Hive (18 page)

And then it did.

About the time he was ready to call himself a fucking lunatic, it did.

But before he saw it, he heard it.

Heard that weird, high musical piping that he knew was a voice. Heard it in his head and outside the cab, and in the pit of his mind he remembered that voice as one of authority, as the voice of a master and such was its dominance, he did not dare try to get away from it. He could feel the ice of Antarctica breathing in his belly, sending out breaths of frost that shut him down and made him watch.

Then he saw it.

It came drifting out of the shadows, a ghostly alien form with outspread wings and trembling tentacles and leering red eyes that opened up his brain like a tin can and reached in there with cold fingers. He screamed, he supposed he screamed, for something came ripping out of him that slapped him sure and hard across the face.

The thing came closer and Hayes pressed down on the accelerator of the tractor, those chained balloon tires catching and vaulting Hayes forward and right at the thing. And he felt something snap in his brain like a tree branch and the pain was immense. But then the tractor rammed into that thing and it broke apart into a thousand luminous fragments.

Then he was alone.

And the wind was just the wind and the snow was just the snow. But in his mind, there were shadows. Ancient shadows that called him by name.

T
here were things in life that could destroy you an inch at a time.

Booze, drugs, depression, tobacco. Hayes knew all about the tobacco-thing, because he'd been smoking for nearly thirty years now. So he knew that one and understood it and realized like anyone else that you lost a minute or five or whatever it was every time you lit up.

But he never saw it that way.

He looked on it by the months and years. That he was buying himself a plot of cemetery earth, shovelful by shovelful. But it didn't stop him and it didn't slow him down. The nicotine had him and it was a pure and senseless thing that was more than just a simple physical addiction, but something destructive in the soul that saw its own end and welcomed it.

So, he understood there were things that took your life slowly. But there were also things that ate away your life in big chunks, in heaping spoonfuls. And what was laying on the cot in the sick bay the next morning was definitely one of them.

Lind.

Or maybe not Lind at all.

Sharkey had him strapped down and he was sweating and feverish and his skin was bubbling like hot fat. Actually
bubbling.
You could say in your mind that they were blood blisters or water blisters, but that didn't cut it and you knew it. Just as Hayes knew it. What he was looking at, what Lind had become, was something akin to the little girl in that old scary movie. The one who puked up green slime and had the Devil in her.

“What the hell's wrong with him?” Hayes asked.

“You tell me,” Sharkey said. “I can't explain the lesions any more than I can really explain his state of mind. I would guess this is something psychosomatic, but -”

“Yes?”

“But to this degree? This is out of my league, Jimmy.”

She had wisely shut the door now to the sick bay and the outer door to the infirmary itself. Lind was just laying there, staring up at the ceiling, his mouth opening and closing. He was making a gulping sound in his throat like a beached fish.

Hayes swallowed down whatever was in him that made him want to turn and run. He swallowed it down and went over to Lind. He looked terrible. His flesh was white as a toad's belly and the oddest smell was coming off him . . . a sharp chemical odor like turpentine.

“Lind? Can you hear me? It's Hayes.”

The eyes blinked, the pupils hugely dilated, but nothing else. There was no sense of recognition. Anything. Lind's mouth snapped close and then his lips parted slowly. The voice that came out was windy and echoing, unearthly . . . almost like Lind was speaking from the bottom of a very deep well. “Hayes . . .
Jimmy
. . . oh, Christ, help me Jimmy, don't let them . . . .”

He stopped, making that gulping noise again. Although he was restrained, his hands were flopping madly about, looking for something to grasp. Horrified as he was by all of it, Hayes was seeing another human being in a terrible plight and he put his hand in Lind's own. He almost immediately pulled away . . . touching Lind was like laying your hands on an electric cow fence. Hayes could feel the energy, the electricity thrumming through the man. It seemed to be moving in waves and he could feel it crawling over the back of his hand.

Lind took a deep breath and that energy died away. Thankfully.

