Domino Falls

by Steven Barnes

  Twenty-eight

  A neatly piled stack of Thread literature waited on the library table, but the officious Gold Coat who had led Kendra to the library walked right past the tables.

  “I’ve been asked to take you to the Collections Room tonight,” he said.

  Kendra was excited, until she wondered why they’d agreed so easily to take her exactly where she wanted to go. The Collections Room was where she had felt the strange vibration during her first visit. When the Gold Coat opened the door to the dimly lighted chamber, she hesitated.

  “You’re a lucky girl,” he said. “Tonight, all of your questions will be answered.” Kendra wondered if he knew why she was really there.

  When Kendra walked into the room, its soaring ceiling seemed to swallow her. The room was crammed with mixed-media paintings and sculpture, one stranger than the next; discarded household items contorted into faces and limbs, with a sameness to the flat features. The oddly lighted room was crisscrossed with shadows.

  When the Gold Coat closed the door behind her, she was afraid to check the lock.

  Kendra had walked only two steps inside when she felt the certainty that she wasn’t alone. No movement or sound, but she knew. She searched the shadows for a human figure, but saw no one. She was about to call for Rianne when she heard a voice.

  “Kendra.”

  The whispered voice bubbled as if it were underwater, and Kendra’s body went to stone, except for her thrashing heart. She felt small and alone.

  Kendra opened her mouth to ask who was there, but no sound emerged. Her hand was reaching back toward the door with a mind of its own.

  “No need for fear, Kendra,” the voice said, impossibly reasonable despite its cloak of strangeness. “We should have grown beyond fear by now.”

  Kendra froze, her eyes darting to her left. Something was moving in the shadows with great deliberation, making itself seen. The figure was nearly six feet tall, with an oversized head. Another careful motion, and Kendra realized that the head was the size of a man’s, but it balanced on a too-thin neck and limbs.

  She stood fewer than ten yards from a skeleton with shiny, sun-reddened skin—or skin reddened by something. He blinked before disappearing from the light. His eyes were like balls of blood. Infected! One of the talkers, which meant he was probably a runner. The Gold Coat had led her into a trap!

  Kendra’s mouth fell open as she sucked at the air to breathe. What now?

  The door was closed behind her, so she would lose precious seconds of escape time if she tried to go out the way she’d come—but was there somewhere else she could run? Kendra remembered teeth sinking into Grandpa Joe’s calf and wondered: Would she kill herself on the spot somehow, or try to tell Terry first? Remembering Terry filled her with grief.

  Kendra was shocked her legs weren’t in motion already, but her mind paralyzed her with a question: How did it know your name?

  “I see you have infinite questions. So inquisitive. You are interesting to me.”

  It wasn’t going to spring at her! The creature had moved no closer, still half hidden in shadows. It glanced at her, but kept its face turned away, as if in shyness.

  This was a freak, wasn’t it? But if it was a freak, that wasn’t all it was. This freak was nothing like the others. Instead of rotting flesh, this one’s skin was as slick as a baby eel’s. Her eyes quickly searched the room again, and she realized that the odd figures looked very similar to the creature before her.

  “Is this your art?” someone calm and reasonable asked. “Or Wales’s?”

  She was talking to it! And the creature still hadn’t sprung, although it began a slow rocking from side to side.

  “Wales?” the watery voice said. “He paints like a child. And color-blind! I don’t think he knows it himself. He’s good for a purplish flourish now and again.”

  “So the other artwork … isn’t Wales’s?” Her voice surprised her again. How was one part of her conducting a conversation while the rest of her was preparing to die?

  “You are far too fast to be so slow, Kendra.” The sssssssss sounds were more reptilian than human. Kendra backed toward the door. If she went slowly, she thought, it might not chase her.

  “Who are you?” the other Kendra said, the one who remembered how to speak.

  “I was called Harry. Now? Call me Harry if you like, but I have no name.”

  Harry. The simple name was absurd.

  “What happened to you, Harry?”

