The Black: Outbreak

by Paul E. Cooley

  A large ceiling tile, half of it scorched and smoking, had fallen from its place and dropped near her chair. That was odd, but it wasn’t what had stopped her in her tracks; it was the two-meter diameter puddle of shivering black goo.

  Delia scrunched her eyebrows and took a cautious step forward. The pool of black liquid continued shivering. Should have brought my radio, she said to herself. She didn’t know if there was a broken pipe in the ceiling, but that crap didn’t look natural to her.

  Something rose from the surface. Centimeter by centimeter, a branch of solid black grew. Over the sounds of the crying babies and that of the heater, she couldn’t hear the crackle and spit of the growing, lengthening appendage. When the protrusion was the height of her calf, it shook and swayed. A black orb popped up and stared at her with alien hunger.

  Delia’s scream joined those of the crying babies. The puddle gathered itself and then rose on tiny multi-jointed legs. Its front transformed into a yawning mouth. She backed up several steps until her ass clipped one of the cribs. The heavy crib stand trembled, but held against her weight.

  She was still screaming when the creature scuttled forward, its eyestalk bent toward her with unblinking menace. Even as terrified as she was, she remembered where she was and that she was close to knocking over the crib. Delia sidestepped and moved backward. When her ass finally hit the glass partition separating the nursery from the hallway, she shrieked. There was nowhere left to run.

  The creature’s legs clicked on the tile, but she didn’t hear it. The infants’ cries rose to a crescendo with her own scream. Frozen, Delia stared in horror as a tentacle punched out of the creature’s side. The hooked appendage wavered in the air before pulling back and then darting forward with incredible speed. The hook caught her in the hip. Blinding pain forced all the air from her chest and stars filled her vision. Then it was dragging her toward it.

  She turned slightly, trying like hell to resist the pull. The infant she’d held just moments ago stared at her with wonder. Delia’s mind blocked out the pain and she managed a half-smile. She never saw the second tentacle that smashed through her head.

  Chapter 47

  Mathis rolled off Harrel’s back and stared at the open glass door to the surgery hallway. A second later, his eyes finally made sense of what they were seeing.

  The Plexiglas windows were gone. A single black tentacle, thick as his forearm and tapered to a hooked end, dangled over the edge of the support wall. The tentacle slid backward slightly and then another tentacle appeared next to it. The two hooks reared back in tandem and then shot downward into the support wall. The crunch echoed through the open door and around the main hall. Mathis’ heart, already thumping in his ears, increased its pace.

  “Get off me!” Harrel yelled.

  Mathis scrambled to get his feet under himself and then shot a hand beneath her shoulder. “Get up! Get up now!”

  She didn’t bother looking up at him or asking why. He pulled her to her feet. Mathis took one last look into the trauma hall. His eyes widened. A horrendous wrench of metal, the tinkle of glass, and the clicking of sharpened talons on tile barely made it through the drumbeat in his ears. The creature had dug its hooks into the wall and was pulling itself over.

  Now she was pulling him. He finally turned and ran down the hall just behind Harrel. The ER lights seemed dim compared to those in the surgery. His shadow followed him and then seemed to spring forward in the diffused light.

  They reached the corner to the ER reception. Harrel caught the tail end of one of the nurses’ scrubs heading to the ER’s entrance and exit. “No!” she yelled. “Don’t—”

  There was no warning. From outside the building came the sound of four shots. Mathis stopped in his tracks, barely avoiding knocking into Harrel. “We have to go!” he said.

  Mathis turned and looked at the hall connecting the hospital and the ER wing. The wall was down again, separating them from the rest of the building. They were stuck.

  “Stairs!” he yelled at Harrel.

  She bolted for the fire door, Mathis hot on her heels. She pulled at the door, but it didn’t open. “What the fuck!”

  Mathis pushed her aside and tried the handle. The door budged, but only a millimeter. “It’s locked.”

  Harrel fumbled at her belt. “Moore! Open the fucking fire door!”

  “No,” the voice said through her radio.

