Genesis (18 page)

“Well, we can’t stop just because of some random sound, and I really don’t hear it, so let’s keep going, but keep your eyes open.” Emily’s hand instinctively dropped to caress the butt of her pistol. She was still kicking herself for not grabbing her trusty shotgun. She’d left it in the cupboard back at the apartment in Point Loma and in the confusion of their escape had simply forgotten about it.

They set off again, both Rhiannon and Emily walking just that little bit closer to one another as their eyes played over the red flora, watching for any threat it might hold. Thor seemed completely oblivious to whatever sound Rhiannon was hearing; he trotted along quite happily next to them. Emily placed a lot of trust in his far more acutely tuned senses, but, still, it would be foolish to only rely on the malamute for any kind of early warning of an approaching threat.

Almost ten minutes later, the twin humps of the hills now only a kilometer or so away, Emily stopped suddenly.

“Okay, I hear it now too,” she said.

A
See, I told you
look was Rhiannon’s answer.

It was a rasping, dry screech that rose in pitch and volume, then slowed and died away again. Emily listened for a good thirty seconds without speaking, but she could not isolate a pattern; it seemed completely random. It was almost like listening to something in pain, but she was sure there was a definite metallic sound to it; it didn’t sound the least bit organic. Again the screech resonated through the hills, fading in and out as if carried on the gusts of the wind that kicked up the debris of the I-40 at their feet.

They continued to trace the road upward, the sound bouncing off the hills on either side of them, filling the air, sometimes a slow drawn-out screech, sometimes a short raspy moan. It was the silence in between that was the most nerve stretching. Drawing the .45 from its holster, Emily found the weight of it in her hand less reassuring than she had hoped, but there was no way she was going to be caught off guard.

The wind picked up again and brought with it a prolonged ululation that lasted for well over a minute. If whales were made of metal, Emily thought,
this
would be the song they made. It was so eerie, she half expected to see a line of ghosts rising from the ground and marching down the hill toward them.

“Come on, let’s keep going,” she said to Rhiannon, who seemed more annoyed than scared. The sound grew louder the closer they got to the summit where the road cleaved the two hills.

“Jeez!” said Rhiannon as they reached the top of the incline and looked out over the stretch of land ahead of them, the source of the eerie, otherworldly sound now obvious.

Emily simply stared, an echo of the melancholy she had felt earlier returning.

Strung out in lines along the northern skyline like sentinels watching over the landscape stood row after row of wind turbines reaching back into the distance, each one probably a hundred meters tall. Emily thought she remembered the ones she had seen in photographs being white, but that, of course, would have been before the red rain. These were varying shades of red and black. Some were motionless, their rotors locked in place, others were nothing but reeds missing their blades, while still others’ rotors were bent and misshapen. But the majority still worked, in a fashion, at least, pushed by the constant breeze of the plain, singing a song of misery, a lamentation for a purpose now lost. Their rotors and bearings shot after two years of no maintenance, the turbines squealed and groaned like lost souls haunting the landscape, a sad aural testament to humanity lost. And for a moment Emily again wondered whether it was all worth it: the constant fight for survival, the need to try, to fight for some kind of a future for the remnants of the human race. Perhaps the paltry few humans left on the planet were like these turbines, outliving their usefulness, purposely striving to continue to be relevant in a world where their time was up and they should just lie down and die.

“That’s actually pretty cool,” said Rhiannon, staring at the dis
tant turbines, genuinely smiling for the first time in a very long time.

Emily turned to look at her companion, momentarily taken aback by how differently Rhiannon saw the same scene. She turned back and looked again at the rows of distant mechanical monsters.
Maybe
they weren’t the tombstones of a dead civilization.
Maybe
they were monuments to what could still be achieved, with a little perseverance.

“Yeah, you know what? It really is pretty damn cool,” said Emily with a nod.

And they continued on their way.

Rhiannon was the one who spotted the car.

About fifteen meters off the road, its roof was just visible above the tall red grass and, surprisingly, from where they stood, it looked like it might be relatively well preserved.

“Let’s take a look,” said Emily. They cut off the road and began to make their way toward the car, pushing the grass aside like they were Lewis and Clark. The vegetation seemed to have sprouted up over the last few days, almost doubling in height.
Maybe because of the rain
, Emily hypothesized as she tried to keep the vehicle in sight while not stumbling over the tangle of roots and new shoots sprouting up from the muddy ground. The growth was so thick it was hard to actually see more than an arm’s length ahead.

“There it is,” said Rhiannon, pointing at a patch of silver shining through the grass, just a couple of meters ahead of them.

