The Raven seemed to reach the edge of the dead area far too soon. Bernie could see the dead treetops from a couple of kilometers away and that brought it home just how close it was to the town. She looked at Baird for a reaction, but he had his goggles pulled down over his eyes.
“I hate a threat I can’t shoot,” she said.
Cole murmured. “Amen, baby. I miss those ugly grub motherfuckers.”
Gettner set down on the edge of the woodland and Barber showed Anya the compass bearing to walk into the contaminated area. Bernie picked her way through straggly thornbushes—springy and alive when she tested them with her boot—and into the cover of the trees.
The silence really was striking, like nothing she’d ever experienced before. Mac sniffed the air but stopped short of rooting around in the leaves like he usually did. He looked up at her with an accusing gaze that asked why the hell she’d brought him here.
Clumps of wildflowers with straplike leaves and long stalks of mauve flowers nodded in the dappled sunlight. Then, as if someone had sprayed weed killer around, the woodland floor became a carpet of brown vegetation with a clear boundary between the live growth and the dead stuff. Bernie looked up at the branches. The trees looked dead too.
“Tell me this isn’t anything to do with the shit we used to develop here,” Baird muttered. “I mean, this was Toxin Town. Chemical and biological weapons research. We keep conveniently forgetting that.”
“We’d have seen something before now,” Anya said. “That was all twenty years ago, at the very least.”
Cole wandered back to Baird’s side. There was no cracking of dry, dead twigs underfoot. The dieback had been sudden and nothing had dried out yet. “Goddamn…”
“I’m going to ask Prescott to his face.” Baird seemed more pissed off than usual. “Asshole. Maybe that’s his precious secret. I mean, suddenly he’s extra-interested in this shit.”
“What secret?” Anya asked.
Baird winced. Anya didn’t know about the disk, then. Well, it was Hoffman’s decision to decide who he told, Bernie thought, but he could at least have warned her he hadn’t told Anya.
“He’s always got one,” Bernie said. You’re going to have to tell her, Vic. “Just when we think he’s told us everything, something else crops up. Like those Sire things Marcus found at New Hope.”
She walked up behind Baird out of Anya’s field of vision and shoved him hard in the back with her elbow. Shut your trap, Blondie. He jerked his head around and glared at her.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “It’s zipped. Okay?”
The further they walked into the woods, the more profoundly dead the place looked. And there were still no signs of stalks or polyps. Eventually they walked back to the edge of the dead area and stood staring at it for a few moments. The line between dead and alive was unnaturally stark. Bernie stood on the precise edge of the brown foliage like a kid stepping on cracks in paving to see the sky fall in. She scraped it with the tip of her Lancer’s chainsaw.
Mac stuck right by her legs, so close that she almost tripped over him. He really didn’t want to explore, and that was a worrying sign. He’d hunt polyps that could blow him apart, but he didn’t like what he could sense now. She rubbed his ear with her free hand.
“No worms. No beetles. Nothing.” Disturbing the leaf mold under trees usually turned up all kinds of small crawling things. “No flies, either.”
Anya bent down to scoop some of the soil and dead leaves into a plastic bag. “I don’t know how much more of this stuff he wants.”
“What’s he doing with it?”
“Oh, it’s probably for his nature table,” Baird said. “He’s had a breakdown. Or he wants us to think he has. Crafty asshole.”
Bernie glanced down at the ground just to see if there was anything else worth retrieving, and that was when it struck her. She was standing inside the dead area—a good fifteen meters or so inside it.
See, there’s the scrape in the ground I just made.
“It’s really moving,” she said. “Blondie, look how far it’s spread since we’ve been here. Look. Look.”
Baird did a good impression of a surly teenager reluctantly forcing himself to look at something that couldn’t possibly be of interest to him. “You sure?”
“Yes. That’s a meter a minute, more or less.”
Anya came over to look. She actually measured it with her boot, marking out heel-to-toe from the scrape to the edge.
