The Melting (They Came With The Snow #2)

by Christopher Coleman

  “Jesus, this place is big,” Smalley says, understating the obvious as she seems predisposed to do. “And open. We’re sitting ducks out here.”

  “Let’s get going then,” Jones says. “The back office past the hockey rink, right? That’s where the boss is?”

  “That’s where her office is,” Pam corrects. “She just got here yesterday—for the first time since the blast—so I don’t know what she’s up to or where she is at the moment.”

  “Where was she when you and Spence came out for your Fritos break?”

  Pam hesitates. “With the colonel.”

  “And where might he be at the moment?”

  “When I left they were in the observation pen. We call it the penalty box.

  “Keeping with the hockey theme?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “I guess.”

  “And what goes on in the penalty box?” Jones continues.

  “It’s a way for the scientists to get close to them—the changed—without risking their lives or having to walk around the outside of the holding pen.”

  “Do you think we could get moving?” Smalley says. “I’m starting to feel a little aquaphobic.”

  “Aquaphobic,” Jones replies. “You scared of the ocean? I think you mean agoraphobic. And yeah, I’m with you.”

  Pam nods toward the offices. “It’s straight ahead, toward those lights, at the end of the corridor that runs between those rows of rooms.”

  We begin walking in that direction, Pam sticking close to Jones, making sure she’s near enough that should we be caught off guard by the security forces in this place, she and Jones will still be able to pull off the hostage charade.

  When we reach the middle of the open space, I begin to feel like a character in a fantasy novel, sneaking into the lair of some sleeping dragon, just me and my trusty sidekicks, keeping a close huddle the entire time, heads on swivels, each watching his side for danger.

  It feels like an eternity, but we finally reach the first of the offices, and I can see that the construction of the rooms is a little more impressive than I’d originally thought. From a distance, I had assumed the offices were shoddily made, thrown up with little more care than what’s given to the erection of a lean-to. But now, standing beside the divider wall of the first room, touching it with my fingers, I can feel that it’s sturdy, solid, made with purpose, each wall ten to twelve feet high with thick fiberglass windows fronting them and steel molding reinforcing the glass at every junction.

  We pass the first room slowly, staring inside hypnotically, like we’re walking through an aquarium. But there’s nothing much to see; it looks to be a typical office. The room is dark, but there’s enough ambient lighting coming from further down the hangar that we can see a standard desk and a couple of office chairs, as well as a small sofa arranged along the left side of the room. The wiring systems for a phone and a computer snake across the desk and onto the floor, though the hardware itself is no longer there.

  We turn to the office on the opposite side of the corridor and it appears to be a mirror image of the one on the right. Still, it seems odd and out of place, staged maybe, an office-building version of a Potemkin village.

  We walk past eight more rooms, four on each side of the main walkway that splits the offices, and they all look almost identical to the first two.

  And then we reach the sixth office on the right, about halfway down the corridor to the light at the back of the arena. And things inside are very different.

  “What the hell is that?” Jones whispers.

  Sydney just shakes her head and swallows, blinking several times, like a child lying in bed, pretending not to hear the thunder rumbling outside her window.

  “We don’t look at it,” Pam says. Her voice is calm, matter-of-fact, like she and Sydney have thought a lot about this particular room and have made the sensible choice to ignore it, the way you would simply ignore a dirty piece of graffiti painted on a subway train.

  “But what is it?” I repeat, and then I step close to the long window that stretches from the floor to the top of the ceiling-less room.

  And then I see it clearly. At the back of the office, hunched in the darkest corner of the room, facing away from us, is a crab. But it looks thinner than the others, discolored and deformed, its bony gray spine bulging against the skin of its back like the edges of a mutated pie crust.

  “It’s one of them,” Pam says, her voice directed away from me, not giving her eyes the opportunity to drift anywhere near the room.

