Swarm

This had to be what being buried alive felt like.

At least, that was the thought that went through Lincoln’s head while he half wiggled and half swam through the tight, winding cave tunnel. The inky blackness pressed in tighter around him than the jagged, sharp-edged rocks that clawed at his clothes and his skin. His damn flashlight was dead again and he didn’t have the time to try to beat it back into existence. Even with it, the water was chocolate soup he could barely see through and he could only hold his breath for so long.

            His toes fought to find purchase on the sharp, slippery rock to push himself forward. One hand felt around ahead of him for obstacles and openings with the useless flashlight floating around his wrist, while his other hand clung to the rusted harpoon gun he’d found on the beach. It worked, but he only had the two bolts. The one in the gun and the one he’d tied to his calf. He didn’t think it would save him if they found him. They hunted in packs. But if he could take at least one of the bloated bastards with him, it would be worth the trouble of bringing the harpoon along. If he managed to find a pocket of air or an opening, something, before he fucking drowned.

            Something thin and slimy slid along Lincoln’s left leg and his mind immediately conjured up an image of a flabby, grey face full of teeth and a clawed hand grabbing for his leg. He stifled the scream that threatened to steal what air remained in his lungs and kicked at the rocks. Some sharp edge tore into the bottom of his right foot and pain lanced up his leg. In anger and frustration, he punched blindly at the wall of rock below him, earning himself only more pain when the skin over his knuckles split and tore open. He thought he could taste the coppery flavor of his own blood along with the salt and seaweed and fish essence of the ocean soup that surrounded him.

            He was an idiot. Not that he didn’t already know that, but he really needed to tell himself off for just how damned ridiculous this plan of his had even been in the first place. What madness had he used to convince himself that crawling into an underwater cave was ever going to be a good idea? Just then, he couldn’t remember. It probably had something to do with the spots of light he thought he saw swimming in his vision just beyond the too-tight goggles that were cutting into the bridge of his nose.

   He only remembered that they were out there. Somewhere.

Hunting him.

            His lungs were shrieking for air. He needed to breathe. If Lincoln didn’t find something soon, he was going to pass out – if he managed to resist the instinct pounding away at his brain, demanding he gulp in the murky water – and then his body would breathe for him. He’d never wake back up. He’d just fill with water, just like those bloated grey-skins, and it’d all be over.

            Angrier by the minute, he dragged himself forward, the utter blackness of the world around him somehow steadily getting darker and narrowing, becoming smaller. That slimy thing slid by his legs again and he kicked at it with what strength he had left. Sharp teeth retaliated. They caught at the flapping skin on the bottom of his foot and tore off a chunk. He vented his fury in a roar that was a burst of bubbles and a pathetic sound that meant nothing to that slippery, biting thing.

            His abused hand broke the surface. Lincoln yanked his arm back against his chest, so startled by the sensation of warm air where he expected more cold water that his mind hiccupped on what he was meant to do about it. Desperate seconds ticked by before the realization slid sluggishly into place. With a last, wild burst of energy, Lincoln lunged upward and broke the surface.

           Fresh air rushed into his lungs and he gulped it down, coughing and sputtering on the salty water and blood that tried to choke him. He tried to stand, and cracked his head against a low, rocky ceiling. Cussing himself yet again, Lincoln’s numb fingers yanked at his flashlight. He set the harpoon by his feet in the shallow water to smack the useless light against his palm.

           “Come on, come on,” he growled at it, both his hands stinging, and then going numb from the impetus of each strike. “Fucking work you piece of shit!”

           Shouting at an inanimate object that couldn’t hear you should have been pointless, but the flashlight flickered. It was so bright to Lincoln’s eyes it was near blinding, but he kept smacking the plastic against his palm until it cracked, and then the light was finally alive again. He closed his eyes against the glare. They burned and tried to adjust. Even the red light that filtered through his eyelids hurt. He lifted up his free hand to shield his eyes, and then slowly cracked them open again.

           The rock above him was pock-marked with dozens of tiny holes eroded away by time and tides. Within them, tiny, hard-shelled things skittered about making a chittering noise he’d only just noticed. He shuddered with an instinctual revulsion for the creatures that ate whatever dead and rotting things found their way into the twisted maze of rock. Again, his mind did him no favors. Images of his own bloated and rotting corpse being scraped into thin tatters of flesh by the sharp rocks while those clawed, crab-like things chittered about within dozens of tiny holes that they’d carved out of his flesh rose up unbidden and unwelcomed to haunt him. The waking nightmare made his empty stomach flip.

