Symbiont (Parasitology Book 2)

by Grant, Mira

  “They’re eating people,” I said, in case Nathan had somehow managed to miss that.

  “Yes. That’s probably for the best—if sleepwalkers are going off the bridge at that rate all day, without the sharks disposing of the bodies that miss the current, we’d be sailing into a solid mat of corpses.” Nathan finally turned away from the water. The salt spray had crusted on the lenses of his glasses, rendering them virtually opaque. “It’s unpleasant, I know, but it’s a good thing, honestly. It’s going to help us make it to land without any major difficulties.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be the human one here,” I said, and turned, walking back to the benches without saying another word.

  Nathan didn’t follow me.

  It took us almost an hour to sail across the Bay, and that was with Fishy pushing the ferry’s undermaintained engines as hard as he could, squeezing every last ounce of speed out of the straining machinery. When we were maybe a quarter mile out from the shore he began to bleed off speed, and his cheerful voice blared over the speakers once again: “Lady, dog, and gentlemen, we are now approaching the Port of San Francisco, where I will attempt to park this boat without actually destroying the historic San Francisco pier. If I fail in my attempt, you can be comforted by the knowledge that this boat was designed to absorb collisions without killing commuters, so we’ll probably all live, but we probably won’t like it.”

  “Oh, yay,” I muttered.

  Fishy continued: “Once we have reached the Ferry Building and, again, hopefully come to a safe and secure stop, we will need to refill the tank, as we’re basically out of gas, and may have to paddle the rest of the way. Thank you for sailing with Oceanic Apocalypse: when the world ends, we get you there anyway.”

  The speaker clicked off. Dr. Banks groaned, offering a heartfelt “Oh, thank God, he shut up,” to no one in particular. I smothered the urge to chuckle. Laughing openly at his discomfort wasn’t going to do us any good, no matter how much I wanted to do it.

  Nathan walked around the corner of the cabin, looking at me uncertainly for a moment before he came and sat down next to me. I reached out and took his hand, twining my fingers firmly through his.

  “Do you know how to refuel a ferry?” I asked.

  “No, and I’d be willing to bet that Fishy doesn’t either, but I’m sure he’s seen it in a video game.” Nathan squeezed my hand. “We’ll be okay. We’re almost there. We’ll get to SymboGen, we’ll get Tansy back, and we’ll go home. Wherever that is by now.”

  “Your mom likes putting labs in recreational facilities. First the bowling alley, and then the candy factory. She’ll have to top that somehow,” I said, and giggled. “Do you think she’ll take over an amusement park next?”

  “Roller coasters are a way of showing reverence to physics; she just might,” said Nathan.

  “It’s adorable how you two delusional little fuckers think you’re going to walk away from this,” said Dr. Banks. His voice came from directly behind our bench. I flinched and twisted to look, not letting go of Nathan’s hand. The unkempt, handcuffed CEO of SymboGen Inc. was standing on the deck between our bench and the next, leveling a malicious look in our direction. He rolled easily with the pitch of the boat, shifting his weight between his ankles and toes in a graceful motion that I would have needed weeks to master. Still glaring, he continued: “You’ll be lucky to make it off the boat. Even if you get a car, what happens then? SymboGen is a secure facility. You’ll never get through the doors. Not unless I help you.”

  “You’re going to help us, Dr. Banks,” I said calmly, swallowing my anger and my fear and my dislike of having him loom over me like he had the right to think of himself as my superior. He wasn’t my superior. He hadn’t been for a long time, if ever. “We already went over this. If you want to walk away in one piece, you’ll help us get into SymboGen, help us get to Tansy, and help us get away. Then we’ll let you go. You’re our hostage now.”

  “You didn’t raise these arguments before we left Vallejo,” noted Nathan.

  The boat was making a slow turn, angling toward a steeple-topped building on the far shore. What I could see behind Dr. Banks as the shifting ferry brought the shore into view was heartening: nothing moved there except for seagulls and crows. We might actually be sailing into something shaped almost like safety.

