Xenoform (38 page)

Debian could not look away from what was happening down there. A thick puddle of the dark, gloopy stuff was spreading around the drunk’s feet. He was screaming non-stop, his braying cries as shrill as a boiling kettle. And the greenshit was beginning to climb up his legs, slowly wreathing his body in dark slime, homogenising him as he struggled and batted uselessly at his own torso.

‘Shoot it, Sofi, for–’ Debian began, but Tec overrode him.

‘No! If you start shooting then those fucking things may come up here. Or somebody else might. What you can do, Sofi, is go and get Whistler like you were supposed to.’ His voice was an intense whisper.

Sofi looked from Tec to the man in the street and back again. ‘What is it doing to him, Tec? I don’t like this.’

The man was being consumed, that was what it was. The greenshit had almost covered him now, wrapping his body like a cloak. It looked like there were questing, grabbing fingers within that slime, enveloping the man, muffling his cries, dragging him dripping into the general mire. As he slowly crumpled, jerking weakly within his cocoon, waves of greenshit slowly washed over his form, melding and melting it into the slimy darkness that slicked the street. Tendon-like strings rose from the puddle, connecting to the body of the monster that still stood swaying in the station forecourt, indifferent to what had taken place. The man was gone – dissolved, incorporated, eaten – whatever one wished to term it.

‘Oh no...’ breathed Debian. He looked at the faces of his companions – they looked as sick as he felt.

‘Oh man! It fuckin’ dissolved him,’ said Sofi. Her knuckles were white on the stock of the rifle. ‘It turned him into fuckin’ goop. What the hell is happening? What does that to a person?’ She was almost crying. ‘You all saw that, right? It fuckin’ dissolved him!’

And then the creature in the station forecourt put its head back – right back until the back of its skull rested against it spine and its mouth pointed up at the sky – and with a rattling hiss belched out what looked like a cloud of green ash or snow. The three companions watched it, transfixed. The cloud billowed up and up, twisting like a tornado of small green leaves, rattling against the glass in the windows of the buildings. It rose and rose, higher than the roof of 13A, and began to fan out. Nobody spoke as it spread above them like an umbrella and began, slowly, to fall. The cloud covered maybe one hundred square metres now. Debian, Tec and Sofi stood watching in awe like three people at a fireworks show. A smell like rotting cabbage was on the wind, cloying and repulsive. Slow, drifting flakes...Hypnotic, almost...

‘Move!’ shouted Tec suddenly. ‘It’s gonna fall on us!’

This brought them all to their senses. He was correct, of course – they were right under the green snow now. Nobody knew what effect, if any, it would have if it touched them, and they decided by silent consensus that nobody wanted to know. As if suddenly waking up, they moved towards the stairs. Debian felt his heart racing in his chest as if it wanted out of there. Had he ever been so frightened? Maybe when he had stepped out of his flat’s window and grabbed for the scrambler-bait. Maybe not. As he ran he risked a glance at the sky. The green cloud was almost on them now, and it did look like snow. But this wasn’t the pure white of natural water-snow, this was the dark and putrescent hue of the greenshit organs, more like flakes of ashy fungus.

They scrabbled through the metal door into the coffin-like darkness of the stairwell. Tec came last, but when he tried to slam the door he realised that the generator’s exhaust-hose was in the way. ‘Damn!’ he yelled, his voice quavering, his head a bright, desperate yellow.

‘What?’ asked Sofi, turning back, but then she saw the problem for herself. ‘Oh,’ she said simply, unslinging the huge gun from her back. ‘Move.’

Tec squeezed past her and out of the way. Through the crack in the door Debian caught a glimpse of the air filled with drifting green flakes as he moved back. Sofi pressed the muzzle of the rifle to the open edge of the door, holding the weapon at waist-height, and pulled the trigger. The report was more of a roar than a bang and the effect in the cramped space was like being inside a steel drum that had been hit with a hammer. The door flew wide open, showing the dark and swirling void of the night sky, bounced off the exterior wall, then slammed against the hose again, distorting but not actually tearing it. There was a surprisingly neat hole, about fist-sized, just above the handle. Sofi shoved the gun behind her, into Tec’s waiting arms. She lifted the hose, threading it quickly through the hole, and shut the door, locking it securely. It was clear that there was something of a gap around the hose, but as a temporary solution Debian was impressed.

