“Mohammed?”
He turned to look at her.
“Did you ever fight over there…in that war in Syria?”
“I told you before. I only healed—”
They heard Grace scream: one short, sharp, shrill bleat of alarm.
Leon’s mom dropped her basket and sprinted down the aisle toward the pale daylight glow of the entrance, Mohammed just behind her.
“Grace? GRACE!”
She wove her way through the leather coffee-shop chairs toward where another flashlight beam was flickering to and fro across the low ceiling and the shelves of magazines at the back of the store.
She heard Grace yelp again before she and Mohammed rounded the end of an aisle of candy and cookies. Grace and Leon were backed up into a corner against the end of the magazine racks. Leon had one arm protectively across Grace’s collarbone and shoulders. With the other, he was sweeping the flashlight’s beam backward and forward across the floor.
“Leon! What happened?”
“Shit…Mom…we saw something moving!”
“What?”
“I dunno…I dunno. Something.”
“Well…what? Big? Small? What?”
“Small,” said Grace.
“Where?”
She pointed with a shaking finger. “There…right there! Among those b-bags of candy!”
Leon’s mom turned to Mohammed, grabbed the flashlight from him, and swung the light onto the rows of bags dangling from the display hooks. The plastic packs glinted under the glare as they swung gently. Shadows danced wildly around them.
“What did you see?” asked Mohammed.
“I’m not sure… It was small…white…”
“A mouse?” He looked at Leon’s mom. “We know fish are immune…maybe mice—”
“No!” Grace shook her head. “It was more like a…a c-crab…or a spider. I just saw it for a second. I w-was…I was—”
“She was reaching for a bag of those,” cut in Leon, waving his flashlight again at the candy. “She was digging through them and—”
“It was h-hiding! I moved and it came out from behind and scratched—”
“It touched you?”
She nodded, her lips trembling as she did so.
Leon’s mom started to step toward them, but Mohammed reached for her arm to prevent her.
“Let go!” she snapped. “We’re immune, aren’t we?”
“That is not proven yet!”
“Let me go!”
“No, to be safe…you must not touch—”
“Get away!” She shook him off and hurried forward. “Grace, where? Which hand?”
“Mom,” she whimpered, “look… It was just a touch…not even a scratch… Just—”
“Show me! Your good hand?”
Grace held out the other arm, the one that had been broken. The bandages and cast had come off weeks ago; the inflammation had gone down. The antibiotics had done their work.
Her mom grabbed Grace’s hand and shone the flashlight at her palm. Then she turned her hand over and saw it—the faint red stripe of a scratch. She had the flash of a memory from when she was a parent helper in Grace’s elementary school: two little girls accusing each other of biting and scratching. She’d easily managed to identify the victim and the culprit from the fading red welt on one of their wrists.
Mohammed took one small step closer. “If it’s a mouse or a rat—”
“It wasn’t a m-mouse,” Grace whimpered.
“Whatever—another animal, it could be a carrier of the virus. Mrs. Button, for your safety, you should not touch her.” He looked at Leon. “Or your son.”
She turned to look at him, her face struggling to find an expression somewhere between outrage and disbelief. “You think I give a shit?”
She stared back at the red mark. It wasn’t fading like a naughty child’s scratch. The small, straight mark remained clear, raised, pink…and now glistening.
“Grace?”
“It r-really d-doesn’t hurt, Mom. I’m OK… I’m OK…” She wasn’t OK—she was terrified.
“Mom,” said Leon, “we should get out of here. Get outside.”
“Yes.” She nodded quickly. “Yes, let’s get out—”
A bag of M&M’s suddenly dropped off the display hook and fell to the floor. Leon swung his flashlight down. Caught in the glare of the light, they all saw it this time, scuttling off the top of the bag and on to the floor. Small, a little bigger than a quarter, as pale and fragile looking as some peculiar figurine made from shellac. It scuttled on delicate legs, six or seven of them, as thin as wire—one way, then the other—seeking to evade the pool of light in which it was caught, but uncertain as to which way to go. It paused, reared up on its legs, and raised one leg that seemed slightly thicker than the others: a small, barbed spear with serrations down one side.
