Warren Fahy: Fragment

“Hey, look, everybody!” shouted Jesse. “The crack of Dawn!”

Peach switched cameras at Cynthea’s pointing pencil. “This is great stuff, boss!”

“We just saved SeaLife , Peach,” she told him.

8:55 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time

On his wafer-thin wall-mounted 55-inch Hitachi screen in his midtown Manhattan office, Jack Nevins watched Glyn give Dawn a two-handed tush-push over a boulder.

“This is great, Fred,” Jack said into his cell phone.

Fred Huxley watched his own drop-down TV in the adjacent office, his own cell phone to his ear as he lit up a Cohiba: “This is GOLD, Jack!”

“I think that magnificent bitch just saved our asses, pal.”

“I could kiss her!”

“I could fuck her.”

“The old gal’s got a hell of a survival instinct.”

“Next week’s numbers are gonna rocket, Baby Fred!”

“Next week’s numbers are going to KILL, Brother Jack.”

The search party fanned out on a ledge where the crevasse widened. Lush vegetation clung to the walls: a strange purple mat of growth squished underfoot.

The vegetation along the walls arched and wove together to form a cornucopia-like tunnel that stretched up into the twilit distance, speared with beams from the setting sun.

“Nell, you hit the mother lode!” Glyn muttered.

Some of the tall, glistening plants resembled cacti; others, coral. The canopy trembled with fluttering, brightly colored foliage above them. The air smelled sweet and pungent-like flowers and mildew, with a sulfurous hint of cesspool.

Glyn squinted skeptically at the canopy. Sweat trickled into his eyes and the salt burned as he rubbed them. He was still breathing hard from the climb. What should have been leaves, the biologist thought, looked more like ears of multicolored fungus sprouting from the branches overhead. “Wait a minute,” he cautioned, winking his left eye repeatedly to clear it.

“Yeah, hold on,” Zero said.

The “plants” and “trees” grew in radial shapes like century plants, yuccas, and palms, but with multiple branches. They swayed as if there were a breeze. But the thick air was utterly still.

A buzzing, chittering sound rose like a chorus of baritones humming through police whistles. The green tunnel turned slightly purple. It rippled as if a strong wind was passing over it.

“Hey!” Jesse yelled, making everyone jump. “This plant’s MOVING, man!”

Jesse’s shout echoed through the stony heights, and the insect noise stopped abruptly. Except for the distant hiss of the surf below, the canyon was silent.

Zero’s camera barely caught a blurry shape streaking through the branches overhead.

The insect noise resumed, louder now.

Dawn screamed. Dartlike thorns, attached to a tree by thin cables, had impaled her bare midriff. As the party watched, the tree fired two more thorns like blow darts into her neck.

The translucent cables turned red, drawing in Dawn’s blood. With a desperate lunge she broke the cables and shrieked, bleeding from the siphoning tubes as she ran frantically toward the others.

Glyn noticed the branches above reaching down-then something caught the corner of his eye: a wave of dark shapes rushing toward them down the tunnel.

He felt a sharp bite on his calf and yelped. “Crikey!” Glyn looked down at his bone-white legs, exposed for the first time on this trip by the damned L.L. Bean chino shorts he agreed to wear for the landing. He almost couldn’t spot the offender against his pale skin. Then he located it by a second sharp pain: a white disk-shaped spider clung to his left calf.

He raised his hand to swat it and hundreds of miniatures rolled off the spider’s back. A red gash melted open on his calf as, in the space of two seconds, the yellow edge of his tibia was exposed and more white disks fired into the gaping gash.

Before Glyn could scream, a whistling shriek flew straight at him.

He looked up as an animal the size of a water buffalo hurtled through the opening of the tunnel.

Zero turned the camera as Glyn yelled, and caught the beast closing its hippo-sized vertical jaws over the biologist’s head and chest. With a sharp crunch, the attacker sank translucent teeth into Glyn’s ribs and bit off the top of the Englishman’s body at the solar plexus. Bright arterial blood from Glyn’s beating heart shot thirty feet between the beast’s teeth, dousing Zero’s shirt and camera lens.

Zero lowered the camera and saw a cyclone of animals shrieking and clicking as they swirled around the rest of Glyn’s body.

The others screamed as they were bombarded by flying bugs and more shadows pouring out of the tunnel.

Zero threw the camera toward the onslaught, and a few animals streaking toward him pivoted and chased it instead.

As fast as he could, he slipped from the ledge and zigzagged down the rocks in the crevasse.

Cynthea, Peach, and the world watched in astonishment as all three camera shots panned wildly.

“Crikey!” someone shouted-and there was an awful cracking sound.

A chaos of shrieks overloaded the microphones, and the cameras jerked and spun.

One camera tumbled onto its side. Red and blue liquid spattered its lens.

Another camera fell, and blood-drenched clothing blocked its view.

The audience across the nation heard screams from their suddenly blackened TV screens.

Cynthea cut to the remaining camera just in time to see something fly toward the lens. Then the camera fell and was instantly blackened by swarming silhouettes.

“We just lost the uplink, boss,” Peach reported.

One hundred and ten million people across the world had tuned in before the live feed had died.

Cynthea stared at the screens. “Oh. My. God! ”

8:59 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time

“We’re fucked,” Jack Nevins said.

“It’s been nice, buddy,” Fred Huxley said, stamping out his Cohiba.

Nell leaped over the rocks toward the crevasse as Zero came running out. His gray T-shirt was drenched with bright red and blue liquid. He didn’t have his camera or his transmission backpack.

Nell called to him but he sprinted past her, lunging down the boulders with a ten-mile stare, heading straight for the water. She followed him instinctively, but halfway down the rocks she swung around and looked back into the mouth of the twilit crack.

What looked like a dog emerged from the shadow of the fissure.

The creature seemed to be sniffing along Zero’s trail. When it leaped onto a rock in the sun she saw that its fur was bright red. It was not a dog. It was at least twice the size of a Bengal tiger.

Its head swung toward her.

Nell backed away, turned, stumbled over the rocks around the derelict sailboat.

She spotted the small Zodiac on the beach and raced for it over the rocks.

She saw Zero dive into the sea and start swimming for the Trident.

Finally, she hit the hard, wet sand and ran. Without looking back, she reached the Zodiac. She shoved it into the water and flopped in backwards, planting her feet on the transom.

She yanked the pull-start and shot a look up the beach.

Three of the creatures lunged from the rocks to the sand.

Apart from their striped fur, they were nothing like mammals- more like six-legged tigers crossed with jumping spiders. With each kick off their back legs, they leaped fifteen yards over the sand.

Nell yanked the pull-start again, and the motor turned over and coughed to life.

The Zodiac pushed over a breaker, and the three animals recoiled before a crashing wave. Driving spiked arms deep into the wet sand, they pushed themselves backwards in thrusts ten yards long to avoid the hissing water.