Blighted Star (13 page)

The
infected closed in, encircling their healthy victims, moving silently through
the grass on long legs tipped with sharp bony points which left deep circles
bored into the soft ground. With one accord they rushed in to the herd of
peaceful grazers, each diseased crab selecting its own target, shouldering it
over onto its back, and thrusting, stabbing with their sharp limbs at the
bellies of their victims.

Though
their bodies were encased in a strong shell, The crabs had little immune
resistance and were destined to be among the first species to fall, and
tonight’s battle was typical of many which were taking place across the world
every night.

The
spawnmother squealed in outrage at the attack on her brood, and thundered down
the hill to the rescue. Bursting into the middle of the fight she cast about
her with her broad limbs, throwing the attackers off with much splintering of
shell and crushing of body. The enemy backed off and she stood in the middle of
her dead children, hissing.

All
around her the brood reanimated, and thus reinforced, the possessed horde
attacked the mother, several of them clinging to each limb, many clambering across
her ridged back until by sheer weight they bore her to the ground. The
possessed mother approached, and began to thrust with its dead limbs at the
body of the struggling prey. It stabbed at her tough shell, seeking the weak
points. Underneath her carapace it found the opening it needed; her cloacae.
The large sphincter was guarded by two strong flaps, but these were wrenched
apart, she lurched away from the burning agony, but already it was too late; a
spiky forelimb had been thrust into the tender opening and had been broken off
by a spasm of muscle. The black pus which exuded from the broken tip had
carried the contagion and already the putrescence was coursing through the
mother’s body, causing her to lurch and flail with the pain.

Now
though, the battle was done, and the attackers leapt aside, knowing that inside
her body the final defences were being breached. The spawn – mother collapsed
with a tremendous thud into the grass. Her legs folded underneath her, sprang
out in a last spasm, and then dropped to the ground like so many dead branches.

 After
a few minutes, she rose again, and with gathering coordination in her many
limbs, moved away to the south, where the burning beacons of a large herd of
bipedal grazers were gathered in the inner curve of a long crescent of water.
Moving with one will the organism directed the enlarged herd to break into two
forces, and approach the lake from two different directions. It now had enough
elements to hunt more effectively, using one force based around the bulky and
highly visible spawn – mothers to panic the herd into the waiting ambush of the
more nimble units.

<><><> 

Athena
and Jackson walked in silence into the Marine’s Utility room. Around them were
the gun racks full of weaponry and combat suits the platoon had brought with
them and which had been in storage until very recently. The hardware gave off a
clean smell, and was still all but unused. However, its mere presence gave
their gathering troubles a more immediate feel, as if making concrete the
situation they were now in. The equipment made Athena feel uncomfortable, as if
events were slipping beyond
her
control and into this military domain
about which she knew practically nothing. In contrast, Jackson seemed braced by
the hardware, as if its uncompromising solidity replaced the nebulousness of
peacetime civilian  affairs.  Athena spoke first.

“Well,
Lieutenant, it seems you had a point.”

Jackson
looked at her for a few long seconds. “About Olafson? Yes, I do think we should
have followed that one up, but we had other priorities.”

“And
now those people are dead.”

“We
don’t yet know that for sure. Perhaps they’ve run away, or even been taken
hostage. Either way, we have to find them, and find them fast. We need to know
what we’re dealing with. Have you got his file?” They both called Gunnar’s file
to their internal comms, and stood in silence for a while, reading it through.
Athena finished first and watched as the more methodical Jackson read closely,
appearing to stare into the middle distance as people always did when they were
reading head – ups. His eye came back into focus and he shook his head a
little.

“There’s
nothing there. You were right, he seemed harmless.”

“Yes,
well, the Psyches got that one wrong, and badly so.” Athena held her pursed
lips for a moment “What are we going to do? We have to get a warning out to the
settlements, particularly Heart Lake. He could still be dangerous.”

“I
agree, but let’s plan it out properly first; we can’t just wake everyone up and
throw them into a panic. Take ten minutes now; it’ll save hours of confusion
later.” He looked at her closely, seeing obvious signs of tiredness in her face
“You all right? You up to this?” He glanced at his internal clock “It’s late,
do you need a few hours of rest first?”

“No,
we need to get on with this.”

<><><> 

The
group of possessed corpses approached the town from the east, slowly and
haltingly but with a terrible intentness of purpose. The dog’s smaller frame
had not supported the large amount of energy needed to fuel the long night’s
trek, and it, like the children, was nearly consumed. Just scraps of muscle
tissue tugging at the fraying ligaments kept them mobile. No matter, their
journey was at an end. Only a little further was a wealth of new hosts. Above
them a tissue of thin cloud obscured the stars, making the night pitch black,
and the lights of the settlement burned all the brighter in contrast. The
organism, however, responded to a deeper sense in which the life in the flesh
ahead stood out as a series of pale beacons.

<><><> 

At
the outskirts of town the organism paused for a moment to marshal its forces,
for the hosts were controlled as one by an ancient instinct to trap and capture;
to expand. Two went one way. Two others went another. The dead children and the
carcass of the dog remained in place at the head of the short road east.
Nearby, a farmbot tilled the land heedlessly, steadily moving to and fro across
the field, creating rows in the soft damp soil.

The
night stars silently crossed the sky, and then at some unseen prompt, the
corpses moved forward into the sleeping town.

