Genesis (24 page)

A bright-red bloom of light appeared at the end of the flare, turning the ground around her blood red, before vanishing behind a blossom of acrid smoke for a moment, then sinking back to a steady hissing red flame.

Jesus! It freaking worked
. She had fully expected the flare to simply fail and was actually struck motionless for a second.

Now throw the damn thing!

She lobbed the flare overhand like a hand grenade, watched it arc through the air, spinning end over end until it hit the side of the tanker and dropped toward the pool of gas. Before the flare even hit the ground she saw the first flicker of blue flame as the gas vapors ignited. She allowed herself a second to watch as the flame quickly spread out across the pool, frying some of the creatures midflight. The flames spread quickly under the tanker toward the valves. The last image she saw before she turned and started sprinting back across the desert toward the depot building was a gushing waterfall of flame as the fire reached the trailer’s valves.

Emily allowed herself a smile as she chased her shadow across the ground back toward the depot.

Couldn’t have asked for a better re
—

She did not hear the gas tanker explode; the shock wave had already hit her, and, for the brief couple of seconds before she hit the ground again, she was too concerned with figuring out how she had suddenly learned to fly.

Emily opened her eyes to a world of flame. All around her fire raged, and the acrid smoke of burnt fuel filled her nostrils.

She looked down her body. Someone’s boots and jeans were on fire.

It took a few seconds for Emily’s muddled mind to make the connection that it was
her
feet and
her
legs that were burning.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” she hissed, flailing at the flames. The heat from the burning gasoline was already beginning to singe the hair of her legs through the thick denim. She began batting at her jeans, but all that did was scorch the soft flesh of her hands. She pushed her hands into the pool of cold, wet mud she had splashed down in, and began scooping up huge handfuls of it, slathering it over her burning clothes. Her flames died quickly. Not so for the hundreds of tiny fires that still burned around her.

Thirty meters from where she lay, where the tanker had been, a huge pool of fire now burned in the shattered remains of the tanker, a heavy plume of smoke rising up into the night sky, spreading southward. A mist of light flowed all around the inferno, dancing through the smoke and circling the fire like a sentient fog: the swarm. The ground was littered with charred and burning debris, more remains of the gas tanker, and probably several of the wrecks that had surrounded it. A stream of burning fuel still leaked from what was left of the rear portion of the tanker, running down the slope toward the depot.

The plan worked! Holy crap, it actually worked.

She had no recollection of what had happened after she’d thrown the flare and started to run; her plan had obviously worked a little
too
well. She looked down toward the depot and could only identify it by the reflection of the fire dancing in its windows. The swarm had left the building completely, the final stragglers zipping toward the burning wreck of the gas truck like earthbound shooting stars. The main body of the swarm seemed fascinated by the fire; they danced and weaved around it, the occasional unlucky one getting too close and falling into the flames. She could hear the pop of their bodies boiling and exploding in the heat as they fell to the ground, sizzled lumps of goo.

Emily eased herself to her feet, her legs still unsure they were willing to hold her up. She patted down the last smoldering spot on her jeans. She was
so
going to have to get a new wardrobe when all of this was finally over, she told herself.

The fire cast long shadows over the landscape, its light pushing deep into the surrounding darkness. Emily began to stumble her way back toward the depot, picking through the scattered fires that burned like tiny funeral pyres. By the time she reached the rear entrance of the building, her legs felt leaden and a dull pain, like she’d been punched hard, pulsed in the muscles of her right shoulder.

She was pretty sure she had lost consciousness, but there was no way for her to gauge exactly how long she’d been out. Long enough for the swarm to have made its way to the fire, at least. But that could have been minutes or half an hour. Either way, it would mean that Rhiannon would have followed her instructions and left in the truck with Thor. Emily had instructed her to head east and put some space between the swarm until daylight, then double back and try and make her way back to Point Loma. Rhiannon would have to come back along the I-40 eventually, so all Emily would need to do was stay on the road. They would inevitably run into each other at some point. She pushed through the rear door and headed straight to the office and was instantly blinded by the beam of a flashlight in her eyes.

“Emily!” Rhiannon yelled and ran to her friend, throwing her arms around her and hugging her hard.

“Are you kidding me? Do you
ever
follow my instructions?” Emily said, too exasperated and bone weary to do anything but speak.

“I couldn’t,” Rhiannon said. “I couldn’t leave you here. I love you, Emily.”

“I love you too,” Emily said eventually and hugged her right back. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

Emily led Rhiannon and Thor back through the depot.

“Let me take your flashlight,” she asked Rhiannon at the door to the vehicle bay. “I lost mine out there.” Pausing, she pressed her ear to the door, listening for any sign the swarm still waited beyond it. Hearing nothing, she eased the door open and swept the beam of the flashlight through the room.

The opposite side of the door, its wooden frame, and the wall it sat in were a cratered mess. Crushed bodies of the swarm were piled around the doorway like dead autumn leaves, and many more were scattered over the concrete floor.

