The Aeschylus

1

“They came with the dark,” Kate said. She set Dominik's diary on the ground beside her and looked at the darkening sky. It was almost too black to see now. The moon lay at the edge of the horizon, giant and red. It cast no light upon the fortress.

“Just a minute.” AJ had fashioned a dozen torches out of wood and old rags, and he was in the process of placing them around the camp. When he finished, he set them ablaze, one by one. “We should be able to see now, at least. What were you saying?”

“I said they came with the dark. When the sun set, that's when… that's when it happened.”

“When this place was destroyed.”

“Yes. When they came and took this place for their own.”

AJ cast a glance to the gate and beyond, looking at the fleshy shapes overhanging the hills. He studied them a long moment. “What else did it say?”

“They were prisoners here, that man and his family. The Carrion were smaller then, but they were studying it.” She paused and then clarified: “They were studying how to kill it.”

“And that stuff down in the tank, it does that?”

She nodded. “Better than acid.”

“Better than acid,” he whispered, looking back in the direction of The Aeschylus. “They've been here a long time. The Carrion, I mean. They've been here a long time.”

“Oh yes.”

“What do you think they are? I mean really. You read the book, Kate, what do you think? What did they think?”

At first, she was taken aback; she hadn't had a moment's breath to think about their situation. But when she stopped, she realized that wasn't quite true. She had been thinking about it, if only in the back of her mind.

“I think they're colonizing us.”

“Who? The Carrion?”

“No. Whoever sent them. Whoever put them here. You know about global warming, right?”

“Sure. The average temperature around the globe is heating up. Too many people, too much pollution.”

“No,” she said. “That might be the general belief, but it's not true. Global temperatures have changed only a fraction of a degree. Some parts of the globe have even gotten cooler within the last hundred years. But some areas have gotten warmer, a lot warmer. That's how both sides manipulate the data. It's because the data changes depending on what region you're talking about. The thing is, it's getting warmer in the places that matter. Places like the polar ice caps. Places like the south pole. The ice shelves are melting.”

A smile played across his lips. “The place you're going is a little far-fetched.”

“No!” She found her voice was emphatic and couldn't quite control it. “You heard Gideon. The sole purpose of those things is to generate heat. They're not trying to change things all over the earth, because they don't have to! They're changing things in the only places that matter. When the ice caps are gone, and the ice shelves melt—”

“Parts of the earth will flood,” he said. His voice was lower now, contemplative.

“Yes! And without the glaciers, the climate will change. It will change on a global scale, and not by a fraction of a degree, either. We're talking floods. Storms. Humidity and pressure changes. All of it! It all starts by affecting a few small areas, areas where no humans are supposed to be.” Her mind harkened back to all those months she had spent at Valley Oil, analyzing data for her job. Every time there was an outcry for green energy, for cutting reliance on gas-powered engines, every time the liberals protested drilling in a natural habitat, it was her job — and the job of her superiors — to sway the public. She knew the facts and figures of global temperature change all too well. The clean-energy representatives could never prove traditional fuel sources were to blame for isolated climate changes in other parts of the world. All the while, Kate had questioned whether or not she would live to regret her chosen profession, if maybe, just maybe, she had been wrong to write the things she did. Sitting here now, for the first time, she was afraid she might have been right. Because if there really was some other force, some other worldly thing responsible for warming the oceans at the ends of the earth, the worst was yet to come.

The whole purpose of creating a colony was to occupy it.

“Kate? You look like you spaced out, there.”

“Sorry. I just… I'm thinking, that's all.”

He did something she didn't expect, then: he pulled her close and hugged her. At first, she didn't know how to react, and then she threw her arms around him. How long had it been since she had really held someone? She couldn't remember.

They stood for a long moment, gripping each other in the primeval glow of the torches. When they broke apart, it was AJ who spoke.

“Dark or no, we don't have much time. If you're good here, I'm going to take a look at the boat and see if I can patch those holes. I'd just assume be ready to go when Dutch gets back.”

“Did you find something to patch them with?”

“Yeah. There are all kinds of goodies around here.”

“The Carrion don't take loot.”

He chuckled humorlessly. “No. No, they don't.”

