“I can see well enough. We gotta get moving.”
Jimmy checked through the window. “Looks okay.”
He opened the door, revealing a darkened room lined with shelves full of ice cream and frozen vegetables. A cloud of cold air poured over their feet. Another door waited at the other end. Maliki listened carefully, but he didn’t hear anyone pounding on it.
Danny startled him by grinning. “Nothing could possibly go wrong.”
As they started to enter, a strange noise in the main room brought them up short. It sounded like TV static.
Jeff and Danny looked at each other and spoke at the same time: “That’s a CB.”
“You mean a radio?” Maliki said. “When the fuck did—”
But the other men were already dashing back into the store.
Chapter 19
KELTON
No doubt about it, Lucy Grimm carried more brains in her head than he had in his entire two-hundred-forty-pound, sack of fear-sweaty, man-flesh body.
Still, nobody in the group now running pell mell for the storm sewer was as smart as young Officer Newton Coburn, leading the way. That’s because he was the only one with the brains to snag a flashlight before they bailed out of the police van.
The flashlight beam bobbed up and down as Coburn disappeared into the horizontal discharge pipe. He was followed by Paula Trent, Chief Simpson, Becky, and Lucy Grimm. The opening was a good eight feet tall, so no one had to bend over as they splashed down a shallow stream into the underground tunnel.
Kelton paused at the entrance and aimed back the way they came. He expected the zombies to be right behind him. He could shoot a few before entering the pipe.
But there was nobody.
That’s odd. Did that mean they shouldn’t go in there? Did the zombies know something the group didn’t?
“Uh, guys?”
But they were too far ahead to hear him. The echoes of their footsteps and harsh breathing were already receding.
Kelton charged after them.
As he ran, he relived watching his partner blow his own head off.
He spoke to Larry as if he were running beside him. “You fucking idiot. Why did you do that?”
And yet he understood why, at least intellectually. He had to admit if it weren’t for Larry, they might not have escaped the van. It just sucked—sucked hard—that it cost his partner and Trevor their lives. He wouldn’t have had the balls to do what they did. Some action hero he’d turned out to be.
Meanwhile, where was the fucking group?
“Wait! Slow down! I can’t see!”
There weren’t any turns or blockages in the pipe, but he still couldn’t see Coburn’s flashlight or anything else. He felt overhead in case the ceiling suddenly lowered.
“Kelton?” the chief said from up ahead.
“It’s me. Don’t shoot!”
Now, finally, Kelton saw the flashlight. Coburn briefly shined it on his face.
Kelton holstered his gun so he could bend over with his hands on his knees and catch his breath. “It’s fine. None of them followed us in here.”
“That’s strange.” Lucy’s words came out as little puffs of steam that danced in the flashlight glare. “Maybe there’s nothing for them to protect in this direction.”
Paula stood so that her bare feet straddled the cold stream of water flowing down the bottom of the pipe. Her voice shook as she shivered. “But isn’t the school this way? The source of their energy?”
“Yes. I can’t explain it.”
Becky pumped her shotgun. “Shit. Maybe this is a trap.”
Chief Simpson peered into the darkness ahead. “Identify yourself.”
They all turned. The flashlight found a tall white man in a dark suit. He stood in their path. He smiled like he knew something. In his right hand, he carried a short, black rifle.
No, that’s not a gun. It’s a tree branch. Is it a tree branch?
The stranger pointed it at them. Not a tree branch.
“Take cover!” Kelton said, but a ball of blue light was already spitting out of the weapon.
Chief Simpson had stepped in front of Lucy, shielding her with his body. The ball of light slammed into his chest and disappeared. Lucy screamed as he collapsed.
Kelton wasn’t aware of having drawn his weapon. He fired, the report simultaneous with Becky’s and Coburn’s guns.
The attacker’s body jerked as liquid sprayed onto the sewer wall behind him. His arm went limp, and he dropped his strange gun.
