Fabler got to his feet—
—and ran at the side of the ship, expecting to be stopped by something solid.
Instead he passed through the light.
The glare inside the cylinder wasn’t as intense, and Fabler saw Lori, lying on a floor made of light and surrounded by light; three-dimensional light coming from everywhere at once.
The mechanical hum droned on, several levels lower, like front row at an AC/DC concert, standing in front of a gigantic stack of amps, the bass so strong it made his body hair vibrate.
“Fabler!”
His wife’s eyes widened, her face creased with terror, and Fabler ran to her but the floor stretched out and Lori got further away every step he took.
Thinking this still must be a dream, but maybe dream-logic could provide lucidity, Fabler jogged backward. Like some insane carnival ride, he got closer to Lori, as if she’d been sitting on a moving walkway.
But something loomed in the distance, beyond her.
“You’re kidding me.”
Fabler couldn’t gauge distance, and had no comparison to judge size. The two figures were man-shaped, but thin. The white outfits looked a lot like combat body armor.
Except for their helmets.
Grey, and broad, like hockey masks, stretched to points on the top and bottom. Eyes black and huge.
Fabler strained to reach Lori before they did.
The grey thing snaked its hand around Lori’s ankle.
“Not in my dream, asshole.”
Fabler launched himself at the figure—
—and instead propelled himself away.
Fabler tried again, and the distance grew longer.
Though counterintuitive, Fabler walked backwards and threw a punch behind him, and somehow connected with the back of the figure’s head.
“Fabler!”
The other figure dragged Lori away as she flailed around. Pulling her toward a small, black spot that had opened in the distance.
Fabler jogged to her, backward, and at a certain point he no longer needed to move.
The black spot tugged him closer. But Lori got there first.
As Lori’s legs were pulled into the spot, she stretched, as if made of taffy. Fabler yelled for her, but even though he could feel his vocal chords flex, the sound came out garbled, less like a voice and more like a leather glove rubbing cello strings. The strange, metallic hum disappeared, and Fabler reached for Lori, reaching behind himself, watching his arms elongate, extending so far he could no longer see his hands.
Then, a sucking sensation, followed by blackness.
“Fabler!”
He could hear her, perfectly. She sounded close.
So did the two figures. Fabler heard their footfalls, coming nearer.
He took several quick steps backward, and their sounds got farther away.
Fabler stood still, listening as the figures approached.
“Are you hurt, Lori?”
“No.” Surprisingly calm.
“What’s happening, Fabler? Is this a dream?”
“I don’t know.”
“Everything was opposite. I couldn’t move right.”
“Same here. Remember all the self-defense training we did? All that time in the gym? Judo and jujitsu and vulnerable points on a man’s body?”
“Yes.”
“Fight, Lori. Fight like your life depends on it.”
Fabler sensed movement, and he whipped his hips around and dropped, extending his legs, executing a sweep, hoping to knock one of the bastards down.
He connected with something.
Fabler felt around, found some limb, and pulled himself atop the figure, hands finding the neck—such a long neck—then higher, the alien hockey mask, tugging it away, digging his fingers into a cold, moist face.
Its eyes were huge.
Fabler dug his thumbs in, putting his full upper body into it, driving into the eye sockets up to his second knuckles.
Cold flesh became warm blood.
The thing screamed. High-pitched, like a cat.
Then the other one came up from behind, trying to put something soft and glowing around Fabler’s neck.
Fabler pushed the creature back, rolled onto his side, into the darkness, and heard a voice.
A voice speaking English, American English, coming from the grey thing.
“Leave him. Take the woman.”
“Lori!”
“Fabler!”
“Keep talking. I’m coming for you.”
He ran to her, a full-out sprint in complete darkness, as Lori called his name, again and again, Fabler zeroing in on it like a bat using sonar, judging her to be two meters away, one meter, and then—
He grabbed his wife, wrapped his arms around her, and began to pull her—
He went left, then right, but he couldn’t grasp any sense of the space they were in.
