by Addison Gunn
The nearest survivors shrieked, some of them swimming back to the wreckage.
“Swim!” Doyle shouted at the screeching people in the water. “Swim here, you bloody idiots!”
Mass hysteria erupted.
Miller swung the pole out into the water and four people grabbed hold, and others grabbed hold of them. One guy shoved one of the first four off and grabbed hold of the hook himself.
Doyle snatched the net and opened it for the first survivor; two tried to crawl in. “One at a time, or none of you are getting in!”
The two fighting over the net refused to let go. Doyle bent down, punched the more aggressive of the two men in the face, and as he floated backwards, grabbed the other and shoved his feet into the mesh.
It seemed to go better after that.
They hauled one survivor in after another, never stopping. One man cut in front of the line and one woman tried to climb up the cradle like a ladder. It was every man, woman, and child for themselves.
A crowd had accumulated at the hatch, with more fighting the current and the roiling waves to reach them. The ones who’d swum for the wreckage were now gone. For every five that made it aboard the lifeboat, another got pulled under with a terrifying shriek.
After a solid hour of hauling people, Miller’s shoulders and arms throbbed and his body shivered. The lifeboat’s interior was barely a quarter full.
Then the storm surged, pounding the boat with heavy rain and sending waves up and over the top of the hull. Miller was still hooking people in, but by this point they were pulling in more bodies than survivors.
It was no longer a rescue, but a recovery. Not wanting to leave the dead for whatever it was that was feasting on them, he and Doyle worked, pulling in the corpses until the sun set and the temperatures plummeted.
Eventually, Miller had no choice but to call it.
“Alright, that’s it,” he said, slapping Doyle’s soaked shoulder and retreating into the lifeboat. He snapped the rescue pole back into its bracket. Across the room, a drenched, exhausted-looking du Trieux was doing the same.
A man huddled under a rescue blanket on the first row of benches gawked at Miller with wide eyes. “We can’t leave. My brother is still out there.”
Without a word, Miller strode past him, clambered up the ladder to the second floor, and went to the steering column.
As the squad closed and lashed the hatches, Miller gave the order to move. Hsiung piloted the lifeboat back toward the Tevatnoa, the single spotlight on the forward bow their only means of navigation.
Of the hundred and fifteen aboard the Dunn Roven, almost sixty had been saved.
Miller supposed he should have been pleased they’d saved any, but all he could do was feel the weight of their failure. He eyed the survivors in the lifeboat, and looked at the hateful sea slapping the hull beneath them.
He spat salt water onto the floor and grimaced.
Fuck. You.
2
THE WIND CAME up from the east with just a hint of sea breeze, tickling the stalks of alfalfa-barley at the tips. The stems swayed and swirled in unison, as if waltzing to a disjointed tune of dissonant chords.
Samantha Hernandez watched the dance with interest, then turned her gaze to the graying sky. If the weather turned again, the commune ran the risk of losing the entire crop. Ten acres of alfalfa-barley yielded nearly twelve thousand pounds of grain. Properly stored, it could easily feed them through the winter months—or, at least, Samantha hoped.
But if they lost this crop, as they had the artichoke-corn during last week’s torrential rain, months of ploughing, planting, irrigation, and careful tending would yet again be washed away, leaving them with nothing but a muddy field and a commune burning with frustration.
Truthfully, this crop had another week—perhaps more—before it was ready to harvest, but another glance toward the swirling sky raised Samantha’s anxiety, enough so that it caught the attention of the two Infecteds working a few meters away, weeding.
“Should we start now?” asked Patty, a tall and muscular Regular with a knack for horticulture. She rose from her crouched position in the row and rested her trowel on her hip. The alfalfa-barley wavered in the wind, batting her on the head.
