Xenoform (46 page)

The lights were off as far as they could see in all directions, except for the occasional punctuating spot of brightness where some enterprising soul like Tec had presumably employed a backup power supply. To the north-east, where the barge had hit, the skyline was still glowing faintly, but very faintly now. The screeching sound of a ground vehicle’s tyres came from somewhere in that direction, drifting on the wind like a scream. A petrol pony galloped, riderless, across the far end of the road, blue exhaust pluming from its nostrils, hoofs clattering loudly.

‘Right, Ari – can you lead us to our van?’ said Whistler.

‘Certainly – follow me,’ said the robot. It pushed through the group and headed off down the street, sensibly killing its headlight and sticking to the deeper shadows of the overhanging buildings. They were about halfway down the street when Whistler hissed at them to stop. Debian’s heart began to hammer so loudly that he feared the others would hear it.

‘Look!’ Whistler said, pointing with her smartgun.

Beneath the overhanging porch of what had once been a nightclub one of the changed was standing, swaying gently, blocking their path. Everybody froze, staring at it in horror and awe. The creature looked up at them, its face a half-seen mindless blank of green sludge. Long tendrils of greenshit joined it to the face of the building, which seemed to be melting, the substance eating into the brickwork, green, foamy slime running from the holes like pus from infected wounds. The creature extended an appendage that looked like it had once been a human hand towards them and began, shakily, to stagger in their direction.

‘No!’ Debian yelled, fumbling uselessly with the gun.

The monster was about twenty metres away but moving with a slow determination. Whistler barked something that sounded like a wordless expression of rage and her smartgun opened up:
hak!hak!hak!
The creature spun, tangling in the cords of greenshit, fluid haemorrhaging from its body in gushes, spraying the walls and floor around it. It recovered and came on, the cords of greenshit rearranging themselves around it, knotting and unknotting. Blank green eyes stared stupidly at its enemies. Some sort of tongue – a thing like a dripping tapeworm unravelled form its mouth and began to probe around, as if it was tasting the air.

Sofi stepped forwards, slinging the plasma weapon over her back on its strap. Her slender hands dipped into her combat jacket and reappeared with a long knife glinting in each. The creature turned towards her, reaching out. Roland had suggested that the particles in the air were not harmful, but Debian thought that maybe if that creature were to actually
touch
you then that might very well be harmful. He thought that might be very bad indeed.

‘Sofi, no!’ yelled Whistler, stepping back and circling around to regain her line of fire.

But Sofi was on it in one fearless bound, knives flashing. The creature made to grab her, but it was too slow, too clumsy, and she passed right between its slimy claws, rolling away and regaining her feet in one smooth motion, plasma thrower appearing in her hands. Debian saw the plastic handles of the two knives jutting from the thing’s chest, slime pumping from around the wounds, and then he was blinded by two bright muzzle flashes as Whistler’s smartgun put two more rounds into the thing’s misshapen head.

Tec and Roland also had weapons trained on it, but it was not necessary. Debian hadn’t even got the submachine gun into his hands. The creature fell, and they heard the heavy thud of its skull hitting the pavement. It made a sighing noise that sounded unbearably weary and sad and then it simply melted away in front of them. They watched in amazement as the putrid green flesh peeled away, exposing what looked like a mutated human skeleton, albeit an incomplete one. And then that, too, withered and shrivelled, dissolving into sludge. The greenshit tendrils on the surrounding brickwork slowly crept towards this puddle like blind, questing worms. Their ends dipped into it and everybody heard what was clearly a slurping, sucking noise. The smell was incredible. The group exchanged sickened looks.

‘It’s being recycled,’ said Tec in a nauseous little voice.

Roland shrugged. ‘Waste not, want not,’ he said.

Sofi just looked angry. ‘What the fuck was all that about?’ she asked, as if demanding an answer from the disappearing pool of goo. She looked around at the corrupted fascia of the nightclub, her face a picture of disgust. There were small, mushroom-like growths amongst the mass of oozing green matter there. They seemed to be pulsing very gently, as if breathing. Sofi leaned in close, to examine one, her plasma weapon pointing at the ground. ‘What is that...’ she mused.