“Then we’d better hope it slows down.” She looked past Bernie in defocus for a few moments, lips moving silently as if she was working something out. “Because unless my math is wrong, it’ll be south of Pelruan in about fifteen days.”
Bernie rarely felt helpless about anything. There was always something that could be done, said, built, found, destroyed, or shot to improve the situation. Gears were trained to be self-reliant and tenacious, and self-reliant, tenacious people tended to become and remain Gears. But she felt helpless now. When she looked at Baird—the ultimate I-can-fix-it kind of bloke—she could see it in his face, too. She could wage war on grubs. But it was hard to think of what damage could be inflicted on a brown patch spreading under your feet. She didn’t even know what this enemy was.
“You remember the first weeks after E-Day, Granny?” Baird asked. E-Day seemed to be preoccupying everyone lately. “Total clusterfuck. Chaos. But we got the idea pretty fast.”
He was trying to be upbeat in his own way. Bernie’s E-Day memories were of being cut off from civilization, desperate to pick up a rifle and deal with the bastards, but not knowing where to start.
Yeah. That was pretty much the way she felt right now.
CHAPTER 7
Just go. Get home any way you can. I don’t know if this ship’s going to be commandeered, confined to port, or sent back to sea. It’s chaos out there.
(Robb Arden, skipper of imulsion tanker Betancourt Star, to his crew, after the emergence of the Locust Horde on E-Day)
NEW SHERRITH, TYRUS: THREE DAYS AFTER E-DAY, FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER.
The trains weren’t running, the phone lines were down, and almost all civilian air traffic had been grounded. Dizzy hitched a ride from the docks on a chemical tanker going to Andius and counted himself lucky.
Those ugly gray things that had burst out of the ground three days ago were spreading further across Sera. And the chaos was spreading right along with them.
The traffic was mostly trucks, police cruisers and ambulances. And the army was everywhere. Dizzy had never seen so many military vehicles. APCs and troop transports streamed past in convoys and he craned his neck, half expecting to see Richie, but he knew that was a slim chance.
“Where are all the cars?” he asked.
“Everyone’s been told to stay put and leave the roads clear for essential traffic.” The tanker driver was listening to the radio, now a constant stream of confused casualty figures and official warnings about roads being closed and cities being off-limits. “That’s all the northbound routes closed. They’re turning freight off at the next exit. Gonna have to drop you off, buddy.”
Dizzy clutched his canvas holdall, stomach knotted as he strained to catch reports of what was happening in other towns. The name he was dreading was Mattino Junction. But the reports were talking about cities across the whole damn world, in Ostri, Pelles, and Vasgar, not just in Tyrus. He didn’t want to know about them. He needed to hear what was happening back home.
The reporter had started calling the invaders locusts. Whatever these things were, they were coming up out of the ground and just killing everyone in their path. They weren’t taking prisoners and they didn’t seem to be heading for anywhere in particular. They didn’t seem to have a plan.
The driver turned up the volume at the mention of Jannermont.
“… and casualties there are estimated at a hundred thousand so far. We’re getting reports of fresh fighting around Nordesca…”
Dizzy stared out of the window.
Things didn’t look normal, but he couldn’t see any of the burned-out buildings, bomb craters or the other signs of war that he was expecting.
What are they? How did they get here? What do they want? What did we ever do to them to deserve this?
APCs and tanks lined the side of the road and the bridge across the highway. Gears, anonymous in full-face helmets for the most part, were marshaling traffic while a few cops looked on.
“They’re picking off the cities one by one,” the driver said quietly. “But they haven’t reached Ephyra yet. When that happens, we won’t even have the news to rely on.”
Dizzy’s stomach was rumbling from two days of missed meals, but what he wanted most was a drink. His hip flask was somewhere on the seabed off Ogari.
“You heard anything about Mattino Junction?” he asked. “My wife and boy are there.”
“Yeah, you said.”
