The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [227]
7
The monitor went blank. All I heard was static. Outside the dome Earth hung full in the lunar night. I watched Africa slide out of sight, watched the black-patched Americas crawl through an endless day, watched Africa return, heard Tanya's voice.
"We're desperate."
Her face was drawn haggard and streaked with something black. In the window beyond her head, I saw a dead black slope reaching up to the dark laval flows that edged the rift valley.
"The bugs have overwhelmed us." Her voice was hoarse and hurried. "Bugs! They're what made those blighted areas that always worried Arne. You must preserve the few facts we've learned.
"These marauding insects have evolved, I imagine, from mutations that enabled some locust or cicada to survive the impact. Evidently they now enter migratory phases like the old locusts. A strange life cycle, as I understand it. I believe they're periodic, like the seventeen-year cicada.
"They must spend decades or even centuries underground, feeding on plant roots or juices. Emergence may be triggered when they've killed too many of their hosts. Emerging, they're voracious, consuming everything organic they reach and then migrating to fresh territory to leave their eggs and begin another cycle.
"Their onslaught on us was dreadful. They blackened the sky. Their roar became deafening. Falling like hail, they ate anything that had ever been alive. Trees, brush, grass, live wood and dead wood, live animals and dead. They coupled in their excrement, buried their eggs in it, died. Their bodies made a carpet of dark rot. The odor was unendurable.
"We're safe in the plane, at least for now, but total desolation surrounds us. The bugs ate our plastic geodomes. They ate the forest and the grass. They killed and ate the hoppers, bones and all. They shed and ate their wings. They died and ate the dead. They're all gone now. Nothing alive but their eggs in the dust, waiting for wind and water to bring new seed from anywhere to let the land revive, while they hatch and multiply and wait to kill again.
"Dark dust rises when the wind blows now, bitter with the stink of death. The hippos came out, wandered forlornly in search of anything to graze, and dived back in the river. Nothing alive is left in sight. Nothing but ourselves, in a stillness as terrible as their roar.
"How long we can last, I don't know. Arne wanted to give up and get back to the Moon, but there's no fuel for that. We aren't equipped for any long trek across this devastation, but Pepe has ripped metal off the plane and welded it into a makeshift boat. If the bugs didn't get across the sea, perhaps we can make a new start beyond it.
"The plane must be abandoned, with our radio gear. This will be our last transmission. Keep your eye on the Earth and record what you can.
"And Dunk-" With a catch in her voice, she stopped to wipe at a tear. "I couldn't wish you were with us, but I want you to know I miss you. Next time, whenever that comes, I hope to know you better. As Pepe likes to say, Hasta la vista!"
One thousand years after, we've been reborn to try again. Much of Earth is still darkly scarred, but those dark spots are gone from Africa and Europe. We're going down to Earth, all five of us, with a cryostat filled with seed and cells to replant the planet if we must. Dian is bringing a few of her precious artefacts and the narrow chance we find anybody apt to care.
We're landing on the delta of the Nile. It drains into the Red Sea now, but its valley is still a vivid green slash across red-brown desert. Pepe has picked a landing spot a little north of where the pyramids stood. We're overloaded. Pepe thinks we'll have to spend so much fuel on survey and landing that we can't come back, but we're prepared to stay. I'll record more detail as we drop out of low orbit.
"Technology!" Pepe's shout of triumph rang from the cockpit on our first