EXPLOSIVES

1 hr 0 min to Birth

Willard reached the wall of the Laboratory Complex. It was about a story tall, made of a crude concrete with lots of cracks that could serve as handholds and footholds.

Climb or go around.

He looked at his right hand. Broken. This is not going to be fun. He took the painkillers out of his pocket and popped a few in anticipation of what was to come. Then he slung the dufflebag over his back.

Maybe he could do it one-handed. It was a short climb. He gave a hop onto the surface of the wall.

He skidded down. That wasn't going to work. He couldn't climb without his right hand.

He sized up the wall more carefully. He could do it in about ten steps up, he figured. Just ten steps.

Step One was a step into a world of pain. In one long, slow-motion, underwater step, he was on the wall. (Broken!) Instantly his mind became newly philosophical: What am I doing here? Can my hand take this? Would I be better quitting? Am I sure I want to do this?

With Step Two, he felt a desperate, frenzied desire to get off the wall. He couldn't think about anything except the lightning bolt in his wrist, electrocuting his brain. His mind was so occupied with ending the pain that he wasn't even sure he'd be able to take the next step up.

(It's BROOOOOKEEEEENNNNN)

Step Three happened somehow. The duffle dragged at his back, as if all the weight in the universe went backwards. His mind was empty. He made a deal with himself: go one more step, then you can get off if you want.

Step Four happened. He remembered his promise to himself. He wanted so badly to let himself drop. I need something to think about. Why am I doing this?

(IS IT GOING TO RIP OFF?)

His thoughts moved slowly, as if creeping down a dim passageway. Sam, remember Sam? That was wrong; he was going to do something about that. And the flies. You're going to die if you don't climb this wall. You're going to die. This is what he needed to think about. He thought he muttered it to himself. Then his mind receded back into emptiness.

His feet moved. His hand moved with a bolt of lightning. He was at the top. I made it.

He swung his feet around and let himself drop off the other side of the wall. He crumpled to the ground and closed his eyes in relief.

He opened his eyes. A flybot was on his arm.

He gave a nervous spasm and the bot took off. It flew away. Willard realized the bot hadn't bitten him. No swarm was descending on him.

A defect?, he thought. I guess if you build a zillion, you get a few defects.

He lurched upward and hiked briskly toward what appeared to be a cluster of buildings. There was a tree or two around him, but it was not a true forest.

As he got closer to the buildings, he heard a low, massive sound. It sounded like an industrial factory. It had to be coming from the buildings.

A few flybots whizzed past his face. Then he saw a small swarm cruise by far overhead. They weren't defects. He was heading into Flybot City, starting to hit suburban traffic.

He came upon the back of a building. It had two floors and windows covered with screens like the ones in the Welcome Center. That building turned out to be the scientists' dorm, empty for the holidays.

The humming noise, a deep buzz, was loud now, like that of a power generator or a huge machine. He suspected that it was coming from the computing building. That must be generating a hell of a lot of power.

He skirted the dorm building, following the loud hum, in search of the computer building. As he turned the corner, he faced the courtyard between the three buildings, and he discovered the origin of the humming.

He stared at the other two buildings, the fancy-looking lab building and the industrial-looking computer building. He saw two Jeeps parked on the gravel between the three buildings. The Jeeps and the whole gravel area were cast in shadow, from a canopy above, taut between the roofs of the buildings. And the humming was loud as hell -- he could barely hear himself think.

He looked up at the noise.

Whoa.

Above, the canopy casting down the shadow on him was a thick blanket of flybots. They were the source of the humming.

Looks like he built some new flybots. But they weren't attacking him.

He slinked over to the computing building. The cube had one door, facing the clearing. He doubted he'd be able to get in.

He started looking for a connection between the cube and the lab building. If he could blow up a connection between the buildings, maybe Nemo's flybots would be disabled.

He was hoping for a massive line of cables connecting the buildings. Or maybe a bulge of earth hinting at a connection underground. But there was no trace of anything. It must be underground, he thought. The cube was big. The side facing the lab was about the width of a city block.

This is not good, he thought. He had a good amount of explosives, but not enough to take out the side of this building -- or the ground beneath it. He walked around to check the door to the building. It was locked, with a hand sensor.

Just a few minutes, he thought. He could blow the door open. But the flybots might not take kindly to that.

Suddenly, the humming of the flybots got louder. It became deafening; it sounded like a space shuttle taking off. The shadow on the door and the earth around him grew darker.

He sat on the ground, his back against the building, covering his ears and looking up. He saw streaks of light in the cloud and realized it was moving. It was heading up into the sky, away from the buildings. They were flying away, crossing the sky like a plague of locusts.

How many were there? Ten thousand? A million? Hard to say. It was like watching an enemy army march by, on the way to a battle that dwarfed him in importance.

It was coming out of the building next to him, the lab building. They are flying out of the top of that building. How are they getting out? Is there a hole up there?

Maybe there's something in there worth blowing up. If that was Flybot Central, he could chuck his duffle in there.

He didn't see any obvious way to get on top of the laboratory building. The front door had a door frame that he could grab and maybe get on, but that would leave him out of reach of the roof. The building had to be about two or three stories tall. There were no windows to grab on. Nothing to grab on. The funny shape of the building -- with some edges sticking out, and some inward -- looked promising, but the walls were too smooth for him to grab anything.

He rounded the back of the building. There was a ladder on the wall. A fire escape? He climbed it. As he reached the top of the building, he noticed that the corner of the roof was equipped with a security camera, and it was following his movements.

Sure enough, the roof had a big hole in it. It looked like there was supposed to be a dome there, or a window, but there wasn't any glass there. There wasn't any debris at all. The roof and the window frame were spotless.

He looked up. The flybot swarm had receded into a black cloud on the horizon. They were in a hurry to get somewhere -- somewhere off the island, it seemed.

His gaze fell and he looked at the compound around him. He could see part of the beach, and a lot of the jungle to the east, and the road from the Welcome Center. And he could see the tall concrete wall surrounding the Laboratory Complex.

Wait a minute. Atop the wall around the Laboratory Complex, near the beach where he had crossed it, he saw figures. Dozens of black figures. There had to be a hundred of them. Gorillas, standing there, on the wall. They were still, as if watching him.

While he looked, half a dozen of the simians let themselves fall from the wall inside the Laboratory Complex. They're coming this way.

He moved toward the hole in the roof and looked over the edge. The space inside, unlike the air around him, was thick with flybots. Trying to see through them, he could make out a maze of machines. It looked like a miniature factory.

Gene was standing in the middle of the room, in a clear area marked with the FlyTech logo on the floor. Willard was about to call out to Gene when he heard a booming voice.

"You're stalling, Gene," the voice said. It echoed up to Willard. Willard craned his neck over the edge of the hole. Where was the voice coming from?

Below, he could make out Gene smiling. Stalling.

It IS Flybot Central, Willard thought. The voice was coming from there. The flybots were thicker than anywhere. And they were working on something in their little factory.

He could drop the duffle right in there, on one of the tables. He could pull the pin on one of the grenades, pop it back in the duffle, and drop it down there.

That would probably blow the whole room up. And Gene. And probably me too. He could jump off the side of the building as it was blowing up. That would be fun. Maybe he could break one or two legs, too.

Willard peered down the hole and assessed the drop down to where Gene was standing. It was only about two stories. He could do it, if he had to.

And there was also the handgun, in his duffle. He probably couldn't hit anything from up on the roof. Especially shooting lefty. He looked at his right hand: he didn't think it had the strength to pull the trigger.