Now all Hayes was aware of was the actual
feel
of Lind's flesh against his own. It was hot and moist and repulsive. Like handling some reptilian fetus that had been expelled from its mother's womb in a breath of fevers. Lind's hand was like that . . . smooth, warm, sweating toxins and bile. It took everything Hayes had in him not to pull away.

“Lind . . . c'mon, old buddy, you can't go on like this, you -”

“I can hear you, Jimmy, but I can't see you, I can't see anything but this place, this awful place . . . oh, where am I, where am I?”

That voice was making a rushing, hollow sound that human lungs were simply incapable of. Hayes couldn't get past the notion that it was coming from very far away. It sounded like it was being accelerated across great distances.

Hayes looked over at Sharkey and she chewed her lip.

“You're in the infirmary, Lind.”

Lind's hand played in his own, felt pliant like warm clay, something that might melt away from body heat. “I can't see you, Jimmy . . . Jesus Christ,
but I can't fucking see you,”
he whimpered. “I . . . I can't see the infirmary either . . . I see . . . oh I see . . . “

“What do you see?” Hayes asked him, thinking it might be important. “Tell me.”

Lind just lay there, staring holes through the ceiling. “I see, I see . . . “ He began to thrash, a wet and tortured scream coming from his mouth. And it almost seemed more like a shout of surprise or terror. “The sea . . . there's only the sea . . . that big, big sea . . . the steaming, boiling sea . . . and the sky above . . . misty, misty. It's . . . it's not blue anymore . . . it's green, Jimmy, shimmering and glowing and full of sparkling mist. Do you smell it? That bad air . . . like bleach, like ammonia.” He started to gag and cough, moving in boneless gyrations like a snake, sweat rolling down his blistered face. He was madly gulping air. “Can't . . . breathe . . .
I can't fucking breathe, Jimmy, I can't fucking breathe!”

Hayes held onto him, trying to talk him down. “Yes, you can, Lind! You're not really there, only your eyes are there! Only your eyes!”

Lind calmed a bit, but kept gulping air. His eyes were huge and filled with tears and madness. His breath smelled unnatural, like creosote.

“Take it easy now,” Hayes told him. “Now just relax and tell me what you see. I'll help you find your way out.”

And Hayes figured maybe he could, if he could find out just where the hell this place
was.
Sharkey was watching him, neither approving nor disapproving of what he was doing. Just standing by with a hypo if it came to that.

“It's hot, Jimmy, it's hot here . . . everything is smoking and misting and those, those great jagged sheets of glass . . . sheets of broken glass rising up from the sea and shattering into light . . . that green, green, green sky . . . purple clouds and pink clouds and shadows . . . those shadows coil like snakes, look how they do that . . . do you see? Do you see? Shadows with . . . veins, veins . . . living shadows in the green misting sky . . . “

“Yes,” Hayes said. “I see them. They can't hurt us, though.”

“I'm sinking, Jimmy, don't let me go,
don't let me go down there!
I'm sinking down into the sea and the water is warm, so very warm and thick . . . like jelly . . . how can it feel like that? The depths, oh those glittering emerald depths. The sea lights itself up and it shows you things . . . and . . . and
I'm not alone, Jimmy.
There are others here, many others. Do you see them? They swim with me . . . swimming and gliding and rising and falling. Yes, yes! Them things, them things like in the hut . . . but alive, all of them alive, gathering at the city!”

It could have been the city beneath Lake Vordog, but Hayes seriously doubted it by that point. Wherever this was, it was no place man had ever trod. Some awful, alien world with a poison atmosphere. And the crazy thing was, although Hayes could not see it and was glad of the fact, he could
feel
it. He could feel the heat of the place, that thick and turgid heat. Sweat was running down his face and the air was suddenly close and gagging, like trying to suck air through a hot oven mitt.

Jesus.

Hayes was nearly swooning now.

He could see the heat and it was coming from Lind, rolling off him like shimmering heat waves from August pavement. Hayes looked over at Sharkey and, yes, her face was beaded with sweat. It was incredible, but it was happening.

