The Black: Outbreak

by Paul E. Cooley

  The Kentuckian pressed a button on his rifle and a stream of LED white light flashed out. He pointed the rifle at the target. The light shined through the glass and illuminated a wall.

  “Shouldn’t the damned lights be on?” Schneck asked.

  She nodded and clicked her mic. “Moore? We’re at floor five. What’s the status?”

  “There doesn’t seem to be any power on the floor. Spotters can see emergency lights in some areas, but most of floor five is in the dark. Over.”

  “Any heat signatures?”

  “None,” the tinny voice replied.

  “Any reason for us to go in there?”

  Pause. “I’d rather you get to floor six as soon as possible.”

  “Roger,” Sarah said. “We’ll head there now. Celianne out.” She killed the mic and then looked at her men. “You heard the lady. Up.”

  As the rest of the team went up the steps, she lingered by the door. She couldn’t help turning on her own light and staring through the window. All she saw was an off-white wall, although it looked as though some kind of design had been painted or etched into its surface. It was impossible to tell what the design was, or was meant to be, but it gave her chills just the same.

  She finally pulled herself away and climbed the steps two at a time. The team was waiting for her, Givens and Perkins taking up door duty once again.

  “Everything okay, Boss?” Kilfoil asked and readjusted the bag on his shoulder.

  “Nothing to worry about,” she said. “We ready?”

  Kilfoil pulled his sidearm from his holster and held it in his right hand, the bag in his left. “I am.”

  “Lights on, men,” she said. White light erupted from the embedded LEDs on the weapons. “Let’s do this.”

  Chapter 52

  Sharma wasn’t thinking. He wasn’t capable of rational thought. When Mathis had pulled them out of the relative quiet and peace of surgery room two, the last reservoir of adrenaline dumped into his system chasing away both reality and logic. That was why he’d turned right instead of left when they evacuated the trauma hall.

  The sight of the thing in surgery one rearing back its tentacles to drive them at the glass wall hadn’t frozen him in place. Far from it. Instead, all he’d been able to do was obey the ancient reptilian part of his brain. And it told him to run for his life.

  A few steps down the hall, he realized there were others following him. Or he thought they were. But it could have been the creature. So he ran faster without turning to look.

  The explosive echo of glass shattering beneath the creature’s assault was the last, the absolute last straw. His sanity fractured and he continued running down the hall even though somewhere in his mind, a voice told him over and over again, shrieking in fact, that he was headed toward a dead end.

  By the time his subconscious made contact with his conscious self, it was too late. Sharma skidded to a halt in front of the wall and the closed-off emergency exit. There was no way out. If he dared press the emergency bar and walked outside, they would kill him. A bullet to the heart or the head made no difference—he’d still be dead.

  “Where do we go?”

  Sharma spun, his heart skipping several beats. The trauma surgeon, Fitzroy, stood panting, his hands on his ample hips. The rest of the trauma staff, save for nurse Pilato, stood behind him.

  He tried to take a deep breath, but his lungs expelled it immediately. He was winded, his sides hurt, and shock and fatigue were starting to have their way with him.

  “I don’t know,” Sharma said. He pointed down the hall. “I’m not going back there.”

  “Fuck that,” one of the nurses said.

  Sharma stared at the two interior doors they’d passed. “Hide,” he said. “All we can do is hide.”

  He ran past the others to the first open door. Somewhere down the hall, he heard the distant crackle of gunfire. The two doctors and remaining nurses looked over their shoulders. Sharma stared down the hall.

  “Are they shooting it?” one of the surgeons asked.

  “We’re saved!”

  Sharma stared at them. “You don’t know that.”

  Click. Click. Click.

  The group froze as one. It was down the hall, around the slight curve. The rapid taps of its sharpened talons on the tile floor receded. Sharma shook his head. “It’s still in here,” he whispered. “Not out there. In here.”

