Exodus (28 page)

“Oh, shit!” The expletive tumbled from her mouth as she struggled to her feet and pulled the hood from her sweat-soaked head, oblivious to the chill.

Stretching out below her, lining almost every foot of the road, was a procession of frozen vehicles winding the remaining two miles to the bottom of the hill.

To Emily, as she gazed out over the line of trucks, flatbeds, snowplows, tankers, Sno-Cats, and even a snowmobile or two, it seemed as though she had stumbled across some long-lost convoy.

It looked like they had been moving in formation together. Maybe they had been evacuating from the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay when the red rain caught them out in the open? The majority of the dead vehicles consisted of either heavy-goods or commercial-size transportation, suggesting they must have come from one of the support sites that supplied materials and assistance to the oil rigs that plundered the Arctic. Maybe these were even from Deadhorse?

Her own Cat was just fifty feet away, its engine billowing plumes of exhaust into the air. She could see Rhiannon, her nose pressed against the glass of the cab, staring at her and then at the snaking trail of frozen metal glinting in the sunlight.

Emily motioned to her that she was okay—not so easy to do when your hands are hidden in gloves. But she was a smart kid; she could figure out that she was all right.

The jackknifed big rig that had caused them to stop was the lead vehicle of the convoy. Behind that was another rig, which had come to a stop about ten feet or so from its rear end. The second vehicle’s flatbed was empty, but when Emily climbed up onto the
cab’s footplate and wiped away the snow from the passenger window, she could see the cabin was not.

“Jesus!” Emily exclaimed.

Where she had expected to find the frozen body of the rig’s driver, she instead found an alien pupa. It was stretched across both the driver’s and passenger’s seats, and a light sheen of frost covered the outside of the dark-red shell. It was at least twice as big as the pupae she had seen in her newspaper’s offices back in Manhattan, and Emily wondered just how many people had been crammed into this cabin when the red rain had claimed them.

She dropped to the snow and moved to the next truck. There were two more pupae inside. Each resting on the seat where the human host had died.

It was the same for the next ten vehicles she checked. Every seat filled. Everyone inside dead.

But some of the convoy’s refugees, either trying to escape or maybe stepping outside to see why the convoy had stopped, had not been changed. They lay frozen on the ground, their still-human outlines barely visible beneath the layer of snow that had settled over them, a shroud of pure white. Some had not managed to make it any farther than their open doors and now lay face-down in the snow, their torsos covered by a white veil while their bottom halves remained inside their vehicles.

That was strange. It was as though the extra insulation provided by the closed-off vehicles had allowed the transmutation to progress to its later stages, while for those who made it outside, the lower temperature had arrested the development into the alien pupa form.

It was only after Emily wiped a sheen of sweat from her forehead that she realized how warm it had become. She exhaled heavily. There was no white fog of breath. In fact, she could feel
the air warming around her, tingling against her ears and her cheeks.

How could that be?

A minute or so later, as she checked for a clear route between a tanker and what looked to be a decommissioned school bus, she had to unzip her parka. The temperature must have risen at least three degrees in that time. She could feel a warm breeze blowing against her face and hands, like a car heater turned to low. It was sweeping down from the mountainside above her, and, as she looked up the mountain toward the peak, she could see rivulets of water beginning to run down the mountain as the snow began to melt.

She glanced around her at the maze of metal. It was thawing down here, too. The windshield of the school bus that had just a minute ago been covered in a crispy frost was now completely clear, exposing the dim outline of another pupa in the driver’s seat. A continual drip, drip, drip of melting ice water ran off the hood.

Emily headed back to the waiting Cat.

There was a sudden loud crack like split wood off to her left.

She started at the noise. It had come from the inside of a Toyota SUV, stopped near the edge of the mountain pass. She paused, listening, then when the noise did not come again, crunched over to the Toyota. A large chunk of snow and ice that had collected on the roof slid off and fell to the ground as she approached.

Leaning in, Emily used the arm of her parka to wipe away the sheen of condensation that had collected on the passenger side window.

There was another pupa inside, but this one was open. A long fissure ran down the center of the shell; there was an inch of space between each side. As she watched, a set of spindly black legs, each
with a sharp claw at its tip, rose slowly from the darkness of the pupa’s interior, grasped each side of the shell, and pushed them wider apart.

Emily took an involuntary step back. “You have got to be kidding me!” The pupae were still alive? They should be frozen solid.

She glanced back at the row of stalled vehicles. There could be hundreds of aliens gestating inside them, for all she knew, heated by the warm thermals sweeping down off the mountaintop.

“Great. Just freaking great,” she spat as she began to make her way back to the Cat as quickly as she could. The top layer of snow was rapidly turning to slush beneath her feet. An occasional spindrift of white still leaped into the air, lifted by the warming breeze.

From all around her now, the cracks of splitting pupae began to resonate, bouncing off the sheer walls of the winding mountain road.

There was still sixty feet left between her and the Cat when Emily heard what sounded like a squadron of mosquitoes buzz into life. She glanced back in the direction of the metal graveyard. A blur of movement behind the windshield of the nearest big rig drew her eyes to it. There was a whirring motion, like a propeller of an airplane, then a screeching sound that was quickly followed by an almost perfect circle appearing against the windshield of the truck. Glass powder began to fly away from the windshield as the alien caught inside began to use its specialized mandibles to cut a way out.

Then the glass circle fell off, and Emily began to run.

She passed the first jackknifed truck just as the alien inside was squeezing through the hole it had made in the passenger side window. Emily could see its black claws pushing through the opening as it pulled itself out onto the hood of the truck.

