With the lights on, Perkins barely recognized the floor. The tile had been recently mopped, but was stained in places and a little grungy. Chairs, couches, and tables all sat in the main foyer in pristine condition. The large room he and Givens had descended into was obviously a combination storage/electrical area. The floor was covered with grease and oil stains, but was mostly clean and well kept. Lit control panels flashed with green and yellow lights.
“And now,” Carter said, “take a look at this.”
He punched a key and the timestamps rolled forward. For a moment, nothing happened. And then the view of the machinery room went haywire. Wood, particle board, cables, and dust exploded downward covering the space between the two large steel power generators. The debris hadn’t even settled before a large black shape smashed down into the floor. It had no eyestalks, no appendages. It was just a black, gelatinous blob that practically bounced when it hit the floor.
Perkins watched in horrified fascination as the thing shook like jostled pudding. Then something extruded from its top. An eyestalk. Then another. And another. Then came the hooked tentacles. The thing pushed itself through the gap between the machines, the floor smoking where it touched. The creature’s tentacles flashed sideways, in anger or probing, he wasn’t sure. Its hooks raked the backs of the generators and then the lights went out.
The screens went black and then a few emergency lights kicked on. The views on the screen slowly rendered the world in shadows. The one facing the foyer flickered slightly as something moved toward it. The shape was difficult to make out, but it was easy to see its tentacles slashing the air. They were little more than shadowy swipes across the screen, but Perkins’ mind filled in the rest.
He wished they had audio, and then reconsidered. Perkins wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the sounds of its limbs clicking on the tile or the sound it made when it moved. Did it growl? Did it moan in some alien voice they’d never translate? What the fuck kind of movie monster bullshit was this?
The large shadow continued moving until it found the furniture. The detail was far from clear, but the damned thing seemed to hunch over them.
“Dragged its ass end,” Givens said.
Perkins looked back at him. “What?”
His partner pointed to the screen. “See that there? That big shadow? That’s the bulbous end it dragged through the hallways upstairs. I think that’s what eats things.”
“You mean dissolving,” Max said with a shiver. The two SWAT team members stared at him. “Just like it did with the doctors in the ER. And the cops. And the wood and walls.”
Perkins nodded to himself. The security guard was making sense. He hadn’t even considered that, but it explained the hole in the floor upstairs. It also explained the strange marks and the reason the tile and concrete shined. The damned thing was absorbing everything it touched.
He dragged his eyes back to the screen. The shadow was gone.
“Shit,” Perkins said. “Where did it go?”
Max took a deep breath and then slowly exhaled. “To us.”
Givens and Perkins exchanged a glance. The Kentuckian spoke. “What do you mean by that?”
“We heard it,” Max said. “We heard it moving through the floor like goddamned Godzilla. Did you see that camera outside?”
“Yes,” Givens said.
“Well, we got a real good shot of it before it left the hallway and out of sight.”
Carter tapped another key and the screen changed again. A camera view showed the hallway outside the security office. Perkins leaned forward. A single security light cast a dim glow, just bright enough to chase away the shadows outside the door.
Further down the hallway, they saw the darkness jitter and dissipate into a shape. The thing was larger than it had been before. Perkins was sure of it. It came down the hallway in a lurching walk, three multi-jointed legs stabbed out in front and then dragged its bulking body behind it. Perkins wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but the floor seemed to steam and smoke where the back of its body came in contact.
The hulking thing moved closer to the door. Now it was in full view of the camera and the light seemed to slide off the creature’s surface. The eyestalks, five of them, waved, the orbs atop them spinning in jerky 360s. A large maw appeared in the creature’s center, impossibly black rows of jagged teeth glistening in the dim light.
The creature’s tentacles reached forward and slashed out of the camera’s view. But it was clear it was trying to get through the door and at the morsels inside. After a moment, the creature stepped back from the door and then crawled down the adjoining hallway and out of sight.
