Kenopsia (Book 1 of Pandora's Wake: The Nomad Chronicles)

A cheer, accompanied by a ripple of applause, went up in the waiting room as the lights flicked back on suddenly, and the nomads looked around their newly illuminated surroundings.

Only Kurt briefly cursed as it took his eyes a second to adjust. He still watched the southern approach to the waiting room like a hawk. With the recent revelation that Shamus had seen something on the back stairs and failed to mention it, Kurt’s nerves had been on edge. He had been straining both his eyes and his ears for any sign of danger. His legs were beginning to cramp on him where he knelt behind the impromptu barricade. Reluctantly he stood up to stretch them and walked the length of the barricade, his eyes still fixed on the southern approach.

Kurt didn’t like to admit it, but he wished that Joanas would hurry up and get back. As the only other professional soldier in the group, he loaned Kurt a sense of security he could do with right now. Even the policeman, Mathias, would be a help. He reminded himself, and not for the first time, that all the Swiss nomads had military training. Before the event, Switzerland had compulsory national service for its citizens, and all had been trained in patrol, observation and firearms skills. The thought made him a little more comfortable.

“Okay, everyone. We have the power back on,” Knut began a little needlessly, Kurt thought.

“If your car is one of the ones providing light, go and turn the lights off, save the battery.”

Kurt hadn’t thought of that. In the darkness, their only light was from several of the vehicles which shone their headlights in through the windows, and from a handful of torches, or ‘flash-lights’ as the Americans always called them. After a while, with the lights on but the vehicles not moving the batteries would lose power. Several nomads dashed out of the front doors to switch their vehicle’s lights off and as they did so the automatic doors swung open. It seemed they hadn’t done too much damage forcing them as they entered. That was good, at least. Being able to close the doors would be very helpful if those dog things they had encountered on the way into town came back.

Kurt gave an involuntary shudder at the thought.

From the oval-shaped reception area near the middle of the waiting room came an excited exclamation in French, and then, switching to English, Delphine called out,

“The computers are back on as well!” Her face was beaming with glee, so much so that Knut couldn’t bring himself to point out how useless they would be. If it gave the French teenager something to do to keep her mind off what was going on, then let her meddle with the machines. She would soon learn for herself they were no longer the font of all knowledge they had been before the fall of civilisation. He turned his attention to where the others were switching off their car lights and wondered if he should have sent someone to keep watch here.

Behind him, Delphine gleeful tried to bypass the system password.

Magda was looking directly at the light when it flicked back on.

She cursed as the sudden illumination temporarily blinded her, leaving a bright flare in her vision that would take a few moments to fade. She had been lying on a gurney in one of the darkened treatment booths, drifting in and out of sleep, pumped full of painkillers by the doctor. Even now she was aware that her leg and her ribs hurt, but it was an odd sort of awareness, as if she was somehow remote from the pain itself, but was being informed of it just so she knew. She giggled despite herself – the sound seemed odd in her ears, partly because she wasn’t given to giggling and partly because it was mingling with the horrid high-pitched shrieking in her ears. She had taken it to be a side effect of the drugs at first, melding with the low level of tinnitus she has suffered since youth. As she became aware of the excitement in the corridor outside though, she realised the screeching was something else.

An alarm.

Cursing, she sat up. There were voices in the passage, the sound of people rushing to investigate the electronic call for help.

Magda determined she should help. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and hopped down. Her mind had an instant in which to register her mistake and then her injured leg buckled under her weight. She pitched forward at an angle and tumbled to the floor, her arms just breaking her fall in time. Her head struck something solid, the leg of a drip stand.

“Idiot!” she scolded herself, then sagged to the cold floor tiles and giggled helplessly at her own foolishness.

Father Businger visibly started as the lights came on and a loud, piercing, electronic screech split the air from one of the treatment booths. He smiled apologetically at Gautier, his fellow guard on the fire exit. Even as he did, he could see from Gautier’s expression that the man had been just as startled as himself. Gautier had been a driver in the Swiss army during his national service and a waggon driver in civilian life. Consequently, he always felt more comfortable inside a vehicle than out of one. Nonetheless, he handled his rifle professionally, and at the battle on the road outside of town, he had brought several of the gore-hounds down.

