Apocalypstick (4 page)

I didn’t answer. I needed to know more about her if I was going
to fight at her side again. I attuned to her mind and listened to her thoughts.
She had some gall, being happy in this paved graveyard. If she had lost it, and
was trying to get killed, she should have done it quietly, so I didn’t have to
come try to save her.

Nothing in her surface thoughts explained what she was doing, or
why she was so happy. She wasn’t trying to get killed, though; this was just a
normal day for her. When she fought, she went full bore. She was an
all-or-nothing sort of person, which meant short-lived for an exterminator. How
she had survived this long with that philosophy was a complete mystery, and
probably nothing short of a miracle.

“Well?” she asked. She stood up and faced me, and my heart
stopped.

For a second, wavy blonde hair framed her pretty face, tears
poured from her soft, brown eyes, and her curious gaze morphed into a tortured,
accusing glare. I blinked, and her bald, tattooed scalp returned. Her cheeks
were dry, and a half smile twisted her thin lips. My heart beat again.

“Looked like a dog,” I lied, trying to recover from the shock of
my hallucination. Why was she asking about my first? It was hard enough to keep
going on without being reminded of that day. It should have been the best day
of my life, but now I wanted nothing more than to forget it ever happened.

It was my last day of high school; the day I finally kissed
Tiffany Hudson. My grandfather had promised to give me his 1970 Shelby Mustang,
the 350, for getting a full scholarship to his alma mater. It was the perfect
start to a new life.

But life didn’t agree with my plans. I never drove that mustang,
never went to college, and never saw Tiffany Hudson again, not in person, anyway.
That was the day I started killing. Xipe called us exterminators, but whatever
word you wanted to use, it all amounted to the same thing.

“It would have killed me if Xipe hadn’t been there,” I added
softly, still caught between the memory of that day and the present. My ears
still rang from blocking so many offspring, but it was fading with rest.

“Xipe?” she asked incredulously. It sounded like ‘sheep hay’ in
her drawl. Close enough. “Yeah, right,” she continued. “I’m already impressed,
pal, you don’t have to drop names.”

I didn’t blame her for not believing me, but I didn’t care
either way. I wanted to find the humans and get out of the city while I still
had a chance, but a chill crawling up my spine told me that our rest was over.
Another quick scan for thoughts found only the lustful, hungry hatred of
another offspring.

“There’s a big one coming. Over there,” I said, pointing at the
shattered post office. “What were you thinking, coming to a city? Anyone who’s
lived this long should know better, especially one of us.”

She didn’t answer. We watched, waiting for the beast to show
itself. It knew we were there, of course; I could feel its tendrils of mental
energy snaking into my head. The sensation of one of these monsters slipping
into my mind was vile, but I didn’t want to block it until it was closer. I
wanted it to think I was just another hunk of human meat.

It walked out of the alley by the post office, and strolled
towards us. It was a big one. The new girl gripped her spear and braced to
fight.

“Funny,” she said with a short laugh. “I got a camel.”

“Clydesdale,” I said. “Where’d you ever see a camel?” I added
with a slightly mocking chuckle. The offspring used our memories to make us
think they were something else; usually a harmless animal that we remembered
fondly. It gave them enough time to close in and kill with surprise.

“I’ve been places,” she said defensively. “I’ll kill this one,
if you don’t mind.” It sounded like a brave offer, but in truth it was an
acknowledgement that she was already too weak to block. She had finished off
half a dozen offspring before I arrived, and was now too exhausted to do more
than kill. Using that much power so quickly would have been a beacon to the
offspring, just as it had been to me.

“I mind,” I said, anger starting to boil back to the surface.
“If you’re already this wiped out, you’ll only be in my way. There are humans
nearby. Go see if you can find them while I keep it distracted, but stay in
sight. We’ll have to get out of here soon if we want to live, and it gets dark
early here.”

I didn’t need to read her thoughts to know she thought I was an
ass, her expression said it very clearly. Even so, she knew I was right. She
jogged to the subway tunnel across the street, and knelt in the shadows of the
descending stairs.

The offspring picked up its pace and trotted towards me,
ignoring the girl. Its mental energy strengthened, building for the crippling
blast it would deliver when it got a few paces closer. Ignoring my ringing
ears, I slammed a razor thin wall of energy between us, severing its links to
my mind. The illusory Clydesdale skin vanished, revealing the beast’s true,
horrifying form as it lunged to attack.

Thick, corded muscles bulged beneath vibrant blue skin on a body
that looked part gorilla, and part bulldog. Its short, but powerful hind legs
and longer, thicker forelimbs faded to yellow hands and feet with wicked blue
claws.

Fleshy knobs resembling ears, a nose, and lips dangled
grotesquely from its chin, with empty eye sockets on either side; a vulgar
remnant of its heritage. Where a face should have been, twisted bony ridges,
resembling an exposed brain, sparked with alien power.

At fifteen paces, the brainy ridges shivered, and it blasted me
with a wave of mental energy. No doubt, this attack would have been sufficient
to stun or incapacitate other victims, but its only effect on me was more
ringing in my ears as it shattered against my wall. It attacked twice more with
its mind before closing in to use its claws. My ears rang, my head throbbed, and
a little more of my strength had been sapped by each attack.

It leapt high into the air to attack with the shark-like jaws in
its chest. If it got lucky, or if I messed up, it could bite me in half.
Fortunately, offspring were nothing, if not predictable: get close with an
illusion, stun with a mental attack, and then eat the defenseless prey.

I ducked beneath it, knife humming as I slashed, and rolled back
to my feet. Black and blue sludge oozed from its wounded belly as it spun
around to face me again. I silently thanked Xipe for the knife. It generated a
frequency that disrupted the offspring’s nanites and kept them from
regenerating. More importantly, it let me kill without using more of my own
power than was absolutely necessary.

