the railing in full view, watching. After Lavachek got caught watching them dump body things yesterday with no repercussions, they figured it didn’t matter.
They watched the men swing the thing out and drop it in the pit. Then one of them fired two shots down into it. On the way back, one of the men waved to Habershaw and Lavachek like a friendly neighbor.
“There’s another one,” Lavachek said. “That’s the second one today.”
“Looks like they’ve slowed down a little, though,” Habershaw replied, half listening.
“Yeah, hi, you sonofabitch,” Habershaw said to the figure below in a voice that couldn’t possibly be heard. “Your days are numbered, asshole.”
Habershaw was worried about Joan. He hadn’t heard from her since yesterday. That was a bad sign. He took the phone out of his pocket and tried her numbers, first her office. Nothing. Then he tried her personal number. The same error message appeared on the phone’s display.
“Unit disabled. What does that mean?” he harshly questioned Lavachek, as though Lavachek bore some personal responsibility.
“Is it working?” Lavachek asked, taken aback, and not knowing what else to say.
“Mine’s working! Hers is the one that’s not working! She should have called by now!”
“Sorry . . . ” Lavachek said.
Habershaw put the phone away. Christ.
“Something’s up. Something’s gone wrong,” he said. “We gotta get back to the settlement.”
“How? Patel told us to wait right here. If we take off and Patel finds out . . . ”
“Hey, Patel can suck my dick,” Habershaw said. “I say we take a truck and drive back tonight. We can be back by dawn.”
“That’s a four-hundred kilometer round trip. I don’t know. If we get caught disobeying orders, Patel could really screw us over.”
Habershaw felt the fear in Lavachek’s voice like a tangible thing. Watching the strange goings-on below could spook anybody, even someone as tough as Lavachek.
“Then stay here. You can cover for me.”
“How?”
“Are you worried about catching hell ‘cuz I’m gone?”
“Well . . . ”
“Forget it. Just . . . just stay here.”
* * *
That night, dressed in a net suit, Habershaw made his way down off the rig and across the open space he’d scraped out of the jungle with the heavy machine. His target was a row of utility trucks on the northern side of the monolith. The law about being out after dark was especially true so close to the ocean. The insect life released from branches, bark and leaves at nightfall here was unusually thick and virulent, even for Verde. The air seemed filled with them like enormous ash or snowflakes blown at random in the twin moons’ light. By the time he got to the first truck, his suit was covered with flying and crawling bugs. He brushed off as many as he could before getting in the cab. Some of them stuck, snagged by sharp feet in the mesh. He kept batting at them, his gloved hands tearing them to pieces.
In the process, he accidentally unzipped his net suit partially open at a seam.
The beetle was rare and quite small by Verdian standards, measuring only half the length of his index finger. It circled him once or twice, drawn by the sweet cloud of carbon dioxide that surrounded his head. Once, it landed on his shoulder and turned in a tight knot, seeking flesh it knew was there somewhere. But finding nothing worthwhile, it unfolded its stiff wing coverings and clattered into the air with a light clicking sound.
It circled again and landed once more, this time at the seam of net suit and cotton fiber. Smelling sweat, it scrabbled into the space between the two fabrics. It would have ducked and clawed its way under the cotton and against his skin if Habershaw hadn’t zipped the space closed. As it was, he sealed the bug between his net suit and inner clothing with a single, long pull on the net suit’s zipper.
He turned the truck on and crept backwards out of the space. He turned toward the road and continued to creep silently until he was well onto it. He checked his watch. Eleven hours till dawn. He’d calculated it out already. He’d have to average forty kilometers per hour to make it back before daylight. That would leave him about three hours to find Joan. Forty kilometers per hour would be pushing it on this road. It wasn’t real smooth.