  Dr. Banks snorted. “As if I would have said ‘this is never going to work’ when Surrey was sitting right there, threatening to have me taken apart for spare parts? Your mother’s a real piece of work, Nate. She’s a real-life Frankenstein, and she’s going to pay for what she’s done to the human race. You might do well to remember that, and start shifting your loyalties appropriately.”

  “Wow. Does USAMRIID have that many cameras pointed at the coastline?” I made a show of twisting around and peering toward the closest pier, taking advantage of the moment to scan for sleepwalkers. I didn’t see any. I also didn’t see any visible monitoring equipment—and when you’re fighting an enemy that operates on instinct, not intellect, why would anyone bother making their cameras or microphone pickups hard to spot? Subtlety was no longer necessary.

  I twisted back to face Dr. Banks. “You’re already practicing your speech for when you sell us out.”

  “It’s about time you accepted the reality of your situation, Sally my dear. There’s two miles of city between us and my doors, and there’s no telling how many walking dead men are packed into that distance. Let me go. Uncuff my hands and let me contact my people. They’ll send an extraction team, and if you’re willing to roll over on the good doctor, they’ll be happy to cut you a deal.” His smile was a terrible thing, filled with teeth and shadows. “She’d roll over on you, you know. She’s never been loyal to anything she didn’t make in a test tube. You probably came closest to her affections, Nate, but a womb isn’t the same as an incubator to a woman like her. You never stood a chance.”

  Nathan’s mouth was a thin, hard line. I clung tighter to his hand. “I know exactly where I stand with my mother, but I thank you for your concern. As for your request, you had plenty of time to negotiate while we were back at the lab. This is the mission you agreed to. I hope it kills you.”

  He stood, still holding my hand, and pulled me with him as he walked away from Dr. Banks, across the deck, and into the small control room where Fishy was now frantically pushing buttons, flipping switches, and generally flailing, such that he seemed to fill all available space even before Nathan and I wedged ourselves inside.

  “The brakes are good, but we’re really low on gas,” said Fishy, without turning to see who had joined him. I guess his options were pretty limited. “That’s making me nervous, especially since I don’t know what the pumping equipment is going to look like, or whether they’d have anything canned in case of emergency.”

  “Earthquake kits,” I said. “I’d think the ferry people would want to be prepared for an earthquake making it unsafe to visit the gas station.”

  “Good thinking!” Fishy yanked on a lever and finally stilled, putting his hands back on the wheel. The Ferry Building loomed directly ahead of us, seeming untouched by the changes to the city around it. It was a landmark, a place to visit for the Saturday Farmer’s Market or to buy expensive artisanal cheese, and just seeing it was enough to take a little of the tension out of my shoulders and loosen a little of the twisted panic that was knotted in my gut. If the Ferry Building was still standing, then not everything had changed. Most things, maybe, but not everything.

  Fishy continued, blithely unaware of my relief: “The employee lot is off to the side. Most of the people who worked the ferry took public transit to work—which is sort of funny if you think about it—but there were always a few who needed to have a vehicle, for one reason or another. The odds are definitely with us that someone drove in and then got slaughtered, or turned sleepwalker, and didn’t need their keys anymore.”

  “What if the keys aren’t in the car?” I asked anxiously. “Do you know how to drive wi
thout keys?”

  “Do you actually know?” added Nathan. “Seeing it in a game of Grand Theft Auto isn’t the same thing.”

  Fishy laughed. There was an odd underpinning of exhaustion to the sound, something I would have taken as completely normal from Nathan or even Dr. Banks, but which sounded out of place in Fishy’s normally jovial tone. “Yeah, I actually know,” he said, pulling back on another lever. The boat bled off a few more notches of speed, sliding smoothly under the canopy of the Ferry Building’s landing zone. We were almost there. “My wife—Laney—was a genius when it came to spreadsheets and numbers and knowing how your insurance policy worked, but she was a little bit of a space cadet when it came to remembering where she left her keys. I learned how to hot-wire a car after the third or fourth time she lost them so completely that we couldn’t figure out how we were going to get home. It was a challenge. I like challenges. I always have.”

