Maybe, before they died, the owner of the apartment above hers had locked himself or herself in the bedroom, completely unaware they would trap their transformed selves after they died.
Whatever the reason, it did not sound happy.
Emily was just about to continue into the bedroom when she noticed sawdust begin to fall from the ceiling, just beyond the bedroom’s threshold. The apartment suddenly filled with the weird gnawing noise as the creature trapped in the apartment above hers began chewing through its floor and her ceiling. Emily took an involuntary step back into the hall just as a large chunk of ceiling tumbled to the bedroom carpet, a contrail of dust and debris following it down.
Emily was a second away from dodging past the bedroom door and heading towards the living room when the creature dropped through the hole and bounced out into the hallway, blocking her path.
She caught herself just in time. If she had jumped she would have collided with the alien in mid leap. She was convinced that would not have ended well for her.
The creature had pulled in its legs and culled itself up into a ball when it dropped through the hole, but now it flicked out all eight of its legs at once, they snapped into place with an almost plastic
click
. The alien raised itself into its normal stance, and shook like a dog after a swim, sending bits of wood, plaster, and dust flying across the room. Its two eyestalks extended and the eyes popped opened, focusing squarely on Emily as she backed slowly away from it. The monster’s jaws vibrated in a blur of motion, rubbing together so rapidly it created a sound almost like a warning growl. It took a couple of steps toward Emily who in turn took a stumbling step backwards, her only means of escape—other than leaving the apartment and joining this one’s friends in the corridor—cutoff by the creature.
Thoughts raced through her head: Was she quick enough to run past it or jump over it? She didn’t know and wasn’t willing to take a risk like that unless she absolutely had to, she had seen how agile these things could be when she watched the one climb the alien tree sprouting up in Central Park.
She continued to take small backwards steps, keeping her eyes focused on the thing in her apartment but trying not to make any sudden movements that it might translate into an aggressive move on her part. The front door handle poked her in the small of her back; there was no place left to go.
“Shit,” she hissed. The creature had kept pace with her as she moved but it hadn’t closed the six feet or so between her and it, choosing to keep its distance … for now.
For a moment that seemed to stretch on for an eternity, the last woman left alive in New York and a creature that had, until just a few days earlier been a living breathing member of the human race but which was now something totally alien, stared across that six-foot divide between them. Each assessed their situation, each with their own imperative.
Then the creature sprang.
It leapt into the air, powering towards Emily. She ducked and screamed, expecting the thing to hit her and tear right through her. Instead, the spider-alien rotated sideways in midair and attached itself to the apartment wall, thrusting its feet deep into the plasterboard. It was now just three feet from her and at her head height. She could see her own distorted, fear filled face reflected back at her from the creatures black glistening head.
The thing gave another, louder chatter, the disturbed air from its blade-like jaws washing over her as its eyestalks moved back and forth, scanning her as if it was assessing her threat potential.
But it didn’t attack her.
Instead, it just clung to the wall, its obscene eyestalks continuing to move up and down but never leaving her. Twice, now, Emily had been in close proximity to one of these aliens and neither of those times had it attacked. Emily had no illusions the thing could take her apart in a heartbeat if it so desired, it had her cornered like a proverbial rat in a trap …but it hadn’t. That
had
to mean it would rather simply get past her and continue on doing whatever it had planned for its first night out on the town.
Emily began to move her left hand very slowly behind her, feeling blindly around until she found what she was looking for.
Click
! The thumb-latch to the door was unlocked.
She began to edge ever so slowly to her right;
easy does it
, she told herself, fighting the urge to simply sprint past the alien spider-thing sitting impatiently on her wall. She knew that idea would be a major mistake on her part. It sensed her but she didn’t think it knew what to make of her and she didn’t qualify as a threat to it just yet. That could all change in a second if the thing became tired of waiting around and decided to simply kill her and get on with joining its buddies that she could still hear moving around the building.
This is beyond surreal
, her mind told her as it struggled to come to terms with the impossible situation.
When she judged she’d edged far enough, Emily slowly raised her left arm until she found the security latch, then, ever so carefully she slid it free of its receiver. The creature regarded her dispassionately, continuing to chatter at her while rocking slowly back and forth on its legs as though readying itself to launch at her at any moment. Emily, could feel cold beads of sweat begin to trickle down the nape of her neck, freezing against her skin as it traced its way down her spine. She lowered her shaking hand to the door-handle, pushed down until she heard the latch click, and then slowly pulled.
Inch by inch the door gradually opened, until a foot of space between the jamb and the edge of the door had been exposed, the creature exploded forward, scuttling quickly along the wall before disappearing through the gap.
Emily suppressed a gasp of horror as one of the legs brushed against her hand as the thing shot out into the corridor, its legs gouging holes in the wall as it ran, sending puffs of powdery debris to the floor. She slammed the door shut and quickly reset the thumb-lock and the security chain.
Her mind was telling her to run and find somewhere, anywhere to hide. But where was there to run to—nowhere! She
had
to press on. She forced her thoughts back to dealing with the situation.
And that was when she noticed the thin streamer of black smoke spiraling up from her open bedroom door. A cloud of smoke had already collected against the ceiling and was now moving slowly in her direction.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” she yelled as she remembered the candle she had left burning in her bedroom. She rushed to the doorway and looked inside. On the bed one of her pillows was on fire, small yellow tongues of flame were slowly consuming the cotton pillowcase. When the creature had dropped through the ceiling, something, either it or a piece of debris, had struck the candle, knocking it off the bedside cabinet where she had left it and onto her bed.