He drove by moonlight until he was a few kilometers out then he hit the trucks lights. The insects seemed to materialize out of thin air in front of the truck. Spinning, whirling specters of red and green and black and brown, they flew at the truck and banged off the windows or zipped past in streaks of uninterrupted motion. The truck wasn’t going that fast, but sometimes the ones that hit left spatters of juice smashed out by their fat weight and inertia alone. Occasionally, he’d see an especially huge something race across the road, or scramble ahead of the truck for a distance; its shiny surface reflecting brilliant accents from the truck’s lights.
He settled in for a long night’s drive. Wherever he could, he upped his speed to forty-five or fifty, just to be on the safe side.
The bug crawled along a folded tube of cotton until it emerged at his side, antennae waving. From there it headed downward, scrabbling over the folds at his hip and pushed under the tight fit of net and cotton in his lap. It made good time going down the relatively smooth stretch along his leg. It headed south again at the knee and when it reached the zipper at his ankle, it took advantage of what moisture and mildew had started months ago—it crawled through a tear where the zipper met cotton. It now hung sideways on the inside of his pants leg, just a centimeter from skin, antennae twitching with an insect’s particular form of delight.
It reached out with those antennae and touched flesh. Then it twisted and snagged sparse hair with its forelegs. Getting a good grip, it twisted farther and thrashed for a grip with its remaining legs. Habershaw felt the crawling sensation of stiff little legs.
“I’ll be goddamned,” he said, reaching down and mashing at the spot with his fingertips. He felt the hard little carapace crush under his hand and felt wetness on the last punch or two. Then he pinched a fold of pants leg and net suit, pulled the elastic band away from his leg and shook it all, leg included, hoping the now dead little invader would fall out.
He and Lavachek had done a good job of scraping the road from the settlement to the monolith. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t supposed to be perfect. It was supposed to be a passable dirt road smooth enough so that most of the vehicles that would need to use it could. They’d left many ragged tree stumps in this wide, passable road. They were inevitable and of little consequence really. All one had to do was drive around them.
He didn’t see this tree stump until it was too late.
He stomped the brakes just as he hit. The stump was so thick and strong that the truck literally bounced off it. The impact was more than sufficient to deploy the restraints, and the bags exploded from their holes with a sound like bombs.
“Christ!”
Habershaw was shaken but unhurt. He pushed the deflated bags out of the way and looked at the instrument panel. Not a single light shone in it. Expecting the worst, he reached for the on button and poked it once or twice. The worst was what he got—the truck was dead.
“Now ain’t this a fine mess?” he muttered to himself.
If I'm lucky, he thought, it's something simple— something I can fix.
He got out of the truck and moved to the side hatches. The night was almost roaring with sound. It was so pervasive and loud that he wondered for a moment if someone could hear it from orbit.
Being out on the dark, lonely road with all that alien life around him was making him jittery. Insects flew by him, crawled on him and banged into him. He looked at the jungle’s edge just ten meters away. He could almost feel its teeming life from where he was—as if the legs, tendrils, vines and claws that existed within it were reaching out for him. He knew he shouldn’t be out alone—especially on the outside of the truck.
“This place is something else." he spoke out loud to himself again, since no bugs seemed to listen.
He lifted the motor’s access door and turned on the diagnostics. The system ran for a moment then returned the error message he needed. Brushing bugs out of the way, he looked at the diagram the system displayed. A length of cable blinked out at him in bright red. Using the diagram as a map, he found the cable and saw that it had been torn loose when the fire extinguisher flew off its mounting and whacked it on its way forward. He straightened the cable and plugged it back in, then replaced the fire extinguisher.
He ran the diagnostic again to check the system. Another error came up. This time it made a reference to some controlling circuitry and a module with a name he didn’t recognize.
“Aw, hell."
He punched the help button. The system told him to yank the damaged module and replace it with the spare. He reached over for the spare. He started to pull it out.
Something hit his back like a club, knocking him into the panel door.
He felt a compression, like a giant pinch across his back that burned like fire. He tried to turn, but couldn’t. His hand fell on the truck’s heavy service wrench just as he was jerked backwards through the air. He hit the ground a few meters away and found himself moving backwards, straight into the jungle.
