Trent Jamieson - Roil

“Cadell?”

The Engineer turned towards him, frowning, having plucked a map from one of his many pockets. “The Dolorous Grey goes through Robert, Hillson and Grayville before veering east across the Lakelands. I don’t think there will be much left of those townships.” He wiped his face wearily, then took a deep breath, and reached a hand towards the north. “Yes,” he said. “I can feel a cold change coming on. Short lived, no doubt, but definitely something that will work in our favour.” He frowned. “You had a question?”

“Why did its creatures come up here in the first place?” David asked.

“Chance, as much as anything. Or perhaps not, perhaps they were looking for me. The Roil thrives on heat, and humans are warm and mobile. But not quite warm enough. Didn’t you notice that the passengers seemed almost feverish? Those were the Witmoths pushing their body temperatures up. In the days ahead it is best to not trust anyone with a fever.”

“So has the Roil killed these people?”

“No, no, just changed them. Though it’s not a particularly nice change. In fact it’s a rather nasty one. David, I dread what we will find in Chapman.”

David dreaded it, too.

THE INTERFACE WITHIN THE ROIL

Anderson had never expected to end up here. When he had been a boy there had not been a name for a place like this. When he had been a boy, the Roil had been but a rumour, and industry ascendant. He’d been destined for big business, running his father’s company in Mcmahon. How things change. The landscape of Shale, political and environmental, had drowned in the Roil’s madness, and so had he. Was he mad? Once he would have thought himself so, to even imagine such a place. Now he worked here.

Anderson’s footsteps echoed along the tunnel that made up the spine of the Interface, his movements a little stiff, the price of a uniform that was hopefully Roil-retardant. His guards stole around him like shadows. Only their weaponry made a noise, endothermic magazine pressurisation an odd counterpoint to his heavy steps.

Every day that Anderson walked to the Interface – which were most days now – he counted the number of steps required before he was under it. And every day that number decreased, sometimes by as many as seven, but never less than four. The title Interface was a misnomer. It had not been a true interface for nearly two months. The Roil had swept past it, with absolute disregard for such human boundaries, on the fourth day of spring, and it hadn’t stopped.

He walked under yet another emergency door, five-foot thick steel that would seal the tunnels should something breach the compound and, hopefully, gain him and his crew a little time to make their escape. He shook his head. Should something breach the compound.

Strictly speaking something had breached the compound an hour ago, and he and his guard walked straight towards it.

Part of him kept thinking, we’re going the wrong way. But he suppressed that tiny terrified voice and kept to the task at hand. This was his job and though he had spent every minute of it afraid, he had never turned away from his duty.

Nor would he now.

The tunnel ended at a pair of steel doors, their frames set solidly into the stone. Winslow waited there, his nervous face shining.

One of Anderson’s guards sprayed him with ice water from an atomiser at his belt. Winslow blinked, but that was all, no moans or smoky exhalations. Everybody relaxed, but only a little. What had happened with the Dolorous Grey was fresh in all their minds, things were not as they seemed.

“Are they here?” Anderson asked.

“Yes. They haven’t been waiting long.”

“Conference Room One?”

“Of course.”

“Good, we’ll let them wait a little longer.” Anderson turned to the guard nearest him. “At the first sign of trouble I want you to ice that room, regardless of my or Winslow’s discomfort. I’m tempted to get you to do it now, but I am in no mood for running today, or explaining why we gave up this installation so easily.”

The guard nodded, her eyes impassive through the thick glass of her faceplate. She left them, walking down a side chamber to the observation area.

Anderson fitted his own mask, Winslow following suit. The masks were claustrophobically tight, not at all conducive to such things as ease of breathing, and their effectiveness a subject of dispute, but Anderson believed himself marginally safer with it on and that was all he had.

He coughed once, took a deep breath through the stifling mask and opened the door. Go in strong. See if you can unsettle them for a change.

Four of them waited in the room, standing by the huge glass window that looked out on to the Roil. And he remembered immediately what he remembered every time he dealt with these creatures; that he could not unsettle them. They were too alien, too distant. Nonetheless he tried.

“That stunt you pulled with the Dolorous Grey. What was that all about? We have an agreement.”

One of the Roilings turned its pitch-dark eyes upon him and Anderson had to dig deep to control a shudder – how could any agreement be made with something that possessed those eyes? They had been human once, but now they could not be mistaken as such. The decrepitation of the flesh that the Witmoths engendered was well advanced. The Roil transformed all it had contact with, if it could touch it intimately enough, and these humans had been touched deeply.

There was a smell about them, sweet and foul all at once, like meat that had only been half-cooked and left out in the sun. Huge eyes, all pupils, gazed upon him and hands with fingers far too long flexed. Fragments of flesh had worn from their faces, revealing not bone but a substance like ash or coal mixed with dark honey, as though they had been torrefied from the inside out. No blood moved through their veins any more, just dust. Clothed in robes made of the moths that moved and shivered in waves from head to toe and back again, a restless nest of shadows, they were something out of a nightmare.

But nightmares were what Anderson was paid to deal with. How did that happen? Just how did that happen?

“Unfortunately, Mr Anderson, we are not all of a single mind,” The Roiling said, in a voice clipped and far too normal. “Though the Roil sits in agreement on most issues there are shifts, swift passings of anarchy. It was a passing of this nature that the Dolorous Grey experienced. It will not happen again, even these last twenty-four hours have seen a deepening of control. Which is why we are here, in part. To apologise, of course, but also to make a request and offer a deal.”

“And what might that be?”

“There is something we require of you.”

Anderson and Winslow exchanged glances.

“We’re listening,” he said. “What exactly do you mean?”

Tap.

Tap.

“You better answer that,” Alice Penn said, and ran on legs far too long and too fast up the hill, away from her. “You better answer that.”

Tap.

Tap

“I know,” Margaret whispered and shivered in the cold. She couldn’t keep up. “I know. But I’ve been chasing you all day.”

Her mother paused, eyes bright with a manic intensity. “You were a good daughter,” she shouted. “Just never fast enough. All you’ve done is run and you still can’t catch me.”

She sprinted away, up and over the rise. Out of sight.

Margaret tried to run, but could not move. Out of frustration, she reached for the rifle in her lap. A Quarg Hound pup lay there instead, its jaws closing on her fingers.