The bodies in the tanks were suspended in a backlight from the lab, making their appearances eerier. Their faces were in semi shadows, giving them gaunt, ghoulish features. Their eyes had opened fully, and they were all the same shade of icy dead blue. The skin on his back prickled with unease as he went into the lab and laid his items on the center tables.
He wanted to rest his arms and back, and he wanted to find out what had happened at the facility. If he were not being hunted and threatened by a maniacal hybrid monster, he would have taken the set of binders and notebooks with him and turned them in to the authorities. Someone needed to know what had happened to all those people. Their loved ones needed closure.
He found the binder he had first read from. It seemed to have had the latest dates on its pages. He sat on the floor with his back to the wall and his legs drawn up to support the binder and opened it to the last page.
Chapter 9
The Binder
July 1981
S78 (human male) and S79 (human female), both of comparable ages (24 and 23 respectively) and socioeconomic background, disease free. Once introduced, the two bonded immediately. During feedings, S78 would not eat until S79 had her portion and backed away. If separated, S78 would call out to S79 with insectile buzzing and would not eat until S79 answered. The scientific team, myself included, were hopeful for the couple’s survival. We ran several experiments and found that S78 was ensuring S79 had food before consuming his own. After much forethought, we let them remain in an observation room together under constant supervision for 72 hours. The couple petted and groomed each other and their calls turned from insectile buzzing to a cooing sound, almost the sound of pigeons. They slept curled together and seemed content. After the 72-hour experiment, they were again separated. S78 became increasingly agitated and called out to S79 through the block wall separating them. S78 attacked Gunther, the nutrition specialist who delivered their food every day and every feeding time. Gunther was not a stranger and did nothing to provoke the attack. He was treated in the infirmary and released back to his duties. S78 began exhibiting periods of rage-like outbursts in which he tried to break through the glass. Guards immediately put up the steel sheet to cover the glass front of S78’s observation unit and S78 clawed at the block wall of his unit. Soon after, S79 began exhibiting same outbursts. While I was in a meeting with the team to determine if we should exterminate the pair, they escaped. S78 killed Gunther and two armed guards before freeing S79. The facility went on immediate lockdown and the order to exterminate the pair with prejudice was handed down. A week later, seventeen dead facility members were found around the facility. Rather than report this great failure, the Director has issued immediate evacuation and has ordered all research notes and materials to be left at the facility with the promise that all current scientists would be brought back after the threat is neutralized.
The facility is now being sealed from the outside as we await the evac team. I saw a new creature, not the pair engineered by my team, but a further hybridization of the pair. It has been one week since their escape. I saw traits of both subjects (S78 and S79) in that single new creature plus the addition of a reptilian tail and black claws at the ends of the fingers. The new creature has two heads, one facing backward, the other facing forward on the body. It has two sets of arms, one set positioned normally for a human, the other set growing out of the sides just above the hips.
It is my belief that the two separate specimens merged physically to make the new specimen. There is no proof that humanity remains beyond the few human features of the eyes, face, and that it is bipedal.
I am leaving these notes in the main lab as ordered. We are all being taken to the upper floor lobby for extraction through the roof. All other exits have been sealed now. As soon as we are out, a team will seal this level just beyond the lab and holding room in hopes of trapping the creature underground.
Robert blew out a deep breath. “That explains a lot.” He closed the book and laid it aside. “Bastards didn’t even come back to make sure the thing was dead, I bet. They don’t know their little experiment is close to escaping this place.” He shook his head. “Idiots.”
He pushed to a standing position again, leaning against the cool wall for a moment to let all the information sink in. “Wait!” He moved to the holding room. “That’s the wall the doctor wrote about. Has to be.” He put his head against the door again, listening. Nothing.
Pulling it open, he started to put his head out to check for the creature when he saw dim colors coalescing on the opposite wall.He jerked back and slammed the door then flipped the lock as the creature attacked it again.
In fury, he kicked the bottom of the door and screamed. “Die already! Fucking crawl off and die!” He kicked the door and pounded it with his hands.
He laughed and ran his hands through his hair. Laughter was all that was left. He stood in a room full of suspended bodies, alive or maybe dead, or something in between, and a monster was attacking his only exit. The next step was total madness. As in total Renfield, eating bugs and muttering to a dark master, no coming back, madness.
He stalked back to the lab and grabbed the lantern and axe. The beast’s attack had subsided a bit when he returned to the door. He put his back against the door and slid to the floor. He would sit and wait it out. It would go away as it had before.
“I’ll just sit here with all my new friends until you leave again. That’s fine, big guy, you just keep wearing yourself out.” He raised his eyebrows at the chubby middle-aged man in front of him. “Ain’t that right, buddy?” He nodded curtly. “Yep, I’ll just wait him out. Got nothing but time, asshole.”
From habit, he reached for his pack of cigarettes. It was crumpled badly. Tearing the foil completely away from the top, he fished out the first cigarette. It had been obliterated. He tossed it away with a chuckle and grabbed the next one. It had broken away from the filter and the bottom half dangled. He plucked the filter and tossed it, tore the tiny sliver of paper still holding the two halves together and crammed a stump into the corner of his mouth, determined to smoke it. Four good puffs and the stump burned his lip. He spat in onto the floor and used his shoe to crush it.