<><><> 

The
fabric over the doorway was only ever intended to keep out the night air, and gave
easily to the push of the rotting hand. Inside, the air was heavy with the
breath of the sleeping family. The corpse shuffled into the parents’ bedroom
and reached out to the sleeping faces. The mother and the father died without
becoming fully awake, convulsing quietly. Then, they rose and joined their
killer on the way to the children’s room. Across the town the scene was
repeated until from door after door more contaminated hosts appeared.

Then,
someone awoke and the night was filled with the despairing shrieks of the
dying. Living people spilled out into the main street to do battle with the
dead, armed with whatever implements they could put their hands to, but all was
futile, one touch from their attackers was enough. They died in agony, and then
rose after a few moments to join the ranks of their killers.

A
mother ran, clutching her twitching, dying child in her arms until it reached
up a blistered hand and caressed her face. Her headlong dash stumbled to a halt
and she fell.

A
youth ran the length of the main street, dodging from side to side to avoid the
surging crowd of the dead, only to find his way blocked by the dog and the
Amish children’s cadavers. He turned back in despair and was engulfed.

A
man, trying to save his family, pushed his wife before him and dragged his
child by the hand behind him. He propelled them round the corner of a building
into the arms of a waiting corpse.

A
small knot of the living was left. These were pushed down the town’s main
street into the central green area where only that afternoon they had stood in
a festival mood round the stray horse. The dead surrounded them, among the
spoiled and blinded faces were the features of those they knew, those they
loved. The dead pressed forward, and there was no possibility of escape. Those
about to die wept and screamed, hugging their families. The dead lunged forward
at the shrinking crowd, and the scene burst into violence. The group of the
living broke apart as the people made one last attempt to break free from the
clutching fingers. Not one of them made it to the edge of the green, and if
they had, it would have been in vain, for more of the dead waited in the
shadows of the streets. The last shrieks subsided and silence descended once
more.

Every
dead face turned its eyeless sockets in one direction, for there was one house
in the town which still contained a living person. From all directions they
converged on where Gerard Pitot cowered behind the sturdy door he had installed
to protect his precious coffee supply.

Gerard
bit his knuckles to lessen his own whimpering, but the monsters had found him.
They scratched and thumped against the door but it held. Their fingers could
not get to him, and he was safe from the fate he had watched overtake his
neighbours. Then, the gas from the corruption began to seep into the room, and
Gerard coughed and spewed, clutching at his own throat. He slumped among his
jars and after a while the corpses outside his room stopped their jostling at
the door and turned away, the signal of life had gone.

The
organism, now grown massively in size and power, gathered its three hundred
component parts and moved on into the night towards the next glowing source of
life. The dog, now almost entirely consumed, dragged its crumbling rear leg
bones behind it as it fell further and further behind the exodus.

The
farmbot finished its run to the end of the field, moved over by quarter of a
metre, and began the reverse run.

<><><> 

Specialist
Bateman had been dozing a little. Just a little. In fact he must have only just
shut his eyes for a few minutes, and that was recognised practice on the night
shift. OK it wasn’t exactly in the rules but everyone did it because you just
couldn’t maintain that level of concentration for a whole night. Normally it
wouldn’t have mattered shit, but right now it meant that he had no idea what
had happened in the minute 03.47. It would be recorded, and he felt sure that
the record would not show anything about which he could have done anything. He
knew what had happened in the minute 03.48: All the life traces had started to
blink from green to red. Then all the traces had started to move around a whole
lot. In the end they had all been red, and had been travelling in a slow knot
towards the settlement of Crescent Waters. It was as if the whole town of Heart
Lake had decided to go on a long walk to visit their neighbours. Except it was
night, and if the monitoring equipment could be believed, they were all dead.

Any
second now Jackass would be through that door, and Bateman had no answers for
him. And if ever a Lieutenant wanted answers, it was Jackass. All the time.
This was supposed to be a cushy assignment. He’d had to call in a shitload of
favours to get placed. The mere thought made him grimace. He’d not had to work
harder since Basic Training.

If
only they’d got some sort of visual monitoring system over the settlements, his
job would have been so much easier, but civilians just
hated
surveillance, and you couldn’t really blame them given the dodgy history of it…

It
just had to be a glitch. But if so, it was the most complicated glitch he’d
ever seen. Could it maybe be something to do with the plasma breach at the
quarry? That sort of energy release could fuck up a system in a thousand ways
which wouldn’t necessarily show up straight away.

He’d
seen plenty of Life – Traces turn red before. Once in a while they were the
real deal and the guy
had
been a “flopper”, but he’d only experienced
that personally once, after all, tracer pellets weren’t standard issue on most
planets, just the new colonies. The dead signal he’d had before was from a guy
who’d been on a dangerous expedition on an ice ball asteroid.

 Nearly
always the system sent a reset signal and the Trace went back to green in a few
seconds. But there were times when the bearer wasn’t dead and the signal still
showed that they were. Protocol was to wait twenty seconds then establish an
audio link and ask politely if they were all right.

What
was he supposed to do now? Ask if the whole population was all right? Actually that
could be a way to proceed; he could establish a link with the whole population
at once and ask after their health in one go. He sincerely hoped he would get
one resounding cursing from man, woman and child for disturbing their rest.
That was the way he’d play it if it was up to him, but knowing Jackass that
would be the wrong thing to do and he would get bollocked as usual. Better to
wait and see what their glorious leader wanted to do.