A dull line of pink light stretches across our path.
“Is that more of them?”
“I don’t think so. It’s not moving.” He takes another shot, and then swaps out his magazine for a fresh one. “Looks more like a wall.”
“How many more of those do you have?” I motion to the magazine he’s just loaded.
“After this, just one more. Do you think that’s a problem?”
At first, I think he’s talking about the limited amount of ammunition he has, and I’m about to declare that yes, clearly, that could be a problem. But then I realize he’s talking about the line of glowing pink ahead of us. “Only one way to find out,” I say, and I’m proud of how nonchalantly brave it comes out sounding.
“Copy that,” he says, and keeps on running.
It’s hard to focus on what’s ahead when the Crawlers are closing in, too many for Graham to shoot. He picks up the pace, and I’m forced to follow. I don’t think I can keep it up for long, but we’ll reach the line of pink, which looks like a deeper rose color, now that we’re closer and seeing it through less ash. The ground beneath us drops down, making me feel lighter, but when it slows to a stop and rises back up, my weight feels doubled. My knees quiver for two steps and then give out.
I hit the ground hard, but haven’t even stopped moving when Graham opens fire. The rapid fire staccato tells me he’s switched to full auto, and he’s unloading on the horde like Rambo. When I get back to my feet, the nearest Crawlers are crouched down, while the rest attempt to scrabble past.
Graham swaps out his last magazine and says, “Try not to do that again.” Then he heads for the glowing wall.
If I could see myself from the outside, I’m pretty sure I’d look like Igor, hobbling after his master, desperate and pitiful. But it’s the best my breaking body can manage, and we’re nearly at the wall of now red light. The color matches the Crawlers’ undersides, which is disconcerting, but I don’t see any immediate threats…not including the sea of giant mites still pursuing, and maybe gaining on us.
On the plus side, the radiation detector alarm hasn’t declared us dead or poisoned yet. The red blinking light means we’re still in the danger zone, but if our armor does its job, we should have time to get away. That is, if we can get back to solid, unmoving land and commandeer a vehicle. Getting to the actual ground might be enough, though. If we’re miles high, it’s possible the radiation in the atmosphere hasn’t filtered down into the Ukrainian landscape. Then again, last I knew, the Machine was closing in on Rivne Nuclear Power Plant. When it gets there, we need to be long gone.
Graham arrives at the luminous wall first, takes a moment to look it over and then turns toward me, raising the rifle. I flinch when he fires, hearing the buzz of a bullet cutting through the air beside my head.
A Crawler snaps back, spinning end over end, spraying its brethren with its slick interior. The slime-covered creatures stop and begin wiping themselves clean. The rest stay on task, closing the distance.
Graham takes a few more shots, slowing the front runners. “Ten seconds. That’s all I’m going to give you.”
I’m confused for a moment, but then see the ‘wall’ and understand. We’ve reached a kind of fault line, where one massive plate overlaps the next. The massively thick, top plate tapers down to what looks like a razor’s edge, but it’s the stuff between the plates that is really interesting. It reminds me of a glowing pink version of the lumpy green Jell-O salad my mother used to make for Easter. Chunky white cottage cheese-like fluid oozes from the wall, slowly spreading. It’s followed by gelatinous red, the bioluminescence’s source. And then there are countless clear spheres with what look like…
I gasp.
“Holy shit.”
“Hurry it up!” Graham says, squeezing the trigger a little faster now.
With shaking hands, I free my sample bag and tools, scraping some of the white and red goo into a small vial and following it up with a single—for lack of a better word—egg. This mash of glowing goop most closely resembles a wad of frog eggs.
There’s a hiss from the goop, then a loud crack that shakes the shell beneath our feet. The top plate rises an inch, and more of the eggs fill the gap. It’s expanding. And then I realize there is a better analogy for the eggs: Fiddler crabs, who carry their gelatinous mash of eggs between layers of shell before flapping them out into the water.
I’ve just finished twisting the cap back onto the vial when Graham takes me by my belt, giving me a wedgie and hoists me three feet up, onto the upper plate. He climbs up behind me, and he’s nearly back on his feet when a Crawler springs up onto his calf. Its sharp limbs clamp down, eliciting a shout of pain from him.
On my feet, I wind up and kick the Crawler’s side. If not for the military boots I’m wearing, I think the impact would have broken my toes, but instead, the force knocks the creature free and launches it, tumbling back over the side. I help Graham back to his feet as more Crawlers jump from one plate to the next, continuing their relentless pursuit.
Graham takes two limping steps and says, “That’s it. Screw this shit.” He removes a grenade from his vest while limp-walking backward. He pulls the pin and says, “Fire in the hole.” Then he rolls the thing over the edge and takes a few more steps back, pushing me with him.
The grenade explodes with impressive force, launching Crawlers into the air and hopefully buying us some time.
Without another word, we both turn and hobble away, our pace nearly perfectly matched now. Ten minutes into our flight, I glance back. There are a few Crawlers still in pursuit, visible through the ash only because of their glowing underbellies, but the horde has either been dissuaded entirely, or delayed enough that we can no longer see them.
