Chapter Nineteen: Running Into Trouble
“Tiffany,” another voice said in hushed whisper.
Diane stopped in mid-stride, almost belying her natural grace with a stumble. People at a nearby cafeteria-style table stopped talking to watch her, but she didn’t notice. She was listening.
The common room still looked a lot like the cafeteria it had once been, but most of the tables and chairs had been folded up and hauled off to storage. The prison’s new occupants needed far fewer than the old.
Had she imagined it? She looked at the three small tables of people, each group engrossed in hushed conversations. A few seconds passed before she heard it again, this time from someone at a different table.
“Tiffany Hudson…”
The name opened a door in her mind, and the dream that had eluded her earlier flooded through.
She was walking through a house, murdering everyone she saw. It felt like she was killing her own family, but she kept going. It ended with a pretty girl’s tortured face, and the exquisite sense of loss that she felt when she first woke up.
The people at the tables watched her; some with the same puffy eyes that she knew adorned her face. They stared at her, or at least in her direction, waiting for her to say something. Did they think she had caused this? It was beyond her comprehension that they could have all had the same dream, but they clearly had. What was going on?
Once again, the only explanation that made any sense was that a host was nearby. If that was true, they would already be dead, not just having bad dreams. For the second time since waking up, her mental walls snapped into place. Scanning the area for other nanite activity, she sensed nothing unusual. She would have known if an exterminator, offspring, or even a host was using mental powers nearby… in theory.
In practice, someone would have to be using powers at or near her elbow for her to sense it, but she still tried. The results were predictably unenlightening. She kept her blocks up, taking comfort in the small sense of security they provided. The faces looking up at her were still heavy with worry. She was their shield, their giver of comfort.
They smiled and said their good mornings as she approached the nearest table. The other tables’ occupants casually stood and gathered around to join the conversation, even if it was only to be about the weather.
Dennis, the first to speak was a rough looking, skinny man in his mid-sixties. They said he looked like Grizzly Adams on a diet, and she pretended to understand. He was from her support group at the hospital before everything fell apart.
“Did you dream about her, too?” Dennis asked. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for her answer.
She nodded. Her typical smile and a few easy going sayings weren’t going to work with these people. They were scared. They all started talking to each other at once.
“…told you…”
“What does it mean?”
“…even the exterminators…”
“Who is she?”
Diane let them talk for a moment, trying to think of something she could say to comfort them. With no solid plan in mind, she just started talking.
“Look, I’m not gonna stand here and pretend I know what it means or that I understand the ‘why’s’ and ‘how’s’ of it, ‘cause I don’t. But I promise I’ll talk with the others and get to the bottom of it as soon as I can, okay?”
The questions piled up again, and she spoke over them in her best no-nonsense tone. “Now hang on a minute. Is there a one of us that hasn’t seen ten stranger things than folks having the same dream? We still don’t know what caused the plague, or what it really is. This is brand new territory for us. Right? How do we know this isn’t a perfectly normal thing with all this crazy stuff going on?”
“I’m sorry, Diane,” Dennis said, “but this is still pretty darn strange.”
“Yes, sure. You’re right on about that. All I’m getting at is, don’t we have enough problems to solve without making another one just because we ain’t figured it out yet? Y’all keep up the fight, and leave this with me. While everyone’s talking about it, why don’t y’all go around and find out if anyone didn’t have this dream, or if somebody had a different version of it. I’ll meet you here tomorrow morning and we’ll talk about it, alright?”
She felt a little better as she left the chattering group behind. Giving them something to do would at least make them feel useful. Even their entire world would be flipped over in a couple hours.
#
Lee and Jamie were already on the roof when she stepped out the stairwell.
“No sector four, then?” Diane asked.
Lee handed her a pair of binoculars and pointed a block south past the police department.
After a quick look, she thrust them back at him, shaking her head.
“What if we pretend we never saw him?” Lee asked.
“What’s the matter with that man?” It was Leonard, running his favorite old circuit along the river. She scanned the streets for a few blocks in each direction. There was a cluster of thirty or so husks in a small park, but they had been there for days.
