The Parasite War (24 page)

"And give up all that food?" Shina asked.

"Yeah," Alex said. "They can't survive on what's left for more than a few weeks, a month or so at the outside. The neonate has to be created before the weather gets too cold. If they had developed the new infection earlier, their plan would have been foolproof. As it is, there's still a chance."

Shina looked at him suspiciously. "How the fuck do
you
know all this shit?"

"Did you hear what I said about the new infection?" Alex asked.

"Yeah."

"I had it."

"Shee-it."

Alex wasn't sure if she were expressing incredulity or belief. "Believe what you want, Shina, but that's what happened to me."

"And they just told you all about their plans while you were infected, right?"

"No, not exactly. But you learn some things just because of the colloid being inside your mind."

"It's true," Jo said.

"I guess you know because it happened to you, too. Ain't that right, honey?" Shina said sarcastically.

"That's right."

"I caught the virus from her," Alex explained. "We both have memories that the colloids didn't want anybody to know. It never occurred to them that we could free ourselves from the infection."

Shina looked from one to the other, and then at Claire.

"It's true," said Claire. "I was a witness to Jo's infection, and I was there when she recovered."

"Wow," Shina said.

"Yeah," Alex said. "Wow is right."

"They didn't eat 'em," said the androgynous creature, who Shina had called "Satch" a couple of times. "Why didn't the colloids eat 'em?"

"Because they wanted our brains in good shape," Alex explained. "Maybe as models for the baby's brains, or maybe so they could infiltrate. Maybe for both reasons."

Shina looked at Satch, and then glanced back at the others. "You telling me that any one of them could be a spy?"

"Any one of us
,
" Alex corrected her. "
Any
one of us."

"Shee-it."

The darkness began to turn gray. Dawn was coming, and they were getting very near to South Ferry. It was time to stop and take stock of their weapons and ammunition, to make peace with themselves and their gods before they went into battle.

"The waterfront's only a few blocks away," Alex said. "I think we'll find what we're looking for there. If not, then we've come a long way for nothing. One man has died, and the rest of us are weary to our bones. The colloids might have left me with a false idea about all this, to throw us off, but I don't think so. I think we're closing in on their last hope to hold onto this planet, and I'm confident that other guerrillas are fighting back all over the world."

Alex was so tired that he was almost hallucinating, seeing shapes shifting in the ruins of the city. Somehow he kept going, though, a vision in his brain of the colloids dying, fading, vanishing from the earth. He knew the truth now; it had been buried deep inside him all the time, but his fatigue, combined with his sense of mission, brought it forth now that he needed it.

"They blew it," he said. "They almost did it, but they didn't develop the third stage soon enough. The trial infections didn't take. We all saw Pat Crowley take his own life rather than allow them to control his mind. That's the sort of courage they can't fight. They don't understand it, and they never will. That's why they're going to lose this war."

"Yeah!" Riquelme shouted, lifting his fist and shaking it at the lightening sky.

Seventy strong, they all lifted their clenched fists in solidarity and cried out for the downtrodden human race. They were going to fight, and this time they did not intend to lose the battle, or the war.

Alex felt their courage reinvigorating him, filling him with renewed strength. He had never believed in destiny, but he was somehow certain that this was the moment he had been created for.

Locking and loading, the guerrillas prepared for battle. Alex no longer distinguished his own people from the New Jersey or New York people. They were the human race, united before this greatest of all. They had been humbled, enslaved, beaten into the mud, and now they would rise again.

Alex turned and led the guerrillas through the empty streets as the morning light grew ever brighter. Jo walked beside him, her .32 pistol in hand. Beside her was Riquelme, the flamethrower's nozzle in his hands as he walked proudly to battle. And beside him were Claire, and Samuel, and Jill, and Shina, and Ronnie, and Jack, and Dan, and all the others.

