Climbers (709 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.8 on 29 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (View user info) at 2009-04-09 18:44:18 EDT
"Jesus, man, look at that chick go."
Jansen had thought he was alone. He turned and saw a young man standing to his right, under a glass and steel awning. He looked up, feeling his blue hardhat shift on his head. "Which one?"
"The hot one," the younger man said with a grin. "Short red skirt. Nice legs. Thong. Nope. Make that no thong. Make that nicely shaved."
"Got her," Jansen replied. The girl was probably about his daughter's age. His daughter was in Seattle. Away from all of this.
The girl in the red skirt did have nice legs, and in her mindless resolve to climb, she was exposing herself to the world. What was left of the world, anyway.
"My name's Toles," the young man said. He had long hair and wore wire-rimmed glasses. He was carrying a guitar case. "It's fucked up like this all the way down to the Village.
"And everywhere else," Jansen said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder to his truck. Inside the cab his radio crackled with frantic voices. "Here comes another one," he said.
Jansen got into the cab of his truck. The blue and white vehicle had a reinforced roof.
The body hit the road a few inches from the curb. Jansen couldn't tell before or after the impact if the large black form was male or female. Before the impact it was a blur. Afterward it was a mess. The body split open on impact as most of the overweight ones did. Drops of blood the size of silver dollars spattered the windshield. Jansen turned on his wipers and spritzed a little cleaning fluid on the windshield.
Jansen heard Toles vomiting as he got out of the truck. "First one up close, huh?"
"Yeah," the younger man said. He was very pale, his cockiness gone. "I walked by a lot of them on the street, but they were just flattened out and... they weren't people anymore, you know?"
They were near the intersection of 7th Avenue and West 42nd Street.
Jansen stepped under the awning and handed Toles a bottle of water. He had a few floating in water and ice chips in a cooler in the truck. "These ones aren't people either," Jansen said.
"Thanks, man," Toles said. "You seen a lot of this already? Seen them hit?"
Jansen nodded. He stepped out from under the awning and looked up. It was a lovely day. Springtime in New York. He wondered if Toles knew that old Sinatra standard. Probably not. Then again, maybe the song was about autumn, and who gave a fuck now?
He turned slowly, shading his eyes with one hand. He counted thirty-seven in plain view. Thirty-seven ordinary people climbing the outsides of buildings. Thirty-seven people climbing buildings until they slipped and fell or climbed high enough to... what was it they were saying on the radio? Germinate. That was it.
Some fuckin fate, he thought.
There was a chubby man dressed in cook's whites, still wearing an apron. There were two young men climbing side by side. Young men wearing sharp suits. They were fit and climbing fast. There was the woman in the red skirt. There was a man in sweats. Start the day with a run in Bryant Park and end it with a detour guided by little bugs in your blood.
Fuckin hell.
"So you think it's true what they're saying," Toles said echoing Jansen's thoughts, "That it's some kinda bug, like a parasite, making people do this crazy shit?"
Jansen nodded. He pointed to a row of newspaper boxes along one sidewalk. The boxes had been crushed by a falling body. The thin, middle-aged man was paper white and a long yellow stalk had displaced the man's left eye from the inside out.
"That's what I'm hearing on the radio."
The man in cook's whites lost his grip. He fell without a sound and hit a stretch limo parked along 7th. The car rocked up and down on its shocks.
The young woman in the red skirt had gotten high enough, apparently. Maybe it had something to do with reaching the sun beyond the shadowed canyons of Manhattan, who knew? The woman's body shook as she tightened her grip on the brick face of an old office building.
Jansen and Toles were too far away to see the fibrous tendrils that came out of the woman's arms and legs, literally rooting her to the side of the building. Soon a bright yellow stalk would work its way out to the light of the sun through one of her eyes and release a golden cloud, a burst of spores.
If she was secured to the building and did not fall, she would be alive through all of this. She would suffer incredible pain until she released her spores. Then she would slowly die of exposure or dehydration.
"Some people say the spores are eggs or something," Jansen said. He and his wife had an apartment on the Lower East Side. It was their home, they owned it, and that made it a condo, but Jansen still thought of it as the apartment. His wife had climbed out the kitchen window that morning while he was eating his eggs and enjoying the breeze that was lifting the curtains.
Lizzy had been frail. She fell right away, a lousy two stories. Broke her fuckin neck.
Already people had been climbing, all over the neighborhood. Jansen had thought they were nuts until he started listening to the radio. He had gone to work in a daze, in shock maybe, and had signed out his truck. No one was around. The truck and the spectacle of people climbing brought him here.