“I can’t get a call through. I can’t raise the neighbors. I can’t get through to the government emergency line. I ain’t seen a news broadcast for two days, and the radio’s just streaming out useless shit. Yeah, I know we got trouble, and I know we got a lot of folks dead and missing, but goddamn, how can a town just not matter like that?”
The driver made a small noise as if he was going to say something but decided it wasn’t a good idea. He stared ahead at the tail of the truck in front for a while.
“There’s just too many places been hit,” he said at last. “I’m trying to get home too.”
Up ahead, orange lights flashed on the gantry over the highway. A warning was picked out in white lights: ROAD CLOSED—DIVERSION AT NEXT EXIT. A roadblock of armored vehicles was spread across all six lanes. The tanker driver slowed and followed the truck in front of him down the ramp.
They were crawling through a residential area now, and heading west—away from Mattino. Eventually the traffic ground to a halt.
Dizzy was fifteen kilometers from home and going in the wrong direction. But fifteen klicks wasn’t far. He could walk that in a few hours if he had to.
“Mind dropping me off at the fuel station?” Dizzy asked. “I’m gonna take my chances. Might find out more if I move through the towns.”
“If that’s what you want, buddy, but you’re gonna get stopped at a checkpoint before then. Good luck.”
The fuel station was closed when Dizzy jumped down from the cab. He peered in the window, hoping to buy something to eat and try the phone again, but there was only a single security light on and no sign of anyone inside. When he walked back across the forecourt, he saw the hand-scrawled sign taped to the pump next to the exit.
CLOSED FOR FUEL. COG OFFICIAL PERMIT HOLDERS ONLY.
Dizzy decided to try further down the road. He could hear the distant rumble of vehicles from the highway, but nothing else seemed to be moving. From time to time he’d look up at a window and see a worried face staring out. Maybe it was worth knocking on the nearest door and asking to use the phone, but he didn’t know just how spooked folks were and how they’d react. All the rules he was used to had vanished. This wasn’t the regular war and he was in central Tyrus now, a place where people didn’t expect to wake up and find the enemy in their front yard. The Pendulum Wars had mostly been fought well away from the COG heartland.
Lena, you’d have the sense to stay put, wouldn’t you? You’d listen to the Chairman on the radio and do what you were told. And Richie would—
Richie would have gone straight back to his unit, whether he’d been recalled or not. Any Gear would. The thought of Lena on her own in the middle of all this shit terrified Dizzy and left his stomach churning.
Maybe the locust things ain’t reached Mattino yet. Don’t panic. Just keep walking.
Up ahead he could see a man nailing boards over his windows like there was a storm coming. From what Dizzy had heard over the last fifty-two hours, it didn’t seem like a few wooden planks would stop one of these locust assholes. They’d just come up through the floor. He started walking faster, trying not to break into a run.
“Hey, can you help me?” he called. Anyone who saw him would know that he was merchant navy from his kit bag and his seaman’s gray duffel coat. “I’m trying to get to Mattino.”
The man paused in mid-swing and looked around. “It’s cut off,” he said. “They tried to evacuate everybody.”
“Whaddya mean—tried?”
“It was on the TV news. They shipped the survivors out.”
Goddamn it. Goddamn it. “Where?”
“Hey, I wasn’t taking notes. All we know is what’s on the news. The government can’t find its ass with an atlas right now.”
If anything brought Dizzy crashing to the ground, it was hearing that. The COG was organized. The COG always had things under control. The guys in charge had been fighting a war for decades, so they knew what they were doing. They weren’t fazed by attacks or any of that shit.
But they were now. He could see it all around him. Tyrus was paralyzed. Nothing was working.
“I gotta get home,” he said, knowing full well that this guy couldn’t help. He just felt better for saying it, reminding himself what he had to do to stop himself panicking. “Where did they take the survivors?”
“Sorry, I don’t know. Look, these things could come up anywhere—you shouldn’t be wandering around.” The man banged another nail into place and looked down at Dizzy. “You’re welcome to come in if you want.”
