Profusion

by Stan C. Smith

  Marleah reached the edge first. She threw herself onto her belly, put her feet over the edge, and slid off, wailing in pain the whole time. For just a moment, her fingers were visible, hanging on to the roof’s lip, but then she let go.

  Peter and Robert arrived seconds later. Five meters below them, Marleah lay in the rocky dirt, moaning and holding her ankle.

  “Give me your hand!” Peter said.

  Robert nodded. “Once I’m down, I’ll catch you when you jump.” He took Peter’s hand and dropped to his knees. A second later he was over the edge, pushing his feet against the wall to keep away from its heat. Peter sucked in a lungful of hot air. With the additional weight pulling him down, he couldn’t shift from one foot to the other. He thought he could actually smell the flesh burning on his feet. Robert’s eyes met his.

  “Do it,” Robert said.

  Peter let go. Robert hit the ground with a grunt and rolled onto his side. Peter was tempted to simply launch himself from the roof to avoid the searing concrete, but such a desperate move would surely break his legs. He dropped to his belly and slid off the side as quickly as he could without losing his grip on the edge.

  He heard Robert call from below, “I got you, sir!”

  His fingers began to fry, so he let go. Robert broke his fall some, but when he hit the ground his knees buckled and his head flew forward and struck the wall.

  “Sir! Peter!”

  He realized Robert was looking down at him. He blinked. “I’m okay. I think.”

  Robert sat back. “God, I thought you were dead.”

  Peter sat up. He put his hand to his forehead, and it came away red. He tried to gather his thoughts. What the bloody hell had happened? It had been more than a fire. It was like a bomb had gone off inside. Perhaps the explosion had been in the lower, underground level. Maybe that’s why the walls and roof were still intact.

  Suddenly a wave of panic washed over him. “Bobby and Ashley! They’re still in there!” His arms flailed as he tried to get up.

  “You can’t go inside,” Marleah said. She was sitting a few meters away, still holding her ankle. “They triggered the 4:44 protocol. There’s nothing left alive inside the compound. Not even microbes.”

  “What?” Peter said, collapsing back into the dirt. “Why would they do such a thing?”

  She stared at her ankle. “It was a precaution. In case something went wrong with the procedures. Obviously something went wrong.”

  “Maybe they found a safe place,” Robert said. “Maybe a closet or something.”

  She shook her head. “There’s nothing alive in there. And it’ll be weeks before the temperature drops enough for anyone to enter.”

  Peter couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had to get inside. Maybe the kids had somehow found a way to survive. Maybe they had even gotten out. He struggled to his feet. His left leg was seriously burned from the knee down, the flesh blistered and the pant leg partially burned away. He looked at the bottoms of his shoes. He had been right about the soles. They were melted, and blistered skin was fused with the remnants of rubber and fabric. He needed to move now, before the pain got so bad he couldn’t walk.

  He spoke to Marleah. “You said there were doors. Which way to the nearest one?”

  She looked up at him. “You can’t go in there.”

  “Which way!”

  “I don’t know. There are four. People only use one because that’s where the parking lot is. It’s probably that way.” She nodded.

  Peter held his hand out and Robert helped him to his feet. He started limping away.

  “I can’t walk,” Marleah said. “My ankle is broken.”

  Peter kept walking. Without saying a word, Robert caught up and walked beside him.

  They followed the gently curving outer wall. But before they were even out of sight of Marleah, Robert stopped. “What is that?” he said. He was staring ahead.

  Peter squinted. A rabbit-sized creature was running beside the wall, headed for them. But it wasn’t a rabbit—not even close. It was pink and hairless, and it ran on two legs like a flightless bird. Something strange was protruding from its side. Peter grabbed Robert’s sleeve and pulled him away from the wall as the thing scampered past them, and he saw what was protruding from the creature’s side. It was a human hand.

  “I think I’m seeing things,” Robert said.

  Peter turned and watched the creature. “You’re not. I saw it too.”