He reached over his shoulder and felt something big and tough and cool stuck solidly to his back. It hurt like hell. He extended his arm out and found a thick tendril or stem leading from it.
He grabbed the stem with his strong left hand and pulled in just a little slack. Then he twisted and kicked with his legs and turned. He took another grab and twisted some more until the tendril was wrapped under his arm. Sliding on his hip and elbow, he could now see what it was. Just three meters away was the enormous head of the biggest bug he’d ever seen. The tendril was pulling him right into the center of jaws that opened sideways, waiting for him with a sharp and hideous larvae’s grin. The moonlight shone on its huge, humped back, covered with brown rolls of leathery material.
He brought the spanner up over his head and whacked at the umbilical. It felt like hitting a thick rubber hose.
Just as he reached that crushing maw, he rammed the spanner across the mouth parts and jammed it in tight. He felt the wrench go in solid and lock down as if it had been made for the space. There was even a final click as he stuffed in it.
He felt whatever was attached to him let go and a flood of warmth ran across his back. Habershaw rolled away, and saw the umbilical snap into place up under the thing’s mandibles. The grub shook its head so fast and violently that Habershaw could feel the vibrations through the air as if they were coming from some bizarre buzzer. It stopped and started, stopped and started, like some strange machine and each time, Habershaw was afraid the spanner would come loose, knock against the horny mandibles on either side and fly out at a killing speed. He put his hands up to protect himself and backed away stumbling, watching the thing trying to dislodge that perfect, stainless steel wrench.
“Have fun, you bastard,” he said. “I hope . . . I hope you choke on it.”
He staggered back to the truck, replaced the module with the spare and managed to get the truck started. He knew he was bleeding pretty badly because he could feel his clothes soaked through down his back all the way to his seat. He didn’t think he would bleed to death because he didn’t think there were arteries in his back. He pressed himself tight against the seat to try to halt the bleeding. Soon he sensed that the warm spread of blood had stopped. He was sore all over.
He checked his watch. He was way behind, but he wasn’t going to turn back now. He had to find Joan—he had to. She should have called. She always called.
He arrived at the settlement just a little off schedule, having made up lost time on some stretches of road that were smoother than he remembered.
The shelter was his first stop. The
place looked abandoned and the door was swinging open.
“This is bad,” he muttered to himself. “Very bad.”
He didn’t see anyone lurking or watching the place. But there was no way of knowing what to expect once he left the meager sanctuary of the truck’s interior.
He gave another look around and unlocked the doors.
He walked up the steps and went inside. The shelter had been ransacked. Every cabinet and drawer had been opened; the contents strewn helter-skelter. Moonlight streamed in and left ragged, angry shadows from everything it touched. He worked his way down the hall, stepping over the stuff that littered it. The bedrooms had been trashed as well. When he looked into the main bedroom—the one he and Joan shared, his anger and frustration boiled over.
“What the hell?” he moaned. “What is this?”
He kicked his way back through the hallway and out the door. He got in the truck and sped toward to the boys’ shelter. They might know something. They usually knew a little about just about everything that happened.
Ignoring the chime, he banged on the door. A moment later, a confused and frightened voice came from behind it. “You’ve been here already!”
“Peter! Open up! It’s Bill Habershaw!”
The door opened a crack. Habershaw pushed his way inside and closed the door behind him. Peter and Mike were standing there, half-dressed. They looked haggard and forlorn, like refugees. They were thinner than he remembered. For a moment, no one looked right at him.
“Mike, where’s Joan?” he asked.
Peter Ho looked at the floor. Mike just blinked and stared, speechless.
“What’s happened?"
“They, uh . . . ” Mike began.
“What?” he shouted, the tension in his body erupting.
“They killed her, Mr. Habershaw,” Peter said. “The soldiers killed her.”
It was Habershaw’s turn to blink. “What?” he asked in a much lower voice.
“They killed her and took her away, and the people who were with her,” Mike said.
