Infinity gate, p.51
Infinity Gate, page 51
Instead the main room of the bunker was open, cleared out. The concrete floor was stained and damp but clear of debris. Dark chambers – caves, basically – led off the main chamber in every direction. This place was huge, she realized. This wasn’t just an emergency bunker. It must be an entire mine complex, though it looked like it had been abandoned.
She thought she heard something – a real sound, echoing in the concrete space full of actual air. She crouched down and tried to stay perfectly still. There was no good place to hide, but maybe Schmidt hadn’t seen her come in.
She ducked low into a shadow as he stepped out of one of the side caves. He’d shucked his suit down to the waist, the arms and hood hanging down behind him like tails. He had a large crate in his arms and he dumped its contents on the floor without ceremony. “I’m back,” he called, in a sing-song voice, like he was calling to pets who’d been waiting for him to come home.
Petrova watched as the crate’s contents slithered out onto the floor. Hundreds of silver foil packets. Colorful pictures were printed on each packet, showing a serving of some mouth-watering foodstuff. Pureed carrots. Mushroom stew. Algae salad. Petrova recognized the pictures right away, as would anyone who had spent time on Ganymede. She knew the pictures were nothing but lies. There was food inside the packets, food nutritious enough to keep you alive, but it never resembled the tempting picture. Instead it was more likely to be a thin gray slop grown in a big bioreactor: proteins and carbohydrates excreted by gene-tailored bacteria in a vat of sugar water. It was the kind of food that workers got when they couldn’t afford anything better, when they’d run out of luck. The government of Ganymede wouldn’t let any of its people starve, but the alternative wasn’t much better.
“Come and get it,” Schmidt called out, in that same lilting cadence.
She was about to move in and put him under arrest when she caught a flicker of motion from one of the caves. Bright eyes glistened back there, catching the light. The filthiest, most unkempt human being she’d ever seen came rushing out, almost running on all fours. It was dressed in rags and its face was so grimy she couldn’t tell its gender or even its age. It moved cautiously as it approached Schmidt, as if it was afraid of him. It didn’t say a word, didn’t so much as mumble a greeting.
“All yours,” Schmidt said, and stepped away from the pile of food packets.
A hint of motion from another cave mouth grabbed Petrova’s attention. Then another – soon people were emerging from a dozen directions at once. All of them as dirty and decrepit as the first. They moved quickly to grab silver packets from the pile, then they raced back toward their caves as if afraid someone would try to take the food away from them. They tore the packets open with their teeth, then stuck their fingers inside. They shoved the food straight into their mouths, getting as much of it on their skin and in their beards as they actually ingested. Their faces sagged with relief, as if they’d been starved for days and this was the best thing they’d ever tasted.
Petrova had no idea what was going on. Time to get some answers.
She rose to her full height. “Schmidt,” she called out. “Keep your hands visible.”
Schmidt winced but at least this time he didn’t just come running at her like a bull.
“Jason Schmidt, you are under arrest. Back up against that wall. Facing the wall,” she ordered.
He shook his head. His hands were up, in front of him, but he wasn’t holding them up to show he was unarmed. He beseeched her with them. It looked like he might fall on his knees and beg her for mercy.
She needed answers. She needed to know what was going on. “You,” she called, to the nearest of the unwashed people, who was busy licking out the insides of a third food packet. “Is this man holding you prisoner? Do you need help?”
The man – at least, he had a beard – looked up at her as if noticing her existence for the first time. He dropped the foil packet and stumbled towards her. His hands clawed and patted at the air, seemingly at random. Despite herself, Petrova took a step back as he came closer. His mouth opened but the sound he let out wasn’t a word. Just a raw syllable, cut loose from any kind of meaning.
“Do you need help?” Petrova repeated. “Are you trying to ask for help?”
“He can’t do that,” Schmidt said. She jabbed her pistol in his direction and he shut up, lifting his hands higher in the air.
The victim came closer still and grabbed at Petrova’s arm. She pulled away from his touch and he grabbed for her helmet, instead, grasping one of the lamps mounted on its side. He let out a crude fricative, his mouth opening wide, spittle flying everywhere. She had to shove him, hard, to get loose.
Someone else hissed like a snake. All of Schmidt’s other victims were making sounds now, raw noise, just the roots of words.
“What’s going on?” Petrova asked. “What did you do to these people?”
Were these the missing persons she’d been tracking? She’d assumed Schmidt had murdered them all. But if they were here, alive, apparently kept captive—
They were moving now, all of them. Lumbering toward her, their hands describing shapes in the air, or clawing at nothing. Their faces were contorted in strange expressions she couldn’t understand. They spoke only in meaningless monosyllables. Ph. Kr. La.
They grabbed at her, clinging to her legs, her arms. Petrova had to dance backward to get away from them. They weren’t particularly strong – now she saw them up close she could see how emaciated and sickly they looked under their coating of dirt – but there were a lot of them.