  But she knew, she realized. She knew what had happened to Harry as well as she knew what had happened to her parents, and Grandpa Joe. Then her certainty went beyond intuition to a blurry image that suddenly sharpened in her mind: an art studio, breaking glass in a dark bedroom, a man’s cries against a woman’s attack. His girlfriend. Locked in a bathroom, accidentally freed by a newcomer. Blood. Kendra saw all of it.

  Her breath died in her throat. What had just happened?

  “Now you know,” he said. “Just as I know your story.”

  “You can talk to my head?” Kendra said, using the only words that fit.

  “Talking is easy,” he said. “Communication is harder.”

  “I can’t see you,” Kendra said. “Come into the light.”

  “I don’t care to. There.” The remaining lights died, left her groping in shadow. Kendra heard no sound, but she felt the creature move toward her. Patient. By inches, the creature was closing in on her.

  Kendra took another step away, could feel the vibration of the wooden door just beyond her, a beacon if only she had time. Her hand groped toward the knob. “I don’t like the dark,” Kendra said, hoping she didn’t sound like she was begging. “Turn the lights back on.”

  “It disturbs my senses,” the voice said. “I have … a different aesthetic now. I prefer darkness to light.”

  “What are you? Tell me!”

  “You know me,” he said. “From your dreams.”

  “No!” Kendra said, surprised to feel genuine irritation inside her terror. “My dreams are just … pictures. They don’t tell me anything!”

  Soft laughter floated from the shape in the darkness, its most human sound so far. “Fear makes you raise your voice. There is nothing for you to fear, Kendra—not you, nor any of your people. We are the same, in the end. We are one.”

  “We’re not the same,” Kendra said. “You got bitten. You’re a freak.”

  The creature bristled, its voice sharper. “That is the word used against us, to make us monsters,” he said. “You casually fling such verbal violence, and then question our motivations?”

  “That word isn’t what makes you monsters,” Kendra whispered. “Look at what you’ve done! You’ve killed millions of us! Billions!”

  The creature sighed. “The innocent, mindless thrashings of a newborn entering a strange world. It was not supposed to be this way.”

  “How was it supposed to be?”

  Finally, Kendra’s hand brushed the doorknob. She tried to turn it, but as she’d feared, she was locked in the room with the creature.

  None of it was an accident, she realized. If this creature was influencing Wales’s art, how could she know she hadn’t been influenced too? She’d seen Sissy’s vacant face at the town meeting. Had this creature done that to her? What about Rianne?

  “Where is she?” Kendra said. “Where’s Rianne?”

  “Prepare your mind, Kendra. Join us, gently. You are different from the others. You … perceive more. You could be one of us.”

  “How?”

  “You are an artist,” he said. “Your mind has an artist’s flexibility. Look how you’ve accepted me already. None of the others, even Wales, have presented themselves as openly. With such courage.”

  “What about Sissy and Rianne?”

  “They do not have your gifts, Kendra,” the creature said. “We are rare, you and I. Fewer than one in ten of us have the ability to make the transition. And because of the … circumstances, less than one in a thousand surv
ives in the wild.” His voice trembled with the memory. She knew how hard it was for humans outside, but she’d never considered what life was like for the freaks.

  “There are more of you?” Kendra said.

  “Join us, Kendra,” he said. “Step into a future without pain, without fear.”

  The creature had stopped moving forward. It was waiting, for now.

  “Do I have a choice?” Kendra said, to be sure.

  “If you come willingly, you have a much better chance of making the leap. And I will teach you so much.”

  In the dark, Kendra had lost her bearings quickly. She saw shadows from canvases and shelves where she might hide for a time, but the creature was better acclimated to the dark. If she was trapped, at least she would know why.

  “Tell me where you came from,” she said.

  The creature made a sharp intake of breath, another sign of impatience. “Our origins are not so simple to pinpoint. We came here centuries ago. We had drifted … I don’t know how long. We only began to awaken when conscious beings ingested us. Ate the mushrooms that grew from the spores.”

  The mushrooms! “Those spores traveled,” Kendra said, to be certain she understood. “And then we began to eat them.”

  “Yes. Our spores did not grow freely, but some took root on the continent of Africa. Tanzania, on Mount Meru.”

