by Bob Mayer
The number dwindled as parasites took over humans who knew where others were hiding and directed the Swarm to them.
The Swarm accepted that there always was a margin of Scale that escaped a reaping. But with a ninety-eight percent capture rate on the estimated living population, a total of over seven billion Scale was acceptable to the Swarm. It was possible, given the damage that had already been done to the climate due to nuclear weapons, the loss of life due to war and the reaping, that the Scale would not be able to repopulate the planet.
For millennia that had been sufficient for the Swarm. To leave behind the rotting husk of what had once sustained Scale. But recently, for the Swarm that is, it had taken destruction to another level, more productive for the long term.
The warship loaded with metamorphised hadesarchaea exited the Core, sliding past the laden, inbound warships. It dropped from orbit toward Earth.
SWARM WARSHIP
It took all of Darlene’s will not to exercise her own will against the parasite. To allow it to enter, absorb into her spinal cord, take control of her nervous system. To be utterly raped as a human being.
To submit to being marched to the warship. To enter a not very crowded bay. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the people from the pick up truck. Some she recognized from Marfa. There were injured lying on the floor. People coughing, moaning. Dying. A child was lying in front of her, blood pulsing from her mouth, nose, eyes and ears. The flow stopped just as the floor moved upward.
Darlene wanted to kneel, to cradle the child. But it was too late for that and she couldn’t draw attention.
Her knees buckled slightly.
They were airborne.
She wondered if Bobby was in here. Had he gone down fighting? Wasting bullets?
There wasn’t much pain, which confused her. The parasite, about six inches long by a quarter inch in diameter had entered her mouth. Her throat had responded naturally, trying to vomit the unnatural invasion, but the parasite had pressed on. She’d choked for several moments as it went down, but then her sense of where it was had faded. There was no doubt it was in her nervous system given her involuntary march to the warship. But how? If it had gone intact from her throat to spine, it would have had to rip through either her stomach or lungs. But she didn’t taste blood. Had it dissolved somehow? Broken down into smaller cellular organisms that could go through her body without damaging it?
It was an interesting issue.
Focusing on this was keeping her from the horror of what surrounded her and the fear of the unknown which awaited her.
Sofia?
We’re here. We’ll stay with you.
Rex?
We’ll get him.
ON THE SEVENTH DAY
And on the Seventh Day, the Swarm had completed all the work it had begun on the planet Earth.
Except for one last bit.
SWARM BATTLE CORE
Shear realized there was a slow current in the soup. A slow movement. He, and everyone around him, were being pushed away from where they’d come. Which was necessary as more and more people were walking off the edge, splunking into the goo, and being released from their thrall.
Looking left and right, the low cliff continued as far as he could see. Thousands of people every second were falling in. The screaming is what hell must sound like, Shear thought.
He was sprayed with something from a person next to him. It took him a second to realize it was blood. The man was coughing as if his life depended on it, spewing blood and pieces of his lungs outward. Shear raised one arm out of the goo and wiped his face clear. The man’s eyes lost life. The head rolled back and he disappeared under the surface.
Shear’s skin was tingling, itching everywhere. A small misery piled on top of the broken tibia and other damage he’d already sustained.
*****
The Fynbar’s sensors were picking up a noise. Turcotte adjusted the volume. The sound made his head hurt much worse. It took him a few moments to realize what it was: humans. Screaming. It echoed in the docking area.
How many people screaming did it take to cross this massive open space, Turcotte wondered.
Millions? Billions? Why did the Swarm want humans? Why had it gone through so much trouble to bring them up here?
He looked down at the flickering green light. The Fynbar was drawing energy out of the air. Turcotte realized that made sense. Whatever the Swarm ships used for STL drive had to be the same as the Fynbar. Magnetic? Gravity? Whatever, like remote charging a cell phone, the Fynbar was taking advantage of whatever field was being propagated in this hangar.
Feeling better about the fuel situation, Turcotte flew the Fynbar through the hangar, searching for a way deeper into the Core.
Because somewhere in here was the truth about the Swarm.
SURVIVAL SILO, KANSAS
The pod was pitch black with the small light off. There was absolute silence since the last screams had faded away. How long ago that was, Tremble had no idea but it seemed like a very long time. He didn’t wear a watch; he’d always relied on his cell phone for the time. But his cell phone was dead.
Tremble turned the light on, but it was almost as bad as being in utter darkness. The walls of the pod felt like they were closing in on him. Tremble wiped a shaking hand across his forehead. It was covered in sweat. His stomach heaved and he couldn’t stop from vomiting all over his shirt and into his lap.
The stink filled the pod. He ripped the shirt off, using it to wipe up the puke from his pants. He didn’t have another set of clothes. He didn’t have much of anything, most particularly space.
Was he sick? Or just reacting?
Tremble began coughing. Hard, trying to get something up. He looked down at his hands. They were covered in blood mixed with something. Pieces of his lungs?
He turned the light off.