‘Come on!’ she barked. ‘Let’s go!’

As one body they turned and practically jumped the stairs down to the next landing. They descended the tower in a desperate rabble, almost tripping over the exhaust hose several times, into the big room, and rallied in a nervous mass there. Tec bounded up the steps to the mezzanine, navigating by the dim, ruddy illumination of the still-burning tea lights. The others heard him rooting frantically around for something and then he came flying back down the stairs. Debian and Sofi exchanged puzzled looks.

Tec showed them a large pair of pliers as he passed. His expression was businesslike. He went to the wooden door that led to the tower and used the pliers to quickly tear and smash a rough chunk out of it. He then passed the exhaust hose through this hole, mirroring the solution Sofi had arrived at upstairs. He slammed the door and stood back.

‘I wanna get this sealed up better,’ he said, ‘then fire that gennie up.’

‘Yeah,’ said Sofi. ‘You do that – I’m gonna get Whistler.’ And with that she dashed off in near-total darkness towards the basement level.

Debian was surprised and slightly envious at how quickly the others seemed to have composed themselves. He still felt like screaming, and refrained only out of fear that once started, he would be unable to stop. He stood for a moment and let his body slowly purge itself of adrenaline. He was trembling all over. Ashamed of his weakness, he breathed deeply, shut his eyes and tried to regain control. He could hear Tec ascending the steps back to the mezzanine, presumably to look for more equipment. There was another round of clattering and banging from up there. When he felt composed enough to open his eyes again Tec was stepping down onto the floor with some sort of gun-shaped tool in his hands.

‘What d’you think that stuff in the sky was?’ asked Tec nonchalantly as he surveyed the door.

‘It came from that creature, whatever it was,’ said Debian.

‘It trapped that bloke, and turned him,’ said Tec, adjusting a rusty control on the tool, ‘into slime. And then it puked out that green snow. Weird, huh?’

‘Weird? Only the most bizarre and frightening thing I’ve ever seen. What’s that?’ Debian indicated the gun-shaped implement in Tec’s hands.

‘Armourfoam. It’s used for field repairs on tanks and suchlike.’

‘And you have it why, exactly?’

‘For shit like this,’ said Tec absently as he worked the nozzle of the gun around where the hose passed through the door, sealing the gap with an expanding line of black foam. ‘I should do the top one, really, but I don’t fancy going back up there right now.’

‘Nor me,’ agreed Debian. His knees felt shaky and he sat heavily on the bottom rung of the mezzanine steps. ‘Let’s get that power on.’
‘Yeah, I think we might feel a little better with lights and coffee.’ Tec stood back again and regarded his work. ‘That’ll do for now,’ he muttered.

‘Where do we plug in, then?’ asked Debian.

‘You okay, man?’ asked Tec, looking him over. ‘You don’t look so good.’

‘Yeah,’ sighed Debian, rubbing his eyes. He wasn’t sure if he was okay or not. ‘I’m just a little freaked out. A lot has happened.’

‘Yeah,’ said Tec sympathetically. ‘It has. And I think there may be more to come.’ There was a gloomy silence as they both considered this.

‘The power?’ prompted Debian.

‘Yeah, er, I’ll have to wire it into the mains at the consumer unit. S’easy, come on.’

He led Debian to a far corner of the big room, shifting an old freezer out of the way. He indicated the supply unit that was fixed, uncovered, to the wall.

‘Right,’ said Tec. ‘Simple stuff. Debian, there’s a yellow toolbox in the lab. Would you get it for me? I’ll find some cable.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ said Debian, glad to have something to do. He rushed off into the darkness of the basement level and fumbled his way into the lab. He searched the cluttered space until he was nearly ready to give up, almost totally blind. He stopped and leaned against a shelving unit, eyes closed, composing his will. He opened them and surveyed the darkness around him, letting his eyesight adjust as well as it could. Yellow? He couldn’t see any damn thing.