The radiation detector chimes and declares, “Radiation levels within safe limits,” which means we’re not going to melt, for the moment.
It’s a full half hour later that the plate beneath us shifts in a downward direction, hinting that we’re nearing the thing’s edge. And it’s another full hour before we find it.
The rise and fall of the behemoth upon which we stand is dizzying, now that we’re standing near a precipice. It’s like the world is flat and has come to an end. The Vikings were right all along. As the Machine rises hundreds of feet, I find myself clinging to Graham’s arm.
He looks at my hand, and then my facemask. “You know we have to jump, right?”
“I’d rather jump than fall,” I say.
He shrugs. “Fair enough.”
We inch toward the edge, shuffling forward slowly. When we reach it, both of us deflate.
“Damnit,” Graham says, looking down. The plate we’re standing on doesn’t just drop away, it angles downward, disappearing into the ashen gloom. If we jump over the edge, we won’t fall, we’ll slide, hitting who knows what on the way down.
“What now?” I ask, and I’m surprised when Graham launches over the edge. I’m about to curse him out for being impulsive, but then I notice the Crawler clinging to his facemask.
He didn’t jump.
He was tackled.
I look back.
Flickering red lights switch on in rapid succession, revealing the Crawler horde’s arrival. They’ve been following us this whole time with the bioluminescent giveaway shut off.
Smart little bastards.
One of the nearest creatures launches at my chest. I lean sideways, evading the strike, and the Crawler sails out over the drop off. With one last look back at the encroaching swarm, I follow it off the edge and begin sliding down the rough, black surface of a giant, descending toward who knows what kind of hell, and pursued by a wave of Crawlers that flows over the edge after me like a living waterfall.
21
I was obsessed with sledding when I was a kid. Sliding down a hillside with nothing but a millimeter thick sheet of plastic between me and the slope was my idea of not just a good time, but the best time. Even when the snow began to melt, giving way to frozen dirt an
d rocks, I would launch myself downward with enough momentum to carry me over the rough obstacles. The sled did little to protect my backside, and I’d go home with bruises and swollen lumps, but they were the price of admission for my favorite kind of fun.
As an adult, sliding down a steep grade, jostled and poked by the rough surface beneath me, and moving at a pace that would make my younger self wide-eyed with envy, I fail to see what I ever enjoyed about sledding. Of course, back then I was sledding down a hillside, followed by friends. Now I’m cruising down the side of a nation destroying monster, pursued by a horde of giant, glowing mites. I don’t think my younger self would enjoy this either.
Most of the massive plate’s imperfections are angled downward, allowing me to slide over them without being snagged, or impaled. That’s a good thing. But it also means gravity is having her way with me, yanking me faster over the giant shell.
A quick glance up reveals the horde, still in hot pursuit. Some of the Crawlers are sliding, belly down, legs splayed wide to stay upright. Most are tumbling like an avalanche of grapefruit-sized stones, bouncing out of control.
I shout in surprise as the surface beneath me falls away. I drop a few feet, impact a new plate and continue downward on a steeper slope. Above me is a fault line, where two plates come together, the uppermost one lifted up by glowing red, Jell-O egg goop.
“Science Guy,” Graham says, drawing my attention back to what lies ahead, and downward. I can see him through a thin curtain of ash, which seems to be thinning as we descend. He’s twenty feet below, sliding on his back, feet first, head raised, arms outstretched to either side. He’s doing a better job of controlling his descent, but he’s still bouncing around, being pummeled by the rough surface. The Crawler that tackled him tumbles at his side, spraying white and glowing red goo from its sliced-open gut. He must have stabbed it shortly after going off the edge.
Thank God for the armor we’re wearing, I think, and then I say, “Right behind you.”
“What’s your sitrep?” he asks.
Sitrep? And then I remember Janet Deakins, an expedition leader who’d spent time in the Army before leading Grand Canyon tours, who took a team of biologists and geologists and me down the Colorado. She’d been out of the military for ten years, but still used the lingo. ‘Sitrep’ stands for ‘situation report’, which is military for, ‘how’s it going?’
“I’m alive,” I say. “And twenty feet above you. But we’re not alone. We’ve got Crawlers…on my six.”
“How many?”
I glance back up. I can’t see the end of them in the ashen gloom above. I’m launched by a bump and the number coughs out of me. “Hundreds.”
“Can you steer?” he asks.
My child self rears up from the past. Can I steer? “Lead the way.”
Graham lifts his left hand from the plate and pushes down hard with the other. The sudden brake swings his body to the right, and he slides away at an angle. I perform the same maneuver, and follow his path. The tiniest hint of a smile forms on my face. Part of me is ashamed by it. Millions of people are dead. Thousands more are probably being killed a few miles below us, victims of the Machine’s destructive power. Graham’s squad—his friends—lay dead on the plates now high above us. And there is a very good chance Graham and I will be next. But as we shift directions and the Crawler horde plummets straight down, a pin prick of hope draws my smile a little wider.
And then the floor falls away again.
It takes a few seconds to strike the next plate, but the impact is slight, as though I’m hovering a few microns above the shell.
“This is it,” Graham says. “Angle your body away from the Machine.”