  The group turned to him as one, their faces set in confusion or surprise. He walked through the open doorway and stopped. A huge hole in the floor led into utter darkness.

  A distant bang, like a heavy steel door slamming shut, echoed through the hallway, followed by the sound of breaking glass and the shriek of tortured metal. He backed out of the room, shut the door, and ran to the next one. The light switch brought on the heavy fluorescents. A hole in the wall led to the next room, but aside from the scattered filing cabinets and broken glass, there was still no place to hide. If they stayed in this room, it would find them. If it comes back, he thought to himself. It will, a voice in his head answered.

  “Get in here,” he said to the others. “Close the door and we’ll hide in here. Move it!”

  They piled into the ravaged storage room. Sharma headed to the hole connecting the two rooms. Ambient light filtered through the large misshapen hole in the wall. He didn’t know how big the thing had been when it first tore through the trauma ward, but it had looked as though it was bigger now.

  “Hide behind the cabinets,” he whispered. They blinked at him like he was speaking in tongues. “Hide!”

  His exasperated hiss finally moved them into action. They chose a corner and began pulling the heavy steel cabinets to make a wall. The unwieldy cabinets resisted their efforts. Sharma watched them, hope sinking. This wasn’t going to work. If the thing had any intelligence, it would know. It would know all too—

  The air filled with a rotten stench overlaying the scent of burning hair and garbage. Sharma held his head in his hands and waited. It was coming. And it was going to kill them all.

  Chapter 53

  The creature tired of trying to force its way through the steel door. It gave slightly, but not enough. If it wanted to follow its prey, it would have to shed its solidity and flow through the broken glass. Its eyestalks swiveled, looking for other options.

  Its legs clicked and clacked on the tile floor as it examined the environment. It saw the ruined credenza for the reception desk, the mangled hunks of metal that remained of the chairs, and the detritus from the destroyed office supplies, bits of metal and glass flung about the floor. It saw the partition separating it from the hospital beyond.

  The creature scuttled to it and tried to push through. The partition didn’t give. It transformed the end of one of its tentacles, the hard surface giving way to its true form. Tendrils of viscous black liquid slithered from the exposed stump. It touched the partition. The large room filled with a brief sizzling sound as it dissolved dust and other biological cast-offs, but the partition held.

  Frustrated, the creature turned. Beyond the reception area was wind, cold, and rain. It knew it had to escape, find the world, reconnect, become one. The creature stepped forward and through the first set of doors.

  Beyond the second set of doors was cold, humid air. But there was light. And lots of it. Its eyestalks saw something on the floor. It swept the area with its moist underbelly. The air filled with sizzling as it absorbed the blood and biological matter from the corpse. In mere seconds, the body was gone, leaving a few metal buttons and the skeletal remains of a pager behind.

  The creature tentatively stepped closer to the automated doors and the final hurdle blocking it from the outside world. Its hard skin prickled and the creature stopped. The light in this place didn’t hurt it. The light outside, the light in the world, on the other hand, was dangerous. The creature stopped in place and pondered. And then there was pain.

  Something slammed into its hard shell. The creature flinched, its multi-joint
ed legs ticking and clicking against the hard tile. Another hit and black dust rose from the surface. One of its legs shattered. More holes appeared in its shell. The creature scuttled backward. The rain of bullets continued until it left the entryway.

  It was trapped. Out there was light and death. It turned and headed back to the door. It tried to wrench it open again, but quickly gave up. Its quarry had disappeared. But it had seen others. And they didn’t follow the two that had escaped.

  The creature turned around and looked up the hallway. It began searching. The hiss of heat flowing through the vents and the clicking of its talons were the only sounds left in the building.

  Chapter 54

  Sharma heard it coming. The others did too. He moved to the door with silent steps and slowly flipped off the lights. The room immediately sank into utter darkness. He didn’t know if the thing could see in the dark, but he was sure it would spot them with the lights on. A sob of fear from the back corner of the room broke the eerie silence. Someone hissed “Shut up.”

