THE IDEA OF breathing fresh air took time to settle in.
Leaving Mexico, Tania had been one foot into the rear cabin when she realized she no longer needed to confine herself to the dreary loneliness that waited within.
“Need a co-pilot?” she asked Vanessa at the cockpit just before the other woman closed the hatch. Vanessa grinned at that and let Tania inside.
They spent the three-hour flight back to Brazil in near-constant conversation. Vanessa shared a few tales of her time in Gabriel’s cult of immunes, stories that involved Pablo and even young Ana and her now dead twin brother, Davi. She stuck to warm stories, and a few times let the endings fall by the wayside when Tania sensed they were drifting into darker waters.
Whenever Vanessa trailed off, Tania stepped in, happy to find someone who would listen attentively to everything that had happened since the disease first arrived. She even told her new friend about the daily life and—in hindsight—comical politics that went on aboard Anchor Station both before and after SUBS broke out. She told of how she’d only been down to Earth once since the disease confined everyone to Darwin’s meager footprint, on the harrowing journey to Hawaii on which she’d met Skyler.
“Did you and Skyler have a …” Vanessa paused. “You know, a relationship?”
Tania felt her pulse quicken, kept herself quiet long enough to compose her thoughts. “I think we both had hopes, but circumstances … well, there was so much else going on.”
Vanessa said nothing.
“I’m happy for him,” Tania added, aware of how lame the words sounded and wishing she hadn’t said them.
“He’s had a remarkable influence on Ana,” Vanessa said. “I guess you probably don’t want to hear that.”
“It’s okay,” Tania replied. Please stop talking.
“She came of age after the disease took her parents, took everyone she knew except Davi. Her brother was the grounding force in her life, you know? They grew up together, riding in Gabriel’s fleet. Can you imagine going through that? At that age I was in university. You were probably studying aboard a space station, for God’s sake. Those two were riding through a demolished world with a psychopath. It’s amazing they both survived, much less escaped. They could have fled. But instead they brought Skyler to rescue us.”
And at the same time, I was agreeing—apparently—to give Skyler up to save the rest of the colony. Tania felt a familiar wave of regret flow through her and this time she allowed it to run its course. The past she couldn’t change. The future, though, was another matter and there was still work to do. She let the conversation drift away from the topic, and spent the last hour of the journey learning the basics of the Helios’s navigation systems.
Vanessa guided the craft along the coastline of Venezuela and Guyana, avoiding the mountains where Doppler indicated a vicious storm. When Belém finally came into view on the horizon, the city looked like a jagged, uneven row of dirty teeth jutting upward from low, cotton-ball clouds. It was midday, hot and rainy below.
“Weird,” Vanessa said.
Tania glanced at her.
“No response from Exodus. Everyone’s eating lunch, maybe.”
A comment died on Tania’s lips when she noticed the wisp of smoke rising up through the dense clouds below. Vanessa saw it at the same moment and immediately aborted their landing approach and angled the aircraft for a flyby.
The smoke curled upward along the path of the thin, almost invisible Elevator cord. Tania followed the line upward and spotted a lone climber high above, beacon light winking rhythmically. She watched it for a few seconds until the motion became apparent: down.
As the Helios drew closer the wisp proved more like a plume. Something big was burning below, and it was right where the camp should be. She dug her nails into the armrests, craned her neck for any detail that might be glimpsed through the gray and white soup. And then they were inside the clouds, her view suddenly shifting torrent like static on a dead screen. This ended as quickly as it had started, and the city came into full view.
Flames engulfed a section of slums near Camp Exodus, leaving a row of charred homes closest to the wall. The fire had started there, Tania noted, and spread north in a cone. In the heavy rain the licking tongues of yellow were almost totally obscured by thick smoke. The tendrils rose black and oily in places, paper white in others and mixing into a gray morass that seemed to become one with the heavy storm clouds that clung overhead.
Bright flashes of light caught Tania’s eye, rapid winks from the perimeter of camp. A few years ago she would not have understood, but now she knew muzzle flashes when she saw them. These crackled along the wall of Camp Exodus as if someone had set off a string of fireworks.
Vanessa brought the aircraft in low over the camp, keeping the speed above 150 kilometers per hour and maintaining a safe distance from the invisible thread of the space elevator. She banked steeply as they flew over, giving Tania a clear view of the entire camp from just a few hundred meters up.
Within she saw people running, ferrying supplies back and forth to the defenders on the wall. A crowd huddled around the medical tent, another by the tower yard where Tania knew the munitions closet to be.
On the wall, every few meters, were colonists facing the erratic onslaught of subhumans that poured in from the city and even the rainforest to the east. Bodies of those shot trying to approach the camp were everywhere, and a few even lay within.