  Mathis took in a deep breath to scream at her, his mind already formulating the seven or eight obscenities he planned to string together. But he didn’t loose them. Instead, he cocked his head like a dog.

  Click. Click. Click.

  “Harrel? Do something. Now.”

  She turned and looked over at the hallway. A shadow crept along the far wall, amorphous save for a pair of long hooks. Harrel’s voice dropped to a whisper. She flicked her eyes up to the camera in the corner, its cold lens staring at her with indifference. “Moore? Open it. Or we’re dead.”

  Two seconds, easily the longest of his life, ticked off in a silence disturbed only by the heartbeat in his ears and the clicking of that thing’s talons on the floor.

  He nearly jumped as the bolt on the door slid back. The fire door was open. He pulled as hard as he could and almost lost his balance. The door opened wide. Harrel shot through the open doorway and started down the wide concrete steps. Mathis pulled the door closed and met resistance from the pneumatics supporting the door jamb. “Goddammit!” he shouted. He put one foot against the wall and pulled as hard as he could.

  Through the half-meter gap in the doorway, he saw the first leg. Long. Slender. Multi-jointed and ending in a deathly sharp talon. Then another. And another. He had one last glimpse of a shadowy torso before the door finally closed. The bolt shot forward and locked the heavy steel door.

  He took one step back and then waited. Nothing happened. The eye-level, shatter-proof glass window grew dim. The bright fluorescent light in the reception area was being eclipsed. Mathis walked forward just far enough that he could see into the area beyond. His eyes opened wide and then he was stumbling backward for the stairs.

  A black talon smashed into the Plexiglas showering him with shrapnel. The jointed tentacle flexed and the point dug into the steel, skating across its surface with an ear-piercing shriek.

  He turned, nearly tumbled, and then found his footing on the first step. Harrel waited for him at the landing, her arm rising and pointing behind him. Mathis didn’t want to look. He’d seen enough.

  The steps fell rapidly to his descent. He hit the landing next to Harrel and then grabbed her shoulder. He yanked her to face the next set of steps and glanced over his shoulder.

  Another tentacle had squeezed through the rectangle in the door. Both appendages struck at the steel in rapid succession. They were denting it, but didn’t seem to be doing much damage. And then he saw the hinges beginning to buckle. “Fuck!” he yelled and took the steps.

  They reached the door to the bottom of the ER annex. Harrel pulled it open and the two of them stepped through. The door behind them shuddered as the bolt shot, locking them out of the stairwell.

  Mathis put his hands on his knees. “We make it out of this,” he panted, “and I’m going to jog every fucking morning.”

  Harrel was as spent as he was. She breathed through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. “Moore?” she said into her headset. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Dr. Harrel. But I would have let you die if it meant the creature was trapped.”

  Mathis exchanged a glance with his team mate.

  “You mean it’s not trapped?” Harrel asked.

  When Moore responded, the annoyance in her voice was obvious. “No, Doctor. It’s not trapped.”

  “Is it still at the stairwell?”

  “No.”

  Mathis rolled his eyes. “Then where the fuck is it?”

  “Going to find the rest of the trauma surgery staff.”

  “What?” Mathis clenched his fists. It seeme
d better than giving in to the panic rising in him like a wild animal. “They tried to get outside. You— You shot them.”

  “That was only one nurse, Doctor. The others went the opposite way from you.”

  “Oh, shit,” Harrel said. “Has it figured that out yet?”

  “Yes.” The word seemed to echo in the large lobby.

  Chapter 48

  Sarah heard screaming. She pelted through the nurses’ station, a woman and a man dressed in identical scrubs yelling after her. The nursery entrance was clearly marked, but there was no keycard to prevent her ingress. She opened the door and stopped, rifle pointed to the floor. The creature had grown. Based on the metallic remains of a stethoscope, the skeletal shell of a cellphone, and a set of keys, it had just finished another meal. Three tentacles waved in the air. Its single eyestalk inspected one of the cribs.

