Her face contorted from a look of confusion to one of fear. “It’s down here.”
He nodded. “Bets on why there’s no electricity? Or what the bang was?”
“Moving. Right. Good idea.” She turned from him and jogged down the hall in the direction of the security offices. Mathis followed close behind, unable to keep himself from looking over his shoulder every few steps.
Chapter 56
They followed the signs to the security office. Harrel had removed the light from her helmet and, besides the few still working emergency lights, it was their only illumination. The thick shadows put her on edge. She knew it was somewhere behind them, hopefully lost in the maze of corridors. But that seemed too good to be true. After all, the damned thing could have turned liquid again for all she knew. And if that was the case, it could be anywhere in the vents above them. She fought the urge to point the light upward at the ceiling tiles.
The door to the security office was shut. A dead camera stared at them from above the doorway. The two doctors exchanged a glance, and then Harrel took in a deep breath of air. Here goes nothing, she thought, and banged her fist on the door.
“It’s the CDC!” she yelled. “Open up!”
From inside, they heard the murmur of voices.
“Open the goddamned door!” Mathis yelled. “We have to talk to you.”
For a long moment, she wasn’t sure they would. The shadows seemed to close in on her, the darkness increasing. She wasn’t sure, but the smell seemed to be growing. Hopefully, that was just her imagination. At last, she heard the squeak of a chair followed by the dull thud of heavy footsteps from behind the door.
The door rattled as someone turned the deadbolt. She took a step back and nearly stepped on her partner. Mathis cursed and moved a meter away.
Finally, it opened a crack. A pair of suspicious brown eyes stared at her. “What do you want?” The man’s voice cracked and fluttered with nervous tension.
Enough, she thought. Harrel walked forward and pushed open the door. Caught by surprise, the uniformed guard stumbled backward. She walked in far enough for Mathis to follow her inside the room. He shut the door behind them.
The other guard stood up from his chair, one of his knees banging into the desk. He cursed and held a hand to the injured spot.
The first guard, the one wearing a badge that said “Carter,” looked at her in shock. “What the hell, lady?”
Harrel glared at him. “You two have just been cowering down here?” The two guards looked at one another in stupid confusion. She jerked a thumb backward to the door. “You have any clue what’s going on?” The guards glanced at one another. “Stop that!” Harrel yelled. “Answer me.”
Carter nodded. “We saw it,” he said. “The SWAT guys were chasing it. I don’t know what happened after that.”
“We haven’t had an update on the radio since then,” the other guard, Maxwell, said. “We were told to wait here. So that’s what we did.”
“Great,” Mathis said. He looked around the room and frowned. “You don’t have power.”
The two men shook their heads. “Went out just a few minutes ago,” Carter said. “Figure the storm did something.”
“If only,” Mathis said. “That would be the best-case scenario.”
Maxwell gulped. “And what’s the worst case?”
“What’s actually going on,” Mathis said. “There’s another one of those things down here.”
“That’s not possible,” Carter said. “I mean, the SWAT guys got it, didn’t they?”
Harrel pursed her lips. “They got one of them. And there are more.”
“More?” Carter asked in a high pitched voice. “How the hell are there more of those goddamned things?”
“Long story,” Mathis said. “And one we don’t have time for.”
“We think the one down here knocked out the generators,” Harrel rubbed her hands together. “And maybe shorted out all the power to the hospital too.”
“Fuck,” Maxwell said. He looked at the dead monitors on the desks and then slowly sat in an uncomfortable looking metal chair. “We’re so fucked.”
“You’re right about that,” Mathis said. “They’re not going to get us out of here until we find a way to get rid of it.”
“How—” Carter cleared his throat. “How big is it?”
Now it was her turn to exchange a glance with Mathis. He shrugged. Shaking her head, she looked back at the young guard. “We don’t know. When we saw it, it was larger than a man. But it’s probably—” Her voice trailed off.