           Lincoln belched and pressed the back of his newly shaking hand to his lips. Nausea roiled, but he didn’t have the time or contents to be sick, so he fought it down until it passed. Turning away from those creeping things, to his left he found a roomy cavern over a small pool of crystal-clear turquoise water. Where he shined the light, he could see straight to the white-as-sugar sand at the bottom.

           Around the pool where several ledges, and spying a safe place to drag himself out of the water, Lincoln rushed to get there. He cut his foot again when he pushed off the ledge of that narrow tunnel that had nearly killed him, but he didn’t care. Dragging the flashlight and the harpoon gun along in each hand slowed him down, but he was stubbornly disinclined to give up either one. All that mattered was hauling himself out of the water and flopping onto the flattest bit of smooth rock he could find.

           “I made it,” he told himself. Quietly, at first. As if speaking too loudly would make it untrue. “I made it,” he said again, louder and more confident. And then he shouted, “I fucking MADE IT!”

           Lincoln’s voice echoed back to him and he quieted again. He had no way of knowing if there was some other way into his refuge. Even if there wasn’t, he didn’t want them to hear him. He remembered his wounds, they pain of the damage and the salt coming back to him, and frowned. He didn’t want them to smell him, either. It was bad enough he’d already gotten blood in the water and had something take a chunk out of him.

It was what he got for scavenging at night, he told himself.

He should have known better.

He did know better, so why had he done it?

Hell, if he knew. He’d done it. That was all that mattered.

           The shipwreck had shown up weeks ago, but doing anything on the beach was dangerous. The grey-skins spent most of their time in the water, but they still came on land often enough for it to be a problem. Particularly for anyone that strayed close to the shore. Manila Bay had been the first to be swarmed by raiding packs when it had all started, and his unlucky ass had been right in the middle of it. Lincoln snorted at the thought. He’d had nothing but bad luck from the day he’d stepped off the damn plane. He shouldn’t have even been in the Philippines. He should have gone with his buddies to Vegas instead of tracking across the world to support his little jarhead brother in the Balikatan.

           “If I was the selfish prick you thought I was, I would have been gambling, drinking, and laying everything in sight while you were over here dying.” His resentment fizzled into guilt as soon as the words left his mouth. It was an old argument. A dead one. But it still gnawed on him.

           Lincoln rubbed the back of his neck and then raked his hand through his hair. Talking to himself had become a bad habit, but he hadn’t had anyone else to talk to in nearly a ten months.

The islands hadn’t fallen all at once. It had taken the better part of two years before the shit had really hit the fan. They’d put up a good fight at first, but they’d never really understood the seawater-swollen things that had crawled out of the ocean just to snatch people up and stuff them into the bloated, translucent sacks on their flabby torsos, and then vanish back into the waves. Their saggin, grey skin looked fragile from a distance, but he’d heard stories of armor piercing rounds bouncing off of them. Not that he believed the stories. But he had heard them. And he’d never seen a dead or wounded one.

           They weren’t as active during the day, but at night they swarmed. Packs of them. Anywhere from five to twenty would raid the shores, snatching people and carrying them back into the ocean. They kept to the shores at first, and then steadily moved deeper into the islands when people got smart enough to start moving inland. Lincoln hadn’t followed the herd. He’s stayed in a barricaded office in a parking garage under some resort while he dug out a hide further underground.

           There had been rumors of help on the way, but it had never come. Or it had tried, and failed. Most boats that had made it ashore showed up empty and bloody. The grey-skins always killed people with weapons. Tearing them open with three long, black claws. They usually went for the middle, spilling guts and organ meat and leaving their victim screaming for what seemed like hours before they finally died. Lincoln had decided it was just bait for a trap. If anyone went to help, they were snatched up or cut down, too.

           There had never been any planes. No bombing raids, at least from outside the island. Anything that had tried to leave had been brought down, but they’d never actually seen whatever shot them down. That was when the panic really set in and the fragile order the government had maintained had fallen apart.

Being underground at night helped. It had kept Lincoln alive, at least. So long as they couldn’t track him back to his hide, he was good. Rubbing himself down in dirt and grass and compost had seemed to do the trick. He’d gotten used to feeling constantly filthy and smelling… well… like shit.

Eyeing the torn mess at the bottom of his right foot,

Lincoln began to wonder if he’d become arrogant and cocky,

or if he’d just been trying to end things.

After all the chaos had died down, it hadn’t been too terrible. For a little while there, it’d been almost decent. He’d met a woman. Amilon? Amihan? He wasn’t sure what her name really was. He’d called her Amy. It had been easier to say and to remember. Lincoln had found her tits deep in mud. She’d gotten herself stuck trying the same trick he’d been using to stay alive. Or, so he had guessed afterward. He didn’t think it was an attempted self-delete because she fought hard to get herself out of it.

