“All the things we could have taught them,” he said, and she wasn't sure whether it was her Vasily talking about them, or them talking about everyone else.
The scream of bombs falling. The roar of an explosion high above – a miss. A shower of rock cracking off the walls of the shaft.
The sea of tumblers closed around Demidov and she shouted, reaching for Yelagin. They covered her, lifted her, hurtled her along as the MiGs roared and she felt the first explosion, the impact, the flash of searing heat as the tumblers rocketed her into their tunnels. They burned, and her skin burned along with them, and then she felt nothing at all.
Just a pinch, at first. That’s all it was.
Then a scrape.
Demidov flinched, surprised that she was still alive, but in pain. Searing pain, scraping pain that made her moan and wince and whisper to God, in whom she had never believed.
Her eyes fluttered open and for a moment all the pain faded, just a little. The city around her – city was the only word – could not have been real, and yet she was certain it was no dream. For a moment she let her head loll from side to side, gazing at the beauty and wonder of its whorls and curves and waves, and the strange spires that looked more like trees, towering things whose trunks and branches were hung with thousands of tendriled creatures, all glowing with that pale, ghostly light. She and Yelagin had glimpsed it from far above, but now she was here in the midst of it. She was in their home.
Another scrape and the pain roared back in.
Groaning, Demidov looked down and saw them on her naked skin, a hundred of the tiny things, their tendrils caressing and scrubbing her raw, burned flesh.
“No!” she cried, trying to shake them off and then whimpering with the agony of movement, lying still as her thoughts caught fire with the horror of their touch.
She remembered the bombing, the blast that scoured the tunnel even as they rushed her away.
“They saved your life,” a voice said.
Demidov recognized the voice without turning toward him. She steeled herself, because she knew that when she let herself see Vasily it would look like him, but it wouldn’t be him. He surprised her by not speaking again.
Swallowing hard, feeling the gently painful ministrations of the tumblers, she looked to her right and saw him standing nearby, watching over her. They clung to his clothes and skin and hair. When he spoke again, she might have glimpsed one inside his mouth, but it might have been a trick of the light.
“Yelagin?” she asked. “Budanov?”
“I’m sorry.”
Demidov sighed, squeezing her eyes shut. “Why save me?”
Vasily’s reply came from just beside her. “I told you. They need an emissary.”
She opened her eyes and he was right there, kneeling by her head, studying her with kindly, almost parental concern.
“There are other shafts. Other holes. They’ve been opening up all over this area. Some will be destroyed, as this one was. But not all.”
Her burnt skin throbbed, but she could feel that the stroking of those tendrils had begun to soothe her. Slowly, she sat up.
Demidov exhaled. “Vasily…”
He ignored her, forging ahead. “They'll share some of their gifts with you,” he said. “Teach you wonderful things, including how it is possible for them to heal the damage to your flesh—“
“Vasily?”
“—and then you will carry their message to the surface.”
“Vasily!”
Blinking as if coming awake, he looked at her. Vasily had stubble on his face and his dark hair was an unruly mess, just as it always had been. For that moment, he looked so much like himself.
“What is it, Anna?” he asked, eyes narrowing, as if daring her to ask the question.
She almost didn’t. Just getting the words out cost her everything.
“Who am I speaking to?” she said.
Vasily did not look away, but neither did he give her an answer. Several seconds passed before he continued to describe the mission the tumblers intended for her to undertake.
Demidov tasted the salt of her tears as they slid down her scorched cheeks and touched her lips. She hung her head, Vasily's words turning into nothing but a low drone.
Her right arm had not been burnt. That was something, at least. She stared at the smooth, unmarked flesh.
A shape moved beneath her skin.
CARGO
B. Michael Radburn
The ship seemed to breathe, its steel hull groaning with every breath, every pitch and yaw heaving the deck beneath Corporal Gary Bronson’s feet. His stomach wasn’t exactly right just yet, but was a far cry from the constant puking he’d endured for the first three days at sea. For now, the fresh air on the June sea breeze kept him settled. He took his Zippo lighter from his pocket; rubbed his thumb across the inscription:
77th Infantry – Guam – July 1944
That was a year ago. He licked his dry lips. Strange, but whenever he looked at the engraving he could taste blood.
Bronson flicked the Zippo on and off in quiet contemplation. He was army, not Marine, and sure as Hell not navy, so he still wasn’t sure how he got this assignment guarding a cargo bay on a Cruiser heading to Okinawa. Hell, he didn’t even know what was inside. And what’s more, the USS Portland was crossing the Pacific without an escort. That was either sloppy, or the sign of a ship that wanted to keep a low profile. Sure the Japs were all but done, but there were still plenty of stray Nip subs out there looking for prey. Bronson shook his head at the thought, slipped his lighter back in his pocket, and looked out across the ocean’s swell, his eyes fixed on the horizon. He had an unopen pack of Lucky Strikes in his pocket, but his stomach remained too unsettled to smoke.
A hatch behind him opened with a rusty squeal, and Private First Class Gill Jefferies stepped out. Bronson knew Jefferies from the Mariana Island campaign, another small-town grunt finding his sea legs.
“Hey, you got a smoke, Corp?”
Bronson handed him his pack. “Keep ‘em,” he said.
Jefferies opened them, lit a cigarette, and leaned on the railing beside him. “Thanks,” he said slipping the pack in his breast pocket. “It’s your picket, Corp.”
They were pulling four-hour shifts and sharing the same windowless berth below the water line. “Already?”
“Time flies when you’re having fun.”
Bronson smiled, hitched his carbine’s sling over his shoulder and headed to the hatch. “You figure out what we’re guarding down there yet?”
Jefferies looked pleased, his gaze darting each way along the gangway before he spoke. “I think I do, Corp.”
“Oh?” Bronson paused in the hatchway.
“Well,” Jefferies said in a whisper. “I just heard a rumor from the cook that Uncle Sam has invented a bomb that can level an entire city. I bet that’s what we’re hauling to the airbase at Okinawa.” He tapped his nose. “Very hush, hush.”
Bronson smiled. “And so Uncle Sam decided you and I would be the best guards to keep this war-winning secret?”
“Think about it, Corp. That’s why we’re sneaking around out here on our lonesome without an escort. And as for you and me… Well no offence, Corp, but we’re the lowest common denominator in this man’s army. If the Japs got wind that a secret Cruiser full of Rangers is sneaking around their islands, we’d be dead in the water already.”
Bronson’s smile faded at the thought of all those whitecoated scientists coming and going down in cargo bay 3. And then there was Major Stanley, the only brassed-up uniform with a pass into the place. No ship’s crew – not even the Portland’s Captain – had clearance. Bronson shrugged. “A single bomb, huh?”