The thing reminded Leon of one of the many weird bottom-of-the-ocean creatures that had yet to be named and categorized: pale from never having experienced sunlight, almost transparent in places, and defying the norms of nature with its asymmetrical body, its odd number of legs, and its one serrated leg.
It made a noise…a soft clicking.
Instinctively, Leon’s mom stepped forward and stamped on it. Its fragile form crunched like a potato chip beneath the sole of her shoe. The sound reminded Leon of a time he’d unintentionally stepped on a snail after a heavy rain. Why? he’d wondered. Why do you small idiots all decide to race across the sidewalk whenever it rains?
She lifted her foot, and they stared down at the pale smear of slime and shards of shell on the floor. They had a moment to inspect it, a moment of silence, then…it began.
Chapter 31
It sounded like the hiss of rainfall on forest leaves, a tap-tap-tapping that merged into a soft and soothing white noise. It was inside the store. It was all around them.
Leon shined his flashlight around. “What’s that?”
His beam of light picked out movement among the racks of candy, other bags fidgeting and swinging from the hooks. Leon’s mom’s beam joined his. “Oh my God, there’s another one!”
“And another,” said Mohammed. His flashlight was aimed opposite, running along the magazine shelf.
Leon could see them emerging into the stark light—small, pale forms—some of them larger than the crushed one, fist size, some even smaller; every one slightly different. The number of legs varied; their thickness and articulation methods varied; the size and shape of their bodies and the way they moved varied. Dozens of them—no. More. Hundreds of them appearing from the darkness beneath the baseboard of the store’s shelving units.
“They’re everywhere!” screamed Grace.
Hundreds? No, maybe even thousands of them, each one like a different failed experiment on how a particular ocean-bottom crustacean should look, like God creating life forms on a bad day when nothing seems to go quite right. These were his screwed-up balls of paper spilling out of the wastebasket. Leon was certain that, somehow, they had something to do with the virus. Products of it? The next stage beyond those clouds of floating spores?
The creatures began to swarm out from the racks, dislodging bags of candy that dropped to the floor like ripened fruit. They swarmed across the floor toward them. Not quickly though, walking pace at best, each creature seemingly struggling to understand how its limbs should work. Their clunky, clumsy movements reminded Leon of the YouTube videos he’d watched of various microrobots’ faltering first steps.
“Get out!” screamed Leon’s mom. “Everyone out!” She yanked on Grace’s hand and pulled her daughter after her, running down the aisle toward the front of the store. Leon followed after them, and Mohammed took the rear, shining his flashlight backward and keeping an eye on the creatures’ sluggish pursuit.
Leon’s mom ran to the service
station’s entrance, intending to head for the glass front of the building and the smashed-in panel through which they’d entered, but she could see that the floor, glistening with granules of glass, was moving.
More of them.
“It’s blocked!” she yelled.
Leon caught up with them and saw that the floor was alive with creatures. They could try for it—run over them, crushing a path through them toward the battered front of the Mondeo—but what did that mean? Contact with them, with their gooey insides? If these were virus linked, creations of the plague, they had to be infectious. Just a touch, a droplet on their skin…?
He tried to close his mind to the next thought. If so, that meant Grace was already infected. He’d had his arm wrapped around her… He was already infected. His mom was infected too.
Are we already dying?
“The other way!” barked Leon’s mom. She headed right, pulling Grace with her again, away from the front of the service station, toward the even darker rear. Leon followed her.
Ahead of them was a small cave of arcade and slot machines that promised big wins. Farther back were the bathrooms: male, female, baby changing. No rear exit from the building though.
Their mom pulled Grace toward the bathrooms. “Leon! Come on!”