PRIVATE ISLAND, PUGET SOUND
Nosferatu had lain perfectly still for several hours, his arm under Nekhbet’s head. There had been no sound for all that time. It took him ten minutes to carefully retrieve his arm without waking her. He suspected he could have jerked it out and she would have not risen to consciousness, but he didn’t want to take a chance. If he opened the tube and those monsters were waiting, best if she not be aware of the end.
He smiled wryly. An Elder of the Undead concerned about ‘monsters’. The irony was rich.
Gently, he lifted the lid. It was pitch black. Even he couldn’t see. He slid out, closing the lid behind. He made his way out of the vault and picked up the first traces of illumination. He stopped for a moment and sniffed. A dampness, but that was the Pacific Northwest. A faint trace of smoke and ash.
Penetrating through was another odor: Death.
That was familiar. Along with the odor of fear. As bad, if not worse than what he’d experienced outside Vampyr’s castle in Transylvania when Vampyr, as Vlad the Impaler, had thousands of humans on stakes surrounding his castle.
Nosferatu had thought it was night, but he realized it was daytime as he reached the surface. It was overcast and snowing. As he stepped out from underneath the opening to the complex, he realized it wasn’t snow because the ground was covered with grey and it was too warm. It was ash. So thick he couldn’t see more than a quarter mile across Puget Sound. Seattle was lost in the distant grayness.
Death. It felt absolute. He could sense no living human. Even the animals seemed to be distant, hiding, hunkered down. He realized there were no birds. No seagulls. No sound. An utter stillness. Looking up, visibility was also limited, but he had a feeling the warships weren’t hovering.
Nosferatu re-entered the complex to get Nekhbet.
SWARM WARSHIP
First Sergeant Donovan was aware there were other soldiers in this cargo hold. But he couldn’t control his body.
Utter defeat.
He took scant satisfaction from the damage his men had inflicted on the dragons and other Swarm monsters. What did it matter now?
He envied t
he dead.
THE FACILITY
“We must get the dog,” Sofia said.
Asha shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. And you said that Darlene warned of a sickness above.”
“Darlene is heading to the Core,” Sofia said. “There’s no one left on the surface. Except Rex.”
“How—“ Joseph began, but then stopped. “No one? You can sense no one up there?”
“They’ve all been taken,” Sofia said. She frowned, then looked over at the bed. “The Fades. They always die?”
“We assume so,” Asha said. “Eventually everything will shut down.”
“But not yet,” Sofia said, more to herself. “I wonder.” She walked over to the boy. He was eleven years old, stocky, sandy haired. She put a hand on his forehead. “He, and the other Fades, can still be useful to the community.”
“How?” Asha asked.
Sofia didn’t answer. She closed her eyes. Several other Metabols entered, ignoring Asha and Joseph. They gathered around the Fade, putting their hands on his head.
Other Metabols were going into the bay in the clinic where the remaining fades were in comas. They put their hands on the Fades’ heads.
The boy’s eyes opened.
Sofia removed her hands, as did the rest of the Metabols. They moved away.
The boy swung his feet over, touching the ground. Stood.
He looked about, without any particular interest. He said nothing.
“How do you feel?” Asha asked, for lack of anything else to say in the face of this astonishing event.
The boy just stared at her, as if she were part of the building.
“He, and the other Fades, will get the dog,” Sofia said. “And check the surface.” She looked at Asha. “You will have to lead them to where they can exit the Facility without contaminating us. And get whatever is on Rex’s collar.”
SWARM BATTLE CORE
Darlene went with the flow as the thralled exited the warship and staggered into the Core. Down a wide corridor. Over the ledge into the goo.
Her link to the Metabols was tenuous, distant, gone at moments.
It would not last.
She felt the soup enclosing her body as she struggled to the surface, to breath. What was this? Was this the entire reason they were brought here?
There was someone else. Closer. Not just a human. There were millions, billions of those inside the Core. Someone else. Someone more than human, but not a Metabol. As she was slowly surged away from the ledge she reached out.
*****
It was difficult to remain oriented inside the Core. Turcotte had begun his inward journey by using the outer ‘hull’ of the Core and heading in the opposite way. After a couple of minutes, though, the hull had disappeared from view. He was in a large void with the occasional warship or scout zipping by. He was trying to maintain a steady heading.
There was a scratching in his head, on top of the pain from the implant. He tried to ignore it, but it became more persistent. He let go of the controls, assuming, perhaps wrongly, perhaps rightly, that the Fynbar would remain in stasis and oriented correctly. He focused on the scratching.
It was a voice. Barely a whisper.
Hello.
Turcotte involuntarily looked about the interior of the Fynbar, even though he hadn’t really heard the voice. He’d picked up the voice.
Who is this?
My name is Darlene. I’m here. I’ve been taken, but I can still—be me. For a little while yet.
Turcotte looked to his left. She was that way. He grabbed the controls, banked the Fynbar and raced toward the ‘voice’. At first he was in the void of the hangar, but then a wall began to close in on the right, then above, below and to the left. The hanger narrowed and there were two wide passageways ahead, each large enough for a warship to pass through.
