by Conner, Jack
“That’s what your people want, right, darlin’?” Janx said.
Layanna nodded guardedly. “They do. I don’t.” She grimaced. “I mean ...” She shook her head, looking weary.
“No,” Avery said, “you can say it. What is it?”
“Nothing, only that it ... would be nice ... to have a forest, even just a garden, ‘Atomic-ized’. If I could have somewhere to walk through banks of blooming rose-coral, and towering tapeworm stalks, like those I’ve seen here—yes, I would like that very much.”
“You may get your chance,” Hildra said, “if we get caught in any more local trouble. You might survive it, blondie, but I don’t think the rest of us’d like it a whole lot.”
Layanna studied her silently for a moment. “No. I don’t suppose so.”
Avery tried to suppress a frown. Layanna was feeling more and more alienated, he could tell, ostracized and alone. He’d told her it was something she would have to deal with on her own, but he wasn’t sure if she could. He wasn’t sure if anyone could. The trouble was he couldn’t think of what to do about it. Some problems just didn’t have answers, at least not good ones.
The jeep jerked to a halt, and Avery’s stomach lurched. Glancing forward and back, he saw the whole convoy had stopped. Questions and shouts rang outside. Those in the back of the jeep looked at each other.
“We’d better go see,” Avery said.
“Do we have to?” said Hildra.
They climbed out. Avery immediately missed the moving air that had been washing over him from the partly open window. Afoot, and with any wind blocked by the tree walls, the air glommed onto him, almost suffocating in its thickness and heat. Mosquitoes buzzed about, and he swatted at them listlessly, bursting one that had landed on his forearm and wincing at the blood that spattered out. Some of the tiny creatures looked odd, with fishy eyes or tiny fins, and he hoped Janx and Hildra had been taking their pollution pills. He was immune to such minor sources of infection, but the mosquitoes’ bites would prove itchy to anyone.
Worse than the heat was the stench of poison and ammonia that choked him and made his eyes tear up. He drew air in shallow gasps and half-wished he had one of the respirators mounted on the suits of armor. The soldiers stayed well away from the trees, which crowded the narrow dirt road, and he followed their example.
“Have we reached the village?” Avery asked one.
The man eyed him dully for a moment, then said, in heavily-accented Ghenisan, “No there yet. This something else.”
Slapping at a bite on his thick neck, Janx said, “Looks like the commotion’s up front. Let’s check it out.”
He and Hildra started toward the front of the convoy, and, after glancing at each other, Avery and Layanna followed. The convoy vehicles had drawn to a stop before another, longer line of vehicles. Lieutenant Mailos and a handful of soldiers were already examining them, guns ready, one car at a time. The lieutenant approached the first jeep slowly. To Avery’s surprise, it showed signs of having been burnt. Unwholesomely luminous vines had begun to grow on it, completely wreathing its tires and trunk. Odd, humming yellow flowers sprouted from the vines.
Lt. Mailos reached out a hand to the door handle and opened it. A blackened body spilled out.
“Damn it!” Mailos jumped back.
Avery examined the body. Flies buzzed around the face, and a brightly colored beetle (with tiny, quivering gills) crawled out of one of the eye sockets. Both were empty. The dead man’s skin had been withered by fire and gnawed on by insects, as well as somewhat larger carrion animals.
The cause of death was obvious. A huge blackened arrow stood out of the ribcage about two feet, feathers burnt off. Looking into the interior, Avery saw other arrow-riddled corpses, all burned. What had started the fire was obvious, too, once Avery moved around to the other side of the vehicle. An equally-large arrow, surely set aflame at the moment of release, had pierced the gas tank.
Avery and the others moved up and down the ruined convoy, finding the same thing in each car, one after the other.
“What did this?” Janx said.
“The Nisaar,” Mailos said. “It must be. Look how big the arrows are.”
“Flaming arrows, too,” Layanna said. “Like they were using against Sevu.”