“Get back,” she told them. “Stay back! Firewatch!”
“They don’t understand,” Schmidt called.
Schmidt – she’d lost track of him. As the clawing, swiping people came at her, she’d forgotten to keep an eye on him. She twisted around and saw him creeping backward up the ramp, toward the surface. His hands were still up but he was getting away.
One of the victims growled, raising her voice as she bashed at the back of Petrova’s suit with weak fists. She yelped like a dog.
Petrova pushed her away, harder perhaps than she should have. She was getting scared, she could feel it. She was afraid of these poor wretched people – she needed to get a grip.
She needed to get the situation under control. Well, she knew where to start. Schmidt was all but running up the ramp, away from her. She dashed after him and smacked him across the back of his neck with the butt of her pistol. “Down!” she said. “Get down and stay down, motherfucker.” She hit him again and this time he fell down. “What did you do?” she demanded, as he tried to get up. She hit him again. “What did you do?”
Schmidt rolled on the floor, rolled until he was lying on his back. He lifted his hands to his face. She realized he was sobbing.
What the hell?
She retrieved a pair of smart handcuffs from a pouch at her belt. Moving fast, she grabbed Schmidt and shoved his face up against the concrete wall. She touched the cuffs to his hands and they came to life, twisting thick tendrils of plastic around his wrists and fingers, locking them in place. He made no effort to resist.
“Oh, thank God,” he moaned. Quietly. His eyes were clamped shut. “Oh, thank you.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked.
“It’s over,” he said. “It’s finally over.”
“What did you do to those people? What’s wrong with them?”
“It’s acute aphasia, it’s… it’s—”
“They can’t talk,” Petrova said. “I got that. Why? Did you… did you do something to them?”
“I saved them,” Schmidt whined.
She stared at the back of his head, unable to comprehend. She had no idea what was going on. Then she glanced down at the pistol in her hands. The light there remained a steady, unchanging amber. Great.
“Tell me everything,” she said. “Then I’ll decide what to do with you.”
As M. R. Carey
The Girl With All the Gifts
Fellside
The Boy on the Bridge
Someone Like Me
THE RAMPART TRILOGY
The Book of Koli
The Trials of Koli
The Fall of Koli
THE PANDOMINION
Infinity Gate
As Mike Carey
FELIX CASTOR NOVELS
The Devil You Know
Vicious Circle
Dead Men’s Boots
Thicker Than Water
The Naming of the Beasts
Praise for the Novels of M. R. Carey
The Rampart Trilogy
“[Carey builds] a broken world that is both marvelously expansive and claustrophobically menacing.… Fans of postapocalyptic science fiction will find plenty to hold their attention.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This series just gets better and better. Clever, compassionate, and genuinely immersive.”
—Joanne Harris
“This is a bold, unique world—be prepared to be engrossed.”
—SciFiNow
“A beautiful book. Gripping, engaging, and absolutely worth the time it takes to burrow yourself into its reality. I can’t recommend it highly enough.”
—Seanan McGuire
“M. R. Carey hefts astonishing storytelling power with plainspoken language, heartbreaking choices, and sincerity like an arrow to the heart.”
—Locus
“The cadence and pacing of [Koli’s] voice adds a depth and richness to the strange and malevolent world.”
—Booklist
“A thought-provoking and deeply engaging story. Profoundly and doggedly humane.”
—C. A. Fletcher
“An exciting post-apocalyptic coming-of-age trilogy.”
—Shelf Awareness
“Narrator Koli’s inquisitive mind and kind heart make him the perfect guide to Carey’s immersive, impeccably rendered world.… A captivating start to what promises to be an epic post-apocalyptic fable.”
—Kirkus
The Girl With All the Gifts
“Heartfelt, remorseless, and painfully human.”
—Joss Whedon
“Original, thrilling and powerful.”
—Guardian
“Haunting and heartbreaking.”
—Vogue
The Boy on the Bridge
“A terrifying, emotional page-turner that explores what it means to be human.”
—Kirkus
“[A] brilliant character study as much as a tense, satisfying postapocalyptic thriller.”
—B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog
“A tense story with superbly rendered characters and the same blend of tragedy and hope.”
—SciFiNow
Fellside
“An intense, haunting thriller with heart. You will not want to put this down.”
—Laini Taylor
“A fantastic, twist-upon-twist, shape-shifting novel. Gripping, deeply affecting, and arrestingly beautiful.”
—Miranda Dickinson
“The next fantastic novel from M. R. Carey.”
—io9
Someone Like Me
“A spooky, wrenching, exhilarating ghost story–cum–thriller.”
—Washington Post
“A taut, clever thriller that left me utterly bereft when I’d finished. It’s a masterpiece.”
—Louise Jensen
“This wonderfully strange and creepy tale is a thrilling, genredefying treat.”
—Kirkus
M. R. Carey, Infinity Gate
