Bachman didn’t want to think where it was coming from.
Thick black veins now covered her completely. These were splitting and seeping the black pus everywhere. Her whole body was a seeping black mass. Then, in a violent action; her chest exploded. The blast sent Bachman flying backwards down the concrete steps.
71
Alex, Troy, and Juan
In the truck on Main Street, Mole Town
A military installation outside New York City
They were trapped. The infected covered the truck. The wheels were clogged with dead bodies that were covering the street. They couldn’t see out of the windows due to the naked creatures slamming themselves against the glass. Cracks started to appear. Thin lines etched across the windshield, as three infected slammed into it – two with their faces and one with his shoulder. Blood, watered down by the heavy rain, started to dribble through the cracks.
Juan wound down the window again, and fired off his whole clip. Many naked bodies fell away dead before hitting the ground, but they were soon replaced – the others used their bodies to stand on.
Then a female forced her face into the gap Juan had just been firing through, and a long tongue, over ten inches, lashed through, whipping about like a thrashing tentacle. It caught Juan’s hand that was holding the gun. He dropped the empty weapon, clutching at his hand.
“FUCK!” he shouted that could just be heard over the sound of the shouting creatures and the slamming of the bodies against the metal and glass, and the deep rumbling of the thunder.
Juan leaned back, resting up against Alex, as he kicked at the tongue with a boot. He caught it, and ground it against the glass. The creature shrieked in what he could only presume was pain – if it felt any, or it could be annoyed that it lost its prey after tasting his flesh.
They all knew they were trapped. They all knew it was only a matter of time before a window was broken, and they poured in.
Troy fought with the steering. He crunched the gears into reverse, then forward, rocking the truck. But to no avail, they were blocked in by a mass of bodies.
Alex couldn’t see any more soldiers through the gaps as the creatures swarmed over the bonnet. All it came down to now was time. How long before they gained entry.
Alex never believed it would end like this. He presumed he would one-day stumble on a Popper, or killed by a desperate human looking for food. But trapped inside a truck’s cab, with the creatures screaming to get at him? Their anger and hunger was unbelievable. Whatever humanity they had was completely gone. They were now mindless killing machines. He knew it would only be a matter of time before the they were all dead. The sign on the way into town was true when it read: Welcome to hell.
72
Bonnie, Tierra, Dante, Cody, Jessica, and Frank
In the truck on Main Street, Mole Town
A military installation outside New York City
In the container, everyone could only sit and listen to the screaming and howling of the infected. The slamming of bodies against the thick metal, and the scraping of nails and teeth. Then as the rain started to pour, it echoed from the metal roof. The thunder reverberated through the enclosed space.
They knew they weren’t moving, so they could only presume those in the cab were dead or dying. They were safe inside the metal container, but for how long. How long would the creatures keep trying to get in? They had no water or food. They could last weeks without food, but a mere three days without the life-sustaining liquid. By the time three days were up, each one of them would be hallucinating, with a pounding migraine, and eventually, multiple organ failure and a painful death.
Not one of them could lean against the metal, not with the constant banging and grinding sounds. They huddled in the middle.
Frank sat holding Bonnie, who was crying while calling her brothers name. Frank stroked her dark hair, holding her close. He could smell her scent – the smell of the shampoo and conditioner she had used in the shower.
So young. So much life in front of her, he thought.
Jessica knelt beside Naomi. Both rocked on their thighs, as if ready to spring forward if the doors managed to fly open. The chain was now wrapped in place, and the padlock clamped shut. The truck was stationary, and they could hear the infected climbing over them and slamming into them. They knew none of the others would be knocking at the door, requesting to be let in.
Tierra sat hugging her son, who was silent, staring at the metal walls as they rung as bodies collided into them. It was the longest he had gone without crying in weeks. She was glad he wasn’t sobbing, but it worried her as to why he was so quiet.
Was he injured when the soldier dropped him?
Cody lay on his back staring at the ceiling. After they first told him his wife was dead, he screamed and flung himself against the sides, shouting to be let out, that he needed to get her body, else she would be eaten. He pulled at the chain, but couldn’t get out without the key. He tried to prize it off Jessica, who had collected it off Frank, and he was rewarded with a sharp whack with Naomi’s metal pipe across the back of the head. He fell upon the floor, unmoving, staring toward the ceiling ever since, while quietly crying, mumbling his wife’s name repeatedly.
The howling and screaming, and animalistic cries rose in volume. The creatures knew they were close to fresh meat, and it would only be a matter of time before they reached it.
That’s the thing, once the creature’s humanity had been stripped away, and everything they knew wiped from their memories, becoming a killing machine, whose sole purpose was to spread the spores to more humans, time is one thing they had in abundance.