Whistler shouted and made to grab her. The ready-status of her smartgun, as indicated by a line of LEDs along its side, went back up a notch at the signs of stress in her voice-pattern.

‘
It’s–’ said Sofi, and then the mushroom-thing exploded in her face:
Pop
! She staggered backwards, her head wreathed in a cloud of green dust like a halo, dropping her gun and flapping at the air as if trying to shoo a bad smell away. She coughed and gagged, doubling over.

‘NO!’ yelled Tec, running to her. He caught her jerking body as it fell, lowering her gently to the floor. ‘Oh man!’ cried Tec. ‘Oh no, oh fuck! What was that thing?’

‘Sofi!’ shouted Whistler, dropping beside her, looking into the other woman’s face.

‘Damn it!’ snarled Roland. ‘Is she okay?’

Whistler was bent over Sofi, shaking her, and Debian couldn’t see if she was okay or not. But then she spoke, coughing and spluttering around her words. ‘Man! That was fucking
disgusting
! Ohhhh...Why me?’

Whistler and Tec visibly relaxed, releasing her. ‘Because you’re you, idiot. That was stupid,’ admonished Whistler. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

‘Bloody woman,’ muttered Tec, standing back. He looked pale and shocked, pretty much how Debian imagined he looked himself.

‘Are you okay?’ demanded Whistler, shaking her by the shoulder.

‘Yeah, I think so. Just an unbelievable smell and taste combination.’ She retched again, spitting onto the pavement and pushed herself into a sitting position. Whistler helped her to stand and Tec gave her back her gun. Roland just watched, clearly unimpressed, his thin arms folded, while Ari scanned the street around them.

‘I want you to think about what you’re doing, Sofi! You hear me?’ scolded Whistler.

‘Okay, okay, enough already. You didn’t just have an alien toadstool blow up in your face, give me a break.’ She wiped at her face with one sleeve, re-seating the hat Roland had given her. ‘Let’s go on, I’m all right.’

Whistler stared at her for several long seconds, her face thunderous. ‘Yeah,’ she said.

They followed Ari down the road to the junction. Smashed pods were jammed together into a single mass that blocked the way completely and they had to climb over one to continue. As he clambered across the bonnet of the crushed vehicle Debian glanced down into its interior. The driver was still in there, impaled on a control stick, a crust of dark, dried blood across her chest like a bib. Her face was a muted mask of agony. A single red light winked evilly on the dash of the pod like an eye. Debian shivered and his hand crept unconsciously to the submachine gun. ‘Keep moving!’ hissed Roland behind him. He jumped down off the pod and followed Whistler.

‘Towards the canal,’ said Ari from up front. ‘Your van’s on Duplex Street. Come on.’

‘Wow,’ said Tec. ‘They were almost home, then, when RPC got involved.’

‘Yeah, that’s tough luck,’ agreed Roland. ‘But we gonna get your friend back.’

‘Nine o’clock!’ yelled Whistler suddenly, whirling to her left with the smartgun outstretched like a pointing finger, the line of LEDs on it lighting up all the way to the end. The whole group turned as one.

A gang of ragged human figures was pelting towards them from the shadows of a vacant lot. There were six or seven of them, coming at Whistler’s group on the run. None of them shouted or called out – they clearly wanted to cover the distance as quickly and quietly as possible. Whistler could see long knives and crude clubs in several of their hands. She held fire, caught in momentary indecision. She could gun them all down in a split-second at this range, but it would be a one-sided massacre. She could feel the weapon itching to do it.

‘Back, fuckers!’ bellowed Sofi, seizing the initiative and sending a burst of plasma fire licking into the air above the oncoming group. This had a truly electric effect on the other party. They scattered, leaping out of the way, shouting curses, scrabbling to get past each other and flee. One of them fell and the others left him to his fate. He hastily got back to his feet and charged off after his companions.

Sofi was laughing, slapping her thigh, the huge plasma thrower pointing towards where their would-be attackers had retreated back into the night. ‘Ha ha ha! Losers!’ she cackled.

