Hive

by Griffin Hayes

  A minute later we assemble inside the Cartier shop. I notice Pennies’ eyes darting back and forth. Bron doesn’t know there are jewels worth a fortune right under his nose and you can tell Pennies wants to keep it that way.

  Glave keeps running his hands through his hair like he’s looking for something he lost.

  “We’re trapped,” he says. “You went and blew up our only way out, and now we’re trapped.”

  “Glave relax,” I say. “You’re not doing anyone any good right now.”

  “The noise coming from that tunnel,” he says. “Did anyone else hear that?”

  I feel my temperature rise.

  “That awful sound they were making! Oh my wife. My poor, poor wife.”

  I can’t take it anymore.

  I stand in his face and point away from the group. “If you’re not going to help, stay out of our way.”

  Glave disappears into a corner of the shop.

  These people want to act like children, I have no problem treating them like children.

  Part of me wants to lay into Jinx real bad, but the truth of it is he ran that mine idea by me, and I okayed it. This was my fault. I look at Ret and the others. “Did anyone see what they were?”

  “It was too dark,” Ret answers. “But we heard ‘em, and call me crazy, but they sounded an awful lot like our Prospector friend who tried to take your head off.”

  I can still feel where the fleshy parts of his fingers had buried into my skull.

  “This place might be crawling with them.” Bron says and he almost sounds excited by the idea.

  I shrug. “There’s no way of knowing, but one thing’s for sure. We’re not alone.”

  There’s a noise from the back of the store and every weapon snaps to attention. It’s Glave, and he looks like he’s just seen a ghost, and something inside tells me it has nothing to do with the arsenal pointing at his face.

  -11-

  Glave’s gesturing behind him, his face as pale as the concrete dust still swirling around outside. I signal to Bron and Ret, and we move to the back of the shop. Jinx stays with Sneak and the others. We come to a desk and behind that is a curtain. Glave’s still pointing and I push him out of the way.

  I’m sure Jinx is itching to join us, but close quarters is no place for big bangs. We snake behind the counter and I inch the curtain back with the barrel of my repeater. My glow stick fills a room that looks like it might have been a rest area for the shop workers. Four figures stand huddled together. From here it looks like they’re asleep. Their clothes are torn, but expensive looking, and it reminds me of those old pictures the Keepers always show us of rich people decked out for balls and fancy dinner parties. Not a care in the world. The two men are in black suits they used to call tuxedos, and the women are in silk dresses. Their skin looks brown and wrinkled like a rotting piece of meat and a word pops into my head:

  Shitbag.

  The dress on the woman closest to me is clinging to her body, caked in blood, and I can’t tell if it’s her blood or someone else’s. I see her lips and I have my answer. A thick trail of gore, or something that looks like it, is all over the lower half of their faces and dripping down their chins. By their feet is what looks like a rat, and there isn’t much of it left, except some bones and even those have been picked clean.

  I raise my hand to give the signal to back away and the woman’s eyes snap open. I can see them glowing, and the light they’re emitting is pointed straight at us. She hisses, and when her mouth opens I can see that it’s black. We back away and the curtain swings closed, but I can hear them coming and I see the lights from their eyes dancing around the edges of the fabric wall between us.

  The woman runs into the curtain and tears it off the wall. I pull the trigger on my repeater and watch thumbnail-sized holes riddle her body through the curtain. She drops at my feet.

  Then Bron opens up with his 20mm cannons, and I’m nearly deafened by the noise. Huge chunks of plaster and splinters of wood go flying. I see one zombie’s face explode. Another’s head is severed at the neck by a shell. The head rolls to the ground, its teeth still gnashing at dead air.

  I feel a hand on me and look down to see the woman I dropped a second ago. She’s clawing at my leg, and her dress has come off, and now all she’s wearing is a diamond necklace. There isn’t any room for the Katana, but I have a six-inch blade tucked into my boot and I shove it in her eye. She stops moving for good after that.