“No!” called out Mohammed. “We will get trapped in there!”
She didn’t listen. She pushed the door to the ladies bathroom open and shoved Grace inside. She reached out her hands toward Leon. “Come on!”
“Mo’s right! We’ll get—”
She wasn’t listening. She wrapped her fingers around his forearm and pulled him toward the open door. “Get in…get in! Get in!”
The creatures from the store merged with the others from the entrance. Thousands…tens of thousands of them. The floor of the building seemed to be a living carpet of pale, glistening shellac forms.
Mohammed was looking for alternative escape routes, shining his flashlight left and right. But their only option now seemed to be the bathroom—that or dashing across the seething carpet of creatures toward the front of the building.
Leon followed Grace inside, followed by their mom, then Mohammed. Mohammed tried to pull the door quickly shut behind him, but the pneumatic anti-slam support at the top allowed the door to close at its own unhurried speed.
“Come on! Come on!” he snarled as he yanked repeatedly on the handle, jerking the door, fighting with it to close. Leon caught one more glimpse of the creatures beyond through the narrowing gap: a churning mass scuttling toward them, a carpet growing deeper as the better designed and faster-moving versions clambered over the slower-moving backs of others to reach them.
With a hiss of resignation, the door gave in to Mohammed’s muscle and it thunked shut.
“Is it closed? Is it completely closed?”
Leon nodded.
“Any gaps? Are there any gaps?”
Leon shone his flashlight down at the bottom of the door. Mercifully, there was a thick rubber lip filling the space between the bottom of the door and the floor.
“They’re going to squeeze under that,” said Leon.
They had a moment, a few moments of silence, the tiled bathroom echoing with their rasping breaths, before they heard the soft scratching at the door. Like fingernails drawn lightly across plywood.
Their mom turned to Grace. “How are you, honey?”
She nodded. “I’m OK…OK.” She looked pale. Her forehead was damp with sweat.
Leon looked at Mohammed. “We’re not immune, are we?”
“I do not know. Perhaps.”
Over his shoulders, Leon spotted a small window above the sink. Frosted glass with a wire mesh. Three feet wide and maybe one foot tall. It was there to allow a splash of natural light in the bathroom, never intended to be opened or closed. It was firmly sealed.
“We can break that glass,” said Leon. “We can get out that way!”
They all followed his gaze.
“It is too small,” said Mohammed. Certainly too small for him.
“Maybe it’s not,” said Leon’s mom. She looked around for something they could use to smash through it and spotted a mop and plastic bucket. She hurried over, grabbed the mop and jabbed the wooden handle at the glass. It banged and slid into the corner of the window frame.
She tried again and left a scuff on the glass.
“I’ll do it!” said Leon. He grabbed the mop from her, climbed onto one of the sinks, braced himself, and then speared the window. A hairline crack arced across it.
“That’s it!” cried Leon’s mom. “Again!”
Leon braced his feet once more and jabbed at the window. The crack began to widen and spread.
“Hurry! Hurry!” cried Mohammed. Leon turned to see him aiming his flashlight along the bottom of the door before slamming his foot down on something. “They are getting under the door!”
Leon smacked at the window again. This time several shards of glass clattered down into the sink. The wire mesh remained though. He slammed at the same spot again and again, more shards tumbling down as the mesh began to surrender and buckle outward.
“Hurry, Leon! Hurry!” Grace whimpered from below. “They’re getting in!”
He didn’t turn to look. He could hear Mohammed’s shoes slapping against the floor. Leon’s mom’s too as she screamed angrily with each stamp. He aimed the broom handle and thrust hard. This time, the very first wire snapped under the impact.
“It’s going!” he shouted over his shoulder. He went at it again and again, bludgeoning a small hole through the mesh.
“Leon!” pleaded Grace. “Come on!”
He could hear both his mom and Mohammed, stamping and stamping, calling out to each other. “There! Get that one!”
“There’s another!”
