Toxic (2 page)

A Lynian and his talents
, Naakrit mused.
That's the last thing I need
.

The Combinates and other organizations fought over the favors of the rare representatives of this species. Their talents allowed them to resolve all sorts of crises as well as to send those guilty of behind the scenes manipulation into nothingness.

H
ector Ramirez only wanted one thing: to go back home to Buenaventura, Colombia.

He was leaving Florida behind him. Three years of survival and wandering had culminated in one fact: the world was coming to an end. Since then, the only thing left for him to do was to go back home and to lay down to rest with his family. He hadn't seen them since his commitment to his second family.
Volver a su casa...

He sat down on the bar of his semi-submersible. Well before the invasion, he had done many runs between Colombia and Florida in a sailboat. It was a well-paid job, given the risks. DEA agents had ended up cornering him. His sister had come to the trial to hear the verdict: ten years, no parole. Prison had protected him from the chaos that had overtaken the planet. It hadn't taken long for the world to descend into a ring of hell, deprived of its guardians. He had escaped from this.

In the heart of the chaos, he had got it in his head to remake himself and go back to his previous life.

The authorities refurbished seized boats in multiple ports before selling them again by auction. While he hadn't found his own, his search wasn’t fruitless. By checking out a coastguard station, he had unearthed this semi-sub which a good number of looters must have though sunk and unusable. The cartels had bought these sorts of boats from tourist businesses in financial difficulty. It could dive ten meters deep, offering vacationers a unique panorama of the sea floor. For more profitable uses, it allowed you to escape from coastguard radar.

He only had to get rid of the ballasts to make it float again, and in a few days’ time, it was in working order. And there was another bonus: four hundred kilos of the white stuff. The haul was no longer worth anything, but his trafficker reflexes remained, even after the end of the world.

The eternal moon was reflected into millions of tiny candles on the peaceful surface of the water. He brought his cup of Colombian coffee to his lips. The aroma of his homeland aroused his taste buds and sense of smell. He closed his eyes and remembered that very same smell in the kitchen of Ramos' hacienda. When he reopened them, reality hit him.

The yacht, lit up like a Christmas tree, appeared out of nowhere. It sped by like a bat out of hell, straight ahead, music blasted to the max. Hector's jaw dropped. These idiots were going to attract an alien drone raid. He turned off the motor's electric feed and grabbed the binoculars located on top of the cockpit's paneling. Shades were moving around on the deck of the luxury boat. He changed places to get a clear view.

“
¡Están locos!
” he murmured.

In the past, he would have smiled at this type of behavior. After all, the owners of these boats consumed the powder which he went to great efforts to provide them with. Vermilion streaks stained the superstructure. The splatters drew vivid arcs on the white walls of the stern. These people weren't having fun. They were fighting for their lives.

“
Madre de Dios...
”

Hector watched them run, in a panic, like animals caught in a trap. On the forward platform, silhouettes with erratic movements were flung in front of others. A torn off arm was thrown overboard. Instinctive recoil ripped his eyes from the eyepiece.

“Oh!”

When he went back to watching once again, the horror took him by surprise. On the rear deck, he saw a creature, skull half exposed, start biting off big chunks of a woman half over the ship's rail. She tried to detach herself by kicking him, but the infected person wouldn't release her. Even worse. He was joined by others, each one pulling at and attacking a body part of the woman who couldn’t manage to dive into the water. She screamed incessantly, fighting with the energy of hopelessness.

On the upper balcony, a man decapitated his emaciated adversary with a baseball bat only to succumb to the assault of two others in tattered fancy clothing. He arched up, opened his mouth wide – he was surely screaming – and then collapsed to the floor. An infected person missing a section of his ebony hair ripped at the jugular of his victim, who was clearly too old to escape. The crimson squirt sprayed the white walls.

“
Madre de Dios...
” Hector repeated.

Passengers dived from the bow, most of them without life jackets. A shiver went down his spine. These unlucky people had no chance of making the coast, which was some ten kilometers to the west. The good swimmers would try, maybe, and the others wouldn't. The world hadn't changed so much, he told himself.

The shining structure was moving away quickly. A few minutes from then, the horrifying story of these people would come to an end, dragging them towards a destiny which he preferred not to find out. He went back to the cockpit, resolved to put as much distance between himself and the shipwrecked people screaming for help. The Colombian froze in mid-step.

Standing beside the boarding ladder, a woman of around forty with short, dark hair has just come on board. Soaked, she begged him with her stare. He hadn't heard her come on board. She was wearing a cream-colored t-shirt covered in red stains. The wound on her arm caught his attention. A thin stream of blood flowed from it.

“Were you bitten or scratched?”

She shook her head. Sending her back to the water was most likely a reasonable sanitary attitude. Her terrorized features made the message clear: she wasn't going back.

“Help us,” she gasped.

The confrontation seemed inevitable to him, but she was closer than him to the shotgun which he kept beside the helm. He couldn't control his reflexive glance towards it. She guessed his intention right away. Hector tried to reach it anyway... and lost the bet.

She seized the gun first and then pointed it assuredly at his chest. The Colombian swore under his breath at these white American women who were taught to shoot before they knew how to walk. He raised his hands into the air.