            Lincoln didn’t speak a damn word of Filipino, wasn’t even sure that was what their language was called. She’d barely had two English words to rub together, but they’d managed somehow. For a few months it was a matter of survival, each using the other. Eventually, sex had become a part of it. It was a matter of course. There was nothing better to do, so why not? He mentally patted himself on the back for not making the first move, but he had no delusions. It wasn’t like she’d loved him or anything. But he’d tried to be good to her. She’d been good to him. And sometimes it had been good. Other times it’d been mechanical, just going through the motions. But the human contact and intimacy had kept him sane.

           Then she’d fucked up. Amy had gone for that shipwreck. He’d told her to stay away from it, but who the hell knew if she’d even understood him? She got spotted by one of those random day-time raids. Lincoln had watched them run her down. They moved faster than anything he’d ever seen. She’d screamed for him. He’d jumped inside an abandoned car to hide as soon as he’d heard her shriek his name. She never did stop screaming. Even after they had snatched her up and stuffed her into one of those sacs, she kept screaming his name and a bunch of things he didn’t understand, but could guess at. He still heard her shrieking when he dreamed. If he dreamed.

He liked the dreamless nights best.

            After that, he’d been alone. Food had gotten harder and harder to come by. There was no animal life left on the island apart from bugs and small birds, and even those were becoming a rare sight. His body had withered around him, lost strength and mass a little more every day. Then he’d wandered out onto the beach at night and decided to check out that stupid motorboat Amy had lost her life for. The engine had been wrecked, it had been pointless to go poking at it and Lincoln had known that from the start.

           Then they showed up. A small party of four. They lumbered on all fours, bloated sacs flopping and sloshing along under their bellies. Each one the size of a mini-van on legs. Their faces were almost human-like, but too long from front to back with flabby jowls and split wide by mouths filled with rows upon rows of spine-like teeth. They reminded him of angler fish, but without the big, saucer-like eyes. Their eyes were the most desturbingly human part of them.

           He'd been lucky. He’d spotted them first. They were between him and the most direct path back to his hide, but he’d found the harpoon gun, a place to curl up among some rocks on the shore, and some seaweed and muck to coat himself in. So long as he was silent and they didn’t smell him, he’d be okay. He knew because it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d laid still and quiet and let them walk over his body, just part of the earth beneath their clawed hands and feet.

           But Lincoln had made a mistake. He should have known better. There were four when there should have been no less than five. It was that other one, smaller than the rest, that had chased him out over the rocks. He’d thought for sure that was it. Game over, he was dead. Then he’d walked out over thin air and fallen. Not far, but far enough that he’d had time to wonder if it was better to die by splattering his brains on the sharp rocks below or by the grey-skins.

           He'd hit water instead of rocks. That came with its own horror. He could have been surrounded by them. The cave had turned up empty, but they were at the edge of the hole above him, speaking to each other in those high-pitched, hissing noises and clicks. Lincoln didn’t wait. He found a hole to wiggle into and had kept wiggling until he was right where he sat, tearing off bits of his shirt and wrapping them around his foot to hold a tattered flap of flesh in place. It didn’t help at all. The fabric was too wet to soak up the blood and the salt water made the pain worse.

           There was nothing for it. It’d probably get infected. His leg would rot and he’d die of blood poisoning. Or maybe first of starvation. Lincoln looked around the small cavern and wondered how late it was and how long he had until daylight. If he could find his way back without drowning, he could hobble to his hide and maybe survive. That attempt at optimism made him laugh at himself. He wasn’t getting out of the cave and he knew it.

           He didn’t panic, or really feel anything about it one way or the other. He’d go to sleep. If he opened his eyes again, he’d figure out what to do about his situation then.

*          *          *

           Something tugged at Lincoln’s leg. It pulled him along the smooth rock shelf and he blinked, but there was only darkness. He blinked again to make sure his eyes were open. Only more darkness. The flashlight had died. Like an idiot, he’d left it on while he’d slept! Another tug at his leg. Lincoln reached for the harpoon gun, where it should have been by his left side. It wasn’t there. Frantic, he smacked at the rock, trying to find it. His fingers brushed the butt of the gun when he reached over his head, and then his body was dragged a few more feet along the rock and it was out of reach.

           Blind, heartbeat pounding in his ears like a drum, he kicked out with his good foot. His heel landed on something slick and boney. It hissed. Lincoln’s heart stopped. The grey-skins had found him. A scream lodged itself in his throat and he kicked again. The clawed hand on his leg let him go, and then grabbed around his torso to haul him off the ground. He kicked out with both feet and pain screamed up his right leg when he connected with something solid.