  A second later, Bron stops shooting. I can see his chest heaving, and his eyes are filled with bloodlust. Ret, standing behind him, never got a chance to fire a single shot.

  “The head,” I say to Bron. “You can do whatever you want to the rest of ‘em, but they don’t die till you shoot ‘em in the brain.”

  The room is calm except for the severed head, which is gnashing wildly at empty air. This time I use the Katana.

  When I turn back toward the front of the shop I see Sneak, and I know by the look on her face that something bad is about to happen. We make it back to Jinx and the others. Glave looks like he just wants to go home, wife or no wife. I don’t blame him. The rescuers are now the ones who need rescuing. That’s when I discover what it is that’s got Sneak so spooked.

  -12-

  Hissing. And bare feet. Dozens, maybe hundreds, crunching through the rot and debris that’s littering the entire shopping plaza. I rush to the door and shine my light. There’s nothing to see, but there’s at least one level below us, and from where I’m standing it sounds like they’re coming from there. “We’re about to have company,” I say. “And lots of it.”

  The barrels of Bron’s 20mm guns are glowing red hot. “I say we stay and fight.”

  “Noble,” I say. “But I’m not interested in being anyone’s lunch. Besides, we came here to find lost Prospectors and I intend to do just that.”

  Ret pipes up. “Azina, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but those Prospectors are probably all dead.”

  Sneak’s banging on the wall by the doorway and signing madly with one hand. She’s telling me she can see them and we don’t have any more time to argue.

  “There must be another door,” Ret says, scanning our surroundings for some sort of way out.

  I head toward the back of the shop. “Oleg, you’re the historian. Do these shops have a back exit?”

  Oleg’s face is blank; I know he can hear the noises outside and it’s preventing him from thinking clearly.

  I head to the room at the back of the shop. One of Bron’s shells has punched a hole the size of my fist in the back wall, and I can feel a trickle of air coming through it.

  “Azina,” I hear someone calling. “Whatever you’re doing, make it fast.”

  I follow the vent up toward the ceiling, and overhead is a metal grate. I put one foot on a shelf and climb up. I use my knife like a pry bar and the grate falls to the floor. It’s big enough to hold a man. I just hope it’s enough to hold Bron.

  “Up here!” I shout, but the words are drowned out by gunfire. I climb down. The others are using the shop counter as a firing platform. A handful of dark-faced Zees are streaming into the store, and I can see more close behind.

  I grab Sneak and motion to the vent. Glave is next, then Pennies and Oleg. Now it’s only me, Jinx, Ret and Bron left. The stream of Zees goes from a trickle to a flood and they jam the doorway. The few who managed to make it inside are either dead or headless.

  “Wait here till Jinx and Ret are up,” I tell Bron. “Then it’s your turn.”

  “What about you?” he asks.

  “I’m last, as always.”

  Ret slides in, and Jinx winks and throws me a grenade. I catch it and slide it into my pocket. “Bron, you’re up.”

  He rolls out of position and I take his place. He gets about halfway up the shelf when the glass at the front of the shop shatters, and a tsunami of hissing gray-faced Zees comes pouring in. There are too many of them for my repeater to be much use. I glance back. Bron’s nearly
through, and I can see the vent dipping under his weight. If it comes down on top of this horde, it’s all over.

  I pull out the grenade, pop the pin, and toss it in front of me. The Zees don’t care one bit and keep charging. I duck into the back room and feel the ground shake as it goes off. Shrapnel flies in all directions, even at the vent leading out over the shop. I hear a scream from inside. Someone’s been hit, but there’s no time to worry about that now. Screaming’s good. Means they’re still alive.

  I grab onto the vent opening and start pulling myself in. I’m dangling in mid-air when I see the room fill with Zees. They look like they’re dressed for a cocktail party. One man has what looks like a monocle dangling from his jacket. They’re grabbing at my feet with their hands. I’m kicking them off as best I can and trying to find something to hold onto when I feel the bite. One of those fuckers has my ankle in his mouth and the pain is excruciating. I look down and can’t believe what I see. The bastard who has my leg is a Warden – a member of the Prior’s personal bodyguard. What the hell?

