Apocalypse Machine (20 page)

21

I was obsessed with sledding when I was a kid. Sliding down a hillside with nothing but a millimeter thick sheet of plastic between me and the slope was my idea of not just a good time, but the best time. Even when the snow began to melt, giving way to frozen dirt and rocks, I would launch myself downward with enough momentum to carry me over the rough obstacles. The sled did little to protect my backside, and I’d go home with bruises and swollen lumps, but they were the price of admission for my favorite kind of fun.

As an adult, sliding down a steep grade, jostled and poked by the rough surface beneath me, and moving at a pace that would make my younger self wide-eyed with envy, I fail to see what I ever enjoyed about sledding. Of course, back then I was sledding down a hillside, followed by friends. Now I’m cruising down the side of a nation destroying monster, pursued by a horde of giant, glowing mites. I don’t think my younger self would enjoy this either.

Most of the massive plate’s imperfections are angled downward, allowing me to slide over them without being snagged, or impaled. That’s a good thing. But it also means gravity is having her way with me, yanking me faster over the giant shell.

A quick glance up reveals the horde, still in hot pursuit. Some of the Crawlers are sliding, belly down, legs splayed wide to stay upright. Most are tumbling like an avalanche of grapefruit-sized stones, bouncing out of control.

I shout in surprise as the surface beneath me falls away. I drop a few feet, impact a new plate and continue downward on a steeper slope. Above me is a fault line, where two plates come together, the uppermost one lifted up by glowing red, Jell-O egg goop.

“Science Guy,” Graham says, drawing my attention back to what lies ahead, and downward. I can see him through a thin curtain of ash, which seems to be thinning as we descend. He’s twenty feet below, sliding on his back, feet first, head raised, arms outstretched to either side. He’s doing a better job of controlling his descent, but he’s still bouncing around, being pummeled by the rough surface. The Crawler that tackled him tumbles at his side, spraying white and glowing red goo from its sliced-open gut. He must have stabbed it shortly after going off the edge.

Thank God for the armor we’re wearing
, I think, and then I say, “Right behind you.”

“What’s your sitrep?” he asks.

Sitrep?
And then I remember Janet Deakins, an expedition leader who’d spent time in the Army before leading Grand Canyon tours, who took a team of biologists and geologists and me down the Colorado. She’d been out of the military for ten years, but still used the lingo. ‘Sitrep’ stands for ‘situation report’, which is military for, ‘how’s it going?’

“I’m alive,” I say. “And twenty feet above you. But we’re not alone. We’ve got Crawlers…on my six.”

“How many?”

I glance back up. I can’t see the end of them in the ashen gloom above. I’m launched by a bump and the number coughs out of me. “Hundreds.”

“Can you steer?” he asks.

My child self rears up from the past. Can I steer? “Lead the way.”

Graham lifts his left hand from the plate and pushes down hard with the other. The sudden brake swings his body to the right, and he slides away at an angle. I perform the same maneuver, and follow his path. The tiniest hint of a smile forms on my face. Part of me is ashamed by it. Millions of people are dead. Thousands more are probably being killed a few miles below us, victims of the Machine’s destructive power. Graham’s squad—his friends—lay dead on the plates now high above us. And there is a very good chance Graham and I will be next. But as we shift directions and the Crawler horde plummets straight down, a pin prick of hope draws my smile a little wider.

And then the floor falls away again.

It takes a few seconds to strike the next plate, but the impact is slight, as though I’m hovering a few microns above the shell.

“This is it,” Graham says. “Angle your body away from the Machine.”

I’m a little surprised he’s adopted the name from my vision, but it’s as good a name as any.

“We need to put some distance between us and it, before touching down.”

Touching down?

It’s then that I figure out that we’re not really sliding down the side of the plate, we’re (mostly) falling beside it.

As are the Crawlers. I see them tumbling out into open space, raining down to the ground far below.

“Are you with me?” Graham shouts.

I turn my focus back to Graham. I can see him beneath me, between my feet. “With you.”

“We need to push away,” he says. “At the same time, so we don’t collide.”

Push away? At this speed?

He’s nuts. But he’s also right. If we fall straight down to the ground, there’s a very good chance we’ll be stepped on, killed in an earthquake or irradiated by the fallout trailing above and behind the behemoth, not to mention the four nuclear reactors it’s closing in on. Once we hit the ground, if we’re still alive, we’ll need to make a hasty retreat or risk being caught in the plant’s impending meltdown.

I lean forward slightly, angling my feet toward the vertical plate. My body lifts fully away from it, and the rough descent becomes a smooth freefall.

“Ready,” I shout.

And before I really feel ready, he barks, “Now! Now! Now!”

I shove backwards with my feet, registering the impact with the shell, and then nothing. Or everything. The world becomes a gray-blue blur. I lose all sense of up and down. My gut twists and my mind goes numb. What is happening to me?

Through the onrush of overwhelming sensations, Graham’s voice pumps loud and clear into my ears. “You’re tumbling!”

No kidding.

“Control your descent!”

I know how, but can’t think of it.

“Open your arms and legs, God damnit!”