Of course!
Night vision
! It was funny, but he had completely forgotten that he had the facility available. He had disabled his HUD system since the incident with the beast, but he was reasonably confident that his head was clean now. And what difference did it make anyway? He had already decided to go back into the net, if he could, once he could utilise the backup power of Tec’s computer. But one half of him was still oddly reluctant to do it. He was getting used to being a virtual meathead, maybe too used to it.
I am forgetting who I am
, he thought.
One day unplugged and I’m losing the plot
. He disallowed this train of thought and turned his HUD on, being careful not to allow his DNI to net-connect just yet. His vision filled with comforting scales and icons. And then he noticed that he was actually leaning his hand on the very thing he searched for – it was lying atop a heap of miscellaneous objects on Tec’s desk. He couldn’t tell its colour by night vision, but it was clearly a toolbox, and its side was helpfully labelled
ELECTRICAL
. Triumphantly, he seized it and dashed out.

In the corridor he ran right into Whistler and Sofi heading up to the big room, sending Whistler bouncing into the wall. She rebounded in a fighting stance, instinctively, and he thought for a split-second that she would kick his head in before he could say a word. But she relaxed quickly, peering at him in the darkness. He switched to IR to see her better.

‘Sorry, Deb,’ she said. ‘I’m a little wired.’

‘Yeah, aren’t we all,’ he agreed.

‘Sofi says there’s some freaky shit going on out there.’

‘Yeah,’ said Debian in a small voice. ‘She’s right.’

‘I want to see for myself.’

‘I don’t think you should go out there at the moment. That stuff coming out of the sky, those things...I don’t think that’s wise.’

‘
I told her that, of course,’ said Sofi in
nobody-ever-listens-to-me
tones.

‘I’ll wear a hat,’ Whistler said, so drily that he stared at her in confusion for a moment before realising she was joking. Her face glowed red and yellow, the skull visible through the skin in his enhanced vision. She looked beautiful, alien, fragile like stained glass.

‘A hat?’ he parroted uncomprehendingly.

She nodded cheerfully. ‘Rain-hat.’

‘Tec just sealed the door to the stairs, anyway.’

‘Yeah? Without asking me? Maybe I’ll just take a nosey out the basement door then. I didn’t see anything wrong in the car park, though. How’s it going with the power?’ she asked.

‘Nearly done, if that damn machine runs, and if nothing blocks the exhaust on the roof.’ Debian was slightly taken aback at Whistler’s complete lack of regard for the terrifying nature of this situation. He supposed that was what made her a leader.

‘Good,’ she said, clapping him on the shoulder and turning to head back towards the lower exit, Sofi in tow.

‘That woman is insane,’ said Debian musingly as he took the toolbox to Tec.

‘Whistler?’ asked Tec absently, quickly snapping the box open and rooting through it. ‘Yeah, she is.’

‘She’s going out there.’

‘Well, she does what she wants, I’m afraid.’ Tec’s face was buried in the wall-mounted supply box. He was apparently wiring in the end of a thick cable that trailed off across the floor to the generator. ‘Tape?’ asked Tec, reaching a hand back without looking. Debian passed him a roll of plastic insulating tape from the toolbox and he took it and rapidly looped it round the splice several times. He stood back. ‘There,’ he said in a satisfied voice. ‘Start the gennie, man.’ He smiled encouragingly.

‘Okay, sure.’ Debian went to the gennie and studied it briefly in the dark. It was old and greasy-looking, slightly dented here and there, but essentially intact. He identified the pull-cord and pulled it. The gennie coughed but didn’t start. He pulled it again and this time it spluttered to life. There was a rising hum from the mezzanine and Debian realised that it was the sound of the ancient fridge cycling up.

‘Wooo!’ hooted Tec triumphantly. ‘Hit the lights!’

‘Where?’ Debian called back.

‘By the stairs!’

Debian found the switch and flicked it. He guessed that Mother took care of such mundane things usually. The shadows jumped back as the big room was flooded with light. Debian switched his vision back to visible spectrum. It was almost too bright after so long in the dark.

‘Good job, Tec,’ he said as Tec came over to check the gennie’s limited readouts.