“Not yet,” Samantha said, doing her best to feel confident. There was no sense in raising a panic. She fought to control her feelings, pushing her anxiety to the back of her mind with the rest of her repressed emotions. It seemed to work. Patty’s concern melted from her pale eyes and she dropped back to the dirt, digging out a weed without another word. The other Infected behind her, an Archaean named Chris, raised an eyebrow, but went back to work as well.
Samantha ground her teeth. There were benefits, without doubt, to the Infected hive-mind—even more so for an Archaean.
Host to the protozoan parasite discovered in sub-glacial Antarctic lakes some five years before, the Archaeans had evolved from the regular Infected after the bio-tech company Schaeffer-Yeager had set off atmospheric air bombs, spreading an anti-parasitic medicine which only resulted in the parasite’s mutation, and the birth of a new breed of hosts. These Archaeans, as they called themselves, possessed a greater control over the hive-mind mentality the parasite created. Where Regulars were violent, disorganized and mob-minded, the Archaeans believed in peace, cooperation and communion, not just with each other but with the new ecology of their planet.
It became obvious to the Archaeans during the invasion that all they had to do was wait for the worst of the Regular Infected to destroy themselves—which they obligingly did, with help from the humans—so the Archaeans could step in and assume command of the masses.
Six months after the blast in the city, the Archaeans were in charge of several thousand Infected, collected from the survivors of NYC and the surrounding areas, and spread out across ten farms in upstate New York, a good distance from the fallout. If all went as planned, Samantha and the council of Archaeans would have re-colonized a sizable area, which had been all but deserted and destroyed.
It was no easy task, but they were progressing well, for the most part. Aside from the weather, the mood of the commune thrived. Samantha only hoped that in the coming winter, when they had fewer duties to distract them, this continued to be true.
“Everything will be fine,” Patty said, looking up with a toothy grin, picking up on Samantha’s anxiety.
The swell of contentedness flowed from Patty so strongly that Sam momentarily lost herself to the undertow. Her body pulsed with warmth—as if six thousand arms had reached out and swallowed her into a sincere embrace. It took an effort on Samantha’s part to identify and disentangle her own mind from the center of the mass.
Samantha seized control of herself and pulled back, literally taking a step backward on the path. When the mist had cleared, she swept a hand over her face and pulled her bandana back over her nose and mouth.
It was hardly necessary, given the scarcity of the burrowing wasps in these parts, but it offered a suggestion of privacy—a falsehood that provided comfort nonetheless.
It would serve no one, Samantha knew, particularly these farms, if the Archaeans succumbed fully to the pull of the hive-mind. It was hard enough on the best days to maintain control. Samantha didn’t want to think how difficult it would be on a bad one.
Samantha cast her gaze over the twenty or so souls weeding the field, then toward the expanse of the farm, including Patty and Chris, and lastly to the people coming in and out of the greenhouse, built a few weeks before in a bid to save the melon-berries from the swarms of locust-armadillos plaguing the region and the invasive fungal blooms, which seemed to thrive regardless of moisture. It stuck out like an eye-sore, given the odd mix of windows and glass panels—plastic would just feed the fungus—but so far, it seemed to be getting the job done.
A shadow passed overhead, drawing Samantha’s eye. She looked up and was momentarily blinded by the sun as it peeked out from behind a graying cloud. Blinking away the plum-colored splo
tches, she fought to focus on the shadow hovering above her, wide and bat-like.
A shiver ran up her spine—a rot-glider. Raising her hand above her brow to block the sun, Samantha squinted skyward and caught more shadows. No, three rot-gliders.
She opened her mouth to raise the alarm. Patty and Chris looked up, uneasy as panic clenched Samantha’s gut. At almost the same time all three of them shouted, “Run!”
“Take cover!” someone else bellowed as fear spread across the field of workers. The Infected workers scattered.
Spinning on her heel, Samantha broke into a run, making for the covered porch of the farmhouse, only ten or so meters from where they stood. Patty, and Chris sprinted close behind her. They pounded down the path, nearly clear to safety when from above, a great force pounced on Samantha’s shoulders, crushing her to the ground.