It was a minivan; one of those vehicles they used to call “people movers” back in the nineties. The grass had grown up around it, and there were obvious signs that it had been here for quite some time. The tires had all but rotted away to little more than shreds, spots of orange rust over its silver paintwork gave it a leopardlike camouflage, and red lichen spores had spread over parts of the windows. Other than that, it looked to be in pretty good shape.

“The doors are all closed,” said Rhiannon as they approached, then stopped and pointed at the perfectly round hole drilled in the windshield. There had been at least one occupant inside, apparently. Red strands had grown up and over the hood and found the spider hole. They had wormed their way inside and inched down over the dashboard, winding their way around the steering column.

“I’ll check the inside,” said Emily, “you keep an eye open.”

Emily stepped up to the driver’s side window and wiped away some of the lichen, leaned in close, and scanned the inside. Keys were still in the ignition, and the crumbling paper-thin remains of an alien pupae lay across the driver’s seat and center console. A bottle of water sat in the holder of the driver’s side door. Emily gave a little gasp when she saw the two kiddie seats in the backseat, the safety straps still in place, a pink pacifier on the seat of one, a blue blanket on the other.

A tug of the door handle proved it was locked, so Emily made her way to the back passenger door, but that was locked too. Wiping away more crap from the back window allowed her to see into the rear storage space and spot the two leather suitcases there.

“Bingo!” Emily said, allowing herself a smile. Maybe she’d have better luck with the rear—

Thor stopped midstep, his muzzle raised, sniffing the air around them, his head moving from left to right as if he were unsure that what he sensed was really there. If a dog could ever be described as looking suspicious, Emily thought, this would be what it would look like.

“Rhiannon,” Emily called out as quietly as she could.

Rhiannon turned and looked at Emily, her face asking:
What?

Emily nodded at Thor. She didn’t even have to ask Rhiannon to come back. The girl was at her side in three steps, her hand on her pistol, eyes moving left and right, scanning the tall grass for any sign of movement.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary to Emily. Drizzle still fell silently from the ubiquitous gray clouds, the red grass hushed and shushed as their reeds rubbed together, swaying back and forth in a breeze that never seemed to go away, rippling over the plants’ surface as though it were a lake.

Thor turned and followed the scent for a pace or two around the flank of the minivan, then stopped again, staring into the wall of red. He let out a deep-throated growl, his head dipping low between his front shoulder blades.

Emily and Rhiannon simultaneously drew their weapons.

“See anything at all?” Emily whispered as she edged nearer to Thor.

Rhiannon shook her head.

Thor was frozen to the spot, his muscles tensed, ready to spring, his snarl constant now, like the low growl of an idling engine.

“Thor, get over here,” Emily ordered, then to Rhiannon, “We need to get back to the freeway.”

Rhiannon began to push her way through the grass back in the direction of the road.

“Thor! Get your ass over here now.” This time Thor complied, backing up until he was close to Emily before turning toward her.

Emily had taken her first step after Rhiannon when she spotted movement in the field. It reminded her of the wake of a shark moving through water, the tops of the vegetation shifting aside in a
V
shape as something moved toward them.

Rhill-tik-tik-tik-tikkkkkk!

The sound momentarily froze Emily in her tracks. It had come from her left. She turned in time to see another wake moving through the grass, this one headed toward Rhiannon.

Rhill-tik-tik-tik-tikkkkkk!

Whatever these things were, they were coordinating their attack, and they had the upper hand. They had to get out of the long grass and back into the open to have a fighting chance.

“Run!” Emily yelled and began to sprint as quickly as she could back toward the freeway.

The call came again:
rhill-tik-tik-tik-tikkkkkk!
This time it was in stereo as both creatures called out at the same time.

An image of another time loomed up in Emily’s mind: a forest, creatures intent on killing their prey. No way was she going to make the same mistakes this time. She sprinted as fast as her legs could carry her, more of a lope than a run, bouncing from one foot to another over the tangles of roots and sprouts of grass, like she was eight years old, and they were cracks in the pavement that went straight to Hell.

Rhiannon was ahead of her, using both hands to push the grass aside as she brute-forced her way to the road.

The second wake was angling toward Rhiannon, and Emily knew there was no way she was going to make it to the road in time. Halting, she leveled her pistol just ahead of the disturbance and pulled the trigger twice in quick succession. Two things happened next: Rhiannon reflexively screamed and ducked, stumbled, then fell to her knees. Whatever the creature in the grass was, it hesitated momentarily, then leaped, a black shadow cutting through the space above Rhiannon. Emily aimed her pistol again, expecting the creature to take its advantage and head back toward the prostrate girl, but instead it whirled around to Emily’s right and met with the second creature, the two wakes merging into one.