“Stay away from that, Thor,” Emily whispered as the malamute sniffed inquisitively at the bloodied pulp of a dead bug, prodding it with his nose. Emily stepped out into the bay. “Come on, stick close to me.” They walked in single file toward the truck.

The windshield of the first dump truck looked as though someone had taken a baseball bat to it; squashed bugs were splattered across the windshield, bodily fluids streaked across the glass. More bodies lay around the tires of the truck, and Rhiannon gasped in horror when one of the creature’s legs twitched convulsively as they passed it. Emily stopped any future movement with the swift application of the heel of her boot.

The other vehicles had suffered less damage, and their own truck just had a few dents and bangs; aside from a spiderweb impact crater that dripped a glowing blue ichor on the passenger side of the windshield, the damage looked minimal.

“Get in,” Emily ordered Rhiannon, opening the passenger door while she scanned the shadows for any movement. When Rhiannon was safely strapped into the passenger seat, Emily made her way to the back of the truck and ushered Thor up and inside. Their gear was still where they had stowed it. She slammed the rear door closed and flinched as the echo reverberated around the silent room.

At the roller door, Emily began pulling the chain as quickly as she could, not caring how much noise she made at this point; they would be gone and on their way before the swarm could react to the sound anyway.

At the halfway point, she ducked her head under the opening and looked outside.

The gas truck still burned brightly back along the freeway, the swarm still apparently entranced by the flames. Good. When the door was fully retracted, she kicked as much of the broken glass out of the way of the tires as possible and jogged back to the truck. She was about to climb up into the driver’s seat when a blur of motion snapped her attention to the roof space.

It had probably been resting on one of the metal girders,
she thought in the split second she had to register what was happening. The light bug swooped down from the ceiling like some kind of dive-bomber, its abdomen igniting suddenly within the darkness.

Emily instinctively batted at it with the hand holding the flashlight but missed, and it swept through the open door and into the truck.

Rhiannon screamed as the creature zigged and zagged inside, bouncing off the interior walls.

Thor snarled, flecks of foam flying from his mouth.

Rhiannon screamed again, throwing up a hand to protect her face from the creature. It whirred around her head for a second, then dived at Rhiannon again, fastening itself to her wrist with its tentacles, its wings wrapping around her arm in an unwanted embrace.

Rhiannon screamed again, this time in shock and pain.

Emily lunged into the cabin, but, as her hand reached for the bug, the creature released Rhiannon’s wrist and headed toward Emily’s face . . . only to disappear in an explosion of glowing blood as Thor plucked it from midair and shook it to pieces between his jaws.

“Shit! Holy shit! Rhiannon, are you okay? Let me look,” Emily said, leaning in to inspect the girl’s arm.

“It bit me,” Rhiannon said, hot tears spilling down her face, her voice full of anger and disgust rather than fear.

“Give me your arm.” Emily unfastened the buttons of Rhiannon’s shirt cuff and rolled the sleeve up to her elbow. There was a single puncture wound just above the inside of her wrist. A spot of blood had welled up and now trickled down the girl’s arm.

“Ow, ow, ow,” said Rhiannon, her fingers rubbing at the spot.

“Quit rubbing it and let me take a look.” Emily shined the flashlight on the wound and saw that in the seconds since the bug had bitten Rhiannon the wound had swelled and reddened deeply, but the bleeding looked like it had stopped, at least.

“It’s okay,” Emily said. “How do you feel?”

“It stings a lot,” Rhiannon said, “but I don’t think it—”

Rhiannon’s body curved like a bow, her arms snapping to her side, her head arcing backward as the seat belt engaged, the only thing, Emily realized, that stopped her body from flying from the seat as a convulsion exploded through Rhiannon’s muscles. The girl’s jaws clamped shut, and Emily saw a thin splatter of blood—
Oh God! Oh God, please, please, no
—fly from her mouth. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and a low hiss, like escaping gas, whistled from between her clenched teeth.

“Rhiannon?” Emily yelled, taking the girl’s shoulders with both her hands. Rhiannon was completely unresponsive, her back arching, then relaxing slightly before snapping back against the seat belt again. “Rhiannon!” Emily yelled again, but there was not a damn thing she could do to help her.

Outside, Emily saw a sudden shift in the light of the swarm as it broke away and began to head back in their direction, the truck’s headlights finally too much for them to resist.

What do I do?
she wanted to yell, but there was no one and nothing that could help her right now.

Rhiannon’s body convulsed once . . . twice . . . then sank back into the chair like a deflated balloon, all her muscles limp, her head lolling toward her chest.

“No, no, not again, Goddamn it, not again,” Emily repeated as her fingers checked for a pulse against the girl’s throat. She exhaled a sigh of relief when she felt the slow but steady pulse of Rhiannon’s heart and saw the shallow rise of her chest.

Rhiannon was alive, but if Emily wanted them all to remain that way, then she had to get them out of there right now.

