SILENCE IN THE MIST

Ramirez pulled up and watched below him as the last of his air-to-ground missiles impacted on the grassy strip, not even a hundred yards from where the troops cowered in their foxholes on the other side of the highway.

Now that was precision flying and precision targeting.

The crop dusters had left now, having exhausted their tanks. His aircraft were also out of bombs and missiles and were already heading back to the carrier to re-arm.

Ramirez alone remained over the battleground, circling, to feed information back to the carrier and to the troops on the ground.

The line was holding here at Albany, he saw, and also out to the west. But the east coast suburb of Mairangi Bay had been long swallowed by the dense white cloud, which had outskirted the defensive line, floating slowly out to sea and back in again behind it.

The frigates Te Mana and Te Kaha had been positioned in the bay, against just such an eventuality, he knew, but the Te Mana was now resting, listing over, on the sands of Mairangi Bay beach, and the Te Kaha was slowly grinding itself to pieces on the rocks of the head land. There was no movement on board either vessel.

The fog, apart from the holdup at Albany and farther west, was pouring down the east coast of the North Shore, spreading out behind the defense force at Albany and chewing its way across the affluent suburbs of Castor Bay, Campbells Bay, Milford, and on to Takapuna and Devonport.

He risked a low pass over the highway, trying to see the troops on the ground, but the mist was too dense.

         

Rebecca pulled up off the sand onto the grassy verge alongside Cheltenham Beach and thought she was lucky to have made it.

Some of the rocky promontories between the bays had been almost impassable. If it were not for the low tide, it would have been impossible.

She gunned the engine up past the navy training center and around onto the main road. Glancing to her right at the intersection, she realized with horror that the mist was barely a few hundred yards away and crawling rapidly forward along the road.

Only a few cars blocked the road here, and she swung from side to side, weaving in and out of them, the fog, omnipresent in her rearview mirror.

The final stretch, alongside the Devonport Golf Club, was clear.

Xena had woken now, if she had actually been asleep and not just resting. She was quiet, though, watching Rebecca drive with wise eyes.

Rebecca skirted the base of Mount Victoria on the long looping road and accelerated down the deserted main street of Devonport.

At the wharf, she turned right, heading along the breakwater toward the naval base.

The barriers were down at the entrance to the base, which didn’t surprise her. What did surprise her, and perhaps shouldn’t have, was the armed guard who stepped out of the security booth and waved her to a halt, the pistol held ready for use in his right hand.

“No admittance,” the guard said, not at all calmly. “This is a military area.”

Another guard stepped out of the booth then, and he had an automatic rifle held at the ready.

“I have to get through,” Rebecca said urgently. “I have orders from Doctor Crowe and Doctor Lucy Southwell.”

“No admittance,” the guard repeated.

“Get out of here,” the other guard growled.

Xena screeched, alarming the guards, who had not noticed her until then.

“What the hell?” the first guard said, looking at Xena.

“Oh hell!” The second guard said, looking where Xena and Rebecca were looking.

The fog was rolling rapidly down the slope toward the sea, swallowing building after building as it came.

         

Two more of the nightmarish white creatures hurled themselves out of the ever-thickening fog. Crowe cut a diagonal slash across them with the jet from his water blaster and they fell.

The crop dusters were gone now. So, too, were the fighter-bombers. The girl had been right. She had been right about the salt and the water, and everything else she had advised or suggested.

Another snowman reared up in front of them, but Manderson cut it open at the neck before Crowe could pull the trigger on his weapon.

Was it possible that she was right about the creatures?

The twin fire hoses next to them were silent now, and Crowe glanced across to see why. Had the water run out?

Where the crew had been, two men to a hose, four of the white sluglike creatures stood silently. Absorbing. Digesting.

“Stony,” Manderson said urgently, looking behind them.

Crowe turned. The fog had come up behind them. It was closing in on their position as he watched. The front of the cloud was alive with antibodies, and behind them moved the dense shapes of the macrophages.

“Stony, we did it,” Manderson began, with a quiet resignation in his voice. “We held out long enough…” But there was a hissing noise from the front, and Mandy disappeared, replaced by one of them. The white-lidded eyes stared unblinkingly at Crowe from where Manderson had crouched.

Crowe screamed and turned his water blaster onto the macrophage. It tore a jagged line across the creature, and the remains of Manderson’s suit spilled out, hanging loosely out of the torn white flesh.

The fog was thickening all around them now. He looked to the left and right, but if any of his men were left, they were invisible in the fog. He tapped his microphone and called his team, but got only silence in return.

An antibody struck the faceplate of his helmet, covering his eyes. Crowe screamed again and slapped it away. He strode forward into the mist, shaking his head violently, erratically, from side to side. The hose of the water blaster pulled him back, tried to stop him, and he wrenched at it, felt something give, then strode forward again.

The barrel of the device, disconnected and useless in his hands, swung around as he aimed the empty weapon at the whiter-than-white shapes that appeared around him.

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.”

His voice filled the suit, and he unsealed and flipped up his face mask to let the words out into the fog.

“Glory, glory! Hallelujah!”

And then there was silence in the mist.