The Buried

by Melissa Grey

  With that, he left.

  Gabe waited for a moment. For what, he didn’t know. But when nothing more happened—no more recriminations, no more confessions, no more accusations—he rose, brushing off his jeans.

  He couldn’t fix what he had broken. He couldn’t save Sash from her own beautiful, foolish bravery. He couldn’t undo the things he had done. Wouldn’t, even if he had that power.

  But what he could do was unstick a stupid pipe.

  * * *

  The filtration system was located in an oversize closet, large enough for the three tanks that cleaned their water, enabling them to drink it. The spring that fed it was the same underground reservoir that powered their lights and kept their air circulating and breathable. It was their oasis in the desert. The source of all their power.

  And now, it was their damnation.

  The water was black.

  “What the …”

  From his vantage point atop the short step stool he’d used to lift the lid of one of the tanks, Gabe frowned down at the darker-than-it-should-be liquid.

  It should have been clear. He should have been able to see straight to the bottom of the tank. It was not. He could not.

  Leaning down as close as he dared, he sniffed at the surface. A not entirely unfamiliar metallic scent stung his nostrils.

  What is that?

  The sense memory hit him before he could properly decipher that smell into something specific.

  Open sores, weeping into the crisp night air.

  Bandaged hands, knobby knuckles.

  Jaundiced eyes, sclera stained, gone wild with something unnamed.

  Bile rose thick in his throat. He clamped his mouth shut, holding in whatever his body wanted to expel with his hand. Nothing, there was nothing in it to expel, no matter how badly it wanted to.

  He breathed in, eyes closed, painting the backs of his lids with innocuous images—Flash Gordon comics, the Very Hungry Caterpillar, Harold and his purple crayon, the Bat signal blazing across the Gotham skyline—until the nausea passed.

  It’s fine, he thought to himself. You’re fine.

  Both lies, but necessary ones.

  He couldn’t afford to lose it now. Whatever it was. The fragile adhesive holding the rational parts of his brain together. He glanced back at the filtration system. There didn’t appear to be anything wrong with it. He had just checked it the day before.

  And the other tanks didn’t appear to have anything wrong with them, either. Their water levels were low, but the water itself was clear. It was only the first tank, the one that drew directly from the spring that was—(don’t say contaminated, contaminated is bad, contaminated means there’s been a breach, contaminated means we aren’t safe)—not quite right.

  Descending the step stool, Gabe pulled a pair of waterproof gloves from his back pocket. He kept them tucked away there, ready for whenever he came into this room. The clarity of the water was integral to their survival. One of the first things his father had taught him was to never contaminate (that word) it. He pulled on the gloves, making sure they rolled all the way up to his elbow.

  There was something lodged in one of the pipes. Something small and dark, seeping billowing clouds of viscous liquid into the tank. It had to be small. The pipes were relatively narrow in this part of the mechanism. Cost-effective, according to Cornelius Moran’s notes. Like money had ever been an issue for the family who had built this bunker, had lived in that gilded palace above.

  Gabe reached his arm into the tank. His hand disappeared from view, swallowed by the blackened water.

  He groped blindly for the source of the obstruction. The water lapped at the sides of the tank, disturbed by his rummaging. His breath trickled through his nose—not his mouth, he didn’t want to taste that smell—in short spurts, oddly loud in that small room.

  Something brushed against his hand. He started, his sneakers sliding against the step stool, nearly upending it. His other hand clutched the side of the tank, steadying himself.

  Don’t touch it, his rational mind screamed. Don’t touch it, don’t touch it, don’t touch it.

  He put his hand back into the tank.

  A groan emanated from the pipe. Bubbles formed on the surface of the dark water, further obscuring Gabe’s view.

  Not that he could see his hand anyway. And besides—

  Something—no, several somethings—rushed past his hand. It took his mind an excruciating moment to realize what they were.

  Bodies.

  Tiny, bloated, furred bodies.

  Rats.