“Thanks, but I need to get to my family.”
Dizzy carried on walking. He’d crossed the next main road before he realized that he should have asked the man for something to eat. He was too upset to feel hungry, but he knew he was going to feel like shit before too long if he didn’t eat something.
And something to drink. Water. Yeah, just for once—goddamn water.
He’d forgotten about everything else except getting home. He hadn’t even stopped to take a leak for thirteen hours; that made him realize how dehydrated he was. And that ain’t smart. Won’t be able to think straight if I don’t get some fluids in me. Even the realization that one of these locust things could bust up out of the ground beneath him didn’t matter, because the biggest fear tying his guts in knots was losing Lena and Richie. He walked as fast as he could, still fighting the urge to start running no matter how much his legs insisted. He knew he couldn’t run that distance. He had to pace himself.
And it wasn’t the slope of the road making his heart pound. It was sheer animal panic. He had to keep his head.
Goddamn it, ain’t there even a patrol out here? How can everyone just run and hide like that?
He spotted a public phone box and tried dialing the usual numbers again—home, the Fiorellis next door, and then the COG casualty information bureau. His fingers moved automatically after so many tries. Each time he dialed, he got the same single continuous tone interrupted by a message that the exchanges were down.
Well, the bureau’s still gotta be in one piece. It’s a Jacinto number. So that means Lena and Richie are okay too.
Part of him knew that reasoning didn’t make any sense at all and that he was just bargaining with himself. He could hear the low booming of artillery fire a long way off. By the time he reached the top of the hill, the sound was louder, and he was looking at low gray cloud that somehow didn’t seem right on such a sunny day.
It was smoke. He could tell because the clouds had tails that led down to the ground. A jungle of towers jutted out of the haze. It looked like hell even at this distance, with fresh palls of smoke billowing up through the layer that had already settled over the place like a shroud.
That was Mattino Junction.
Down there, that was his home. It was his last fragile link with Lena and Richie. He thought he was going to puke with fear, but there was nothing inside to fetch up, and it left him nursing a terrible burning pain just under his ribs. He heard someone say “Oh God…” and then he realized it was him.
Get a grip. Do something. Just get in there and find out
where they’ve gone.
Dizzy started to jog down the road. He just couldn’t hold himself back now. He heard an engine—a bus, maybe, or even a utility vehicle—but he couldn’t tell where it was coming from and he didn’t plan to stop. If he kept going, he’d reach the intersection with the eastbound highway and he’d be on the final leg to Mattino.
Damn, I’m not even making sense to myself. But what am I going to do, turn around and go back? Where do I go if I don’t check out the town? How the hell am I gonna find Lena and Richie?
A horn honked behind him. That was enough to snap him out of the whirling panic and make him look around. An army Packhorse in COG polar camo, all black, white, and gray patches, was bearing down on him. It was a strange paint job to see in Tyrus. The brass must have drafted in everything with wheels that they could lay their hands on.
The Packhorse drew level with Dizzy and a Gear stuck his head out of the side window. “Hey, sir, where the hell are you going? We’ve got a movement restriction in place. Turn back.”
Damn it, they could see the town, couldn’t they? Where the hell did they think he was going?
“I gotta get to Mattino Junction. I don’t know what’s happened to my family. My boy’s a Gear, see. He was home on leave. I ain’t heard from my old lady either.”
The Gear put his hand to the side of his helmet for a second or two as if he was listening to his radio.
“What’s his name and unit?”
“Private Richie Wallin, Two-Five Sherrith Cav. My name’s Dizzy Wallin.” Pretty well every COG citizen had a military connection of some kind, so Dizzy didn’t expect any special treatment. He just thought these guys might know something. “I gotta get home.”
“I think you’d better forget that, sailor.” The Packhorse stopped just ahead of him and the Gear got out. “Any civvies who made it got shipped down to Corren. We’ve still got guys in Mattino fighting the grubs.”