Sliding back into her seat, Emily pulled her door shut and
slipped the truck into drive, edging out of the bay. Her attention was split between the unconscious body of Rhiannon slumped in the seat next to her, navigating a route to the freeway, and the glowing cloud of the swarm advancing rapidly across the half kilometer or so of open terrain still separating them. Multiple strands of the swarm extended into the air in front of the main body like antennae, probing ahead for something they knew was there but seemed unable to pinpoint.

“Hold on,” Emily said, stealing a glance at Rhiannon’s motionless body. Flipping on the high beams lit up the landscape ahead of them like it was day. She might just as well have painted a target on the truck, because the swarm instantly began to accelerate toward the vehicle. The road leading from the depot to the freeway was broken and uneven, and Emily had to resist the urge to just floor the accelerator and pop another tire.

“Come on. Come on,” she mumbled to herself as she navigated the truck over a slab of road forced up almost a quarter meter by a tangle of plants. The swarm was picking up speed now, and Emily could sense its collective excitement as it closed the gap with its prey.

The headlights illuminated the freeway ahead of her, the road in front of them clear. She pressed the accelerator pedal hard and felt the supercharged engine kick in. The truck’s front tires found the freeway, its rear tires momentarily losing traction, fishtailing the rear end of the vehicle until the tires caught again and the truck lurched forward onto the I-40. Emily swung the truck in a wide semicircle until the nose pointed toward the east.

The first few scouts of the swarm rocketed alongside her window, dodging in front of the truck, the rest of the swarm only seconds behind them now.

Emily pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor, and the truck roared. In the rearview mirror the light of the swarm began to recede into the distance. Emily checked her speed; she was going a smidgen under eighty. Her eyes flicked to the rearview mirror again; she had already put a half kilometer between them and the swarm, but the tenacious little fuckers were still following. She forced herself to breathe deeply; her concentration
had
to remain on the road. At this speed, if there was anything in the road she was going to have a matter of seconds to react.

Ten minutes later, Emily began to ease her foot off the gas pedal, allowing the needle to gradually drop to thirty. In the mirror, there was nothing but night. The glow of the swarm had disappeared completely.

With the threat of the swarm far enough behind them, at least for now, Emily pulled the truck over to the side of the road, left the engine running, and leaped out. She sprinted around to the passenger side and pulled the door open.

Rhiannon was deathly pale, slumped forward, her arms hanging loosely at her sides. Emily checked for a pulse; it was there but slow and weak. Gently lifting the girl’s injured arm to the light, Emily examined the bite or sting or whatever the fuck it was the bug had done to her. Memories of another time, with another child, tried to crowd into her mind. The bite mark on Rhiannon’s wrist looked angry and inflamed, the dot at the center a dried scab of blood. Emily lifted first Rhiannon’s left eyelid then her right with her thumb; they were both dilated, but at least they were no longer rolled back into her head. A good sign? Emily had no idea whether it was or not, because, if she were being perfectly honest, she had no clue what she was supposed to do. The light bug must have injected some kind of venom into Rhiannon when it bit her, because the reaction had been so damn fast. It had been almost a half hour since the attack, and she was still breathing, so that had to be a good thing, right? Maybe the swarm relied on multiple bites to kill its victims; maybe a single bite would simply render the victim immobile. She was still alive, so that meant there was hope.

The voice in her head tried to get her attention again:
Just like Ben was still alive, remember?

Emily cursed under her breath and ran to the rear of the truck. She lifted up the cargo door, ushered Thor out, pulled the blanket and a sweater from Rhiannon’s backpack, and pushed their gear farther back until it was up against the backseats. She ran back to the front. Unbuckling the safety belt from around Rhiannon, Emily slipped one arm under her knees and the other around her back and carefully lifted her limp body out of the seat. The kid felt like she weighed as much as a sparrow, if there had been any sparrows left, and her skin was cold, clammy with sweat. She carried Rhiannon’s unconscious body to the rear of the truck and gently slipped her into the cargo compartment, resting her head against the rolled-up sweater, then pulled the blanket over her.

Emily took a step back from the truck and allowed herself to breathe.
Now what?
she wondered. She answered herself:
Now we wait.
That was all she could do: keep the kid warm and watch her as closely as she could . . . and if the worst-case scenario became a reality? Would she,
could
she, really do that again? Emily already knew the answer to that question: she would do whatever it took.

“Jesus!” Emily exhaled the word as though it had been caught in her throat for the last day. She leaned forward—sank, really—until her forehead rested against the window of the truck and allowed its coolness to sink into her skin. Maybe she could just stay like this, silent in this eye of the unseen storm she knew was whirling around her.

Thor’s soft but insistent whine brought her back to the moment. He sat at her feet, looking up expectantly at his mistress.

“She’s going to be okay,” Emily said, not sure if she was reassuring the malamute or herself.

Thor watched her, his tongue lolling from his mouth until she reached down and scratched behind his ear. The thought of losing Rhiannon was just too painful to think about, but she knew that the kid’s future was out of her hands now. Her only recourse was to watch over her and wait. And hope—she could still hope; there was still some of that precious liquid left in that shallow well.