57

He was dreaming. He was walking down an empty beach, holding Ada’s hand.

Michael? she asked.

“Yes?” he said.

Do you love me?

He didn’t know how to answer, so didn’t. He loved Ada; he was sure of that. But he didn’t understand how she had changed. How they had moved apart.

I need you to do something for me, she said.

“What?” he said.

I want to have a baby, she said.

“Are you serious?” he asked.

She nodded. That’s what I need, she said. It’ll bring us closer together.

And then in the dream there began a faraway insistent sound. At first he hardly noticed it, but it grew louder and louder. Ada was still speaking, almost as if she didn’t hear it, but he could no longer hear what she was saying. And then both she and the beach around them began to be eaten away by darkness, slowly coming unraveled, and he woke up.

The sound was still going. Someone had triggered the alarm again. He got out of bed, got quickly dressed, and went out into the hall. It was deserted. In the room behind him, he heard the comlink go live.

“Altman?” it said. “Altman, this is Field. Are you there?”

He went back, switched the visual on. “I’m here,” he said.

“Something’s gone wrong,” Field said. His face was bone white. “I saw it, but can’t hardly believe what I saw. It’s horrible, absolutely horrible. Get to safety, Altman, as quick as you can.”

“Calm down, Field,” said Altman. “Tell me what you’re talking about.”

“It sprouted swords,” said Field. “Just had them sprout out of its back like—”

Somewhere in the background came a scream. Field whirled around, and Altman saw he was holding a gun. The vid clicked off.

Down the hall he heard screams. He poked his head out, saw a researcher running toward him.

“What’s wrong?” Altman asked. “Wait a minute. Stop!”

But the man kept running. “They’re everywhere!” he called back over his shoulder. “You shoot them and they still keep coming at you.” And then he was around the corner and gone.

I’m still asleep, Altman thought. He closed his eyes and shook his head, and then opened his eyes again. No, it was still as it had been, more screams and now even the sound of gunfire.

He rushed back into the room and looked around for a weapon. Nothing there. He went out again and down the hall in the direction the man had run, walking very quickly. Rounding a corner, he saw the corridor barricaded by a laboratory table turned on its side. He headed for it, and shots rang out, thunking into the wall beside his face.

“Don’t shoot!” he cried, raising his hands above his head. “It’s me, Altman.”

A chorus of shouts, and the firing stopped. Someone from behind the table waved to him, and he moved to the table and pulled himself over it, down among them.

“Altman,” said Showalter. “I’m glad they didn’t get you.”

“Get me?” said Altman. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t exactly know,” said Showalter, his eyes darting nervously from side to side. “I’ve only seen one of them, but I wish I hadn’t. It was monstrous. It had bone scythes instead of arms and legs and it scuttled like a spider. Its head just hung there, swinging, staring down at the floor, but it seemed to see us anyway. I don’t know who it used to be, but you could tell from the remnants of clothing that it used to be someone, that it used to be human. It sure as hell isn’t human now. Something’s gone horribly wrong.”

“I gathered that,” said Altman. He looked around. One of the other men was someone he vaguely recognized. White, he thought his name was. The third he didn’t know.

“Here,” said Showalter, and handed him a gun. “Got this off a guard who had his head torn off. Don’t know that it’ll help much. When you shoot them, they don’t seem to die. They just keep coming.”

Altman took the weapon. “How many people left alive?” he asked.

Showalter shrugged. “How do I know? The four of us counting you,” he said. “Probably a few guards. There’s a few others running around.”

“Field vided me not long ago, so he’s still alive,” said Altman. “It must have started down here. Maybe it hasn’t made it to the top part of the facility yet, to the part above water.”

“Maybe not,” said Showalter.

“Vid Field,” said Altman. “Tell him to get up there and seal the lock, wait for us on the other side. We’ll fight our way up and once we’re there, he can let us through.”

Showalter passed the order along to one of the other two men with him, someone called Peter Fert, who took out his holopod and got to work.

From the far end of the hall came an eerie bellow and then something shuffled around the corner. It stood roughly as tall as a man, but the arms it had looked like the arms of a child. They protruded from its stomach. From its shoulders had sprouted two jointed scythes of bone, like the wings of a featherless bird. Its skin was mottled and seeping, disgusting to look at, and it smelled faintly of rotting meat. It was humanoid, but Altman wouldn’t have guessed it had once been human if the tattered uniform of a guard weren’t still clinging to its torso.

“Holy shit,” whispered Altman.

“Keep trying to contact Field, Fert,” said Showalter, keeping his voice low. “We’ll hold it off. Oh, and if you can help it, men, try not to send too many bullets into the walls of the passage. Last thing we want is to be flooded out.”

