The Storm (NUMA Files 10)

“Not used to fighting much, are you?” Kurt baited Jinn.

Jinn grabbed some type of pipe that had been tossed out of one of the airships. He came at Kurt, swinging it like a sword.

Still holding the rifle in both hands, Kurt blocked the pipe and jabbed the butt of the rifle into Jinn’s face. The blow opened a gash that bled profusely.

Jinn stumbled back, dropping the pole, putting his hands to his bloody face. Kurt stepped forward and kicked the pole off the platform.

It fell into the dark, trailing a strange whistling sound from its hollow ends.

By now the rising stain of the horde had reached the edge of the helipad, its first probing fingers curling up and onto the flat surface, converging toward the middle from all sides.

Kurt was running out of time.

Through a mask of blood Jinn shouted, “If you didn’t have that rifle, I would kill you with my bare hands!”

Kurt pointed the rifle at him and then flung it off the deck. “You can’t beat me, Jinn!” he yelled. “I’m better than you. I’m fighting for something that matters, all you’re doing is playing out the string. You don’t want to die. You’re afraid to die. I can see it in your eyes.”

Jinn charged again, the rage distorting his face. This time Kurt set his feet and dropped his shoulder, slamming it into Jinn’s gut. He wrapped his arms around Jinn’s torso, picked him up and body-slammed him to the deck.

From out of nowhere Jinn produced a knife. It sliced Kurt’s arm before he could grab Jinn’s wrist. Blood flowed, pain surged through him, but Kurt’s strength and determination prevailed. He slammed Jinn’s hand down on the deck, smashing it three times before Jinn released the knife.

Kurt swatted it away and it skipped into the approaching tide of microbots.

It was now or never. Jinn tried to get up, but Kurt elbowed him in the face and then slammed his head to the deck. Gripping Jinn’s hair, he twisted the man’s face to the side, forcing Jinn to look at the horde that was approaching.

“Look at them!” Kurt shouted, holding Jinn’s cheek to the deck. “Look at them!”

Jinn had given up fighting now. He stared at the advancing horde. The line was getting closer, the circle around them getting smaller.

They reached a trail of blood and swarmed into it like ants crawling all over one another. They glistened beneath the overhead lights, and the sound of their movement was overwhelming, like a monstrous swarm of bees and fingernails on chalkboard mixed together.

“Give me the code!” Kurt demanded.

The laptop sat a few feet away, the horde had already encircled it. It was literally floating on the sea of microbots.

“What good will it do you now?”

“Just give it to me!”

Kurt held him down, Jinn pushed back into him, trying to keep his face out of the approaching line of bots. His lips trembled as they crawled onto him, moving into the cut on his cheek. He spat them from his mouth, but some got into his eyes, they stung like acid.

“Now, Jinn! Before it’s too late!”

“221-798-615,” Jinn shouted.

Kurt yanked Jinn to his feet. “Did you hear that, Marchetti?”

A tinny voice came from Kurt’s pocket. “Transmitting now!”

The scraping sound continued. Kurt pulled Jinn back, but the circle of safe ground had shrunk to the size of a kitchen table and then to a manhole cover.

“Marchetti?!”

Suddenly, the horde went still. The sound of their chewing and crawling and scratching dissipated in a wave, flowing outward in all directions like a giant wave of dominoes falling.

They dropped from the sides of the buildings in huge sheets, flowing down and piling up dunes of gray and black with their bodies. A cloud of them drifted like dust across the zero deck below.

In the wake of all that terrible noise came normal sounds, the creaking of the huge metal island and the soft fans of the airships circling it.