"Some folks thought it was the end of the world and stopped doing everything," Mike said, shrugging. He nodded at the combine. "Maybe there was a rapture, and this guy was the only guy who got taken."
Something rustled in the corn, the tall stalks swaying. Mike pushed me to the ground, dropped beside me, and brought up his gun.
An old man in a Tommy Hilfiger sweater walked out of the corn: his hair and beard were untrimmed and unkempt; his clothes hung from his body, tatters trailing like fringes from his arms; his smile was beatific and he mumbled nonsense words as he carried an armful of corn back toward the shed.
Mike gestured me to come along, and we followed the bearded guy around the other side of the shed, where we ducked down behind a four-hundred-gallon gas tank.
One wall of the shed had been pulled open, and the building was divided in half. On one side, a boy rested in the bed of straw. A woman crawled away from him, pulling ragged clothes back on. I was relieved to see it wasn"t Amanda.
On the other side of the shed, a dozen or more women were lined up in rows. Their heads were covered with rags, and pieces of old s.h.a.g carpet and odd bits of blanket were wrapped around their shoulders to keep them warm. They stood in thawing mud, bare feet shifting constantly. The sound that I had mistaken for moaning was a constant low murmur of nonsense words.
When I saw that many of them were pregnant, I wanted to puke.
Mike shifted position, crouching around the other end of the tank. He was looking for Amanda. I was too disgusted to move. Every bone and muscle in my body screamed at me to throw down my guns and run away.
One woman moaned louder than the others. Her swollen belly popped out of her sparkly tee-shirt and soiled sweatpants.
The boy rose up from his bed of straw-he was not much older than Josh, with no beard to speak of and pale as a ghost. When he leaned in to sniff the woman"s mouth, she tried to bite his nose. He jerked his head away, then he bent down to sniff her crotch. Something satisfied him, because he tilted his head back and crooned in some inhuman language.
The old man in the fringe-tatter Tommy Hilfiger sweater dropped his new armload of earcorn and came, whining out his own reply. A third man, still wearing his business suit and tie, but hairy and ragdemalion like the others, came trotting around the corner.
Thing was, I could have known any of those men. I even recognized the cheerful smiles on their faces from a thousand days at the office, from the trips to the mall, from the visits to school.
While I stood there uselessly, Mike ran over to a Chevy parked near the far end of the shed and held a scope in his hand to peer inside.
Tommy Hilfiger and Three-piece repeated the sniffing at mouth and crotch while the woman moaned and panted, clearly in labor. The women around her shuffled out of her way, keeping up their continuous flow of jabberwocky.
The old man took out a knife and handed it to the pale boy. They exchanged words in their weird groaning language, and then without prelude, the boy thrust the knife into the underside of the woman"s belly.
I jerked up the shotgun, banging it into the tank, startling myself. I shrank back, expecting to be seen, but the others were too focused on their task.
The ghostly boy sliced the woman open from hip to hip. At first I thought her intestines were spilling out: then I saw that it was a pile of worms, silver-gray and wet, hundreds or thousands of them, swimming like a school of squids out of the ocean of her belly.
She moaned with another contraction. Three-piece reached his hand up into her stomach and pulled.
A creature flopped out. At first I thought it was a human baby, stillborn, deformed-its head was too small to be fully developed. I thought it was just food for the worms to feed on, and I waited for the ma.s.s of tiny creatures to engulf it.
But as the b.l.o.o.d.y red thing hit the ground, it lifted its head and cried out. It pushed itself up on all fours-its limbs were as inhuman as its head-and began climbing up the woman"s body. She was braced against the wall of the shed, the old man tying her to the wall to hold her upright. Three-piece and the ghost helped the monster climb, petting it and stroking it, crooning to it as it went. The baby bent its squat neck back and cried out again.
The mother cried back, word for word, weakly, fading. The sound sent chills through me, as did the sight of the baby ripping open her shirt and biting into her breast.
"Amanda!"
Mike walked into plain view, toward his daughter, who, I saw now, was hidden in the midst of a cl.u.s.ter of women at the farthest end of the shed.
Her head turned at his voice. She smiled as though she was happy to see him, though her eyes were blank.
Other heads also turned at the sound of his voice. The baby lifted its weirdly disfigured crown and screeched. The ma.s.s of worms on the ground wriggled and pulsed in his direction. The three men left the side of the woman and ran toward him.
