Multitude, p.14
Multitude, page 14
part #2 of Dimension Space Series
Beside her, Vaughn nodded. “I know. So how far into the future would we have to go for things to change this much?”
Angela froze, stopping mid-turn as a rustling noise suddenly came from the trees on her left.
Vaughn seized up as well, his hand clamping down on hers like a vice.
A moment later, two robots stepped onto the bluff. They looked identical to the ones she’d seen in the subway stations.
For a long, unreal moment, the two couples—one biological, one synthetic, both pairs holding hands—simply gaped at one another.
Pinned by fear, Angela stared at the apparent robotic lovers. Her eyes fell to their clutched, four-fingered graspers. They were holding hands, just like her and Vaughn, but instead of one hand, the quad-armed machines held two.
The robots broke the stalemate. All eight of their combined arms raised as if in slow motion. A mechanical digit extended from each of their hands, and they pointed at her and Vaughn in an all too human gesture.
Then Angela flinched as a high-pitched siren shattered the silence.
Chapter 17
Vaughn darted between two trees, dragging Angela behind him. The screech of the robotic screams filled the air, the sound chasing them down the tree-covered hillside.
Angela tried and failed to pull free of his grasp. “Let go of my hand!”
A branch swung back and slapped her in the face before she could block it.
“Dammit!” She yanked her hand back again and finally freed it.
Vaughn looked over his shoulder.
She pointed ahead. “Go! I’ll keep up.”
He nodded and pushed deeper into the trees.
Angela followed close on his heels, all the while dodging swinging branches.
They emerged into a small clearing and ran across it. As they reached the trees on its far side, Vaughn shouted over his shoulder. “Are they following us?”
Angela glanced back. The slope behind them looked clear. “No! Not yet, but I can still hear them.”
She turned forward just in time to catch another branch to the face. “Shit!”
“What?”
“Nothing!” She pointed down the hill. “Just keep going!”
A moment later, they burst out of the tree line and ran onto the beach. Not slowing, they sprinted for the waiting skiff.
Vaughn began to pull ahead of Angela. Reaching the small boat, he dropped a shoulder and plowed into its inflated rubber hull like a football lineman hitting a practice sled.
The skiff lurched backward and slid into the water. Vaughn jumped onto its bow just as Angela caught up to him.
This time, she accepted his offered hand. He pulled her onboard and then jumped behind the controls.
A moment later, the boat surged backward as it pulled free of the sandy bottom.
Looking across the beach, Angela saw the two robots emerge from the trees.
She pointed. “We’ve got company!”
Wildly waving all eight of their arms, the robotic pair continued to scream at them. At first they had sounded like sirens, but now they seemed almost organic.
Having finished backing the skiff away from the shoreline, Vaughn placed the boat in drive and hammered its throttle. The electric motors thrummed, the bow surged into the air, and then the dinghy sped them away from the beach.
Angela looked back.
The robots had stayed close to the trees. They seemed reluctant to venture onto the beach. She had a moment to wonder if they feared damage from the sand or the salt water, but then she saw more movement. Several additional robots had emerged, some in pairs, others in trios, and a few appeared to be solo.
“Vaughn!”
He glanced over his shoulder and then did a double take.
“Oh shit!”
Dragging his eyes from the sight, he looked ahead and turned the boat, aiming it straight for the waiting yacht. It floated idly in the middle of the bay, about a mile ahead of them.
Glancing back at the gathering bots, Angela shook her head. “What the hell are we going to do?”
“Let’s just get in the yacht and head out to sea. Maybe we can get clear of the area before they call for help.”
Angela pursed her lips. She imagined these machines didn’t need things like telephones or walkie-talkies to call for help. They probably had built-in communication devices.
She glanced back at the beach and then shook her head. “We need to run for cover. The yacht is too big. We’ll stick out like a sore thumb!”
Vaughn pointed at the robots that now crowded the tree line. “The entire island might be crawling with those things.” He shifted his gesture to point at the yacht. “We need to get on that and head out to sea.”
Angela shook her head vigorously. “They’ll see us.”
“They already do, but not for long. We’ll get out of here, head southwest. We’ll be out of sight over the horizon before someone comes looking.”
Angela glanced back at the still gesticulating robots and then nodded reluctantly. “Okay.”
She flinched and then stooped, as a tremendous thunderclap cracked the clear morning air. It sounded as if it had come from directly above their speeding skiff.
Angela threw up her hands defensively. She looked overhead and saw a stubby, wingless ship rocketing straight toward them.
“Vaughn! Watch out!”
He looked up and flinched, causing the boat to rock.
The white vessel slowed rapidly. It matched the speed of the boat, flying a few feet above their heads. Perfectly pacing the rushing dinghy, the egg-shaped craft hung silently above them, blotting out most of the sky.
“Hold on!” Vaughn shouted.
He yanked the skiff’s wheel left and then right, trying to throw off the vessel, but it perfectly matched each jink of the boat.
A brilliant fan of white light shot down from the center of the strange ship’s belly. It looked like the flat beam of a laser show. The bright wedge of white light held steadfastly, blocking their forward view.