The two men looked anxiously down the passage towards the source of the sound, uncertain of what to do, when doctor Allmendinger and Cherubin lunged out of one of the treatment booths. They had set one up as best they could to use, illuminated by a set of floodlights powered by a car battery that the caravan had set up for just such an occasion. The two medics raced for one of the other booths and in a moment the electronic caterwauling had ended. They emerged, as far as Father Mathias could tell, unphased by what they had found in the small booth. None-the-less, Dr, Allmendinger was heading towards him, while Cherubin returned to one of the other treatment booths.

“What is it, Selina?” Father Businger asked softly, lowering his voice to remove any urgency or panic that may have crept in.

“The alarm was one of the medical monitors.” She began. “In the treatment booth were we found the soil and the blood. It was left switched on when the power went, switched on and hooked up to someone in fact.” father Businger nodded. They had already established that someone had been left behind, someone who was under medical care at the time. This was just one more piece of evidence to confirm their fears. The question was where were they now? Could they have survived here, alone? They certainly seemed to have walked out of the treatment room under their own steam.

“Will you be alright here on your own here for a moment?” Father businger asked Gautier, who nodded in response and turned his gaze to the little glass panel in the fire door.

“I’ll go and let Knut know,” the clergyman said, before turning and striding purposely down the corridor towards the waiting room.

“You might want to come and look at this guys!” Ronan called over his shoulder as he sighted his rifle down the passageway towards the site that had alarmed him so. “It’s like something out of ‘Aliens’.” He said more quietly, to Esther who was kneeling on the floor, her pistol cupped in both hands and trained down the corridor. With the lights on, it was possible to see all the way to the end of the passageway. Its left-hand wall was broken by several doors, whilst the right-hand wall had two before opening up into what looked like it may once have been a waiting area of some kind. On the left wall facing the waiting area where two or three more lift doorways. Esther couldn’t be sure of the number because from about half way down the passage the strange, sickly, yellow concretions began.

Whatever they were, they looked for all the world as if they had been vomited up and left to set by some demonic creature from her blackest nightmares. The substance, whatever it was, covered the walls, ceiling and floor of the passage. It almost had the appearance of some form of wax. Here and there it pulsated and throbbed in a manner that was stomach churning to behold.

What lay at the far end of the passage was, Esther suspected, the things that had created the strange substance. They writhed in one large, squirming mass of chitinous horror. Alien insectoids, each about the size of a large cat. Their carapace tapered to the rear, while at the front it was split by a narrow mouth which was flanked with huge, serrated mandibles. Their small eyes seemed beady and underdeveloped, but two thick antennae sprouted from above the eyes and waved in the air as if sensing something – sound waves, Esther reasoned.

Worst of all they were coming this way.

Several of the creatures broke off from the squirming mass and scuttled up the passage ahead of the main body – almost as if they were the reconnaissance units for a larger force. Now, detached from the mass of wiggling, writhing insects that followed on more slowly, Esther could see that the creatures were carried along on four legs, despite their otherwise insect-like appearance. It did nothing to make the sightless revolting. Esther could feel her skin crawling.

As the alien creatures scurried closer their mandibles began to click together, making a chattering sound that jarred her nerves.

“Whoa... dear me!” Ember recoiled as she poked her head round the door of the generator room, her eyes widening at the sight of the alien creatures scuttling up the passage.

Joanas and Mathias pushed past, levelling their weapons down the passage at the things.

“Seal the door!” Joanas yelled to Ember, “We’ll cover you!” he took several steps forward and aimed at the leading creature as Ember nodded and knelt by the door, fumbling with her tools as she tried to pick the lock closed again.

Behind the approaching creatures, sections of the wall seemed to throb and pulse as more of them pushed their way through the strange, organic, concretion, glancing about curiously, their mandibles clacking.

“I think it's the sound that is drawing them!” Esther repeated as Joanas decided what to do,

“Well it’s going to get a lot louder very soon!” he warned. “If Ember can’t get that door sealed we will have to fire, they are getting close.”

“Very close!” Ronan agreed, grimly.

“I’m gonna’ need more time!” Ember’s heart was thumping in her chest, her fingers trembling as she tried to re-engage the lock.

“Shit!” Joanas spat as the vicious looking creatures, perhaps recognising the urgency of the situation, seemed to redouble their efforts to reach the end of the corridor the humans were defending.

They were running out of time.

“Fire!” Joanas gave the order reluctantly and for a single heart beat, nothing happened as the others glanced sidelong at one another.

Then the air was ripped apart by the deafening sound of weapons fire, and the battle to hold the corridor began.