Daniel Suarez - Influx

Suddenly all the lights went out. Electric motors whined to a stop in the blackness around them. Silence. No emergency lights came on. It was so black, Davis realized, it made no difference whether her eyes were open or not.

Cotton groaned again in the darkness. “There’s the HEMP. Great job, guys…”

Davis asked, “What’s a HEMP?”

“High-altitude electromagnetic pulse. They would have fired it from the edge of the atmosphere. Out there, the X-ray and gamma ray radiation interact—creates a massive free-electron maser. Any microelectronics within fifty miles are for shit now.” He listened carefully. “Don’t hear any fighter jets now, do you?”

“FBCB2 is down, sir!”

McAllen’s voice: “Captain, get this rear door open!”

“There are hatches over our heads, sir…” They heard banging around. “Hang on…”

Cotton’s chains rattled as he held forth. “You have no idea what you’ve done. If you brought ten thousand people, you couldn’t protect me. Just put me back! Let’s go back to the trial! It’s not too late. Come on—back to prison…”

Just then moonlight entered the vehicle as the staff sergeant opened an overhead hatchway up front. The captain opened another one near the rear and stepped up to look out, shouting down to someone. “Lieutenant, do they have power over there?”

There were muffled calls as Davis frowned at Cotton, who was busy groaning fearfully.

The captain came back down. “Power’s out in the entire force. And there’s thick fog coming in.”

Cotton nodded. “They’re lowering the dew point to mask their advance. And you no longer have night vision. Are you happy now? We’re all going to die. And I nearly had this solved. But you had to go and ruin it, didn’t you, Davis?”

She scowled at this strangely alien Richard Cotton. “Ruin what?”

Suddenly horrific sounds—like the fabric of reality tearing—reached them through the armored walls of the Stryker. Automatic gunfire erupted outside, with intermittent shouts and explosions. Then booms from a .50-caliber machine gun.

And then the deafening roar of a whole marine company opening fire shook the Stryker.

The staff sergeant poked his head up through the hatchway, shouting down, “We’re under attack, Captain!”

“From what direction?”

“I can’t… this damn fog. I can’t even see the tracers.”

Cotton nodded. “You’re blind, and they see everything. We’re sitting ducks in here.” He shook his chains. “Unchain me, damnit.” He looked to McAllen. “If we survive this, I’ll talk, I swear it—just get me out of here!”

Davis grabbed his arms. “Calm the hell down, Cotton. No one’s going to reach you in here.”

Already outside the gunfire had gone silent.

“There. They might have driven them off.”

Cotton just shook his head sadly. “You have no idea what’s coming.”

Then a blinding light and searing heat cut through the cabin—slicing the marine captain in half lengthwise even as it cauterized him. The last two feet of the Stryker fell away, the edges glowing red, as tons of steel and composite armor collapsed onto pavement. Night air swept onto the stunned faces of Davis, Grady, Cotton, Falwell, and McAllen.

Outside, they could see thick roiling fog and soldiers lying motionless on the asphalt. It was suddenly eerily quiet. No aircraft overhead. Not even the sound of crickets.

Davis turned back to see half of the marine captain twitching on the bench. She coughed at the combination of ozone and burned flesh and looked away, drawing her Glock pistol. Falwell and McAllen did likewise. The staff sergeant grabbed an M4 from a weapon rack and aimed it out into the fog.

He shouted toward the driver. “Captain’s down, Ricky!”

“What the hell hit us?”

“I don’t know!”

Davis glanced back to Grady and Cotton, only to see them both staring in horror out into the fog. She turned back again. “Thomas, we have to get Grady and Cotton out of here.”

Falwell shook his head. “This is insane. I don’t understand…”

Moments later three negative forms materialized from the fog. They were the darkest black Davis had ever seen. Their outlines swallowed light, as though they were living silhouettes.

Cotton covered his head with hands and cowered in his orange body armor. “Oh God! Morrison, it wasn’t me…”

Davis, Falwell, and McAllen opened fire with pistols, while the staff sergeant fired short bursts with his M4. In the confines of the Stryker the gunshots were deafening—spent cartridges bounced all around them—but they fired repeatedly until their clips were empty.

As she reloaded, Davis focused downrange, through the gun smoke into the dark fog. The three negative forms stood unmoving.

Finally a voice like that of God spoke: “Deputy Secretary McAllen. I bring a message from the director of the BTC.”

McAllen scowled as he lowered his gun. “What is it, you bastard?”

A tearing sound ripped the air again, and before Davis’s eyes, a white-hot fire swept from inside the tip of McAllen’s outstretched hand and down within his arm as he screamed in agony. It was as though some chain reaction was turning his body into fire. He started to burn like the glow moving down a cigarette. He barely got a second shriek out before his face and torso were consumed by the wave of glowing embers—the heat bursting forth from him singed Davis on the other side of the cabin. By the time the blinding flash ended, his form had collapsed into ash, his undamaged pistol clattering to the steel deck.

“Oh my God!”

Davis had reloaded, and she and Falwell opened fire at the dark forms again, but to no avail. When their guns were empty, they stared at the figures still standing, unaffected.

And then Davis heard the ripping sound again. Falwell turned back toward her as he burned. “No!” She grabbed his outstretched hand and screamed in agony as her skin burned along with his.

The unnatural fire consumed them both.

Jon Grady stared, unbelieving, asAgents Davis and Falwell blew away into ash. He then turned toward the dark silhouettes at the mouth of the wrecked Stryker.

“Aaaahhh!” He charged at them. But one of the forms held up a hand, creating a force that swept over him, Cotton, and the staff sergeant, hurling them against the rear bulkhead. Dazed, Grady felt gravity shift, and they “fell” out to land roughly on the pavement—as if a giant had upended the Stryker and shaken them out like candy. Every loose object in the Stryker came along with them—including the remaining half of the captain, tools, and rucksacks. Grady and Cotton then floated up a couple of feet above the ground. Spent shell casings and trash levitated around them.

Several more dark forms floated down from above to join the first three, and they now stood staring at the floating men.

Grady turned to see that the staff sergeant was still breathing but unconscious. Apparently someone had noxed him—something Grady had seen many times before.

The fog was already dissipating as the summer breeze continued to blow over them, and now Grady could see just how many marines were lying unconscious in the parking lot.

Cotton was babbling toward the jet-black center figure. “Morrison, I wasn’t working with them! Scan me! Go ahead and scan me!”

The same wrath-of-God voice spoke from the ink-black human outline. “How much did you tell them, Cotton? You piece of shit.”

“I didn’t tell them anything!”

As Grady floated in the air, helpless to move, he concentrated on the dark forms. They were menacing in a way he’d never felt before. Like demons from hell.