“Get it! Get it!”
He pushed the broom halfway through the hole and now started levering it frantically backward and forward, bending the loose-end wires back on themselves.
Grace screamed. He turned and looked down to see her stamping the floor around her.
Shit-shit-shit.
He levered the broom savagely against the widening hole and it broke in half. “BASTARD!” He tossed it aside and grabbed the sharp prongs of metal with his hands, bending them back one at a time.
Leon’s mom could feel the creatures clinging to the sides of her tennis shoes, digging their little spear-like claws into the nylon webbing and hanging on. Learning, learning fast, holding tight and waiting for a fleeting break in the jarring motion of her legs, then pulling themselves just a tiny bit farther up, anchoring themselves again more firmly.
She felt something needle-sharp pricking at her ankle. She looked down and saw three of them clinging to the cuff of her jeans. She swiped at them with her hand, knocking two of them to the floor. The remaining one burrowed down into the narrow space between the arch of her foot and the lip of her shoe. She stamped down hard and felt it frantically wriggling beneath the sole of her foot.
“Leon!” she screamed. “Hurry up!”
“There’s a hole, Mom!” he gasped. “There’s a hole!”
She kicked her shoe off. The creature clung to her sock, dangling persistently from the heel. She slammed the ball of her foot into the tiled wall and crushed it.
The floor beneath the door was now heaving with the creatures, one after the other squeezing under the rubber rim, clambering over the crushed bodies in front of them.
“Mo! We can’t stop them!”
She glanced at him and saw several were pulling themselves slowly up the backs of his thighs. She swiped at them with her hands, dislodging a couple. A third clung to her thumb and started digging into her flesh with a jagged blade as fine as a surgeon’s scalpel. She flicked her hand, and it flew off into a toilet stall.
“Mom! I made a gap!”
She glanced up and saw that Leon had managed to create a narrow gap in the mesh, framed by jagged little wires that were going to cut viciously at anyone struggling to wriggle through. But he was right—it was just about big enough for Grace. Maybe even Leon too.
“Get out!” she screamed. “Get out of here now!”
“I need to make it bigger so—”
“Get out!”
“Mom! It’s not big enough for you and—!”
“Do it!”
Leon reached his hands down for Grace. She was busy fighting her own battle, stamping bugs one after the other as they scurried across the floor toward her feet.
“Grace! Give me your hand!”
She couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop. He bent down and snatched at her arm and pulled her up onto the sink. She sat there, her legs dangling.
“Come on!” He dug his hands under her armpits and hefted her up to her feet. The sink shifted and creaked alarmingly beneath their combined weight. “Climb through!”
She stared round eyed at the jagged wires around the hole. Then nodded mutely. The alternative, staying here, was unthinkably worse. She thrust her arms through the gap, then twisted her head sideways and into the hole, feeling one of the sharp wires digging at her left ear. She wriggled through the gap until she felt the wires stabbing and scratching at her belly and found herself staring down the brick wall of the back of the building at a six-foot drop down onto weed-covered asphalt.
She was going to drop headfirst, with only the strength in her weak arms to break the impact. She felt Leon pushing her butt with one hand and grabbing her right foot with the other.
“No! Leon! No, I’m going to fall… I’m going to—” He gave her a firm shove and she tumbled out.
Leon looked back at his mom. She was stamping frantically and swinging her arms. Mohammed’s lower legs appeared to be covered in the creatures, like mother-of-pearl buttons. Only these buttons were spotted with red; his blood spilling from a hundred delicate surgeon’s incisions.
“Mom! You next!”
“Get out!” she screamed as she flicked her hands at her hair. Leon could see some of them were dangling from loose tresses of her hair like oversize money spiders. He looked down at the floor of the bathroom. A number of the creatures were converging around the bottom of the basin. He couldn’t see beyond the porcelain rim, to see whether they were figuring out how to get up it. But they were going to do it; they were going to figure it out—he was certain.