by Phil Maxey
Kizzy closed the window. A heavy locking system slid back, and she moved quickly inside, closing the door behind her. She had with her a backpack which she threw on the top bunk, and then threw herself up there as well, her legs dangling over the side.
The room was heavy with the absence of conversation.
Kizzy reached into her backpack and pulled out a candy bar. She slid off the side of the bunk, and held it out to Shannon. “Stole a bunch of these. They’re fruity…”
Shannon smiled, took it, then went back to reading.
Kizzy went to sit next to her, but Shannon moved away. “I’m not going to bite you or anything. I got plenty of blood, stole some of that too.”
“Good to know.”
Kizzy paused and looked down at the magazines. “Mind if I read one of these?”
“Be my guest.”
Kizzy grabbed the top one, jumped up onto the top bunk and laid back.
Shannon read a bit more, but the gardening article wasn’t shaking the questions she had rattling around her brain. “So, what are you?” she said, looking up at the springs just above her head.
“I could show you, but it might freak you out.”
“I’ve seen a lot. I can handle it.”
“Okay, well, look towards the—”
Shannon screamed, pushing herself backwards against the wall. At first, she thought a large strange snake was lowering itself down from the top bunk, but then she noticed the snake had fingers and wasn’t, in fact, a snake at all.
Kizzy’s arm and hand quickly retracted out of view.
“What the hell are you?” Shannon asked again.
“Told you it would freak you out.”
“I’m not… well I’m a little freaked out, but how did you do that?”
Kizzy jumped down to the floor again. Shannon was glad to not see any rubbery limbs. Just a normal girl stood in front of her.
“Trust me, it freaked me out too when I found out I was not like the other vamps.”
Shannon sat up. “You can stretch and stuff?”
Kizzy held her hand out, it immediately began to extend, until her arm was a foot longer. “Yeah. I just can feel my body expanding, and it does. I don’t get it. I can also do other things…”
Shannon laid back. “I think I’ll learn about them some other time. You sure you got plenty of blood?”
Kizzy smiled. “Maybe a month’s worth.”
*****
Joel stood from one of the more comfortable chairs in the common room, and looked up at the skylight. The sky was turning dark blue. Daybreak was about to happen and there had been no attack.
He looked around him. The twelve humans were asleep, and he could hear it was more or less the same throughout the prison.
He grabbed his jacket and a set of keys and walked out into the hallway then down into the silent stairwells, winding his way through the labyrinthine interior of the prison. Still some slept in the corridors, but most had now found cells. He looked through the panes of reinforced glass to the double floors of cellblocks making sure everything was as it should be.
He then made his way to one of the side exits and out into the dawn. As soon as he felt the cool air on his face he sensed he was not alone in the unused space between the main prison buildings and the wall. In the gloom of the distance a womanly figure walked, and a dog bounced around her.
He hesitated, wondering if he should turn back inside for a few moments.
“It’s fine… we should talk,” said Marina. Her voice being of such low volume that any human would have just thought it was the wind.
He jogged over to her. Flint bounded up to him and then jumped up. He ruffled the German Shepherds fur, before letting him drop back to the muddy ground.
“No attack then…” she said as a statement, not a question.
“Doesn’t look like it. They must be waiting for something… How’s Jess?”
“Bit weirded out by the amount of people here, but in some ways I think she likes it. Feels more normal.”
“Jasper?”
Despite the low light conditions he could see her expression grow heavy. “He’s afraid of his father, although he says he doesn’t think he’s coming with those that will. He said something about his father has something more important to take care of.”
“More important than his son, yeah that sounds like him.”
“He can never get him back, Joel. Promise me that?”
“Not if I’m still breathing.”
She looked up at the wall, and burgeoning morning sky. “Why do you think they didn’t attack.”
“Don’t know, but I’ll take the extra time to secure things even further.”
She nodded and walked away. He searched for words to continue the conversation, but none came. He turned and walked back.
As he got to the door, Donnie ran up to him. “There you are, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“What is it?”
“Art’s looking for you, says there’s something up with the water supply.”
“Lead me to him.”
Joel looked at the young man as they were walking to the basement entrance. “You don’t have to be in here with us. We can give you a vehicle and—”
Donnie frowned. “My place is here. I want to fight.”
“Most inside these walls don’t even know what you are. Hell, I don’t really know what you are… other than your father would be proud of you for staying. I’m just saying you won’t get any appreciation for it.”
They walked down a narrow, dark, concrete staircase, to a monotone gray corridor. Donnie switched on his flashlight. “Too dark down here even for me.”
They walked into a room which they couldn’t see the end of as it was full of machinery which shuddered and rumbled.
Art waved them over. With him were two other people, an older man and woman, both wearing flannel shirts and armless jackets with various tools in pockets.
“Tell him what you just told me,” said Art to the woman.