“Jesus,” Perkins whispered.
“You’re here to save us, right?” Carter asked, his voice shuddering with fear.
Perkins glanced at Givens. The Kentuckian shrugged with his eyes. “We’re here to keep you safe,” Perkins said. “Or die trying.”
Chapter 22
Sheetrock dissolved at its touch. So did wood, biological remains such as rat dung, roach leavings, and dust. Each particle of matter added to its bulk, the matter transforming into another individual synapse, and adding to its essence.
It dragged its growing body down the hall searching for a way out. Its dreaded enemy, UV light, was completely absent from this level of the building, but it didn’t know that. It only knew that it was dark and inviting. But it was running out of food.
It had sensed food behind the security door, but the metal kept it from the prize. It had to find more. It would find more.
Wandering the maze of hallways, it finally found one that led to a wider space. The creature, realizing it needed speed more than bulk, stopped in the hallway. The bulbous rear end crackled and sizzled as it retracted. The thing’s squat middle elongated slightly and shimmied. It commanded the outer cells to transform and they changed from liquid into a translucent outer shell. More crackling. Three more legs slowly coalesced beneath it and then lifted.
The creature, now on six multi-jointed legs, skittered down the hall to the open area. It was fast now, faster than it had ever been. It knew there was more food. It only had to find it. And become.
Chapter 23
The breakers in the adjunct had tripped. That meant they had no lights in the ER annex basement. And since no one was answering the goddamned phone, he could only assume the security guards didn’t have any communications apart from their radios. And down here, the reception was shit. He normally got at least one bar on his cell phone, but now there was nothing. Great fucking night.
Terry Mixon cinched up his pants and walked down the well-lit concrete hallway. This was the part of the hospital most of the doctors, nurses, and even the janitorial staff, never saw. Getting down here was via security access only and that included the morgue. It was the only way to make sure bodies didn’t disappear and people didn’t get hurt.
The boiler room, the electrical closets, and the tool areas, were places where a normal person could get into big trouble. And since the terror scare, the folks in charge had made sure they didn’t leave themselves open to an attack. Well, that and the congressional mandates making it so. Not many people believed some asshole wanting to meet their deity in person was going to bomb or sabotage a hospital, but it wasn’t worth taking a chance. Hence the security and the fact the basements were swept every hour and the computers knew every person that came down here.
Mixon continued walking, his tool belt jingling with his heavy steps. His radio crackled, belched static, and then a tinny falsetto voice broke through it. “—there?”
Sighing, Mixon pulled the radio from his belt. He clicked the button. “What do you want, Macumber?”
“Mixon. You in the basement?”
“Aren’t I always?” he replied. Macumber was the facilities honcho. Nice guy, but he sucked at his job. “Whatcha need?”
Macumber cleared his throat. “Why can’t we contact security? Any ideas?”
Mixon stopped and held the radio in f
ront of him so he could glare at it. He imagined the tiny plastic grooves were garrotes slicing through the man’s jolly cheeks. “I’m heading over to the adjunct now. Going to check out the phone and electrical junctions.”
“Right. I’m already on my way down. Meet you near the divider. Out.”
The radio burped more white noise and then went silent.
“Meet me?” Mixon asked the empty hallway. “Wow, you’re either bored or just had your ass chewed.” He placed the radio back on his belt and continued walking.
Strolling through the basement was like entering a tunnel you weren’t sure had an end. It wasn’t dark, per se, but gloomy nonetheless. The fact that it housed the morgue was fitting and ironic as hell. The docs that ran that place were damned demented. Whenever they caught him wandering the basement, they told him a new joke or a bizarre anecdote about an autopsy.
One night during a vicious storm, the power had failed in the morgue. No place else, just the morgue. Mixon had been awakened from a half-sleep by the shrill sound of the phone. When he saw who was calling, he knew it was trouble. Goddamned Doctor Roche.
