Geoff North - How the World Ends

This was impossible, Louie thought as they ran down the steps and into the parking lot. They’re microscopic, they can’t move that fast. We’ve kept ahead of them. How did the swarm get this far out of the city?

He found the answers to his questions lying in a ditch less than a hundred yards up the road.

“Jesus Christ,” Roy panted. “Is that a deer?”

“It was,” Louie whispered back.

There was nothing left of the animal’s back end. It clawed away at the grass in front of it, trying to stand, unaware its back legs were gone. It slipped and collapsed in a puddle of its own blood and entrails. The blood was black, and it was moving.

“The fucking things can take over anything,” Louie said. “I thought it was just people… but they can take animals, too.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“LDV3! Ticks! Goddamned microscopic wood ticks! It’s what they were working on back in the disease center.”

A woman started screaming from the building behind them. Roy looked towards the entrance. “The nurse I punched.”

“She’s dead, or she will be soon.”

The fat dead corpse from the third floor lurched out onto the steps. Moments later the old lady Roy had murdered with his hammering fists followed. The upper part of her body was hanging forward, flopping from side to side, with only skin and a bit of spine left to support it.

“I killed her,” Roy whimpered. “I fucking smashed her chest in. She can’t be alive… she just can’t be.”

“She isn’t.” The comatose man stumbled out after them. His face was black from the throttling Roy had given him, but he was back on his feet nevertheless. “None of them are alive anymore. Only the things inside are keeping them going now.”

“Don’t you have some kind of spray to use? Didn’t your scientist buddies develop a repellent for the little fuckers?”

The question was so ridiculous it actually made sense. The DSC would have undoubtedly been working on a way to kill the spread of something so vile. If they were weaponizing the swarm, surely they would have developed a counteragent—or as Roy had put it, a spray —to neutralize them with. HR was right. I would’ve made a shitty disease research scientist.

The puddle of black fluid from the deer was headed for them. The dead residents of Green Forest Haven were headed for them. Louie ran out into an open field, and Roy followed. “We have to keep out of the forests,” he gasped. “These things can travel faster than us now. Open ground… we have to stay in the open so we can see them coming.”

Roy had caught up to him. “Monsters. You and all the assholes you worked with. No better than the fuckers that dropped the bombs.”

Louie wanted to point out that Roy had a monstrous streak of his own, but there wasn’t time to argue. They had to keep ahead of the swarm, and that was going to be a difficult thing to do.

Tracy hid in the small space under the desk and waited. She had dove under there when the remains of Mrs. Brown rolled down the stairs from the second floor. The woman had always been large, but the thing she had become was a tank—a bloated, purple mass of dripping flesh. Mr. Combes, the comatose resident in room 207, had also put on an extraordinary amount of weight. He hadn’t moved from his bed in three years. Tracy watched from around the desk leg as Maureen Whitaker descended the steps behind Mr. Combes. The ancient spinster was Green Forest’s oldest resident. She had been a kind old woman, and she had been in her room on the second floor for at least a decade.

None of them were alive anymore, but there they were, lurching and jerking and stumbling for the front doors. They left a trail of blood and black goo. Tracy turned in the tight space and saw their bloated ankles and feet. They left the building.

Tracy started to cry. She was alone. All alone now.

Through the tears she saw a line of black creeping over the back of her hand. It travelled to her thumb and entered under the nail. Tracy jumped back and hit her aching head on the underside of the desk. It felt as if someone was jabbing spikes under all of her finger nails. The agony spread into her hand and intensified up her arm.

Twelve seconds later the swarm found her heart and put Tracy out of her misery.

This wasn’t possible. Caitlan slammed the steering wheel, hoping that rage alone would start the car again. Maybe the vehicle would sense this anger—like all those travelling in the Audi with her—and listen to her demands. The car remained quiet, and so did the five passengers.

“Fucking piece of shit. Goddamned German piece of fucking shit.” She turned her head slowly and saw Angela staring at her. The woman’s face was ashen grey. The boy sitting on her lap looked even more shocked. Caitlan rested a hand on his knee. “I’m sorry for the swearing, sweetie. It’s nothing to do with you.”

Angela opened her door and the boy slid outside. “Well then maybe you could control that temper a bit better before you fly off the handle like that. For God’s sake, Caitlan, the car ran out of gas.”

Caitlan nodded. The doors in the back opened and Hayden, Amanda, and Michael stepped out. “I can’t help myself. I see red, and I let the expletives rip.” She rubbed her palms along the wheel, as if trying to soothe to the car after her outburst. “So many people are dead now. All the millions of cars no longer running… I never imagined finding gas would be so hard. There’s oceans of it sitting in the underground tanks of every gas station in North America, and we can’t get to a single drop of it.”

“That’s what happens when the power shuts off. No sense beating your car up over it… or anyone else.”

Hayden knocked softly on Caitlan’s window. She opened the door instead of lowering the window; the battery had to remain charged as long as possible. They were in the middle of nowhere, the night would grow cold, and the car was the only shelter they had. “Yeah, I know,” she told him, “I’m sorry I swore again in front of the kids.”

Hayden shook his head. “It’s not that. There’s a town maybe six miles west of here called Brayburne. With any luck we might be able to find a vehicle with fuel inside.”

The leather car seat squeaked as Caitlan pulled her big body out of the car. “I ain’t built for walking, handsome. Take Angela and see how you make out.”

Hayden shook his head again. “I’ll be honest… Nicholas hasn’t exactly warmed up to you yet. I’m not leaving him here with you as the only adult.”

Caitlan got that look in her eye—it seldom left—and her big shoulders hunched up. She started towards Hayden and he held his hand up. “Don’t try and break my nose again. I won’t let you.”

“You gonna hit a woman?”

“It wouldn’t be my first choice.”

Angela was out of the car now. “The two of you stop it!”

“I’m not going to get into it with him again,” Caitlan told her. “I was going to start walking to this town he’s talking about. Hopefully find a container and some gas.”

Nicholas ran to Hayden. Hayden steered him back to the car. “You’re going to stay with Angela, okay, buddy? We’ll be back before it gets dark.” He protested, but settled down once he was standing next to Angela. The woman had a way with kids, Hayden had seen it with the Fulger twins. They gravitated towards her. Fighting with Caitlan wouldn’t have been his first choice, and leaving his son with an almost complete stranger wouldn’t have been his second, but Hayden had very few choices left. He looked at Angela, and then looked at the passenger window towards the glove box.

She nodded. Caitlan had a gun stored in there the guards back at the Sandman had missed. “Nicholas will be fine.”