She held her hand out to Joel. “Name’s Josephine, but I prefer Joe. This here’s my husband Albert.”
“Pleasure,” said the man, touching his hard hat.
Josephine looked up at a series of dials on the side of a large pipe. “So, as I was saying to Art, this here is what brings up the water from the natural well under the prison.”
Joel could already see the needle on the largest of the circular meters was all the way to the left, on zero. “There’s no water?”
“No water.”
“How’s that even possible? It’s a natural well.”
“It shouldn’t be possible for a few hundred years, less if there’s year on year drought, but anyway I checked it myself yesterday when we first arrived and it was showing full pressure.”
“You’re sure it’s not a fault in the system somewhere?”
“Could be, but unlikely.”
“How can we check?” said Donnie, asking a question no one wanted an answer to.
“Well, someone, somebody small, could climb into the pipes, see if they could see any blockage or issue, but if the pressure suddenly comes back on…”
“So what you’re saying, is that it’s not a job for a human?” said Joel.
“Well, no I’m not saying that—”
“I’ll do it,” said Donnie.
Art looked at the young man. “Son, you might be some kind of strong vamp, but if that pressure goes back up to what it should be, well I doubt even you’ll survive.”
“What happens if we can’t figure out the problem?” said Donnie.
Joel sighed, looking at him. “Then the humans eventually die of dehydration.”
“Then I got no choice.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A thunderous boom reverberated around Donnie as he crouched in the three-foot-wide water pipe.
He covered his ears, scrunching his face up. “Yeah, I’m fine!” he shouted to those just outside, not being sure
if they could hear him.
The air smelt damp and heavy, and a cone of light being cast by the flashlight built into his hardhat wobbled.
“Ten yards then it heads down…” He sighed.
He unhitched the radio from his belt, and turned up the volume. A constant hiss of white noise came back at him.
Still no signal.
They told him he probably wouldn’t be able to communicate via the radio due to the metal shielding around him, but gave it to him nonetheless.
He staggered forward slowly, being bent over. His hands traced over the rough surface of the inside of the pipe to give him balance, and he was soon at the point where the route plunged downwards into a dark pit. One that would take him under the prison, deep underground.
He looked down.
No bottom. Great.
He focused his thoughts. His hands became clawlike, and his body mass increased with his muscles pulling at the shirt he was wearing. When he felt the rage reaching a tipping point, he relaxed, bringing himself back to the world around him, back to the wet darkness.
No need to be full wolf-boy yet.
Lowering himself and pushing his boots out to give him some leverage, he then ducked into the vertical shaft and used his inch-long nails to scrape the metal as he slowly descended.
Images of a monsoon of water rushing up towards him made him start to slow.
He shook his head. “Don’t be a wimp.”
The bottom bend of the pipe came into view, and he dropped the final few feet, sending a clanging echo along the pipe.
“Guess I’m underground…”
The husband and wife engineering team told him to listen out for leaks. That he will hear the problem before he sees it.
He strained his hairy ears into the gloom, but there was only silence out there. He looked along the stretch of pipe that ended outside the prison walls and chuckled. If he had been a prisoner this would have been the perfect escape route.
As he walked forward, he imagined himself in a movie, a movie where he had been wrongly accused of murder, and he had to break free to prove his—
Where’s the pipe gone?
About twenty feet ahead of him, jagged and twisted pieces of rusted metal gave way to… nothing.
The long coarse hair which now covered most of his body stood erect. As he walked towards the void, he sniffed the air.
Death.
If it weren’t for the stench drifting towards him, he might have thought there had been some kind of land slippage, that the dirt, rocks, and clay had somehow shifted, taking the pipe with it. But he knew the smell. It was the same odor he smelt on his sister after she had been bitten. It was the scourge.
He thought about letting his lycanthropic transformation complete, but he wanted to be cogent. He needed to investigate what had happened and get back to the others up top.
Creeping to where the route ended, he allowed his flashlight’s beam to flit around beyond. The light searched but could not find anything to bounce back off. There was still only silence, so he was fairly sure there was nothing around in the absolute darkness.
Plucking a small rock from the layers of rocks around him, he let it drop off the edge and waited for it to hit the ground. A few seconds later it did which he figured meant the bottom of this pit was roughly forty feet below him.
He hesitated.
They should know about this. This is artificial, the vamps have been tunneling.
But he also wanted to know what was out ‘there’ in the black. The enemy had a route into the prison, but right now were somewhere else, maybe he could infiltrate them, find out what they were up to. That would be a lot more valuable to Joel and the others.
He nodded to himself then found a piece of the pipe that wasn’t razor-sharp and lowered himself off the edge.
*****
Carla led Max, Rachel, Josh, and Bill through busy corridors alive with fear and anxiety to quieter ones which appeared long abandoned. She then came to a set of doors which she produced keys for. Opening and pushing the metal-strapped wooden doors back to reveal a large room full of worktops and machinery.
