Sullivan - The Parasite War

The room was dark. Just enough moonlight slanted through the broken windows for Alex Ward to make out the debris littering the floor, chunks of ceiling plaster lying in heaps amid the wrecked office furniture. He had gone from one floor to the next, until he had ascended almost to the top of this abandoned insurance building. He was looking for somethinganythingthat he could sell in the sewer, but the lower floors had been picked clean. His best chances were up high in these old executive suits, where he might find a bottle of liquor behind a wall painting, or a gold pen and pencil set, something he could trade for food or ammunition.

Besides, there werent likely to be any colloids up here. He couldnt afford to waste ammunition, so it was best to hunt where attacks were infrequentinfrequent, but not unheard of. Alex fondled the barrel of his Ingram 9mm to reassure himself.

He overturned some plaster lumps with his boot. Underneath them was something with a shiny edge that might have been glass or metal. He reached down and gently pried it loose. Dusting it off, he held it up to the moonlight.

It was a photograph in a gilt frame, showing a man and two young children smiling through the cracked glass. They were probably the husband and kids of the executive who used to inhabit this office. Most likely all four were dead by now. If they werent, they wished they werethat much was certain.

Alex sighed and stuffed the picture under his shirt, figuring the frame would be worth something.

He walked slowly, stepping around a yard-wide hole in the floor, and entered the adjoining room. The windows, ten feet high from floor to ceiling, had long ago been smashed, and a cool breeze stirred the dust on the floor, piling it against the wainscoting.

Hundreds of feet below, the dead city streets were a blackened labyrinth, littered with insectile wrecked cars. Few buildings stood intact. The crumbled ruin of Independence Hall aroused memories of Philadelphia as it had been, before the colloids came. The old city had been vibrant then, but those days seemed as distant as a dream.

Something flapped out of the shadows, flying straight at his face from the floor above. Its unearthly shriek echoed in the enclosed space as Alex crouched and flailed at it with the Ingram. It sailed past his head, stirring the short hairs on the back of his neck, and smacked onto the wall beside him. It clung there, pulsing in the moonlight, a four-foot-long, shapeless thing.

It would be on him again in a second if he didnt kill it. Alex fired a burst and the thing exploded in wet, stinking chunks. Hot liquid splattered onto his clothes and skin, as bits of the nonshape fell quivering to the floor.

Before he could take a breath, something snaked around his right ankle.

Jesus! He jerked his foot away before the pseudopod could get a purchase on him. Hopping backwards, he turned and nearly stepped into a viscous hump, its snake-like pseudopods whipping as it advanced. Behind it was a dripping coil that writhed like a worm in pain.

Time to go.

The Ingrams flash strobe-lit the room, its roar deafening as spray from the two monsters soaked his ragged clothing and burnt his skin. The acrid smell of gunpowder mingled with the colloids stench. Before the pieces of the three things could regroup, he sprinted toward the door, skidding on the slime and nearly falling. Heart pounding, he managed to stay on his feet and get into the outer office, where he was confronted with more colloids than he had ever hoped to see in one place. Leaping, squirming, burbling, chittering, gurgling, screamingthey came at him.

He fired, muscles straining against the recoil, and backed away as the colloids were torn to pustular shreds by 9mm slugs. The monsters wailed hideously, pieces of them spinning through the dusty air and slapping against the walls and floor. More of them closed in on him through the outer door, and the quaking remains of those hed shot were starting to come after him, too. He couldnt kill them, could hardly slow them down. There was only one way out.

Behind him was the hole in the floor. It was ten or twelve feet to the lower level, and there was no telling what was down there, but he had no choice. He jumped.

He landed on his feet and fell to his knees, rolling over in plaster, wood, and masonry. He struck a jagged board, and a nail protruding from it ripped his clothing, tearing the skin on his back. Somehow he held onto the Ingram and managed to stand. His shin struck a fallen I-beam and he groaned, but he was still able to walk.

Looking up, he saw a bloated thing pulsing on the edge of the jagged hole. He kept the Ingram trained on it as he backed out of the room. No use wasting ammo if it stayed where it was.

There was nothing moving in the corridor. He had to get to the stairwell before the colloids did. Their hesitation wouldnt last long. He had allowed them to follow him upstairs and corner him, and it was only by dint of sheer manic energy that he had escaped.

The dark maw of an open elevator door was between him and the stairwell. Alex winced as he pressed his wounded back against the wall and slid by, facing the elevator. A colloid oozed out and slithered toward him. He fired, fingers and forearms aching, and sprinted for the stairwell, adrenaline pumping as caustic spray and his own hot blood soaked into his shirt. He took several stairs at a time, leaping down to each landing with the Ingrams barrel out in front of him, in case more colloids were waiting. His footsteps echoed in the stairwell. As he glanced over his shoulder to see if they were coming after him, he nearly stepped on a flowing mass of living tissue. The thing had crawled out from its roost behind the stairs, and he had surprised it as much as it had surprised him. Sensing his presence, it recoiled like an amoeba stung by electricity. Alex pointed the Ingram at it as the colloid pooled on the landing. He squeezed the trigger. The firing pin clicked on an empty chamber.

He was out of ammunition.

The colloid began to rush toward him, a coughing, gelatinous stream of gray tissue. It moved faster than it had any right to, but not fast enough to catch Alex. Grasping the handrail, he vaulted onto the stairs below, unable to keep his footing. He slammed down onto the next landing painfully. Dazed, he looked up to see the colloid descending the stairs like a sickly, slow-motion waterfall.

It would be on him in a second if he didnt move. Behind it were four or five more colloids, and he heard the liquid sounds of still others, just above. Alex somehow made it to his feet and bolted, taking the stairs three at a time.

It took a lifetime to get to the bottom and out into the night air. He hobbled down Market Street until he found a grating. Lifting it, he dropped it onto the cracked pavement with a clang. He climbed down into the filthy sewer water, grateful to have the burning spray washed from his body, and made his way west, away from the building where he had been attacked. By now, the street above was swarming with colloids. It was pitch dark down in the sewer, but it was the only place the colloids wouldnt go. They avoided any place where there was a lot of water.