Tim Lebbon - Contagion

He paused a few steps from the car and nodded at Hayden, trying to communicate a sense of calm. The man looked terrified, and Jack could not blame him. The things resembled humans in form, but the resemblance stopped there. Their eyes were dark and shiny. Faces were slick, skin smooth and featureless. They exuded no personality, and looking at them was distinctly unsettling. But Jack did his best not to look away.

“The man in the car is precious,” Jack said. “He can stop something terrible from happening. You might know about the bomb, you might not. But I want him alive and safe. And I don’t want to have to fight you for him.”

One of the creatures hissed, the other raised its heavily clawed arms, and Jack turned his head and shouted, channelling the talent he had already used so devastatingly. He put a lot into it—this was no time for a subtle demonstration—and he felt power thrumming through him, setting him on fire. He liked it. But he berated himself, because relishing it was what had turned Reaper bad.

The reinforced concrete wall, topped with a heavy metal railing, shattered out into space, and four cars were forced out after the shattered rubble, bodies crunched, windows shattering, wheels screeching across the concrete floor. They tumbled from view and then impacted the ground below several seconds later. Even before the two creatures had recovered from their shock, Jack had moved closer to them. He was almost in touching distance.

They looked at him with wide eyes.

“Move away from the car,” he said. He was shaking with the remnants of the tremendous power, and he had to breathe deeply to cast it down.

One of the creatures laughed.

“Jack!” Rhali’s voice, and it was coming closer.

The creatures scampered from the car and clattered away, but not too far. They slipped behind a big BMW and peered out at Jack, and he couldn’t shake the conviction that they were waiting for something.

“Jack!” Rhali burst from the stairway into the open air, panting, sweating, looking as if she was about to collapse. “Jack, there are things coming!”

“What things?”

“I don’t know, they’re like people but…” She saw the two creatures watching. They’d become braver now, and they emerged from behind the BMW and scratched threateningly at the vehicle’s paintwork. “Yeah. Like that.”

“Jack can waste them all!” Sparky shouted. He and Jenna drew close, and though danger was also approaching, Jack felt better that they were all together once more. Even Andrew was still there, close to the car. Lucy-Anne had helped the man open the distorted door, and he was standing slowly, utterly terrified. Jack thought perhaps he’d been driven mad.

“You can do this?” Jack asked.

“Wh…what?”

“Hayden. That’s your name, right?”

He nodded.

“So Hayden, you can stop the bomb if we get you to it?”

Hayden half-nodded, shrugging at the same time.

“Don’t do that!” Jack shouted. “Don’t give me any doubts! I might have to kill people, now. These things, they’re still people. Just as much as the poor sods you bastards have been cutting up are people.”

“I haven’t cut any—”

“So tell me you can stop the bomb!”

Hayden nodded. “Given time.”

“How much time?” Jack asked.

“I’ll need an hour with the bomb. And peace and quiet. And the right tools.”

“And how would you like your fucking steak cooked?” Sparky asked.

Jack laughed, high and loud, and felt his own sense of control wavering. He almost puked.

“Everyone in that one,” Sparky said, nodding at a Mazda estate car.

“Plan?” Jack asked.

“If there’s any battery left I can hot-wire it, and it’s down to them to get out of the way.” He slapped Jack’s shoulder, and the gesture proved he knew so much about his friend.

“Good plan,” Jack said. “And if everything goes wrong…”

“Then we’ve got you,” Sparky said. “Superman. Our secret weapon. Hulk, smash!”

“I’ll smash you in a minute. Get the bloody car started!”

Sparky saluted, grinned, and they all ran to the car. The door was open. The wheels weren’t completely deflated. And there wasn’t even a mummified corpse in the driver’s seat.

Bonus! Jack thought. Maybe things are turning our way .

Then he froze as, on the next level down, he heard the sharp, rapid scraping of chitinous limbs.

Andrew drifted away, and when Lucy-Anne started after him Jack held her arm.

“I don’t think they can hurt him,” he said. Andrew glanced back and seemed to nod, and then he passed between two parked cars and disappeared from view.

“Come on, come on!” Sparky said. He’d opened his pocket knife and forced the covering beneath the steering column, and now he was hunkered down, bent almost double in the driver’s seat as he spread a knot of wires, stripped some, then sat back. “Send a prayer to the god of car thieves,” he said, and he touched two wires.

The engine growled…and then wound down with a tired yawn.

“Battery’s flat!” Jenna said.

“You. In the car.” Sparky grabbed Jenna and shoved her towards the driver’s seat. Jack winced even before Jenna shoved back against her boyfriend—she wouldn’t be told anything.

“Don’t you treat me like a—”

“We push, you bump start the car!” Sparky said, exasperated. He looked across the split level, down at where those creatures were now sprinting for the ramp up to their level. “Maybe thirty seconds. Go! Second gear, clutch down, lift the clutch when I say, the car’ll jerk a bit, then when it bites ease on the gas. But don’t go without us.”

“Rhali and Hayden, in the back,” Jack said. “Keep the doors open for us.”

Jack, Sparky and Lucy-Anne went to the back of the car and started pushing. They strained and groaned, propping their feet against the wall behind them and pushing harder, and then Sparky shouted, “Take the bastard hand brake off!” Jenna did so, and with a squeal of frozen brakes the car eased forward.

“Now,” Sparky said, “push as hard and fast as you can.”

They pushed. The car rolled. Jack glanced up and saw Rhali’s concerned face watching them through the back window, and he tried to smile. Then through the car and out the front windscreen he saw the movement of things reaching the top parking level.

“They’re here,” he said.

“Then push harder! We need to get close to the ramp. That way if the engine doesn’t start we can coast that far at least.”

“And then?” Lucy-Anne said between them. But Sparky did not answer.

“They’ve stopped,” Jack said, but he held no hope that the things would not attack. They merely seemed to be formulating a strategy. The two that had been trying to get Hayden were conversing with three others in a language Jack could not imagine, gestures and loud clicking sounds replacing the spoken word. They spread out, three stalking forward while two others scampered back down to the level they had just emerged from. They had seen what Jack could do, and were spreading themselves out as much as possible.

Even if Jack and his friends did manage to start the car, they would have a gauntlet to run.

They’re just people! Jack thought, wishing he could communicate, reach out to them. But “just” held no meaning anymore.

“Now!” Sparky said.

Jenna eased up on the clutch. At first Jack felt a resistance, then the vehicle jerked forward and he almost stumbled to the ground. Sparky grabbed him, and Lucy-Anne was already darting for one open side door. The car jarred forward, the engine coughed and growled, Jack caught a faceful of foul air from the exhaust, and then Sparky shouted, “Gas!” Jenna pressed on the gas and the engine roared.