Squinting and shielding his eyes with a raised hand, Vaughn jerked the wheel back and forth in another futile attempt to throw off their pursuer, but the egg-shaped ship held fast above them. The fan of light that was streaming from its belly remained in place as if anchored to the front of the boat.
Angela reached out and grabbed the skiff’s throttle and yanked it back, hoping that the sudden drop in speed would cause the craft to lose lock.
It didn’t work.
The vessel matched the boat’s deceleration, and the beam held fast.
Angela released the throttle and turned sideward. “Jump!”
She launched herself overboard, diving headlong for the water. In her peripheral vision, she saw Vaughn jumping from the boat’s opposite side.
Then, in a flash, the light washed over her falling body.
Darkness swallowed Angela.
All noise vanished.
She cried out in pain as her extended arms and upper body slammed into a hard surface.
Angela rolled painfully and then came to rest facedown. Gritty dust filled her mouth.
What the hell? Had she landed on a sandbar?
Her stomach lurched as a godawful smell nearly overwhelmed her.
Coughing and wheezing, she rolled onto her back and looked up.
The ship and its beam of white light were gone. The egg-shaped vessel had disappeared. It no longer hung overhead.
Still coughing, Angela stared into the suddenly empty sky. Confusion twisted her features.
The sky was … wrong, still cloudless, but now brown, as if filled with dust.
Hearing Vaughn coughing and hacking, she turned to see him sitting up. He had landed a few feet away. Rust-colored dust covered him from head to toe.
Sitting up, Angela saw that grime also covered her.
They looked around and then exchanged confused glances.
The water was gone, too.
This wasn’t a sandbar.
Angela’s head was spinning.
Her heart raced. She scanned the air and then the horizon, frantically looking for the water, the skiff, their yacht.
All of it was gone.
In an instant, the indigo atmosphere and its underlying ocean of blue water had morphed into brown land under a dust-choked, ochre sky.
A series of low hills surrounded them. Beyond those, the craggy peaks of tall mountains scratched at the soiled sky. The range stared down on them from above the thick, dusty haze that obscured the base of the mountain chain.
Somehow, those distant peaks looked familiar.
Vaughn stood. Covered in dust, he walked over to her, his eyes darting left and right beneath knitted brows.
Angela accepted Vaughn’s offered hand and stood.
“Where …?” He paused and looked around. His voice had a panicked edge that unnerved her further. Finally, he locked eyes with her. “Where the hell are we?”
Angela wrinkled her forehead. “I-I don’t know!” After a quick sideways glance at their surroundings, she looked at him. “I’m scared.”
Vaughn released a short laugh that hitched. “Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger.”
Another wave of nausea washed over Angela. “That smell … It’s horrible.”
Nodding, Vaughn leaned over and spat. “Smells like death.” He pointed over her shoulder. “Let’s head to the top of this hill. Maybe we’ll see more from there.”
Angela spat as well, then she nodded. “Okay.”
As she began to walk, something crunched under her foot. She stopped and glanced down. Splinters of broken white twigs protruded from under her hiking boot. Scanning the ground, she saw several more of the small, desiccated branches sticking out of the dust around them. They appeared to cover the entire hillside. The brittle twigs only protruded a couple of inches above the sandy soil, but their coat of dust made them difficult to discern.
“Are you okay?”
Angela looked up and nodded. “Yeah.”
Vaughn was standing farther up the hill. He waved her on. “Let’s see what we can see.”
She caught up with him, and they continued up the hill. With each step, more of the weathered branches crunched underfoot.
Her eyes returned to the distant mountain peaks. They still looked naggingly familiar.
Could those be …
Angela shook her head, refusing to complete the thought. It was too crazy.
Halfway up the hill, she began breathing heavily. She felt short of breath.
Panting beside her, Vaughn appeared to be having the same problem.
A few moments later, they finally crested the rise. Its far slope had significantly more of the brown scrub brushes. The short scraggly branches of the withered plants protruded everywhere. Softball-sized rocks dotted the ground on this side of the hill.
In her peripheral vision, Angela saw Vaughn scanning the horizon. Then his body tensed. “Oh shit. We’re back!”
Angela looked up from the field of dead plants, and then her breath hitched. “Oh no …” She shook her head. “No, no, no. This can’t be.”
Wide-eyed and now panting, she stared at the all-too-familiar range of mountains.
“I’m afraid it is.” Vaughn pointed. “Those are definitely the Alps.”
Angela slowly nodded.
Somehow, they had teleported back to the Geneva area or at least some hellish version of the Franco-Swiss border town. However, unlike that verdant, forested region, the land here offered nothing green. It appeared dead in every sense of the word.
Considering the smell and their respiratory difficulties, Angela was also starting to think that the air was dead as well, its oxygen level too low.
A tan disc slowly rose from behind the easternmost mountains.
She watched it rise for a moment. Then recognition struck. “Is that the sun?”
Vaughn nodded. “Yep.”
Angela stared at the dim orb. The atmospheric dust was so thick she could look directly at the sun.
