Book One: A Storm of Glass and Ashes

Chapter 19: Archetypes

 The road up to the insectarium was brief and unhindered by live things. Hawk didn't know which was worse: the silence of ashes, or the soft hooting sounds in the distance as the ape-creatures moved through the unknown. She wanted to say the latter, but she kept seeing pairs of shoes, slowly emptying of the ash that had once been feet, and her skin went crawling. At least the creatures were something you could do something about. Violent things, maybe, that she'd prefer to avoid, but at least it was motion, movement, positive inertia. This quiet death surrounding her, scattering across every surface and gusting on the wind...she wanted to run. She wanted to move until her lungs burst because at least that meant she was alive, and could go back to the world where plants were green, animals weren't disappearing into particulate, and life at least had a chance.

The golf cart made its obedient little purring sound. It was almost a whine. Some chariot for Armageddon's opening act. But it was faster than walking and, worst case scenario, would be easy to abandon if they had to.

The insectarium was a large, geodesic dome around a butterfly garden. Hawk swallowed, knowing this was going to be bad. But as they drew closer, Hawk's breath caught. There was green within the dome. Yes, she saw beige. She saw all kinds of death within. But there was green. There was life! Oh, all she had to do was get inside, and...and...

...and what?

"You know," Alex said, from the driver's seat. "I'm getting real sick of the rules changing on me every twenty minutes. First the apes, and now we've got plant survivors. What'd they do here? Feed honeypots to the ivy?"

"I'm going in," Hawk said. "In and out. You can stay or come. Have fun." And she lept out of the golf-cart without waiting for anyone else to follow her. Footsteps echoed like gunshots in the silence, and the remnants of trees trailed their own dissolution like flower petals. Wind hissed in an unfamiliar tone, unblemished by the rustle of leaves, the scent of grass. It was cold. It was sterile. It clashed with the bright colors of the nearby bug-festooned carousel. Hawk could see large cartoon eyes on a mantis, the big black spots on a ladybug...and the bodies piled against the ropes where people had once waited in civil lines. Oh, god, the shoes that must be over there. Tennis shoe soles with pleather toppers and cheerful plastic cartoon decals. Strappy rattan heels with the rattan gone, only rubber and metal buckles left behind. The soles and uppers of tennis shoes. There would be diaper bags and purses, pacifiers, polyester blankets, strollers. Dental fillings. Pacemakers. Did they have time to run? From the jumble of velvet ropes, she thought they did. Barely.

There was another pile of dead people at the doors to the insectarium. Hawk stepped over these. Sheltered as they were by the building, she could still make out features. Noses. Open, staring eyes. The tangle of hair turned to ashen filaments. Wedding rings still on fingers. Hands still clasped together. One prone shape appeared to be a woman holding a child to her breast. The wind had taken away most of her hair. It left the curve of her lip, the soft shadow of her child's closed eyes.

Hawk did her best to pass through without disturbing them. And the insectarium was mostly vacant once she was past the door. She could breathe easier. Even had enough space left amid the panic and the horror and the grief to look back and see where the others were. They'd left the golf-cart, were seemingly taking their time as they picked through the corpses.

Maybe Hawk could finish up before they even got inside.

She found a kiosk with a map. It was partially gone, as the backing was metal mesh and it had been printed on paper, but enough of the ink and laminate was still pressed against the kiosk glass for Hawk to locate what she wanted. Not the butterfly garden, but the honeypot feature. It was down the main hallway a ways, framed by small enclosures filled with Glass. Hawk knew why: the sides of each terrarium might be glass, and thus safe shelter from the Glass energy, but the lids would be permeable. Screens of varying mesh sizes, or plastic with holes drilled in, stuffed with cotton to keep the bugs in but allow air to move freely. And so the Glass energy had gotten in, winding its aural spikes down through the living contents like eldritch anemone tentacles. Here was a scorpion, beige and dead, the harsh aquarium lighting reflecting on the illusion of an intact carapace. Hawk was tempted to break through the layers of drywall, remove the terrarium screen, and press down on the corpse until it was obliterated. She hadn't had that impulse with the human corpses, but she wanted the dead insects gone. It made it real. Seeing a pile of glassy beige ash in tennis shoes still felt unreal, like it could somehow be staged. But they couldn't have staged the dead scorpion, or the dead tarantulas in the next set of cases, or the dead preying mantises or the living ants—