His body began to shudder. He clutched at his neck. His feet drummed on the floor. I was sure he was dying.
"Come on, Jack," Charley said. "Let's get the fuck out of here."
"You can't leave him!" Rosie shouted. "You can't, you can't!" David was sliding out the door, into the sunlight. His movements were less vigorous now; his mouth was moving, but we heard only gasps.
Rosie struggled to get free.
Charley grabbed her shoulder and said, "God damn it, Rosie-"
"Fuck you!" She wrenched free from his grip, she stamped on my foot and in my moment of surprise I let go, and she sprinted across the shed into the next room, shouting "David! David!" His hand, black as a miner's, stretched toward her. She grabbed his wrist. And in the same moment she fell, slipping on the black floor just as he had done. She kept saying his name, until she began to cough, and a black rim appeared on her lips.
Charley said, "Let's go, for Christ's sake. I can't watch."
I felt unable to move my feet, unable to leave. I turned to Mae. Tears were running down her cheeks. She said: "Go."
Rosie was still calling out David's name as she hugged him, pulled his body to her chest. But he didn't seem to be moving on his own anymore.
Charley leaned close to me and said, "It's not your fucking fault."
I nodded slowly. I knew what he was saying was true.
"Hell, this is your first day on the job." Charley reached down to my belt, flicked my headset on. "Let's go."
I turned toward the door behind me.
And we went outside.
DAY 6
4:12 P.M.
Beneath the corrugated roof, the air was hot and still. The line of cars stretched away from us. I heard the whirr of a video camera motor up by the roof. Ricky must have seen us coming out on the monitors. Static hissed in my headset. Ricky said, "What the hell's going on?"
"Nothing good," I said. Beyond the line of shade, the afternoon sun was still bright.
"Where are the others?" Ricky said. "Is everybody okay?"
"No. Everybody is not."
"Well tell me-"
"Not now." In retrospect, we were all numb from what had happened. We didn't have any reaction except to try and get to safety.
The lab building stood across the desert a hundred yards to our right. We could reach the power station door in thirty or forty seconds. We set off toward it at a brisk jog. Ricky was still talking, but we didn't answer him. We were all thinking about the same thing: in another half a minute we would reach the door, and safety.
But we had forgotten the fourth swarm.
"Oh fuck," Charley said.
The fourth swarm swirled out from the side of the lab building, and started straight toward us. We stopped, confused. "What do we do?" Mae said, "Flock?"
"No." I shook my head. "There's only three of us." We were too small a group to confuse a predator. But I couldn't think of any other strategy to try. All the predator-prey studies I had ever read began to play back in my head. Those studies agreed on one thing. Whether you modeled warrior ants or Serengeti lions, the studies confirmed one major dynamic: left to their own devices, predators would kill all the prey until none remained-unless there was a prey refuge. In real life the prey refuge might be a nest in a tree, or an underground den, or a deep pool in a river. If the prey had a refuge, they'd survive. Without a refuge, the predators would kill them all.
"I think we're fucked," Charley said.
We needed a refuge. The swarm was bearing down on us. I could almost feel the pinpricks on my skin, and taste the dry ashen taste in my mouth. We had to find some kind of shelter before the swarm reached us. I turned full circle, looking in all directions, but there was nothing I could see, except"Are the cars locked?"
My headset crackled. "No, they shouldn't be."
We turned and ran.
The nearest car was a blue Ford sedan. I opened the driver's door, and Mae opened the passenger side. The swarm was right behind us. I could hear the thrumming sound as I slammed the door shut, as Mae slammed hers. Charley, still holding the Windex spray, was trying to open the rear passenger door, but it was locked. Mae twisted in the seat to unlock the door, but Charley had already turned to the next car, a Land Cruiser, and climbed inside. And slammed the door.
"Yow!" he said. "Fucking hot!"
"I know," I said. The inside of the car was like an oven. Mae and I were both sweating. The swarm rushed toward us, and swirled over the front windshield, pulsating, shifting back and forth.
Over the headset, a panicked Ricky said, "Guys? Where are you? Guys?"
"We're in the cars."
"Which cars?"
"What fucking difference does it make?" Charley said. "We're in two of the fucking cars, Ricky."
The black swarm moved away from our sedan over to the Toyota. We watched as it slid from one window to another, trying to get in. Charley grinned at me through the glass. "It's not like the shed. These cars are airtight. So… fuck 'em."
"What about the air vents?" I said.
"I shut mine."
"But they aren't airtight, are they?"
"No," he said. "But you'd have to go under the hood to begin to get in. Or maybe through the trunk. And I'm betting this overbred buzzball can't figure that out." Inside our car, Mae was snapping closed the dashboard air ducts one after another. She opened the glove compartment, glanced inside, shut it again. I said, "You find any keys?"
She shook her head, no.
Over the headset, Ricky said, "Guys? You got more company."
I turned to see two additional swarms coming around the shed. They immediately swirled over our car, front and back. I felt like we were in a dust storm. I looked at Mae. She was sitting very still, stony-faced, just watching.
The two new clouds finished circling the car, then came to the front. One was positioned just outside Mae's passenger door window. It pulsed, glinting silver. The other was on the hood of the car, moving back and forth from Mae to me. From time to time, it would rush the windshield, and disperse itself over the glass. Then it would coalesce again, back away down the hood, and rush again.
Charley cackled gleefully. "Trying to get in. I told you: they can't do it." I wasn't so sure. I noticed that with each charge, the swarm would move farther back down the hood, taking a longer run. Soon it would back itself up to the front grill. And if it started inspecting the grill, it could find the opening to the air vents. And then it would be over. Mae was rummaging in the utility compartment between the seats. She came up with a roll of tape and a box of plastic sandwich baggies. She said, "Maybe we can tape the vents…" I shook my head. "There's no point," I said. "They're nanoparticles. They're small enough to pass right through a membrane."
"You mean they'd come through the plastic?"
"Or around, through small cracks. You can't seal it well enough to keep them out."
"Then we just sit here?"
"Basically, yes."
"And hope they don't figure it out."
I nodded. "That's right."
Over the headset, Bobby Lembeck said, "Wind's starting to pick up again. Six knots." It sounded like he was trying to be encouraging, but six knots wasn't anywhere near enough force. The swarms outside the windshield moved effortlessly around the car. Charley said, "Jack? I just lost my buzzball. Where is it?"
I looked over at Charley's car, and saw that the third swarm had slid down to the front tire well, where it was swirling in circles and moving in and out through the holes in the hubcap. "Checking your hubcaps, Charley," I said.