THE BEACH

2 hr 23 min to Birth

"Don't move," Sam hissed into Willard's helmet.

Neither the gorilla nor the humans moved for a minute, looking at each other.

"I don't think he can hear us," Willard whispered. "Through the helmets."

"Are gorillas dangerous?" she asked, voice low.

"I don't know."

"What should we do?"

He thought of Vermont. There were certainly no gorillas there, but every now and then he'd run into a bear. They usually went on their way.

"Gorillas are smart, right?"

"Yeah."

He wondered if that made them less dangerous.

"Is that mud on his face?" she asked.

How do I know? he thought. He didn't know what a gorilla face looked like without mud. But as he focused on it, it did appear to be smeared with mud.

"For the flybots?" he asked.

"I dunno. Maybe."

Interesting. Why were they testing flybots on gorillas? Because gorillas are pretty smart. They wanted to see what the gorillas would come up with in defense.

He looked at the ground. "Where are they getting the mud?" he wondered. "Maybe we can follow him and see."

"We don't have time for that." Then she paused. "Do you hear that?"

Faintly through his helmet, Willard heard a noise echo in the forest. An animal cry. ROAAAAAR. ROAAAAAR. A gorilla? The gorilla in front of them was standing straight up now, looking off after the noise. The yell echoed again. The gorilla plunked himself down and began a hasty escape. His long arms swung in front of him, and his body followed through, clearing foliage as he went.

"That's their signal," Sam guessed. "The flybots are coming."

"Come on," Willard said, and he was off, sprinting through the jungle. In his suit, he felt like he was running through ocean waves. He only hoped he was actually going faster.

"What are you doing?" her small voice wailed in his ear.

"Following," he said. The gorillas had been through this before.

They struggled to stay in sight of the huge beast, but it was increasing its distance from them. There was no sign of the flybots yet. Willard imagined a silver cloud of them, whizzing through the trees, scanning the forest floor for orange shapes.

Willard tripped and his bubble visor smacked hard on the ground in front of him. The bag of explosives slid and crashed down on his head behind him. He swore and got up and started running again. Sam was in front of him now. He could barely see the gorilla ahead. It was nearly invisible in the jungle at that distance.

An endless period of running went by. It was probably not much longer than a minute. His helmet shield was starting to fog up. He had no idea if he would be able to retrace their steps back. They were long out of sight of the hill. Then he noticed the forest floor was sloping downward slightly. And the forest around them was getting brighter.

"The beach," Sam said.

Right. They were headed to the edge of the island. He saw the forest opening up in front of him: a straight opening to the beach. The gorilla reached the mouth of brightness and ran through, disappearing into the light.

His helmet started sounding an alarm. On the little screen in the upper left he saw:

STATUS: ALERT

Unidentified particulate matter

In front of him, the light of the beach, the light he was running to, disappeared. He slowed in confusion. Then, as he got closer, he saw what was blocking the light: a massive cloud of silver. Swarming in front of them was a cloud of flybots. There had to be ten times as many as before, enough to cover both of their bodies from head to toe two or three times over.

Sam hesitated in front of him, stopping in front of the cloud.

"Don't stop!" Willard shouted into his helmet. "Follow him!"

He ran past her and into the cloud. He couldn't see as the flybots pelted his helmet. He could feel them pressing around his body, like a boa positioning itself before starting to squeeze. He kept running, not even bothering to swat at his neck.

Light exploded around him. He stumbled and almost fell. He was running on sand. The silver cleared and he could see.

He was on a small, rocky beach, facing the ocean. Out in the water were a hundred or so gorillas, bobbing up and down, splashing the water with powerful strokes of their arms. Some of the bigger ones, the silverback males, opened their mouths wide and bared their teeth in mighty war cries.

Water, he thought. Of course. These things are robots. Flies. They can't live in water.

He yelled incoherently to get in the water.

There was a jarring alarm in his helmet. It said,

System override!

Rebooting...

followed by a scrolling list of commands, as the computer inside the helmet rebooted the system.

Depressurizing...

He heard the sound of air.

It's opening?

Feeling his ankles break the water, he dove forward. He landed mostly submerged in shallow water and flopped over on his back, his helmet floating on the waves like a buoy. He felt water rushing into his suit. He kicked himself further out, trying to keep himself submerged. His helmet was once again enveloped in silver. He heard tapping and buzzing sounds on the faceplate.

He got deep in the water and it came right up to his neck, inside the base of the helmet. The air in the helmet prevented him from submerging completely under the water. His helmet bobbed on the surface, peppered with flybots.

He couldn't see. He had no intercom system. He had no idea what had come of Sam. What were the flybots doing? Boring through the helmet? Were they trying to kill them? Would they get through the helmet? If he went under water, would the flybots be able to see him?