Kelton fired again but wasn’t sure he got him. It was enough, though, to goad the stranger into running off. He moved so quickly into the darkness ahead that Kelton could have sworn he was flying.
“Help!” Lucy said.
She and Paula cradled the chief as he lay there in the streaming water. His mouth hung open, and as Kelton watched, his eyes rolled back into his head. The blast from (a ray gun? Really? A ray gun?) the gun had burnt away the fabric of the uniform shirt covering his chest and much of the skin beneath. In the char-black of his abdomen, blood seeped out across striations of exposed muscle fiber and fatty white tissue.
Chief Simpson still held his sidearm. Kelton relieved him of it and handed it off to the other officers. No sense in arming a zombie.
“Shit,” he said. “Just…shit.”
This had to be a dream. All of it. In only a few short hours, everything he’d accepted as true—such as that the dead stayed dead—had been turned upside down. Larry’s death, the chief’s death…this was part of a nightmare, right?
Lucy wiped away tears. “He saved me.”
“What?”
“He saw the guy was aiming at me, so he stepped in front of me. He did it so quickly. Without thinking.”
He’s the hero. Not me. “Why was that man aiming at you?”
“I have no idea.”
***
Officer Coburn fumbled and almost dropped the flashlight. “What the hell was that?”
Kelton glared at the young man. He wanted to say, A ray gun, dummy. And at the end of the tunnel is a flying saucer. Maybe a leprechaun. But all he said was, “I don’t know.”
“Over here.” Becky stood near the blood the stranger had left on the wall. “Newton, shine on this.”
“Coming.” Officer Coburn followed her down the pipe and aimed his flashlight at the splatter.
Kelton picked up the ray gun. It looked like a cross between a tree branch and a solidified hunk of slime. But it had a grip and trigger on the bottom like an Earth weapon. Maybe the little green men—or tall white men—had taken a cue from humans in their gun design. Or we took a cue from them.
Meanwhile, the stranger’s blood reflected the flashlight beam in bright streaks.
Becky shook her head. “It doesn’t bleed like us or the zombies.”
“Is that orange?” Coburn said.
Kelton was reminded of a scene in Predator, one of his favorite movies starring the Governator. “If it bleeds,” he said, quoting, “we can kill it.”
No one seemed to get the joke. They didn’t even glance at him as they resumed walking down the pipe.
Kelton cast one last look back at the chief’s body, lying there in the stream. He had no idea if they would be able to return for it. Such an unfitting end for somebody who really was an action hero.
“I’m sorry, boss. I’m so sorry. That was…that was beast. Righteous. Radical.” He tried to think of more slang he could say—his final gift to the man who’d given his life—but he came up empty. Chief Simpson had been more than a boss to him over the years. He tried to imagine what it would be like to come to work and not see him sitting behind his desk, surfing the Internet for his next fad interest. Maybe it was best not to imagine. Not yet.
He turned to follow the others and was startled to see Paula standing there, watching him. She must have heard what he said. He felt embarrassed, but he wasn’t sure why.
“You okay?” he said for lack of something better.
“Then let’s go.”
Gee, it was nice to have a real conversation with her again.
***
Whenever Coburn swung the flashlight his way, Kelton saw that a mist hovered at eye level, a product of the cooler underground air. He kept glancing back, sure a zombie was creeping after them. They were all trying to straddle the stream as they walked down the sewer pipe, but their occasional splashes made it impossible to listen for pursuers.
This whole venture struck him as ridiculous and stupid. The chief had been correct to try to get the civilians to safety. Here they were, three police officers and two untrained women—one of them barefoot—and they wanted to mount an assault on an unknown enemy?
Larry. The chief. I can’t believe they’re dead. It hasn’t hit me yet. I can’t let it.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s take a breather and regroup.”
Everyone stopped and formed what he thought was a pathetic little knot of humanity. All wide eyes and bare feet and toy guns.
He held his breath, listening for zombie footsteps behind them. Nothing. He hoped they truly were alone. His heart wouldn’t slow down.
