Spiral (17 page)

And across the factory floor were three hundred hospital beds arranged in a grid, each bed with a person stretched out on it in a state of unconsciousness. The scene resembled some mass dormitory of slumbering humans, consisting of Topsoilers and Colonists, and even a handful of New Germanians who had been brought in to make up the numbers.

Rebecca One stood before the group of women. “This is . . . ,” she began to say, but then noticed most of the Styx women weren’t paying any attention whatsoever to her. Drawn by the irresistible, primal drive present in each of them, many were already edging toward the beds. Rebecca One held her hands high in the air and addressed the women at the top of her voice. “This is one of the greatest moments in our long history, and we’re proud to have been able to . . .” She trailed off as she realized it was useless; the assembled group of women were barely listening as their eyes darted over the beds.

“Once you’re done in here, you can move on to the other two warehouses, where the rest of the candidates will be waiting for you,” Rebecca Two added. “Don’t worry if you can’t manage them all: More of our sisters will be joining us later.”

“We’ll try to leave them a few scraps,” Alex said. A ripple of muted laughter ran through the group, but most of them were too full of anticipation to join in.

“So let the Phase begin!” Rebecca One proclaimed in a shout.

The women fanned out across the factory floor, some running in order to claim the humans in the outlying corners for themselves.

“We’ve come a long way since Romania,” Rebecca One said. “It’s so much easier now that we have the technology to scrub their minds,” she said, referring to the intensive Dark Light treatments the people on the beds had been subjected to.

“Yes, it’s far less messy than hobbling them. Even with their ankles shattered, they might still try to resist,” Rebecca Two said breathlessly as she watched Alex approach one of the nearest beds.

As the Styx woman sidled up to the senseless human, she shed her jacket, then her blouse. Straddling the body, Alex arched her upper body and threw her head in the air, unleashing a primordial and piercing shriek that rose to the corrugated roof and seemed to fall back down to the factory floor again.

There was already blood on her back. But as she’d begun to shriek, two slits opened up across the upper edges of both her shoulder blades, the flesh tearing apart.

From these slits, jointed insect legs pushed out. They twitched as if they’d just been born and were taking their first breath, then they snapped open to their full length.

A pair of insectoid limbs, black and shiny and glistening with blood and plasma, and covered with small bristles.

Alex was still shrieking, but the sound was swelled by the other women as, astride their victims, they began to shriek, too. They shrieked until the combined volume was unbearable in the confines of the factory, the sound resonating through the very fabric of its walls.

Then, as Alex threw her arms forward at the insensible human, the insect limbs also whipped over each of her shoulders. With their pincers they gripped the man’s temples on either side, holding him steady for what was about to come.

Alex was breathing in staccato bursts as she lowered her head closer to the man’s and stuck her thumbs into his mouth, stretching it wide open. A tube suddenly burst from her mouth. More than a foot and a half in length, it immediately found the man’s gaping mouth.

“It’s a wonderful thing to behold,” Rebecca One slurred, intoxicated by the spectacle before her. “We’re so lucky to see this.”

The fleshy tube was similar to the ovipositor found at the tip of the abdomen of many insects for egg laying, but far larger. And Alex’s pulsated as something was squeezed down it by the peristaltic movement of the muscles.

It was a pod the size of a box of matches. An egg case.

As the tube pushed farther into the man’s mouth and forced its way down his throat, a reflex action made him cough and he tried to move his head. But, with a final slurping sound, the egg case was deposited deep inside him, and he became still again.

Alex’s insect limbs unhooked themselves from the man’s temples. She raised her arms and stretched them elegantly, then slid from the man. She immediately moved to the next bed, where a woman lay.

“One down, five hundred and ninety-nine to go,” Rebecca Two said.

“AND FROM EACH OF THESE
egg sacs or pods,” Eddie continued, “more than thirty Styx are spawned. They go through a larval stage, consuming the living flesh of the human host. And when they’ve depleted the host’s ravaged carcass, they burst out, and —”

“Burst out?” Will asked, looking more than a little queasy.

“Yes, they rupture it and crawl out in search of more food. In the following days, they need an ample supply of fresh meat in order to fully develop. Once they’ve absorbed sufficient protein, they form cocoons, for the pupation stage. And within a week or two, they hatch out, and a brand-new army is ready to swarm.”

Drake was frowning. “You say ‘Styx’ are produced. What do you mean, exactly?” he asked.

“Like me, like Limiters,” Eddie answered.

Drake’s frown deepened. “After only two weeks? How can a fully formed adult be produced in only a matter of weeks? How can that be?”

“They possess the intelligence of a fully developed Styx male, but they have no emotional faculties. They have no need of them. They’ve been brought into this world with a single purpose — to kill. And they’re incredibly good at it, because they have no qualms about dying. We call them the Warrior Class. They’ll work their way through the Topsoil population, using whatever weapons are available and slaughtering as they go, until they’re ordered to stop. Or until there’s no one left to kill.”

