Instinct (54 page)

He ran to intercept her.

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Her eyes were still mostly closed and the vines hovered her feet about an inch of the ground. They floated her forward, supporting her on a thousand delicate little fingers. Judy’s mouth was a flat line. Robby lifted the knife in one hand and pressed his other palm flat against the back of the shaft. He lifted it to shoulder-height.

“I’m sorry, Judy,” he said.

He swung the knife before he could talk himself out of it.

His blade moved towards her and the vines carried her towards it. Robby closed his eyes when the knife hit her. He expected stiff resistance, but dumb luck carried the blade right between her ribs and deep into her chest. Her mouth flew open as she gasped in a startled breath. Robby squeezed his eyes shut tighter. He didn’t want to know if she opened her own eyes in her final moments.

He heard the vines began to clatter around them.

He felt them pressing her body into his hands.
 

Robby finally opened his eyes, stumbled backwards, and pulled the knife with him. The blood—Judy’s precious blood—was spilled down her shirt in sloppy splotches. Her body had stopped advancing, but the vines had not. They were above him and on all sides. Robby moved away, backing towards the light.
 

The vines didn’t seem to care that Judy’s body was convulsing. Her muscles were contracting as they ran out of oxygenated blood. He swiped at the nearest vines with the bloody knife. The ends he cut fell to the ground and Judy’s deep-red blood splattered on the leaves. Still, the vines continued to move.

She had said, “It’s in the empty space between my atoms.”

Doubt crept into Robby’s brain. He had assumed that the gamete needed a living host to transport it. What if it only needed flesh? If the gamete was still viable, he had only seconds to figure out how to prevent it from reaching the ball of light.
 

Robby ran back to Judy’s lifeless form and slashed at the vines that supported her. With every little tendril he severed, two more grew from the thicket behind her. A couple made half-hearted attempts to grab at him, but he cut them away. They seemed more focused on moving Judy than attacking him.

Robby kept swinging the knife. He didn’t hold hope that he was having an effect, but he couldn’t think of what else to do. He cut away all the vines that were supporting her arm and shoulder. The vines simply bolstered their grip on her other side and turned her slightly to deny him access to the real support. Robby’s hand strayed too far into the leaves with his next slash. The thorns tore at the back of his hand and his arm. He pulled his arm away, but with deep scratches and blood welling up from the wounds.

He heard a thrashing noise behind him. Robby turned and saw a horse. It was in one of the outer circles and it was flopping on its side, trying to free itself from the vines. Robby saw much more subtle movement amongst some of the humans trapped in the vines. One woman was wriggling her arm. A man was trying to bend his leg.

Robby turned back to Judy and then down to the brown vines at his feet.

He saw the whole thing as a balanced equation. In order to add vines here, they had to subtract them from over there.
 

He slashed and tried to formulate a solution. He was only able to cut so many vines. Given their current pace at moving Judy towards the light, he wasn’t going to be able to do enough.

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“Wake up!” he yelled over his shoulder. “You have to struggle. You can get free if you try.”

He heard more thrashing, but glanced back and saw it was the same horse. The animal was foamed with sweat, trying to get to its feet.

Robby saw other movement, back towards the alley. Ty was impossible to miss. His shirt, tied into a sling, was a diagonal stripe across his naked torso. Two people were at his sides—Romie and Tim had also escaped the Beardos. Snow swirled and fell around them.

“Help me!” Robby yelled. “Find something to cut these vines.”

They ran towards him.

Tim arrived first. He had a utility knife and he used it on the thicker trunks a few feet back from the leading edge of the vines. Ty had a big piece of metal. He swung it in savage arcs, beating back the vines and grunting with each blow. He twisted his whole body and kept his bad arm tight to his chest. Robby focused on cutting the vines that were supporting Judy. Soon, Romie appeared at his side. She had a knife like the one he’d stolen.

Robby sucked in a breath when Romie was ensnared. A clump of vines grabbed her arm and then her leg as she stepped forward to try to free herself. Robby moved to help her.

Brad appeared at his other side. He beat the vines with a length of pipe.
 

They were still backing up as they cut. The vines continued to make progress. Fear rose in Robby’s throat as he realized that the bed of vines they were treading across was wriggling under his feet. That meant they were getting closer to the light. He looked to his side and saw that they’d crossed the outer circle of ensnared people.

Hope returned as he realized that one of the ensnared people was attempting to stand. It was an older woman. She had climbed to her knees and was picking thorny vines from her shoulder. She seemed unaware of everyone else, but Robby was encouraged that the vines had lost their grip on her.
 

Someone else was working next to Ty. Robby realized it was one of the Beardos. He sliced the vines with a long blade. Judy’s body began to rise as the vines lifted her away from the ground. Robby noticed that he could see his shadow against the green leaves. They were being backed right towards the light.

“Wake up!” Robby yelled again to the people around him. Some people were moving, but others were still entranced by the light. At the sound of his yell, a horse screamed. It grunted and screamed again as it found its feet. It sprinted from the circle, trailing streamers of dead vines.

As Judy’s feet rose, Robby moved under her body, trying to cut the vines supporting her. He ducked, and barely missed being sliced in two by the long blade of a Beardo.

More people had joined the cutting. Robby saw a couple more Beardos. Back along the river of vines, Robby saw someone dumping gasoline from a red can. They lit the gas and a big patch of vines burst into orange flame. Black smoke began to curl up through the falling snow.