Lind was like some weird portal, some doorway to those seething alien wastes. He was there, his mind was there, and he was bringing some of it back with him. Because now it was more than just the heat, it was the smell, too. Hayes was gagging, coughing, his head reeling, the room saturated with an unbearable stench of ammoniated ice. Steam was rising from Lind now and bringing the smell of that toxic atmosphere with him. It reminded Hayes of wash day back home when he was a kid. That eye-watering, nose-burning stink of Hilex bleach.

Sharkey wisely opened the door to the infirmary and started a fan going. It cleared the air a bit, at least enough where Hayes wasn't ready to pass out.

Lind was talking on through it all: “ . . . seeing it, Jimmy? You seeing it? Oh, that's a city, a gigantic city . . . a floating city . . . look how it bobs and sways? How can it do that? All them high towers and deep holes, honeycombs . . . like bee honeycombs, all them cells and chambers . . . “

“Are you still with them, Lind? Those others?”

Lind chattered his teeth, shook his head. “No, no, no . . . I'm not me anymore, Jimmy,
I'm one of them!
One of them spreading my wings and swimming and diving through those pink honeycombs and knowing what they think like they know what I think . . . we . . . we're going to . . .
yes!
That's the plan, isn't it? That's always, always, always been the plan . . . “

“What's the plan?” Hayes asked. “Tell me the plan, Lind.”

But Lind was just shaking his head, a funny light in his eyes now like a reflection from a mirror. “We're rising now . . . the hive is rising now . . . through the water and ice into the green glowing sky . . . thousands of us into the sky on buzzing wings, thousands and thousands of wings. We are the hive and the hive is us. We are the swarm, the ancient swarm that fills the skies . . . “

“Where are you going?”

“Above, up and up and up into them clouds and thickness, sure, that's where we go . . . up beyond into the cold and blackness and empty spaces. The long, hollow spaces, long, long . . . “

“Where are you going? Can you see where you are going?”

Lind's breathing had slowed now to barely a rustle. His eyes were glazed and sleepy and lost. The air in the room no longer stank like bleach. It was cold, very cold suddenly. The temperature plummeting until a bone-deep chill settled into Hayes. Sharkey killed the fan and cranked the heat up, but it was barely keeping an edge on that glacial cold. Hayes could see his breath coming out in frosty plumes.

“There are winds,” Lind said in a squeaky whisper. “We drift on the winds that carry the hive and we dream together . . . we all dream together through the long, black night that goes on and on and on . . . nothingness . . . emptiness . . . only the long, empty blackness . . . “

Lind stopped talking. In fact, his eyes drifted shut and it seemed he had gone out cold. He was sleeping very peacefully. He stayed that way for ten or fifteen minutes while Hayes and Sharkey could do nothing but wait. About the time Hayes decided to pull his hand free, Lind gripped it and his eyes came open.

“The world . . . the blue world . . . the empty blue world . . . this is where we come, this is where the hive goes now. Oceans, great oceans . . . black, blasted lands . . . mountains and valleys and yellow mist.”

Hayes knew where they were now. They could be nowhere else. “Is there anything alive there, Lind? Is there any life?”

But Lind was shaking his head back and forth. “Dead . . . dead . . . nothing. But the hive, the hive can seed it . . . create organic molecules and proteins and the helix, we are the makers of the helix . . .
we are the farmers, we seed and then we harvest. The primal white jelly . . . the architect of life. . . we are and have always been the farmers of the helix, the hive mind, the great white space, the thought and the being and the structure and . . . the helix . . . the perpetuation of the helix, the surety and plan and the conquest and the harvest. . . the makers and unmakers . . . the cosmic lord of the helix . . . the continuation of the code the helix the code vessels of flesh exist to perpetuate the helix only exist to perpetuate and renew the helix the spiral of being... the primal white jelly... the color out of space... “

Hayes tried to pull away now, because something was happening.

Lind's eyes were now black and soulless and malevolent, filled with a dire alien malignancy. They were black and oily, yet shining brightly like tensor lamps. They found Hayes and held him. And those eyes, those bleeding alien cancers, they did not just look through him, they looked straight into the center of his being, his soul, coldly appraising what they found there and contemplating how it could be crushed and contained and converted into something else. Something not human, something barren and blank, something that was part of the hive.