  The thing stopped when it saw Marleah sitting where they had left her. It approached her cautiously. Peter started to yell at her to avoid touching it, but he was too late.

  She kicked it with her good foot. “Get away from me!”

  The freakish animal tumbled away but was not so easily deterred. It approached her again.

  “Marleah, move away from it!” Peter shouted.

  Instead of backing away, she kicked it again. Again it tumbled away, and again it approached her, this time more aggressively. Another kick. It tumbled. And then it leapt at her and latched onto her leg.

  “Get off! Get off!” She pounded it with her fists until it let go. But it attacked again.

  “She needs help,” Robert muttered, and he started limping back to her.

  Peter hesitated. The dream he’d had flooded his thoughts again. “Wait!”

  Robert turned.

  “I don’t think you can help her.”

  Robert frowned. “It’s attacking her. I’ll stomp on it.”

  Marleah continued screaming at the creature, trying to fight it off.

  “Listen to me,” Peter said. “It’s more dangerous than it looks.”

  “How so?”

  “The Lamotelokhai tried to warn us—”

  Suddenly Marleah’s cries escalated to sheer terror. “What is this? Oh no! What is it?” She was scooting backwards, pushing herself with her hands. But not to escape from the hairless creature—it was running away from her, still hugging the slightly curving wall.

  Instinctively, Peter started toward her with Robert at his side. It was impossible to ignore someone in such desperate distress.

  “What is it?” she cried over and over.

  At ten meters away they both stopped. It was now obvious why she was backing away.

  Peter became vaguely aware that Robert was retching. In the corner of his vision he saw him cover his mouth. But Peter couldn’t take his eyes off Marleah. She was trying to back away from her own legs—because now they weren’t legs at all.

  “No! What is it?” Her cries were becoming little more than garbled screeches.

  Her legs had lost their solid physical form. Instead, they had become shifting, wriggling masses of worms. Hundreds of them. Some were large, like snakes. But most were the size of spaghetti. The main mass of them was attached to Marleah—it was being dragged with her as she tried to escape. But many had broken loose, and she was leaving behind a trail of individual squirming earthworms as she pulled herself across the rocks and dirt.

  “No! No!”

  Something with wings fluttered by Peter’s face. A second winged thing flew up from the ground and came for him. He swiped at it with his hand. He then realized the worms Marleah had left behind were changing, becoming other creatures. Some of them now had legs and were skittering about. Others were sprouting wings and taking to the air. One of these fluttered at his face and he ducked instead of trying to swat it, fearful that any contact might result in the same frightful fate as Marleah’s.

  “Robert, run!” Peter turned and ran as fast as the pain of his broiled leg would allow. A moment later he heard Robert grunting behind him, trying to catch up.

  “No! Noooo!” Marleah’s screams became muffled, and then they stopped altogether.

  As they followed the curving wall, Peter saw a car speeding away on a gravel road, leaving a cloud of dust. After running a few more meters, a cluster of parked cars came into view. And then they were at the entrance to the compound.

  The door appeared to ha
ve been blown off its frame. It lay on the ground in front of the entrance. Next to the door was the body of a woman. She had been crushed, possibly by the broken door.

  While Robert stared at the woman’s body, Peter approached the open doorway. At arm’s length from the opening, he could go no closer due to intense heat. He could see nothing but darkness beyond the doorway. It was like the gaping maw of hell.

  “Bobby! Ashley!” Of course there was no answer. There was nothing alive in there. Not even microbes, Marleah had said.

  Robert stepped up beside Peter. “Maybe they got out. That psycho Helmich knew they were important. He probably took them with him when he evacuated the place. Don’t you think?”

  Peter didn’t answer. He just stared into the darkness.

  Seventeen

  Bobby watched Tiffany walk across the parking lot and through the gleaming doors of the Kmart. She had changed into shorts and a shirt she’d gotten from the car’s trunk, and she’d combed her hair to hide the burned spot. Now she was going in to buy clothes for Bobby and Ashley.