White, Altman saw, was holding his gun so tight that his knuckles were white.

The thing shuffled slowly in their direction and then stopped dead. It made a grunting sound and then, with a cry, rushed at them.

“Fire!” screamed Showalter.

All three of them fired at once. The shots slowed it a little, but didn’t seem to permanently harm it. It just kept coming. Altman aimed carefully for the head and fired three times quickly. At least two of the shots connected—he saw the bursts of flesh and blood as they went in—but the creature continued forward unfazed.

And then it was on them, looming over the barrier. They crouched down and kept firing, trying to keep it at a distance, but with remarkable ease it leaned in through the hail of bullets and plucked up White.

The man screamed and tried to run. The creature’s scythes were gouging into White’s back, which had already grown bloody. It pulled him close like a lover and leaned in to bite his neck.

It was terrible to watch, White flopping like a fish out of water, screaming in a way Altman had heard only once before, when a rabbit had been shot in the head but lived long enough to realize it was desperately hurt. The creature was making a grotesque mumbling sound, drooling as well as biting, and shaking its head so bits of flesh and gore spattered about.

Altman’s first impulse was to run. The only reason he didn’t was because of a fleeting selfish thought. If I don’t kill it, he thought, I’ll be next.

He moved as close as he could and put the gun’s barrel up against the creature’s neck and rattled off four shots. It was enough, at point-blank range, to tear the thing’s head mostly off, to get its teeth away from White’s neck. But even without the head, the body kept moving.

“Don’t these things ever die?” shouted Altman.

Showalter just grunted. He was imitating what Altman had done, holding the pistol at the joint of the scythe. He pulled the trigger and fired and the blast tore it off.

“That’s it!” said Altman. “Maim it!” He brought his gun low and shot three times, until the thing’s leg collapsed and it tilted to one side and went down, taking White with it. Altman vaulted the barrier and was on top of it. He fired and stomped on its remaining limbs, kept stomping until it was in enough pieces that he didn’t think it could do any damage. Even then, he wasn’t sure it was dead. He was only sure that it was incapacitated enough that it couldn’t hurt him.

He stepped back, stunned. His shoes and legs were slick with blood, blood spattered on his chest and arms, too. White, he saw was still alive, but in shock, his back a bloody mass. Altman knelt down beside him and slapped his face, tried to get him to pay attention. The man’s eyes flicked slightly and then clouded over. He was dead.

“Is he all right?” asked Showalter.

Altman opened his mouth and gave him artificial respiration for a moment, trying to breathe him back to life, tasting the dead man’s blood on his lips.

Showalter touched his shoulder.

“Leave him,” he said.

He looked up and shook his head. He was just turning back toward the mouth when he heard a crack, saw White’s torso convulse.

He pushed away from it and scrambled back. The body seemed to be going through a fit, shaking and contorting. And then it began to change.

Altman watched, horrified, trying to keep his panic under control. “What the hell is going on?” he said.

“He’s changing,” said Showalter. “He’s one of them now.”

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” said Altman.

“I’m afraid there’s one more thing we have to do,” said Showalter.

“What’s that?” asked Altman.

“We need to take steps to make sure he doesn’t come after us.”

Altman nodded, his lips grim. “You mean . . .” he said.

“We’re going to have to dismember him.”

·  ·  ·  

The two of them were standing together, breathing heavily, staring down at blood and gore on the floor, the pieces of the creature, and of the partially transformed White. I’ll never be the same, thought Altman, and he could tell by the way Showalter dodged his gaze that he felt similarly. He’d been having nightmares before, but he had material for an entirely new set of them now.

“I got through to Field,” said Peter Fert. “He says as far as he can determine, the creatures are still all in the lower levels. He’ll try to get to the airlock and shut it, and then wait for us to contact him.”

“If we’re going to make it, we’ll need something other than guns,” said Altman. “Bullets don’t do enough. They barely even slow the things down.”

“What do you have in mind?” asked Showalter.

“We raid the labs and janitorial closets as we go,” said Altman. “See what we can find. Anything that’ll cut off a limb or get partway there.”

They found, in the first lab they came to, a handheld plasma cutter, which, by unscrewing the guard, could be made into a close-combat weapon. Showalter recalibrated a laser pistol taken off a dead guard using the tools of the next lab to give it a wider beam, something with a little slicing power. Peter Fert dug up a laser scalpel, modified it to cut through an object as thick as a wrist.

“Probably won’t stop them,” said Altman.

“First thing I’m worried about is cutting through their scythes,” said Fert. “If I can get that far, I’ll be lucky.”

“All right,” said Altman. “What do we have to lose? Let’s go.”