He took another sip of his water, and stood up, rubbed his eyes. He would go out into the hab. There was a viewing cupola on Level 3490. He could get there and back in time to suit up for his shift. He wondered if the shift numbers would be lower. Lots of people were getting pulled into militia. He was not certain why, and the rumours… well, the rumours were laughable. It was an excuse to squeeze more out of the indents like him, he was sure, ship labour to some other complex and tell those left that they had to work twice as hard with half-rations because of some kind of crisis. It was all just a play.

But the sirens were sounding a general alert, and Nula from work gang 67 had said that there were press gangs patrolling the west zones. They had shot people for resisting. That was what she had said, anyway. Mekcrol did not know what to believe. Just like bad dreams, there was nothing you could do about rumours except to try to get your head together and get on. He would go to the view cupola and look out down the street canyon towards the Iron Spire. It might be lit, but then again, the power had been rationed too, so more likely not.

He unlocked the door and opened it.

A blast of wind rocked him back. A figure was standing in the door, vomit and frost on her smock, bloody hands gripping the door frame, empty eyes looking at him. Skin folded, flesh stretched. Teeth grew.

‘We… are… coming…’ gasped the voice of his mother as she stepped across the threshold.

Mekcrol did not wake again. He died screaming, falling through his dreams. No one in his block noticed and by the time his absence from his work shift was logged, no one was wondering about where a low-level indent supervisor was.

The next night, half of the people across the northern hemisphere woke from dreams of things without eyes, or of creatures squatting on their chests in the dark, wearing the skinned faces of loved ones and crooning in the voices of past pain. People fell and fell forever through abysses of night lit with lambent eyes and bared teeth, the screams of their descent following them down and down. The sound of hooves and the howl of wolves rolled through the dark as night passed across the face of Terra.

After three nights of dreams the riots began. Fires lit the Arctic fringe hives and hab-warrens. Crowds poured through breached curfew zones. Arson flames blazed across hundreds of kilometres. Pacification cohorts were deployed. The death count rose, and the nightmares galloped on with the turning of the heavens.

Fourteen

Edge of survival
Wolf of the new moon
Monsters

Freighter ship Antius, Jovian Gulf