“You better stay here. I don’t see anything moving right now, but two of us would make a pretty monster magnet. Besides, if anything happens, we can’t afford to lose two exterminators.”
Lee nodded and smiled grimly. “I’ll stay up here and keep watch. You have to promise me something, though. If anything big comes after you, just run. Try to lead it to the intersection, down there, where we’ll have a good view. What? I haven’t watched TV in over a year. I work hard. Don’t I deserve some entertainment?”
“Funny,” she said, not returning his smile. “I’ve run with him enough to know his route. If he survives long enough, he’ll be near that parking garage in about ten minutes. See it? I’ll intercept him there, at the corner of Pearl and Madison. I’ll come out on the east side, drag him back in and kill him where no one will see. Yeah?”
Lee looked at her sideways, sizing her up, then shrugged and nodded his approval. Jamie and the four humans on post up here were listening, too, and Jamie looked like he was about to speak up. The humans on guard duty each had a rifle, but only a handful of bullets, since ammo was getting scarce. Their real weapons were their knives, clubs, and homemade spears, like Diane’s.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, y’all, I’m not really gonna kill him. Yet. I just don’t want something else punchin’ his ticket first, in case I change my mind. Clock’s tickin’. I better go.”
She wouldn’t change her mind, of course. Most exterminators were already plagued with nightmares just like the one everyone shared last night. Killing monsters that looked mostly human wasn’t easy, and she, at least, had no desire to add more faces to those already haunting her.
She even avoided killing the husks when she could. The hosts were another matter, though. Most of them could pass as human or husk at first glance, but that had been the final mistake of more than one exterminator.
“We’ll come, too,” one of the roof guards said, following them towards the stairs. He was a tall man with graying hair and a scruffy, grizzled beard to match. He went by Peters, but his bearing and attitude had earned him the moniker of Wall Street.
She looked at their eager faces, and understood why they wanted to tag along. They were bored to tears, and this was a chance for some “outside time.”
“Which two of you are the best shots?” she asked.
There were four of them: Mister Wall Street, a well-muscled young black guy called Boots, a Latina woman, and a Latino man. Diane knew them by face and name, but not much more than that.
“My husband and Mister Peters are the best marksmen, but Boots, here, he’s the angel of death with a pistol,” the woman said.
Diane looked them all over, sizing them up in a couple of seconds. “What about you? Tonya, is it? Can you shoot?”
Tonya shrugged. “A little, I guess.”
Diane knew better. She wouldn’t be on post up here if she wasn’t good. “Alright. You and your husband stay on post. Help Lee keep an eye out for us. If we get in trouble, don’t shoot! I don’t want you drawing any attention. Just let the others know. Jamie, Boots, Peters, let’s go.”
Since their lives often depended on it, Diane, like most of the MPC colonists knew the surrounding five blocks better than people who had lived there their whole lives. Using the access tunnels in the subway and the sewers, they made it to the building next to the parking garage without having to use the streets. Once in a while, a few husks wandered down here, but there wasn’t enough walking meat traffic beneath the streets to draw the attention of anything bigger, so they made good time.
The stairwell was clear, but before they reached the third floor, Diane signaled them to stop.
“Offspring,” she whispered. “Somewhere above us, not far, I think. Remember: stab up through the mouth from the front, or right between the shoulders from behind. Be quick and quiet.”
They walked, instead of jogged, up to the third floor, but Diane still sensed it above them. At the fourth floor, she nodded and pointed at the door. Spear in hand, she pushed through and crept out of the stairwell.
She was pleased that she had been able to sense the thing, but wished that she had the same skill as the other exterminators at pinpointing them. At least she knew it was somewhere ahead, and that it was masking, so it knew they were coming.
“You’re blocking, Jamie. Shields up. It knows we’re here,” she said.
A surge of nanite activity tickled the back of her mind as the others climbed. It was powerful, but distant, and unlike any offspring, host, or exterminator she had ever sensed. It was something new. She noticed it once before, about three months ago, but was no more able to trace it this time than before.
