Chapter Nine: The Shine

They all had the shine to some degree; infected humans, husks, and hosts. But the eyes coldly holding her gaze belonged to no creature Lanni had ever seen. This thing had managed a feat duplicated by only the strongest of offspring. It resisted the host's summons.

"I don't want to hurt you," Lanni whispered. If it had the presence of mind to ignore a host's compulsion, it could be an ally. She moved slowly, steadily, one step, and then another into the room.

The eyes blinked, a glittery membrane sliding diagonally across and then vanishing. It followed her, matching her step for step; revealing its silhouette with its movement. Well over seven feet tall, it had a mannish figure, if freakishly thin.

An intact row of shelves separated them, with another row in the same condition behind the creature. Further back, an area near the middle of the room had been roughly cleared.

It stepped back around the shelf behind it as Lanni reached the end of the one between them. A long-fingered hand curled around the corner post, holding on while it lowered its head to her level.

"I don't want to hurt you," it repeated in a high pitched, gravelly whisper. The inflection and pacing, however, mimicked Lanni's almost perfectly.

The air was thick with nanites, not like a focused scan or an attack, just oddly active.

"I don't want to hurt you," the voice repeated faster, but deeper in pitch.

"I don't want to hurt you," it howled from the clearing in a gurgling growl that spread across the room.

"I don't want to hurt you!" This time it stabbed at her from directly overhead, full of menace.

Lanni ducked and looked up at the ceiling, ready to defend herself. Only the empty ceiling stared back. Looking back, the man-thing had vanished.

She felt, rather than heard John and Rumiko. John, ever the strategist, wanted to leave the room and take his chances in the hall, but Rumiko braced for combat. Of the two, she was the tactician, always ready or preparing for action.

Despite her stolen words, Lanni agreed with Rumiko. She needed to kill this thing before it attracted unfriendly attention.

She rushed to the corner of the next row where she saw it last. Some kind of sticky goo covered the floor, and rotten cardboard clung to her boots as she moved.

"Hurt you!" the voice screamed.

Something heavy struck her between her shoulders, knocking the wind out of her. The force of the impact shoved her forward, and she caught the edge of the shelf to keep from falling.

A heavy aluminum can thunked to the floor at her feet. Once more her hiking pack's frame caught the worst of the blow. If this kept up, she'd have to consider wearing one on the front, too.

The shelf's legs popped and groaned, causing the whole tower to shift as they buckled. Already off balance, Lanni's grip slipped. She spun as she fell, landing flat on her back. Make that one more save for the backpack. The collapsing shelf's steel frame had corroded where it bolted to the floor, and had chosen that moment to collapse.

If she could get beneath the adjacent shelf, it might shield her from the falling beams. This time her backpack wasn't so helpful. Caught on something unseen, it held fast to the floor as she tried to roll out of the way.

She couldn't move. Paint flecks and dust rained down on her as she clawed at the breakaway buckle on her waist strap. It clicked apart and she tried again, but was still held down.

Chest strap!

The crumbling shelf leaned precariously over her. Snapping connectors and supports broke free and fell towards her like pinballs. She realized the legs were corroding into nothing while she watched. This was no coincidence.

She clicked the chest strap and slid her arms out as the top of the falling shelf crashed into the next unit.

Changing direction, she dove under the collapsing unit and came out on the other side near the door, with most of a second to spare before the whole thing landed in a twisted heap of metal and wood.

"I don't," the words came like moaning wind from everywhere and nowhere. "Want to."

"Hurt you," it whispered in her ear.

Nanites rained down on Lanni as it spoke. Silver glittering eyes blinked down at her, inches from her face. Its fetid breath reminded her of offspring stink, but heavier on the ozone and less like rotten meat.

The face raised up, but was still directly over Lanni's. A narrow slot at the base of its throat vibrated, reproducing her words in a mockingly sad tone.

"I don't want to hurt you." But it's cold, insectoid eyes told a different tale. Long, spidery arms rose up from behind its head, poised to crush her with a heavy propane tank.

With no room to dodge, Lanni braced for the blow, pulling her knees up to her chest. Rumiko must have taken over, because she continued the momentum and rocked up onto her shoulders, kicking the tank with both feet as it raced towards her head. The impact jarred her knees, reminding her of her already battered ribs.

The heavy fuel tank flew over and behind the Skinny Man, landing noisily in the rubble. The Skinny Man jumped back and vanished like a shadow in the dark. No sign of its presence remained but cascading whispers of "hurt you!"

Not waiting for it to regain the initiative, Lanni pulled a club-sized shard of steel from the wreckage and ran towards the open center of the room. There was no point in trying to fight amid where her opponent could bring the furnishings down on her head. She'd be able to fight more effectively in the open, anyway.