I’m a little surprised he’s adopted the name from my vision, but it’s as good a name as any.
“We need to put some distance between us and it, before touching down.”
Touching down?
It’s then that I figure out that we’re not really sliding down the side of the plate, we’re (mostly) falling beside it.
As are the Crawlers. I see them tumbling out into open space, raining down to the ground far below.
“Are you with me?” Graham shouts.
I turn my focus back to Graham. I can see him beneath me, between my feet. “With you.”
“We need to push away,” he says. “At the same time, so we don’t collide.”
Push away? At this speed?
He’s nuts. But he’s also right. If we fall straight down to the ground, there’s a very good chance we’ll be stepped on, killed in an earthquake or irradiated by the fallout trailing above and behind the behemoth, not to mention the four nuclear reactors it’s closing in on. Once we hit the ground, if we’re still alive, we’ll need to make a hasty retreat or risk being caught in the plant’s impending meltdown.
I lean forward slightly, angling my feet toward the vertical plate. My body lifts fully away from it, and the rough descent becomes a smooth freefall.
“Ready,” I shout.
And before I really feel ready, he barks, “Now! Now! Now!”
I shove backwards with my feet, registering the impact with the shell, and then nothing. Or everything. The world becomes a gray-blue blur. I lose all sense of up and down. My gut twists and my mind goes numb. What is happening to me?
Through the onrush of overwhelming sensations, Graham’s voice pumps loud and clear into my ears. “You’re tumbling!”
No kidding.
“Control your descent!”
I know how, but can’t think of it.
“Open your arms and legs, God damnit!”
His precise instructions register, and I realize I’ve curled up into a tight ball. I open my arms and legs. Wind tears at them, straining my ligaments and muscles. My tumble stops, and for a moment, I find myself falling backward.
That’s when I see it.
The Machine.
Through the gray haze, a creature the size of Manhattan, maybe larger than Manhattan, lumbers through the ash. I still can’t see all of it. It’s obscured by ash, and I’d probably need to be miles away to see the whole thing at once. But it’s the most I’ve seen. Its massive plates are black, but also translucent, revealing shimmering light from within. The plates that cover the outside of its body are split by glowing fault lines, all filled with that thick, luminous, red material.
Eggs, I think, remembering the viscous mass.
Massive coils of glowing red-orange tubes hang down from the Machine’s underside, some of them twisting back up in great loops, others hanging loose and open, drizzling vivid pink fluid on the unseen landscape far below. While much of this thing seems very machine-like, it’s also very much alive, radiating prehistoric biology and displaying biological adaptations still present in modern day organisms—horseshoe crabs and frogs, as well as ancient creatures, like trilobites.
The Machine’s eight massive legs, segmented with large armor-like plates, grow wider at the base, where massive mounds of softer looking flesh spread out, dispersing its incredible weight. It’s an extreme example of how an elephant’s foot evolved over millions of years; the perfect adaptation for something so heavy, keeping its girth from punching through the Earth’s crust with each step. But how did something like this evolve at all? To evolve requires an entire species population and countless generations. Are there more of these things hiding beneath the volcanoes? Are they like cicadas, emerging from their subterranean hiding places every couple of million years? The legs move with graceful efficiency, their stride covering miles with each step. In the seconds I observe it, the thing has nearly passed me completely. While it appears to be moving at a slow, lumbering pace, taking scale into account, I guess it’s moving at an easy two hundred miles per hour. And I think it’s taking its time. My thoughts drift for a moment, wondering why the wind didn’t scour Graham and me from its back.
It’s not aerodynamic, I realize. The air doesn’t flow over its shell smoothly. The Machine is punching through the atmos
phere, disrupting the flow of air, creating pockets of stability.
“Science Guy!” Graham shouts, snapping me from my thoughts and back to my current plight.
I twist around, so my stomach is facing the ground, still hidden by ash. Arms open wide, I angle myself away from the Machine and turn my downward fall into an angled glide. Graham is above me now, and further away. I can barely see him through the ash.
“Radiation ahead,” Graham says, sounding calm despite the grim notification.
My radiation detector chimes, and the feminine voice repeats her previous warning. “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. Recommended action… Unknown.”
The GPS unit is likely trying to make sense of our rapidly changing position and altitude.
“Maintain present course,” the device finally says.
Like we have a choice.
“Secondary recommendation,” the voice says. “Repair radiation shield damage immediately.”
It’s then that I feel the breeze cooling my exposed backside. My pants and the lead mesh within them, protecting me from radiation, must have been torn during our rough slide. When I sense a wet warmth along with the breeze, I realize it’s not just my pants that were torn up. Pain follows the realization, burning the back of my legs and butt. My body tenses. Running away from the Machine, and the nuclear power plant it’s closing in on, is going to be difficult if my muscles are torn and I’m gushing blood.
Focus, I tell myself. One problem at a time.
The ground slides into view, emerging through the dry, gray fog. The land below is both comforting and disconcerting. Comforting because it’s solid ground, rather than the back of a lumbering, ancient, megalithic monster. Disconcerting because it’s wide-open, green field. We won’t have to worry about colliding with houses or vehicles, but it’s going to be a slog before we find transportation.
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