He pointed at Coburn. “You take point,” he said—unnecessarily, since Coburn had the flashlight and had to take point anyway, but it made him feel better to issue orders. “Becky, the other side.”
Becky nodded and walked to the rear of the group. She aimed her shotgun back the way they came.
Lucy shivered from the cold. “S-stopping doesn’t seem wise, Kelton.”
“Just relax. I got an idea.” Kelton pulled the police radio off his belt. He’d almost forgotten about it. He was super-glad he’d held onto it after trying to use it in the van. Still, he would have rather had another flashlight. “Let’s see if anyone is out there now.”
It was a delay tactic to give him time to think. He didn’t really expect it to work. The pulses of blue light toyed with their reception, and now they were inside an underground sewer. Still, it was worth a try.
“Hello, this Nilbog P.D. Officer Kelton, sending a distress call. Can anyone read?”
He repeated the message a couple times. The good news was the radio seemed to be working, at least. But the bad news was nobody—
“Hello? Hello?”
The voice belonged to a young man. The reception was tinny and thin, but it was still a voice. He couldn’t believe it.
“Oh, thank God,” Paula gasped.
Another voice came onto the channel. “Kelton, this is Danny. You believe we saw a meteor now?”
“Oh my god—give it to me!” Paula tore the radio out of his hand.
Kelton considered taking it back, but he was so startled by Danny’s voice that he wouldn’t have known what to say.
“Danny!” Paula screamed into the mic. “Is Jeff with you?”
“Paula?” Jeff’s voice now. “Baby, are you okay?”
“Yes. Kelton and some police officers are looking after me.”
Kelton’s heart jumped at the mention of his name. He held his breath as his ex-girlfriend sobbed into the radio. Her wedding ring shone brightly in the flashlight glare.
“We’re trapped at Sammy’s,” Jeff said.
“We’re in a sewer.”
“Not sure who got the better deal.”
Paula laughed and cried at the same time. Kelton’s chest felt on fire. “We’re heading to the source of the wave to destroy it.”
“Okay?” Jeff sounded doubtful. Kelton could imagine what he was thinking. The source of the what? Kelton’s taking you where?
“The old school building on Pine Avenue,” she said. “You know it?”
“Yeah. Listen, I’m not sure if I’ll get to say this again.”
Kelton glanced at Lucy. She was pulling her lab coat around herself against the cold and staring hard at him.
“Paula Trent,” Jeff said. “I love you.”
In tears, Paula shouted, “I love you, too!”
“Kelton, can you hear me?”
Paula hesitated before handing the radio over to him.
“I’m here.”
“Listen, I know you and I have never really gotten along, but I’m gonna ask you for something now.”
He already knew what it was. “Go ahead.”
“I need you to look after my girl. I’m begging you. Keep my Paula alive, okay?”
Kelton felt everyone’s eyes on him. Especially Lucy’s, for some reason. “I will. And Jeff.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
Swallowing, Kelton handed the radio back to Paula and stepped away. He listened to the remainder of the conversation with his back turned, trying to sort out his feelings. She’s not yours. Isn’t it about time you gave it up?
“Jeff?” Paula said.
“Yeah, baby?”
“I’m so scared.”
Paula gasped as an alarming wave of static crashed over the channel. And then Jeff was back: “Listen, baby, I don’t have a lot of time right now, okay?”
“Oh, no. Please don’t go.”
“I’m sorry, baby. It’s the battery. I think it’s gonna die any sec—”
More static cut off his words.
Kelton turned to watch Paula depress the talk button and holler into the radio. “No! Baby, no. Don’t go. Please don’t leave me.”
She let go of the button to hear any return transmission, but the static remained. She doubled over like she’d been socked in the stomach.
Becky gently took the radio out of her hands and returned it to Kelton. She hugged the other woman, who sobbed as if her husband were already dead.