Shortly afterward, he dozed off. He dreamed of his father and one of his famous hunting trips. He woke with a start, disoriented at first but quickly acclimated.
He knew he had slept long enough for the lab to go completely dark again. That was at least twenty or thirty minutes. The pins and needles from his lower back to the tips of his toes told him he had slept a lot longer than that. Leaning forward, the pins and needles ran from his shoulders to his fingers and the back of his head was numb. Sleep had been the farthest thing from his mind. Had anyone been with him to suggest a nap, he would have laughed at them and called them crazy. Who could sleep at a time like that? Apparently, he could.
When he could move again, every joint was stiff and aching, every wound throbbed with renewed vigor, but he didn’t have nausea or vertigo. Get rid of two and inherit tenfold in return, he thought angrily.
As he looked at the door he wondered when the creature had stopped its attack and if it had gone away. The wall was even more tantalizing since reading the notes. If he could get past it, the hall would lead him to the upper floor and from there, he could find, or make a way out.
Breaking away that one cinderblock was the key to weakening others so they could be removed more easily. The shoddy thrown-together look of the job, though, had already fooled him. He had thought it would be easy to get that first block out of the way, too.
Before he opened the door, he kicked the bottom, hoping to entice the monster to another attack if it was waiting out in the darkness for him. After a few seconds, he heard nothing and kicked the door and yelled at the same time. He listened. Silence was his answer.
“Good enough for me,” he whispered.
Easing into the hallway, he debated whether
to light the lantern since it was so low on fuel. Instead, he moved back inside and stepped through the doorway of the lab. The lighting came on and he walked back to the hallway to await the spill of light.
In the tenuous afterglow of light, he examined the damage to the wall. It was greater than he had thought. Nearly all of the cinderblock was missing. Using the corner of the metal plate as before, he grated at the mortar around the remainder of the block and then used the axe to pull and push until it fell to the other side.
He worked for what felt like hours this way; scraping and grating away at the old mortar and then working the blocks free, pushing them to the other side of the wall. He only hammered at them when it was absolutely necessary to cut down on noise that might bring the creature back.
Arming sweat off his face, he stepped toward his handywork and flicked his lighter. The ragged hole was large enough for him to shimmy through sideways, but he didn’t think it was large enough for the creature to crawl through.
Placing the lantern on a piece of block that jutted into the hole, he grasped the edge and pulled up. He dropped his axe through the hole and turned onto his side facing the lantern. It was poor lighting, but it was all he had besides the Zippo, and he didn’t want to lose it.
The rough blocks bit into his naked flesh, opening new wounds. As he grimaced against the pain he worked himself through the hole until his hip was on the block. Gingerly, he turned to face the floor and braced for the inevitable fall.
He landed in the broken debris but he could not stifle a scream as a piece of broken block jammed mercilessly into the tender flesh just above his left kidney. He held his breath against another scream and ran his hand over the wound as he rolled away. Gravely bits rolled through the cut and he was sure some of them bedded down inside it. The wound wasn’t grievous, only superficial, he thought.
He stood up and took the lantern down as he turned away from the wall. He lit the lamp and limped up the steady, curving grade. Soon, light filtered into the passage from farther ahead. He walked faster. The light became brighter. It wasn’t much light, but it was enough to let him know that there was definitely somewhere ahead where it could get in. And that meant he could get out.
As he was jogging he stayed the curving course, feeling his freedom edging ever closer. White-washed images of his impending freedom flooded his head. He would get out of the building, walk a short distance through the forest to the dirt road, follow it out to the paved road, and be back at the little gas station in only a couple hours. From there, he could be back home inside a day.
Julie and Lilli were waiting and worried about him. His first order of business after escape had to be a phone call to his family to let them know he was okay and on his way home. Just had a bad spot of car trouble and no access to a phone, honey. Everything’s fine now, though, and I’ll be home tomorrow, he would assure her. Then, he would take them to the park for ice cream, and they would let Lilli play as long as she wanted this time.
He reached the end of the wide hallway. A set of double doors lay ahead. He slowed to a walk again, searching for the source of the light. The ceiling seemed to have tiny holes at regular intervals, as if following a strict pattern. At that point, the ceiling soared above his head at twenty-five feet or more according to his estimation.
The double doors had long skinny windows set into them above the handles. Standard issue security doors. The glass had been broken out and a few shards stuck up from the bottoms like jagged teeth just waiting for a taste of human blood. He cleared them away with the axe handle.
“Not today. I’ve spilled enough blood here.” Instead of the expected echo of his voice, it fell away only a few feet from him.
The humidity had jumped astronomically from the underground tunnels where he had been. The mixture of higher humidity and temperature was suffocating. He imagined it felt like being completely shrouded in a hot, wet wool blanket.
Beyond the doors, was the lobby area he had read about. It could be nothing else. The ceiling was lower in there, and there were more of those strange pinpoints of light coming through. He could smell the swampland in the sticky, still air.