73
Doctor Bachman
The underground bunker in a stairwell
Quirauk Mountain, Pennsylvania
For some reason, Bachman remembered lying on the beach in Cancun, Mexico, with his ex-wife. Those had been happier days, before he was reassigned to Groom Lake. At first, he could leave each night and catch the flight to the Las Vegas airfield with hundreds of others who didn’t live on-site and was low level workers with no high level clearance. He lived a normal life back then. That is until he was reassigned. Then he was only allowed to leave on weekends. Then every other weekend. Then monthly, and before he knew what was happening, his wife had filed for divorce, and he was living fulltime in the bunker.
However, the memory he was experiencing was during their honeymoon. He was happy then; he had someone to share things with. He had what some would call a happy life.
His wife, Sally, didn’t want children, not just yet. She knew her husband had ambitions, and was going far in the government-run facility where he worked, even though she was never told what he actually did. Little did she realize those ambitions would pull them apart.
At first, she was okay with not knowing. He was a good man; they had been dating for six years. She knew he caught a plane to the secret government compound everyday. She knew the rumors and gossip connected with the facility, and the names it was given – Area 51 was the most popular. She knew about all the conspiracy theories and stories of alien crafts and autopsies. However, all she knew for certain was he was a scientist, and that was it. She wasn’t even sure what he was a Doctor of?
But young love and being naive, she believed he would open up, chat about everything; they were dating, and then married, but it slowly ate away at her that a large part of her husband’s life was a mystery. They couldn’t talk about what he did, it was like a large black hole in their lives.
She felt untrusted. Surely, he could tell her what he did in the privacy of their own home, over dinner? What was the harm? Was it really that much of a secret? What could he possibly be doing that was so secretive that he couldn’t even tell the person he had chosen to spend the rest of his life with?
If he came home stressed, or tired, she couldn’t comfort him, because she had no idea what the problem was. Eventually, she stopped asking, and they slowly drifted apart. Then, when he stopped coming home,
and it was weekly, then monthly, she gave up caring and started to concentrate on her own life. If he didn’t want to share with her, that was fine, she would find someone who did.
The divorce papers stated he was unemotionally detached and absent. He didn’t contest; he wasn’t allowed; the government dealt with his side of the divorce due to the delicate situation. It was quickly resolved.
Afterwards, now he had no attachments to the outside world; he was moved into the pod section of the facility. With what he then found out, he was glad he had no attachments and no children.
Bachman’s eyes fluttered. He was dazed, but luckily still conscious – just rattled. If he had been knocked out, he knew there would have been a good chance he would never have woken up again due to suffocating.
He hadn’t thought about Sally in years. He wondered if she was still alive, or was she one of those creatures that were charging towards Groom Lake that was incinerated by the explosion? He found it ironic to think about it. If she was one of those naked beings, in the end, she had run to the place she hated the most.
The memory flash was unexpected. Reality rushed back with a jolt.
He was laid upon his back, wedged up in the corner of the stairwell. He felt like a turtle that had been turned onto its shell.
Pain shot down his legs, and his back was aching. The air tank had taken the worst of the impact, which had then sent that shock through to his flesh. He was lucky no bones were broken. The inflated suit took the worse of the blast, absorbing it like a sponge.
He was staring up at the ceiling in the stairwell; it was full of black spores. They churned and danced over the surface.
He presumed the suit was intact due to not choking, or having the spores racing around inside with him.
Bachman groaned as he rocked back and forth, struggling to get on his side. It took effort, and he was already exhausted and thirsty.
He eventually got onto his knees. He held on to the stairwell banister, and he slowly climbed to his unsteady feet. The suit was getting heavier with each passing minute.
A spasm of pain shot up his spine.
Just bruised, I hope.
He stood leaning over the rail. He concentrated on trying to catch his breath. The sound of his breathing was loud inside the mask.
I have to keep moving; I have to reach the surface, he told himself, trying to boost his strength.
God what I wouldn’t give for a drink of refreshing water.
His vision clouded for a second. He wished he could wipe his eyes, but he was cocooned away from his own body. He had never felt so restricted in his life.
Even marriage wasn’t this bad.
Slowly, he started back up the stairs.
He reached where the woman exploded.
What was left of her was smeared up the walls, leaving her legs and lower half of her slack body on the floor. Her arms were blown off; one rested against the wall; the other must have shot down the steps with him. Brain matter and flesh dribbled down the magnolia surfaces. From what was left of her upper body, which was just her bloody hipbone and part of her spinal column, long strands of black tendrils climbed up the walls and stretched across the floor, just like in the pod chambers. These were climbing as he watched; growing out of the remains of her body, as if her veins had been modified. And growing straight up out of the remains of her stomach, was what looked like a large shiny black seed pod. It was about four feet tall and circular, and it pulsated slowly. Also along the length of the tendrils grew strands, looking almost like thin mushrooms, with bulbous heads that pulsated.
These spores have a different delivery device. This one is much faster. It doesn’t use the human host as a moving, fighting, eating machine, to spread the virus, it instantly disables them, creating more spores to take down others.
Maybe this one has changed to create a faster acting delivery device after humans started fighting back and destroying the other pods?