  I frowned a little, glancing uncertainly at Nathan. He gave a little shake of his head, signaling for me to stay quiet, and in this instance, listening to him seemed like the better idea.

  “Once we have a car, the two of you can take Dr. Banks and head for SymboGen,” continued Fishy calmly. “I’ll stay with the boat, make sure we don’t get overrun with sleepwalkers or taken out by survivors or anything cliché and inconvenient like that.”

  “But what will we do once we have Tansy?” I asked, alarmed. Our plan hadn’t involved Fishy staying behind.

  He glanced back over his shoulder. “Bring her here. If I can’t stay docked, I’ll at least stay close to the shore, so you can see me. Then we’ll just have to find a place where you can park and I can pull in close enough that you can get on board. It’ll be a fun challenge.”

  “A fun challenge,” I echoed faintly. I felt like I wanted to be sick. Throwing up would have been a terrible idea, but that didn’t make it any less appealing. That horrible hot/cold mixture was forming in my stomach again, and the drums were getting softer, harder to hear, which struck me as bad in some way I couldn’t entirely define.

  “Tansy is going to be on life support,” said Nathan. “Putting her in the water could kill her.”

  “Which makes it all the more important that someone stay with the boat.” Fishy turned the wheel delicately to the side, and we slid in along the dock as if our boat had been intended to sit there all along: the missing piece of an elaborate puzzle. “Welcome to San Francisco.”

  Only one of the other ferry bays was occupied, by a boat that was half submerged and still taking on water through the gaping hole in its side. I had no idea what could have done that to one of these sturdy, metal-plated craft, and I didn’t want to know. The dock was clear, and nothing moved in the shadows. That was what really mattered to me, at least right now: that we were, for the moment, alone.

  “Sal?” asked Nathan.

  I nodded tightly and left the cabin, moving to the rail. Dr. Banks said something, but his words were washed away by the roar of the engine as Fishy did whatever he had to do in order to lock us into place, and so I just kept walking, turning my back on the scientist who had helped to make me. When I reached the edge of the boat I stopped, resting my hands on the railing, and closed my eyes, trying to listen with everything I had. The noise didn’t matter; my ears weren’t a part of this.

  Pheromone trails are funny things. They’re both immediate, generated by bodies in motion, and left behind by bodies that have already passed. Ants use them to keep track of each other. Cats use them to claim things as part of their territory. And tapeworms use them, in a strange, incomprehensible way, to communicate. I didn’t know what an unaltered tapeworm would have to say, but I knew what the sleepwalkers were saying with their pheromone trails, and hence one of the things that I was saying to them when they happened to cross my path—maybe the most important thing:

  Here I am.

  The air in the Ferry Building was stale, thick with salt and a faint, sweet foundation of decay. There had been sleepwalkers here—I couldn’t have explained how I knew that, because the knowledge didn’t come with any accompanying words. Neither did the knowledge that they weren’t here now. The water was too close and too bitter, and it got too cold at night. They had been driven deeper into the city, or at least away from the dock area. What that was going to mean for the rest of our journey, I couldn’t say.

  I let go of the rail and turned, unsurprised to find Nathan and Dr. Banks standing behind me. “There’s no one here but us,” I said. “It’s an enclosed space, though. There could be a hundred sleepwalkers outside and I wouldn’t know about it.”

  Dr. Banks sneered. “Leave it to Surrey to build an early warning system that can’t work through walls. What use are you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I guess I’ll have time to figure it out. Where’s Fishy?”

  “He’s shutting down the engine, and then he’s going to come help us find a car,” said Nathan. “It should be a minute or so.”

  The slow rumble of the boat beneath us died, leaving my feet tingling at the sudden lack of vibration. Fishy trotted out from the cabin, waving to make sure we knew that everything was all right. Beverly jumped, pressing herself hard against my legs. For one terrible moment, I expected to hear her growl come ripping through the still air of the Ferry Building like a condemnation. This was going too easily: something had to go wrong. That was how things went for us. Wrong.

  Fishy slowed as he drew closer, and Beverly did not growl. “Are we clear?” he asked.