He could have stayed under the helmet with enough air to breathe for at least several minutes. But the flybots were trying to get in, and something had gone wrong with his suit.

He pushed himself down into the water, out of the helmet and away from it. Underwater, he was caught in a tangle of HAZMAT suit. Like an illusionist, he struggled to free himself of the straps and folds of the HAZMAT suit under the water. Still in his jeans and his boots, he swam as far as he could, not knowing what direction he was going in. The last air was slipping out of his lungs. He needed desperately to breathe. He felt like his head was going to pop. If you go up you're going to die, he thought. He kept swimming. Don't go up. Don't breathe. You don't need to breathe. (But I have to come up eventually, right?) He tried to keep swimming. He tried to swallow emptiness instead of breathing. Some water slipped inside his mouth and he started choking.

He pushed up, and popped his head above water.

He gasped for air and sputtered. He could barely swim in his clothes and his boots. His feet didn't touch bottom. The sun was bright on his face but he didn't see anything. The salt and sun stung his eyes. He saw gorillas to one side, at a comfortable distance of several yards.

He inhaled and went back under the water.

He struggled to remove his boots under the water. He didn't think they had bit him. At their speed, how could they have missed him when he came up for air? His boots were off. He swam about twice as fast. But he was out of air again. Don't breathe. He stroked blindly. Losing track of time.

He popped up out of the water. His feet touched bottom this time -- it was rocky and sharp on his feet. The water was only up to his chest. There was a noise next to him like a lion roaring and splashing. He wiped his face. He was next to a gorilla, a mama gorilla, screaming in his face and baring her teeth.

He half-swam and half-waded away from the gorilla and ended up at the edge of the water. Small waves crashed around his ankles. The rocks underfoot were uncomfortable. He stumbled ashore.

He didn't see any flybots. His panic started to subside.

Don't collapse. Stay on your feet.

Lo and behold, he came across his HAZMAT helmet, rocking back and forth with the waves. He picked it up. The faceplate was pockmarked, like a dog had been chewing on it. He inspected it closer, running his fingers on the surface. There were little holes. They got in somehow, he thought. He must have ducked underwater just in time.

He looked up. Sam was down the beach, standing over the bag of explosives. He walked towards her. He'd forgotten all about the explosives. He must have dropped the bag as he ran into the water.

She had ditched her HAZMAT suit, like Willard. It was crumpled on the rocks next to her, with the helmet on top. Her standard-issue gray shirt was plastered to her body by sea water, but her spikey red hair was dry.

Her face and neck were red, swollen with hundreds of little bumps.

"They got me," she said.

The bag was open at Sam's feet. She had taken the gun out and was holding it in her right hand.

Her face was twitching. Watching her was like watching a movie with half the frames missing. Her features were jumping around, spasming. Her mouth contorted and twisted between frowning and smiling faces.

"They are planting thoughts in my head," she said.

There was a buzzing noise. It sounded like a miniature propeller, or an electric fan.

She took a step forward. This movement brought her face into a shadow, and he looked up to see the flybots, hovering above them. They were swarming and buzzing in a disk shape, like a silver flying saucer.

Planting thoughts in her head? The flybots?

He looked down and found himself staring into the barrel of Sam's handgun. She was pointing it at his face. He jerked backwards and sideways, in a movement so sudden as to snap his own neck. She herself jerked her arm to the side and down, away from Willard, as the gun fired.

With a deafening clap, the bullet fired harmlessly through the shallow ocean and into the sand. In the water, the gorillas went into a renewed frenzy of fear and aggression. Above, the flybots were unmoved.

"What are you doing?!" Willard shouted.

"It's him." She grimaced. With incredible suddenness, faster than any martial artist had ever punched, her right arm extended in front of her and she fired.

He felt a blast of air, stumbled backwards, and fell in the rocky sand. He jerked up into a crablike position. He wasn't hit. Sam's arm was back alongside her thigh. Then it jerked up again. As her face spasmed, her body did, as well. She jerked again and shot, sending a bullet off towards the forest. She grabbed her right hand with the left to pull the gun down and away from Willard, but, in the next moment, her hands cooperated, together pointing the gun at him.

On his back in the sand, he found his right hand next to the huge knife strapped to his calf. The way she was struggling with herself, he could draw it and jump on her and slit her throat in a second, like the super special ops guy he was supposed to be.

She fired again to the right. The shot landed about a foot from his head.

He got up and ran away from her.

She threw the gun in the sand. But then, when Nemo planted his next thought, she knelt and picked it up and fired. Her strategy had worked partly, however, because trying to pick up the gun and shoot in one motion led to an inaccurate shot.