Mathis sighed. “It’s eaten since then.”
“Eaten what?” Maxwell asked.
Neither Harrel nor Mathis replied. A dead silence filled the room. Harrel waited for someone to say something, including herself, but she didn’t know what to add to that.
Carter finally broke the awkward silence. “Who’d it eat?”
“The trauma team,” Mathis said. “And almost us.”
Maxwell groaned. “That’s just awesome.”
“What do you have for weapons?” Harrel asked.
Carter stared at her. “Man, this is deja vu all over again. Those SWAT guys asked the same shit.”
“Well,” Mathis said and leaned against the metal door, “why don’t you tell us?”
“Pistols,” he said. “Bullets. Batons. Handcuffs. Mace. And Tasers.”
Harrel stared down at the floor. They didn’t have shit. Not a damned thing to drive it off. Something clicked in her mind and a grin slowly spread over her face. She activated her mic. “Moore? You read?”
“Yes, Doctor Harrel.”
“Can you patch me through to Ellis?”
“Of course.” A few seconds passed before the disembodied voice said, “Go ahead.”
“Ellis? You there?”
“You know it,” he said. He sounded beyond tired and his voice had the unmistakable edge of fear in it. “Just sitting here in exile with a goddamned monster in a test tube.”
Mathis growled. “Cut the shit. We’ll throw a goddamned pity party for you later.”
“Right,” Ellis said. “Sorry. What’s up?”
She explained the situation to him. He listened without comment, but she heard him take several deep breaths. No doubt he was wondering when the creature trapped inside the mobile command center would find a way to get out and eat him. She knew the feeling all too well.
When she finished with her explanation of their situation, she waited for his response. “Do you think it’s possible?”
“Sure,” Ellis said in a trembling voice. “But that means I have to experiment with the leftovers. And it isn’t exactly going to be accurate. I don’t know shit about electricity.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Mathis said. “Just find out.” Somewhere in the building, metal groaned. “We’re going to need to know real soon.”
Chapter 57
It was one of those days he wished he hadn’t answered his phone. It was one of those days he wished he could wake up, laugh, and go back to sleep knowing everything had just been a silly dream born of too much green chili before bedtime. But no. He was really in the mobile command center with half the goddamned military outside, most of HPD, and inside? Well, inside was the most fun. Because that’s where the monster was. Just a meter away. And here he was getting ready to once again let the little bastard out of its cell.
And why couldn’t you ask for something simple? Something like “how big does it get when it eats you, Paul Ellis?” He stared at the test tube. There was so little of the original sample left, he could put the test tube over a match and boil the liquid until it turned into the consistency of brownie crumbs, with the same hazardous properties.
“But no,” Ellis said to his captive, “we need to know all the ways to kill you.” A single bubble popped from the viscous liquid’s surface. “Or at least all the ways I can kill you.”
Ellis rubbed at his eyes. He was beyond exhaustion, but Mathis had been righ
t. Complaining about being trapped in a comparatively safe place made him sound like a pussy when everyone else was battling creatures the size of a goddamned cow with little more than guns to protect themselves.
That didn’t make him feel any better, though. For all he knew, Moore’s grand plan was to incinerate the mobile command center just to make sure the quarantine held. It wouldn’t be difficult either. He’d looked out the windows. He’d seen the views from the cameras. Men wearing military uniforms stood out in the rain, flame throwers grasped in their hands. Even against the harsh glare of the floodlights the military and cops had put up around the building, he could see the tell-tale blue glow at the edge of the dark barrels. Pull the trigger, light up, and then spray down the command center with over a thousand degrees of death, and then wait for the inevitable BBQ. And then Ellis and his little pet would disintegrate into carbon while microbes fed upon the charred remains of bone and flesh.
He shook away the image with a shiver. That wasn’t going to happen. He’d do this last experiment. And then he was going to kill the rest of the creature. One match beneath the test tube, a glass stopper in the top, and his little captive would cease to be anything more than black grit not much different than pummeled coffee grounds.