  “No sleepwalkers in the building, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way, especially after we open a door,” I said. “I can’t be sure they’re not at the front, either. I’m still figuring out how all this works.”

  “As long as they leave me alone long enough to get some fuel into this baby, I’ll be fine,” said Fishy, patting the side of the ferry. He was smiling, calmly and consistently.

  I didn’t like that expression—something about it was off, somehow, although not in a way that would have meant he was going into conversion—but it was Nathan who spoke, asking, “Are you feeling all right, Fishy? I didn’t expect you to volunteer to stay behind.”

  “Yeah, I’m good,” said Fishy calmly. “It’s all good. See, this is where we split the party to deliver the MacGuffin”—he pointed at Dr. Banks, who looked more confused than affronted—“and cure the zombie plague that’s been destroying mankind. You guys are running into a series of cut scenes. If I stay here with the boat, I’ll either get an unstoppable wave of enemies to fight, or I’ll be ready when you come back with the final boss fight in tow. Either way, I’m good.”

  I frowned. It took me a moment to puzzle through what he was saying. I’ve never really liked video games. They moved too fast, and involved too much violence. I was happier with cartoons and audio books when I needed something to keep me entertained. “You’re really sad, aren’t you?” I ventured.

  “Not anymore,” said Fishy. “I’m probably going to die today. Thanks for that.” He thrust his hand out at me, fingers spread. I blinked. Then I took it, and shook. He beamed. “I’m pretty much ready to log out and go home. Now let’s find you guys a car.” He pulled his hand away and loped off toward the stairway that would grant him access to the deck. I stared mutely after him, not sure how I should respond.

  Dr. Banks did it for me. “You know that boy’s a few kittens short of a litter, right?” he asked. “Not sure I’d feel good about leaving him with my escape route, if I were you. Not that you’re going to make it back here to use it. It’s just a matter of principle.”

  “Yes, because crossing the city with the arrogant bastard who brought about the end of mankind in order to increase his profit share is so much better.” Nathan grabbed Dr. Banks’s arms, ignoring the older man’s protests, and hauled him after Fishy.

  I took one last nervous glance over the side of the boat, tightened my grip on Beverly’s leash, and followed them.

  It begins now.

&
nbsp; –FROM THE NOTES OF SHERMAN LEWIS (SUBJECT VIII, ITERATION III), NOVEMBER 2027

  The techs are tearing down the last of the essential equipment and checking everything for bugs. I feel like Santa Claus: we’re making a list, and we’re checking it twice. We should have room in the truck for most of the hydroponics and the livestock, but we’re leaving behind a lot of personal belongings, with no way of knowing whether it’s ever going to be possible for their owners to come back and retrieve them. The top floors of the factory have already gone dark. This was a good way station. I hoped that it might prove to be our home. Like so many of my hopes, this one has come to nothing, and I do not know what lies ahead of us.

  The people I work with here are human, with the exception of Adam—my precious boy—and Sal, who may never be fully at ease with her nature. That’s my fault as much as it is anyone else’s, but as I do not have the power to revise the past, I choose not to dwell on that. The simple fact is that I live my life surrounded by the planet’s dominant species, and their hold on that position is slipping. Soon, Nathan and Sal will return with Tansy. Soon, I will have to make the final judgment call:

  Who inherits the earth?

  –FROM THE JOURNAL OF DR. SHANTI CALE, NOVEMBER 16, 2027

  Chapter 19

  NOVEMBER 2027

  The garage where the employee vehicles were kept was locked, which made no sense to me—who stops in the middle of an apocalypse to make sure everything is safe and secure from looters? Fishy dispatched the lock with a single swipe of the crowbar he’d acquired from somewhere, knocking it to the ground with a loud clattering noise that made the rest of us wince and look around, waiting for an attack. I still wasn’t picking up on any nearby sleepwalkers, but as I had tried to explain to Dr. Banks, my funny sort of radar was neither tested nor proven to be completely reliable. It was a mad science party trick, and like all party tricks, I had to assume that sometimes it could fail to work the way it was supposed to.