“But why would they attack the convoy?” Avery asked. He didn’t need to ask who the convoy belonged to; it was a time of violence and there would be many parties struggling to gain some advantage—warlords, politicians, drug dealers, rebel generals. The dead men could have served anyone, or been their own rogue force. “The Nisaar’s issue is with the villagers, or the tribe they’re a part of, not the people of the cities. Unless—you don’t think—they haven’t declared war on all humans?”
The lieutenant frowned. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. All I know is we won’t be going any further in this direction until these vehicles are cleared off.”
Avery saw what he meant. The jungle closed in tight to the road, as it had the whole way; it must take considerable effort by the locals to keep the road from being overgrown. Avery had learned that the local governments paid the tribes to clear it for them and this was a major source of income for the aborigines, human and nonhuman alike. Some used machetes to hack it back; some used poison; some simply set fire to long stretches. The reason the band had had to take the cable car into the mountains was because the tribes that lived in the villages east of Ezzez had neglected their duties due to the fighting in the city.
“Most of the engines look burnt,” Mailos went on. “We’ll have to drag them off.”
One of his men shouted, and the lieutenant’s head popped up. A group of soldiers milled around one of the vehicles further up the line, looking excited.
“There’s a live one!” one shouted. “Sir, someone survived!”
Mailos went forward. Avery and the others followed, the doctor wondering how long it had been since this convoy had been attacked. Long enough, he supposed, for whoever had survived to be in desperate need of water. Mentally he prepared to find a flask or canteen for the poor soul as soon as he had checked on his condition. Other issues, of course, would be burns. Avery had brought along a medical kit, just in case, and he had some alchemical agents that could be used to treat burn wounds, but anything as extensive as what Avery had seen on the first corpse was beyond Avery’s ability to help. He would have to instruct Lt. Mailos to have some of his men ready a vehicle and ...
As Avery arrived on the scene, everything else faded from his thoughts.
The soldiers were tugging at the door of the cab of a burnt car, trying to get it open from where it had been fried during the attack. The metal of the door had almost fused with the main body of the vehicle, and they were having some trouble getting it open. Then, with a great heave, the door popped free, and three of the soldiers spilled to the ground. One—a private named Xarris—laughing, rose, dusted himself off and reached into the interior of the cab, where Avery could just see a figure stirring.
Xarris got his arms around the figure and, gently as he could, pulled him loose of the confines of the cab and brought him into the harsh light of day. Flies swarmed the survivor, which was a man, badly burned and with a glazed, almost dead look to his eyes. He emitted a strange buzzing sound from his mouth that reminded Avery of insects. He had heard that sound before.
As Xarris started to kneel down to lay the wounded man on the ground, the private started screaming. He dropped the survivor, who thunked to the ground without protest, stood and turned to the others, horror on his face. What looked liked scores—no, hundreds—of pale, wriggling maggots had covered his chest, arms and neck ... and, before anyone could stop them, they began boring into the soldier’s skin.
Xarris screamed louder, cords standing out on his neck and face. The maggots tunneled their way into this flesh. Xarris sank to his knees and scraped at himself, drawing red lines wherever his fingernails raked. He crushed one maggot, then another, but there were many of them, t
oo many, and in moments most had vanished into him.
Avery rushed forward to help, but Janx hauled him back.
“No! You’ll just get them on you.”
Avery saw that Janx was right. He still might have gone to the stricken soldier, but just as he managed to free himself and take a step forward, the other man, the burned one who’d started all this, climbed stiffly to his feet. A blackened, horrible thing (Maimed for life, poor soul, was Avery’s first thought) the man took a tottering step toward the soldiers, then another. His wasted limbs clawed the air, and blackened teeth gnashed in a ruined, half-charred mouth. Maggots squirmed all over him. They oozed out from between his lips, tunneled up from his pores, burst from his eyes. They wriggled on his fingertips as he reached toward the soldiers.
“Fall back! Fall back!” shouted Mailos, and they did, retreating hastily, fear in their faces. No, not just fear. Terror.