  “No, fucker!” she yelled and aimed. Her first shot cut the eyestalk from the body. The creature turned and shook. Another rose in its place. And then another. She walked into the room and snapped off careful shots, managing to separate another tentacle before it rushed at her.

  Sarah wasn’t frozen. She knew what to do. She had to get it the hell away from the infants, out of the nursery, and into the hall. They could control it there. Corner it. Or something.

  You’re going to die, girl, a voice said in her mind. You can’t stop this thing with bullets.

  She shook the voice away and continued walking backward. The scuttling thing made it across the floor to the nursery entrance just as she turned and ran. Sarah barely noticed the two nurses standing off in the corner as she exited the room. She had just enough time to see Epp standing beyond the credenza, firing his rifle. Schneck fiddled with something at the wall.

  And then she tripped over her own boot and fell to the floor. Instead of crumpling in a heap, she went with the fall and turned it into a roll. She brought herself to her feet and then the sound started.

  At first, she thought she was dead and that was the sound of her flesh collapsing into nothingness, being absorbed by the nightmarish creature. She pivoted her hips and sidestepped. In an instant, she faced the entrance to the nursery and was a few meters from the credenza. What she saw made her mouth open in wonder.

  The creature had left the nursery and was less than a meter away from her, but it was moving away rather than attacking. The creature’s back, for lack of a better word, bubbled and crackled. But instead of the liquid she’d seen so many times, the creature looked to have grown a skin that was slightly lighter in color than its liquid form. Schneck held a UV lamp and pointed it at the creature. It scuttled several more meters away and turned. Its tentacles slashed the air and the hall smelled of burnt fur.

  Its five spider-like, multi-jointed legs raised its body waist high and were as thick as a small tree branch. The thing had grown more than she thought possible. Just one human being had given it so much more mass. She raised her rifle and snapped off a round at one of its legs. The limb shattered at the knee into black dust. Thick black liquid shot out of the severed limb. The instant the liquid touched the floor, it hardened from the forelimb down to the hooked talons it used for toes.

  The creature started to move toward her. “Get behind me!” Schneck yelled.

  Sarah did just that, but kept her rifle pointed over his shoulder. The creature clicked its taloned feet on the tile while its three eyestalks stared at her with malevolence. The two nurses in the corner held one another, their eyes locked on the horror standing just a few meters away. Epp still pointed his rifle at the black squatting thing.

  It moved a step forward and came in range of the UV light. Its dark surface bubbled and popped. The creature moved backward and the crackle stopped immediately.

  “Boss? What do we do here?” Epp asked.

  She looked at the nurses. “You have an extension cord?” Neither answered. She took a deep breath of air and tried to keep from screaming. “Hey.” The two nurses flicked their eyes to her. “Do you have an extension cord?”

  The female nurse opened her mouth to reply, but just then the wall separating the hallway from the patient rooms exploded into sheetrock and broken wood. Sarah turned to the new threat, and barely managed to choke down a scream.

  Chapter 49

  Givens tracked it. The creature had started in one of the patient rooms. Based on the diamond-encrusted wedding ring that had fallen to the floor, he guessed the patient was no longer amongst the living. The sheets were burned and half dissolved, as were the non-metallic parts of the bed. It had come through the ceiling and devoured her without notice.

  After that, it had headed to the next room. And the next. And the next. The walls were still intact. Ceiling tiles were missing in each of the rooms. It was using the crawlspaces and duct work to travel. But by the fourth room, Givens knew it couldn’t continue doing so.

  The fourth room was a wreck. A duct hung below the drop ceiling along with electrical lines. The creature had dissolved the insulation in its final stealth attack. Givens didn’t need any skill to track it now—it was pretty obvious where it was going.

  The wall between the fourth and fifth rooms had been dissolved and burned. The creature might have managed a relatively silent attack, but its next wouldn’t be. Shaking his head, Givens ran back into the hall and down three rooms more. The rest of the team followed him in silence. When he reached room number seven, he stopped and cocked his head to listen. Then he heard it.

  Crackle. Sizzle.

  And something that might have been a human struggling to survive.