There was a shocked silence in the Humvee until Will spoke. “It’s like the ichneumon wasp,” he whispered in horror. If it was possible with his unpigmented skin, his face seemed to have turned even whiter than usual. “I saw this TV program about them once. They lay eggs in a living animal, which hatch out and b —”

“It’s more than that,” Drake interrupted, turning to Will. “You remember that last time we were in Highfield with your father? When he wanted to catch a glimpse of Celia from the rooftop?”

“Sure, I remember,” Will said. “In Martineau Square.”

“Well, I rather glibly made a comparison between the Styx and viruses then. I had absolutely no idea how close I was.” Drake turned to Eddie. “At a guess, when the spawn grows in the host, it assimilates not just its proteins but also some of the host DNA into its genome, doesn’t it? And isn’t that the reason why current Styx physiology mirrors our own?”

Eddie nodded. “Our scholars believe that there was a Phase in prehistoric times, which brought about the extinction of the dinosaurs. And we most certainly weren’t humanoid in those days. The scholars tell us that the human resemblance came later, after a second Phase during Neanderthal times.”

Will uttered a barely audible “Wow.”

“Wait . . . this is all getting a little too fantastic,” Drake said, holding up his hands. “Where’s the proof for all this, Eddie? How do I know what you’ve just told us is true?” he challenged, although not aggressively, as he tried to deal with what he’d just heard. “We’ve only got your word f —”

Eddie made a move to reach inside his jacket. In a heartbeat, Drake had drawn his gun and was aiming it straight at the Styx.

“You know I’m not armed,” Eddie said, holding completely still. “I want to show you something.”

“Go on,” Drake said, his gun still on the Styx.

From an inside pocket Eddie slowly eased out a book, its cover creased and worn.

“
The Book of Catastrophes
?” Will asked, as he regarded the battered volume in Eddie’s hands, which was bound in some type of ivory-colored parchment.

“No, this is from long before that,” Eddie replied. “Only a handful of copies of this book survived from the fifteenth century. No Colonist has ever laid eyes on it, and it’s unlikely there’ll be another above grass. I had this particular copy smuggled out of the Citadel for me.”

Putting his handgun away, Drake shrugged. “So what is it?”

“Well . . .” Eddie thought for a second. “The Styx title for it means ‘from one comes many,’ There isn’t an exact match in the English language, but I suppose the best word for it would be ‘
Propagation
,’ or better, perhaps, ‘
Proliferation
.’ ” With a finger, he traced the three sides of the inverted triangle tooled into its front cover. “Yes, the
Book of Proliferation
,” he decided, then held it up to Will and Drake. “And this isn’t leather. It’s bound in skin. Human skin.”

“Okaaay,” Drake exhaled. “I suppose that about sets the tone.”

Eddie opened the book and was carefully turning the pages, which rustled like old leaves. “Ah, here it is,” he said, rotating the book so Will and Drake could see the illustration, a crude woodblock print.

It depicted a man lying on the ground, his body bloated and misshapen, as a woman’s thin face hung over him. The rest of her body was partially concealed by the shadows and difficult to make out.

Will was squinting at the picture. “It sort of looks like she’s got wings on her back . . . but those must be the insect limbs you talked about,” he said.

“Correct.” Eddie swiveled the book around again and glanced at the page of meticulously written text. “This is a record of our last Phase. It documents what took place in the mid-fifteenth century in Romania,” he told Will and Drake. “It was during the reign of the Prince of Wallachia, who achieved notoriety for his wholesale slaughter of p —”

Will couldn’t stop himself from jumping in. “Vlad . . . Dad told me about him. You’re talking about Vlad the Impaler, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Eddie confirmed. “And the folklore surrounding him has given rise to the improbable vampire stories and films that seem to be so in vogue at the moment. But the reality is somewhat different. . . . The reality is that our Phase started the myth. You see, the prince offered us protection on the understanding that in return we’d wipe out the boyars, his archenemies, for him. His part of the bargain was to provide somewhere secure for the Phase to take place . . . and an ample supply of human bodies.”

“I bet he gave you that, all right. My dad said he killed thousands, after roasting and skinning them and hacking off their arms and legs,” Will remembered. “And he liked to stick their heads on stakes.”

“That was just window dressing to divert attention from what we were up to,” Eddie said. “The prince was actually a very cultured and gentle man.”

Drake was frowning. “Let me get this straight. If there was a Phase back in the fifteenth century . . . then . . . what happened? We’re not all dead or in servitude, so what went wrong?”

“The prince reneged on us,” Eddie said. “He was persuaded by his bishops that we were ungodly, and that we had to be stopped. So he ordered his knights to storm the catacombs in the palace where the Phase was under way. Our newly spawned Warrior Class was still either in the larval or pupation stage, so the knights met no opposition, cutting them to shreds and burning their remains. In fact the only resistance was from our womenfolk, but the knights eventually corralled them down one end of the catacombs, where they put them to death.” Eddie almost smiled as he added, “So rather than portraying him as a cruel despot, history should instead recognize Vlad — the so-called Impaler — as one of its greatest saviors. The irony is that he
saved
all humanity.”