Mike aimed his gun, and with short controlled bursts, dropped the old man and the ghost. Three-piece fell down, but rose again, blood pouring from his side and from the defensive wounds in his outstretched arms.
My teeth were chattering but I stepped around the tank with the shotgun raised. I was screaming curse words, the same words, over and over and over.
Still I couldn"t bring myself to shoot.
Mike took a step back and shot Three-piece again, dropping him for good. The women in the shed keened and flapped their arms like a flock of frightened birds. Answering calls came from the fields and the houses.
I grabbed Mike by the arm. "We have to get out of here!"
"Amanda," he said. "I"m so sorry, Amanda."
She pressed forward, smiling at the sound of his voice: but she echoed the keening cry of the other women, and began to flail her arms.
He shot her in the head, knocking her back and leaving a hole in the wall of bodies.
There were more men coming from the fringes of the farm, out of the house and the cornfield. I had my fist in Mike"s jacket, dragging him backward toward the road. He pulled away from me long enough to light one of the Molotov c.o.c.ktails he had brought along. The flaming bottle arched through the air and landed in the dry straw of the shed.
The flames raced across the stalls like a golden retriever running to greet its master. The women seemed unable to flee the shed. As they jerked and struggled in the flames, their screams sounded more and more human. The men running out of the cornfields went right past Mike and me, throwing themselves into the flames to try to rescue the most pregnant of the women.
I was retreating, trying to pull Mike along. He was emptying his gun into the screaming bodies, screaming along with them, their voices merged into a single wall of sound that threatened to overwhelm and drown me.
Only the baby escaped the inferno. It had dropped from its mother"s breast at the first roar of the flame, and now it ran, b.l.o.o.d.y-mouthed, on all fours with its little lizard"s gait toward us.
Mike pointed his gun at the monster, but the trigger clicked on an empty chamber.
The creature stretched out its clawed hand to Mike"s leg, while he tripped, staggering backward, fumbling to switch magazines.
I stepped forward with my shotgun. Raising it over my head, I slammed the b.u.t.t down on the baby"s head. I hit it over and over, until the stock cracked and flew off, and then I beat at it with the barrel, until the head was pulp pounded into the dirt. I couldn"t even see what I was doing, my eyes were so blurry with tears, my vision red with fury.
Mike pulled me away and I threw the barrel on the monster and yelled at it. My elbow was bleeding, where the gun had gone off and grazed me with the shot. I didn"t even notice when it happened.
As we drove away, the flames reflected in the window of his truck. It felt like the whole world was on fire.
When we were in the car, driving back to our camps, I kept thinking about the way Mike had shot his daughter rather than see her like that. I wanted to be like Mike. If I had to be, I wanted to be strong like he was. I didn"t want to see my children suffer.
Before we went back to the deer blind, Mike made me wash up so I wouldn"t scare Josh with all the blood on me. He talked a lot, more than usual for him-self-recriminations, how he should have extended his perimeter, taken out that bang earlier; talk about teaching Josh how to shoot, heading north for colder country.
We looked into the blind, and I saw that Josh had taken off his belt and tied himself to one of the corner posts.
"What"s up, big man?" I said, trying to sound light-hearted.
He was shaking, sitting on his hands to keep them still. His voice was very low.
"It was only one, Dad. There was only one that got on my face, that"s it, only one. I didn"t know what it was. Nick was saying how they tickled-how it was dandelion seeds but they tickled."
I looked over at Nick, sitting catatonic in the corner. The Jif peanut b.u.t.ter jar had fallen out of his pocket; it was filled with a dozen squirming worms, setting off tiny blue sparks like little fireflies. The J had peeled off the label, leaving a glowing, brightly colored jar of if.
Josh saw me see it, and his face went sick. He gritted his teeth, put on his meanest face, and said nothing, trying not to shake.
Mike said, "Good work, Joshua. Smart. I need to talk to your dad for a second."
We stepped away from the blind. Mike put his hand on my shoulder. "I"m so sorry," he said.
I was shaking my head, rubbing my eyes.
He said, "It"s all right. I"ll take care of it. You had my back at the bang, I got yours here."