Tania craned her neck to take in more details as the Helios slipped out over the river and began to turn for another pass. “It’s safe to land, I think,” Tania said. “We’ve got to help them.”
“Copy that,” Vanessa said. “Switching to verts.”
The note of the electric motors changed as thrust was redirected out the tiny vertical ports. Vanessa spun the craft about. As the camp came back into view, Tania glanced down at the swollen river below. People were swimming toward camp amid bodies floating limp, arms outward. Not people, she corrected herself. More subs. Just like in Colorado, they were of a sudden single-minded purpose, only here it seemed to be to get to the Elevator and not the alien object in the Helios’s cargo hold. What then? And what had triggered their sudden, all-consuming goals?
She made a sudden, frantic study of the camp, looking for the Magpie. Were they back already? Prize, or prizes, in hand? There were no other aircraft within the walls that she could see, but maybe they’d been forced to complete the journey on foot, or by truck. Tania tried the radio again while Vanessa focused on lining up the Helios with the colony’s single landing pad. Again no response came.
“If anyone can hear me, please respond,” she pled. “We need to know if the landing site is safe.”
Silence. Then, a crackle. A thud. “Tania?”
“Karl,” she said. Relief spilled out into the name, perhaps a little disappointment, too. She’d hoped for Tim. “Karl, thank God.”
“When we saw you fly over we realized we’d left the comm room empty. Really sorry about that.”
Tania gripped the transmitter tightly. “Can we land?”
“It’s safe for now, far as I know anyway. I’ll send a squad over there just to be sure. You saw the subs, I take it?”
“Hard to miss,” Tania said.
“Fucking-A.”
“The same thing happened in Colorado.”
A slight pause. “Then you succeeded, too?”
“We did.” She fought to keep her voice level. “Skyler’s back, then?”
“No,” he replied. “It’s just that the Elevator did that twang-effect twice, so we knew both objects had at least been recovered. There was a weird shock wave after the second time a few minutes later. Came from the east, where Sky went. Scattered birds from every tree. I’m afraid all’s quiet, otherwise.”
She couldn’t imagine what would cause that, but the fact that it hit here from that direction certainly implied Skyler had done something big. “Right, okay. We’re almost down. Hold the fort, huh?”
“Count on it.”
“Is Tim with you?”
A pause. “He went up, last night. Zane needed a break.”
“It’s okay, I understand.” She clicked off and shared a glance with Vanessa. The subs were attacking despite the presence of an object. Tania felt a now-familiar ripple of fear at the thought.
“Do you think they’re trying to get up the Elevator?” Vanessa asked cautiously. “To the other ones, I mean?”
“I suppose it’s possible.” She considered it as the landing pad began to slip below them and the aircraft started to drop the last twenty meters. “Or maybe they’re wired to converge on the nearest Builder technology once all of the objects are found.”
A vision exploded into Tania’s mind. Packs … no, herds of subhumans from all over the world, making the same desperate migratory trek to the auras that humanity had. The final hint, the final push the beings needed to finish what the disease had started.
She had her harness off before Vanessa could even reach for the throttle to kill the engines. The canopy opened to the sound of roaring wind from the dwindling fans, the crackle of distant gunfire, shouts of alarm and surprise, and even, here and there, encouragement. Tania skipped the tiny steps engraved into the Helios’s fuselage and simply leapt to the soaked concrete below. Rain fell in a heavy vertical barrage.
A group of colonists stood nearby, armed with various weapons and varying amounts of confidence in the way they held them. She took in each person’s stance and rushed up to the one with the most presence in the way he stood, the most familiar grip on the gun in hand. “They’re swimming across!” Tania shouted to him. “You need to get some people covering the river entrance!”
Camp Exodus’s wall left the shore open for fishing and swimming. Subs weren’t known for their ability to cross water, and indeed in the two-plus years since the camp had been established Tania had never heard of a sub reaching the camp from that direction. A few snakes, sure. Even a black caiman. But no subhumans.
The man glanced that way, disbelief in his eyes.
“We saw them from above. Trust me. Many are drowning but some will make it. Take this group, find others, form a line. There’s no time to debate. We’ll be okay.”
“Right,” he said. With a jerk of his head the ragged group filed in behind him and walked toward the turbulent waters.
“Tania!” a familiar voice called out. She turned and saw Karl limping toward the aircraft. He swept her into an embrace that favored his good arm. “Are you okay?”
“We survived.”
He squinted, confused. “I saw you get out of the cockpit. No suit? I don’t understand. Are you … you’re …”
Tania shrugged. “I don’t know what happened. Started to get the headache, just like you, then that shock wave rolled past and I felt fine. Well, I felt okay.”
