Tunnels 05 - Spiral

Proliferation
,” he decided, then held it up to Will and Drake. “And this isn’t leather. It’s bound in skin. Human skin.”
    “Okaaay,” Drake exhaled. “I suppose that about sets the tone.”
    Eddie opened the book and was carefully turning the pages, which rustled like old leaves. “Ah, here it is,” he said, rotating the book so Will and Drake could see the illustration, a crude woodblock print.
    It depicted a man lying on the ground, his body bloated and misshapen, as a woman’s thin face hung over him. The rest of her body was partially concealed by the shadows and difficult to make out.
    Will was squinting at the picture. “It sort of looks like she’s got wings on her back . . . but those must be the insect limbs you talked about,” he said.
    “Correct.” Eddie swiveled the book around again and glanced at the page of meticulously written text. “This is a record of our last Phase. It documents what took place in the mid-fifteenth century in Romania,” he told Will and Drake. “It was during the reign of the Prince of Wallachia, who achieved notoriety for his wholesale slaughter of p —”
    Will couldn’t stop himself from jumping in. “Vlad . . . Dad told me about him. You’re talking about Vlad the Impaler, aren’t you?”
    “I am,” Eddie confirmed. “And the folklore surrounding him has given rise to the improbable vampire stories and films that seem to be so in vogue at the moment. But the reality is somewhat different. . . . The reality is that our Phase started the myth. You see, the prince offered us protection on the understanding that in return we’d wipe out the boyars, his archenemies, for him. His part of the bargain was to provide somewhere secure for the Phase to take place . . . and an ample supply of human bodies.”
    “I bet he gave you that, all right. My dad said he killed thousands, after roasting and skinning them and hacking off their arms and legs,” Will remembered. “And he liked to stick their heads on stakes.”
    “That was just window dressing to divert attention from what we were up to,” Eddie said. “The prince was actually a very cultured and gentle man.”
    Drake was frowning. “Let me get this straight. If there was a Phase back in the fifteenth century . . . then . . . what happened? We’re not all dead or in servitude, so what went wrong?”
    “The prince reneged on us,” Eddie said. “He was persuaded by his bishops that we were ungodly, and that we had to be stopped. So he ordered his knights to storm the catacombs in the palace where the Phase was under way. Our newly spawned Warrior Class was still either in the larval or pupation stage, so the knights met no opposition, cutting them to shreds and burning their remains. In fact the only resistance was from our womenfolk, but the knights eventually corralled them down one end of the catacombs, where they put them to death.” Eddie almost smiled as he added, “So rather than portraying him as a cruel despot, history should instead recognize Vlad — the so-called Impaler — as one of its greatest saviors. The irony is that he
saved
all humanity.”
    Drake steepled his fingers as he absorbed this. “So what you’re saying is that conventional forces — armed only with rudimentary weapons — stopped the Phase? So with modern equipment, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
    “If — and only if — you can find where the new Phase is taking place, and destroy the Warrior Class before they spread,” Eddie answered. “Before or during pupation.”
    “Why?” Drake cut in.
    “Because the Warrior Class can reproduce, too. When they get out, their numbers become —”
    “Exponential,” Drake interjected. “So they’re male and yet they can reproduce.” He was suddenly struck by a question. “But why is this new Phase taking place right now?”
    “As I told you, a number of factors have to be present before a Phase is triggered, and even our scholars don’t know exactly what they are. Perhaps one of the factors is simply our biological clock. The time was” — Eddie stopped, correcting himself — “
is
right. And I know it is because I can feel it, and so can all those Limiters who’ve come over to me.”

WITH CAPTAIN FRANZ standing like a shop dummy behind them, the Rebecca twins had been watching on a security monitor as Alex and the other Styx women worked their way through the humans, impregnating them with egg sacs.
    Rebecca Two spotted activity at the factory