I swallowed deep, knowing he was right, wishing that I had known him before everything went so bad, wishing that we could have been friends, that Amanda and Josh could have grown up together. I took a deep, loud breath, and willed my chest to stillness.
Looking him in the eye, I said, "Thanks. Thanks. But I can do it. I need to do this myself."
"You sure?"
"Yeah, yeah, I"m sure."
He nodded approval, and I found myself wanting his approval as he reached into my pocket and pulled out the revolver. He flipped it open, checked the bullets, and pressed it into my hand.
"After this, we"re going to go kill all those f.u.c.king alien monster b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," he said. "All right?"
"All right."
"Dad?" Josh said uncertainly.
"I"ll be right there," I said.
Mike patted me on the back. The revolver felt heavy in my hand, like an anchor keeping me in harbor during a storm.
I raised the gun and shot Mike in the face.
He toppled backward, and lay on the ground, his head a b.l.o.o.d.y wound that lay open to the sky.
"Dad!" Josh cried.
"I"m right here."
I went into the blind. Josh"s teeth were chattering. He was pale and shaking, and his eyes had already started to take on the glazed look. He saw the gun in my hand.
"I don"t want it to hurt," he whispered. "Don"t let it hurt."
"I won"t."
The thing is this: even with the alien taking over, some part of us remains in them, some essential piece of our DNA remains unchanged. I have to believe that. I thought of the way Amanda turned her head at the sound of her father"s voice. Her tongue was inhuman, but her face was full of joy.
So I put down my gun. Untying Josh"s bonds, I say, "Come here," and I take him in my arms. He squeezes me tight. I look at Nick, who"s already somewhere else, and I pull him onto my lap. I reach down and pick up the peanut b.u.t.ter jar full of rapeworms.
I unscrew the lid and pull one out. Pinched between my thumb and finger, it writhes, cilia twitching and setting off tiny blue sparks.
Josh buries his face against my shoulder, torn between clinging to me and pushing away so he can follow the siren call of the worm in his brain. His voice is weak, not hardly his own voice any more. "Dad, I"m scared."
"Yeah, me too."
Holding him to me, I lift the rapeworm to my nose. It sparks as it enters, tickling, making me want to choke. I taste a spurt of hot blood. Then I take hold of Nick"s hand, and Josh"s, and we rise. When we go, we"ll all go together.
Everglades By Mira Grant
Mira Grant is an open pseudonym for fantasy writer Seanan McGuire. Under the McGuire byline, she is the author of Rosemary and Rue Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation A Local Habitation, and An Artificial Night An Artificial Night. Seanan is also a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. As Mira Grant, she is the author of the Newsflesh trilogy, the first of which, Feed Feed, came out in May. She describes the Newsflesh books as "science fiction zombie political thrillers" that focus on blogging, medical technology, and the ethics of fear. Our next story is set in the same milieu, during a time called "the Rising," the event that changed everything.
Steve Irwin was the host of the extremely popular Australian TV show The Crocodile Hunter The Crocodile Hunter. Irwin, who had been wrestling crocodiles since early childhood, took over his parents" zoo, and married a woman who had attended one of his shows. (They didn"t wear wedding rings, as these might pose a hazard to them or the animals.) He was criticized for once holding his infant son in his arms while feeding a crocodile, though Irwin maintained that the child had been in no danger. Danger was something he lived with daily. A television ad he appeared in joked about him dying of snakebite after not choosing the fastest delivery service. He eventually did die after being attacked by a stingray while snorkeling at Great Barrier Reef. Later, several stingrays were found dead on local beaches, their tails chopped off, presumably by vengeful Steve Irwin fans.
Our next tale is also about danger, death, and wild creatures. The author says, "This story is about the inevitability of natural selection. And it"s about alligators. I"ve always had a pa.s.sion for reptiles and virology, which gets you looked at sort of funny when you"re a perky little blonde girl. I have been bitten by multiple kinds of venomous reptile, and one of the most chilling things I"ve ever done was go into the Florida Everglades to see the gators. That really makes you realize that Nature has things much more efficiently designed to survive than we are. We"re just blinks of an eye to the alligator."