Mixon had left his tiny office, grabbed his tool belt, and headed across the basement to the morgue. Upon arrival, he’d swiped his key card and headed into darkness split only by the glare of a flickering and buzzing “NO EXIT” sign and the emergency lights.
Roche, still wearing his smock and apron from an in-progress autopsy, had greeted him outside room two. The doctor, with his trademark handlebar mustache smiling above his lips, wore his usual shit-eating grin. Without his surgical mask, Mixon had thought the man looked like a walrus merged with a ferret. And the walrus got the better end of the deal.
“I need power if I’m going to finish dealing with this mess,” the doctor said in a scratchy high-pitched voice. “Nails on a chalkboard” didn’t begin to describe the sound. But the man’s smile was infectious even with that ridiculous caterpillar beneath his nostrils.
Mixon had blinked at him and then headed to the electrical box. The doctor, stinking of offal, had followed him around as he checked the fuses and made sure nothing had been tripped. Turned out several of the breakers had tripped. One at a time, Mixon had turned them back on and checked the power levels. He’d thought he was done, but then Doctor Roche was waiting for him at the door to room two again.
“Still ain’t got nothing in here. No lights, man.”
The large electrician followed the man to the doorway and then stopped. He’d suddenly realized he was going into a room where a stiff was lying down on a steel table being poked and prodded by this sicko. And the man had called it a “mess.” Shuddering with revulsion, Mixon had forced himself to walk into the cool room.
It had been a scorching summer day and Mixon was briefly happy for the cool air. Until, that was, it had simply enhanced his already-puckered gooseflesh.
Three emergency lights, boxes with two lamps, had “lit” the room. As if Mixon had needed more proof that the morgue was the pit of hell, he’d noticed the backups barely illuminated the room at all. The cold metal shelves where the stiffs were kept gleamed dully with the weak light. The stainless steel autopsy table was almost completely in shadow. Mixon had been thankful for that.
He’d walked to the wall adjacent to the shelves all the while feeling the clammy touch of angry ghosts on his back. Mixon had opened the electrical box, his flashlight cutting through the gloom, and seen the problem at once. As with the other few boxes, breakers had been tripped. Mixon had run his checks on the voltage, made sure he wasn’t about to get electrocuted, and then flipped the breaker.
Incredibly bright white light punished his retinas. He’d squeezed his eyes against the glare and turned to face the middle of the room. That was when he nearly pissed himself.
Roche stood next to the autopsy table. A corpse, at least part of one, had been sectioned on the stainless steel. The demented doctor hadn’t even bothered covering the damned body with a sheet. Mixon had had a clear view of the split-open chest, the caved in head, and exposed organs. The right femur had been fractured and parts of bone speared through the bruised flesh. The man’s head had been caved in on one side, fragments of skull visible through the punctured and squashed skin. The remaining eye had dangled down from the socket on red veins like a yo-yo.
The doctor had giggled at the expression on Mixon’s face. “This, Mr. Mixon, is Mr. Thomas Reed.” He’d reached down and lifted the corpse’s one intact arm. He’d waved its hand at Mixon. “Thomas says hello.”
Mixon had belched. It had been all he could do not to spew his gorge on the floor. He’d tried to look away, but his eyes had found the late Mr. Reed’s crotch. The hip bone had broken and jutted out near the man’s crotch like a second, bloody candy cane penis.
“What— Why? Why the fuck would you show me that!” Mixon had yelled.
The doctor had only grinned wider. “So you could see what a motorcycle wreck can do to the human body.”
“I don’t ride a goddamned motorcycle!”
Roche had winked. “And after seeing this, you never will.”
Mixon had vowed then and there never to visit the morgue again under any circumstances. With any luck, the power and communication problems hadn’t spread there. It was the night shift and that meant somewhere in the morgue, Roche was carving up a late hospital patient or someone the EMT’s had scraped off the pavement.
He shivered as he walked, but not from the cold. The memory of the dead man’s face still haunted him and he guessed it always would. “Please don’t make me go in there again,” he whispered to the empty hallway.