The man with the maggots stumbled toward them, as if desperate to give them gifts of the crawling, squirming things, even as the downed Xarris (now behind the maggot man) succumbed to some terrible seizure, thrashing and twisting on the ground, beating against it with his fists. Blood trickled from one corner of his mouth, and Avery knew he’d bitten his tongue, perhaps off.
The maggot man stumbled closer to the soldiers ... closer ... the maggots wriggled faster ...
Lt. Mailos never gave the order to fire, but he didn’t protest as first one, then all of the soldiers (more had come, drawn to the cries) began firing at the shambling, maggot-festooned being. Still it stumbled toward them, maggots squirming in its eyes and tongue, even as pieces of it were obliterated by gunfire. Streamers of gore flew out behind it as bullets punched through it. The soldiers even riddled its brain, but still it came, its body disintegrating under the hail of gunfire. As its legs were blown into mush beneath it, it crawled toward them, maggot-wreathed hands digging into the dirt and dragging it forward, inch by inch, that awful buzzing noise still issuing from what was left of its mouth. Even after its jaw was reduced to wet tatters, that sound still came out.
At last the thing could go on no more but collapsed utterly. The buzzing noise continued for several moments, then that stopped too. The soldiers, Avery, and the rest stood there staring down at the wet, shredded lumps that used to be a man and taking deep breaths. Avery hadn’t even been aware of the sounds of the jungle during the event, and he wasn’t sure if they had stopped during the gunfire or not, but they slowly began to trickle back into his hearing, as did color and smell and rational thought.
Wide-eyed, feeling sweat sting his eyes, he turned first to Layanna, then Janx and Hildra. Janx looked as shocked as he felt, though he displayed it differently, going hard and flinty rather than slack-jawed and gasping (as Avery knew he had), while Hildra swore viciously, and Layanna only blinked and looked pale.
Avery bent over and retched.
“I …” Lt. Mailos said. “I don’t understand.”
Bypassing the remains of the sole survivor of the attack on the convoy, Avery (once he had wiped his mouth) moved to Xarris, but when he reached out a hand to touch the man’s forehead he hesitated, and was glad he did, as a gray-white maggot burst from the skin of the man’s brow just where Avery had been about to touch, as if it had sensed Avery’s intention. Avery stared, frightened and fascinated. The maggot—although, looking at it closer, Avery could see that it wasn’t really a maggot at all but something longer and more awful-looking, multi-faceted and mature, not larval, but he could only think of it in terms of maggots for the moment, having no better reference—squirmed about for a moment, then burrowed back under Xarris’s flesh and was gone.
“I wouldn’t touch ‘im, Doc,” Janx said.
“Listen to Janx,” Hildra cautioned. “For Ani’s sake.”
Avery nodded, feeling his heart pound. Just what are we dealing with here?
“Do you think … ?” he started. “Could this have anything to do with the priests of the Restoration? Those maggots …”
“I don’t know,” Layanna said. “I’ve never seen anything like it, except in Ezzez. It’s not Atomic Sea-like in nature. Surely they must be related to the priests.”
The lieutenant arrived, winded and ill. Perhaps he’d thrown up, too, as something glistened on his chin. Several of his men surrounded him, jumping at every noise from the jungle.
“Can you help him, Doctor?” Mailos said.
“I don’t know,” Avery said. Looking back over the burnt convoy vehicles, he said, “I wonder if the other bodies ... if they’re all like this.”
“Can’t be. That doesn’t make sense.”
“No?”
“It was some thing from the jungle. Some mutated creepy-crawly. Some bug that became infected. That’s all.”
“I hope you’re right, Lieutenant, but my friend, who’s an expert on such things, doesn’t think so.”
“What else could it be?”
“That is a very good question.” And the priests of the Restoration might have the answer.
“Well?” Mailos said. “Can you do anything for him or not?”
Avery returned his attention to Xarris, who was now frothing at the mouth, his eyes jerking crazily in his skull. He trembled only a little now, subsiding every moment. Soon he would be completely still, except for his eyes.
