The Buried

by Melissa Grey

  His hands tightened around her throat, bruising. Squeezing. Crushing.

  The world went dark around the edges. The red light narrowed to a circle, shrinking smaller and smaller until the only thing she could see was her brother’s face, drenched in a scarlet glow.

  Sash’s fingers clawed at his hands but it wasn’t enough. Her fingers were numb. Weak. Limbs refused to listen to the commands her oxygen-starved brain was sending them.

  This is it.

  The words were sharp in a way nothing else was.

  This is how I die.

  The lights went out. The last thing Sash saw was Misha, but he wasn’t looking down at her. Not anymore. He was looking up, eyes going wide, mouth opening in a scream.

  And then, nothing.

  The darkness is good.

  The darkness will protect us.

  These words repeated themselves over and over in Yuna’s head as she cowered in that very darkness, surrounded by the soft sounds of other people cowering.

  Everything was louder in the dark.

  Her own breathing was riotously loud in her ears. Her heart a violent drumbeat against her rib cage. Every movement, no matter how minor, had a resonance to it. Under the light of day it might pass unnoticed, but now, in the cloying blackness, it felt like a blaring alarm.

  Beside her, someone—her mother perhaps, or maybe her father—shifted their weight, leaning into Yuna’s arm. The one carrying the knife. Cotton rustled against skin, the whisper of it so abrasive it made her skin itch.

  Be quiet, she wanted to scream. Be still.

  They can’t hurt us if they can’t see us.

  She angled the knife away from whoever was pressing against her side. It wouldn’t do to stab someone in the dark. They might shout or yelp or do something else to draw attention.

  And if attention was drawn, she would need that knife free and mobile.

  Click.

  Click.

  Click.

  Nail on metal. A different quality to the sound than when she’d heard it in the manor. There had been open spaces up there. Rotting wood under foot. Mildewed carpets to eat the sound.

  Now there was nothing to absorb the noise. Only cold, hard metal to reflect it, to bounce it back toward them over and over, around and around until it was hard—no, impossible—to pick out its origin in the silent dark.

  Skkkritch.

  Something dragging itself over the floor paneling.

  Criiiiiiick.

  A new sound then.

  Metal, rending, tearing, opening, exposing—

  Swallowing, Yuna leaned forward. (The saliva in her mouth was loud, so very loud. Had it always been that loud?) Gingerly testing the space in front of her, she moved forward, inch by terrible inch. The darkness was so complete, she couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face, a blessing, a curse.

  The hatch was close. They’d been so close.

  But maybe they could make it still. Maybe if they were slow and quiet and deliberate, they could make it to the door.

  With her free hand, Yuna softly touched the arm of the person beside her. They started, a tiny yelp escaping the confines of their lips.

  Skrriii—

  A pause.

  Listening.

  Waiting.

  All of them.

  Monster and man.

  Yuna’s hand flew up, as fast as she dared, to softly touch the mouth of the person in question. The narrowness of the jaw. The sharpness of the chin. Pointed, like the bottom half of a heart.

  Her mother.

  The woman trembled under Yuna’s touch.

  Click, click. Click.

  Yuna placed one finger on her mother’s cheek. With a light touch, she spelled out two letters, right on the woman’s skin.

  G. O.

  Go.

  A frantic shake of the head dislodged Yuna’s hand.

  Groping blindly in the dark, she sought out her mother’s hand. Yuna squeezed.

  Take Appa’s hand. She thought the words as loudly as she could, screaming them in her mind. Prayed to every god—dead gods, forgotten gods, vengeful gods, and merciful gods—that her mother understood.

  They could not afford to lose one another in the dark. Connection was all they had. Connection was how they would survive.

  Yuna’s mother squeezed back.

  (Not enough.)

  Careful of the knife, Yuna pulled her hand back from her mother’s iron grip and let her newly freed hand explore the immediate vicinity until it landed upon someone else. A woolen sweater, the weave recognizable under her touch.

  Appa.

  She took his hand, wasting no time, and joined it with her mother’s. Then she took her mother’s other hand and squeezed, not gently this time but hard.

  Understand.

  Touch would save them.

  Fear would doom them all.

  Down the line, Yuna could hear the soft sound of people moving, trying desperately to make as little sound as possible.

  They were doing it. They were joining hands.

  At the beginning of the chain, Yuna moved forward, tugging her mother along behind her, each footfall deliberate, every impact of toe to floor as measured and careful as possible.

  Yuna’s understanding of the world narrowed to one foot in front of the other, leading their procession perilously through the dark.

  This blessed dark.

  This cursed place.

  She felt her way along the wall with the back side of the hand holding the knife. The wall was her anchor, her guiding constant.

  Follow it straight and the hatch will be there.

  The moment her knuckles brushed against the rivets that surrounded the hatch, she sunk her teeth into her bottom lip. She had to hold back the shout of triumph that wanted to be set free.

  They were there.

  They had made it.

  But then, the only thing worse than the lights going out happened.

  The darkness was a blessing.

  But the lights … the lights turned on.