The voices chased her through the remaining upright shelves, but the Skinny Man didn't reappear. The clearing, such as it was, lacked the tall shelves of the room's perimeter, but clear, it was not. It must have once been a staging area for pallets of cargo. Whatever used to be here appeared to have been demolished in a tornado. She couldn't imagine a worse place to fight.

Silence blanketed the room as the whispers ceased. Lanni chose each step carefully through the knee-high trash. It was a wasteland of car parts, ceramic tiles, area rugs, and... lots of cans.

Hundreds of them littered the room, and those were just what she could see. She nudged one sticking partially out of the ruin. Its green and orange label said Sweet Potatoes in syrup. If she lived to get out of this room, the colonists would have a pleasant surprise in store.

Without warning, the whispers returned, shattering the quiet with a hateful hissing roar. The trash mound came alive with movement. An arachnoid creature the size of a cat crawled out from beneath a clump of moldy cardboard beside her, less than two feet away. A metallic glimmer played across its limbs, and flashed in its two silvery eyes; vertical, but otherwise identical to the Skinny Man's. Spiny, hooked protrusions, like rose thorns lined the underside of its legs.

Lanni dodged aside as it leapt at her. She spun to bash it with her improvised club, and to her horror, saw more of them climbing and leaping towards her. A hundred sibilant whispers of "hurt you" sliced the air.

The nearest creature jumped at her from a few feet away. Her club rang like an aluminum bat on a fence pole when she knocked it aside. The thing was massive! Much heavier than she expected, she barely hit it with enough force to divert it. She kicked another in mid leap, earning a slash through her boot and a wounded ankle as it tried to catch her foot. This could get ugly fast.

"I did not sign up for this!" she said, looking for a way out. The exit behind her was no good. She'd be wearing a coat of metal spiders by the time she crawled back out to the hall. She needed to put some distance between them to buy some time.

"Climb," Rumiko said.

She raced for the nearest shelf, half jogging, half jumping from spot to spot. Unhindered by the clutter, the spiders moved twice as fast as Lanni. She reached the nearest shelf just ahead of her pursuers, and started climbing.

Like the others, it was a massive steel frame with mesh shelves covered by plywood. Each tower had three shelves, about four feet tall, with space on the floor beneath for pallets or boxes. Hanging from the corner support near the first shelf, she kicked a spider aside, and hurled her club at another.

With both hands free, it was an easy climb, and she was soon looking down from the top, almost twenty feet above the floor. Contrary to the spider beasts' shape, they were clumsy climbers. They could jump a few feet laterally, but the vertical jump from shelf to shelf was too far.

However slowly, they were making the climb up the frame. The first wave climbed as high as they could, and held position. Those coming up behind, climbed over them and repeated the process. They were using each other as ladders.

"Hurt you hurt you hurt you," the evil whispers continued in a relentless torrent.

The shelving towers lined the room's perimeter a couple of rows deep, more or less intact. Lanni quickly mapped out a path along the top with the shortest jumping distances from unit to unit, skipping those that leaned or twisted. Just before the first wave of metallic monsters reached her, she ran to the end of her shelf and leaped to the next tower.

Her wounded ankle burned as she ran. It gave out as she landed, and she collapsed and slid to the edge. Behind her, the silvery spiders pulled themselves onto her level. She stood up and made the limping-running jump to the next tower with her pursuers skittering in pursuit. Her burning ankle quickly settled into an ache, thanks, no doubt, to her pumping adrenaline.

The third tower wobbled as she landed, groaning in protest. This one lacked plywood, and the mesh tore away from the frame. She would have fallen through if not for the braces beneath the mesh, but by the time she reached the other side, the spiders were already landing behind her. Their sharp, pointed legs jabbed through the mesh, slowing them down. Once more, those at the front held their positions while those behind climbed over them.

Lanni reached the opposite side of the room from the entrance, with the whispering spiders never far behind. The plywood and mesh had been ripped away from the top of the next tower. The one beside it, nearer to the wall, had a top shelf, but whatever had damaged the first one had taken out its middle shelves. It leaned a little towards the wall, too. She was a few jumps ahead of the spiders, thanks to another mesh incident, but they were closing fast.

Scanning for another way out, she saw cleared out ring in the center of the room. The trash and ruined remains of merchandise had been pushed back, and a pile of human bones rose in a ghastly parody of a pyramid. Even more than the terrifying spiders and their whispered promises of pain, the care and organization that had gone into erecting the grisly monument chilled her heart.

I am not ending up in that pile of bones!

She sprinted across her platform and leaped with all her strength to the shelf by the wall, and made it. It was a hard landing, and she had to tumble into a forward roll. The shelf trembled, but it held. She stood up from her roll into the too-long, outstretched arms of the Skinny Man.

The slots in his throat purred, and nanites raged. His arms wrapped around her, their thorny spines, like those on the spiders, dug into her skin as he pulled her into a tight, painful embrace.

"Huuurrrt yooou!"