And then Fabler sensed movement.
Fabler lashed out with his fist, connected with something, and followed it up with a kick, also connecting.
He didn’t let go of his wife’s hand, but he felt her fighting back, throwing fists and feet at the unseen enemies.
Every time one came too close, Fabler made it pay, every squeal and moan he extracted from them another medal he could pin to his Army Service Uniform. He punched and pushed and slapped and snarled, and Lori snarled too, swearing at them, daring them to keep coming.
Then voices, in unison, coming from all the creatures at the same time.
“Fall back. I am sending in the Experiment.”
As quickly as the attack began, the formation retreated. Fabler put one hand around Lori’s waist, snugging her close, and held his other fist up, waiting for the next salvo.
“I love you, Fabler.”
“I love you, too.”
“If we don’t make it…”
“We’re going to make it, babe.”
“Fabler…”
“Have I ever broken a promise?”
“No.”
He turned to her in the black, his cheek on hers. “I promise to you. On my life. On our love. This is the most sincere promise ever made to anyone in the history of humanity.” He held her so tight he could feel her heartbeat. “I will get you out of here, Lori.”
Then, in the darkness, a stench.
Part rot. Part medicinal.
As the odor got stronger, Fabler sensed movement.
It hit like a pickup truck, knocking them over, Fabler barely managing to snag Lori’s hand before a dozen men pinned them.
Fabler groped around in the darkness, unable to push it away. He searched for a head—heads were vulnerable—but all he touched were arms. Arms and hands of different lengths and widths coming at Fabler in odd, unnatural directions. Fabler grabbed a hand, and it felt human, thin, with long fingernails…
Another hand yanked his away, this one thicker and male, and yet another grabbed his throat.
Fabler bit down, hard enough to break the skin.
The thing cried out in multiple voices that sounded like the damned in hell being burned alive.
Fabler tasted blood, spat, and tried to force his way through all the slapping, punching, squeezing hands, tried to touch the body of the thing on top of him, and he did, but he couldn’t understand what it was, couldn’t comprehend what he was feeling. Bare skin, with the familiar human texture and warmth, the muscles flexing beneath the flesh.
Even though Fabler couldn’t see in the dark, in his mind he saw a harvestmen cluster.
Harvestmen. Another name for those daddy longlegs spiders, the kind that looked like a grey ball with eight long, black, spindly legs sprouting out of it. In the summer, they would clump together in colonies of hundreds, like a giant, wiggling, spider-carpet.
That’s what Fabler imagined, touching this… experiment. But instead of spider legs, Fabler pictured human limbs; arms and legs in a tangled, giant knot of flesh and bone.
“Fabler!”
Lori got ripped away from him, and Fabler stopped trying to fight back and instead stretched for his wife, flailing in the darkness, managing to snag her hair.
“Fabler! Don’t let go!”
The hands of the thing enveloped Fabler, a wall of flesh pushing him away.
“LORI!”
“Don’t let go!”
He could feel Lori’s hair begin to break, and worried he’d yank her scalp off, Fabler tried to adjust his hand, get a firmer grip—
And then she was ripped away, and he was released, and he could hear the Experiment, moving ridiculously fast, carrying his wife away into the blackness as she screamed Fabler’s name.
Fabler got up, tried to run after her, and the floor beneath his feet disappeared and somehow he tumbled upside-down, falling over from a headstand, twisting into a pike, and dropping onto the grass in front of his house.
The saucer was gone. The light was gone. The sound was gone.
Fabler, sunburned and alone, sat in the middle of a giant, brown circle of dead lawn, Lori’s bloody ear still clenched in his fist, and he screamed into the star-speckled sky for the woman he loved so much.
PRESLEY ○ August 26, 2017 ○ 8:50am
On her knees, Kadir’s gun pressed against the back of her head, Presley searched the floor of the secret room for the board with the fingerhole in it.
