The animal clopped slowly forward without being led, stepping into the dim interior of the storeroom.
“Hey there, horsey,” said Terry.
“It’s…not…right,” said Ron slowly. He looked down at the animal’s hooves just as its rear disappeared out of the winter sunlight and into the gloom beyond. He was pretty damn certain hooves were supposed to be nearly black, hard, and shiny. Instead, what he glimpsed, before they were lost to the sun, were flexing gray-red pads that, for some reason, reminded him of gym-shoe treads.
Terry was looking at him. “You all right?”
“That horse,” he said again. “It’s not right.”
Terry shrugged. “It’s not well.” He pulled the shutter door closed behind Ron’s back and locked the padlock again. The room went dark except for a crack of light coming in between the shutters and a small shard of light coming from the open door leading into the tropicarium. Terry handed back the keys. “Here…”
“The horse feels wrong,” said Ron. “The hair. It feels like sponge.”
“It’s probably not been—what’s the term?—groomed for months. It’s—”
“Just feel it… Go on, stroke it.”
“OK.”
Ron could only see the faintest silhouette of the horse, standing perfectly still, and Terry’s outline, stepping toward it, reaching out a hand. He heard the soft rasp of a hand running down the animal’s side.
“Well?”
“That’s odd… Ew… What’s…”
“What?”
“Feels sticky. Is that a cut on its side…or something?” They heard something wet spluck down on the concrete floor beneath the animal’s distended belly. “Oh great. Did it just crap?”
Ron fumbled with the jangling keys. There was a little LED flashlight on the key chain somewhere.
“Oh boy, now that really…really stinks,” gasped Terry.
They heard something else splatter on the concrete. “Whoa! I think our friend’s spurting diarrhea, Ron.” He could hear Terry puffing air at the stench. “Jesus Christ!”
Ron found the small flashlight nub on his key fob and pressed it. The little LED bulb glowed, and he aimed it at the horse.
The animal’s eyes reflected the beam like those of a fox caught in the headlights of a car.
“Oh my God…what’s all that stuff beneath it?”
Ron looked where Terry was pointing. Beneath its four legs, the belly of the creature appeared to have ripped wide open and emptied its contents in a wet, glistening, pink-and-purple pile on the ground.
Ron thought he could make out organs, sausage loops of intestines, pulsating vein-covered sacks that might well have been the horse’s lungs, still flexing rhythmically. The animal snorted a bloody aerosol spray from each nostril; then its legs suddenly buckled and it collapsed onto the pile of offal beneath it.
Terry staggered backward. “Jesus!”
The horse’s thick neck began to deflate, the hide, fake fur, and skin wrinkling as the substance beneath spilled out of the horse’s wide-open mouth, pooling into a viscous puddle that spread out across the floor.
Ron stared at the carcass, watching as it deflated like the time-lapse film of some roadkill deer being eaten from the inside out by maggots.
“It’s the virus… We’ve let it in!”
Ron looked at Terry, his mouth opening and closing dumbly. “Terry? We’re all still immune, aren’t we?” he whispered.
Terry was staring at the collapsing body, mesmerized. “I don’t know! I hope so.” He looked up. “It made a horse, Ron. It made a complete bloody horse!”
“I know.”
“A completely convincing horse!”
“I know!”
“Jesus.” Terry stepped away from the slowly spreading pool and headed toward the door leading to the tropicarium.
“Where are you—?”
“Diesel,” replied Terry. “I’m going to get a can. We need to incinerate that. All of it.”
“Yes.” Ron nodded. “Go. Hurry!”
Terry rushed out. He could hear the sound of the others approaching: excited babbling from Grace and everyone keen to meet their new guest. Ron reached the door and pulled it closed behind him as they all appeared.
Grace led the way, announcing loudly that she was volunteering herself as chief horse-looker-after-er. The snaking line of the curious followed her lead and made their way along the winding pathway toward the back of the tropicarium, past the sauna shacks and empty spa pools, an excited babble of voices keen to see the animal close up.