He didn’t know if that was better or not. Either way the host dies.
At least this way the host doesn’t go through weeks of suffering, it’s over within thirty or so minutes.
He was about to step over some black roots, when the woman’s legs twitched.
Just electrical impulses, he reasoned. She can’t be alive; she has no brain to function.
The small stalked pods started busting, with little popping sounds. Clouds of black spores drifted on the draft of the stairwell.
Bachman stepped over her twitching legs and started climbing the next set of steps.
He found her other arm; it was a few steps up, with more tendrils growing from its severed end.
As he stepped over it, he ignored her twitching fingers as her rings tapped on the concrete step.
74
Alex, Troy, and Juan
In the truck on Main Street, Mole Town
A military installation outside New York City
Alex watched as a crack widened, and pebbles of glass dropped to the dashboard. An elongated tongue whipped through, lashing about, dribbling oil-black saliva onto the dashboard.
He couldn’t lower the windows any more, not with what happened to Juan, and if he fired through the windshield, it would weaken it – he might as well just open the door.
Juan was in pain. His hand was blistering where the tongue had raked along it. The blisters were black. It didn’t take a genius to work out that he was infected.
Alex knew the eye blinking would soon follow. Then the coma would hit. He felt sorry for him, but at the same time, he would rather not be sat next to him, squashed between a moaning teenager and a frantic Troy.
“It’s gotta work; it just has to,” Troy mumbled as he fought with the wheel, while grinding the gears, trying to get the truck to go backwards or forwards, but the tires slipped on the piles of burst bodies.
This truck will become our tomb. Or will it?
Alex knew the creatures weren’t concerned with infecting them; they were going to rip them limb from limb and consume them. They would end up in their bellies, and they would become part of the bloated delivery system for the next hapless person to wander too close.
The bodies were slamming into them constantly. It was hard to tell whether it was thirty of the same infected moving around, thrashing together, or if more were joining in, and they were a hundred deep. The smeared windows and heavy rain made it difficult to tell.
There was no hope. There were only a few minutes left before they were eaten alive, ripped to shreds by wide serrated mouths. Alex looked at the handgun. He weighed it in his hand.
Only one shot. Painless. Compared to being ripped apart. Quick and easy or slow and painful?
Neither of the others paid any attention to him staring at the weapon.
“Shoot me. Please shoot me!” Juan started shouting, now the implications of the swelling of his hand had sunk in. He was thrashing around in the seat, as if his blood was boiling through his veins. He gripped his hand and held it away from himself, as if it didn’t belong to him anymore.
“I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to become a host!”
Juan swung around in his seat, facing Alex.
“Please!” His face was contorted.
The gun was in Alex’s hand, all it would take is one pull of the trigger.
“I can’t. You are infected; your blood would, likewise, infect us,” Alex shouted, to be heard over the screaming mob, the slamming of bodies and the weather.
Troy was oblivious. Every ounce of his concentration was fixed on getting the truck moving. All their lives counted on it.
The constant sound from the creature’s outside was like a loud white noise.
Alex noticed Troy had a photo crushed in his hand as he tried to free the truck.
Alex spun around as Juan grabbed him.
Juan’s face was contorted in pain and misery. Tears filled his eyes.
“I can’t let my sister see me like this.” He started crying.
Alex g
ot the impression Juan hadn’t cried in a very long time. It came pouring out of him, shaking his whole body.
“I can’t I’m sorry.” Alex looked at the gun in his hand. He ignored the movement outside the windshield and the slamming into the glass.
Time seemed to stretch.
Is it like this with everyone? He wondered. Once death is excepted peace steals over you.
After everything happened, and the world fell apart it was impossible not to consider how you would eventually die. But this wasn’t how he envisioned it. Once again, his thoughts turned to how he thought he would die. He envisioned it as he snuck around the city looking for food. He would never have guessed a truck would become his tomb. Shredded by people who only a month ago would have smiled at him as he passed them on the street. People who would be stood behind him in a queue at the supermarket. Sometimes life can be worse than the most horrific imagination.
A couple of blood-covered fingers were now reaching through the crack in the thick windshield, pulling at the glass, trying to rip it away. Shreds of peeled skin stuck to the sharp glass.
Then suddenly, Alex was pulled from his thoughts when Juan yanked open the truck’s door, and with a few hard slams, fueled by desperation, he forced the infected back enough to slide outside. Just as he did he shouted, “Look after my sister for me!” and he was gone. The door slammed shut again when the creatures swarmed around the fresh meat.
75
Doctor Bachman
The underground bunker in a stairwell
Quirauk Mountain, Pennsylvania
Bachman was exhausted. He had no idea how far he had climbed or how far he had to go. He passed five more people on the ascent. All had exploded, adding more spores to dance around the stairwell, leaving masses of roots to grow, with the bizarre tubular pod going straight up.
The Sixth Extinction: America (Omnibus Edition | Books 1 – 8) Page 20
