John Shirley - Crawlers

SELECTED WORKS BY JOHN SHIRLEY

Novels

A Splendid Chaos
Eclipse
Eclipse Penumbra
Eclipse Corona
Wetbones
City Come A-Walkin
The Brigade
And the Angel with Television Eyes
Spider Moon
Demons

Short Story Collections

Black Butterflies
Darkness Divided
Really, Really, Really, Really Weird Stories
Heatseeker

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Shirley is the author of more than a dozen books, including Demons; City Come A-Walkin; Really, Really, Really, Really Weird Stories; and the newly reissued classic cyberpunk trilogy A Song Called YouthEclipse, Eclipse Penumbra, and Eclipse Corona. He is the recipient of the Horror Writers Associations Bram Stoker Award and won the International Horror Guild Award for his collection BlackButterflies. Shirley has fronted punk bands and written lyrics for his own music, as well as for Blue yster Cult and other groups. A principal screenwriter for The Crow, Shirley now devotes most of his time to writing for television and film.

Visit the authors Web site at www.darkecho.com/John Shirley.

Some people are not meant to be in this world very long. They know it, too, in the back of their minds. Maybe theyre uncertain, shaky in the way they live life. Maybe theyre fragile. Others are the opposite extreme, too reckless. Some, like Ray Burgess

Who was only twenty-seven years old, that night, in a remote Nevada lab

Some are just prone to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Death seems to know whos going to be the antelope that strays too far from the herd.

Right now, Burgess was crouched behind an overturned metal table in the break room, the tables stainless steel legs projecting away from him toward the door. The lights of the lab were still burning, out there, but here he huddled in the dark next to a soft-drink machine that made him twitch every time it hummed and clicked inside itself. A little light came from the slightly opened door and from the softly suggestive glow of the vending machine.

His right-hand thumb was clamped between his teeth, and every time he heard any kind of metallic noise or the sound of something moving, from the next room, he bit down hard to keep from yelling. It was crumpled and torn, that thumbnail. Pretty soon blood would be seeping out.

He tried to see the luminous face of his watch, but he had his glasses on, thick glasses for his severe nearsightedness, and they made it harder to see things very close. He didnt want to move enough to lift his glasses. He was afraid if he moved, he might bump the table, might make some kind of sharp noise. Did the watch say 9:10?

If it was 9:10 P.M., then hed been crouching there for more than two hours.

He wondered if Ahmed had bled to death, in that time.

Chances were, Ahmed was pasted to the floor by a sticky puddle of his own blood by now.

He pictured a skin on the pool of Ahmeds blood, like on cooled cocoa. He had always liked Ahmed; the little guy had a sense of humor that was balanced by a kind of trusting optimism. He might still be alive.

If I could get out, get someone to take care of Ahmed.

Probably not going to happen. The damn things had of course cut the phone lines, right out of the box. They might even have incorporated the phone linesfused them with tissue, somehow.

Hed never make it to the phone down the hall. And thanks to the Dazzling Geniuses, as Ahmed called them, in Security, they werent allowed to have cell phones in Lab 23. It had never made sense, and now not being allowed to have cell phones made it more likely, it seemed to him, that he and Ahmed were going to die.

Optimistic Ahmed.

Ahmed is going to bleed to death, if he isnt dead already, and I...

Ahmeds death might be merciful, really, considering the way Kyu Kim had died. The things had picked Kyu because he was the one who opened the Development Box. He was the one whod discovered that they had disengaged the labs safety circuits.

The breakouts had divided Kyus body into five parts, to use as many muscle groups as they could commandeer. Which meant Kyus legs had begun to thrash and work themselves free from his torso, like snakes being born from eggs. And then his limbs had started moving around the room on their own. The torso, with the head still attached, went humping off in another direction.

And Ahmed had fallen in front of Kyus reorganized body, and Kyus new jaws started that snap-snap-snapping like electric lawn clippers and ripped into Ahmeds sidebefore Ahmed had pulled the sterilizer down, onto Kyus head... and smashed it. Smashed Kyus head broken and bloody.

But Kyus body wasnt dead. Burgess could still hear it thrashing in the next room, now and then, under that big metal cabinet.

Ahmed lost blood fast, lost consciousness when the blood went, and Kyus eyeless limbs proved to be more or less useless to them. The breakouts were always experimenting, ironicallyso theyd abandoned Kyus parts and started some other kind of interconnected mutual e-construction. Wasnt that the term the Pentagon boys had come up with?

Something went click-click in the lab next door, and Burgess gnawed more deeply into his thumbnail, beginning to taste blood.

He told himself, again, that he had to sit still till morning. Dr.Sung will have his daybreak shift at the lab. Hell put out the alert, andmaybe the Secure Penetration Team will find a frequency, or set up a decoyorsomething.

Or would they just abandon him? Ahmed had said something about how they might have to firebomb the Facility, under certain conditionsas if it was a bioweapons lab. It almost was a bioweapons lab. But then again, it wasnt. They hadnt developed a virus or bacterium; not one.

He had to pee and it was getting worse. Could he hold it? Could he pee on the floor without the breakouts hearing? How good was their sense of smell?

He had taken the wrong road in life, the fatally wrong road, signing on for the Facility. He knew that now. But there was no excuse for it: Everyone at the National Security Agency Advanced Research Facility knew that once you were in the Facility, you were committed.

You cant just say, Ive decided to go into something else. If you thought that Chinese scientist at Lawrence Livermore had it bad, just try walking out on the Facility. Suddenly youd be an enemy agent.

Not like there hadnt been warnings. There had been rumors. Things had been going wrong before hed arrived. Thered been more than one infection. Thered been a Lab 21 and a Lab 22, dedicated to the same project, and theyd both been quarantined. But the new protocols were supposed to be more than enough. Micro-womb integrity, they liked to say. Burgess had shown just the gift for tunneling-electron manipulation; and they had offered the two-hundred-grand-a-year starting salary hed needed. It had seemed right.

But hed known. Hes always known that life had it in for him. Hed been pretty sure of it since his mother had joined that Christian end-times bunch. The cult had sucked her right in, like some kind of mutually incorporating program. Hed watched her drive away with those guys. Thin, underfed, faintly smiling guys in prim, cheap suits. And since Dad wouldnt have anything to do with them, he knew then hed never see her again.

Right now, he really, seriously had to pee.

He peered at his watch, squinting. Pretty sure it said 9:12. Time was... well, it was crawling. The breakouts were so methodical, it wouldnt be long before they came in. Theyd divided things up into sectors by now, probably, and made their assignments. Theyd come when it was most efficient.