Rhiannon’s shocked face, her eyes wide, mouth agape, pressed against the window of the Cat, staring at the alien as it emerged
from the frozen tomb. At her side, Thor barked silently through the reinforced windshield.

The snow had become slippery, almost like mud now, and it sucked at her feet, slowing her pace. She was almost at the Cat’s front set of tracks when the newborn alien launched itself into the air toward her from the side of the cab that still hung precariously over the precipice.

Emily let out a gasp as it landed on the lip of the road just a few feet from her, its two front claws furiously trying to find purchase on the slippery surface, while its back legs scrambled against empty air. It managed to hang there for a few seconds then, just as Emily clambered up onto the gantry of the Cat, she saw the creature lose its fight and disappear silently over the edge.

Emily pulled at the door, but it was still locked. She hammered furiously on the window until Rhiannon, still shocked at what she had just seen, reached across and flipped the lock. Emily pulled the door open and jumped inside, locking the door again behind her.

“What is that?” Rhiannon demanded.

Emily ignored the girl. As she repositioned herself into the driver’s seat, she looked up at the convoy just in time to see the first wave of twenty or more spider-aliens begin to collect on the flat top of the lead big rig.

“Emily? What are they?” Rhiannon yelled again, almost in tears now.

“They’re aliens, Rhiannon. And we have to get out of here, right now.”

But where was she supposed to go? She couldn’t go back, there was no other way across these mountains than the road they were on. They were still far too high up to try a direct descent over the side of the mountain; it was virtually a sheer drop all the
way to the bottom at this point. There was only one way: forward, through the maze of stalled and wrecked vehicles.

More of the creatures had collected on the roof of the first rig, milling around aimlessly, scuttling back and forth as if looking for some way off the mountain.

Emily revved the engine and moved toward the space at the back of the first rig, keeping the Cat moving as fast as she safely could. She edged around the back of the first trailer and aimed toward the second larger gap.

As she passed the end of the trailer, something heavy hit the top of the Cat’s roof.

Rhiannon squealed as first one, then a stream of the spider-aliens landed on the roof and then jumped down to the snow beside them. A constant stream of the creatures poured off Emily’s side, hitting the snow, rolling, and righting themselves, then leaping and jumping as they hit the snow. It was almost as though the snow was burning them. Some of the creatures took off toward the nearest vehicle; others bounced like scalded cats until they either stopped moving or disappeared off the lip of the road.

As Emily finally cleared the first truck, the flow of aliens stopped, but not before one final creature launched itself off the top of the truck. It hit hard on the roof and bounced down onto the extended hood of the cab. It scrabbled around and clacked toward Emily and a screaming Rhiannon, smacking against the reinforced windshield. It clung there for a moment, each of its two eyestalks focusing on one of the humans inside the cab.

Thor’s head appeared between the two seats, drool flying from his mouth as he snarled and barked at the unwanted hitchhiker.

The malamute’s barking only grew more manic as the alien’s bulbous black head reared back and the two cutting appendages that passed for jaws suddenly began to spin furiously. In
seconds they were nothing but a blur of motion. The creature’s head dropped forward and connected with the windshield. Instantly the inside of the cabin was filled with a high-pitch whine, worse than a hundred sets of fingernails on a blackboard. A plume of pulverized glass flew from the junction of windshield and alien.

Emily’s vision, already half-obstructed by the creature’s huge corkscrew-like body, was blocked completely, her senses overwhelmed by the piercing screech of pulverizing glass.

She hit the brake rather than risk a collision.

A second later and a circle of glass fell away, crashing onto the dashboard. The reinforced glass of the windshield refused to shatter and fell to the floor. The creature eased its head through the newly opened space, swiveling back and forth as if surveying the cab’s interior. Its matte-black skin seemed to brighten as it touched the much warmer air of the Cat’s cabin.

Rhiannon was screaming over and over, “Emily! Kill it. Kill it.”

Thor was still trying, unsuccessfully, thank God, to push his way between the seats and reach the creature, which was already forcing itself through the portal it had created. Rhiannon had shrunk as far back into her seat as she could, trying to remain out of its reach.

“Thor. Get back,” Emily screamed as she twisted around and pushed herself between the dog and the seats, reaching for the shotgun. “Get back, Thor,” she yelled again when the dog continued to try to move forward. The dog finally acceded and wriggled free of the space. It was all the room Emily needed, and her fingers found the strap of the shotgun.

She pulled the Mossberg toward her, grabbing it with both hands. Swinging around, she brought the gun down to her side, aiming the barrel at the creature’s head.

It was halfway through the hole now, its eyestalks swiveling back and forth. Emily paused, her finger on the trigger. If she fired the gun in here, there was no telling what kind of damage the buckshot might do. It could ricochet around the cabin and maim her, Rhiannon, or Thor. The blast would surely kill the creature, but this close it meant an added danger from flying alien carcass. She couldn’t risk it.

Emily flipped the shotgun around and hit the creature between its two eyestalks with the butt of the shotgun.

The eyestalks shrunk back, and the thing’s buzz-saw jaws flew wide apart. It was, Emily supposed, the closest the alien could come to expressing surprise. But it didn’t back away, so she hit it again, this time aiming for the top eyestalk. It exploded into a mess of black goo.

That seemed to get the message across that it was not welcome, and the thing rapidly pulled back through the hole, skittering off the hood of the Sno-Cat.

With the alien gone, the cabin was now replaced with the rumble of the idling engine flowing in through the hole in the windshield. She was going to have to figure out some way to fix that.