But first, the test. He heaved a sigh and left his chair to rummage in the storage cabinets beneath the lab sinks. The carefully labeled and organized drawers told him everything they contained. Syringes, lancets, cotton balls, Q-tips, extra pipettes, stoppers, test tubes, and the like. But the drawer he was looking for was special. When he found the drawer labeled “Junk,” he grinned.
The drawer was filled with separate plastic compartments, but there was no logic to what was in them. One held some random screws. Another held binder clips, of all goddamned things. His fingers caressed the compartments lovingly while his eyes searched for what he was looking for.
There. His prize sat in a simple yellow rectangle of plastic. To any other being on the planet, it might look like busted wiring. To him, it was salvation of a sort. The powers that be never knew what destination a mobile command center might be sent. It might end up in a civilized place like Houston or be sent out into the wastes of West Texas, or even airlifted to some hellhole in the middle of South America. The powers that be had therefore decided to include a few niceties. One of them was wires.
Not everyone was trained on repairing lab equipment. In fact, most of the doctors had little clue about how anything worked apart from the sparse details they gleaned from manufacturer manuals and the like. But some of them, a very few, knew how to hotwire when necessary. Ellis didn’t know shit about fixing lab equipment. But playing with electricity had been a hobby since childhood and his first foray into cheap robotics. This would be simple by comparison.
The extra wires still had their insulation. That was easy to fix with one of the scalpels. A few minutes later, he was staring down at a meter length of wire, the bright blue insulation stripped from both ends. He’d operated on his patient with the skill of a meatball surgeon. It wasn’t a great job, but it would do for what he had in mind. He hoped.
Next? He needed a power source. Something that could act like a Taser in its delivery. Also in its strength. And the only thing that fit that bill, apart from the goddamned battery in the engine, was a defibrillator. And they had three of them.
The first two were the personal models. Instead of ripping open a patient’s shirt and taking the time to attach the leads to their chests, these were self-contained units. All you had to do was put the heavy rectangle of circuitry and battery on the bare skin, and then wait for it to tell you what to do. Those were made so that even the more ignorant and unskilled could use them. They were good for heart attacks and solving tachycardia from allergic reactions or general nervous system failure. But they monitored the human heart to prevent damage from unnecessary shocks. No. What he needed was good old-fashioned low-tech.
And that was the third defibrillator. Old school. A bulky thing that looked like a car battery charger and had two separate leads ending in pads to be attached to the patient’s skin. It had a digital display and a knob for turning up or down the system’s power. While it monitored the heart rate too, it also had a manual mode. That’s what he needed and was exactly what the newer models didn’t have.
He removed the bulky thing from its shelf and put it on the lab work area. Another bubble rose and popped in the test tube less than a meter away. Ellis watched it for a moment, waiting for tendrils of black liquid to rise from the gunk at the bottom. But they didn’t. He loosed a relieved sigh and got to work.
Fixing the leads was easy. They were replaceable, after all. What was more difficult was shaping the ends. He had to cut more insulation. Without something to connect the wires together, he risked a short circuit. He twisted the ends of the wires until the defibrillator had two long leads dangling off the table. The blue insulation on the junk wires would somewhat protect the circuit, but he had a better idea for the twisted ends.
Connectors were usually made of hard durable plastic and contained threads for the twisted ends to catch. They weren’t exactly designed to act as a permanent solution for continuous voltage, but they worked in a pinch. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any. What he did have, however, were rubber stoppers.
It only took a moment to jerry-rig them to provide the insulation to keep the circuit intact. The last thing his friends needed was for him to electrocute himself while trying to carry out this little experiment. Once satisfied the wires would hold and he had enough insulation to keep from dying, he charged up the defibrillator.
