The Roaches were there, feasting. A violent convulsion tore through the man. Blood spurted in a thick arc from his mouth, and he let out a gurgling cry. Something was inside him. Many things were. His body twisted sharply, this way and that, as viscera showered from fresh wounds. Celeste saw gore-slick metal writhing and thrashing in his remains. They were chewing the man up and spitting him out. Breaking his body down. Reducing him to paste.
The sound of bone and flesh being ground down to mush echoed in every direction.
A cybernetic insect head, trailing tubing and wires, reared out of the dead man’s guts. It turned through one-hundred and eighty degrees until Celeste saw red LED eyes blinking inquisitively at her. She froze, sweating, until its gaze passed on. It hadn’t registered her presence. Thank Allah.
“Too perfect,” Grace said, at her side. “I should’ve seen it, should’ve known. Right in our path. He was a trap.”
“How could he be?”
“Crippled like that. Sick and scared. Why chew on one when you can chew on three? If we’d helped him, that’d be us. Come on, we gotta to skid fast.”
Grace grabbed Celeste by the wrist and pulled her along. A glance over her shoulder showed a tableau of raw bones and dripping, glistening claws. The Roaches were done with him – now they wanted the other two. In low crouches, Celeste and Grace scrambled ahead of the clicking black tide. Zig-zagging through the ventways with no plan or direction; only a faint hope of sanctuary driving them on.
“Need a module. We need a fucking module,” Grace shouted. “There!”
She started to pound and kick her heels against the access-pad to a module. It remained stubbornly closed. “Knew I should’ve brought a cutter with me.”
Her face turned to Celeste and it was a haunted, pale oval; the same she remembered from when the trace where they first met disintegrated. “You got anything?”
“Might do.” Celeste said.
She pushed past Grace, placed her wrist against the module’s reader-pad and touched the nodule beneath her earlobe. She closed her eyes, felt the faint orgasmic rush of Flood-contact pass through her, and thought – open…
A shush of decompressed atmos answered.
They were in.
It was Celeste’s turn to take Grace by the wrist as she dragged her inside. Celeste operated the internal reader – close…
The Roaches hit the module like a wave of broken glass fragments. Incisors and mandibles scrick-scracked all over its outer shell, but they couldn’t get in. It was secure. Minutes ticked by. Grace’s breath steadied. Celeste’s heart-rate eased. And the murderous tide of predators gradually ebbed away.
They were safe. For now.
Chapter Seventeen
The module was a dank, desultory space. They stood in its airlock listening to one another breathe, feeling their own heartbeats, sweat cooling and drying on their skin. Feeling they were alive, not dead, not chewed up like the poor bastard in the ventways.
“Why didn’t they come in after us?” Celeste asked.
“Conflict of subroutines I rec,” Grace said. “Outside the modules, we’re target. Inside is where we should be. Also, you jacked in so they must think we belong here.”
“Piece of luck,” Celeste said.
“I never seen that before though.” Grace said. “How’d you do it?”
“Would you believe a knack?”
“Nuppa.”
Celeste shrugged, “Something happened to me in the mid-secs. I’m still not sure what exactly. But something inside me lets me… do things. Things that shouldn’t be possible. Access to places. Stuff I’ve seen. I should be dead really. Not able to walk around and tell people about it.”
“I believe that over knack.” Grace said.
“What do we do now?”
“Wait a bit,” Grace said, “’til the Roaches are well clear. They scan and purge in blocs so we should be able to leave here and be clear safe after a half-span or so.”
“What to do with that half?”
“Have a look around?” Grace said with her bright smile.
Celeste operated the pad for the module’s interior. The door cycled open.
Inside was dim and obscure, but lit by hundreds of small blinking lights.
“What’re those?” Grace asked.
“Christmas tree lights. Old-time tradition.” Celeste said.
Then, the smell hit them.
They saw a family; mother, father, and daughter. All wired in. Feed-tubes, catheters and bionetic thread-harnesses making them resemble flies caught in a colossal spider’s web. Coloured light danced across three faces that were dry and wrinkled like perished apple-skin. Celeste reached out to touch the face of the little girl. The small face crumbled inward from being disturbed, exposing the hollow space beneath.
“All dead. All empty.” Celeste said. “I thought everyone was cleaned up by the Roaches.”
Grace shrugged, “Not everyone. There’s always dodgy connections. Some die when the feed-tubes and catheters are put together incorrect. No system’s perfect. Some get missed, like these.”
Celeste looked at the family mummified by time and dust. She put her fingertips against the smooth bone showing through the child’s disintegrated face. It was so cool and lifeless. There were tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. She blinked them away. No time for that now.
“This is what it comes down to? You either die and get turned into soup by the Roaches or you get overlooked and die alone in a module. The future as a clerical error.”
Grace frowned, not understanding.
“How much longer d’you think we should hang on in here?” Celeste asked.
The young scavenger whistled through her teeth. “I reckon the Roaches should be elsewhere enough now. They’ll get assigned new targets and move on. Even if they pick us up again, we’ll be at the bottom of their to-do list for a span or two.”
“Let’s hope it’s a long list.” Celeste said.
They made their way into the airlock, leaving the dead family behind. Before they departed, Celeste looked over her shoulder. One of the dead girl’s eyes appeared to catch the light and move as if it were looking at her.
No, it was a cockroach crawling out of the hollow socket. All of the animals and birds were long gone but down here, among the almost-dead of the human race, these particular insects clung onto existence. Surviving. Proliferating. No wonder the scavenger-drones had been nicknamed Roaches. They’re what’s left behind when we die, to pick over our flesh and bones. Perhaps, they’re all that’ll be left of life one day.
Celeste followed Grace out of the module.
They crawled on through the ventways for hours, listening out for Roaches. They were undisturbed except by occasional crepitations in the infrastructure that Grace reassured her were normal; the rattling and banging of aged metal expanding and contracting as heat and cold levels altered throughout the lo-secs. Celeste was tired, sore and her muscles were very cramped when Grace signalled her to stop. They were in front of a vent covering like any other – like hundreds they’d passed before – so it seemed.
“Here we are,” said her companion, finally. “Home sweet home.”
Grace dislodged it with a series of adjustments using a screw-jack. She dropped down and Celeste dropped down after her. They landed in a standard module by appearance, but something was different. It was empty and relatively clean for one thing. There was white light filtering underneath the airlock door. Grace punched in an access code and the door opened.