  Click. Click. Click.

  It was in the hallway now, just outside the door. He reached slowly for the door knob, hoping like hell there was a lock on this side. There wasn’t.

  A slant of ambient brightness filtered through the jamb and beneath the heavy door. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he could at least discern shapes in the shadows. Sharma stepped away from the door slowly, careful not to bang his shins or feet into the clutter of metal and glass.

  He made it as far as the hole in the wall before the world exploded with sound. He uttered a hoarse shout, the others in the room following suit, and stared back at the door. The light coming through the gap beneath the door cast a strange, moving shadow. And then the light disappeared completely, even from the jamb.

  The sound came again and he flinched in spite of himself. He waited in complete darkness for the end, his fluttering heartbeat the only sound he could hear. Until it tried the door again.

  Metal squealed and shrieked. The door rattled in its frame. Someone cried out. Sharma stared stupidly at the door, tiny rays of light occasionally making their way through the jamb as the thing on other side tried to push its way into the room. He took a step backward and tripped over the remains of a smashed metal box.

  He caught himself before falling on his ass, but stumbled into the wall with a loud thump. And then the door exploded off its hinges.

  Silhouetted by the hallway light, it was impossible to see any detail. But what he could see froze his brain with panic. The thing had at least six legs, a trio of eyestalks waving from its squat body, and tentacles that pushed aside the leaning, heavy steel door.

  Someone screamed. He turned and ran through the hole into the other room. One of his feet caught on the remnants of the sheetrock and he fell face first into the power room. Something cracked in his shoulder and bright pain flowed through his nerves. Sharma groaned and carefully lifted himself off the hard tile.

  For a moment, he wasn’t certain where he was or what he’d been doing. His head felt like it was filled with broken glass. A chorus of horrified shrieks echoed behind him, and then he remembered exactly where he was.

  He turned over, ignoring the molten fire in his shoulder, and stared at the hole leading to the other room. The open door to the storage area cast just enough light for him to see what was happening.

  The creature had moved into the middle of the room. The trauma staff had broken cover. One of the surgeons, he wasn’t sure which one, tried to run past the thing. A black tentacle, as thick as a forearm, lashed out almost casually and smashed into the man’s chest. The blue-scrubbed surgeon flew into the wall with a wet smack. The man then slowly slid to the floor, head on his chest. Even in the dim light, Sharma saw the blood trails and spatter from the man’s fractured skull.

  It stepped forward, menacing the remaining surgeon and nurse. Their screams of terror sliced through the ringing in his ears. Sharma shuffled backward away from the hole in the wall, but was unable to look away.

  The creature wrapped its tentacles around each of the surgical staff. The crunch of broken and shattered bones echoed, as did their screams. The thing’s surface seemed to melt, exposing wet liquid. The tentacle holding the surgeon retracted and thrust the man into the creature’s open, liquid maw. The screams stopped at once, replaced with a sizzling popping sound. Sharma watched the body slowly disappear.

  The last nurse writhed and wriggled in the thing’s clutches. She beat at the tentacle with her fists all while shouting her voice raw. But it did nothing to keep the tentacle from pulling her inside the thing’s mouth.

  As Sharma watched, the creature scuttled to the surgeon it had smashed into the wall. One of its tentacles reached and grabbed the man’s legs. It pulled him across the floor until it was below the thing’s squat body. The creature then lowered itself and dissolved the corpse.

  Sharma screamed and shuffled backward on his hands. The creature’s eye stalks swiveled toward him, attracted by the movement. It quickly scuttled to the wall, one of its tentacles shooting through the gap and swiping at his legs. Ears ringing, skull aching, and shoulder screaming with pain, Sharma managed to pull himself from its reach. He pushed a hand where the floor should be and felt nothing. His lips twisted into an “O” of surprise as he lost his balance and slid into the ragged hole in the floor.

