The fire spreads faster than the rot, catching, devouring and digesting it, until all that remains is ash.
When the fire continues, consuming the living world beyond the spreading death, I start to doubt what I’ve done. Animals scurry from the forest. I hadn’t seen them there! The flames catch them, igniting them one by one, with the sudden deadly efficiency of moths striking a bug zapper. They shriek, leap and ignite. By the time they hit the ground again, they’re nothing more than charred remains, reduced to their most basic chemical elements.
“No,” I say, tears in my eyes.
A rabbit springs into the air, trying to vault the flames. Its outstretched body clears the flickering orange, but the heat alone set the soft fur alight. The shriek of its passing lasts just a moment, but it’s enough to fully break my resolve. “No!”
The fire spreads toward the horizon, filling the air with smoke and cries of anguish. Heat surrounds me as flames lick up the cliff side and then lunge into the forest behind me.
My legs give way.
Hard rock digs into my bare knees, and for the first time since this vision began, I realize that I am once again naked and shameless. Blood flows from my scraped flesh, oozing out into the rocky crags. I feel no pain. Only sorrow at the world’s passing.
“Do not despair,” the voice says. “Rebirth requires sacrifice.”
“Requires death, you mean.” The words are an accusation. “Murder. Genocide.”
I think my words, burning with anger and accuracy will put the presence on the defensive. That it will learn the error of its ways and recant. I have come to believe, after all, that I am communicating with the aberration. Why it’s bothering to show me these visions, I don’t know, but some small part of me hopes it can be reasoned with.
But then it adds to my list of accusations, revealing it fully understands the scope of what it’s doing. “Extinction.”
I turn to face the figure, thrusting my index finger toward its smoke covered face. “You don’t have to do this! We don’t deserve this! What gives you the right!”
Unaffected by my tirade, the figure, which is now really just a spectral, undefined head and a limbless body, tilts its head. “The machine is fueled by destruction.”
The machine.
The smoky figure spoke of it in the first vision, too. Ike called it ‘the ancient.’ But am I speaking to the machine? Is that what’s walking across Europe? Maybe the machine is what woke the massive creature? Or Kiljan’s blood. Or the ice ax assault? Did that small scale attack trigger a war?
None of this makes sense.
But I know it’s wrong.
“Destroying a species isn’t—”
“It is the world that burns,” the figure says. “Not a single species.”
I’m speaking with a sociopath intent on scouring all life from the planet. The depth of its hatred and loathing unhinge me, and words I haven’t used since becoming involved with Bell rise from the depths and hiss through my lips. “Jesus fucking Chri—”
The figure billows out like a predatory bird, unfurling its wings, flaring with primal rage. “Fool!” For a flickering moment, I see past its smoky veil, seeing luminous eyes that tear through me—body and soul. Then it descends, lifting me off the cliff and propelling me over the side. Gravity takes hold with sickening quickness, pulling me toward the scorched earth below.
I look back at the figure standing above me on the cliff, its ominous shape taking on the figure of a man once more. It seems satisfied with my fate, watching me plummet to my death.
But will I die?
This is a vision, I think.
I’m still riding on the machine’s back. Still with Graham. Perhaps unconscious, but in no immediate danger, if you ignore the potential for radioactive fallout. But last time this happened, I was only unconscious for a few seconds, and speaking out loud.
“Veneno mundi,” I whisper, the words yanked away by the wind whipping past me.
Poisoned world.
The machine is fueled by destruction.
I feel the realization tickling my mind a moment before I strike the ground.
Bones break. Everywhere.
My insides liquefy and ooze from pores and burst skin.
And yet, I live. I can hear. And see. And think, despite the fact that I can feel my brain slipping out of my opened skull.
The taste of ash is dry on my tongue. The land around me is charred and dead.
But no longer poisoned, I think, my impending epiphany returning.
The ash twitches.
A coil of green pushes up through it, into the sun.