  “Meru? Is that near Kilimanjaro?” That was the only mountain she knew in Africa. Her father had climbed Kilimanjaro when he was in college. Would the creature spare her if she found the right words, the right questions?

  “Yes,” it whispered. “And if it had been Kilimanjaro, this all would have happened long ago. But outsiders didn’t climb Meru. Only the Chagga tribe knew about the mushrooms, and used us for their vision quests, and to stave off hunger. Then Europeans found us, and carried us around the world. Mixed us with chemicals. The infection would have been slow, painless. We would have become symbiotes to humanity, as we had for the sentient life-forms of so many other worlds.”

  “But what happened?” Kendra asked. “What went wrong?”

  And it began to tell her.

  Twenty-nine

  You sure this is it?” Terry said as Piranha coasted the truck to a stop in the high weeds. Piranha clicked the engine off. Crickets burred around them in the dark.

  In the backseat, Hipshot growled softly, and Terry shushed him. Bringing Hippy might have been a mistake. If Hippy started barking, they might be busted before they began. He didn’t see any Gold Shirts or other guards yet, but he was sure they were close. Cameras might even be monitoring the tunnel entrance. If so, the mission had failed already.

  “That’s his freak growl,” Piranha said.

  Terry nodded, surveying the high grass and sheltering stands of trees near them. “There might be a nest not far from here. And Kendra thought she smelled freaks inside, so keep your eyes open.”

  Terry nuzzled Hipshot’s chin and tried to stare the dog in his alert brown eyes. Hippy looked away, submitting to his master.

  “Hippy?” Terry said, wishing he could access dog language. “We need you to be really quiet, boy. Shhhh. No noise. No matter what.”

  Hippy whimpered, uncomfortable under Terry’s long gaze. But in a strange way, Terry thought the little guy might have understood him.

  “You think that dog whisperer crap’s gonna work?” Piranha said.

  “It better.”

  As they climbed out of the car, Terry pulled on the thin, frayed rope they’d improvised as a leash to control Hippy. The dog hesitated before jumping out of the car, casting wary glances into the dark. Then he reluctantly hopped out behind them, and they began the short hike to the spot where they thought the tunnel entrance was, relying on the moon rather than their flashlights for vision. The sky was practically cloudless. Cool beans.

  “Check it out,” Piranha said, pointing behind them.

  About three hundred yards east, a faint glow flashed once, then again, to show them where Darius and Dean were staking out the tunnel.

  “The Twins see us,” Terry said. We’re going to do this, Terry thought, as if realizing it for the first time. Or die trying, a voice whispered that didn’t sound like his.

  “I’m glad we’ve got backup.” Piranha hoisted the aluminum baseball bat he’d brought across his shoulder.

  Hippy growled again, and Terry gave his rope a displeased yank. With a resigned whimper, Hippy trudged on with them toward the heap of brush Jason had told them concealed the tunnel. They had briefly considered bringing Jason to help them navigate and leave him in the truck, but it would have been too dangerous. Hippy’s rope was always taut as they walked; the dog didn’t want to follow them. He knew something.

  For an instant, fumbling in the darkness, Terry thought their plan was futile. The tunnel might not still be there, and they might be nowhere near it. But Piranha made a sudden clucking sound, bending over to examine something to the right, and he rolled a mound of tumbleweed away.

  The tunnel entrance was unguarded, and there was no camera in sight. Wales must be certain that no one would try to get in or that no one remembered it. The archway-shaped iron door was as rusty as the chain that locked it. Wales might not have thought about the rear tunnel entrance since Freak Day.

  “Bolt cutters, Dr. Cawthone,” Terry said.

  “Step aside, son.”

  For the first time, they brought out the flashlight. First, they signaled briefly behind them to show the Twins they had arrived, and saw a reassuring flash in response. Then Piranha trained the light on the chain to search for the weakest link, which was the padlock itself. One powerful snap, and the chain clinked away.

  Hippy whimpered again, stepping backward.

  “Shhhh,” Terry said. “Easy, boy.”