Buried under leathery skin slick with moss, fighting to catch her breath, Samantha writhed to break free, only to feel razor-sharp talons encircle her shoulders and pierce her to the bone.
Someone screamed. The shrill screech sounded inhuman to Samantha’s pounding ears.
With a shudder, the creature’s grip relaxed. It gurgled in her ear and then collapsed, grinding Samantha’s face into the dirt so hard she tasted blood.
“Samantha? Sam!”
The weight lifted and the talons slipped from her skin, leaving gaping, bloody holes. She turned over and blinked away the blackness threatening to consume her.
Patty’s pale eyes appeared above hers. “Get up!”
“Hurry!” Chris begged from over Patty’s shoulder.
Everything inside Samantha told her to run, flee. Panic swelled in her chest; she couldn’t tell if it was her own or that of the Infected she heard shouting and screaming across the farm.
Taking Patty’s outstretched hand, Sam pulled herself up—howling at the sharp pain in her shoulders—and looked at the beast on the ground beside her. A gardening trowel protruded from its spine. Fresh blood pooled around the blade and from Patty’s fist.
“Go!” Chris snapped, taking off down the path with Patty.
Willing one foot in front of the other, Sam followed. Behind her, the blanket of terror from the farm shifted, evolving into a call to action. Gripping at her bleeding shoulder with one hand, she trudged forward, fighting to keep up with the others.
The unmistakable whir of bows and arrows filled the air, bringing about brief pangs of satisfaction and frustration as the archers struggled to hit the swooping rot-gliders, and then Samantha felt an odd lifting sensation, as if her feet had left the ground.
Nausea clutched her stomach, stopping her in her tracks. She doubled over. The hunger clenched her abdomen in a vice of acid and pain.
Sam was on her knees, her vision blurred. All she felt was the desperation of her pack as they hunted, the terror from their prey on the ground, and a frustration at the air currents that looped and swirled recklessly, making it difficult to glide for more than a few strokes.
Samantha pounded her skull with angry fists, fighting off the connection. Communion with the rot-gliders was not welcome or pleasant. Their need to feed was pungent in her mouth, sour and rancid. Their blood must have mixed—it shouldn’t last long, but for now she clung to humanity with a slipping grasp.
Beside her, Patty had stopped. “Sam?”
“Go!” Samantha managed to say. “Don’t wait for me!”
Before her eyes, a rot-glider cascaded from the air, folded its leathery wings inward and crashed straight into Patty like a wrecking ball.
Talons the size of backhoe blades pierced Patty’s shoulders and bashed her head against the ground. From just a meter away, Samantha heard the audible crack of the woman’s neck.
With a pang of delight and excitement, the rot-glider opened its wings wide, flapped them a few times and pushed off the ground, carrying the entirety of Patty away, her pale eyes open and blank.
Samantha’s mouth watered in anticipation.
She shook the hunger from her head and ambled up, swaying in the wind and covering the last few meters to the farmhouse porch on unstable feet. Chris and a few others also cowered there, watching the carnage. Once under the patio awning, Sam allowed herself to collapse—welcoming unconsciousness—but it never came.
She lay on the porch, listening to the shouts and shrieks from the farm below, pushing away her pain and mounting terror. Eventually, the voices began cheering and whooping with celebration; the rush of excitement and relief told Samantha the rot-gliders had left. She pulled together a plea for help to the forefront of her mind and cast it out like a fisherman’s net. Within seconds, Samantha was surrounded by Infected.
As squares of fabric were placed on her wounds, and tied around her shoulders, Samantha bit back her pain and took stock of the faces of the survivors. She felt an emptiness where Patty had once been, and two other absent minds which had once worked the fields. But there was more: presences that had been there, which had not disappeared, but gone away.
“Who else is gone?” Samantha asked.
“Bernard and Rose, I think,” Chris said.
“Where are the others?”