Kadir tapped her, hard, with the gun barrel.
Presley could imagine the route the bullet would take if he fired. It would slice through her brain and exit right below her left eye.
Her stomach roiled.
“What’s taking so long?”
“I don’t see any fingerholes in the floor. Do you?”
“He said check the fifth position.”
Presley remembered. In Fabler’s room, when he spun the cylinder on his Charter Arms Pitbull revolver and tried to make her play Russian roulette.
“Take the gun. Pull the trigger. I’ll be fine. The bullet is in the fifth position.”
“You have to move back, Kadir. I can’t see with your shadow.”
“I’m not going anywhere, little lady.”
“I can’t see.”
“So feel for it. It’s a fingerhole. Use your damn hands.”
Presley swept her hands over the floorboards in a circular motion, not searching for the hole, just trying to buy some time so she could figure out what to do next.
One-on-one, even though Kadir had that terrible ring with the prongs on it, Presley felt confident she could physically handle him. He was older, overweight, and didn’t have her training. Twice, she’d been able to do some damage and get away.
Her hand found a small indentation in the floor.
“Do you really need that gun to handle me, Kadir?”
“You broke my nose, Presley. Twice. And my finger. And you took my 9mm, which I want back.”
“I needed time. I wanted to get you your money. It turned out to be more complicated than I thought.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you were really concerned about that.”
Presley chanced turning around to look at him.
Without intending it to happen, Presley imagined that Kadir was Grim. She let herself smile, and lowered her chin, just a bit, and hooded her eyes; a pouty, come-hither look she practiced dozens of times in the mirror, trying to channel her inner Angelina Jolie.
“I didn’t think you cared about money as much as…” Presley lowered her eyes, glancing at Kadir’s crotch before staring back at his face. “…other things.”
Kadir blushed, which made his poison ivy glow brighter. “Just keep looking for the gold.”
“You’ve got me, all alone, and your big concern is gold? I thought you were different than that, Kadir. I thought you were an alpha male. One of those men who takes charge. Seizes the moment.”
“I am like that.”
Slowly, maintaining eye contact, Presley raised her hand up, touching his thigh.
But Kadir didn’t move. He stared down at her in a creepy I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening kind of way. Part predator, part kid in a candy store.
Like all women, Presley had dealt with a lot of unsavory male behavior in her lifetime. Too many inappropriate comments to remember them all. Harassment in school, in the military, at various jobs. Groping. Name-calling. Needy guys whining for pity sex, and super-aggressive guys who didn’t think the word no applied to them.
The first option revolted her, and would probably end up with Presley hating herself even more than she already did. Especially if it went too far and she didn’t escape.
The second option seemed equally bad. Having non-consensual sex where she pretended to be the aggressor would be awful, but being beaten up and violently raped and possibly killed would be even worse.
Presley made her decision.
She reached higher, for his fly, and Kadir appeared delighted.
“I got a gun pointed at your head, and you’re going straight for it. You really are a whore.”
“I adore strong guys. It’s a turn-on.”
“You are one crazy bitch, Presley. I’ve always liked that about you. Here. You’ll need this.”
Still keeping the gun on her, Kadir reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a leather-bound clamshell case. Too thin for eyeglasses. Longer than a deck of playing cards.
“Open it.”
Already creeped out, a feeling of absolute dread shrouded Presley, and then became almost unbearable when she opened the case and saw—
A syringe in a velvet-lined case. With a small vial of liquid.
“I don’t want any drugs, Kadir.”
“They ain’t for you. They’re for me.”
“What is it? Smack?”
Kadir laughed, a sound like a dog yapping. “I wish. It’s called Quadmix. A bunch of hormones and vasodilators.”
Presley didn’t like the sound of that.
“What does it do?”
“It gets me hard, for over an hour. No matter how many times I come. Now I need you to draw out one cc into the needle, then inject it into the base of my dick.”
What Happened to Lori Page 34