Turcotte slowed down.
Darlene? You there?
Darlene responded. Yes. What are you doing?
The left passageway. Turcotte angled into it. Coming for you.
No! I am not important.
The miles flashed by. The walls abruptly disappeared and the Fynbar was once more in a large space. Not as big as the hangar, but stretching ahead of him for miles. To the left was a wall with portals exiting to a whitish plateau below. A black wall several miles to the right.
Turcotte let go of the controls, leaving the Fynbar hanging, as he tried to process what he was seeing. Streams of humans were staggering out of the portals on the left.
There were so many they merged into a solid mass of people. All moving left to right. A third of a way across, the white plateau had a drop off, not very far, perhaps ten or fifteen feet. To a grayish-red sea full of people.
There had to be millions of people below and in front.
Turcotte looked right. The grayish sea curved down, very gently, but enough to keep the entire thing moving. And the people in the ‘sea’ gradually disappeared the further it went. From humans struggling to stay afloat to faces, arms and legs sticking out, then nothing as the ‘sea’ disappeared downward just in front of the black wall.
Had they all drowned?
******
The itching was worse, so much worse. Shear lifted his hand, dripping grey. The tips of his fingers were—disappearing.
Shear screamed, joining the unending chorus.
He twisted his head, looking in the direction of the flow. The carpet of gray tinged with red and full of people curved downward, out of sight hundreds of yards away.
That was the end.
Shear knew it. And he wasn’t sure if he wanted it to come faster or not.
He was literally dissolving, becoming part of this material.
Soylent green is people!
He’d have laughed; instead he died.
*****
Darlene fell over the edge into the gray goo. She felt the release of the Swarm parasite instantly. Reconnected the thin thread to the Metabols on the planet below, sensed Turcotte was somewhere above. All in an instant.
You cannot save me she sent to Turcotte. Thank you to the Metabols. But then she saw what they were doing with the Fades and she was confused for a moment. Sending them out? Then she saw why. For Rex. The drive.
And the Fades. She sensed them.
She looked back, toward the portals through which she and the other humans had come. That flow had ceased. Instead of people, there were spiders, Naga, Cthulhu, dragons and the headless Medusa bodies. Heading toward the same fate.
They were done with their mission and no longer needed.
*****
Turcotte had no idea where, among the mass of humanity below, was the woman who called herself Darlene. He knew she was correct, but he was loath to abandon her. Of course, he immediately realized he was abandoning millions, billions, all undergoing the same thing.
*****
Darlene pushed aside concern about the Fades because she understood what she was immersed in. It was part of the Swarm. But not the Swarm. It was seeping into her skin, a base biological soup that could take any living being, break it down into individual cells and rebuild as desired.
This was the source of the spiders, the Naga, the Cthulhu, the bodies for the Medusas, and, ultimately, the Swarm itself. All were connected. The monsters were coming back to it to be broken down until they were needed again, perhaps in a different form as dictated by the planet and Scale to be reaped. A continuous, self-replicating loop of life.
The perfect form of attack to mold the weapon to the planet and the species.
There was a consciousness behind all this.
There is a single brain she sent to both Turcotte and the Metabols.
*****
Where? Turcotte responded to Darlene. It had to be huge, given the size of the Core and the billions of individual Swarm.
Kill the brain, kill the body.
What could destroy that? The Tesla cannon? Doubtful.
Then he knew what could.
He spun th
e Fynbar about before he got an answer from Darlene. Time was critical. He raced back the way he’d come, toward the hangar. Reached it, almost collided with a warship, managing to avoid it by a few feet. He went for the closest portal. Entered.
Still no reply from Darlene. He wondered if he’d lost contact with her as he decelerated just before hitting the membrane. He pushed forward, as quickly as he dared. The membrane stretched, slid around and he was free.
Then he exited the portal and was in space.
Where the hell was it?
THE FACILITY
Asha wore a biological hazard suit. The sound of her breath inside the head cover was a steady beat of accusation, of guilt, as the Fades walked in front of her, along the service tunnel toward the interior door. They wore just their jumpsuits. They were strangely lifeless, yet alive.
She was trusting a girl, albeit a Metabol, with this action. Sending the Fades out for a dog. Had she lost all sense of reality? How had Sofia taken charge from Joseph and her? She felt as if she had no control.
She hit the button on the side of the tunnel and the door swung open. The Fades shuffled inside. She followed, shutting the door behind them.
It wasn’t an airlock, but with the positive overpressure from the Facility, the flow should be outward, not in. She went to a control panel and adjusted the vents in this space, increasing the air pressure so that when she opened the exterior door, all the air would push out. And then when she returned, if she returned, the same would happen when she opened the outer door.
She waited a few moments, her breath rasping inside the suit, the steady, low hiss of the oxygen tank on her back loud. Then she opened the outer door to a gray, dim day in the Davis Mountains of Texas.