  “What’s wrong—”

  With the speed of a greyhound—and nearly the build and color of one, as well—the crab scurries from the corner of the office and races towards the place where I’m standing. Its eyes are thin and focused, its teeth bared like a crazed baboon. It doesn’t growl, per se, but its heavy nasal breathing is somehow a more terrifying noise.

  I’m frozen, unable even to exhale as I stand inches from the glass, watching the horrible thing approach. So instead of fighting the terror, I take in the vision with fascination, the way one would if a tiger shark were approaching the side wall of its tank, feeling that primal instinct of fear but knowing the shark is no real threat. The truth is, of course, I don’t really know that I’m safe in this particular environment, and unlike the shark, or any of the other crabs I’ve encountered to this point—save those at Gray’s Grocery, perhaps—this creature doesn’t have the detachment of feeling in its attack. The beast rushing at me now is deranged, angry, filled with hate.

  The crab never lifts its torso more than two or three feet from the floor as it comes at me, seeming to maximize its speed by using this posture, and there is no deceleration as it crashes against the inside of the acrylic glass window, causing the entire row of offices to shake violently.

  Sydney screams, and with that alarm now sounded, I have no doubt that we’ll be shot within the next few seconds. But I still can’t move, and I watch the dull white ghost attack me through the glass over and over again.

  “Dammit, shut her up!” Jones barks at no one in particular. “She’ll get us killed.”

  “It’s okay,” Pam assures, “if they’re in the penalty box, they’ll have a tough time hearing us. It’s not completely sealed, but it’s surrounded on the sides by thick glass, a lot like these offices.”

  “But they might not be in there now,” Jones reminds her.

  “Then it’s too late, Jones,” I say, turning slightly, trying to extricate myself from the maniacal draw of the monster behind the glass to take over for Pam in her side of the conversation. “We have to hope they are and not waste any more time. Let’s keep walking.”

  “Hold on,” Smalley scoffs, an ironic smile on her face. “What the hell is going on here? What is that thing?”

  “Smalley, we have to—”

  “No!” Smalley barks at me, and I can see she’s almost in tears, on the verge of a breakdown, perhaps. “Why is that thing in there like that? And what’s wrong with it? It looks...just wrong.”

  Pam looks down, assuming her earlier posture of shame. “He’s one of the tests. One of the guinea pigs, I think. For the next...batch of them.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask, turning completely toward Pam. My back is now facing the crab as it continues to press its hungry face against the barrier, gnashing its teeth against the impenetrable acrylic.

  “Why do you think we’re still here? Why would this place still be open?”

  I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.

  “It’s not over. They’re not going to stop now. They’ve killed thousands of people.” Pam looks away and swallows, and then a nervous chuckle exits her mouth, as if she’s just now realizing the magnitude of what they’ve done here. “Why would—”

  A banging sound rattles from somewhere in the back of the arena, and everyone stops in place, their stares fixed to some invisible place in space, searching for the sound with their eyes. There’s silence for a beat, and then the faintest sound
of a voice drifts in from the same direction as the banging.

  “What the hell is that?” I ask.

  Pam shakes her head. “I don’t know.” The answer comes a little too quickly, too assuredly.

  “Come on. Let’s find it.”

  We continue down the corridor toward the rink, leaving the white monster in a rage against the clear wall of his cell. I look back at it, and his eyes are following us as we leave, and suddenly a new fear enters my mind, that this is one of the new rulers of the world. It’s too late, they’ve been created, and by all accounts, these mad doctors are trying to make more of them. And even if we stop them, the people who are building these demons now, what difference will it make? The technology is out there; it’s probably been distributed through electronic means and is now floating around in cyberspace like some unstoppable virus.

  As we progress further down the corridor, the crab fades from sight, but the banging grows steadily louder. By the time we reach the end of the rows of offices, however, the banging has stopped.

  But then I hear the word again, distinctly this time, ringing through the enormous building like an echo in a canyon.

  Help!

  It’s a word humans are programmed to hear, no matter the language or circumstance, whether coming from a five-year old at a playground during a game of tag, or from a swimmer struggling in the ocean. The word rings softly, almost inaudibly, but I can see in the eyes of Jones and Smalley that they’ve heard it too.