  “I notice she took the keys with her,” Ashley said.

  Bobby had noticed this too, but he was glad. If Tiffany had left the keys, at this moment he’d be talking Ashley out of driving off and leaving her here. They needed Tiffany’s help. They had no money, or ID, or anything else—except a cellphone and an incomplete chunk of the Lamotelokhai.

  Bobby closed his eyes and tried to gather some courage. There was something he had to do, and it couldn’t wait—they would be at the airport soon. He touched the skin behind his right ear. The area still hurt, and it was crusted with dried blood. He moved his hand to the left side of his head and touched the box anchored to his skull. He had no idea how it was attached, but sheer force was probably the only way he could remove it. He had already tried pulling gently on it, but he’d had to quit because of the pain. So he decided to treat it like a Band-Aid—pull hard and fast, not soft and slow.

  Before he could talk himself out of it, he sucked in some air and then yanked on the box. A cry escaped between his gritted teeth and his feet shot out and kicked the back of the driver seat.

  Ashley whipped around. “Damn, Bobby!”

  He clamped his eyes shut, enduring the lasting pain and trying to breathe normally. He hadn’t pulled hard enough. The box was still attached, although now it jiggled a little when he touched it. He opened his eyes and looked out the windows to make sure his cry hadn’t attracted attention. Tiffany had parked at the outer corner of the lot to change her clothes, and the closest people were too far to have heard.

  “You need to wait and have a doctor do that.”

  Bobby looked at his hand. It was shaking, and his fingertips were red with blood. “A monster bit the other one off. I survived that. I just need to pull harder.”

  “Well, at least let me do it.” She got out of the car, flipped the seatback forward, crawled in next to him, and shut the door behind her.

  Bobby turned so she could get at the left side of his head.

  She gripped the box with one hand and put her other against the side of his head. “Ready?”

  Bobby closed his eyes again. “No, but I want it off.” He waited. Seconds passed.

  She let go. “I don’t think I can do it.”

  Bobby exhaled.

  “Why don’t you use that?” she asked, nodding toward the lump of clay. “Or do you still think it’s dangerous?”

  Bobby considered this. So far this portion of the Lamotelokhai hadn’t done anything disastrous. Maybe it could help.

  “It might work.” He looked at her. “But you should get out of the car, just in case.”

  She frowned. But then she crawled out, closed the door, and leaned in through the open window. “If you turn into a monster, I’m going to kick your ass.”

  Bobby put his hands on the lump of clay and decided this time to just speak out loud. “I need help getting this thing off my head. Can you make it come off without hurting me?” He waited for a moment then pinched off a pea-sized chunk and rubbed it into the box and the surrounding skin. He waited.

  Ashley watched him silently, her elbows resting on the door.

  Abruptly the box dropped to his shoulder and tumbled onto the seat. He picked it up. It was black and made of metal, featureless except for the side that had been against his skin. That side had a sticky gray pad and four shiny steel posts that looked like they’d been melted off at the ends. Was the rest of each post still stuck in his skull?

  Ashley opened the door again and crawled into the back seat. “If it can do what you ask, it should also do what I ask, right?”

  “I guess so, but—”

  She put her hands on the clay. “I want Bobby’s shaved hair to grow out. Like, right now.” She pinched some off and smeared it gently onto the right side of his head. There was something almost magical about her fingers rubbing his scalp. He was tempted to close his eyes but decided that would look weird.

  She finished and said, “Turn.” He turned, and she rubbed it into the other side. She wiped the remaining bits onto the back of the seat in front of her. She then sat back and gazed at the side of his head.

  This made Bobby feel awkward, so he looked out the window at the Kmart. It looked like every other big store he had ever seen, except some of the signs were in Spanish. And the shoppers were Puerto Ricans, most of them with dark hair.

  The shaved areas of his scalp began to tingle.

  “It’s working,” Ashley said. “I can’t believe I did it right.”

  Bobby felt his head. It was working. Bristles now covered the previously smooth skin. And the bristles were getting longer by the second.