His precise instructions register, and I realize I’ve curled up into a tight ball. I open my arms and legs. Wind tears at them, straining my ligaments and muscles. My tumble stops, and for a moment, I find myself falling backward.

That’s when I see it.

The Machine.

Through the gray haze, a creature the size of Manhattan, maybe larger than Manhattan, lumbers through the ash. I still can’t see all of it. It’s obscured by ash, and I’d probably need to be miles away to see the whole thing at once. But it’s the most I’ve seen. Its massive plates are black, but also translucent, revealing shimmering light from within. The plates that cover the outside of its body are split by glowing fault lines, all filled with that thick, luminous, red material.

Eggs,
I think, remembering the viscous mass.

Massive coils of glowing red-orange tubes hang down from the Machine’s underside, some of them twisting back up in great loops, others hanging loose and open, drizzling vivid pink fluid on the unseen landscape far below. While much of this thing seems very machine-like, it’s also very much alive, radiating prehistoric biology and displaying biological adaptations still present in modern day organisms—horseshoe crabs and frogs, as well as ancient creatures, like trilobites.

The Machine’s eight massive legs, segmented with large armor-like plates, grow wider at the base, where massive mounds of softer looking flesh spread out, dispersing its incredible weight. It’s an extreme example of how an elephant’s foot evolved over millions of years; the perfect adaptation for something so heavy, keeping its girth from punching through the Earth’s crust with each step. But how did something like this evolve at all? To evolve requires an entire species population and countless generations. Are there more of these things hiding beneath the volcanoes? Are they like cicadas, emerging from their subterranean hiding places every couple of million years? The legs move with graceful efficiency, their stride covering miles with each step. In the seconds I observe it, the thing has nearly passed me completely. While it appears to be moving at a slow, lumbering pace, taking scale into account, I guess it’s moving at an easy two hundred miles per hour. And I think it’s taking its time. My thoughts drift for a moment, wondering why the wind didn’t scour Graham and me from its back.

It’s not aerodynamic,
I realize.
The air doesn’t flow over its shell smoothly. The Machine is punching through the atmosphere, disrupting the flow of air, creating pockets of stability.

“Science Guy!” Graham shouts, snapping me from my thoughts and back to my current plight.

I twist around, so my stomach is facing the ground, still hidden by ash. Arms open wide, I angle myself away from the Machine and turn my downward fall into an angled glide. Graham is above me now, and further away. I can barely see him through the ash.

“Radiation ahead,” Graham says, sounding calm despite the grim notification.

My radiation detector chimes, and the feminine voice repeats her previous warning. “Radioactive isotopes detected. Cesium-134 and Cesium-137 have both been detected in unhealthy levels. At current levels, prolonged exposure could result in fever, muscle weakness, vomiting and other flu-like symptoms. Recommended action… Unknown.”

The GPS unit is likely trying to make sense of our rapidly changing position and altitude.

“Maintain present course,” the device finally says.

Like we have a choice.

“Secondary recommendation,” the voice says. “Repair radiation shield damage immediately.”

It’s then that I feel the breeze cooling my exposed backside. My pants and the lead mesh within them, protecting me from radiation, must have been torn during our rough slide. When I sense a wet warmth along with the breeze, I realize it’s not just my pants that were torn up. Pain follows the realization, burning the back of my legs and butt. My body tenses. Running away from the Machine, and the nuclear power plant it’s closing in on, is going to be difficult if my muscles are torn and I’m gushing blood.

Focus,
I tell myself.
One problem at a time.

The ground slides into view, emerging through the dry, gray fog. The land below is both comforting and disconcerting. Comforting because it’s solid ground, rather than the back of a lumbering, ancient, megalithic monster. Disconcerting because it’s wide-open, green field. We won’t have to worry about colliding with houses or vehicles, but it’s going to be a slog before we find transportation.

I look left and see the distant silhouette of eight cooling towers rising above the city of Rivne, dwarfed by the Machine closing in, its massive limbs covering miles with each step.

“Pull your chute,” Graham shouts, and I don’t hesitate.

There’s a hiss of wind yanking the small, reserve pilot chute from my back. The wind drags it up, taking the canopy up into the air behind me, where it snaps open and slows my descent.

The green grass beneath me comes into focus for just a moment, as I slip through the ash. Then it’s pummeling me as I touch down. Knowing I’m not up to sticking the landing, I go limp and flop to the ground. I’m dragged for a moment, and then the parachute, no longer tugged down by my weight, falls to the grass ahead of me.

Alive, but battered, I roll over in time to see Graham perform a perfect landing, running to a stop. He’s a hundred yards away, in the right direction. While I get back to my feet, he frees himself from his parachute rig, discards it in the grass and then waves to me.

“Get a move on, Science Guy. We’ve got just minutes before that thing reaches the power plant.”

I hobble toward him, legs aching and stinging with equal urgency. I shed my parachute gear, and feel a bit lighter, but it’s the radiation detector that speeds me up. “Radioactive isotopes detected. Cesium-134 and Cesium-137 have both been detected in dangerous levels. At current levels, exposure for—fifteen minutes—could result in fever, muscle weakness, vomiting and other flu-like symptoms. Recommended action, evacuate immediately in a southwesterly direction.”