“Hey, maybe all horses are immune?” She grinned at the thought of Horse World—nothing but the nature-covered ruins of mankind and an endless herd of carefree horses frolicking through it.
Leon spotted Ron, backed up against the closed door of the storeroom. “Is the horse in there?”
He shook his head and remained there, blocking the doorway.
Grace look alarmed. “You didn’t leave him stuck outside, did—”
“It’s not a horse.”
She looked confused by that. “Of course it’s a horse!”
Leon noted his ashen face. “Mr. Carnegie, what’s wrong?”
“We have to burn it.”
“Burn it?” Grace almost shrieked. Her head swiped from Ron to Leon and back to Ron again. Several others gasped in horror at the thought.
“Burn it? What? Why?”
Ron shook his head. “It’s not right, Grace… It’s not…well.”
“Of course it’s not well,” said Freya. “The poor thing’s starving!”
Dave pushed his way forward to the front. “Shit! It’s infected, isn’t it?”
Ron met his eyes, looked away, and then nodded.
“Shit! I said that! I bloody said it might be!”
“It can’t be!” said Grace. “It was running around just now!”
Leon put a hand on his sister to hush her. “Mr. Carnegie, we’ve all seen how quickly this thing affects animals. It didn’t look like—”
“Leon, the thing in there”—Ron tipped his head at the door he was leaning against—“it isn’t a horse.”
They heard feet pounding and liquid sloshing; then Terry appeared carrying a five-gallon plastic drum of diesel fuel.
“Oh God…no, no, no! Leon, they’re serious!” cried Grace.
“Mr. Carnegie, what do you mean it’s not a horse?”
Ron looked at Leon. “It’s the virus. It made a copy of one.”
“OK, that’s just insane!” said Freya. “That was a real horse I just saw outside!”
Terry set the drum down. “Freya…Ron and me just saw that thing disembowel itself.”
“What?”
“It stepped inside… Then it immediately started to…” He tried to find a term that worked. “Un-make itself, to break apart!”
“Oh, come on, that’s crazy—”
“No. We’ve seen the virus can make crabs out of itself,” cut in Spanners. “I’ve seen bigger things. Rabbit size…dog size.”
Freya turned around. “Right, but not an actual rabbit or dog, right? Not something you’d actually mistake for one?”
Just then, they heard a baleful cry from beyond the door, like the sound of some animal finally comprehending the purpose of a slaughterhouse…recognizing its impending fate. They all looked at each other. “That didn’t sound like a horse…”
“All right, that’s enough!” Ron bent down to pick up the drum of fuel. “We’re going to burn whatever’s in there now. I want you all to step back. Get far back!”
Grace broke free from Leon’s hold, raced forward, and grabbed at the plastic gallon drum. “No, don’t! Please, don’t kill it!”
“Let go, Grace.”
She hunched over the drum, grasping the handle tightly.
>
“Leon, get your sister, please,” said Terry.
Leon stepped forward. “Come on, Grace—”
“No! Leon! Don’t let them kill it!”
He peeled her fingers off the drum’s handle and dragged her back, kicking and screaming. “Grace, for God’s sake!”
“Dave?” Ron looked at his deputy manager. “Fire extinguishers. Get two of them. I don’t want to burn the whole bloody place down!”
Dave nodded and hurried off.
Freya hunkered down and tried soothing Grace. She was sobbing, her face buried in her crossed arms.
“You’re absolutely sure about this, Mr. Carnegie?” said Leon. “About what you just saw?”
Ron nodded. “It…it’s a copy, like a goddamn photocopy. Completely, a hundred percent convincing…until I touched it.”
They heard the clanking of fire extinguishers and Dave’s approaching footsteps.
“All right, then,” said Ron, drawing in a deep, fluttering breath. He picked up the drum. “Terry, will you take one of those extinguishers? The rest of you, back up some more. I’ve got no idea how big a fire this is going to make.”