  Ashley put her warm, magical fingers against his scalp again. “We’ve just discovered a cure for baldness.”

  Bobby smiled at this. “It came a zillion light years to help middle-aged men feel young again.” But then he forced the smile away. It didn’t seem right to make jokes when so many people had just died, including Peter and Robert. Maybe he could go back to the compound and use this piece of the Lamotelokhai’s clay to bring them back to life. But it would be days before they could enter the compound. And besides, the bodies were probably burned to ashes. Maybe if he successfully restored the Lamotelokhai’s consciousness, he could ask it to create a new copy of Peter’s body and put Peter’s consciousness in it. That wouldn’t work for Robert, though, because the Lamotelokhai hadn’t put its particles into him to learn about him.

  Ashley finally pulled her fingers from his scalp. “What else do you think it can do?”

  “No idea.” He put his hands on the clay and spoke aloud. “I want to know what else you can do. Can you tell me?”

  He didn’t really expect much to happen. But then an arrangement of Kembalimo symbols appeared before his eyes. He squeezed his eyes closed. The symbols were still there, and they remained when he opened his eyes again. It had been months since he had talked to anyone using Kembalimo, but he remembered every symbol combination he’d developed when he had worked through the Kembalimo lingo-building process back in the Papuan rainforest. Millions of people had created their own Kembalimo lingoes using Peter’s smartphone app, but Bobby was one of the few who had ever created a lingo with the actual Lamotelokhai.

  The general meaning of the arrangement of symbols was, “Hello, Bobby.”

  An old habit kicked in, and he raised one hand, ready to move symbols into a reply, but the 256 symbols that used to be arranged in a border around the main statement were missing. There were no symbols to choose from, other than the four that made up the greeting.

  So Bobby spoke aloud. “Hello, Lamotelokhai. Is it really you?”

  The four symbols faded away and were replaced by one. “No.”

  Bobby frowned. “Then what are you?”

  The single symbol disappeared and was replaced by at least thirty more, arranged to be read left to right, top to bottom. “Lamotelokhai created me. I am knowledge. Small knowledge. I talk to yo
u. My purpose.”

  “Bobby?” It was Ashley.

  He turned to her, and the symbols moved with his field of vision. Now they were displayed in front of her face. He pulled his hands from the clay, and they disappeared. “It’s talking to me. I think the Lamotelokhai gave it some basic programming. Because it knew it was about to die.”

  He put his hands back on the clay. “Your purpose is to talk to me?”

  One symbol appeared. “Yes.”

  “And you are the Lamotelokhai’s knowledge?”

  The symbol was replaced by another set. “Small knowledge. I talk to you small. I help you small.”

  Bobby figured he knew what this meant—limited help. “So what can you do to help us?”

  The symbols changed. “Please talk different.”

  Bobby stared. “Um, would you be able to stop all the transforming creatures that started back at Dr. Helmich’s compound?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Small knowledge now. Small help. You help me more knowledge. More knowledge more help.”

  Bobby cursed quietly. They still needed to get the other data packets. It could take weeks. But maybe this thing could at least help them do that.

  “Um, can you heal us if we get hurt?”

  “Possible. Need hurt definition.”

  This looked promising, and communication was already getting easier. “If we get cut or scraped.”

  “Possible. Need definitions.”

  He sighed. Maybe it wasn’t getting easier. “Here, I’ll show you.” He pinched off some clay and applied it to the gashes on the right side of his head from the Helmich-bat’s teeth. As he spread the clay he realized the hair in this area was now much thicker. “Can you heal these cuts?”

  After a few seconds the symbols changed. “Talk first. Take my parts second.”

  “Okay, I have cuts on my head. I am going to take some of your parts and put them on my cuts. I hope you can heal the cuts.” He pinched off more and applied it. He waited. His scalp was still tingling due to the fact that the hair was still growing quickly, so he couldn’t tell if anything new was happening. But soon he realized the pain was fading. He touched the cuts. They definitely felt better.