Wretched Earth. James Axler
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he said.
She gazed up at him for a spell, then turned and walked off.
“What that about?” Jak asked, walking up to Ryan. He moved with his customary youthful-predator swagger. Ryan shrugged in response. He reckoned Jak didn’t feel much better than anybody else, but had enough resilience to hide it better.
The one-eyed man already knew none of his party was injured. It had been hard to make himself heard above the bus’s clatter, but he’d confirmed that nobody had caught any grief beyond scrapes and bruises.
And, most importantly, no bites.
The companions moved off to the side. The cultists and other refugees showed no interest in mingling with them, and they were just as glad not to have to answer any uncomfortable questions about the manner in which they’d hitched a ride. Not to mention the fates of the cultists who’d been atop the bus with them.
“A fire would be welcome,” Doc said, rubbing his hands together. “Restore warmth to chilled bones.”
In lieu of that they squatted in the lee of the bus. An east wind had risen during their uncomfortable ride. It came whistling beneath the wag’s swaybacked undercarriage, cutting through Ryan’s clothes and skin like a knife.
“What do you plan to burn for fuel, you old coot?” Mildred asked. “Your extra long johns from your pack?”
They had unloaded their backpacks from the luggage rack, just in case they needed to make their own way out of there in a hurry. Or in case some of the cultists unexpectedly drove off.
“What are those rad-blasted creatures?” Ryan said, ignoring the byplay. He stood with his back to the wag and his Steyr slung over his shoulder.
“Triple-pain in the hindquarters, is what,” J.B. said.
“They have me feeling the creepies all over,” Krysty said.
Ryan looked at her. “How come they don’t feel pain? How come a wound that would drop any normal man doesn’t slow them down? How can they even move? And why do they need to eat, anyway? Far as I can tell, they’re chills, or next thing to it. What do they need food for?”
“Why, my dear Ryan,” Doc said, “you seem to have taken an unusually empirical turn of mind.”
“Didn’t think you went in much for abstract curiosity,” Mildred said.
“Nothing abstract about it. ‘Know your enemy like you know yourself,’ Trader always said.”
“I don’t want to know these things,” Krysty said. “They’re not part of Gaia’s nature.”
“Worse than muties?” J.B. asked.
“Yes,” the redhead said emphatically. “There’s a wrongness about them I’ve never felt from the most horrible mutie. Ryan, they’re dead. They really are. Just like those hogs in Canada.”
Ryan nodded. “That’s why I want to know about them, Krysty. How do you fight what’s already dead?”
“Shoot head,” Jak said. “Works.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Why?”
“You really aren’t succumbing to curiosity for its own sake?” Doc asked.
“Fireblast, no. If I know why that chills them, I may be able to find something else that does it, too. At least waste less time and ammo doing stuff that doesn’t faze the bastards.”
“Chopping their heads off should work,” Krysty suggested.
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “I hacked one or two through the back of the neck, too. That seemed to drop them, and made them stay down.”
“Their central nervous system appears to retain some function,” Mildred said. She squatted with her arms crossed tightly beneath her breasts. Her big chocolate eyes stared intently at nothing in particular as she wrestled with the questions.
“Or perhaps something else makes use of their nervous system,” Doc said.
“You talking crazy, Doc? Don’t need you losing it, just now,” Ryan said.
But Mildred had raised her head and was looking hard at her customary antagonist. “What are you getting at, old man?”
“Clearly, or at least so far as we can tell, life has fled these poor unfortunates that Ryan dubbed ‘rotties.’ Yet they move. And we saw none of those horrid worms from the north.”
“You channeling Galileo?” Mildred asked. “Eppur si muove.”
Doc laughed, a soundless, head-bobbing motion.
“What are you two rambling on about?” Ryan demanded.
“Ancient history,” Mildred said. “You wouldn’t be interested.”
“Perhaps these unfortunates have been taken over by some kind of organism, not the worms of Canada, which we haven’t seen.”
“Well, we definitely know that’s a possibility,” Ryan said.
“When I was held captive by the vile whitecoats,” Doc said, “my captors often spoke of artificial organisms that they could program to do their bidding. Like living steel, but so small the finest optical microscope could not see them.”
“You talking about nanotechnology, Doc?” Mildred asked.
He blinked. A light snow had begun to fall, swirling on the side of the bus away from the wind. White crystals crusted the long lashes above his intense blue eyes.
“I believe that was the term they used, yes.”
“We’ve heard about that before,” Krysty said. “But how could this nanotechnology be involved here? These are people. Or rather, creatures that were people.”
“Perhaps the nanotechnological machines permeate the bodies of their victims,” Doc said slowly, clearly speaking thoughts as they formed in his mind. “Somehow they animate the limbs and impart some measure of direction to their actions.”
“That almost sounds like demonic possession you’re talking about, old man,” Mildred said.
Doc frowned at her, seeming to chew over the concept mentally rather than take offense.
“Aside from arising from an agency not strictly supernatural,” he said slowly, “how is this possession not aptly described as demonic?”
“So why does shooting their heads chill them?” J.B. asked.
“Obviously, the organisms, or whatever they are, require their victims’ bodies to sustain and reproduce themselves. Like disease germs. Perhaps they also make use of the human nervous system to control their stolen bodies.”
“Ugh.” Krysty shivered.
“Drive us,” Jak said. “Like bus.”
J.B. turned to him, his eyes squinted behind the round lenses of his glasses. “That’s cold-blooded even for you, Jak.”
The albino teen just shrugged.
“If the pathogens are nanoscale robots,” Mildred said, “that might explain why the, uh, the change is infectious.”
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Ryan said. “Or mebbe I should say, something else I don’t understand. From what that skinny kid told us back in the ’serai, it took his friend hours to ‘change’ after he got bitten. But Plunkett’s gaudy sluts were already rotties when he came screaming down the stairs, when I went in to get him. They couldn’t have been bitten more than a few minutes before.”
“That reinforces the idea the change works like a sickness,” Krysty said.
“How would that happen?” Ryan asked.
“Different people show different reactions to disease,”