Symbiont (Parasitology Book 2) (44 page)

Fishy and Nathan looked up from their examination of a large, white-sided boat when I came bursting through the door from the ferry launch. They had opened a hatch in the hull, revealing a rusty but sound-looking engine on the other side. Fishy blinked. Nathan frowned.

“Sal, what in the—”

Dr. Banks ran through the door three steps behind me. He whirled as if to close it, only to realize that his hands were still tied. With one vicious kick, he banged the door back into place. The slam shuddered the frame. Eyes wild, Dr. Banks turned to the rest of us and spat, “They’re everywhere. They couldn’t get the door down, so one of them punched through the fucking
wall
.”

“Sleepwalkers,” I added, not quite needlessly. Sleepwalkers were bad, but they didn’t have guns, which meant they weren’t quite as bad as survivors would have been.

“Shit.” Fishy shut the hatch in the side of the boat, latching it with a quick, clever twist of his fingers. “We have fuel and the engine looks good, but I’m worried about our rudders. We don’t have any way of testing them to see if anything’s jammed down in there. They could blow halfway across the water, and where would we be then?”

“Less dead than if we stay in a building that’s about to be flooded with sleepwalkers,” I said. “How do we get onto this damn boat?”

“Follow me,” said Fishy. He picked up his rifle from where it had been leaning against the hull and took off at a loping run, heading for the front of the boat. The rest of us followed, even Dr. Banks. Under the circumstances, it was the only sensible thing we could have done.

Access to the ferry when it wasn’t prepared for loading passengers was through a narrow door near the front of the boat, leading to an even narrower set of steps that connected the dock to the deck. When the ferry
was
loading passengers the whole back end opened like some strange metal flower, but that process took time, and time was something we no longer had.

Fishy was the first up the narrow steps, calling back, “I’m going to get the engine started! Nate, worm-girl, make sure we’re not tied down!” And then he was gone, following whatever interior blueprint he had to the captain’s chair.

Nathan went up second, and crouched down to pat his knees and cajole, “Come on, Beverly, there’s a good girl,” as our dog hunched and whined, unwilling to climb such a steep, unfamiliar stairway.

“Leave the damn dog,” snarled Dr. Banks. “Let me up.”

“We’ll leave you before we leave her,” said Nathan. He patted his knees again. “Come on, Beverly. Heel!”

She looked back at me and whined. Then she stiffened, sniffing the air, and growled—a long, low sound that seemed to have too many edges. I winced.

“Not now, Beverly, please. Just go. Go, so we can get out of here.”

Dogs are smart, in their own unique canine way. She heard the panic in my voice and reacted the way she always had: by trying to take away whatever was causing it. Since Nathan was high and I was low, clearly our separation was the problem. She scrambled up the steps, rudderlike tail slapping against the plating on either side. When she was halfway up I let go of the leash. She slammed into Nathan, not expecting her own
acceleration, and twisted to give me a bewildered, slightly betrayed look. I was supposed to be holding on to her. That was the way this worked.

Not this time. I stepped to the side, allowing Dr. Banks to rush into the channel, and gave him a shove when his lack of hands seemed to be leading to a fall. He didn’t thank me. He just kept running, knocking Nathan and Beverly aside as he sprinted onto the deck. I turned to look back toward the door. It was shuddering on its hinges, and this time the sleepwalkers weren’t going to be able to break through the wall; there was only one way they were coming at us.

“Sal!” Nathan sounded like he was on the verge of panic. “Get on board!”

“Check for ropes holding us to the dock!” I shouted back. “I’m going to see if I can slow them down.” It was a stupid idea. Every inch of me
knew
that it was a stupid idea. But the sleepwalkers were starting to listen to me, even if it was only for a few seconds at a time, and maybe a well-placed command to stop could keep them from rushing the boat. Not forever. Just long enough for Fishy to get the engines turned on and get us the hell out of this deathtrap.

“
Sal!
”

“Go!” I kept my hand on the door, ready to jump onto the boat and slam it behind me. The stairs didn’t retract. What I was planning might not be safe, but it wouldn’t get me killed unless I was stupid or mistimed getting on board.