Freedom was so close but he held back. Rushing into the room without scanning it for movement could prove disastrous. Not only was he worried about the creature, but alligators and snakes might be lurking in the room. He could make out foliage, low and insubstantial, growing in a wide patch to his left. To the right, it looked like any other large business lobby with a long, curved counter, an area with padded chairs and low tables, a few potted plants, and shiny, tiled floors.
The bank of windows on each outward facing wall had been covered. Likewise, the entrance doors. He pushed at the doors, and as expected, they didn’t open. What he had not expected was the sound of a chain rattling against the metal.
Sliding his arm through a broken window, his fingers found a thick chain that had been looped through the handles on the other side several times.
He muttered, “You gotta be fucking kidding me!”
He continued to walk his hands over the rusted chain links until he grasped a padlock. The rust had taken up residence on it as well. He pulled and wiggled the lock until he could see it. Industrial size Masterlock. That was good and maybe bad.
He worked the axe handle through the window on the right and watched through the one on the left, where his arm was. The uncovered end of the axe was still too large to fit under the arch of the lock, but the corner jammed in tightly. That was good.
Pushing against the axe, he strained hoping to force it apart. It didn’t give and he had exerted all the power he could muster. Taking a deep breath, he tried again. No luck.
Echoing up through the passageway were the sounds of another full-on attack by the monster. Panic slipped an icy hand around Robert’s spine. The holding room door had been open. The creature could have easily investigated and seen he was no longer there. That meant his temper had been turned on the block wall. The creature was strong enough to tear out the blocks. Of that, Robert had no doubt. And it would do it faster than he ever could have.
Again, he shoved downward on the axe, straining until the muscle at his armpit shot sharp pains through his shoulder, forcing him to quit. Pulling his left arm back through the window, he grabbed the flat plate at the end of the axe and shoved violently down. Wham! But there was no give. He did it again. And again. And again. The axe flew free, and with his downward momentum, the steel plate smashed his fingers against the windowsill.
The creature screamed. The sound was moving. It had made it through the block wall and was coming for him. There were no side doors to escape into; there was only the lobby beyond the doors.
Pressing the side of his face into the opening, he saw the bottom of the lock lying on the floor. The sound masked by the scream of the monster and his own fear, he supposed. Pulling the axe back, he leaned it haphazardly against the door and stuck both hands through the glassless windows. He yanked on the chain. Something still had it hung. Frantically, he moved his fingers over the links again. The arch of the lock had remained in the links, preventing its movement.
He pushed it free and jerked the chain through one handle, fumbled again, and pulled it through the other handle. Each time, the length grew as the chain unwound. The hybrid’s chittering call replaced the screams. It was still moving but not as fast as he had feared. Maybe its injury had slowed it down. Maybe it had injured itself more on the block wall.
The sound of the chain drowned out most of the chittering. With enough of the chain removed from the handles, he pressed his weight against the doors, grasped the axe and lantern, and stepped through into the lobby.
Chapter 10
The Lobby
Setting the lantern down hard, he fed the end of the chain through the door handles, looped it through twice more, and grabbed the lantern.
The creature was close behind him. So muc
h for being careful in here, he thought as he ran across the lobby. As he rounded the corner into an open hallway, the creature crashed into the doors. The chain rattled noisily but it would only serve as a very temporary hindrance.
The sound of the monster battering the doors followed him down the hall. He was thankful for the bit of natural lighting as he turned sharply into a large room. The axe hit the metal door frame and rebounded, catching his leg with the sharp, rusted jag of blade. He ignored it and turned in a circle looking for a place to hide. It was a large, open room with two wooden benches running nearly the width of the room between two rows of skinny lockers, a row of sinks, and one free-standing set of wide storage lockers stood against the wall.
There was no time to consider his options, the slapping of bare feet advancing across the lobby at a run made his decision for him. He flew into one of the wide storage lockers and pulled the door closed behind him. The lantern flew forward and slammed into the door, pushing it open. He grabbed it again and pulled it closed.
The creature entered the room and let loose a terrible scream that made Robert want to scream back at it. A low steady growl let him track it through the room. It turned over both rows of lockers at the benches and then moved slowly toward the storage lockers. They were rusted through in several places. A circle the size of a dinner plate in his door looked more like mesh than solid metal because of the advanced rust.
The hybrid battered the doors, crushing them inward. Robert’s door buckled but, miraculously, the rusted spot remained intact. The onslaught continued until the thing had dragged the lockers away from the wall and pushed them over. The force of landing on his back knocked the air out of Robert and he saw stars as his head made contact. The sound deafened him momentarily and was replaced with a high whining sound.
The next time the monster screamed, it sounded weaker and not as loud. Robert couldn’t tell if it was because of the whine in his ears or if the thing was really weaker. He hoped for the latter. It moved back to the other lockers, assaulting them randomly. After several seconds of silence, Robert heard a distinct whimper mixed in with the insectile buzzing call.
S79 The Horror in the Swamp Page 12