Leaves sprout.
The plant grows.
Life from death. Rebirth. Poison defeated.
Bare feet step beside the plant, flexing, digging in the ash the way a child does sand at the beach.
I turn my eyes—the only part of me that can still move—up. Two slender legs give way to a naked body that I recognize before my gaze reaches the face. But when I see Mina’s kind eyes looking down at me, they’re framed by wrinkles. Like with the vision of Ike and Ishah, she has aged.
“Do you understand now?”
“Why are you here?” I ask, and then I address the presence, who I can no longer feel, but who I suspect can still hear me just fine. “Why show me her?”
Mina crouches down beside my dying body. She caresses my cheek with the back of her hand.
The vision fractures, and I see other realities.
An endless green, living ocean. I can feel the toxicity emanating from it.
I know what this is. The Great Oxygenation Event. The very first mass extinction on Earth. Massive amounts of photosynthetic organisms bloomed in the oceans, covering the planet, releasing vast amounts of free oxygen, which was toxic to the anaerobic organisms that populated the Earth 2.3 billion years ago. Nearly all life on Earth was killed, until suddenly, something shifted. The photosynthetic organisms’ numbers were greatly reduced, and life was allowed to flourish and evolve once more.
A green wave, hundreds of feet tall, surges through the ocean, heading directly for me. My eyes follow the cresting form toward the top, where the sun glows brightly, blotting out the shape of something massive, moving through the water, shedding waves of material from its back with every step.
The vision within a vision ends when Mina pulls her hand away from my skin. Her fingers come away bloody. “Quid futurum sit. Erit.”
She stands, looking like she wants to say something else, but then her face twists up in fear and anger, and she screams at me.
“Science guy! Get the fuck up!”
19
Despite the crash of the C-130, the deaths of all those Rangers and my own close call with the brink, the moment I entered the vision-state, the environment surrounding us was calm. I had time to think and observe, to wipe away ash and test a theory—that physical contact allows human beings to somehow communicate with the aberration…the Machine. While the theory appears to be validated, Kiljan had his toe impaled by the creature’s spine and experienced nothing more than pain. All of this comes and goes through my thoughts with the brevity of a top quark’s lifespan, measured in yoctoseconds, and is replaced by a louder, more desperate set of thoughts that coalesces into a simple, three-word expletive. “What the shit?”
I’m on my back, looking up at an ash-filled sky. But I’m not lying still, I’m sliding backward, bouncing over the shell’s rough surface. Graham is dragging me with one hand, yanking my body over jagged imperfections while firing his tan SOPMOD M4 assault rifle in regular three-round bursts.
What is he shooting at? I wonder, as the vision-fog lifts. Our situation doesn’t seem to have changed much. We’re still on the Machine’s back, and I seriously doubt bullets will do the megalithic creature any harm.
“Science Guy!” Graham tugs harder, shaking me, driving his fist into the back of my skull.
“Oww!” I shout, and I’m dropped.
“Get up!” Graham sa
ys. “Tangos at your six.”
I’ve never been in the military, nor have I ever really played military video games, so I’m not very familiar with military terms, unless they involve some kind of tech or advanced science. But I’ve seen enough movies to know that ‘tangos’ means ‘bad guys’—though I’m not really a fan of dehumanizing enemies with terms like Charlie, Gook and Haji. And I know ‘my six’ is behind me, which is also Graham’s twelve.
Did another military force land on the Machine’s back? If so, why would Graham be firing at them? His is the only weapon I hear, so if there are people here with us, he’s either pinning them down or slaughtering them.
I roll to my stomach, push myself up and get a good look at what’s coming our way.
They don’t have guns, but they’re not human either.
The best way I can describe them is giant, eight-legged mites, or hairy crabs. Their shells match the Machine’s back in color and texture, and if they weren’t moving toward us, I doubt I’d ever notice them. I don’t see any pincers, but their mandibles look prehistorically powerful. In fact, everything about them feels ancient.
