Apocalypstick (5 page)

“A baby? You have uninfected humans? How many?”

I didn’t wait for her answer. Offspring were what happened when
infected humans had babies. It was no wonder there were so many of them here.
Instead of scanning her thoughts, I delved into her memories and saw
everything. Even though they were all infected, every able woman among them was
pregnant or trying to get that way. The doctors and scientists carefully
monitored every stage of the process.

They had solar and wind power plants on the roof, and diesel
generators for backup, while the fuel lasted. They were still surviving on
salvaged food, and with careful rationing, could eat for another eight months.

I was disturbed by what they were doing here, but with dozens of
baddies closing in around us, the time for discussion was over. With our minds
connected by my delve, she knew that I was in her head. It wasn’t likely that
she could use the connection as I did, but we certainly knew each other’s
surface thoughts.

We can’t stay together,
I thought.
Just
like we can sense them in greater numbers, they can sense us; together we are a
magnet. I’ll lead them away while you get the humans back to safety.

I was already running before I finished the thought.

Crane, no! Come with me. We will be safe at the
prison,
she thought.

I dropped the delve, and burned some power to cover more ground.
Each stride became a soaring leap, carrying me ten paces or more. It worked,
too. I was like a rabbit in the open, running from a pack of wolves. I put up
my blocks to keep the host out of my head, and kept going towards the river.

Six offspring loped down the street after me, all about the size
of great danes. I looked up and saw three more leaping from rooftop to rooftop,
easily keeping pace with me. I stopped a block from the river, and waited in
the middle of the street to make my stand.

The host was still several blocks away, but it would start its
assault on my mental barriers soon. More husks appeared from doorways and
around corners, some shambling, others running towards me. The offspring ate or
trampled any that got in their way. They reached me first.

I could have picked them off from a distance, but I let them get
closer to conserve my strength. As came into striking distance, I hit each of them
with a quick jab of mental energy, disrupting their brains and dropping them
like sacks of meat.

I used a lot more energy to kill them this way, and it was like
a beacon to any mutant that didn’t already know I was there. By the time the
first wave of offspring reached me, twice as many were on their way. I just
needed to keep them busy until Diane could get her humans to safety.

I slashed with Xipe’s sonic knife as the beasts attacked. I was
already completely deafened by the ringing in my ears from their mind blasts,
and the stabbing pain of each wave sapped my strength and distracted me. I
would be able to hold out for a while, but it was starting to look like Diane
had gotten me killed after all.

I pushed more power into the knife, killing an offspring with
each blow, but it wasn’t enough.

They were all around me now, and the first wave of husks was
getting close. An offspring dropped from above, and almost landed on me. I
barely got out of its way, and melted it with a single slash. It was getting a
bit snug, even in the middle of the street.

I wanted to have more of them closer before I threw my nuke, as
I thought of it, but three offspring were rushing me together. I knelt down on
a knee, harnessing all of the power I could muster. When they were almost on
top of me, I pushed a burst of energy away from me in a rolling ring. For two
blocks, every one of them fell into a pool of blue sludge.

It left me with almost no power, but hopefully, it bought me
enough time to recover and get away. My hearing was completely useless, and
even my vision had blurred from the mental exertion. I focused on the
vibrations of Xipe’s knife, and did a quick meditation exercise to focus my
mind.

Instead of relying on my faulty senses, I scanned for thoughts.
I was just in time to dodge an offspring that had been on a rooftop above the
radius of my burst. It landed next to me, showering me with chunks of shattered
pavement. The one I didn’t notice landed on my right calf.

I rolled over, and amazingly pulled away from the beast, but
when I couldn’t stand up, I realized that my crushed leg was still pinned
beneath its clawed feet from the knee down. The other offspring hit me from
behind, sinking its teeth into my right shoulder.

Time slowed to a crawl as rocked forward and bit my arm off. My
body tried to repair itself, but every drop of blood I lost, and every ounce of
flesh was replaced by replicating nanites. At any moment, the balance would
shift, and my living flesh would no longer sustain the nanites with its warmth.

I pushed another ring of sonic energy away from my body with all
the strength I could muster, turning all the offspring within twenty yards into
goo. It was all I had. My severed arm still clutched the knife, buried in
gelatinous mutant goo. I’m sure I was in shock, but I managed to find my arm
and stick it back in place, letting the nanites reconnect the tissue.

I managed to push myself up and lean on an elbow. More concrete
in front of me crumbled as another offspring from the roof landed. It was odd
watching it happen with blurry vision and no sound.

I figured this would be the one that killed me, but it slumped
and started melting where it landed with an arrow sticking out of its brain. A
short, dark haired man was running towards me, and more arrows sailed overhead,
biting into the offspring that kept coming down from the roofs. The dark haired
man punched and kicked, melting offspring and husks with each hit. Another
exterminator!

