Children of the Plague

Chapter Seven: Fat Skinny

Chapter Seven: Fat Skinny

"We can still leave," Rumiko said. "Not even you can fight that many enemies."

"Leave? This couldn't be better if I had planned it. The offspring can't see me, the skinnies are all hiding, and if a host is nearby, it's here for reasons that have nothing to do with me. It's perfect. I can search this place without having to fight for every step."

Lanni forced her imaginary friends into silence. She tightened the straps on her hiking frame pack and drew her belt knife, just in case. Ready for anything, she jogged down the aisle towards the containers the offspring had just abandoned. Sporadic battles between offspring and husks, all just out of sight, reminded her of a Halloween haunted house.

She saw little point in sneaking. The husks wouldn't risk attacking her with landsharks nearby. Jogging confidently from stack to stack of containers, a professional-wrestler sized husk broadsided her at the corner of row two and column nine.

The impact clearly surprised the not-so-skinny skinny as much as Lanni. It smashed into her at full speed, toppling them both like bowling pins. At least three hundred pounds of filthy, naked flesh pinned her to the concrete. Crushed and unable to move, she couldn't even draw a full breath. She hoped the sharp pain in her side and back wasn't from cracked or broken ribs.

Son of a carpet bagger! Where did you come from?

Her mostly empty frame pack cushioned her landing a little. It kept her from cracking her skull on the pavement, but it also forced her head forward. The husk's sweaty, hairy man-boobs squished against her face. Aside from being gross, his flab blocked her nose and mouth, literally smothering her.

Still holding her knife, she couldn't budge it. The blade had impaled him to the hilt, and was braced against the floor. The husk groaned as she tried to wrench the blade free, but neither weapon nor husk budged.

The surprise of the impact faded, and she heard more husks running past. At least, she assumed they were husks. The aberration on top of her groaned as it tried to stand, and Lanni heard a voice.

"Guys! I think it saw me. Bash it!"

Definitely not husks.

Lanni stopped struggling. Her lungs burned for a breath of air. She hoped the humans wouldn't notice her feet and shins sticking out in the dim light.

They couldn't have come from the MPC. So, who were they? What were they doing here?

The Sumo-trucker pushed up on his hands, lifting enough for Lanni to draw a couple of quick, gasping breaths.

"Batter up!" a male voice said.

Something—probably an aluminum baseball bat—cracked against its head, and the husk fell on her again. It convulsed in time with several muffled, bone-crunching pings. By the time it stopped moving, warm wetness spread across her belly and oozed down over her head.

With some effort, she turned her face to breathe, but under the dead weight crushing her, it wasn't easy. The bat-boys moved on, clearly unaware of the teenage girl pinned beneath their victim. Not knowing who, or even what they were, she didn't move until her lungs demanded more air than she could get while pinned.

Surprisingly, her frame pack kept its shape. The contoured braces hugged back and curved around her ribs. The slight curve let her rock side to side until the husk's mass shifted, and he slid off to her left. She bent her knees for more leverage, shoved with all her strength and squirmed free.

The rogue baseball team had vanished, but sounds of battle came from every direction. The Red Hook container terminal was under attack. It wasn't the MPC, of course. Their main goal was protecting their dwindling population, and this was far too risky. But if not them, who?

"Alex? Are you here?" she whispered. He needed to know about this.

Nothing.

Blood and gore clung to her face, and her cold, wet clothes smelled of urine. She tried not to think about the spongy bits clinging to her hair.

I should have worn my hoodie.

"You should have brought your spear," John said. Rumiko was quiet, but Lanni could tell she agreed. Sometimes she felt like a spectator in her own mind. She considered the warehouse's layout, size, the location of exits, and other strategic factors with an expert eye. It wasn't her expertise, of course. It could have been John's or from another aspect she didn't even know about.

She concluded that no areas of the warehouse were substantially safer than any others. She would be exposed to an unacceptably high risk of discovery if she continued. That last bit came from John. It made sense, but she wasn't ready to give up and lose a full day of searching and recon.

The echoes and random noises bounced off so many surfaces before reaching her, it was impossible to tell the direction to their sources. Scent became a much more reliable indicator, and a strong spike in the offspring stink alerted her to a monster's presence before she saw it.

It lurched towards her from the deeper shadows between the next rows of containers, blasting the entire area with its stunning nanite attack. Thanks to her aura, she felt no more than a faint tingle as her own energy neutralized the nanites. It stopped a few feet away, emitting another ineffective attack from the trembling brain-like ridges where its face should have been.

She rolled a couple of yards from the dead husk, and stopped to catch her breath. It wasn't as easy as she expected. Every time she inhaled, pain lanced through her side. If a cracked rib or two were the worst of her troubles after being crushed beneath the giant husk, she'd consider herself lucky.

The offspring climbed on top of the corpse, and latched on with all four claws. Lanni knew the routine. It would gorge itself on this bruiser's entire body, and then find a spot to go dormant for a day or so, while its body expanded to accommodate its new mass.

She spared a mournful glance back at the disgusting scene as she slipped away. Her favorite knife was still wedged in the husk's ribs, but she took comfort knowing it would be a nasty surprise when the offspring bit down on it. She'd make a new one later, if she could find the time.

"Choke on it, landshark," she said.