"I heard it's like they are like eggs too," Toles said. He was no longer looking up. He was looking at a little kid in the gutter. The kid and the kid's book bag had exploded in a fall. "Superlight eggs that float around like pollen until we inhale them. Some fucking hay fever, huh?"
Jansen took off his hard hat, ran a hand through thinning gray hair, and put the hat back on. Not that it would do shit if a body fell on him.
"And they say you never know when you're infected, until you start to climb."
"That's what they say," Jansen said. Toles was getting spooked.
Jansen went back to his truck. As he looked down the length of 42nd Street he could see hundreds colored specks moving up the outsides of buildings.
"Christ," he said, turning. "You'd think—"
Toles was gone.
Jansen looked up. The young man had left his guitar case behind and was already climbing up and away from the glass and steel awning.
Jansen watched him climb.
--
Inspired by this... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3094502532482500454&ei=1m7eSZj-KZKqrQLIye3gBg&q=Cordyceps+unilateralis+video&hl=en
--
On that note, have a nice Easter weekend,, everyone.
User Reviews
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2009-04-18 20:13:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
OMG ITS M. NIGHT MCCALLUMLAN
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2009-04-13 23:48:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Judgement (user info) at 2009-04-13 16:18:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2009-04-13 14:42:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by no1hasdis (user info) at 2009-04-13 14:29:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Jack, I found your sister, she's in sioux city:
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2009/04/11/news/local/d09db42c89bc240b86257595000bdc50.txt
And the post wasn't bad. Definately better then most of your shit, of course that's not saying much.
Submitted by phuchuebuddy (user info) at 2009-04-13 12:21:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-04-11 16:53:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by reginajacks (user info) at 2009-04-11 14:45:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
this was kinda dumb.
how are people climbing up the sides of buildings? are they like spiderman or something? it seems like most people would fall before they got very high...
--
(1) He turned and saw a young man standing to his right, under a glass and steel awning.
(2) Jansen got into the cab of his truck. The blue and white vehicle had a reinforced roof.
Submitted by reginajacks (user info) at 2009-04-11 14:45:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
this was kinda dumb.
how are people climbing up the sides of buildings? are they like spiderman or something? it seems like most people would fall before they got very high, and then you would just have a lot of people with broken ankles. i love sci-fi but you gotta make me believe it, dude.
pretty good writing style, though. you seem like you could spend the time to set it up a little better.
Submitted by BranDo (user info) at 2009-04-10 22:47:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You know what they say,
the only way is up!
Submitted by Ducky (user info) at 2009-04-10 22:33:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
heh...happy easter jack.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2009-04-10 17:56:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2009-04-10 17:45:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
What I said was dumb, and I apologize to everyone involved, unless someone already called me out on it in which case I hate you.
I'm sick?
==============
SIck? Yeah, and you're ugly, too.
6CO2 + 6H2O --------sunlight----> C6H12O6 + 6O2
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2009-04-10 17:45:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
What I said was dumb, and I apologize to everyone involved, unless someone already called me out on it in which case I hate you.
I'm sick?
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2009-04-10 17:39:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
My plant biology professor hates plants.
I don't blame him.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2009-04-10 17:09:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by FaceOfGod (user info) at 2009-04-10 17:00:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Well done.
Submitted by RoadSong (user info) at 2009-04-10 16:30:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
The vid would not play for me, what a relief.
Submitted by FilledwithHate (user info) at 2009-04-10 16:08:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I like eggs.
Submitted by Yozz (user info) at 2009-04-10 16:03:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You sick fuck.
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2009-04-10 15:33:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Humans: but another consumable in a long line of consumables.
Submitted by messmind (user info) at 2009-04-10 15:00:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by LittleMonster (user info) at 2009-04-10 14:48:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Redskies was telling me about this not so long ago. Creeped me out then, creeped me out now.
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2009-04-10 14:25:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2009-04-10 14:17:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Uber: Resurrected. Just like Jesus!
Submitted by Gyro_Gearloose (user info) at 2009-04-10 13:55:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Jesus.
Submitted by coley (user info) at 2009-04-10 02:37:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Good story; even creepier after watching the video! Ruined my stirfry :(
Submitted by pandora (user info) at 2009-04-09 21:47:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Chilling, good imagery!
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2009-04-09 19:55:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 McFiction.
See? No sweat.
Submitted by cheerios (user info) at 2009-04-09 19:48:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
didn't read.
Submitted by johnny.b.dumb (user info) at 2009-04-09 19:11:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
This wasn't bad. You still suck, though.