Alex had agonized through the night about the best method of attack, and he had been forced to conclude that there was nothing for it but to face the infected head on, to try to break through to the colloids' breeding ground. The guerrillas had learned that the infected were not really warriors, and, conversely, that they themselves were now seasoned veterans. Everything depended on how many of the enemy were left to send out against them. If the colloids had spread the infected too thin, the guerrillas might succeed.

They soon saw how many they were up against. In the gathering light, the infected were spread out all the way to the docks by the tens of thousands, as they had feared. There were at least as many colloids oozing irritably a safe distance from the waterfront. The guerrillas clung to the deep morning shadows of wrecked brownstones, moving stealthily. Alex raised his hand, signaling them to halt.

They retreated out of sight and earshot of the infected, to discuss possible strategies.

"I say we should hit 'em hard," said Riquelme, patting his trusty flamethrower. "Just burn a hole right through the middle of them."

"It might work," Claire agreed.

"If it is the Lord's wish," Samuel said.

"I don't know," Alex said. "It might be smarter to look around for some other means. There are just too many of them for a full frontal attack."

"He's right," said Shina, whose advice was welcomed by the others. "There might be a place where they ain't so thick, where we can get through and get a look at this baby you've been talking about."

"So what do we do?" asked Ronnie.

"Send out a scout to look around. There's gotta be a place where they're spread too thin."

"I think Shina's right," said Jo.

"Woman's intuition," Shina said, grinning at Jo. "Ain't that right, babe?"

Everyone laughed, breaking the tension for a moment. But the suspense seeped back into the air as surely as the morning mist.

"We'll send out two," said Alex. "One to the right and one to the left."

"I'll go," said Jack, eager to avenge his father's death.

"Not this time, son," Alex said. "You risked enough yesterday. This time I think I'll volunteer."

"Not spoken like an old Army man," said Riquelme, "but admirable, nonetheless."

"Well, we need to save you for the firefight."

"Firefight is right," said Ronnie, squeezing Jack's shoulder. The boy frowned in disappointment, but he didn't put up any argument. His father had apparently taught him to obey authority figures, a necessity in wartime.

"Who else is going to volunteer?" Claire asked.

"Jo is," said Alex.

"Oh, I am, am I?" Jo looked extremely dubious about Alex's assertion.

"You have to, Jo. You're the only one who's been infected."

"True, but so what?"

"Jo, there are millions of colloids just a few blocks away. When you and I get close enough to them, their telepathic emanations are going to get through to us."

Jo's brow furrowed. "I was going to ask you how you know that, but that question would be a waste of breath."

"Who knows what else might happen?" Alex said. "We've never been so close to so many colloids since we were infected. You never have been near thousands of them like I have. We've speculated on the possibility that their telepathy is enhanced by larger numbers of colloids. I remember how they seemed to scream when I shot them the night I met you. My mind was picking up their pain. If we're psychically receptive to them, maybe we can learn enough to second-guess them all the way to their breeding ground."

"You've been up too long, man," said Satch.

"No, I think it's possible," Claire said.

"Are you feeling any telepathic signals?" Alex said to Jo.

She looked a little frightened. "Maybe . . . I can't really be sure."

"I think you must be picking them up," Alex said. "I am. It's very faint, but it's definitely there."

Jo's eyes were furtive, frightened, but Alex took her by the hand.

"The infection can't hurt you, Jo," he said. "We drove it out of you once. And they aren't going to try it again. But you're sensitive to them now, just like I am. Can't you feel it?"

"Yes," she said. "God help me."

Alex put his arm around her. "This can help us win, Jo," he said. "This power they've accidentally left us with could make all the difference."

Jo nodded.

Now that he had become aware of the colloid's emanations, Alex read them more and more clearly. The guerrillas were indeed very close to the breeding ground, he sensed. The infected were under the colloids' control, of course, but very imprecisely. Once the virus matured, it became more and more communicative with the colloids, until it was a colloid itself. And then it was part of an enormous group mind, a psionic network that covered the entire planet.

"Do you want to take the Jersey side, Jo?" Alex asked.