The smell hanging over the broken corpse of the campus is rich, ripe, and green-the heavy reptile smell of swamplands and of secrets. It teases its way past sealed windows and in through cracks, permeating everything it touches. Across the empty expanse of the quad, the green flag suspended from the top window of the Physics building flutters in the wind. It marks the location of survivors, waiting for a rescue that may never come. I wonder if they smell the swamp as clearly there, tucked inside their cla.s.srooms full of quiet air, where the search for the secrets of the universe has been replaced by the search for simple survival.
Something darts across the pathway leading toward Shattuck Avenue. I twitch the telescope in that direction quickly enough to see a large black cat disappearing under the Kissing Bridge. I haven"t seen anything larger than a stray dog in the two hours of my watch. That doesn"t mean it"s safe to stop looking. Alligators are invisible until they strike, a perfect match for their surroundings. In this dead world, the zombies are even harder to see. From A to Z in the predator"s alphabet.
This is California, a world away from Florida, but that makes no difference now; the Everglades are here. I lean back against the windowsill, scanning the campus, and breathe in the timeless, tireless smell of the swamp.
I was eight and Wes was twelve the last time we visited our grandparents in Florida. True to family form, Grandma and Wes promptly vanished to spend their time on the sunny beaches, exchanging hours for sandy shoes and broken seash.e.l.ls, while I dove straight for Grandpa"s tobacco-scented arms. Grandpa was my secret conspirator, the man who didn"t think a pa.s.sion for snakes and reptiles was unusual for a tow-headed little girl from Ohio. Our visits were wonderful things, filled with trips to zoos, alligator farms, and the cluttered, somehow sinister homes of private collectors, who kept their tanks of snakes and lizards in climate-controlled rooms where the sunlight never touched them. My parents saw my affections as some sort of phase, something that would pa.s.s. Grandpa saw them for what they were: a calling.
Grandpa died five years ago, less than a month after seeing me graduate from high school. Grandma didn"t last much longer. That"s good. I haven"t seen any reports out of Florida in days, and I haven"t seen any reports from anywhere that say people who"ve been dead that long have started getting back up again. Only the fresh dead walk. My grandparents get to rest in peace.
That summer, though, the summer when I was eight and Wes was twelve, that was the perfect summer, the one everything else gets to be measured against, forever. Our second day there, Grandpa woke me up at four-thirty in the morning, shaking me awake with a secret agent"s sly grin and whispering, "Get dressed, now, Debbie. I"ve got something to show you." He rolled me out of bed, waited in the hall for me to dress, and half-carried me out of their cluttered retiree condo to drop me into the front seat of his ancient pickup truck. The air smelled like flowers I couldn"t name, and even hours before sunrise, the humidity was enough to twist my hair into fat ringlets. In the distance, a dog barked twice and was still. With that bark, I came fully awake, realizing at last that this wasn"t a dream; that we were going on an adventure.
We drove an hour to a narrow, unpaved road, where the rocks and gravel made the truck bounce uncontrollably. Grandpa cursed at the suspension while I giggled, clinging to the open window as I tried to work out just what sort of an adventure this was. He parked next to a crumbling little dock, pilings stained green with decades of moss. A man in jeans and an orange parka stood on the dock, his face a seamed ma.s.s of wrinkles. He never spoke. I remember that, even though most of that night seems like a dream to me now. He just held out his hand, palm upward, and when Grandpa slapped a wad of bills down into it, he pointed us toward the boat anch.o.r.ed at the end of the dock, bobbing ceaselessly up and down amongst the waterweeds and sc.u.m.
There were lifejackets in the bottom of the boat. Grandpa pulled mine over my head before he put his own on, picked up the oars, and pushed away from the dock. I didn"t say anything. With Grandpa it was best to bide your time and let him start the lesson when he was ready. It might take a while, but he always got there in the end. Trees loomed up around us as he rowed, their branches velvet-draped with hanging moss. Most seemed to stretch straight out of the water, independent of the tiny clots of solid ground around them. And Grandpa began to speak.
I couldn"t have written exactly what he said to me even then, without fifteen years between the hearing and the recollection. It was never the exact words that mattered. He introduced me to the Everglades like he was bringing me to meet a treasured family friend. Maybe that"s what he was doing. We moved deeper and deeper into that verdant-scented darkness, mosquitoes buzzing around us, his voice narrating all the while. Finally, he brought us to a slow halt in the middle of the largest patch of open water I"d seen since we left the dock. "Here, Debbie," he said, voice low. "What do you see?"