The loose soil shifted beneath Angela. Something cracked loudly under her hiking boots. She looked down and her whole body tensed.
Wide-eyed, Angela pulled her gaze from the exposed item and slowly scanned the slope beyond it.
A soft cry escaped her lips. Finally, she managed to speak. “V-Vaughn …”
“What?” he said, still staring at the dirty skyline.
She pulled weakly at his sleeve.
Finally, Vaughn looked at her. Fresh concern took over his features. “What is it?”
Choking back tears, Angela pointed at the ground.
Vaughn followed her gesture. His eyes went round, and he stepped back. “Oh shit!”
When the soil had shifted beneath them, it had exposed a skeletal human arm and a grinning skull. As Angela and Vaughn stood transfixed, the skull’s hollow eye sockets seemed to glare back at them accusingly.
“How did that get here?” Vaughn said, his voice now reedy.
“That’s not the only one.” Angela gestured ahead, and her voice cracked. “They’re covering the whole hillside!”
Vaughn looked down the slope. His jaw quivered, and his throat bobbed. Then he spoke, his words barely audible. “Stone the fucking crows …”
A field of dust-covered bones blanketed the slope, and what she had initially mistaken as small rocks now proved to be hundreds of skulls.
Angela took a couple of trembling backward steps. Then her legs buckled, and she collapsed to her knees.
Vaughn stood beside her, confusion twisting his face. “Who are they?”
“It’s them …” A short sob escaped her. “All of them.”
Vaughn shook his head. “Who?”
“Every—” The word caught in her throat. She swallowed and then swept an arm across the scene. “Everybody!”
The rise and fall of the ones that surrounded it weren’t hills at all.
Angela and Vaughn were standing on the piled bones of millions, no, billions of dead, Earth’s entire human population.
She swallowed again and then looked up at Vaughn. “It’s humanity … All of it. The entire human race.”
Vaughn turned and stared at the surrounding mounds. Then he too fell to his knees.
Angela stared across the scene. “This is where everyone went.” She shook her head. “And now we’ve joined them.”
Chapter 18
Vaughn tried to rein in the effects of the adrenaline that had dumped into his system. He was already short of breath. Now his heart hammered in his chest, and his respiratory rate had redoubled.
The scope of Angela’s revelation threatened to end him. He’d known they had lost billions, but that had been a number without weight. Of course, he had grasped the fact that they had lost the whole of humanity. That truth had driven him to the edge of suicide, but beyond his personal losses—those of friends and relationships—he’d had a hard time wrapping his mind around the true scale of the tragedy. Above a particular value, numbers became meaningless … weightless. However, as he stood atop the mounded heaps of uncountable millions, Vaughn felt something in his mind threatening to snap, the irrefutable truth trying to undo him, to steal his sanity.
This was real, tangible … and undeniable.
Part of his tortured mind latched onto the realization that millions of the dead must have survived the transition only to perish under an ever-increasing pile of new arrivals.
Vaughn shook his head.
It was all too much!
Had his mother ended that way, buried under a growing mound of humanity and the rest of Earth’s discarded life?
He grasped his head with both hands.
He had to stop!
Vaughn found himself kneeling next to Angela with no recollection of how he’d gotten there.
Wrapped in each other’s arms, they hugged tightly.
Angela sobbed inconsolably, her face buried in his chest.
Vaughn resisted the urge to tell her everything would be alright.
How in the hell would anything ever be okay?
All along, he’d secretly held out hope that maybe everyone had been transported elsewhere, to some higher plain or something like that.
This was no higher plain.
This was Hell.
Stop it! he shouted inwardly.
But he couldn’t hold back the avalanche of thoughts that plowed through his mind.
He and Angela had been banished to the same place as had the whole of humanity, dropped from a churning blue ocean of water onto a brown sea of the dead.
And judging by the landscape, they’d soon be going the same way as had the billions before them.
Vaughn shook his head. Screw that!
They had come this far. He’d be damned if he would give up now. He wasn’t about to just lie here and wait for the end.
Grabbing Angela by the shoulder, Vaughn held her at arm’s length. The pain manifest in her green eyes almost broke his resolve.
He shook his head again.
“Angela!”
She blinked, and then her bloodshot eyes focused on his.
Holding her gaze, Vaughn tilted his head toward the distant mountains. “When is this, Angela?”
“What?”
“If this is the Geneva area, then what version of it?” He shook his head. “No. I mean what point in time? Did the robots send us into the ancient past?” He looked around again and then added, “Or is this the distant future?”
He watched her struggle with the same emotions, the soul-crushing thoughts that had threatened to quit him only moments before. The knot in his gut eased a notch as he saw her also starting to gain the upper hand.
Angela closed her eyes for a moment. She took a deep, hitching breath and then let it out with a sigh. She rubbed the tears from her face with the back of her hands, smearing mud across her cheeks.
Finally, Angela looked at Vaughn. “No.” She sniffled and then pointed at the surrounding mountains. “The geography lines up too closely with our Geneva.”
“Okay.” Vaughn was glad to see her focus on something other than their immediate surroundings. He prodded her to continue. “What’s that have to do with the timeline?”