Mixon finally reached the entrance to the morgue. Lights bathed the sign and shined down on the security card reader. He sighed with relief and continued walking. Ten meters ahead of him, the security door opened with a loud squeak. Macumber, dressed in khakis that barely fit around his ample belly, and an oversized pressed blue long-sleeved shirt accompanied by dark sweat stains, walked into the hallway. The door shut behind him with a loud bang. Macumber flinched and turned to regard the door with distrust.
“Hey, Macumber,” Mixon called.
His boss flinched again and then turned in a fast circle. The man’s patented lopsided grin appeared on his face. He ran a hand through his dark, thinning hair. “Mixon. How you doing?”
Mixon shrugged. “I’m here, ain’t I?”
“Yeah,” Macumber said.
Mixon waited for his boss to say something else, but the man just stood there on shifting feet. He looked nervous.
“Something going on?” Mixon asked.
Macumber nodded, the grin fading from his face. “CDC quarantined the ER and the trauma center.”
“Quarantined?” The pit of Mixon’s stomach tightened. “Another Ebola scare?”
“Don’t know,” his boss said. “I didn’t get any information from the triage station. Just heard about it from one of the nurses they evacuated from the area.”
“Wait, they evacuated everyone?”
“Yeah,” Macumber said. “Everyone but the surgeons working in the ORs and the attending. Not sure what else is going on or how many CDC folk are up there. I just know the phones are out to security. Well, that and the ER.”
“Shit,” Mixon said. “So I gotta go up there too?”
“Probably. Shall we?”
“Yeah,” Mixon said and hitched up his pants. Damned tool belt was so heavy it defied any and all attempts to keep his plumber’s crack from showing even when he walked. His wife had threatened to dress him in overalls, something Mixon considered anathema.
He walked past his boss, feet aimed squarely at the darkness ahead. The trauma center adjunct had been built when the original trauma center and ER became the most profitable part of the hospital. And that meant the new construction didn’t exactly mesh up with the original building. Lots of wires had to be carried across, network cables run through the concrete walls, and the foundations matched up. They’d done a good job, but there were s
till parts of the adjunct that made it obvious it was built as an afterthought.
For one thing, the adjunct was lower than the main building. The basement hall joining the two had a slight incline. Although the construction team managed to make that invisible on the ground floor, here in the basement they hadn’t even bothered to try. But at least the two buildings were connected. Mixon hated the thought of having to go outside to get around to the junction boxes and maintain the lines. This was a much better way to do it, even if it meant he had to occasionally suffer the morgue doctors like Roche.
Macumber walked next to him on stubby short legs, taking 1.5 steps for each of Mixon’s. The man’s breathing was an annoying snuffle that made him sound like he was partially suffocating. Mixon liked his boss in small doses, but tonight he had absolutely no patience for bullshit.
They neared the junction between the two buildings. Beyond the single emergency light casting a dim spot of brightness in the center of the hallway, the building’s basement was pitch black.
Mixon reached and pulled the powerful flashlight from his belt. Damned thing had ten separate LED lamps inside and was the brightest light Mixon had ever owned. Tonight, he’d need it.
“Coming to watch me work, eh?” he asked his boss without turning.
Macumber snuffled again and then took a deep breath. “I just want to make sure I get a chance to talk to security. Plus, if you need help, there’s no one else coming.”
Mixon groaned. “Justman call in sick again?”
Justman was the other night maintenance man. Unfortunately, the guy hardly ever showed up, was always late when he did, and seemed sick half the time. Mixon was pretty damned sure the guy had a drinking problem, but he hadn’t bothered getting to know the other man. In Mixon’s world, you showed up and worked. You didn’t skive off and make excuses. Work when work was to be done, lollygag when there wasn’t.
“Weather,” Macumber said. “He’s flooded in.”
The Black: Outbreak Page 11