  “Is that them?” I ask, looking at Pam, my voice piercing with urgency. “The internals?”

  “I guess,” Pam says, looking confused, a tone of irritation in her voice, as if helping these people wasn’t part of their deal and thus she doesn’t want to focus on them.

  “Where are they, Pam?” I return to my professor voice, but underneath it the bubbles are forming, and it won’t take much to bring them to the surface.

  “I...I don’t know. I said I would take you back to the rink. To the penalty box. I’ll take you to Stella and the colonel and we can—”

  “What did you say?” I hear the words come from my mouth, but I feel like they’ve been spoken by some alien being on another planet. I can feel the blood rush from my face, my knees weakening. I could faint if I’m not careful, so I force myself to rally from the blow of her words.

  “I don’t know where the internals are, but—”

  “The name you just gave. Who did you say?”

  “What? Oh, Ms. Wyeth. Estelle Wyeth. She goes by Stella. We don’t usually call her by her first name because—”

  “I don’t care.” I pivot to Jones. “Give me the gun, Mr. Jones.”

  Jones hands me the gun without hesitation. He no doubt recognizes the determination that has suddenly overcome me, perhaps from some past experience of his own when a thing needed done at the moment without question.

  “This wasn’t the deal.” Pam complains. “I’m not sure—”

  I raise the gun and point it at Sydney.

  “Whoa, professor, what’s going on?” It’s Smalley, her tone more curious than concerned.

  “Where are they? Where exactly are the internals?”

  “I...I don’t know. I mean, we can hear them, so they obviously must be close, but they weren’t in one of the offices so I don’t know.”

  I study Pam’s face for a few seconds. “I think you’re lying.”

  Pam puts her hands on her hips and cocks her head, and then opens her eyes wide, defiantly. “Well I’m not.”

  I open my eyes equally wide now and take a step toward Sydney. “Well, we’re going to find out. I’m counting to two, and if you haven’t told me where they are, I’m shooting your friend in the face.”

  “Jesus, Dom,” Jones says. “What just happened?” I can hear the doubt in his voice, doubt that maybe him giving me the gun wasn’t the best idea after all.

  I ignore him, my focus locked now on the young IT specialist, Sydney, who was probably considering grad school only a year or two ago, and decided to go with this job instead. She’s crouched in a heap below me, facing forward and crying to some unseen god.

  “This place is too big and I don’t have time to look around. And suddenly I don’t trust you anymore. So here we go Pam. On two. One.”

  “Who counts to two?” Smalley whispers to herself rhetorically.

  “It’s in the floor, behind the holding cells.” Pam shakes her head as she speaks, her voice distant, undetached, as if understanding that she’s sealed her fate.

  “What is?”

  Pam rolls her eyes. “The blueprints to Fort Knox. What are we talking about? The people who came with Ms. Wyeth. They’re in a cellar behind the offices.”

  Stella.

  The name suddenly hits me again. I knew it. And then for a while I didn’t know it. But I think I always did. Somewhere inside of me, I knew Stella was lying. Or at least holding something back. Maybe I didn’t think it was something on this scale, but I knew there was more to her story.

  A man and his son. Or grandson. That’s who Pam said were with them. That means Tom and James.

  And no Danielle, which means Danielle is dead. What other explanation could there be?

  “If those two men aren’t out of that cellar in the next two minutes, I’m going to tie a rope around you and young Sydney here, and the three of us are going to hoist you up over the wall of office number six and into the pit of that thing back there.”

  “I don’t understand what the hell happened here?” Pam asks, genuinely confused. “I thought we had a deal. What did we do wrong?” She looks at Jones, who can only shrug, not quite understanding the change in terms himself.

  “You took the wrong job, Pam, and then the wrong people broke into your office today. Let’s go.”