  I kick him off and struggle the rest of the way into the shaft. Up ahead, it sounds like aluminum sheet metal bending back and forth. Everyone’s inching forward through some sort of air duct, and none of us have the slightest idea where we’re heading.

  -13-

  We make slow progress and I can’t help but feel the tiny walls closing in around me. Below us, the Zees are hissing and moaning something awful. My only hope is that they’re too stupid to clamber up into the vent after us.

  Then another thought occurs to me. What on Earth sent that horde swarming toward us in the first place? Was it the sound of Bron’s heavy guns? Maybe, but the mine detonation and tunnel cave-in had been so much louder. This job was supposed to be a cake walk. That’s the way Prior Skuld had pitched it. “Should be run-of-the-mill, for an experienced crew like yours.” He was smiling at the time, too, and I thought the expression on his weathered face was betraying a secret admiration. If we make it out of this alive, Prospectors or not, this job's gonna cost double.

  Without warning, the vent takes a forty-five degree dip and I can hear them sliding down. This isn’t good. Down isn’t where we want to go. I hear a thud, and someone cries out, and I’m sure I know what’s happened. “One at a time!” I shout ahead. “Or you’ll get your head rammed up someone’s ass.”

  Bron’s in front of me, laughing, and the vent starts wobbling even more.

  Now it’s my turn to slide, and there’s so much debris the trip down’s not nearly as fun as I thought it would be.

  It doesn’t take us long to reach the end of the air duct. Everyone’s touching ground and dusting themselves off. Oleg’s robe has gone from mostly red to mostly black. Even his face looks like someone powdered it with crushed coal.

  By the looks of it, we’ve gone down at least two levels. I scan the surroundings. Open space. Low ceilings. More shops on both sides. On the dirty floor, mixed in with the debris, is a sign that looks like it once hung from a pair of hooks on the wall. I point at it, and Oleg wipes off the dirt with a bare hand.

  “Food Court,” he says. “Where in heaven’s name have you led us, Azina?”

  I’m not feeling nearly as diplomatic as I was before. “Led you? I didn’t lead you anywhere. You were more than welcome to stay behind with those things.”

  Then the burning pain in my ankle makes me think of that dark-faced Keeper zombie. “How long have you known about this place?”

  He gives me a blank stare.

  “This complex. How long has the Order known about it?”

  “We didn’t. Those four Prospectors had been the first to discover it, and that couldn’t have been more than a handful of days ago.”

  I don't believe him. The others are watching us and I can see the worried look on Ret’s face. “That horde that charged the store. Mixed in with ‘em was what looked like a Warden Captain. He was one of ‘em. Shit-colored face and all.”

  Oleg laughs. “I highly doubt that,” the old man says. “Everything was chaos. How can you be sure?”

  “Because he tried to bite my leg off.” I leave out the part where he succeeded.

  “I don’t understand,” Bron says.

  “You’re not the only one,” says Oleg. “What are you implying, Azina? That The Keepers have known about this place for a while?”

  “I never said that, but if you’re asking me to risk the lives of my people, I’d like to know what we’re getting involved in.”

  Oleg crosses his arms over his chest and I can tell he’s shutting down. “I know as much as you do,” he says. “If The Keepers had any knowledge of this place, don’t you think they would’ve told me?”

  I decide to let it go for now. Besides, we have a job to do.

  -14-

  The second Prospector is easy to find and nearly impossible to identify. The body looks like it’s been mauled by wild animals. Most of the flesh has been stripped to the bone.

  Glave is about to do his crying routine again and I stop him cold. “This isn’t your wife.”

  “How on Earth do you know that?” His eyes are wide and frantic.