  They poured out of the pipe, feet scrabbling against Gabe’s skin, pricking through the rubber of his glove. Some floated to the surface while others fought, clawing at each other to breach the surface.

  With a choked scream, Gabe threw himself backward. The stool slipped, sending him toppling to the ground. The rats flowed over the side of the open tank, hitting the ground with meaty little thuds. A few bodies stayed where they were, but enough of them got up, cushioned by their brethren as they swarmed.

  Right at Gabe. Who was still on the floor. Frozen, mouth slack-jawed and stupid with fear.

  The feel of the first one climbing up his pant leg is what did it. That wretched, frozen moment shattered. Sound rushed back in around Gabe, an incoherent roar of blood in his ears.

  They were on his jeans. Clinging to his sweater.

  There was something wrong with them.

  Something wrong, something wrong.

  He batted at them as he tried to stand, but the floor was wet now, so wet. The soles of his sneakers skidded against the water on the ground. His knee slammed, not into the metal paneling of the floor but into something else, something hot and soft and wet, and he would have screamed if he wasn’t so afraid to open his mouth. He could feel them, on his skin, trying to find something? What? Warmth? Food?

  Groping at the side of the water tank, Gabe pulled himself up, spinning frantically as he swiped his gloved hands against his chest, his legs, flailed wildly at his back.

  One of the rats touched his neck, its small, sharp claws scrabbling for purchase. It was in his hair, too close, too close.

  He ran, his hands knocking into his own body, his head, his everything so hard he could feel the bruises wanting to form. He slipped on something else, he didn’t want to know what, before he reached the door.

  The hatch.

  They couldn’t get past the hatch.

  He couldn’t let them.

  It swung open under his hands. He was fast, but they were faster, running, shrieking, spilling over each other like they were made of something more liquid than flesh and bone and sinew.

  Gabe threw himself through the door, not looking back as he slammed it shut behind him, spinning the handwheel to lock it.

  He collapsed against the far wall, eyes riveted to the closed hatch. Droplets of water and something else, something darker and thicker, peppered the bottom.

  The doors were thick. At least five inches so. That was how they were designed, back in the Cold War when madmen with more money than sense were constructing bunkers for a doomsday scenario they would never live to see. But even then, even over the harsh rasp of his own breathing, Gabe could still hear them scrabbling, fighting, screaming to be set free.

  * * *

  He scrubbed his hands until they bled.

  The sight of the water in the basin turning pink made him heave into the toilet. He’d done this so many times he thought he might start losing vital organs to the process.

  The cold metal panels were a balm on his hot skin. He could still feel the rats, pawing, clawing, scratching.

  If he could rip his skin off his bones and flush it down the toilet he would.

  But he couldn’t.

  What he could do was this.

  * * *

  He had a nervous tic. Twirling pencils. Graphite was one of those precious commodities in the bunker, one of the things they were running out of and fast. Lessons never involved
note-taking. Well, they had, once upon a time. A long, long time ago, when their stores had felt ample and their quarantine like it had an expiration date. He’d kept one in the hideout for precisely this purpose. Twirling. Around and around and around until the maelstrom of thoughts slowed enough for his body to turn them into action.

  The radio crackled to life.

  Gabe froze, his body seizing with such force that the pencil in his hand snapped.

  That wasn’t—

  That couldn’t possibly be—

  He stared at the radio again, waiting for it to make another noise, like a child at the circus waiting for a trained cat to jump through a hoop.

  A burst of static punched through the speaker, making him jump.

  He wasn’t crazy.

  This wasn’t a hallucination, or a dream, or wishful thinking.

  This was real. It was happening.

  He knocked the mic off its perch in his haste to get to the radio.

  Sending a quick and fervent prayer to any deities that might have been listening, Gabe adjusted the volume controls.

  Please. Please, please, please.

  There was a wordless crackle. And then, noise.

  It was a phrase, seemingly repeated, but too broken by bursts of static to mean much of anything.