  We walk around to the backside of the right row of offices, and as we turn the corner, I can just make out to my left, in the distance, one of the panes of glass that forms the hockey rink. I can’t see any of the crabs from here, but I think I can see a section of the penalty box contraption that Pam mentioned.

  At the back corner of the office row, we turn right again and circle back towards the front, and, about a third of the way back, Pam stops above a small square that’s been carved into the floor. The hinges and latch are sunken so that anyone walking near it would barely notice the hatch existed. The pounding and screaming beneath has stopped.

  “It’s here,” Pam says.

  “I’m really hoping that when you open this door, my friends come out of there unharmed.”

  “Friends?” Smalley and Jones say simultaneously, like they’ve practiced the line for a slapstick comedy routine. “What are you talking about, Dom?” Jones adds.

  “It’s them, my group from the boat, and the diner, the ones I’ve been looking for. Two of them at least.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I don’t have the time or energy to explain it all now, so I close my eyes and shake off Jones’ question. “Just open it, Pam.”

  She reaches down to the latch of the cellar and, before she places her hand on the thin metal, a voice echoes through the hangar. “Hello, Dominic.”

  It know instantly it’s Stella, and her speech is coming from somewhere high up and behind me. The words sound powerful, nearly bringing me to my knees. But I hold myself steady and take a deep breath, resisting the urge to turn. I can’t know for sure, but I’m guessing there is a rifle or two pointed at my back.

  “Who the hell is that,” Smalley asks, wasting no time in turning toward Stella. But she gets no reply from the woman.

  Jones is already facing in that direction and I can see his eyes searching for the voice as well.

  It’s Sydney’s turn to rotate to the voice now, and I can hear the relief in her weak and pleading voice when she says, “Ms. Wyeth.” She pauses and lets out an audible bawling sniffle. “Oh my god, Ms. Wyeth! They broke in and took us—”

  “I’ve no doubt you did all you could, Sydney,” Stella interrupt
s, and I can hear in her tone that she’s clearly embarrassed by the girl.

  “Where are you?” Jones asks, and with that question, I turn in time to see Stella walk from an unlit section of the raised walkway into the halo of the auxiliary lights below; walking beside her are two soldiers, presumably the ones who monitor the roof for hordes.

  “As I’m sure you did too, Ms. Young.” Stella is too far away for me to see her eyes, but I can almost feel the look of contempt in them, blazing at the back of Pam like lasers. “And where is Spencer?”

  Pam turns now and looks up at Stella, shaking her head. “He left. He just...they broke in through the lobby glass and then he...I don’t know.”

  Stella nods at Pam’s answer, a gesture that says she always suspected Spencer would betray her someday, though betrayal wasn’t quite what it was.

  Stella moves a few steps closer on the walkway, so that her face is now fully illuminated by the light. Her hair is pulled back and her face made up. She looks showered, freshly clothed.

  “Where’s Danielle?” I command, stepping away from the door to the underground prison and toward Stella, meeting her eyes with mine as I approach.

  “That’s good right there, Dominic.” The soldiers don’t move, but the message has been sent.

  I can see Stella’s face even clearer now, but there isn’t the look of smugness I had expected, a look that says you were right not to trust me, Dominic, and you should have gone with that feeling. Her look is worse than self-satisfied. It’s cold and uncaring. All business.

  “Answer me, Stella. Where is she?” Suddenly, the whereabouts of Danielle is the only thing I’m interested in. The rest of it—the ‘Whys’ and the ‘Whos’ of everything that went on in this building, and even Tom and James imprisoned below me—has now taken a secondary position.

  “She’s pretty amazing isn’t she?” Stella asks, nodding in what appears to be genuine appreciation for Danielle’s aptitude. “After Tom got that boat started and got us to shore, it was mostly Danielle who kept us alive for the next few days. Though I’d be misconveying the story if I gave her all of the credit. Some of it has to go to Tom as well. Maybe even a little bit to James.” She folds her hands in front of her and erects her posture. “Certainly none of the credit goes to you though, Dom. I see you’ve moved on and made new friends.”