She looked at him strangely. "You read my mind," she said, not realizing for a moment why the others were laughing. "But I guess that's the whole point, isn't it?"

"Exactly," Alex said. "Let's go."

Alex crouched as he made his way across an open area, and then hid behind a crumbling warehouse. He saw no indication that he had been spied by the infected, though he could see a few of them shambling about in the distance. He looked back toward the building where the guerrillas hid, and saw Riquelme watching him.

Alex felt, rather than saw, Jo making her way cautiously to the west. She worked her way toward the docks as she attempted to circle around the infected hordes.

Doing the same thing, Alex moved quickly from the shelter of one building to the next. Willing himself to stay in contact with Jo, he scurried a few blocks and then stopped to get his bearings.

He could smell salt on the breeze that was blowing away the mist. That meant that he couldn't have been more than a half mile from the ocean; perhaps he was even closer than that. Had he gone far enough east to avoid the infected?

If he climbed to the top of one of these piles of rubble, he might find it a good vantage point. In fact, there were a number of more or less intact buildings in the neighborhood. One of them might prove even more useful for reconnaissance. Looking for a high roof, he began to move furtively to the east again.

At last he found one with a fire escape. Climbing up and crawling across the roof, he made his way to the building's southern edge and peered out over the harbor.

The low-lying fog was burning away rapidly, revealing the dark mass of Staten Island and the wreckage of the Verazzano and Goethals bridges, as well as Governor's Island. Even Ellis Island was faintly visible. And just past it was Liberty Island, where the Statue of Liberty still stood. Colloids or not, Alex supposed, the Army had drawn the line at blasting the Lady.

Closer in, along the rotting wharves lining New York Harbor, were the massed colloids and infected. Alex gasped involuntarily when he saw how many there were. Not tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but surely millions. A black, viscous stream of agitated colloids roiled uneasily between the streets and the docks. Between the guerrillas and the colloids, the infected were so closely packed that he could easily believe that some of them were being crushed to death. Indeed, there were hundreds of lifeless figures lying on the broken asphalt near the docks. Many of them heaved with the feeding throes of their parasites, as the colloids rushed to finish consuming them before they rotted.

Reminded of Hitler's rallies, Alex watched a forest of mindless human bodies sway as they formed a barrier between their alien masters' breeding ground and the guerrillas.

But where, exactly, was the breeding ground? It occurred to him that perhaps "ground" was not the right word. But how could the colloids have bred the creature underwater? He thought about it and realized that an amphibious creature would be the fifth stage of colloid evolution on earth.

But that would come later, he knew. For now, a thing that walked on land was the colloids' aim. Why, then, was Alex so certain that the breeding ground was somewhere beyond the waterfront, out in the harbor somewhere?

Alex tried to use his newfound telepathic gift to find out. As he concentrated, he thought he saw something move out there in the mist.

He focused his mind, for the moment forgetting everything, even Jo.

And he saw where the breeding ground was. Hundreds of colloids were on Liberty Island, sliding around the base of the Statue of Liberty! There were humans out there, too—third stage infected.

It made sense now. They needed a lot of salt water, the basic fluid that would compose most of the neonate's body, just as it composed most of a human body. But the colloids themselves couldn't deal with water, not even saline water. So, to do the job for them, they manipulated human helpers with colloids in their brains.

Alex's reception of the colloids' telepathic waves was stronger up here on this roof than it had been on the ground. Was it possible that the massed infected had created a kind of interference to the transmission? That might be another reason why the colloids had set them up as a barrier between Liberty Island and Manhattan. For surely they knew that Alex and Jo were receiving their emanations.

Of course, Alex realized with a chill, that might also mean that they knew where he and Jo were. And just where
was
Jo now?

He shut his eyes, panicking to think that something had happened while he had cut off contact with Jo. But she was there, watching the masses of the infected from behind an old loading platform. He tried to talk to her with his mind, but his thoughts were only a vague sensation to her, as hers were to him. Nevertheless, she knew that Alex was there with her.