Instead, I used a tiny bit of power to boost my speed and
reaction time. I slashed again as it lunged, barely avoiding its claws.
Predictability didn’t make them less dangerous. My own nanites could repair
most wounds with enough time and heat, but a strong hit from those claws or
teeth might do too much damage too quickly for me to survive. The new girl must
have been worried about this, too, since she was running towards me with a lit
propane torch.

By the time she reached me, I had landed a few more stabs and
slashes, and the fight was over. The offspring had collapsed into a pool of
sludgy flesh and goo.

“You ok?” she asked, offering the torch.

“Thanks, but I can’t do that anymore,” I replied.

“Oh,” she replied. Her expression went from concern to sorrow,
and she looked at her feet. “I’m so sorry.”

Since the nanites used thermal energy to replicate, we could
burn a bad wound to kick them into overdrive. The damaged living tissue would
be scorched away, painfully, I might add, and replaced with nanites. When the
nanites reached a certain percentage of our mass, they would require more heat
than our living tissue could produce, and… game over. I was somewhere very near
that critical ratio, and didn’t want to push it.

“How many is that, now?” she asked, looking at the carnage around
us.

“Can’t tell,” I said. The gelatinous corpses from our previous
battle had pooled together, making it impossible to count how many we had
killed. I had kept count, of course, but Xipe used to say that it didn’t matter
how many we killed, only how many were left. He was right, and there could be
anywhere from a thousand to a million just in Manhattan.

“I’ve never seen anyone move like you. It was like you were in
three places at once; stabbing, slashing, and parrying all at the same time.
Who are you?”

“All the speed in the world doesn’t matter if there are too many
enemies to track in a fight. One hit from the one you didn’t see is all it
takes. That one was stronger than most offspring I’ve fought, but that’s why I
stay out of cities, and that’s why we need get out of this one. Did you find
the humans?”

“I didn’t look for them. I was watching you,” she replied. “I’m
Diane. I’m real glad you showed up when you did.” She stuck her arm out to
shake my hand.

“Crane,” I said, reluctantly. I pretended to clean my knife,
though it was already spotless. Nanites slid off of its blade like water off a
hot skillet.

“Crane?” she repeated. She stared at me with Tiffany’s eyes
again, weighing what she had seen, and deciding whether or not to believe me.
“As in… Crane? Did you pick his name out of respect, or to try and pass as
him?”

I guessed she made up her mind. “I took the name my parents gave
me,” I said with an unblinking stare. I forcefully turned my thoughts away from
my family.

“Huh. I’ve been fighting side by side with a legend. Wait ‘til
my friends find out.”

Her sarcasm took me off guard, and I almost laughed aloud, but
this was no time or place to let my guard down.

“Look, we need to find the humans and get them back to wherever
they’ve been hiding. If we stay here we’ll bring hell down on this place, then
you can die side by side with the legend.”

She stared at me again, reconsidering. She wanted to ask if it
was true. I could hear her thoughts as easily I could her words. She
desperately wanted to believe it.

“Is it true?” It was almost a whisper. She was scared to
believe. “They say Xipe knew how to stop it. I never really thought he was
real. If he was, or is real, and he did know how to kill them all, he would
have done it, right? If you are really Crane, then you know Xipe. Are you
really him?”

“In the flesh,” I said. I didn’t want to have this discussion
with her, but her eyes held such hope and desperation that I had to answer her.

“Speaking of flesh…” she began. She pointed down the deserted
street behind me towards a single man walking casually towards us. “Maybe it’s
human.”

I could tell right away that it wasn’t. Its mind was so
incredibly powerful that I could sense it without trying, even from this
distance. I had faced hosts before, and they were deadly. Where an offspring
relied on claws and teeth to kill before consuming its victim’s flesh, a host
leached away its victim’s memories, emotions, and thoughts. Before you even
knew what was happening, you were an extra in a George Romero film.

“Let’s get out of sight,” she said. “Please? I hate killing
these things. It’s just so sad. I don’t understand how some of us become like
you and me, while others end up like… like that. I can barely recall what it
was like when we were all just people.”

“That thing is not just people anymore, and it won’t ever be a
person again. We are exterminators, and it needs to die. Now, put your blocks
up, and let’s get it before it gets us.”

“You were human, once, Crane. There are people in this city;
scientists and doctors, and they’re close to a cure. I don’t want to kill the
hosts if there is a chance we can save them.”

“Then let me ease your mind. They can’t be saved. Their minds
are alien, their souls are shredded, and their humanity is gone. There’s no
coming back from that. Death is the last dignity we can give them.”

“What about us? What are we, then?” She was on the verge of a
moral crisis, and was silently pleading with me to tell her there was still
hope. There was, but not in the way she wanted to hear.

“We are the only ones who can do it. We kill them: hosts,
offspring, husks, all of them. You are a killer, Diane. Get used to it. You are
the first exterminator I’ve seen in six months. We are losing this fight
because we forget what we are, and that’s when we die. I know you are looking
for hope. Well, look in the mirror. If there is any hope left for humanity, we
are it.”

She bowed her head. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She
needed someone to lean on, but for people like us, there was no one. We had
only ourselves. The host was about a block away, and the hoard of husks that
followed it was coming out of the buildings and alleys. Offspring started
showing up, too.

“Time to go,” I said. I grabbed her arm and pulled her into the
subway tunnel. “I sense two humans in here. Be careful.”

“I know, Crane. They are sentries. There’s an entrance to the
prison from the sewers, about two blocks from here. That’s where the humans are
hiding. It’s fortified, and there are other exterminators defending it. We have
doctors, Crane, and… and a baby. Two hundred fourteen of us live here. No, two
fifteen, now.”