  “Four—nine—sector—four—nine—exclusion—zone—”

  Gabe cracked the volume up as high as he dared. He had the headset on, sure, but he wasn’t positive it would cancel all noise. And he wanted to be able to hear anyone approach if they did.

  He didn’t want to think of what Moran would do if she found him with a radio. A radio, of all things! And he’d turned it on, broadcasting their location to who knows where.

  He fumbled for the microphone, dropping it not once or twice but three times as his hands shook with the wild abandon singing through his veins.

  “I don’t know if anyone’s out there, but if you are …” Gabe squeezed his eyes shut, praying for the first time in years. Not to a deity, not to the divine, but to whoever was listening. His hands steadied on the mic as he did the only thing he could think of to do, the only thing that felt right. “We need help.”

  Sash didn’t know how long she screamed until she simply couldn’t anymore. Her voice cracked. Went hoarse. And then, agonizingly, crumbled into a broken rasp. Her forehead slumped against the metal of the door with a dull thud that reverberated all the way down to the roots of her teeth.

  “Come back.” Calling the words a croak would be generous. They clawed their way out of Sash with painstaking effort, each consonant scraping at her raw throat.

  Her nails scrabbled against the unrelenting bulk of the door. It was an industrial hatch. Impossible to force open, especially when all you had in your arsenal was your own legs. She could try kicking the door down, but she’d sooner break a knee than the lock. But still, that knowledge didn’t stop her from pounding against the solid metal frame, fists bruised and battered and swollen by the time her voice ran dry.

  Fist thudding uselessly against the door, Sash sucked in a lungful of stale air. Staler even than the rest of the bunker. No one ever came into this room. Not on purpose anyway. The air didn’t cycle through it the way it did in the other, more habitable rooms.

  The thought was enough to make Sash’s chest seize.

  She shook her head, hair rucking against her sweaty skin.

  It was hot in here too. Or maybe that was the fear ratcheting up her body temperature. It could do that. Sometimes it made you feel cold, but other times, it burned you right up from the inside.

  Keep it together. You’re fine. You will be fine.

  The voice inside her head was nearly as shattered as the one that actually made sound.

  They can’t leave you in here forever.

  Summoning that particular thought proved to be a mistake. Hot on its heels was its counterpoint. Its shadow self.

  They could keep you in here forever.

  Sash squeezed her eyes shut, though it made little difference.

  They might just forget about you. Leave you here all alone. To starve or to suffocate.

  She wasn’t sure which would come first.

  Gabe. Gabe would know. Gabe always knew stuff like that. Odd details. Stray scraps of trivia.

  Her feet shuffled away from the door as she put out her hands to test the limits of her space.

  The room was small and dark, but neither of those adjectives did it justice.

  It wasn’t just small. It was downright claustrophobic, even by the standards of someone who had lived most of their life in a basement. If she stood up on her toes, her hair brushed the ceiling. If she laid down, legs stretched out their full length, her toes hit the wall. If she extended her arms to either side, the tips of her fingers would brush against cold hard metal.

  And it wasn’t just dark.

  The blackness was so opaque it made Sash dizzy. She closed her eyes, not to fight the shadows, but to allow her mind to embrace them. If she opened them, her mind tried desperately to sort out some shape or form, but there was no illumination for her brain to use to make sense of anything.

  It was the sort of darkness she had never known. There was no ambient light that could penetrate the bunker, no soft morning sunshine or velvety twilight glow. But whenever someone entered a room, a light was triggered. Not a very bright one (to conserve energy, naturally) but enough to see. The light bled out of the recesses set into the ceiling and walls, cleverly hidden so as not to be obtrusive.

  But light was always there when she needed it.

  Now, she had nothing.

  No light.

  No sound but the rasp of her own breathing.

  No one to come for her when she called. They were all in the room when Moran had ordered Misha (her own brother) to take her away. They had all watched. They had all said not one word in her defense. Not even Gabe. Not even Yuna. Not even her own mother. Her mother.

  Heat pricked at the corners of her eyes.