With a rifle in hand, he was about to turn towards the hole in the fence. Then Kate spun with a sharp intake of breath. An approaching figure stumbled and then fell, clutching a wound in its side. Kate tried to shout, but no words escaped her lips. Dutch, she mouthed. Oh God, Dutch!

2

The cleft in the tentacle opened as Mason ran a finger down it. He put his hand inside, feeling the warmth like a man returning to the womb. I can heal in there, he thought. I can heal and be strong again.

His leg was broken. When he had jumped from the top of the boat, he had landed wrong, and the bone had given out around the bullet wound. AJ and the smart boy would be leaving, and a broken leg wouldn't get him there in time. He needed help. Help, from his new friends. The fact that he was still standing at all was a testament to the energy running through his veins. Now, he had an army with that kind of power at his fingertips.

“Boss,” Christian said. “What you do… Boss…”

The others were standing behind him, watching. He didn't know what he had expected. Well, maybe that wasn't true. He expected the tentacles to part, to move for him like The Red Sea before Moses. Moses… and The Red Sea… and The Exodus… and The Fire Telephone. He expected to walk right up the path, beyond the crater, to the front gates of the fortress. He expected to march inside and strangle AJ and the smart boy with him. The Carrion didn't work like that though, didn't move like that.

No matter. Path or no path, he would have his army. He and his men could take the long way around.

His men.

That turn-of-phrase meant little, now. The group was down to three. Peter was a rotting corpse, his brains scattered on the floor of the machine shop like candy. Christian was alive but of little use. The man had made it to the water in time to put himself out, but not before his brain cooked. He was naked now, the flesh melted around his chest and around his hips. His penis was a ruined, withered thing; it had fused with the side of his thigh in the heat. Even with The Carrion running through him, he could barely stand for the pain. Melvin was all right, but even he had taken shrapnel on the deck of The Aeschylus.

Foolish, they had been, all of them. Spoiled. Trained to rely upon a predictable enemy with predictable tactics. And that business in the machine shop with Dutch and Gideon, well, that had just been bad luck.

A bad luck day.

“Boss,” Christian insisted.

Mason reached out and steadied him. Soon, they would be through with this terrible place, and they would sleep. They were in this together.

To the end.

The tentacle stood before him, still oozing, still calling to him with its soft, inaudible whisper. He pulled the knife from his belt. They came to protect themselves, wasn't that right? They had come when Whitman's friends had tried to scrub them off of the ballasts. They had come when Jin had sliced one on the lower decks. They had come and taken the people in the long ago when an explosion had destroyed their kind.

Certainly, they would come now.

He cut sideways, creating a wound as long as his arm. A cloud of brown spores wafted into the air, a black tar ooze dribbling onto his boots. Seconds passed. And then, he felt it: a trembling, an anticipation. The whole of the island began to shudder and waken.

3

AJ came bustling out of the supply bunker door and dumped the leavings of his final haul to the ground: an old flame thrower, several boxes of ammo, and an MP38. The submachine gun looked like it had never been fired, and it probably hadn't. The rest looked in almost as good a shape, but it would be impossible to tell whether or not any of them would work until they were put to the test. All in all though, it was a damned good stash.

In the bunker next door, Kate was cleaning Dutch's wound with a bottle of alcohol. Like the guns, the bottle had probably never been used, but unlike the guns, it was probably useless, long since turned to water. Still, it was better than nothing. Dutch's wound looked bad.

Kate prodded him with a piece of cotton. “How could this happen? Where did they come from?”

“Out of nowhere,” Dutch said. “I didn't hear them.”

They both looked up as AJ waltzed in, grabbing a seat on a cot opposite.

“Are they like the others?” he asked. “They are, aren't they? It's the only way they could have survived.”

His friend blinked and then nodded.

AJ checked the pistol in his belt, then picked up a Karabiner rifle he had left on the floor. The flare gun Dutch brought was already tied to his waist. “I'm going to check the boat. Clean that gun there, and check the thrower. Make sure it works.”

“There's no fuel for it,” Kate said.

“Forget it, then.” He pointed to his friend. “Listen, he's in no condition to go back to the docks on foot, even if we help him. Maybe I can fix the RDF boat enough to get us there, though. If Dutch is right about that dory in the machine shop, we'll make the switch when we get there. All right?”