           The bloated bastard shrieked and dropped him. Lincoln held his breath as he fell for what felt like far too long. His shoulders hit first, but it was the back of his skull cracking against the rock a second later that slowed him down. Another one, or the same one – he had no idea – grabbed at him again. Lincoln’s body was limp and useless and it hefted him up effortlessly. He didn’t realize how cold he was until his body was pressed up against something warm and soft. It resisted him at first, and then slowly let him sink inside.

           Some part of his mind knew that this was it. He was going to die and there was no more reason to fight it. A warm fluid encased him and he held his breath. His eyes were still open, but there was nothing to see. There was a splash, the sounds of water rushing by and those hissing and clicking sounds vibrated around him. So slowly that he didn’t think it was real at first, the world got brighter. Then he realized it was sunlight. Early morning judging by the color and streaming through the ocean to make patterns on the white sand bellow him.

           Lincoln’s lungs began to burn, but he was busier with trying to make sense of his situation. He was in one of those bloated sacs. He reached out a hand and pushed. The membrane gave, but didn’t let him out. It felt tissue thin and fragile. He tried punching it. The grey-skin shrieked, but nothing happened. He hit it again, and again, and again. Still nothing. Anger built up to power his struggle and Lincoln thrashed and clawed and screamed his outrage at the bloated bastard. It amounted to just as much nothing as everything else.

           He took a deep breath. Choked. Took another. A cog slipped its gear and Lincoln stared at his hands as if the answers to the universe were written on his palms. His mind lurched and chugged to make sense of how he was breathing the warm fluid, but there was no making sense out of it. His body didn’t hurt anymore, either. He felt stronger than he’d felt in months.

Nothing made sense.

           The grey-skin turned, and something new took up what limited function Lincoln’s mind had left. The world ended on a knife sharp edge where white sand stopped and a yawning nothingness began. Like the blackness of the cave, but deeper and thicker and all consuming. The fathomless reaches of it were more than he could take. And then something moved inside it. Like a mass of giant, writhing sea snakes that he only caught hints of when they moved. He thought he saw an eye the size of a football stadium blink at him and another cog lost its grip and spun wildly. The grey-skins swam straight for it, and Lincoln’s mind broke.

           Screaming, he flailed inside the bloated sac, railed against his fate. He wasn’t going to die like this. He wasn’t going to go down there! He clawed at the sac, tried to bite at it, anything to tear it open. His hand brushed something sharp at his thigh. Lincoln looked down. The second bolt he’d tied to his leg was still there. Hope and a sense of victory made him clumsy, but he snatched the harpoon up into both hands and stabbed.

           The sharp point went right through that thin membrane. Lincoln screamed his triumph, delirious on the euphoria of victory. The grey-skin shuddered around him and cried out a sound that was almost human while Lincoln stabbed over, and over, and over again. That warm fluid was leaking out and cold, salty ocean was rushing in.

It didn’t matter.

He kept stabbing.

He kept screaming.

And then he was out.

In his madness he’d screamed his lungs empty and now there was black, endless ocean and a writhing mass beneath him. Lincoln looked up toward the surface, to where light existed, and with burning lungs and cramping muscles, he swam as hard as he could for that light. Grey-skins swam around him, more than he’d known where there. They were everywhere, but they looked different. Without their sacs swollen full of that warm fluid, they were lean muscled and graceful, even elegant, as they swam. Were human eyes had been, their lids were drawn back and wide open so that massive eyes took up all of their face that wasn’t grinning mouths full of teeth.

           They shrieked at him, but they stayed away from him. Lincoln thought it was about fucking time. The bastards should have learned to be afraid of him a long time ago. Maybe ripping his way out of one of them had made an impact.

           A sucking sensation of water rushing past him made Lincoln’s stomach drop out his ass and leap into his throat at the same time. The surface was still so far away, and something dragged him deeper. Terror broke through that sense of victory and he clawed at the ocean around him, kicked at it with every ounce of hate and horror he had left. Something huge moved behind him. He could hear it sliding through the water. It was like the darkness from below had slithered up to claim the world around him, and then he was being pushed up instead of pulled down.

           A frantic kind of hope made Lincoln laugh and suck some of the salty ocean into his lungs to choke on. The light above started to fade. He thought, at first, that he was drowning. It was the lack of oxygen finally claiming him. Then he noticed the darkness had a shape. Jagged, like thick thorns that framed the top and bottom of the world. It was as they came together and the last of the light vanished that Lincoln realized the strange shapes were shadows.

Shadows cast by rows of wide, shark-like teeth

that closed without a sound.