Children of the Plague

Chapter Eight: Wooden Niggles

Chapter Eight: Wooden Niggles

Lanni proceeded through the rat's maze of stacked cargo boxes, looking for her cheese with a much greater respect for potential traps. As rat traps went, the Red Hook warehouse had all of the working parts.

Her trap theory would have been better if it had been remotely possible. Traps had to be set by someone, typically for someone. That part didn't seem likely. It was one more in a string of nagging inconsistencies that put an itch between her shoulder blades, just out of reach.

The odd behavior of the offspring topped her list. All offspring were crafty fighters, but they weren't tacticians. They were never subtle, and they never used scare tactics like what she had just witnessed.

The husks, too, displayed some noteworthy characteristics. Since they grew smaller the longer they survived, the large husks must have been brain-drained fairly recently. Being human prior to that unhappy event, they must have come from somewhere. The only conclusion that made any sense, especially with the bat boys in the equation, was another group of human survivors hiding nearby.

It was an equally exciting and frightening prospect.

She turned down a narrow aisle and nearly gagged from the stench. An offspring crouched at the far end of the container, tearing a husk into bite-sized morsels. If being covered in the fat husk's brain, blood, and urine weren't enough to make Lanni sick, the sights and smells of a feeding offspring would certainly do the trick. She squeezed the break-away button on her waist strap, and let the frame pack slip from her shoulders. It banged against the container wall as it fell free.

So much for being careful.

She listened for signs that her clamor had drawn attention, and was satisfied it had not. The offspring, however, stood perfectly still, gore dripping from its chest onto the half-eaten body beneath it.

Did it hear me? Impossible.

She knew it hadn't. An offspring's eyes, ears and nose were vestigial. Weren't they? Deaf or not, it certainly acted like it heard something. She froze and held her breath.

Three seconds. Five. Ten.

The landshark squatted over the corpse to resume its meal, and Lanni breathed again, though she instantly wished she hadn't. The awful smell made her wonder if suffocating might not be so bad. This incident would join the others on the list of oddities she'd ask Alex about.

It finished eating and stood up on its thick, stumpy legs. All offspring were incredibly strong, even the little ones, and those thick yellow claws weren't decorative.

It proved Lanni's point by launching itself straight up in the air. It pushed off the container walls to keep its momentum, leaving rent metal claw marks in its wake. Pulling itself to the top, it loped to the far end in three paces and jumped to the next stack. The now-familiar sounds of crunching metal drums marked its progress across the warehouse.

Finally.

Thanks to the moonlight, Lanni could tell the mess from the landshark's meal was mostly powdery-blue nanite sludge. Its meal must not have had much human flesh left, or it would have been wetter and bloodier.

She peered through the claw holes and saw the container was full of small, sealed boxes, shrink-wrapped to wooden pallets. It looked promising. The one above it was half full of taller boxes and crates, and the one on top would have to wait. She wanted to get inside the lower two first, and see what she had found.

Reasonably sure no enemies were about to attack her, she pulled her gloves off and grabbed the jagged metal edges. Using her power was a risk. While any offspring or hosts nearby might sense it, they would certainly notice if she pounded the lock off with a crowbar.