  Gabe squeezed his eyes shut against the onslaught of light, brighter than any he’d ever experienced inside the bunker. Vivid. White. Searing. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, falling freely over his cheeks.

  It was too much. Entirely too much.

  They didn’t know how to handle that much illumination. How to filter it into a form that could be digested, processed, understood.

  But closing his eyes was the biggest mistake he could have made.

  Something slammed into Gabe’s shins, knocking him down. The knife fell from his hand, the sound of it clattering to the floor paneling swallowed by the chaos erupting in the narrow corridor.

  Screaming. Only some of it human.

  “Get out! Go, go, go!” Yuna’s voice arched above the madness, coming from the direction of the hatch. He’d seen it in the distance. Close and far, all at once. Yuna had gotten them there. She was shepherding people through it. She was—

  Gabe’s own pained shout rose above all the rest as something dug into the thick denim of his jeans.

  He opened his eyes, knowing he had to and wishing he didn’t.

  The thing on him defied description.

  Open sores, like the man with the rat. But more, so many more. The surface of the thing’s skin was covered in them, like a pelt of blistered flesh.

  A skull, mishappen. Half-smashed. A face so completely covered in scars its features were subsumed. The other eye, wild and lolling, the whites shot through with angry red and sickly yellow.

  A mouth brimming with irregular rotting teeth, broken, jagged, sharp.

  Blackened nails, scrabbling at Gabe’s legs as it tried to find purchase on his jeans.

  He kicked wildly. Kicked the thing in the cheek, the jaw, the nose, the forehead. It reared back as blood—dark and thick in a way blood shouldn’t ever be, like tar—spurted forth. Gabe backed away in a sort of crab walk.

  Backed into a wall—no, not a wall. A door.
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  He tore his eyes away from the writhing thing in front of him, to glance up.

  An auxiliary electrical closet. There were two of them at either end of the bunker. Each was connected to the central generator room, the tiny closet with the tangled wires.

  The tangled wires Gabe knew were a hazard.

  A bomb waiting to go off.

  He grabbed at the door handle, ignoring the lance of pain shooting up his arm when his bloodied, bandaged stumps hit metal, and wrenched the door open.

  The darkness would save them.

  Through the mass of bodies—human and otherwise—Gabe saw Yuna hacking away at the things, monsters, creatures. At least half a dozen. Maybe more. Maybe less. His own father was by her side, swinging what looked like a heavy wrench. Between the two of them, they made a hole for the others to scramble toward the hatch. To escape.

  “Gabe!”

  His father spotted him at the same instant.

  Between them, three of those things reared up. They jostled one another, spittle and blood flying from their maws.

  “Get Lucas out of here!” Gabe shouted. “Go!”

  Whatever his father said was lost. Gabe threw himself into the electrical closet just as one of the things leaped for him.

  Its body slammed into the door as Gabe shut it behind him with a well-placed kick.

  The sounds raging from the hallway outside were dulled by the heavy metal door. The light in this room was far dimmer, emanating from a single exposed bulb overhead.

  Just enough to see the mess of wires in front of him. And the small toolbox at his feet, stamped with the following words:

  FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY

  He thought that maybe this situation qualified. Gabe flicked open the locks on the box and grabbed something sitting at the top, something that would help the others escape. Buy them time enough to get free.

  A flare.

  With his injured hand—now bleeding freely through the bandages his mother had wrapped around his severed fingers—he grabbed a fistful of wires. Then he yanked them out of the wall with all his might.

  The small, pathetic bulb overhead went out.

  He could do this. Once they were outside, they would be safe. They just needed time. And the things locked in the bunker needed to not get out. Not now. Not ever.

  Without giving himself time to stop, to breathe, to think about the absolute madness of what he was about to do, he opened the door and lit the flare.

  Orange light pierced the shroud of darkness.

  “You want me?” Gabe shouted. A series of clicks and barks and purely animal screams answered. “Come and get me.”

  And then, flare in hand, he ran.

  It happened too fast for Sash to be able to stop it.

  Misha’s mouth opening in a scream.

  The sound cut short by something heavy slamming into him.

  The lights going out. Completely. Not even the red half-light they’d been told for years and years and years would always be there. No, this darkness was complete. Thick and impenetrable.

  All Sash had left was sound and smell and touch.

  Weight, heavy on her legs. Misha’s knees digging into the meat of her thighs as he tussled with someone—something?—above her.

  A fetid smell. Rancid. Like rotten meat.

  Another scream this time. Not Misha’s voice. Something else. Something that didn’t sound like a person.

  The sound of fabric ripping.

  A gurgle cut short.

  The snap of bone.

  The drip, drip, drip of something hot and wet on her face.

  Then, a single point of light flashing in the darkness. A shot echoed through the black.

  Sash experienced a slivered moment of illumination, just enough to see the source of the sound. A woman’s hand—long-fingered, bony—holding a gun.

  Misha’s weight slumped against her. But it was too heavy for even Misha’s considerable stature. It was Misha and something else. Misha and more.

  Sash pushed at Misha’s shoulders with all her might. He was heavy, so heavy. And there was something leaking on to her chest, soaking through her shirt.