  You knew she never loved you.

  The thought came so suddenly, the force of it had Sash swaying in place.

  She had never manifested the thought so plainly. Oh, she had flirted with the notion. Danced around the idea with a quick-footed grace her mother would envy. But never had she phrased it as such, not even to herself.

  Sash wrapped her arms around her stomach and sank her nails into the tender flesh of her sides.

  “Stop it,” she hissed to no one but herself.

  How long had she been in here? It felt like minutes. It felt like hours. Either seemed as likely to Sash in that horrible, elastic moment.

  She always blamed you.

  Her fingers curled into fists on her lap. She dug her knuckles painfully into the meat of her thighs.

  It’s your fault.

  The voice whispered through her head, slick and oily and viscous. Clinging to the nooks and crannies of her wrinkled gray matter. Soaking into her skull.

  You were at the stream.

  “Stop it.” The words didn’t hurt this time. Not really. They brought her back to herself a little. But not quite enough.

  She told you not to go out that far but you did. You always did.

  With nothing but the dark to cradle her thoughts, there was nothing left to anchor them. Nothing to keep them solid and safe. Nothing to protect her mind from itself.

  It’s your fault he never made it back.

  And this is it, Sash realized.

  This was the punishment.

  It wasn’t the darkness. Or the cramped quarters. Or the silence. It was all three, working in perfect, harmonious tandem, to ensure that she would be purely and perfectly alone with her thoughts.

  And sometimes, Sash realized as hot tears tracked down her cheeks, there was nothing more horrifying than that.

  Your father is dead and you’re the one who made it happen.

  “No.” But it was such a weak word. So small. So easily devoured by the blessed dark.

&n
bsp; Tell me.

  The voice changed timbre. It fell deeper. Got rounder.

  Are you proud of yourself, Alexandra?

  “No.”

  Are you proud?

  And then, no words. Not even that one. Not even no. Just a single wordless cry as Sash clapped her battered hands against her ears and screamed.

  Darkness, Yuna had begun to appreciate in a way she never had before, was a blessing. Truly. Undeniably so.

  It was also a curse.

  Hidden in the alcove beneath a set of winding stairs, Yuna held her breath as long as she dared. And when that proved to be an unsustainable tactic, she fought to keep it as quiet as possible. In and out through her nose, a noiseless rush of air through her aching lungs.

  Ensconced in the darkness, she waited for the thing to pass her by. The thing she’d heard upstairs. The thing that stalked the night.

  The thing that she knew, deep in her heart, was not human. Maybe it had been, once upon a time. But whatever it was had shed any trace of humanity long ago. Now, it was a beast, twisted and unrecognizable. Hungry. Ravenous.

  From her hiding spot, Yuna could see the shadows writhe.

  Click.

  Skkritch.

  It was closer now than it had been five minutes prior. How long had she been curled up under the stairs? Hiding like a rabbit in a thicket from a big bad wolf?

  You can’t stay here.

  The thought blazed across her mind like a bolt of lightning.

  She couldn’t. It was true. She couldn’t just sit here and wait to die. People were depending on her, even if they didn’t know it.

  Seven years.

  Sash was depending on her.

  They need you.

  It wasn’t her voice now. It was Junsu’s, clearer than it had ever been.

  Yuna unfolded her legs out from under her—quietly, so painstakingly quietly—and rose, peeking out first left, then right. Not that it made much of a difference. She was completely in the dark.

  She tiptoed through the hallway, back toward what she was fairly certain was the ballroom. The moonlight that had been so generous with them before was all but shrouded behind a thick veil of clouds, its illumination feeble. Pointless. She navigated her way down the corridor by memory and by touch, her hand trailing along the flocked velvet wallpaper, which had gone uncomfortably moist from the evening dew. Yuna could feel the hairs at the nape of her neck beginning to curl, the way they did when she worked up a good sweat in dance class. Her skin was too hot, too clammy. Every breath sounded like a gunshot in the silence.