  His right arm banged into the exposed steel and wood on the way down, the bones cracking like dead kindling, blood exploding from severed veins and arteries. His broken shoulder clipped the side of the hole as he fell. The pain was so intense the world swam before him. And then he was no longer falling.

  He landed on the concrete floor on his back. Something snapped. Sharma stared upward through the mouth-like hole into the floor above him. His shoulder no longer hurt. Neither did his arm or anything apart from his head. His spinal cord was severed, or at least severely damaged.

  Unable to move, he merely stared upward into the dark hole above. Seconds later, something moved up there. It could have been a leg, or maybe a tentacle. It didn’t matter. He was dead and he knew it. So when the creature’s eye stalks stared down at him through the floor, Sharma prayed to Ganesh his death would be fast.

  The creature leaped in the air and then fell through the hole. It hurtled toward him, barely visible in the darkness. As the shadow filled his vision, he closed his eyes and waited for it to be over.

  Chapter 55

  Givens and Perkins had gone into the basement. They had given chase to the creature and reported to their Lieutenant what they found. But until he was staring at the destruction with his own eyes, Mathis hadn’t really believed what the men reported they saw. Now, he thought they’d undersold it.

  The stairwell had led them into the cafeteria below the trauma ward. Mathis stared over at the food kiosk. The Golden Arches logo hung jauntily over the steel shutters enclosing the order/pickup area. “Damn,” Mathis said. “I’m hungry. Think they’ll serve breakfast soon?”

  Harrel glared at him. “Can you be serious for a minute?”

  He jerked a thumb back to the stairwell door. “I think that was pretty fucking serious.”

  She nodded. “Got that right. Moore?”

  “Yes,” the voice said over the radio.

  “Any luck upstairs?”

  Pause. “I’m afraid not. We lost sight of the entity. Last we saw, it was heading down the corridor where the surgical team disappeared. Nothing since then.”

  Mathis growled low in his throat. “No cameras down there?”

  “None that work,” Moore said.

  A low-pitched boom echoed through the building. Mathis and Harrel traded a stare.

  “What was that?” Moore asked.

  Mathis gulped. “Sounds like something—”

  The remaining lights in the ceiling suddenly went dark. Emergency lights kicked on, bathing the floor in dim twilight. “We just lost power,” Harrel said into the mic.

  Pause. “Understood. We lo
st our feeds.”

  “Lost the feeds?” Mathis asked. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means,” Moore said, “that we no longer have video surveillance on any floors in the ER or the main hospital. Something shorted out the main power as well as the backup generators. Ben Taub has gone dark.”

  “Christ.” He shook his head. “What do we do now?”

  “Doctors. I suggest you try and find the security office. Those men are armed and may have more information.”

  “They sounded pretty useless to me,” Mathis said. “Can’t you send the SWAT team back down here?”

  “Negative,” Moore said. “They are dealing with more important problems at the moment. But I cannot end the quarantine until we are sure there are no more entities running free in the building.”

  Harrel licked her lips. “Which means?”

  “Which means, Dr. Harrel, that you’re going to have to destroy the creature before I can get any of you out.”

  Mathis uttered a short, mirthless laugh. “Fuck this day. Just fuck it.”

  “Understood,” Harrel said. “We’ll try and find the—”

  Something crashed on the other side of the basement floor.

  “What the hell was that?” Mathis asked. He walked a few steps from her and peered into the vast cafeteria. The tables and chairs had all been stripped of their plastic, fabric, and anything not metal or glass. The resulting destruction made the room appear as though an apocalypse had occurred. Which, he guessed, was damned near accurate.

  He sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. That smell. Something between the sewer and overcooked day-old offal. The scent was barely there, but it was growing. “Oh, man.”

  “What?” Harrel asked.

  “We need to move. Now.” He looked at the barely legible signs on the walls. One of them said “SECURITY” in bold letters. He pointed at it. “We need to go there. Now.”