***
The sewer condition deteriorated the farther they walked. Small cracks in the concrete widened into larger cracks that admitted swaths of bare earth to spill into the pipe. Increasingly, more trash and clumps of small animal carcasses polluted the stream and dammed it into pools that they had to step around. One area contained the aftermath of a large-scale cave-in. It delayed them for long, tense minutes as they picked their way around scaffolds of twisted rebar and crumbled earth and concrete. All the while, they swept their guns in all directions, expecting an attack. If only they’d had another flashlight.
It made sense that things worsened closer to Pine Avenue. To Kelton’s knowledge, the school had been its main feature, so when it died, it took the rest of the area down with it. Nilbog Elementary—along with the rest of the city’s public education system—had shut down in the Eighties, when he was in the second grade, the victim of budget cuts. He’d been bussed up to Albemarle County to finish his time. Pine Avenue and its long, expensive sewer pipe were the product of an earlier generation’s optimism. That’s when the post-World War Two baby boom and easily affordable mortgages for returning soldiers fueled a Nilbogian housing explosion. But when the school closed, so did plans to develop the island’s east end. This pipe, the school, and an unused parking garage for Richmond commuter bus travelers were now hangouts for thrill-seekers and urban explorers.
Soon after they threaded through the cave-in’s rubble, the sewer pipe’s diameter abruptly cut in half. They ascended an incline to enter another pipe so short they had to bend over to walk. Their harsh breathing echoed against the closer confines. They braced themselves on the sides of the pipe as they crept along.
“Where does this go?” Paula said. “Are we there yet?”
Kelton edged past her so he could walk behind Coburn at the front. “Look for a manhole.”
Less than a minute later, the sewer pipe branched off into several pipes that were two small to fit through. Dirty water poured out of each of them in miniature water falls.
But that was okay because they had reached a ladder. Coburn shone the flashlight up at a closed manhole overhead.
“I was thinking,” Lucy said. “These aliens.”
Kelton realized she was speaking to him. Everyone stared at him, making him uncomfortable.
&nbs
p; “Aliens?” He tried to sound surprised. Part of him still resisted the idea ETs were behind this, despite the evidence and despite the strange weapon he carried. Until now, he wasn’t sure they’d even used the term aliens out loud. Weird how watching so many sci-fi movies had made him skeptical to the idea they existed in real life.
“What else do you know that bleeds orange?”
Kelton sighed. I guess it’s time to call a spade a spade. He nodded.
“You think they’ll be protecting this central hub of energy?”
He shrugged. “Most likely.”
“You better learn how to use their gun, then.”
Kelton looked down at the weapon. It felt smooth and repellant in his hands, like holding a dried beetle carcass. He didn’t know why he still carried it—some vague notion that it was a superior weapon to his own. But now that it was time to put up or shut up, he was afraid. It could blow up in his hands. It could sense he was human and electrocute him. Or something. He shouldn’t take the risk.
The others still watched him—except for Paula, who stared sadly at her feet.
“Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”
He walked back the way they came, grateful for the brief respite from everyone’s attention. He felt like he was ducking out to go to the bathroom.
“Need the light?” Coburn called.
“Thanks, but I’ll make my own.”
Then, before he could give himself any more time to hesitate, Kelton raised the weapon to his shoulder. The trigger felt like an insect’s leg as he squeezed it. Not mechanical at all. It probably—hopefully—wouldn’t work.
A ball of blue light formed at its muzzle like the one that killed the chief. It blasted off into darkness. It lit up the tunnel all the way back to the rubble of the cave-in. There, it hit the pile and caused more dirt and concrete to rain down.
Before the blue light winked out, Kelton saw the opening in the pile they’d crawled through was no more. He’d plugged it up good. So, the good news was the zombies couldn’t pursue them through it anymore.
The bad news was they couldn’t go back.
Coburn ran up. “What happened?”
Kelton smiled. “We have no choice now. Once more unto the breach, dear friends!”
Plan 9- Official Movie Novelization Page 18