He turned the setting to manual, fired it up for 200 joules, checked the status lights, and then stared at the test tube. If this didn’t work, he could be dead in the next minute or two. And if it did? He could still be dead. If the black didn’t somehow get out of the test tube and eat him, it might explode with enough force to send his broken, charred body through the vehicle’s metal shell. Either way, he’d still be dead. But, he thought with a grin, getting blown up is preferable to being eaten alive.
“So, my little friend,” he said to the test tube. “It’s nut-cuttin’ time. Do you know what that means?” The viscous substance said nothing. “Well, doesn’t matter. Just a redneck expression you fucking aliens wouldn’t understand.” He frowned. “If, that is, you’re not from this planet.” The test tube said a little more nothing. “Shit, you might not even be from this universe for all I know.” The black substance was still as death. “Wouldn’t that be a kick? If you were some goddamned Cthulhu thing?” He chuckled. “Yeah. Grow some more tentacles and own the world!”
His laughter died as suddenly as it had started. The idea of this shit covering the whole goddamned planet, leaving only death and destruction in its wake, wasn’t a pleasant possibility. “Always hated Lovecraft,” he whispered. Holding his breath, he dropped one of the metal leads into the test tube.
The surface of the black liquid sizzled as it absorbed skin cells from his fingers, dust, and who knows what other biological material. It didn’t matter. What did matter was a single black tendril slowly materialized from the gunk and traveled up the wire. Heart pounding, he dropped the other lead into the tube.
The black reacted by sending another tendril racing up the new wire. The panic animal inside him finally won control. His hand darted out and hit the switch.
The unit whined for what seemed like an eternity. And then there was the “ka-chunk” of the defibrillator discharging its capacitors. Ellis wanted to close his eyes, but didn’t even have time.
Electricity pounded through the wires like invisible lightning. It hit the black in the test tube and then Ellis was on his ass staring up at the command center’s ceiling, ears ringing, mind confused. He didn’t know how long he lay there before something in his mind screamed at him to get the hell up.
He raised his head and stared at the lab table. The test tube was gone, replaced by a black scorch mark. The metal stand was on its sid
e, the heavy steel bent and twisted. His makeshift wiring job was blown away, the long leads seemingly vaporized. A cloud of gray smoke hung near the roof like fog.
Ellis scrambled to his feet. His vision wavered for a moment, but it quickly cleared. The terror began crawling across his skin. The test tube had exploded. But that didn’t mean the creature had been destroyed.
He backed away from the lab table as far as he could, eyes scanning for any telltale spots of the deadly black liquid. It was nearly two minutes later that he felt more calm. He slowly moved back to the lab area with measured steps, his eyes flicking back and forth as he looked for a sign. It was gone. It wasn’t on the floor. It wasn’t on any of the surfaces. And it sure as shit wasn’t on the ceiling. Ellis managed a sideways grin.
His makeshift electricity test had been a success. But it had been even more explosive than using good old fire. Much more explosive. If he’d done that to the original sample, there might be a smoking hole where the command center stood. When his breathing was finally under control, he thumbed his mic.
“Harrel? Mathis? You there?”
“Yup,” Harrel said. “Still here and still waiting.”
He wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead. “You can use electricity. That works.”
“Glad to hear that,” Mathis said. “However, I get the feeling you’re about to say ‘but.’”
“But, you’re going to have to be damned careful. I nearly blew up the goddamned lab.”
“Fuck me,” Mathis said.
Harrel sighed. “What did you use?”
“Defibrillator.”
“What size was the sample?”
“Small, Harrel. Damned small. Like 3 milliliters.” He took a deep breath and then chuckled. “Damned near blew the lab table apart.”
“Great,” Mathis said. “So we electrocute it and set off a bomb?”
He shrugged even though he knew they couldn’t see him. “I guess. But a defibrillator is different than a Taser. Different cycle. I’ve no idea what it will do when it gets hit with ungrounded electricity. I don’t have anything else I can test with.”
The Black: Outbreak Page 26