“There’s nothing in my training that enables me to deal with this,” Avery said honestly, “although we do at least have gloves and protective suits we can use to touch him with, and plastic to wrap him in. If this is some local ailment, perhaps the villagers of Sevu can be of assistance. If nothing else, they’ll have poultices, herbs, fresh water, a place for him to rest. At best they might even be able to treat the illness, if we can call it that.”
“Well, they do owe us,” the lieutenant mused. “But I sent a runner ahead to appraise the approach to Sevu. Bad news: the villagers haven’t maintained the road from the main road to the village. We’d have to go by foot.”
Avery motioned to the wrecked vehicles. “We can’t go forward by automobile until these are moved, anyway.”
“Fine. You and your people come with me. I’ll detach a group of soldiers to go with us to the village while the rest stay here and clear the path.”
He strode off, giving orders, and Avery turned to the others to see them looking nonplussed.
“I don’t like this, bones,” Hildra said.
“Do you have a better plan?”
She bit her lip.
“Do you think ...?” Janx started, then gathered himself. Some terrible notion seemed to have occurred to him
“Yes?” said Layanna.
“Shit, you think this is why those Nisaar attacked the caravan? To, you know, burn out the disease?”
Avery looked at him, startled, but could not answer.
* * *
Lt. Mailos gave Avery some time to wrap the maggot-riddled soldier, Private Tulos Xarris, in a protective cocoon of plastic and rubber, and had several men cart him around the stopped vehicles and down the road; others carried the armor the group would need. Walking with the soldiers, Avery fished for any necessary medical information, such as congenital and contracted diseases, and discovered from them that Xarris had grown up on a pig farm. His father had died early of a heart attack and his mother turned to drink, beating her three sons regularly and forcing them to work at grueling labor from sun up to sun down till eventually Xarris had enough and ran away from home for the bright lights of the big city. Although the soldiers wouldn’t come right out and say it, Avery received the distinct impression that Xarris had had to earn money in the oldest way possible once he got there, servicing men in back alleys and rest rooms until one day he came of age and was able to join the military. Now, less than a year later, just when his life was really beginning, this. Avery could only hope the people of Sevu had more answers than he did.
Mailos stopped, gesturing at the jungle. “Hard to see, but this is the trail. Or what’s left of it.”
&
nbsp; “Fuck this, man,” a soldier said, but when Mailos narrowed his eyes at her, she looked ashamed.
“If that was you,” Mailos said, flicking his gaze to Xarris, who still twitched every now and then, “you’d want us to make every effort to save your sorry ass, wouldn’t you? Well, this is our best shot, and we’re taking it. Any objections?”
“Single file through the jungle,” grunted another soldier. “And with those Nisaar pissed at us. A good place for an ambush, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. Place a scout ahead of us and a trailer behind. No one will take us unawares.”
Some still grumbling, they began donning the strange armor used for trekking through the jungle.
“Godsdamned uncomfortable,” Janx said, struggling into his. He had to stuff himself inside like an overlarge, naked lobster trying to inhabit the shell of a smaller specimen.
“It’ll save your ass in the Drip,” a nearby soldier told him.
Janx mumbled something under his breath and snapped a piece into place.
Avery had to agree with Janx. The armor may have fit Avery better than it did the whaler, but it pinched and stifled regardless. Breathing into the helmet, tasting his own breath with every inhalation, he was reminded of the environment suits worn on the Atomic Sea, but at least those were of fabric, not metal.
Once ready, the group trooped through a narrow corridor in the jungle, alien plants crowding them on all sides. The stench of ammonia and exotic poisons filled Avery’s nose more than before, burning his eyes and sinuses; the armor was not airtight and the respirators were only for emergencies. Only about half of the vegetation seemed to have been contaminated by the infection spreading from the local waterways, if that’s what had done it, but the infected trees and vines and undergrowth blended so thoroughly with the green, healthy plants that the alien presence was omnipresent, and Avery began to feel a panicky feeling, made worse by the armor. Strange noises sounded through the jungle, hoots and chitters, ticks and warbles.
