Chapter 26: Raindrops, falling into the sea.

Dibbuk laid there, listening as the mandibles of the Davisian ants worked their way through the ancient rusted metal and near petrified wood. She was getting lucky here. The build quality of these old carts was much higher than that of the current age.

She'd once watched a video of a swarm overtaking a cart, rending steel and cable as if it were plastic. She'd seen them do the same thing to flesh but even faster. Of course, that was human flesh. She doubted it would be so quick in her case.

'Well, what are my options?' She thought, sitting up. She glanced around the cabin. The lights were still on, dim but on. The sensor eyes might still work. She'd be able to get a look at her imminent death.

As she moved to stand up something shifted beneath her and poked her right below the tail. She jolted upwards, glancing around in embarrassed exasperation. To her relief none of the corpses snickered as her bluish green skin grew a slightly darker shade of navy.

She composed herself and investigated the spot where she had been sitting. A handle, made of steel and wrapped in rotting leather, was jutting out from under where Captain Botus leg had been. The extremity had fallen apart and caused the handle to shift upwards.

'What? A sword? Was he that kind of old school?' Dibbuk thought, giving the handle a tug. To her geekish glee what she pulled out was not in fact a sword. It was something much more useful.

"No fucking waaaay." She said under her breath, the morbidity of her situation forgotten in her amazement. It was a shearing bolter. Originally designed to blow holes in steel plates, the weapon she now held in her hand was one of the oldest recorded weapons used by wastewalkers.

Before proper insecticides had been formulated for Davisian ants they had used these incredibly heavy weapons to take out swathes of them at a time. Nearly every walker had one. She couldn't understand how now that she was holding one. It was massive.

They were actually incredibly economic as well. As the projectiles used were sheared off bits of steel, razor thin, then shot by a rail system at 2400 feet per second. The bits of steel came from a solid state reservoir that could create nearly four hundred rounds per reload.

Dibbuk thanked her lucky stars that she was such a nerd. Even her brother had gotten tired of studying the old waste walker weapons with her. She'd always wanted to hold one of these. She could almost do so with one hand.

'Actually, why am I holding one of these? Bolters were from long before even Captain Botus time. The fact that this one hasn't rusted into dust is a miracle in and of itself. It's dripping wet with that odd green stuff too.' She thought, looking back into the pool of greenish liquid under Botus corpse.

She took a closer look. There was something else breaking the surface of the pool. She hesitated at first, but then considered that the substance was already coating her claws as it was. Plunging her claw under the surface she grabbed hold of something solid.

She tugged on the object, immediately regretting it. Dibbuk had to stop herself from crying out in pain as she pulled her claw back out of the liquid. A gash in her palm began to bleed. As she held the gash closed she saw that she had managed to pull the object into sight. It was a spare bolter clip, half used and still sharp on one end.

Splotches of red began to form in the oily green substance as her palm began to gush. Years in the pipes had taught her not to panic in these situations, but as she pulled the tiny first aid kit out of her pocket, she stopped. The wound, fresh as it was was began to bubble and hiss. She began to panic.

As Dibbuk shakily pulled the zipper on the first aid she noticed that the pain was gone. The muscle was stitching itself back together, little strands of red and orange barely visible before her skin closed up around it. The only sign that there had ever been a cut was a thin line leading from her thumb to the middle of her palm.

'This...this is what she was talking about. So far from reality. Down here where time seems to move at a snails pace.' Dibbuk thought, wrestling with her growing anxiety. There was something there, a void opening up and enveloping her. It felt like the depths of the sea.

There she might find only the company of horseshoe crabs to bring her comfort. Horseshoe crabs and... and something else. A faint ringing, like a bell in the fog. The sounds of thousands of ants gnawing their way into the cart had faded away, leaving nothing but the sound of her own breathing.

Dibbuk glanced around, looking for some sort of form in the darkness. Then, lights began to flicker all around her like raindrops falling into the sea. As each light dimmed and brightened they rang like bells in the void, each one a different tone, each time growing in volume.

Within moments they became a deafening cacophony of dissonant bells assaulting Dibbuks mind. She dropped to her knees, clutching at her head. She felt as if her own thoughts were being scrambled in the unending chorus of sound.

Then the lights went silent. Dibbuk searched frantically for a moment hoping that the lights had disappeared. They hadn't. They were all there, surrounding her, but they were no longer flickering. They sat in place glowing faintly in unison.

They had gone silent, but there were other bells. One came from above, and two in the distance in front of her. Two were faint, nearly silent, but one in the distance in front grew again in volume. As the volume grew the lights around her hummed and vibrated. Then a voice, cold and crass reverberated in Dibbuks head. A new voice she'd never heard before.

'Lizard will do just fine. The new spore will never gestate. Monkey will suffer. I will not end.'