“Anyone have a match?”
“Here.” Spanners handed him his lighter.
“Come on, back up…everyone!” Ron shooed them with his hands. They all stepped away from the door, picking their way back past the empty spa pools into the humid warmth of the tropicarium, but all of them still close enough to watch.
Ron turned to Terry and Dave. “I’m going to splash around what I’ve got in here, light it and we’ll give it about a minute, then we go in again and put it all out. Agreed?”
“I…uh…I’m not going in there,” said Dave. “Can’t we just spray it from outside?”
Ron glared at him. “Jesus Christ…just do what I said, will you?”
“Give it to me,” said Spanners. He took the extinguisher from him.
Ron shook his head at his deputy. Then took another deep breath. “Right.” He turned the handle and pushed the door inward. “Here goes.” He stepped into the dark storeroom, the other two following in behind him.
Leon watched them disappear through the open door into the storeroom’s darkness. He was still holding Grace firmly. And she was still sobbing. “It was so beautiful,” she whimpered.
“It’s got to be done, Grace.”
Dave had backed up and was standing beside them. “We shouldn’t have let it in in the first place,” he muttered angrily.
Leon could hear murmuring voices inside the storeroom, echoing out through the open door, but not clearly enough for him to hear what they were saying. He could hear the scraping of feet, the clank of the fire extinguishers, the first slosh and splatter of diesel fuel being poured out.
Then he heard, “That’s not all of it?”
“Where’s the rest?”
Then…
“Shit! Ron! Look out!”
Chapter 43
Leon heard Spanners’s voice. “They’re everywhere!”
Then Ron’s, screaming, high-pitched with terror. “HELP ME!”
He heard the loud clang of one of the extinguishers being dropped on the floor and something else that made his legs suddenly feel boneless and useless: a hissing sound. In the same way a single person clapping sounds like a clap while an audience applauding can sound like rain, the hissing sounded like white noise. Leon knew what it was—he recognized it from the service station: the sound of thousands of tiny, pincer-like legs scrabbling for traction against a hard, smooth surface.
He leaped forward, hurrying toward the open door, not sure what his plan was—to help Spanners and the others get out, or to pull the door shut?
“Leon!” screamed Grace. “No!” She grabbed at the back of his shirt. “Don’t go!”
And because of that, he didn’t make it to the door in time. They swarmed out of the dark interior of the storeroom, a heaving carpet of mother-of-pearl-colored shells. Bigger than the ones from the service station, palm-size bodies, but the same random configuration of legs and claws, and this time with long, antennae-like feelers, like a cat’s whiskers.
The larger scale didn’t slow them down. In fact, they moved faster, frighteningly fast, on legs that had been refined to move more efficiently. They made a beeline toward the nearest fresh meat: Leon and Grace. She clawed at his shirt.
“Run!”
He backed up, tripping over her. He managed to stagger around her and keep on his feet, but his weight had knocked her into the ground face-first.
The nearest of them leaped—actually launched itself—through the air at her prone body, landing at the top of her back.
Leon grabbed one of her flailing hands and dragged her behind him, kicking and screaming as the creature dug its barbed pincer legs into her sweatshirt and clung on. With her free hand, she tried reaching around and tugging and slapping at it, but it hunkered down in the valley between her shoulder blades, fine, jointed legs receding like a tortoise into the shell, tugging the clenched material with it, clinging on, as impossible to dislodge as a limpet.
Leon managed to get her to her feet just as the rest of the swarm caught up with them. More of them launched themselves from the ground at him. He batted one away with his hand, a hard, razor-sharp edge slicing open the pad of his thumb. He staggered backward to where he’d been standing with the rest of the group just moments ago, but they’d now broken and fled in different directions into the tropicarium. Dave, however, was still standing there, a tennis racket in his hand. He stepped forward and swung it at a crab that had landed on Leon’s upper arm. It spun off, jetting an arc of pale gunk behind it and leaving behind a broken-off pair of pincer legs that continued to flex and twitch as Leon pulled them from his hoodie.