As Willard was getting away, her internal struggle took on the form of a strange dance. She threw her gun in the sand, then dove and picked it up and fired. She'd run a step or two forward. Then, she'd throw the gun in the sand and recoil backward. She tried a few times to cock her arm and throw the gun farther away, but she couldn't complete the motion in time before Nemo planted an overriding thought, forcing her to drop the gun as it was cocked over her shoulder or sidearm by her waist. She wasn't getting off as many shots now.

Willard turned. At that distance, he was unlikely to be shot. He relaxed. The gorillas had pulled back, bobbing in the water.

His right arm was throbbing. He was concerned that he was going to mess up his hand permanently or shove a bone through some nerves or something.

Sam looked like she was wrestling an invisible opponent. The silver disk glared in the sun, some ten feet over her head, following her minutely as she moved. Was it functioning as a satellite dish? He had difficulty believing that the disk, or anything else, was sending thoughts into her head. But neither could he believe that Sam would go crazy on him. She had the perfect DNA for loyalty. That was her job.

She held her ground, neither approaching nor distancing herself significantly. This could go on forever, he thought. They didn't have the time for this. It might have made sense to go on without her. But he needed the bag of explosives at her feet. I could charge in and take the gun from her. I need to get that bag. He might have to go on without her. But he'd have the explosives, and she wouldn't have a gun.

His heart was racing. He braced himself for the charge.

Should he call out to her? Warn her that he was coming? He didn't know if that would help. Was it better to warn the half of her that was cooperating with him? Or was he better off trying to surprise that half that Nemo was controlling?

She yelled something incoherently across the beach. It was half a sentence, all she could get out before the swarm took over her vocal chords and halted them.

She was fishing in the dufflebag.

She's reloading.

He took off at a sprint toward her.

He closed the distance. She looked like a seal playing in the ocean. She dove forward on her belly with arms outstretched, then lunged backwards with chest arched upwards. Every motion that she controlled was driven by complete desperation, fighting for survival. Every motion that Nemo controlled used her muscles more efficiently and completely than the human brain knew how to do by itself. At that rate, she was going to pass out from exhaustion soon.

As he watched, in one motion, she grabbed the gun from the sand with one hand, the magazine from the dufflebag with the other, and shoved the magazine into the Glock. Reloaded.

He was only a few seconds away. He was still safe probably from a half-cocked shot, but that was changing as he got closer. She saw him. She stopped flopping like a seal. She picked up the gun and didn't drop it.

Instead, she started pointing it this way and that, on one knee with both arms outstretched, like a cop surrounded by countless bad guys. And she started firing more. She got off almost two shots a second. Her arms were in a struggle between pointing at Willard and pointing to the side.

He was almost there. A shot whizzed by him.

Now she was trying to pull the gun in towards her chest. He heard her gasping, crying.

He was almost upon her when her arms pointed straight at him.

I'm dead.

He tried to zigzag, but he was too close.

She wrenched her hands back with a grunt. She placed the nozzle of the gun in her mouth, and fired.

The last shot echoed around the beach. He halted and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he saw what he had heard, what he had hoped not to see.

He fell to his knees and placed his head in his hands. "Oh God," he said. "No, no, no." He touched her hands. He pried the gun away and held it uselessly. Everything was going way too fast now.

Did the flybots really do this?

Now that she's gone, will they go for me next?

He heard the buzzing overhead. They sounded like insects, only louder. He looked up at the flybots. They were still there, in a disk shape, hovering indifferently.

He stood up and pointed the gun at the cloud above him. He had to hold it in his left hand. He swore at the cloud and fired several shots into it, nicking a flybot or two. It was awkward pulling with the finger on his left hand. The disk broke apart and reformed a few times. Then it sped away. The buzzing grew faint as it headed out of sight into the jungle.

It was quiet. The gorillas were looking at him, from out in the water. They almost looked sad. That was impossible, of course. But they had expressive faces.

The gun still in his hand, he slid his right arm through the strap on the dufflebag and hoisted it on his shoulder, leaving the HAZMAT packaging behind.

You know, he realized: I don't have to do this. I can go back the way I came, get on that boat, and get off this island.

He thought about it. The cloud hadn't attacked him; maybe it never would. He could hike back to that motorboat.

The only consideration to the contrary was that he had already hiked so far. He was probably close to the Laboratory Complex. And there was a Jeep there. He could take that Jeep and be back to the Welcome Center in twenty minutes instead of two hours. Plus, once he was there, he could consider helping out. That settled it: it was better to go to the Laboratory Complex, whether he was going to help them or leave the island.

The sight of her mangled body on the beach was revolting, and sad.

He headed down the beach, in the direction of the Laboratory Complex. As he trudged out of sight, the gorillas started to emerge from the water.