Nathan didn’t shout again. I glanced up the stairs and saw Beverly’s worried black face peering back at me, her ears perked forward in canine confusion. I offered her a wan smile but didn’t talk to her, not even to tell her that she was a good dog. She might have decided that was her cue to come to me, and I wasn’t going to try getting both of us on board without time to do it properly.

The sleepwalkers hit the door again, this time hard enough
that the boom of impact resonated through the entire building. I tensed, turning just in time to see the door fly open and the swarm of sleepwalkers begin forcing their way inside. There were at least thirty of them, possibly more: they must have come from every inch of the waterfront, following the promise of food—and maybe, I had to admit, the pheromone trail that I was leaving just by moving through their world.

I can’t be Sally
, I thought, almost nonsensically.
Human girls don’t leave tracks like bees for their drones to follow back to the hives
.

The boat under my hand gave a small hitch and then began to vibrate on an almost subsonic level as the first of the engines came on line. Beverly barked and withdrew, presumably to go to the end of the deck and bark more at the sleepwalkers.

“Good girl,” I murmured. The leading edge of the swarm was no more than fifteen feet away now—close enough. I raised my voice and shouted, with all the authority that I could muster, “Stop right there!”

And they stopped.

Not all of them, but four of the larger individuals. They had been at the front of the mob, and their sudden stillness ran another six up against immobility as they found their passage blocked.

“Stop!” I shouted again.

Three more stopped, and four more were barricaded. It was like a strange and potentially fatal math problem: if yelling at the onrushing cannibal zombies makes them stop moving, but it only works for X percent, how many times will you need to yell before safety is assured? Show your work, and don’t get eaten.

The vibration from the boat was getting stronger. It became audible as the second engine kicked in, suddenly roaring. That was good: that meant we were on the verge of getting out of here. That was also bad, because it meant that the engines were
going to be pulling air, which would strip my pheromones from the air.

“Stay where you are!” I yelled.

Most of the sleepwalkers, against all odds, listened. Maybe it was the noise from the boat, making the area strange and potentially dangerous and keeping them from taking any major risks in pursuit of a single skinny dinner that they would need to split between them. Or maybe it really was the beginning of the next stage in our development. We still didn’t know how sleepwalker/chimera interaction was going to look, because we didn’t have the models for it.

“Sal!” Nathan’s shout came from the top of the stairs. “We’re clear!”

“I’ll be right there,” I called back, glancing toward him.

That was my mistake. The sleepwalkers might have been able to resist the urge to rush for me, but two bodies ripe and ready for consumption were a much bigger temptation. As soon as I took my eyes off them they moaned and began rushing forward again, moving with that eerie speed that they could achieve when they were focused on a goal. A goal like eating me alive. I looked back, screamed, and began scrambling for the stairs.

A hand caught the back of my shirt as I was stepping over the gap between dock and boat. I screamed again, thrusting one elbow backward with as much force as I could muster. The sleepwalker fell back, ripping the collar of my shirt in the process. I shoved myself forward into the tiny stairwell and slammed the door shut, pulling down the handle to lock it into place. The sound of hands drumming against the hull began almost instantly.

Twisting in that narrow, confined space was difficult, but I was able to do it, and was rewarded with the sight of Nathan’s worried face peering down at me from the deck of the ferry, his glasses askew and Beverly peeking over his shoulder like
she was afraid that I would disappear. I forced myself to smile, aware that the expression would look artificial, but willing to accept it if it meant reassuring the people I cared about.

“I’m okay,” I said. “They didn’t hurt me, and they actually listened when I told them to stop—did you see? Did you see them stop?”

“I saw you risking your life to buy us time we didn’t need,” said Nathan, leaning forward to offer me his hand. I took it, allowing him to tug me up the last few steps. “Please don’t do that again.”

“Can’t promise that under the circumstances,” I replied. He pulled me into an embrace, and I went willingly along with it, wrapping my arms around the reassuring barrel of his chest and inhaling the detergent and sweat scent of his shirt. I giggled, unable to stop myself.

“What?” demanded Nathan.

I pushed myself away, smiling up at him. “Just thinking about how we both need another shower.”