The swarm of crabs caught up with the three of them, most streaming past them in pursuit of the others, but dozens were now starting to try to clamber up their legs. Leon stamped on one trying to gnaw its way into his left shoe. Its shell crackled and spurted gunk out on to the ground.
“It’s cutting into me!” screamed Grace. Leon looked down to see the creature that had latched onto her back had now climbed higher and had burrowed itself in her long, dark hair.
Beside him, Dave swung the racket at everything airborne, the fibers of the racket zinging as creatures spun off like well-returned serves. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” he was shouting.
We’re dead this time. That was all that was in Leon’s head. He was about to reach into Grace’s tangled hair to try to extract the creature lodged in there when one landed on his cheek. Razor-sharp points dug into his flesh immediately. Instinctively, he let go of Grace and with both hands clawed at the creature on his face. As he tugged at it, he could feel the thing tensing, barbed hooks burrowing deeper, his cheek being tugged painfully as he tried to remove the creature from his face.
He could feel a fine articulated arm fumbling blindly for something else to latch on to. It found his nose, his left nostril and something sharp curled up inside. He could feel dozens of other crabs taking advantage of his distraction, clambering up his legs, pinpricks like kitten claws, hopscotching up toward his torso.
Leon heard himself screaming. An out-of-body voice—someone else dying, not him. He felt pricking around his waist, circling around to his back. It felt like dozens of them, it felt like hundreds, a Lilliputian army jabbing at him with tiny spears and swords, death by a thousand paper cuts.
Then it all stopped.
Very suddenly, every one of them froze. For a moment, he felt like an overdecorated Christmas tree, standing there covered with rustling, crackling creatures, poised and motionless. Then they dropped off him. One after the other, they just loosened their hold, clattered to the floor, and scuttled away.
He looked around for Grace. She was on the ground beside him, tucked into the fetal position. He saw the creature that
had been tangled in her hair slowly making its way down her shoulder and hopping to the floor. One of its pale pincer arms was covered in her blood. It held that aloft, like a trophy, like a captured flag, and as it joined the others, they clustered around it, their whisker-like antennae reaching out and stroking the bloody pincer, caressing it. He had a sense they were all trying to get a sample of it.
“What’s happening?” whispered Dave.
Leon shook his head. “Grace? Grace? You OK?” He bent over to look at her.
She uncurled herself and looked at him. Wide-eyed with terror.
“You OK?”
She nodded. She reached around to the back of her neck and dabbed there. She showed Leon the blood on her fingers. “It…it was digging deep. I…thought…it was getting inside. I thought I was going to d-die!”
Leon turned to Dave, begrudgingly wanting to thank him for staying put and helping them, but he was staring intently at something.
“What the…?” said Dave.
They looked where he was looking. The swarm was heading back toward the storeroom, back to the place from which they’d all emerged moments ago. The other creatures that had rushed past them to pursue the others scuttled back too, giving Leon, Grace, and Dave a respectfully wide berth as they did. The one creature with the bloody pincer held aloft like a victory banner was right in the middle, surrounded on all sides. Protected like some timid, crowd-shy pop star amid a mob of hired bodyguards.
“They stopped,” said Dave. He looked at Leon, then at Grace. “They stopped.”
“Jeez,” Leon gasped. “I know, but…why?” He watched the swarm converging in the doorway, clambering over each other like a haul of shellfish caught in a trawler’s net.
He hunkered down beside Grace. “You OK?”
She was staring at the blood on her hands. Her blood. “I…I could feel it…trying to get in…me…” Her face crumpled, and Leon wrapped his arm around her. She sobbed into his shoulder.
He could hear the others elsewhere in the tropicarium, their voices echoing off the glass roof. “What about Ron? Terry? Did they get out?”
Freya’s voice among them. She was calling Leon’s name. He looked up at Dave. “Thanks for hitting that crab off me.”