Before she could say anything else, he turned and headed out the door.

Once he reached the open air, he threw the rifle to the ground and barely stopped himself from slamming his fist into the bunker. But he didn't need a broken hand, not now, not with them counting on him. He settled for stomping the ground instead, kicking up earth hard enough to feel the pain in his feet.

I think we should split up.

He had known it would be dangerous. He had known there were risks. Dutch could always handle himself, but if there was one thing they had never expected, it was this.

Mason.

The sonofabitch was still alive, and he had waited for them to break apart. Bruhbaker might be changing, but he wasn't far gone enough to forget how to divide and conquer. Because of that, Gideon was gone, Dutch was wounded, and now, they needed him. In a million years, he would never have wanted this. He would never have wanted the weight of another person's life on his shoulders again. It's why he left his old life to begin with. It's why he put as much distance between himself and his military buddies. It's why he had spent so much time…

Drifting.

That's what Kate had called it. He had blown her off, but thinking about it now gave him pause. The truth was, he wasn't really good at anything he'd tried in the last fifteen years. Sure, he could work with his hands, he could guard an empty stretch of mine up in the shit-ass Andes. None of those things were him, though. AJ knew he wasn't put on this earth to fix things, to run an office job, or even to run security. What he was good at was fighting. What he was good at was survival. Maybe he didn't want to be responsible for anyone else, but his friends were counting on him, and so he would get them out, and he would help them survive. That's what he was put here to do. Maybe it was the only thing he could do.

Spitting bitterly on the ground, he picked up his gun and began heading towards the shore. It was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

4

Kate was a quick learner. She'd never picked up a submachine gun before in her life, but with Dutch's help, she had the thing disassembled and cleaned in minutes. She wondered if she should be doing something more for him— sewing his wound, for instance — but without a needle and thread, he would have to survive with a tight wrap and disinfectant.

As for Dutch himself, he hadn't given up. While she worked, he began loading rounds into the spare magazines. He had a handful packed and ready by the time she finished. Kate thought she had finally begun to see that flippant shell of his for what it was, though. It was armor. Not because he was sensitive, but because Dutch had seen some seriously scary shit in his day, and the flippant side was just his way of coping. He wasn't using that armor now; it looked like that armor was all used up.

She was about to go to him, to comfort him, when Dutch looked up with something like alarm. He turned towards the door and sniffed the air. “Oh no.”

5

The boat was on fire. AJ stood on the beach and watched it burn, the smoke disappearing into the dark. They were already here. As soon as he saw the flames, he knew. Worse, he knew the chances they had done something similar to the boat in the machine shop were good. But like it or not, they had to chance it. They had no choice now, no way out.

It felt too quiet. He thought he could see movement out along the edge of the sea, and he reached for the flare gun at his waist. Popping a round into the chamber, he looked up and down the beach. “Fuck it,” he said, and fired a round over the sands.

What he saw in the glow, some thirty feet away, was not a shape or an animal or a single member of the Black Shadow team. What he saw was an army of Carrion, a swarm of blackened figures, all padding up the shore as if some greater intelligence had commanded them not to be heard. The one in the lead was not Mason, but a disfigured, burned man AJ barely recognized. His skin was blotchy-black, his stomach cut and distended as if with child. The figure opened its mouth and shrieked.

And then they were all sprinting up the shore, tumbling and spitting and hissing as they ran towards him.

6

His body fell in a mass of arms and legs, rolling into the sand. Then all at once he was up, dashing towards the hole in the fence. He could hear their horrible footsteps behind him, splashing through the water as they ran up the beach. His mind flashed to Kate, to Dutch, to what he could do to protect them. What could he do with those things coming? He found himself screaming their names, calling to them as his feet pounded dirt. He stopped and fired a round from his rifle into the oncoming crowd, but it had no effect. They kept coming, sprinting and hurtling and charging up the beach.

Before he had time to breathe, he threw himself onto his back and pushed himself through the hole. Kate was standing on the other side, holding the submachine gun like she didn't know what to do with it.

“Can you fire that thing?”

She nodded, her eyes wide and blank.