A man screamed and Robby saw a man lifted from the ground by a thick group of vines. The cables looped around his waist and squeezed. The man’s body was bent over backwards as he writhed in pain. People moved to the base of the vines and hacked at its support.

Judy’s feet dipped several inches as the vines redistributed their effort. Robby and the people around him redoubled their effort.
 

The vines began to consolidate into one thick trunk, supporting Judy’s body.

Robby moved in closer to attack the base. A few other people had the same idea, but there was only so much room to move. Judy’s blood dripped down and stained the leaves and blowing snow.

Robby heard a yell from his right. He looked down to see Romie on the ground. She had her hands clamped to the side of her head. Blood seeped between her fingers and began to run down her wrist.

Ty, Brad, and one burly Beardo were all concentrating their efforts on one side of the trunk. They timed their blows and were making good progress at chopping through. The trunk was like a tree. The vines were almost braided together, and began to twist every time they were hit. They turned the strongest vines to the outside of the trunk and pulled the severed ones inside.
 

Robby looked up. In his peripheral vision, he saw the ball of light. It had swelled to several times the size from when he’d first arrived. It looked like it was growing towards Judy’s body as the vines lifted her to meet it. The vines raised her higher as the people hacked at the column. Her feet were now out of Robby’s reach. Another person was snatched by the river of vines. Someone else escaped.

Between the timed swings of the three men, Robby jumped and grabbed at the trunk. The vines were were thick and didn’t have as many leaves or thorns. Still, it was like grabbing a double-handful of glass. Robby pulled and reached for a higher grip. He kicked his legs for momentum and Ty gave one of his feet and giant shove. With the push, Robby swung his legs up around the thick trunk. He clawed and climbed, ignoring the pain from the vines shredding his skin.
 

Robby climbed higher. The vines sagged under his added weight. He got his foot lodged in between two twisted vines and used the footing to propel himself upwards. He grabbed Judy’s body around her waist and pushed himself free. All his weight pulled down on her, and the vines struggled to compensate. His face was pressed to her. The smell of her blood filled his senses, and Robby squeezed his eyes shut.

He felt the tug from below and his spine was stretched as hands pulled at his feet. He gripped his hand around his other wrist and struggled to hang on. One of his shoes pulled off and he jerked back up until the hands returned to grab his foot. He heard a triumphant yell and the stretching abated for a second. Robby adjusted his grip just in time. Even more hands grabbed at him and pulled him down. Soon they were grabbing as high as his knees.

Robby opened his eyes again to discover that he was almost back to the ground. People were pulling Judy’s body from the vines and slicing them as they stretched to hold her. Robby released her and helped with the cutting. He pulled then severed ends from her neck. The skin tented as he removed the thorns.

Nearby, a young woman stood, staring at the light. Robby saw Romie approach the woman. Romie still had one hand clamped to the side of her head, but the bleeding looked under control. Romie turned the woman away from the light until she regained her senses.
 

Brad and Tim were carrying Judy’s body away from vines. Lisa appeared and ran up to lift Judy’s feet so they wouldn’t drag on the ground. Ty led the group still working on the vines.

They hacked back another part of the trunk and another cheer rose amongst the people. Robby saw more than a dozen people working on the vines now. Several still had scraps of brown vines clinging to their flesh. They must have been liberated from the circles. Others were still trapped, staring up at the light, but their numbers were decreasing every second. People seemed to snap out of their hypnosis and some turned to help their neighbors.
 

One of the military-looking Beardos shouted instructions to the people around him.

“Get all the guys with backpacks!” he yelled. “We have to get them out of here.”

Robby ran to that man.

“There are bombs in the packs, right?” Robby asked him.
 

The Beardo was dragging one of the men with a pack away from the circle. The man with the pack was still in a trance. His mouth hung open and he stared at the light.

“Yeah, but don’t try to take them off. They’ll explode if you try to take off the pack.”

Robby nodded. He found the nearest man with a pack and ran towards him. He was already struggling to free himself, so Robby just helped. He cut at the vines. As soon as his legs were free, the man tried to run.

“Wait!” Robby shouted. “You can’t take off the pack.”

Either the man didn’t hear him, or he was too frightened to listen. He tore the last vine from his arm as he turned and ran. He sprinted up the hill and across the snow-covered vines. Robby started after him until the man began to near the corner of a building. He was about thirty yards away when the man slipped his arm through one of the straps of the pack. Robby ducked just as the man rounded the corner and exploded.

CHAPTER 45: TOWN

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ground and tore through the corner of the building. Chunks of brick flew every direction. Robby got his arm up in time to shield his face and turned away from the shower of debris. The explosion killed his hearing. As it came back, Robby heard the chaos breaking out. People screamed and ran. The Beardos who had joined the fight against the vines were now spreading through the circles of ensnared people, trying to secure everyone with a backpack.

Robby saw Tim, Brad, and Lisa, dragging Judy’s body away from the light.
 

A new thought occurred to him, and he ran for them.

“Faster!” Robby shouted at them. It was all he had time to get out. He saw a red cloud blossom from Brad’s knee. A fraction of a second later, Robby heard the distant pop of the rifle’s report.

Brad cried out and dropped Judy’s shoulder. He collapsed in a heap, holding his leg.

Lisa turned with a frustrated look that turned to horror as she saw the fresh blood staining the snow. She put down Judy’s legs and crouched to help Brad.