The Black: Arrival

by Paul E. Cooley

  She took a deep breath. “Okay. You’ve got light in your hands. Your knees okay?”

  “Cracking and clacking, but yeah. I can do this.”

  “All right.” She put her fingers on the gooseneck of her lamp. “I can drag this one out a little bit. Give you some cover.”

  “Okay.” Jay sounded less than ready, but he squatted down again with an “oof.” He pointed the lamp’s light a half-meter in front of him. “I’m ready.”

  Kate wasn’t. Not really. But they had to get the M2 into the drain. She wouldn’t feel safe until it was in the waste tank and incapable of hurting them or anyone else. “Here we go,” she said. She knew her hands were shaking. She just hoped she could give Jay cover in case it moved toward them. “Go.” Jay exhaled a nervous breath and duckwalked forward.

  The strong light bobbed up and down slightly with each step. Jay grunted into the mic. The M2 was still, its surface seemingly as solid as metal. The bright halogen light edged forward bit by bit. When he was half a meter away, Jay slowly raised the light from the floor and toward the pool.

  As the rectangle of light obliterated the remaining shadows, Kate took in a deep breath. It was now or never. Jay paused, the light mere centimeters away from the M2. He exhaled loudly and then shined the light directly at the black.

  The surface bubbled immediately. The pool moved backward out of the light leaving smoke in its wake. “Jesus,” Kate said. “Okay. Drive it toward the drain.”

  Jay said nothing. She heard his breathing turn to panting. She couldn’t imagine how hot it was inside that suit. He dropped down to his knees and shuffled forward. The pool smoked and vibrated as the light touched its edge. It moved backward again. The tendrils that strayed from the center had disappeared back into the pool. When it moved, it moved like a single organism.

  The drain was still several meters away. Kate crept forward. She had enough slack in the lamp’s cord to cover Jay for another half-meter. After that, he was on his own. She squatted down and pointed her lamp at the pool as well.

  Tendrils of smoke rose from the viscous fluid and it slid backward to get out of the light. Each movement revealed more impossibly clean tile. Jay crept forward another step. The black moved backward. The middle of the pool started to quiver. “Jay?” Kate licked her lips. “What is it doing?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. He lifted the lamp’s neck a few centimeters and focused the light on the middle of the pool. A white spot appeared on the quivering mass. The liquid bubbled and then a hole of clean tile appeared. The mass of black had hollowed itself out like a doughnut, the rest of its mass distributed around it. Jay moved the light to one of the edges. The black responded by filling the hole it had left and pulling back once more. The quivering radiated outwards.

  “What is it doing?” Kate said into the mic. “It’s almost like—”

  Something rose from the middle of the pool. Even with the lab lights turned up to full, the shape was difficult to make out. After another second, she knew what it was. “Jay! Get back!”

  A thin tentacle that ended in a hook shot out of the middle of the pool. The edges receded as it focused its mass into the appendage. It wavered in the air and then started slashing. Jay fell backwards on his ass. The lamp slipped from his hands and smashed into the tile floor. The bulb shattered. The bright spot on the pool of black disappeared. “Jay!” Kate yelled.

  The appendage grew in length. The top of the hook swiped at the table. Jay tried to shuffle backward, but the suit was too bulky. Kate gritted her teeth and moved as far as the cord would let her. She pointed the light right in front of Jay. The tentacle lashed out and into the rays of light.

  Smoke billowed out from the hook’s end. The appendage flew back into the pool with a slurp. The black moved backward away from the light. A new appendage grew out and grabbed the table leg. It pulled.

  The table rattled and then started to tip. The fluoroscopy machine wobbled. And then the table came crashing down. Kate shivered with fear. A sizzling sound started behind the trashed piece of furniture. Kate’s hands shook, but she kept the light facing a half meter in front of them.

  “Fuck me,” Jay panted into the mic. “We have to get out of here.”

  “You got that right.”

  “And what the hell is that sound?”

  The sizzling hadn’t stopped. If anything, it had grown louder. A puff of smoke, or maybe steam, rose into the air from behind the overturned table.

  “Get up!” Kate grabbed Jay’s hand and lifted. He was heavy and for a moment, she wasn’t certain she could help him to his feet. He finally grasped her other hand and pulled himself up. Both of their faceplates were fogged from the exertion.

  They stumbled backwards. Kate jerked as the cord from her lamp ran out of slack. “Shit.”

  “Leave it!” Jay yelled.

  She put it down on the floor, the bright light casting a halo a meter in front of them. They continued moving backwards toward the glass partition separating them from the hallway.

  The sizzling sound slowed and then disappeared. “We have to get out of here,” Jay said. “Like now.”

  “Mike said we have to—”

  “Fuck Mike! Fuck the CDC!” Jay’s panting chuffed into the mic. “Oh, shit. What the hell is that?”

  Kate followed his gaze. Something peered at them over the top of the table. A black stalk with a scorpion’s dead eye stared at them. “Did it grow?”

  The table wobbled. Something appeared at the side of it. An impossibly black, three-toed claw scratched at the floor.

  “Oh. My. God.” Jay’s voice shivered. Another puff of smoke rose from behind the table.

  The eye stalk waved in the air. The sizzling sound ramped up. “Fuck the CDC,” Kate said. She bolted for the door. Jay followed.

  Something squealed along the floor. She was afraid to turn and look. Her gloved fingers fumbled with the door handle.

  “Hurry!” Jay shouted.

  Kate finally got her grip on the handle and pulled. The door opened and a rush of air whooshed into the room. She scrambled out of the lab and held the door for Jay. Her headset filled with gibbering as Jay shut the door behind them. When she looked through the glass, her heart stopped.