  He gestured to the team and they took up positions by the door. Givens took a deep breath and then kicked it open. Someone had closed the window blinds blocking any ambient light from outside. In the dim silver of light cast from the hall, Givens saw a huge shadow at the edge of the bed. He hissed and then swiped for the room’s light switch. The bright fluorescents kicked on, burning an afterimage into his retinas. He almost wished his eyes had stayed that way.

  The thing that had eaten O’Malley was small compared to this. And to be honest, Givens hadn’t gotten a good look at it before he’d thrown the grenade. But now, framed by the bright lights and without the screaming and yelling of his terrified squad mates, he finally had a chance to take it all in. And it was fucking terrifying.

  The creature in room eight was the size of a large Kodiak bear. He counted seven legs, four tentacles, and three eyestalks waving from its squat form. The woman in the bed was half consumed, her dead eyes staring off into space. The thing had started eating her from the middle down. It ceased its meal, the eyestalks whipping in his direction.

  Givens took a step back. The creature’s front quarters moved off the bed and hit the floor with a thump. Rather than turning toward him, the creature’s middle seemed to rotate, a giant maw appearing where its legs had previously been affixed. The jointed legs swiveled along with the tentacles and eyestalks to face him. The creature’s body seemed as though it was covered by a darkish skin that barely reflected light. Its mouth opened and loosed a silent roar. All Givens heard was the click of its talons on the tile floor, and then it started to move.

  He snapped out of his horrified daze immediately. Rifle pointed at the creature, he squeezed the trigger three times. One of the eyestalks disappeared with a pop. The thing rushed him.

  Givens rolled to the side of the door frame just as the huge creature hit the wall. Wood and sheetrock splintered onto the tile floor and the hallway echoed with the crunch of the creature’s girth, smashing its way out of the room.

  The world exploded with the sound of gunfire as his teammates opened up. Perkins had moved to the back wall so he could cover Givens. Bradfisch and Kilfoil distracted it with their gunfire, but one of its tentacles lashed out and smacked the wall just above Givens’ head. He somersaulted backward and then stumbled away. Perkins ran from the wall, grabbed him by the shoulders, and pulled him further away from the thing.

  Kilfoil and Bradfisch backed
up step by step, their rifles continuing a staccato beat. One of the hooked tentacles lost its end when a bullet connected. But as Givens watched, the other tentacles elongated, their tips grazing the ceiling with their flailing. Dust from the ripped and torn ceiling tiles fell in a cloud of debris. And then it happened.

  One of the tentacles lashed out and ripped Bradfisch’s feet out from under him. The SWAT team member fell to his back, his head bouncing on the tile. Kilfoil responded by reaching down and dragging his wounded comrade backward. In an instant, Givens was focused, aiming down his sight, and firing more shots at the creature. Perkins followed suit.

  It whirled again with that liquid grace to face them. “Running low on ammo!” Perkins yelled. His partner was right. They needed something else. Something to drive it away. His HE grenade was gone. But he still had a flash-bang.

  While Perkins continued sending steel jacketed bullets into the creature’s appendages, Givens took the grenade from his belt, and pulled the pin. “Fire in the hole!” he yelled to the others and rolled the grenade toward the creature.

  He dropped his rifle to its sling and covered his ears. Perkins did the same and looked away. On the other side of the creature, Kilfoil was huddled over Bradfisch’s prone form. One of the creature’s tentacles reached for the black, perforated cylinder, the hook touching its metal surface. And then the grenade detonated.

  The M84’s magnesium charge created a subsonic explosion of light and sound. The shadows in the dim hall disappeared as if the sun had suddenly entered the building. Givens’ brain seemed to slide back in his skull from the concussion. Both he and Perkins staggered backward, trying and failing to keep their balance.

  From his vantage point on the hard tile floor, and through the shock threatening his grip on consciousness, he saw the creature sprint for the opposite wall. Its tentacles slashed through the sheetrock like sharpened steel through flesh. And then the smoking hulk was out of the hallway and rampaging through the next room.