I gave Sarah a playful smack on the ass, and she ran ahead exaggeratedly, crying, “Unwanted contact!” We all shared a much-needed laugh – some esprit de corps had returned, at least for now. It wouldn’t last long before being broken by a discovery that was grim even by the new apocalyptic standard, but for now we felt, what? Almost good? Almost…

As we walked, my mind roamed over jumbled thoughts of the past. Distant yet vivid memories of childhood – falling from the monkey bars and having the breath knocked out of me in first grade – mingled with recollections of my recent, jaded urban existence. My internal replay progressed to last night’s imaginings, to the vision of the network connecting the stars, and to its malevolent turn. The information fabric of modern life had turned against itself, been used as an instrument of chaos, and then had itself succumbed to the inexorable disease which it had so willingly hosted. Why, for Christ’s sake, did the light bulbs and cars and refrigerators have to be connected? Build a better, internet-connected, mousetrap, and the world (and its share-price-boosting sales revenue) will beat a path to your door – which can now be opened remotely by a halfway competent hacker.

As we rounded the point the road hugged the beach, and I could see another of the many innumerable wrecks had made the road impassable except on foot. Two cars had collided head-on, apparently at very high speed – it looked at is they had crashed nose-to-nose, but at a slight angle (as if one of them had veered out of its lane intentionally in order to hit the other), caving in the front ends and sending them reeling with reflected momentum to resting positions that lay obliquely across the road lanes. One of the cars, I could see by the hump of cameras on top, was autonomous. Autonomous, at least, until someone seized control of it and made it do their bidding… This scene, repeated thousands of times the world over, was like something out of Maximum Overdrive. Except this time, there were no possessing demon spirits needed – just some ill-willed hackers enabled by myriad security lapses and an ultra-modern 5G network. Or maybe the latter is just one concrete manifestation of the former. 

The steel-blue ocean began to glint with the light of a single, newly exposed patch of baby-blue sky that broke rebelliously through the gloomy clouds. The rolling hills yawned under a supple, pillowy quilt of fog, only the farthest headlands exposed, like toes peeking out from beneath the covers. The unceasing waves crashed faintly with the metered rhythm of the moon’s invisible tug. The water, the sand, the moist air exuded that intoxicating salty smell that made them feel so alive, even amidst all-encompassing death. 

That’s quite a big flock of gulls, I thought – and what were they feeding on? As soon as my mind had formed the question it had an answer, and the answer brought a sick feeling of sinking, sinking like the gulls whose paths I followed with my eyes down to the beach, and I knew somehow that their carrion was human. The low sun shone only weakly behind the cloud cover, and some piles of driftwood blocked my view of that part of the beach, but I knew.

”Everybody stay here,” I muttered. “I’m going to walk up and take a look.”

“I’ll go with you,” Aaron volunteered helpfully, and began to walk my way. “Never go alone, right?”

“Stay here,” I repeated, roughly this time. I was breaking my own rule by going alone, but I feared the worst and didn’t want any of the others to see it up close and personal. Before anyone could object, I walked quickly away on long, anxious strides.It took a few minutes to reach the driftwood, and I felt increasingly cold and hollow as I approached, slowing to a crawl as I came close enough to see what was on the other said.

“Holy Jesus,” I said under my breath when I finally laid eyes on the whole scene. Now I was glad I skipped breakfast. The gulls had already started working on the but hadn’t had a chance to strip much away. From the horrible, impossible angle of the head and the body, it was clear what had killed them. Their throats had been cut all the way down to the spine, so that the heads were barely attached any more. In the gaping wound, I could see exposed tendons, cartilage, muscles, arteries, and verterbrae. Two had been killed in their sleeping bags, and the other one, from the looks of it, as he was pissing over by the driftwood sculpture. Blood was sprayed in long spurts across the sand, and pooled under their necks where they lay. Whoever had done it had needed only one monstrously vicious cut per victim – I didn’t see any signs of repeated hacking or slashing. I wasn’t comforted to know that the killer’s hand was well-practiced.