Chaos Space - Marianne de Pierres [19]
‘GET OUT OF THERE!’ bellowed Jo-Jo.
Petalu didn’t bother trying to get upright; he just rolled his body over the lip like a giant worm and flopped onto the other side. As he hit the floor the join irised shut, tearing his shirt off, leaving Petalu bare-chested and shaking.
The whole node began to judder.
‘Mama,’ Petalu cried and scrambled to his knees.
Jo-Jo grabbed one of his huge flailing arms and helped him to his feet but the juddering threw them both against the wall. Bethany lay on the floor moaning.
The groaning noise got louder and louder until there was a crack, more deafening than any thunder.
The juddering stopped.
Jo-Jo squeezed out from underneath Petalu’s sweat-slicked stomach folds and looked for somewhere to wipe himself clean. The big man had, unsurprisingly, pissed himself.
He staggered over to look through the peephole at the join. ‘Fuck me,’ he said. ‘It’s gone. The whole thing has broken off.’
Jo-Jo wanted to sit down then and collect himself. Take it in. No—he wanted to lie down, smoke some changlo hemp and go to sleep.
Instead, he shepherded the other two along the passage.
Bethany nursed her shoulder.
‘Must be blessed, eh?’ Jo-Jo said to her. ‘A few-minutes later and—’
But Beth’s stare was fixed ahead to where the passage opened into the vast bottom level of the station’s trade court. ‘Maybe it would have been better if we’d been in it,’ she whispered.
The trade court was under a light pall of smoke that didn’t hide the wreckage: broken tables and chairs, booths that had been torn from their footings, racks of fellalos strewn across the floor and stained with the contents of an overturned Kafe Kart, a food warmer slammed through a glass-vendor’s display shelves.
But there was worse than that.
Creatures, taller than Petalu Mau and encased in sticky insect-like carapaces, were moving slowly through the mess. Each had six clawed legs and a head but no visible eyes. A few of them grouped together, their long thin probosces extending downward under a table into a tangle of humanesque arms and legs. An overpoweringly sweet scent pervaded the entire court.
‘What—are—they?’ Beth whispered.
‘A problem,’ Jo-Jo whispered back. ‘Don’t move while I think for a moment.’
She began to sob.
‘Stop!’ He clamped his fingers around her wrist, jabbing his nails into her skin. ‘Do nothing to attract their attention.’
She closed her eyes and bit her lip. ‘What are they doing to those people?’
‘Don’t look at it, Beth. Just listen to what I have to say.’ Jo-Jo scanned the thick central column that housed the CTL. The row of lift doors that normally flashed icons and blared music were blank and silent, their outlines dimly visible through the smoke. ‘The emergency service lift should still be working. Mau?’
‘Over there.’ Petalu Mau nodded towards the farthest wall where a faint red light pulsed slowly.
‘Had to be there,’ muttered Jo-Jo under his breath. He released Bethany’s wrist and slowly turned his mouth to her ear. ‘We are going to crawl over to the emergency lift. You follow behind me. Understand?’
She turned her face to his. Her eyes were wide open with fear and so close to him that her eyelashes almost brushed his cheek. ‘Don’t let them do that to me. Will you?’
He nodded.
They crawled in a slow single file around the perimeter of the trade court. From floor level they could see humanesque bodies fallen everywhere under the tables. The creatures clustered near them.
As they reached the halfway point a creature broke from its group and crawled in their direction. Jo-Jo froze, feeling the thump as Bethany knocked into him and then a harder one as Petalu did the same.
The creature stopped at a dead body only two tables away from them and began to probe the flesh in a methodical manner. The corpse was partly disrobed, as if it had already been examined. It was male. Jo-Jo could see a beard and the