Every time one of Graham’s bullets strikes a creature, it hunkers down, looking more like a stone than a living thing. But there are no bullet holes. The rounds are being deflected, not even leaving scratches. And once the barrage ends, the struck creatures get back to their sharp-tipped feet and continue toward us. Individually, I would find them no more threatening than a large crab, but these…Crawlers…have a malevolent look in their six, small, black eyes.
And they outnumber us a hundred to one.
Graham swaps out his spent magazine for a new one, his movement fluid and practiced. He aims at the encroaching horde, but holds his fire. “Ideas?”
He’s asking me?
But then I realize he’s already exhausted his options. Brute force isn’t going to help.
“Where did they come from?” I ask.
He motions with the rifle’s barrel, at the rear of the advancing wave of Crawlers. Small pore-like holes pock the vast exoskeletal shell. The smaller creatures must have been huddled inside the divots. “They came out just after you went down and started mumbling.”
“What did I say?”
“How should I know?” he says. “Sounded like Latin. That’s hardly pressing, though, don’t you think?”
I focus on the creatures, hoping to glean some kind of clue about their purpose here. I find it in their appearance. Like mites. “They’re symbiotic organisms,” I declare. “Living off the Machine, scavenging material that collects on its surface, the way pilot fish swim around sharks, picking off parasites. Or the way actual eyelash mites do, eating old skin cells and oil.”
Graham takes a step back, standing next to me as the Crawlers close in. I can’t see his facial expression behind his goggles, facemask and helmet, but his body language exudes tension. He’s doing a good job not losing his mind, though. I feel close to becoming unhinged, but finding a way to classify these things helps.
“So what are we, in this scenario of yours?” he asks.
Wishing I had a weapon of my own, even though I know it wouldn’t do any good, I say, “We’re a food source. Given the size differential between us and the Machine, a better comparison might be bacteria, in which case the bacteria that’s already made its home here—” I motion to the Crawlers, now just twenty feet away, “—sees the new bacterial strain—us—as invaders. These things might be part of the Machine’s physiology.”
“You keep calling it ‘the Machine.’” He turns his head toward me, and though I can’t see his eyes behind his goggles, I feel his gaze like a weight. “You know something I don’t?”
“Just something I heard.”
“At the White House?”
“In a…” I nearly say vision. “In a dream.”
“Well, that’s incredibly not helpful.”
I see a blur of motion reflecting in his goggles.
“Look out!” Before I understand what I’m doing, I shove Graham out of the way, putting myself in the projectile’s path. I have just enough time to turn my head and see that the thing flying toward my face is a Crawler. The creature sprang into the air with the energy of an enlarged flea. Its underside flexes wider, and its eight limbs spread open to envelop my face. Of all the ways I imagined myself dying on this mission, being killed by something so much smaller than me wasn’t on the list.
Just before the creature strikes my mask, a three-round burst drowns out the sound of my scream and punches into the Crawler’s underside. Limbs explode outward, trailing tendrils of white and luminous red gore, which slaps against my facemask. The consistency of toilet paper dunked in milk, the goopy guts stick, until I brush them away. Through the smeared visor, I see the shell spinning by my feet.
There’s a pause, as the small creatures seem to watch their fallen comrade’s corpse spin around, flinging a pattern of white and glowing red slime that reminds me of the spin-art toy Mina bought the boys a few years ago.
Then, all at once, they start tapping their little legs with frantic urgency. Their undersides flicker red and then glow, like miniature undercar lights.
Graham backs away. “That can’t be good.”
“I think we should run,” I say.
“That’s your scientific opinion?” he asks, and I hear the sarcasm.