Karl blinked at that. “Immune …”
“Let’s figure it out later,” she said, casting a glance toward the combatants on the wall.
Ninety minutes of hell served as Tania’s welcome back to Belém.
She left Vanessa with instructions to guard their cargo, and dust off if necessary to protect the object. Then she went to the wall, picked up a gun from someone too tired to continue, and began to kill.
Pounding rain dropped visibility to fifteen meters, even less at times. The waters ran in milky brown rivulets along the battered roads beyond the camp’s wall. Tania felt soaked to the bone, and like most of the others she’d shed much of her clothing for the simple reduction in weight.
The subs came alone, in families, and in packs. One group thundered in as if in careful coordination—fifty from the west, another thirty from the north. Many went for their general plan of scaling the walls, but a number rushed the gate and tried to shoulder it open. They were cut down in seconds by those on the wall, Tania included. She saw her own gunfire pop the blood and brains out of a child-subhuman that couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. She’d turned and retched after that, and she wasn’t the first nor the last to do so. After her fourth or fifth kill the revulsion ebbed as the task became less a violent art and more a chore.
A lull followed. Stragglers, here and there. Conserving ammunition was becoming the principal concern along the wall, and so colonists began to call their shots before firing. “I’ve got one-arm,” and “Blondie on all-fours is mine.” Tania took a sip of offered water from the woman who stood next to her. They shared an embarrassed laugh at the line of partially clad warriors lining the top of the wall. Flames from the fire that had blackened most of the slum north of the camp were now too far off to provide sufficient light, and the day grew darker by the minute. Torches were improvised and tossed out into the mud, but most went out upon landing, forcing a call for volunteers to go out and set them up. Tania found herself raising her hand without a second thought.
Three minutes later she stood behind the massive colony gate, half a broom handle in one hand and a borrowed pistol in the other. The meter-long stick had an old shirt wrapped around the end. It had been doused in some kind of grease or oil.
A stout, dour woman lit it for her seconds before the gates were thrown open, and Tania rushed madly over the bodies that had piled up just outside. Her feet pounded in the mud and soaked asphalt beyond. Sixteen other colonists ran with her, some carrying torches like hers, others carrying cap-powered LED lanterns that would last for weeks. The group dispersed, each running toward a spot they’d chosen ahead of time, ten or fifteen meters in front of the place they’d previously occupied on the wall. Those nearest to the gate were done quickly and, as per the hastily agreed-to plan, turned and went back to the gate. The fewer colonists abroad that might be confused for subs, the better.
A few gunshots rang out from the wall. Tania heard animal grunts from nearby, and cries from farther away. She ignored it all, focused on the stump of a telephone pole she’d picked as her landmark. Murky water splashed with every footfall, and as she lifted her feet from the ground it sprayed up her back and into her hair. Filthy, soaking wet, overwhelmed with adrenaline, Tania reached the stump of wood and leaned her torch against it. Each drop of rain that hit the fire ended with a little hiss. There was no soft ground nearby to thrust the torch into, so this seemed the next-best option to her. She’d brought no rope, though, and the torch seemed likely to fall with the slightest breeze where it stood.
A guttural roar emerged from the smoke and rain nearby. She heard fingernails scrape on concrete as a dark shape began to emerge. Tania held the torch in place with one hand, kept low, and raised her pistol. Before she could fire someone on the wall did, dropping the diseased human with one rifle round to the thigh, and a second in the center of the back when the creature had fallen.
Tania returned her focus to the torch. Other flame-bearers who’d ventured farther than her were already running back toward the gate. With no better idea, Tania set her pistol on a relatively dry bit of ground beside her and unlaced her boots. As more shots rang out from the wall, she set about knotting the two laces together and then wrapping the now-joined string around the stump and the broom handle.
More cries from the darkness. Tania swept her pistol up and managed to find the proper grip just in time. A sub had crept up slowly on the opposite side of her torch, using the flame itself to cover its approach. She registered it as two glowing eyes just beyond the flame, raised her weapon, and fired twice as the creature leapt to strike her. Her shots missed and the subhuman crashed through the flame and into her abdomen. She had the presence of mind to turn, using its momentum to send it rolling away from her toward the colony.
No shots from the wall. They couldn’t see well enough to know who was friend or foe. Tania froze, caught between fighting, moving to the torch so the shooters could see her as one of their own, or running for the gate.
She had no choice. The creature came up from its fall and ran in the opposite direction from her, toward camp, toward the space elevator. Tania lifted her weapon, squeezed the fine trigger. The gun barked, slapped against her palm, and thrust a dull pain up her arm. A single, perfect red hole appeared in the center of the subhuman’s back and it stumbled. One arm shot out to brace the fall, but by the time it had dropped that far the life had gone out of it. Tania lowered the gun. The flames behind her hissed and sputtered under the heavy rain. She dropped her chin to her chest and let the water cascade off the clumps of black hair that were matted to her cheeks.