“I thought you all might want to take a look in here. Maybe you could turn it into some kind of lab or something…”
Max walked into the former prisoners’ workshop with the look of someone who had found a long lost friend. He walked past the knotted and worn wooden surfaces of tables with holes and scribblings, mentioning how the warden was an asshole, and let his hand come to rest on a milling machine.
“Been a while since I’ve used one of these,” he said with a smile to Carla.
The others followed him in, each one honing in on a piece of machinery which particularly interested them.
“I don’t know what you can do with any of this, but it seems stupid to let four of the brightest minds in this place go to waste. Where’s Evan?”
Bill frowned. “Being a ‘lookout’ in one of the towers. He said he wanted to be more directly involved… Evidently, academic studies are of little interest to him now.”
Carla smiled. “I’m sure he’s still interested in the book stuff. But I can’t say I’m displeased to have a Hybrid’s set of eyes up there.”
Bill nodded.
She looked to the others. “So, is all of this good? Can you do what you do down here?”
They all smiled, nodding.
“Thank you,” said Josh.
She could tell having somewhere to call their own was something they needed.
“No problem.” She left the key to the room on one of the work tables and left.
Bill placed the backpack carefully down on the stained light wooden table then looked at the others. “We should get started.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Donnie stood at the bottom of a huge cavern, created not by man or machine, but by beast.
The ground was sodden and full of puddles.
He walked forward trying not to splash through them to alert anyone or anything of his presence. Despite his efforts to catch any noises in the dark ahead of him, the only sound he heard was his own heartbeat.
But the smell gave them away. He wasn’t sure if it was his heightened olfactory sense or if the stench would have invaded his nose regardless, but a trail of fumes led across the vast space to the far side wall of clay and stone.
An opening fifteen foot across sat ahead of him. Despite the light on his head not giving much illumination beyond a few yards, he could tell the tunnel ran for some way, and appeared to be level.
He wondered if now was the time to turn back. This was obviously the work of vamps.
A noise came from somewhere in the tunnel.
His head flicked towards it and he instinctively crouched, lowering the light beam to the ground. Waiting for something to leap from the dark, he remained motionless. Nothing emerged though.
Must have been water falling from the tunnel’s ceiling… I’ll go a bit further.
Keeping to the left side, he let his hand trail along the mud-caked wall. After walking for five minutes there was still no end in sight.
How long is this thing.
He wondered what they thought back in the pipe room, if he had gotten lost or something.
Better be getting back soon.
Then he heard it. A faint sound.
He walked forward some more, trying to angle the hat down, so its beam wouldn’t be too obvious to anything ahead of him.
The sound took on more form, repeating and oscillating.
Breathing.
He took his hat from his head and held it in his clawed hand, pointing it towards the rough ground.
He almost trod on the first vamp’s foot before he saw it, then another, and another. The large tunnel he was in was smothered in vamps, in varying levels of dress, but all covered in grime, dried blood, and brown smears from clay.
He also noticed something else about them. Around their necks a metal clamp of some kind which appeared to cut into their neck
s.
They were all sleeping. Hundreds. Some were even attached to the walls, their arms and feet lodged into the soft mud, holding them aloft.
He carefully picked his way over the feet and limbs. He needed to know where the tunnel came out.
One of the vamps just to his side stirred. He froze, moving the light just enough away so not to dazzle the creature, but still near enough so he could see if it had awoken. It had not.
As he progressed, not daring to breathe too heavily, he was sure the ground beneath him was tilting upwards. It was hardly noticeable but after another hundred yards, he was sure of it.
He arrived at a junction. Another tunnel, one twice as high and wide as the one he had just left, cut across him.
Holy cow.
More vamps. Hundreds? Thousands? In the gloom, they were just a mass of misshapen body parts, all packed in like ants in a nest. All ready to be activated once the sun fell again.
He looked back the way he came. What were the chances he would make it back through without one of those things waking up?
Zero chance. Have to keep on.
The tunnel ahead of him was the smallest so far, but it also looked as if it had the least vamps.
He crept across the junction and into the relative safety of the new tunnel. A wave of air hit him, lighter, fresher than before.
As he moved forward he found the going getting harder as the once horizontal ground was now becoming increasingly steep.
He tilted his head upwards. A point of light, like a headlight of an oncoming car blinked at him in the distance.
The surface?
He wondered how far he had travelled from the prison.
Five miles? Ten?
He clambered forward and upwards, his claws digging into the grooves made by previous creatures. In the light he started to see gray clouds.
Streams of water ran past him, making the ground even more impossible to move over.
He pushed his boots into the quagmire harder as a flash of light heralded a crack of thunder.
Eventually, his head broke from the darkness into the outside world, and into a storm.
Ahead of him was a parking lot of some kind, mostly empty apart from helicopters. At the edge though were featureless warehouses, three stories high.