“Help us,” she said again.

“We can get along. Just you and me.”

As a response, her grip tightened on the trigger.

“
Sí
, let's pretend that I didn't say that.”

“You’re going to move this piece of scrap metal and get these people out of the water.”

“Wait a minute. I can’t let so many people on board.”

“Do you want to join them? That’ll save us one space.”

Hector lowered his arms. With a movement of the barrel, she ordered him to put them back up. “Are you going to help us?”

He nodded.

The woman kept him in her aim while he maneuvered closer to the group of shipwrecked people. All of a sudden, a ball of fire burst on the horizon. The yacht was being attacked by a pack of drones. One by one, terrified men and women came on board. He directed them to the empty space on the main deck, at the bottom of the mast and folded sails. The second to last climbed up the ladder. Hector immediately noticed the piece of flesh hanging from his elbow.

“Were you bitten?”

The individual denied it energetically. His eyes didn't lie. Hector drew back. The man, rather beefy, grabbed the handrail and invited himself aboard, spitting out curses which weren't far off from reality. A gunshot resounded. His face, torn to pieces by the buckshot, was pushed back and the big guy fell into the water. Hector turned around. He would remember the determined expression on the features of that woman for a long time.

The last survivor joined his companions in misfortune.

“And now what?” Hector asked.

“What’s the closest port?”

“Key West, I think.”

“You’re going to take us there.”

The Colombian accepted after brief consideration. He couldn't allow himself to keep them on board. Getting rid of them as early as tomorrow at the next dock seemed like a satisfactory option for him, given the circumstances.

She gave him back his shotgun as a sign of trust.

“I'm Elaine. I'm a nurse.”

T
he tracker-jumper slowly approached the megatransporter used by the mercenaries. The Combinate emissary sighed with pleasure. The never-ending voyage was coming to an end. He observed the abrupt maneuvers of the transatmospheric shuttle, which seemed like an insignificant insect when compared to the enormous ship which had brought him here. In the distance, other vessels were parked in an inferior orbit. He recognized two round tamer-class combat ships. Mercenaries loved these rustic ships, which were easy to maintain and had spacious bays. This type of operation required a lot of logistics.

The T-J's airlock opened up to the sight of Naakrit. The emissary appreciated the smuggler attitude of the Primark, who came in person to receive him. Even if they were impossible to negotiate with, reptiles took good care of business relationships.

“Emissary Jave. I welcome you to Earth.”

“Primark Naakrit.”

This last comment meant that the use of his commander rank would not be necessary.

A plate levitated towards him. It held a bowl that contained an assortment of human fingers and condiments. The Combinate experts were talking about this as a new scheme that would result in fortunes. They were most likely right. The emissary refused the generous yet calculated attention. His task had nothing gastronomic about it. He thanked his host and gave the excuse of a stomach ache. Soon he would be on the surface of a world rich in oxygen. As a reflex, Jave verified his carbon dioxide feed.

“Twenty-one percent on this planet,” Naakrit specified for his information.

The oxygen saturation in the atmosphere didn't carry the risk of killing them, but the rate was high enough to disrupt their biochemical equilibrium. He took his place in front of the area reserved for materials and lifted a glove of his suit. His four fingers closed around the glass of cold water that he had just ordered. Beyond the bay, the halo of the planet stretched out in a glowing arch bordered with purple shades.

“Magnificent, isn't it?”

Life was prolific, and even if numerous planets were home to it, it was still necessary to unearth them among tens of billions of stars. The Commercial Collective had therefore divided the galaxy into multiple holdings which were bought by governments, consortiums, warlords or rich smugglers. The majority of them were content with scraping out the wealth of their sector. Often at a loss. Naakrit had won big.

“A second order civilization?”

“Pre-spatial. They haven't gone any further than their natural satellite.”

“Robotic probes?”

“Many. One of them led us here. These idiots carved their coordinates on a metal plaque. I keep the device as a trophy on my own personal tamer ship.”

He felt a vibration run through the floor followed by mechanical noises. The T-J moved away from the junction ring which allowed him to appreciate the size of the megatransporter. Its fleeting geometry seemed to have no end. Its lines disappeared into the background, hidden by forests of masts and bouquets of antennae. He couldn't even see the propulsion bays, just a vague cobalt glow which showed that they were working. He thought about the file given to him by the Combinate. The record of operations mentioned three deliveries of one million units each and many more beyond contractual quotas. The last one didn't contain more than one hundred thousand whole products.

Their ship let itself be drawn into Earth's gravitational pull and quickly reached the upper layers of the atmosphere. The rubbing ionized the magnetic shield, which went from red to white and back again. They surfed on a streak of flames which stained the sky an electric blue.

The ballistic phase of the flight finished, short wings were deployed. Aerobic propulsion took over. The horizon swung back into view. They pierced the cloud ridge at an altitude, flying at supersonic speed towards a region dabbled with ochre and beige shades. His almond eyes creased with amusement, making grooves on his green skin. Naakrit had of course established his main base in the middle of the desert. Each species possessed what specialists called a comfort zone. That of reptiles often bordered equators.