  Terry and Piranha exchanged a glance for courage, and then they pulled the door’s latch. It took both of them to tug the door open wide enough to fit their bulk in.

  “Who’s there?” Terry called authoritatively, as if in challenge, just loudly enough for anyone posted near the door to hear. No response.

  “We’re in,” Piranha said. “Let’s go get the girls.”

  The door opened to steep, rough-hewn steps that threatened to crumble under their weight as they descended down six feet. Once they were inside, they both turned on their flashlights, illuminating walls of stone and packed dirt. Carefully, they pulled the door nearly closed behind them in case an alert passerby might notice. Patrols might check the tunnel.

  Terry’s heart drummed harder each time he felt Hipshot try to pull the other way, but he stopped shushing the dog’s growls. As long as Hippy wasn’t barking, the soft warnings were a reminder to be watchful.

  “Old mine shaft,” Piranha said, pointing to a rusted length of abandoned discarded track barely visible as a ridge in the packed dirt. The tunnels were narrow, but wide enough for trolley tracks, even if there was no mine car in sight. The walls had been widened, and Terry suspected that the widening had been within the last few years. Wales?

  “Damn,” Piranha said.

  They reached a gate much newer than the door outside, sure to be locked. But when they tested it, they realized it was a freakproof lock, much like the ones at the quarantine house and the Motel 6. No bolt cutters were necessary to open it. Another gate waited fifty yards ahead, as easy to open. Then a third. The farther they walked, the wider the tunnel and the louder Hippy’s growls. And something else …

  “You smell that?” Terry said.

  He’d hoped it was his imagination, but now he had confirmation that Kendra had been right: Wales’s ranch was awash with the stink of freaks. Then he heard a distant bang-bang-bang with an imprecise rhythm that reminded him all too much of Vern in the freezer. The muffled sound was coming from two or three places ahead of them. Ghostly faces raced toward him in the shadows, vanishing when he blinked.

  Suddenly, Terry didn’t feel well enough armed for their task. He had a gun, but had they brought enough ammo? He only h
ad two extra clips. A few freaks wouldn’t generate an odor that strong; the tunnel must be teeming with them. That explained the freakproof locks. Should they bring the Twins in? Did they have time? They’d planned to let the Twins give them cover outside, but although the tunnel entrance was only about a hundred fifty yards behind them, it might as well be in Mexico. Terry’s unsteady legs tensed, ready to bolt.

  Piranha stood at the last gate and shined his flashlight into the yawning void. “Think I see them. Looks like … cages. Cells.”

  “Like Jason said,” Terry remembered, relieved. That made sense, but his knee joints still trembled. “Freaks locked up, trying to get out?”

  “Let’s hope they’re locked up,” Piranha said, and opened the gate. The hinge screeched, and the banging ahead got louder in response. Much louder. The banging swelled into a macabre chorus.

  For the first time, Hippy barked.

  “Shhhh,” Terry said, accidentally yanking his leash so hard that Hippy yelped in pain. Terry didn’t soothe him. The tunnel was cool, but a slick of perspiration pasted his clothes to his skin. As much as he’d experienced since Vern’s attack, Terry couldn’t remember being more afraid. Their flashlights seemed useless against the dark, like shining penlights into a muddy ocean.

  “Zip it, mutt,” Piranha said.

  After a half-dozen steps, the vague shadows behind the bars ahead took a more solid aspect, framing shapes that were still confusing to the eye. Grasping, mindless hands reached through the bars, as if to capture the air, but the reaching arms were low to the ground. The hands were bigger than children’s, but the freaks seemed shorter than even a child should be. What the … ?

  “Too lazy to stand up?” Piranha said.

  Then, Terry got it: their legs might be broken! The freaks couldn’t stand or run, but he and Piranha might not be able to avoid their touch. Rows of arms undulated near the ground like tentacles on both sides, growing in pairs. Freaks crowded the cells by the dozens. There might have been a hundred or more in the tunnel. Terry’s skin crawled.

  “We’re gonna have to walk straight down the middle,” Terry said. “They’re dumb, but they’re strong. We get pulled in too close …”