Emily caught up with Rhiannon just as she made it to her feet. She grabbed the girl by the backpack and pulled her upright, pushing her ahead as she tried to keep her eyes on the creatures and not stumble herself.

Rhill-tik-tik-tik-tikkkkkk!

The creatures were headed toward them again, this time at breakneck speed, the red grass parting like a whirlwind was blowing through it.

“Move it,” Emily yelled. Blacktop ahead, just a few more meters. She was in front of Rhiannon now, placing herself between the girl and the onrushing creatures, simultaneously pulling Rhiannon along. Then her feet were on the freeway and she had traction again, doubling her speed.

“Get to the median,” she ordered Rhiannon, pushing her in the direction of the guardrail running down both sides of the median. Emily hoped it would provide some kind of a barrier if either of the things in the long grass decided they wanted to come out and play.

Halfway into the center lane, Emily slowed, turned to face the grass, backing up as she did. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see Rhiannon hopping over the metal guardrail, kneeling and leveling her own pistol to cover Emily.

Rhill-tik-tik-tik-tikkkkkk!

The creatures milled around the border between the grass and the hardtop of the freeway, as though they were uncomfortable or unsure about coming out into the open space, and that was just fine as far as Emily was concerned. She had eight rounds left in her .45 and would prefer not to use them unless she absolutely had to. If they could simply get away from—

The edge rustled violently as the creatures moved closer.

Emily caught a glimpse of Thor moving past her left side, barking insanely as he rushed toward the edge of the field.

“No, Thor!” Emily yelled. “No!”

Thor skidded to a stop but did not come to her. Instead he stood his ground growling and barking just a few meters shy of the grass.

“Here, come here,” Emily yelled, edging forward, trying to identify exactly where the threat would come from.

“Get your ass over here, right now, mister,” Rhiannon yelled, suddenly at Emily’s side, and in a voice that commanded more authority than Emily had ever heard before. Thor, instantly cowed, stopped his barking, dropped his ears and head down, and ran toward Rhiannon . . .

. . . as the two creatures hidden within the tall grass now exploded outward . . .

They landed on either side of Thor, hulking four-legged creatures that looked almost bearlike save for their flattened heads and double row of twelve globular black eyes spaced in a semi-circle around the front of their skulls. The “fur” covering their bodies was as red and as long and thin as the alien grass they had hidden in. A fin, more like a sail, ran laterally along the spine of each animal’s back from the base of the neck to the end of the tail. As each thudded to the ground, they exhaled that same
tik-tik-tik
call, their heads shifting from dog, to human, to dog again, as if assessing which would be the easiest prey.

Rhiannon opened fire first, striking the creature on the left three times in the face, her hollow-point rounds exploding its head into bloody ribbons.

Emily brought her pistol up level with the second animal, expecting it to launch itself at them, then eased her finger from the trigger as, instead, it looked at its now-deceased brethren and wailed a long ululation as it scuttled to the dead creature’s side in an unmistakable act of surprise. Completely ignoring the humans and dog, the creature sniffed around the remains of the other animal, prodded the body with its snout, and, when it did not move, lifted its head and wailed . . .

Rhillllll-tikk
—

Crack! Crack!

Emily jumped in surprise as two shots rang out in quick succession, hitting the creature in the neck. It staggered once, then dropped to the ground, its head lying across the back of its partner, chest rising in deep, long pants, as it struggled feebly to regain its feet. A third shot from Rhiannon hit the creature in the temple and it too was no more.

Thor sniffed at the bodies of the two dead creatures.

“Get away from there,” Emily scolded, her mind still caught up in the interaction she was almost certain she had seen between the dead animals. She was already beginning to doubt herself, but she was sure that in those final moments the second creature had shown clear indications of disbelief, maybe even grief, at the death of the first. Why she was surprised by that, she did not know. Perhaps it was simply because it was easier to label everything created within this world as monsters without emotion, without anything other than the base instinct to survive at all costs. There were plenty of examples of animals before the red rain that mated for life, or exhibited grief at the loss of a member of its family or friend; why then, should the new creatures of this planet be any different?

And Rhiannon . . . what about Rhiannon? Emily was beginning to worry about her. She seemed absolutely unperturbed after killing the two creatures, barely even looking at them once she was sure they were dead. That was disturbing to Emily. Neither creature had seemed intent on attacking them; as she reran the images of the past few minutes through her mind, they seemed more interested in driving them away from the field. And they had only moved outside the long grass after Thor had made the first aggressive move, and, even then, they seemed more interested in holding their ground rather than attacking. Emily had to wonder whether there was a connection between the spent pupae she had seen in the minivan and these two creatures. Could it be—

“Do you think we should go back and check out what’s in those cases?” Rhiannon said, breaking Emily’s train of thought.