“They’re hiding in the greenhouse and the barn.”
“What of the alfalfa-barley?”
“It’s partially trampled,” someone answered.
“...but sections are salvageable,” another completed the sentence.
Samantha swallowed and licked her scabbed lips. “We should harvest...”
“...before the rains come.”
“Yes.”
“Who else is wounded?”
“Just two others.”
“But there’s more missing than that,” Samantha said.
“We should send for the apothecary.”
Words bled into one another, voices sounded as one: ...missing... wounded... the crops... won’t be back. For a moment, she released her resistance and was swept into the hive-mind. The pain in her shoulder was shared—spread wide, dulling as it extended across the others—and her fear, absorbed by the sense of control and calm as plans of recovery were discussed, evaporated into the throng.
It lasted only a moment. Just as Sam’s eyes darkened, and her mind eased, the sky opened a downpour like no other, cracking the sky wide with lightning and pounding the roof of the awning so forcefully, specks of paint chipped off and floated down onto the heads of those below like snow. The onslaught was torrential, catastrophic.
“The crops,” Samantha managed to say before unconsciousness mercifully took hold.
The crops...
She just managed to acknowledge the sad realizations from the commune before slipping into the void; she knew, then, the salvageable crops were being washed away by the rain.
3
THE SURVIVORS OF the Dunn Roven gathered on the second floor landing and huddled together, their rescue blankets wrapped tightly around them against the bitter, cold sea wind that drove up and over the railing.
Miller pushed through the crowd of survivors and made his way down the corridor in search of the deck officer—it was only after a few meters that he realized the lot of them were following him.
Raising his hands, he eyed the wet, sunken faces of the survivors and bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood. “Wait here,” he mumbled, then took off as quickly as the swaying ship would allow.
Past the hollowed-out gift shop that now served as a barter station, and a lounge area stacked high with storage crates, Miller found who he was looking for: Jennifer Barrett, formerly the head of IT at Schaeffer-Yeager. She’d found herself without a job after the compound’s collapse. The Tevatnoa had their own crew for that sort of thing. These days, she was reduced to coordinating living space for the survivors: it was beneath her skill set, but she’d taken well to the demotion and immediately let the power go to her head.
Standing in the center of a crowd of enraged people, she watched with gritted teeth and an insincere smile as Miller approached. “Miller!
Such a pleasure, what can I do for you?”
“The Dunn Roven capsized. I have survivors who need to be placed.”
Her smile immediately fell. Gripping her clipboard tighter to her chest, she squared her shoulders. “How many?”
Before Miller could answer, a man in a woolly red cap shouted in her face. “Hey! What about my toilet?”
Jennifer blinked at Miller, then faced the man with a stony expression.
“It’s been two weeks since our linens have been cleaned,” hollered a woman on her other side. She waved a gray towel in the air. “And we’re all sick. What are we supposed to do? Wash them in our sink?”
Jennifer barely batted an eye. If Miller didn’t know any better, he’d think she was enjoying this.
“That would be a very good idea,” Jennifer suggested. “If you want to use your fresh water rations for laundry—by all means...”
“We have three new people in our room and one of them keeps taking showers!” bellowed another woman. She had a squalling baby on her hip. “Can we get more water?”
“What about my toilet?” shouted the man in the cap again.
Thrusting an arm into the air, Jennifer raised her voice above the hubbub. “If you would please submit your requisition slips to the Rationing Office and repair requests to Maintenance, I will be sure they get to them just as soon as they can. There is nothing I can do for you today. Please stop blocking the walkways and return to your living quarters.”
“But what about my toilet?” the man shouted again from right beside her.
“I submitted a requisition slip for more water a week ago,” said the woman with the baby, “and I never heard back.”
Jennifer rolled her eyes and ignored her, turning her gaze once again to Miller. “How many?” she asked again.
The man with the cap grabbed Jennifer’s arm, yanking her to face him. “What about my toilet?”
