James Axler - Hive Invasion

The albino stepped through the door and took up his position on the left side, while Ryan went in and took up a position on the right side. J.B. came next, followed by Mildred and Krysty. Ricky was staying outside with a nearly unconscious Doc.

“Nobody move, and nobody has to die,” Ryan said, the muzzle of his blaster dead center on the standing man, who turned his head to look at the newcomers in shock. They stood amid several empty freestanding shelves lining the walls, indicating this had once been a storeroom.

It was the break one of the raggedly dressed people sitting against the wall had been waiting for. He launched himself at the man, barreling into him and sending him staggering across the room. The blaster flew from the man’s hand, skittering across the floor to stop in front of J.B., who stooped and picked it up without taking his eyes off the two struggling, cursing figures.

“Fireblast!” Ryan said, striding forward. The scavvie crouched on top of the other man, who was dressed in a relatively clean light blue jumpsuit, and pummeled him with wild, flying fists. The former hostage taker was doing his best to protect his head and face, but his assailant was so pissed that only one out of every three blows was landing.

“All right, enough of that!” Grabbing the one on top by the back of his ragtag jacket, Ryan hauled the short wiry guy, arms still flailing, off the downed man. When the guy tried turning to punch Ryan, he simply lifted him off the floor and held him in midair.

“What’re you— Let me go! You gotta kill him before they kill all of us!” the captive yelled in a high-pitched voice. He was dressed in a patchwork combination of what other people would have called rags, but on closer examination, Ryan saw they were stitched with care and fit the guy’s small frame well. His pants were a mix of canvas, blue denim and leather, and his shoes were worn construction boots that had been repurposed with what looked like rubber patches on the toe and heels. Ryan turned him around to see his face, revealing short-cropped, dirty blond hair framing a definitely female face now twisted into a combination of rage and fear.

“Look, just calm down, all right? He’s unarmed now, and it doesn’t look like you’re in any real danger.”

“You don’t understand!” she cried. “They’ll—”

Another loud groan interrupted her, and everyone glanced over to see another person lying on the floor, a jacket fashioned into a crude pillow under her head. The woman was dressed in the same kind of jumpsuit as the man, except her abdomen was grossly distended, making the fabric bulge out.

“Just relax, Sammee,” the man on the floor said through swelling lips. “Please, help her if you can. That’s all I ask.... I’ll do whatever you want, just help her.”

“You best do what Tully said, kill both of them quick before they come for all of us,” the second person sitting against the wall, a lanky black-haired man, said.

“I’m not taking orders from any of you right now,” Ryan said. “J.B., Jak, watch these three. Mildred, check her out.”

“It’s all right, I’m a healer,” Mildred said as she crossed the room and knelt by the sweating, ashen-faced woman holding her bloated stomach with both hands. “Do you know how long you’ve been pregnant?”

The woman shook her head, but broke in as Mildred began asking another question. “Not...pregnant. It’s...dying.”

Mildred’s brow furrowed. “It? What’s it?”

Sammee opened her mouth as if to answer, but instead let out a high-pitched scream at the top of her lungs. Mildred placed a hand on her stomach, then drew back. “It’s distended and hard...and, oh, my God.”

As Ryan and everyone else watched, something stretched out the woman’s skin from the inside, creating a small bump as if poking at her, then retreated.

“Do you have a parasite living inside you?” Mildred asked as she pulled out her small medical kit. “Do you know how long it’s been there? Or how you contracted it?”

Sammee shook her head. “Dunno—just know it’s killin’ me—” Her words turned into another scream of pure pain.

“I’m going to try to cut it out of her!” Mildred selected a scalpel and positioned it at the top of her stomach. But the moment the blade touched the woman’s skin, she jackknifed forward, tendons in her neck popping as she strained against something inside her, mouth open in a silent scream, then fell back onto the floor, motionless, her wide eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

Mildred checked her pulse at both the wrist and carotid artery. “She’s dead. I’m sorry.”

“No! No! No! No!” The other man crawled over to his dead woman and cradled her in his arms. “We were leaving, gonna make a new life...” He looked at the ceiling and screamed, “We were going! We would have left you alone! Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?” Mildred was already preparing a small tranquilizer shot, one of the precious few she had, and stabbed it into the man’s arm as his screams faded into loud sobs. The man didn’t notice, just cried until the drug took effect, and he slumped over into unconsciousness. When he was out, Mildred closed Sammee’s eyes, removed the jacket from under her head and covered her with it.

For a moment, no one moved. Then Ryan spoke. “What the hell’s going on here?”

“Let me down and I’ll tell ya.” With both of the jumpsuited people out of commission, the blonde fist fighter had calmed down a bit.

“All right—just remember who has all the blasters.” When she nodded, Ryan carefully lowered her to the floor.

Tully straightened her clothes and walked back to her partner before saying anything. “You know I’m Tully, and this here’s Latham.” She nodded at her bearded companion. “We’re part of a group heading west. We come from south of the Lachan Mountains, but over the past few years the barons over there have been gettin’ more and more greedy, putting folks off their land, and killin’ them that don’t go peaceful. When we had enough, we headed west. Heard of plenty of good land out there, with few people to bother us. We’re just lookin’ to settle down somewhere and farm and live without any trouble.”

Ryan nodded. He’d heard this story many times before. Tales of some sort of fabled Eden were a dime a dozen—and worth just about as much, too. “Go on.”

“I will, but first...” Tully rummaged in her pack and pulled out a metal canteen. Opening it, she took a drink, then offered it to Ryan. “You all look pretty dry.”

Ryan slowly reached for it, trying not to betray his eagerness. “Thanks.” He forced himself to take one mouthful—even though every last inch of him cried out to drain the entire container—then handed it to Krysty. “One swallow each. Jak, have Ricky bring Doc in here.”

While he instructed the others, Tully talked quietly with her companion, who grudgingly surrendered his canteen to Ryan and the others. Each of them took a second, precious gulp of the flat, metallic-tasting water, savoring it as if it were the finest predark liquor.

“We’d encountered another dust storm like the one outside a few days ago, and hunkered down in a ville a few miles east of here. That’s when we were attacked—” Tully nodded at the sleeping man and his dead companion “—by these folks.”

Jak frowned. “Not seem like much threat. Chill and keep movin’.”

The man called Latham snorted. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw them in action. These two—” he waved at their prisoner and the corpse “—don’t even come close. Can’t put them down, not easily.... They take a shitload of damage and just keep comin’.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair. “They’re...different. They all move and fight together, like...ants or somethin’. I don’t know how to explain it. I just know I never seen humans actin’ that way before.”