Dutch stumbled from the prisoners' bunker carrying one of the Karabiners. AJ saw his friend had outfitted it with a German sniper scope and was about to ask him what the hell he was doing, when Dutch raised the rifle and fired. The first figure to make it through the hole fell at AJ's feet. Half a dozen more were crawling over his body before anyone could blink.

“Kate!” he yelled.

She pulled the trigger of her weapon, but there was only a click.

“Pull the lever!” he yelled. “Pull it!”

She fumbled with the cocking handle, her hands shaking so badly she couldn't get her fingers on it. AJ fired his rifle, taking one of the figures in the shoulder. Another leapt through the fence and charged straight for him. AJ cried out, but his voice was drowned in a hail of gunfire. The MP38 roared to life, slamming his attacker backwards and then chewing a line through the oncoming horde. They dropped like cattle, falling to the ground in a spray of black blood. A few of them kept coming on their bellies, crawling with their arms outstretched. Recovering, AJ walked over and shot the closest one in the head, then did the same to the next figure, and the next. When he was sure they weren't getting up, he grabbed Kate by the arm.

“You okay?”

She nodded, her eyes still swimming. Her left hand reached to touch the muzzle of the gun, as if she couldn't believe what she had done. She yanked her fingers back; the metal burned hot. “I've never shot anyone before.”

“You still haven't. Those things aren't people. Now, I want you to reload. Don't panic, all right? Think.”

“I don't know if I can—”

“Reload!”

As soon as she was finished, a bizarre look crossed her face. She looked back and forth, then dropped the gun and began jogging towards the other end of the base. Dutch shot AJ a glance, and both of them were about to start yelling when they saw what she was doing.

At the gaps in the walls, the Germans had placed strategic artillery cannons, 10.5cm Howitzers, the kinds with the long barrels on two wheels. They could have been used to repel a naval attack, had anyone cared enough to take the island by sea. Guess the joke's on them, AJ thought, wondering how surprised they must have been when Carrion ran through the inside gates.

“Help me!” Kate said. She had begun trying to pick up one the rear beams. The cannons could be pushed like a wheelbarrow, but only if you had four strong men… or a truck. When AJ looked at her, her eyes narrowed. “You told me to think, so I'm thinking! We have to plug that hole or they'll overwhelm us. Now help me!”

AJ lifted one of the legs, but the thing wouldn't budge. It was like pushing a semi. Then, Dutch was there. He grabbed the spare support, and by inches, the thing began to move. It went slowly at first, and then it began to pick up speed. The three of them jogged towards the hole, backs straining and legs heaving. AJ wondered if the women who lifted wrecked cars off of their babies felt the same kind of adrenaline.

Just as they reached the hole, the naked thing emerged from it, the thing that had once been Christian. It whooped a single, bone-chilling howl.

“Keep going!” AJ yelled. “Run through it!”

They barreled into the man-thing, and it fell backwards, the cannon toppling after. One wheel crushed the body where its testicles should have been, and it hissed at them, its tongue black and vermicular.

AJ approached the hole with his gun in hand, intending to finish it off. Then, he saw what was really in its stomach. Mason, who had known the man was useless, had stuffed him full of grenades.

“Get back!” he yelled. “Get back!”

The powder caught less than a second later. AJ felt his feet leave the ground, his body hurtling upwards and then slamming into dirt. When he looked up, he saw his two friends were kneeling next to a bunker unharmed. The walls near the fence, however, were blasted to chunks. So was Christian, who by all accounts, was now liquid at room temperature.

AJ stood and coughed. The fence was in ruin, the metal melted and the barbed wire in disarray. The wire would keep the three of them from getting out, but he had a feeling it wouldn't do much to keep The Carrion from getting in.

“We're trapped,” he said. “Mason just sacrificed his best man to keep us trapped in here.”

His hands fell to his knees, and he bent to catch his breath. He felt anger and despair tugging at him and refused to give in. When he looked up, he saw Kate had another one of those bizarre smiles. She was looking at the front gate, the place clogged and overgrown with black tendrils. He could see the calculation in her eyes. Before he could ask her what she was thinking, an ear-splitting cry thundered across the landscape. It was as if a thousand inhuman voices had sensed the time of the blitzkrieg was at hand.