He blinked before smiling back. “Doesn’t seem like it happened today, does it?”

Something slammed against the side of the boat. My head whipped around, all traces of levity—and I knew that it had been artificial giddiness, conjured up by our escape and by the potentially false promise of temporary safety—fading. The slam came again before resolving itself into a steady tattoo of concussive bangs.

“Oh, no,” I murmured, and rushed to the side, peering down at the sea of sleepwalkers crushed onto the dock. They were beating their hands against the side of the boat, some of them using their fists, others slapping with open palms. A few were even biting at the metal, their teeth breaking against the implacable steel of the hull. We were moving slowly forward, gathering speed at what felt like an impossibly slow rate. The sleepwalkers were moving with us, and more were pouring
through the door into the launch area, drawn by the sound of the boat’s engine as much as by our presence.

“They’re going to be crushed,” said Nathan, sounding horrified. I turned to see him standing next to me at the rail, Beverly sitting by his feet. They looked so normal, like they had no place in this scene. It was hard to believe that any of us did.

“They’re going to drown,” I said, not arguing so much as adding to the risks that the sleepwalkers faced. I turned, trying to get my bearings on the ferry deck. We were standing in an open space, with plastic benches stretching behind us and a metal roof overhead, both providing protection from the elements and creating a secondary seating area. Dr. Banks was sitting on one of the benches, glaring at us like that would somehow change his situation. “Where’s Fishy?”

“The… I don’t know what you call it on a boat. The cockpit is over there.” Nathan gestured toward the front of the ferry.

“Watch Beverly,” I said, and took off running in the direction Nathan had indicated, weaving around benches and a single coil of weathered rope. I quickly ran up against a wall, which wasn’t something I expected to find on a boat. Moving along it brought me to a door, and through the door’s single clear aperture, I saw Fishy, standing behind a bank of controls I didn’t understand. I tried the door handle, and found it locked.

“Fuck,” I muttered, and knocked on the clear opening.

Fishy didn’t turn.

“
Double
fuck,” I amended. This time I beat both my fists against the actual metal part of the door, setting up a din that couldn’t possibly be mistaken for engine noise. Fishy’s shoulders tensed for a moment before he turned, squinting at me. I waved.

It only took him three steps to cross the small cabin and wrench the door open. He didn’t wait for me to step inside or speak before he was running back to his controls, turning his back to me once more. “What is it, Sal?” he demanded. There
was an edge of strain in his voice that was decidedly unusual for the usually laconic technician. “I’m sort of busy getting us out of here alive.”

“That’s the problem,” I said. “The sleepwalkers that followed us here are still trying to attack the boat! They’re going to be killed!”

“How is that my problem?” He glanced over his shoulder only long enough for me to see that he was serious, and then turned his attention back to the water. We were still driving through the shadowed depths of the ferry launch, which seemed unreasonably long for what was essentially a glorified waterfront garage. “I know the mad doctor thinks of those things as her kids, and while she’s welcome to her fucked-up family reunions, I don’t see any need to worry about them. Every sleepwalker that dies now is one that won’t be waiting for us when we get back.”

I stopped. His perspective was callous but accurate in at least one regard: we needed the sleepwalker population to go down if we wanted to come back this way. And I still couldn’t see that as a good enough reason to kill them all. “You’re not going to do anything?”

“What do you want me to do, Sal?” For the first time, he sounded genuinely tired. “I stop the boat, they swarm up here and kill us all. Plus this whole damn suicide mission was for nothing, which would be one hell of a bummer. I don’t have an air horn or anything, and they’re not raccoons; they wouldn’t just scatter even if I did.”

“An air horn,” I said. The words had sparked an idea that was as improbable as it was unlikely to work. It was all that I had. “Thanks, Fishy, you’re the best.”

“Whatever, kid.” He didn’t look around as I ran back out of the room, returning to my place on the deck next to Nathan.

He hadn’t moved while I’d been gone. Neither had Dr. Banks. Beverly was trotting up and down along the rail, tail up
in a warning position, pausing only to fire off menacing volleys of barks at the sleepwalkers below.