  Blood.

  With a wail, she pushed, scrambling away from her brother—the body—and whatever that thing was.

  Blood.

  Her hand swiped at the mess on her shirt, coming away tacky and hot.

  Misha’s blood.

  A tremor worked its way through her whole body, starting with her hand and expanding outward until every bone, every muscle, every sinew was shaking, hard enough to tear her apart at the seams.

  Then the lights flared on.

  Sash’s eyes closed reflexively against the glare—unbearable, white, hot—but not fast enough. She saw it. She saw everything.

  Her brother prostrate on the floor. Facedown in a sluggishly expanding pool of his own blood. The track her own body had made as she’d pushed herself through it. A thing wrapped around his shoulders and back like some kind of horrible limpet.

  And at the other end of the hallway, Dr. Moran held a silver revolver in her hand. The pearl handle gleamed iridescent in the light.

  Moran lowered the gun—just a few inches, not entirely—and made a disappointed noise in the back of her throat.

  “What a shame,” said the doctor. “He was such a fine lieutenant.” Then she sighed. “But better him than me.”

  Sash opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Closed it again. She didn’t know what she was trying to say. What she should try to say.

  Moran studied her for a moment. “I’d run if I were you. My pets do so love the light.” She tapped the side of her nose. “And the smell of blood drives them absolutely wild.”

  Looking at the doctor was terrible, but so much less terrible than looking at the table before her. The two figures locked together. Joined by the single bullet that had ripped through one and entered the other.

  With a swirl of her red skirt, Moran turned and left, footfalls echoing through the hallway as she departed. She turned a corner—toward the hatch, Sash’s mind supplied. Not the main one. Not the one through which she left every night to take her readings, wrapped up in a suit of armor she didn’t need. The suit had been for their benefit. For her lie.

  Sash placed one bloody hand on the wall and pulled herself up, leaving a crimson smear against the textured metal. Her legs weighed a hundred, a thousand, a million pounds each, but still, she put one in front of the other. Again and again.

  Don’t look back.

  She forced herself forward, moving in the direction of the doctor and the gun.

  Whatever you do, don’t look back.

  She was the last through the door.

  Mr. Correa had tried to stay behind, to go after Gabe, to protect his son, but Yuna stopped him. With one hand on the back of his shirt—and strength she hadn’t known she possessed—she’d shoved so hard the cotton tore, but it was enough.

  Enough to throw him through the door.

  Enough to swipe at the things trying to flood past her.

  Enough to dig the knife into the chest cavity of one that lunged at her.

  Enough to fall backward through the hatch.

  Enough to slam it shut, to kick the snapping jaws trying to squeeze through, to slice at the fingers prying at the open door.

  Enough to fling her weight against it, to hold it shut, to spin the hand wheel.

  Enough to push them to the surface, up the ladder Moran had scaled how many times? Hundreds? Thousands?

  Enough to suck in a lungful of air—fresh, clean, pure—when she reached the surface.

  Enough to save a few.

  But not enough to save them all.

  An accident waiting to happen.

  That’s what Gabe’s father had called the generator room with its tangled wires, its exposed power sources, its flimsy, haphazard construction. Its illogical design, brought to life by a madman driven by fear and paranoia.

  An accident waiting to happen.
>
  Waiting for the right combination of elements. A dropped tool here. A forgotten safety cap there.

  “If this thing blows … ,” his father had said, many nights ago. He’d been walking his son through the machines’ idiosyncrasies, guiding him to take care of them, like a gardener with a particularly poisonous patch of exotic plants. “Then we’re all dead. Boom. Kablooey. That’s a wrap, folks.” A mournful shake of his head, the one he used whenever he was forced to bear witness to subpar craftsmanship.

  “An accident,” his father had said, “waiting to happen.”

  As it turns out, Gabe thought, yanking wires out of the wall, rerouting power, exposing delicate copper, fastening things together that absolutely should not touch, the accident this place has been waiting for is me.

  It was incredible that Sash was able to find her way to the hatch by memory and touch alone. Their secret hatch, the one that symbolized so much to them. Freedom. Defiance. Hope.

  Though perhaps incredible wasn’t the right word. Not at all.

  Her navigation was the most credible thing of all.

  She’d lived a whole life in this bunker. It had felt large once, when she’d been small. But now, even in the dark, she saw it for what it was. A cage. A tank. A cell.

  One whose corners and curves she knew well.

  It was harder once she’d crawled through the air vents, through the hatch, out of the opening in the ballroom floor.

  She didn’t know the manor.

  Not the way a woman who’d spent her childhood in it would. How many years had Moran lived within these gilded walls before she was sent away? How many hours had she spent committing every nook and cranny, every closet and stairwell, every window and door to memory?

  Sash had no advantage here.

  What she did have was her rage.

  The night was dark, darker than it had been the last time she’d been up here. There was no moonlight overhead to illuminate her path, no crisp starlight to guide her.

  In the shadows, something moved.

  Sash paused. Strained her ears. Listened.

  Not something. Several things. Clicking and skkkritching and sniffing and snapping.

  “Followed me all the way up here, did you?”