“Common sense,” I say, and then I make a break for it. It’s probably not nice of me to run without a consensus, but my odds of survival are much lower than Graham’s. Most of my photographers over the years have joked that the best way to survive a dangerous encounter is to be faster than the writer you’re working with. It was funny the first time, as the photographer and I stared down a grizzly bear, and the second time, when Bell said it while we squared off against mice in the attic, but it hasn’t been funny since. And now, as I stumble-run over a rising, falling and tilting landscape, I suspect that there is a nugget of wisdom buried in the cliché.
When Graham easily overtakes me, I’m sure of it.
“Where are we going?” I shout.
“Hell if I know. You’re the one who picked the direction.”
“Straight line,” I say. “We’ll reach the edge sooner or later.” I take a quick look back. The Crawlers aren’t crawling any more. They’re scurrying. Leaping. Building speed as we put a little distance between us. But I don’t think they’ve reached full speed yet, and there’s no way to know how far they can run without getting tired.
At my best, I know that I can run miles when certain death is chasing me. I learned that on the glacier. But that was just a few days ago, and I’m already starting to feel the ache return to my muscles. I’m not ready for a long distance slog.
Graham on the other hand, looks like he could run around the globe, his posture and pacing perfect, like he was engineered in Germany.
I shouldn’t be here.
I should have said ‘no.’ Stayed with my family.
Why didn’t I?
A shrill beeping fills my ears.
“Is someone trying to contact us?” Despite being thirty feet ahead of me, Graham has no trouble hearing me over the comms, which is where the beeping is coming from. He slows to a stop, staggering a little, as the ground beneath our feet slows to a stop and starts rising again. He bends his knees, absorbing the shift in direction, as he looks down at his chest.
What is he looking at? I think, and then I look at my own chest, where I see the radiation detector. A small red light is blinking in time with the beeping.
Shit.
I look back at the Crawlers, now surging straight for us.
Shit, shit, shit.
An almost sexy, robotic voice fills my ears. “Radioactive isotopes detected. Cesium-134 and Cesium-137 have both been detected in unhealthy levels. At current levels, prolonged exposure could result in fever, muscle weakness, vomiting and other flu-like symptoms. Recommend immediate evacuation in a southeasterly direction.”
I lo
ok to the sky, trying to find the sun, but it’s nowhere in sight. I am lost, in every sense of the word. But Graham is still in control. Consulting a compass on his forearm, he turns around and points. “Southeast.”
“Rock and a hard place,” I say.
“Killer rocks and a radioactive cloud. But it’s a simple choice. I can’t shoot radiation.” And with that, he charges directly at the incoming Crawlers.
20
Graham moves with the swiftness and agility of a running back despite the armor and gear he’s wearing. I can’t pull off that level of physicality, even without gear and armor, but I do my best to follow him. Any other path might lead directly to my demise.
Two groups of Crawlers are tick-tacking their way across the shell-back, scrabbling over the imperfections stumbling me up, with ease. Their broad, flat-bellied bodies and eight legs are tailor made for this environment. The hordes are closing in on us from both sides and zipping together behind us and pursuing.
We can’t stop.
Can’t change direction.
We’re either running toward freedom or directly into a trap.
I flinch when Graham opens fire, squeezing off one round at a time. The bullets ping off the shells of the nearest Crawlers, doing no real damage, but triggering their crouching instinct, allowing us to pass by without being leapt upon.
We run like this for several minutes, with me breathing heavily, Graham shooting any Crawlers that make it past the mental line he’s drawn and the Crawlers inexorably closing in behind us. We’re a little bit faster than they are, but with the zipper still closing behind us, the horde is just ten feet back, nearly close enough to leap on me. And that’s what keeps me moving, despite the ache in my side, the burn in my lungs and invisible knives stabbing into my thighs.
“Science Guy.” Graham sounds a bit winded himself. Or afraid. Neither possibility comforts me. He slows a little, letting me catch up. He shoots a Crawler making a mad dash toward him, forcing it to the ground, squelching the red light from its underside. Then he points straight ahead.
Apocalypse Machine Page 13