Down the street, eight humans with bows launched more arrows
into the fray, and another exterminator joined the first, killing the ones that
were hit with arrows, while Diane stood with the archers, killing any that
tried to reach them.

Diane
I thought, linking our minds once
more.
I’m sorry to do this to you.
Like Xipe had done to me, I imprinted
all of my thoughts, memories, and experiences into her mind. She instantly knew
everything I knew. Her shock quickly became revulsion as she understood what I
had done.

The stories about Xipe knowing how to stop the spread were true.
Xipe knew how to change the nanites into anti-particles he called antites. They
would neutralize and convert every nanite they touched into an antite, starting
a chain reaction that would begin slowly, but would eventually spread across
the world, wiping out the parasites and anything infected by them.

Oh, God, no! You could have stopped it. You could
have stopped it! You were the first exterminator; our hero, but it was you who
doomed us. You kept fighting when you could have ended it, and now it has
spread too far.

One of the exterminators knelt next to me with a propane torch,
but I shook my head. “I’m over the line. I can’t burn anymore,” I said.

“Dear God,” he whispered, looking past me to the river. An offspring
the size of a whale was climbing out of the water, followed by a dozen more of
various sizes, but all bigger than the ones I had just killed. I fell back and
relaxed. There was only one thing left to do.

I can’t undo what I’ve already done, Diane. I am
dying. My nanites are already cooling. It’s up to you now. You have to decide
if you will kill us to save what is left of humanity. Save the world, Diane.
Kill us all.

You’ve already killed us all, Crane.
A year
ago, maybe ten thousand people would have died. Now, it will be a miracle if
that many live.
She stood up and looked towards the behemoth that crushed
the street and toppled the first building it lumbered into.

His body was failing. Was he seeing through Diane’s eyes, or his
own? He couldn’t reason it out. Memories flashed through his awareness,
blending with reality until he couldn’t tell what was real and what was
fantasy.

“The others are coming,” a man’s voice called. “We just have to
hold them off for a minute. Diane! Let’s go!”

She didn’t hesitate. It spread out like a soft breeze through
the crumbling city, a ripple of pale blue light, so faint and fast that most
didn’t even see it. Almost every living being it touched suffered. Most died
instantly, but not all. Most of the survivors died later, unable to recover
from large portions of their bodies suddenly melting away. Only a few were
completely untouched; maybe one in twenty thousand.

I tried to wipe the sweat from my cheek, but my arm wouldn’t
move. It wasn’t sweat on my cheek, anyway. My body was cooling, and my nanites
flowed off of me like dry water. I was melting, just like the offspring I had
killed. It didn’t hurt much.

With our minds still delved, Diane and I experienced each
other’s final moments. She was still mostly human, so she was in agony as the alien
portions of her body died and separated from her flesh.

Somehow, even as she was dying, she thought of the people hiding
here in what she thought of as ‘the safe zone.’ She thought of her sister,
Tina, who, that same day, became a mother to a healthy newborn child. It meant
that there was hope for mankind, after all, and she felt happiness through her
suffering.

My eyes might have been closed, or they might have melted away,
but I knew that I wasn’t seeing the real world. The flitting bits of data
flashing through my brain took me back to Tiffany Hudson’s house on our last
day of high school.

Her dog attacked me on the back deck, but Xipe showed up and
killed it. He saw that I was infected, too, but because I had resisted becoming
a host or a husk, he implanted his memories and experiences in my mind, making
me Earth’s first human exterminator.

He had already exterminated dozens of my neighbors, and had
traced the last of the infected here, to Tiffany’s house. Now that I knew what
he did, I had to finish his work, or let the alien plague spread across the
Earth.

I didn’t think I could do it, but his voice in my head urged me
on. Killing Tiffany’s little brother had been almost more than I could bear,
but with the heavy consequences of failure impressed in my mind, I kept
killing.

Her little sisters, her parents, even her visiting grandparents
had to die. Even though they saw each other melt into pools of nanite sludge,
they knew nothing of any infection. They only knew that I was killing them.

I found Tiffany last, cowering in her bedroom closet. We both
wept when she saw the knife in my hand.

Xipe had reached the nanite tipping point, too, but we had
stopped the alien plague that destroyed his world and countless others. He was
the last of his kind, but he seemed eager to die knowing that I would carry on
in his place, ready to create and use antites if the plague returned and
couldn’t be contained.

I was still crying as I walked down the sidewalk in front of
Tiffany’s house. Yes, for the killing I had done, but also for the killing I
had not done. She stood in her bedroom window, watching me leave. Tears
streaked her pretty face, and blond curls fell down over her soft brown eyes as
she pressed her sludge covered hands against the window.

God forgive me. I couldn’t do it.

But as the last images flickered and vanished, I knew that no
forgiveness awaited me.

The end

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