Read LZR-1143: Evolution for Free Online Page A

turned back to us.
    “I know you folk have been out of the loop, but let me give you the some new pieces of intel we have on these bastards. Last few people we rescued reported that they came from a small town. It was large enough to have one good, strong shelter, housing about a hundred pitiful survivors in a high school gym. They barred the doors and hunkered down. Just like thousands of folks are doing this very second.”
    “Well, this town, it didn’t have so many people. Maybe a few thousand total, and they were spread out over twenty or thirty miles. Decent farming community, but nothing like New York or Boston. Hell, not even bigger than a large neighborhood in one a those places.”
    He frowned then, voice going slightly lower, softer. Behind us, Vincent shifted his weight, exhaling loudly. He had clearly heard the story.
    “The folk we rescued were holed up in a small convenience store. Nothing secure, but they were sneaky. They kept the lights off, the sound down, and their profiles low. See, these things seem to hunt by sound and smell. Sight’s for shit. Can’t see too well at all, unless the target’s movin’ or they’re pretty close. According to our friends, they also have trouble with glass and reflections—almost as if they see in grays and blacks.”
    I remembered the car dealership, where the creature had trouble focusing on me behind the opened car door. The analysis made sense. We knew they used noise and smell, but it was good to know they lacked acute vision, as Kopland had explained in the lab.
    “Anyhow, these people sat there for days. Watching these dead folk wander about outside, hoping against hope that none of ‘em would sniff ‘em out and break the glass windows in front of the store. Never had a break to run for it. Didn’t have guns or a car. Just stuck there.”
    He paused as a landing aircraft shrieked in the background, tires slamming against pavement at more than a hundred miles an hour. The engines whined loudly and then rapidly spooled down. He continued, unfazed.
    “Then, one morning they woke up and no one was outside. Nothing was moving. They waited. For hours, they waited for one of those hell-damned bitches to wander by. But they didn’t see any. That’s when they heard it. From clear across town, they heard the pounding of thousands of bodies. And then the screams. They knew where all the others had gone.”
    I knew too. I had seen them bind together. Individually, they could be killed, defeated. In groups …
    “The school,” Kate said, a look of revulsion on her face.
    He nodded, turning back to the board. “One or two at a time, these things are manageable. Especially to a SEAL team or a machine gun or a cluster bomb. When thousands show up at your door, there’s very little that you can do.” He paused. “Unless you’re me, of course.”
    I breathed out heavily, surprised at how tired I felt.
    “So what you’re saying is that these things are developing a herding instinct? Do you have any reports of communication between them?”
    He shook his head. “Nope, nothin’ like that. God forbid. While they respond to the noise that others make, they don’t seem to be able to do anything more than that. They just seem … well, they seem to know . They seem to know when they got people trapped and when others are around. We did a flyby on a suburb of Boston before we laid into the city. Had reports of survivors in a McDonald’s thereabouts. There were at least five thousand of those mother fuckers swarming over the building when our chopper got there. If we had been there ten minutes earlier … well. No use in mourning the family cow after she dies.”
    I blinked. When were you supposed to mourn her?
    And do people really mourn cows? I mean, I know I was missing the point, but I grew up in the North. We didn’t have wisdom like that where I was from.
    He pointed at glowing green dots that seemed to be evenly spaced up and down the East Coast. One dot