She rushed into the room and grabbed the edge of the pillow furthest away from the flame, trying to avoid burning her hand in the process. Flipping it over Emily threw it to the floor with the flame side down then started stomping as hard as she could until she was sure the fire was extinguished.
Goddammit, that was my favorite fucking pillow.
The room stank of burnt plastic. Emily coughed a couple of times and flipped the pillow up. It was ruined, of course. Her impromptu attempt at firefighting had also left a large scorch mark in the carpet.
There goes my security deposit
.
Emily let out a long sigh then realized with a sense of dread that now the fire was out the only light was coming from the candles in the outer rooms. She was standing in a virtually dark room with the hole above her head where the creature had dropped through, just minutes earlier. One close encounter of the weird kind was enough for her, she decided. That one was gone but what if more of them decided to pay her a visit while she stood there in the dark? She dropped the still smoking pillow to the floor, gave it a final stomp and then headed out of the room as quickly as her feet would carry her.
Emily picked up the flashlight, turned it on and headed back to the bedroom, peeking her head through the doorway as she scanned the room with the flashlight, ready to run if she was saw any sign of another of the creatures. The room looked empty, so she turned the flashlight toward the hole in her ceiling. It was an almost perfect circle, much like the one she had seen in the window of the crashed delivery truck and the stalled cars. Cut electrical wires dangled from the opening and she could vaguely make out some of the furniture from the apartment the creature had come from. It was a pity the power was off, she thought, chewing through those electrical wires might have fried the little son-of-a-bitch.
She had no way of patching up the hole, it wasn’t like she could call the building manager to come take a look, and there was no way in hell she was going to spend the night in the bedroom with that hole up there and the potential for more of those things to come crawling through. Besides the place stank now.
Tentatively, she stepped back inside her bedroom, keeping her eyes on the hole, just in case another unexpected visitor decided to put in an appearance. The bergen lay where she had left it on the bed, thankfully untouched by the fire. Emily pulled it off and onto the floor, choosing to drag it rather than try to lift it. She reached out with her free hand and pulled the comforter from the bed, pulling both it and her bag of precious supplies out into the corridor before returning to close the bedroom door.
Her earlier encounter with the alien had proved these things had no idea how to deal with a closed door. They seemed quite happy to bore through it rather than simply open it, so she felt sure that she would at least get a heads up if any more of them decided to drop by. She left the bergen in the hallway but took the comforter with her into the living room, shaking off dust and broken bits of ceiling.
Through the apartment window, Emily could see the last vestiges of daylight succumbing to the night. The light from the two candles cast flickering shadows across the walls and her still shocked mind was only too happy to turn those shadows into more of the creatures.
She dropped the comforter onto the sofa—she would spend the night there, she decided—then moved over to the table where she had left the sat-phone. The green LED indicator on the battery-pack showed just three out of five of the green lights lit. It wasn’t fully charged but Emily felt that would be more than enough juice to call the group in Alaska, she could finish the rest of the charge over night. Besides, she
really
needed to hear another human voice right now.
She disconnected the battery from the charger, popped off the plastic back panel of the phone and pushed the battery into place before reattaching the panel. The phone needed a clear line of sight of the sky to latch on to the satellite signal. There was no way she was going outside again tonight so she would just have to hope her roost by the living-room window would do the trick.
She extended the antenna from the side of the phone, clicked it into place and pressed the red ON switch on the phone’s keypad. The LCD display blinked the message
SEARCHING …
as it looked for a satellite signal. A minute later and the phone locked onto a signal and the display changed to
READY
.
She tapped in the number Jacob had given her and waited, listening to the chirrup of his phone ringing at the research base in the Stockton’s. It rang five times before it was picked up and Jacob’s voice answered “Hello, Emily. We were beginning to worry about you.”
*
*
*
Emily let out a sigh of relief, feeling some of the tension leave her body. She had secretly been harboring the thought no one would answer her call, that maybe something awful had happened in the time since she and Jacob last talked … or that she really had lost her mind and imagined the whole conversation. It was good to know she wasn’t crazy.
She wanted to say something profound to transmit her relief to him but all she could manage was a weak, “Well I guess the phone works.”
Jacob gave a good-humored chuckle, then: “So how are things looking? Are you all set to leave?”
Emily considered telling him about what she had experienced since they last talked but how could she explain something so inexplicable? Best if she just skipped those details for now, so she answered with a simple “Good. I’m packed and out of here first thing tomorrow.” She added, “I’m going to send you my route via email, as soon as I figure out how to do that. I’m following your advice and just getting clear of the city as quickly as possible. Once I’m out I’ll identify the best route to get to you guys. Things are getting a whole lot stranger here.”
Jacob sounded as though he was on the verge of asking her to elaborate on her comment but then seemed to think better of it. “Okay,” he said, “that sounds like a plan.” He paused for a moment then added, “Are you sure you’re safe? Do you have protection?”
Emily glanced over at the Mossberg leaning against the wall, “I’m covered,” she said.
They spent the next few minutes hashing out a plan for a daily communication schedule: she would call him at 6:00 pm her time every evening, and if she missed her schedule’s timeframe someone from his group would call her. Emily knew the calls were entirely for her benefit, to give her a sense of connection and safety, something concrete for her to fix on, because both Emily and Jacob realized she was going to be well and truly on her own out there. At least with his calls she could hold onto the illusion of company. Emily was thankful for Jacob’s kindness.
By the time Emily hung up the phone, she felt as confident as she could expect about her chances of reaching the Stocktons, given the circumstances.
Beyond her little apartment, the sounds of alien movement and their incessant calls had ebbed away to almost nothing .Emily began slowly to ease down from the intense emotional high of the day.