  I point to the slight bulge at the crotch, the one area left intact. Glave sighs with relief. I don’t want to tell him his chances of finding Rosaline alive are slim, but he’s probably thinking that already.

  The Prospector’s pistol is still in its holster.

  “Looks like they at least finished him quick,” Ret says.

  Even in the dark I can see the blood drain from Pennies’ face.

  Glave collects the pistol, grabs a handful of clips, and wedges the gun under his waistband.

  Personally, I’d prefer that he leave it alone. Popular thinking always says the more guns the merrier. I beg to differ. A gun in the hands of someone who doesn’t know how to use it usually creates more problems than it solves. One of the few bits of history I can remember has to do with a huge war that engulfed the entire world. At one point, these guys called the Germans armed old men and young boys to defend their capital. Problem was, the raw recruits had a nasty habit of either getting in the way or shooting their own guys by mistake. I couldn't say if the stories were one hundred percent true, but it doesn’t take more than one or two experiences in the real world to figure it probably was.

  Sneak goes ahead a few yards and I can see by the tilt of her head she’s listening for the sound of those things. The blinding urge to pull up my pant leg and check the wound is almost unbearable. Not to mention my head's starting to swim and I can't tell if it's because of the intense pain or the thirst that’s still kicking my ass.

  I don’t dare check the wound in front of the group though, not before I find out what it might mean. I can still see that ghoulish Keeper’s face, his skin like tree bark, and that single-minded, feral glare in his glowing eyes. He’d looked vaguely human, but there wasn't a shred of humanity left. It’s becoming clear now that something had turned both the Keeper and that first Prospector from men into monsters, and I need to know if I’m at risk.

  Ret covers the body with a jacket he’s taken from a nearby shop while the others sit down on the cold, hard floor. Oleg is staring off into thin air, and he has a look on his face like he’s not so sure he’s gonna make it out of this. Maybe he’s praying.

  Oh Newton, God of weight and movement, grant me the speed to outrun these lowly Mercenary barbarians or the courage to end it all with a single bullet...

  I sidle up next to him. “These things are what nearly killed the human race, aren’t they?” I whisper.

  Oleg’s eyes are still on the jacket and the form underneath it. The jacket isn't quite long enough, and one of the man’s skeletonized toes is sticking out. “It seems that way.”

  “If we want any chance of getting home," I say, trying to keep my voice down, "then I need to know what we’re up against. I get that The Order insisted you accompany the rescue mission, but if you’re not going to open up and be honest, then frankly, you’re no g
ood to us.”

  This seems to make a dent. “What is it you need to know?”

  “For starters, what are they? And how long have they been down here?”

  Oleg shakes his head and I worry that I'm gonna get another load of bullshit.

  “It’s taken us years to piece together what happened in those final days," he starts. "Nearly two centuries ago, our forefathers felt the need to start pumping a psychotropic substance into the water supply in the hopes that it would calm a people who were growing dangerously... shall we say... restless. Only years before, they had introduced a compound called fluoride into the water designed to prevent tooth decay. To them, this next step hardly seemed like a huge leap.”

  “And they ended up killing people.” I jump ahead.

  “Not exactly. You see, everything dies eventually. It’s just a matter of when. For the human cell, death comes after fifty divisions. Cellular replication and death are part of the ageing process. Whatever they dumped into the water created a series of genetic mutations in the population. One of those mutations halted cell growth once it hit that fiftieth division. They were locked into an indefinite holding pattern. But, without new cells, the skin darkens and begins to wrinkle. The chemicals in the water also seem to have disconnected the brain’s higher functions. The human race began to regress.”

  Cells. Genetics. Evolution. Most of this goes over my head except for one thing. Their infinite lifespan. “How long have they been down here?”

  “That's hard to say. If they've been locked away all these years, I'd say upwards of two centuries."

  “So let me get this straight. These things have been trapped down here, starving to death, for over two hundred years.”

  Oleg nods, and I’m shocked he can be so casual about all of this.