She stared down between her feet, captivated by her own silhouette reflected in the dark puddle below. The wildly dancing flame behind her seemed to burn in a halo over her shadowed form. Heavy drops of rain rippled the demonic image, made it look as if she herself wavered like an apparition.
A shape rushed past her on the left. A subhuman, loping awkwardly on two feet and one hand. The other arm was tucked up against its body, an infected stump where the hand had been.
Another on the right, racing toward the wall. They were ignoring her, she realized, as the whip-crack serenade of gunfire rang out from the wall. They see me as one of them, she thought.
Or they don’t see me at all.
The two were quickly dispatched and then she heard the shouts from the wall, urging her to move. Move now. The pall that had settled on her lifted and Tania ran for the gate.
Ten meters away another subhuman came toward her. This one’s single-minded drive toward the Elevator faltered when it noticed her. It slid to a stop, lost its balance, and then righted itself. It screamed at Tania and leapt, filthy hands outstretched.
Tania slid under the attack, rolled in the mud, and came up at a sprint. A chorus of gunshots rang out from the wall and Tania heard something splash into the mud behind her, heavy and final. She didn’t look back.
They were ready for her at the gate, holding it open just enough for her to slip through, and as soon as she did the massive metal door slammed shut behind her.
“What’s wrong?” someone asked, a person she did not know. “Why’d you stay out there?”
Tania shook the cobwebs from her mind. “They weren’t after me,” she said.
A dozen confused stares from the people around her.
“They’re after what we stole.”
The climber slid the last few meters in near-total silence, its motor column producing only a soft whir over the unrelenting storm.
Tania sat in the cargo bay of the Helios, the door open so she could watch the climber arrive. Vanessa or Karl, she couldn’t recall which, had thrown a scratchy blanket over her shoulders and handed her a cup of hot tea. Only seconds after the vehicle arrived, Karl returned, the question she knew he would ask apparent in his concerned gaze.
Gunshots still rang out from the perimeter of Camp Exodus. Less frequent than before, the miniature thunderclaps had faded into the landscape.
“I’ll take it up,” Tania said.
“You sure?”
She nodded. “Vanessa can assist me. Besides, we need an immune to open the hatch.”
He stood in the rain, waiting.
Tania let her gaze drift up. Belém’s skyline still hid under the blanket of rainfall. Dark shapes at the edge of vision, like gigantic versions of the aura towers. The fires had finally burned themselves out.
“Load the other cars with the injured, or anyone too weak to fight.” She took a sip of the scalding hot tea and winced as it singed her tongue. “Once we’re above, we’ll send every available climber back down and the evacuation can begin.”
Even in the dim light, under the ashen clouds, she could see his face pale.
“Tania …”
“If they give up before then, fine,” she said, “but we’re going to burn through all our ammunition like this and it might not be enough. We won’t even get a chance to clear the bodies, and without that task accomplished our problems here will only get worse.”
His mouth tightened into a thin line.
“Don’t take this personally, Karl. You’ve done a remarkable job holding out this long. Tell me, how well are the stations provisioned?”
He considered the question, his shame momentarily forgotten. “Melville and Platz have enough for three or four weeks. The farms a bit less. Black Level is running low.”
“It’s a skeleton crew there anyway. I’ll call Greg and Marcus and have them move the staff down to Platz. I could use their help anyway.”
“What about down here?” he asked.
“You tell me.”
He frowned, but he turned and studied the place he held responsibility for. “We’ll lock everything down. I suspect they’ll leave it all alone except the food, most of which will spoil anyway. We’ll need to secure the aura towers well. I don’t think they know how to use them, but they might set them in motion by accident.”
She wanted to say that might not be necessary. That what had happened to her in Colorado signaled an end to the need for the auras. She had no real proof, though, and while she had little in the way of superstition in her personality, a real fear dwelt within her that to voice the idea might doom it somehow. So she said only, “Good. Proceed.”
With that he turned and held a hand out. Tania picked up the bag that held the alien object, took Karl’s offered assistance, and walked to the climber. He helped usher her into the waiting compartment, already packed with the first evacuees and their belongings. The goodbye was short, too short, and she hoped it wouldn’t be their last.
Vanessa came in a few minutes later. Tania offered her the adjacent seat and set the brown bag containing the relic between them on the floor.
As the vehicle rose up through the raging storm clouds that seemed almost a permanent fixture over the city, she wondered if she would ever set foot on Earth again, and what kind of place she would find if she did.