‘Were they trying to rush us?’ asked Debian. It had all happened so fast he had barely had time to register what was going on.

‘I guess,’ answered Tec. ‘Nice one, Sofe.’

Sofi shook her head, suppressing giggles, and engaged the safety on the plasma thrower. They followed after Ari again, Roland keeping a careful watch behind them lest their company return. They passed a shabby single-storey house with a window open onto the street. From inside came the heartbroken cry of a man who sounded on the edge of madness, his voice high and wobbling: ‘
My sissy
!
My sissy
!’ Debian had no idea if sissy was a person, a pet, or what, and he didn’t want to know. He thought that anybody who would have their front window open that night was probably beyond all help.

Near to the canal the street was flooded with a lake of greenshit. Several of the creatures stood in the pool, heads back and faces to the sky. Their hair was long and tangled and their semi-naked bodies were twisted and lumpy beyond any real semblance of humanity. These individuals, thankfully, took no notice of the group. They watched the creatures from a block away in silence for a moment.

‘Shall I fry ’em?’ asked Sofi keenly.

‘No,’ said Whistler. ‘Let’s find a way around.’

‘Look at that pod,’ said Tec, pointing. A dun-coloured gravpod was apparently dissolving into the slime. Its shell looked as if it was becoming plastic, melting and changing. They could just make out in the moonlight how tendrils of its body were mixing and stretching into the greenshit, marbling the slime with traces of brown that faded into the lake, merging with it. The pod was actually sinking slowly as they watched.

‘Processing, you said, Roland,’ mused Whistler. ‘I think that’s about right.’ As she said this one of the monsters leaned over and vomited a huge quantity of liquid into the pool, gurgling and choking as it did so. For a second, it looked their way, its chin dripping. There was no recognition or concern on its drooping face. The group stared back, disgusted.

‘This way,’ said Ari, pointing into a narrow street to their right with one limb. Its eyes flashed eagerly. ‘Come on.’

They detoured to the right, trying to angle back onto Duplex a block further down. They found that the lake still blocked their path. ‘Check out the canal,’ said Sofi, indicating where it threaded through the streets ahead of them. They looked and the canal was entirely green, flowing turgidly. They could hear those corrupted waters oozing and glooping along, a sound like someone smacking their lips wetly. Debian swallowed, nauseated, wiping the green dust from his face and neck. Was it really safe to be out in this weird snow? Would it not corrupt and change
him
, too? All of them? He was suddenly keener than ever to get to the van.

Ari led them back out onto Duplex another few blocks further down. Whistler scanned the street with her smartgun, her tiny fangs bared. ‘I see it,’ she said. ‘Back down that way.’ She nodded in the direction they had come from along the other street. They all looked and yes, there was the van, slewed across the road, looking solid, architectural, reassuring. It was just beyond the edge of the slime pool. ‘Let’s go.’

They stood around the van, breathing a collective sigh of relief. Debian studied its sinister curves admiringly. ‘Where the hell did you get a thing like that?’ he asked.

‘I built it, mostly,’ said Tec proudly. ‘Mixture of off-the-shelf and military bits we got through HGR. And some pieces I made from scratch. She’s a proper one-off. Can’t say how relieved I am to see her again.’ He put his hand on the skin of the van gently, as if petting the machine. ‘I don’t get why RPC didn’t take it if the main computer was off at the time. Maybe they didn’t have the manpower. It’s still off – I thought you said you turned it on, Ari?’

‘I turned it off again after my chat with it,’ said Ari tonelessly. ‘That seemed the prudent thing to do.’

‘Perhaps he’s helping us,’ thought Debian, not realising he had spoken aloud until Whistler responded.

‘Who’s helping us?’ she asked sharply.

‘Er...the internet,’ said Debian, flustered. He realised that everyone was looking at him. ‘The AI, I mean. It.’

‘
It’s a fucking
he
now, is it?’ asked Whistler. Her face was incredulous, suspicious.

Debian couldn’t find an answer for this, couldn’t hold that icy stare. Instead, he said, ‘Can we get in, with no computer and no wireless? Maybe Ari could–’