They moved in formation down the long hallway to main elevators by the vending machines, and finally to the skybridge that connected the building to the parking garage across the street. The entire time, the odd sensation flickered tantalizingly at the edge of her perception, blinking in and out like a firefly.
They were all grateful for the breeze that whistled through the missing glass panes as they stepped out onto the skybridge. The tunnels and hallways up to this point had been stifling. The streets below were clear of anything that might want to eat them, but a sense of dread was crawling up Diane’s spine, and she couldn’t shake it.
Halfway across the bridge, they saw Leonard jog around the corner two blocks away, heading in their direction. He was making better time than Diane expected.
“Burn that man!” she said. “We better hurry if we want to head him off. Jamie, I want you to keep blocking so we don’t get caught by surprise. You two stay a few yards behind us, but keep us in sight. I don’t want to end up chasing a marathon runner down the street, so let’s move!”
The stairwell was clear, and they took two and three steps at a time, all the way down to street level. Without waiting for the others, Diane burst through the door across from the ticket booth at the garage entrance, and nearly fell over when the door stopped about halfway open.
She stumbled a few paces sideways, and tripped over something she couldn’t see, as her eyes adjusted to the bright morning sunlight. A second later, Jamie slammed into the steel door shoulder first, forcing it open a little wider as whatever blocked it gave way.
“I think it’s a corpse,” Diane said, grabbing her spear and sitting up. She knew she was wrong before she finished the sentence, though. All around her, bodies littered the cool pavement, and as one, they started stirring.
“Husks!” Jamie yelled as Boots and Wall Street came panting up behind him. Wasting no time, he drew a police baton in each hand and waded into the fray.
Diane was scanning for nanite activity, so she knew that Jamie was using his power even before his first swing obliterated the top of a husk’s head. She imbued her spear with the same power, and sliced cleanly through an arm that had just latched on to her ankle.
Out of nowhere, Wall Street and Boots were behind her, lifting her to her feet. All around them, the entire level seemed to lurch as dozens of husks started to stand, growling and yelling wordlessly, like primal beasts.
“Get to the street!” Diane ordered. Only a handful of husks stood between them and the exit. “If things go bad, make your way back to the MPC. With Leonard!”
She turned away from them, and flipped the imaginary switch in her mind that unleashed her nanites. She loved the sensation of the alien power rushing through her body, obeying her thoughts on an instinctual level. There was nothing else like it, which was part of the reason she seldom did it. Sometimes it felt too good, and could be difficult to switch off.
The world became a blur of energy, and she was at its center; part of it; connected to it; viscerally aware of the warm bodies around her, each fly buzzing in slow motion through the air, and even the uncomfortably threadbare fabric of her tattered socks. Everything was connected in a very real way by an invisible nanite network.
She spun, lunged, and dodged attacks with supernatural grace, slicing and stabbing her home-made spear with surgical precision and impossible speed. Husks fell around her like autumn leaves in the wind.
The odd tickle of nanite energy returned, along with a sudden awareness that other minds had sensed her massive expenditure of energy, and were searching for her. If she didn’t put up her blocks, she would be vulnerable to mental attacks from offspring or, God forbid, a host, but that thought was no more than a whisper on the storm winds of power that rushed through her.
Jamie was not a skilled fighter, but every blow from his nanite-imbued batons was lethal. A few husks managed to get their hands on him, but he was still unwounded and on his feet when the fight ended.
“Do you feel that?” he asked when Diane snapped out of her martial trance. “It’s like a vibration, or feedback. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Yeah, I feel it, too. I don’t know what it is, either, but you can bet it won’t be anything good. Come on.” She was a little dizzy and out of breath from her power burn, but Boots and Wall Street had just turned the corner a block away, and she wanted to catch them before they got too far ahead.
She and Jamie hadn’t gone more than a dozen paces when they heard gunshots. Several quick pops of rapid fire from handguns were followed by silence.
“Keep up,” Diane said, and sprinted down the street.