  The table the M2 had hid behind had been thrown into the wall. Several other tables lay on their sides as well. Broken lab equipment was scattered across the floor. In the middle of the room, a squat, black thing stood on several legs of differing sizes. Some had three toes, others five. Two eyestalks waved in the air, dead eyes staring at her.

  The thing scrambled over the broken and smashed equipment. Smoke rose from the floor where it touched plastic and circuit boards. They melted into its grotesque body and it grew larger before her eyes.

  “Hey!”

  Kate jumped. So did Jay. She turned and saw Neil and Bill. They had come out of their lab as well. The two men were still in their clean-room suits sans hoods.

  “What the hell is that!” Bill yelled.

  She didn’t want to see what it was doing now. “Did you see it?”

  Neil nodded. “We saw it through the glass in our lab. Right after we talked to Mike. Is that the M2?”

  Jay pulled off his hood and tossed it away. He ripped out the headset and dropped it to the floor. “Yes, Goddammit. That thing is the oil!”

  “We—” Kate pulled off her hood and held it by one hand as she struggled for breath. Her hair was a matted, drenched mess. “We have to kill it. It’s eating anything that’s not metal or glass.”

  “Jesus,” Bill said.

  His cheeks were pale beneath his 5 o’clock shadow. He looked as though he’d been awake for years. It made her wonder how she looked.

  “It’s afraid of the light,” she said.

  “Bull. Shit.” Bill shook his head. “It’s not having any problems tearing the hell out of the lab!”

  “No,” she said. “Only broad spectrum. Sunlight. Or halogens.”

  All four of them started as so
meone banged on the door at the end of the hallway. Kate turned toward it. “I hope that’s the CDC,” she said.

  The door banged again. There was a murmur of voices and then the banging stopped. The beep of the card-scanner echoed in the hall. The door squealed open.

  Jakob stepped aside as three people clad in green moon suits walked into the hall. “CDC! Stay where you are!” one of them yelled.

  A crash from inside the lab made the four scientists turn. Kate caught a glimpse of something moving on the ceiling. And then it was gone.

  “Where did it go?” Jay asked.

  Kate shivered. “Into the air ducts.”

  Book 2: Quarantine

  Chapter 5

  The three moon-suited CDC specialists corralled them in the bio-lab. Before walking them inside the enclosed room, Kate and Jay placed their removed hoods in a large yellow bag marked with a bio-hazard symbol. Anything that had been inside either lab was considered to be contaminated and would be destroyed.

  You mean studied, was what Kate thought. No way they were simply going to burn that up. Not without a chance of figuring out what infected Marie. At this point she didn’t much care either. She wanted food. She wanted to pee. And she wanted to get the hell out of HAL with her daughter. And what did the CDC want? For none of them to leave.

  Those feds hadn’t seen the thing in the lab, hadn’t watched it move and devour. All they’d seen was four terrified scientists in the midst of a complete freak-out. And instead of getting the hell out of the building, they were quarantined in the goddamned lab.

  Still in her chem-suit, sans hood, she sat in one of the rolling chairs near the computer station. Jay was slumped against the wall. He looked as though he was going to nod off at any moment, but she knew better. He might be exhausted, but after what they’d seen, she wasn’t sure either of them would ever sleep again.

  The leader of the CDC crew, Dr. Melanie Hoyt, had a tablet in her gloved hands. She tapped the screen as she spoke. “So what was the extent of your exposure?”

  Jay and Kate looked at one another. Kate shrugged and stared at the woman in the moon-suit. A single lock of Dr. Hoyt’s hair had come loose and dangled inside her mask. Her voice was muffled, but perfectly understandable.

  “Well, neither Jay nor I had direct contact with the M2,” Kate said.

  Dr. Hoyt raised an eyebrow. “M2?”

  Jay cleared his throat. “It’s what we call the oil. It’s from a trench called ‘M2.’ It’s located near Papua/New Guinea.”

  The doctor nodded. “Where PPE drilled.”

  “Right,” Kate said. “The sample arrived yesterday afternoon in a typical oil barrel. Marie—”

  “Ms. Krieger?”

  “Yes, Dr. Hoyt.” Kate felt like slapping the woman’s hands every time she looked back down at her tablet. “Marie hooked up the barrel to our vacuum pump system. She cut herself on the barrel’s lid when she perforated it.”

  Dr. Hoyt frowned. Her green eyes bored into Kate’s. “And what’s the procedure when that occurs?”

  “Excuse me?” Jay asked. “You implying something?”

  “No,” Dr. Hoyt said, clearly implying something. “Just wanted to know what the procedure is when you are contaminated by the oil.”

  “Oil is not contamination,” Jay said. “If it was, you wouldn’t be putting the shit in your fucking car, lady.”

  “No need to be defensive,” Dr. Hoyt said.

  “Look, Doc,” Jay said, his finger pointing at the other lab, “you didn’t see what just happened. You weren’t in there with that thing! It’s loose in the goddamned building and you want to give us the third degree about procedure?”

  The moon-suited doctor dropped her hands, the tablet tapping against one knee. She glared at Jay. “We’re getting to that, Mr. Hollingsworth.”

  “Doctor,” he corrected her.

  “Excuse me,” Hoyt said, “Doctor Hollingsworth. A young woman is dying at Ben Taub and we need to know why.” She tapped her foot. “And I don’t understand why you’re making up some story about a monster.”

  Jay opened his mouth, but no words came out. Kate knew exactly how he felt. “Look, I don’t expect you to believe us. But if we just sit here, that thing is going to come back here and kill us. And we need to get everyone the hell out of the building!”

  Dr. Hoyt’s foot stopped tapping. She turned to the other CDC personnel. “I’m sure these fine scientists will stay here with me. Go cordon off the area. Do a search and sweep and find any other people. We need them quarantined as well.”

  “I need to get my daughter,” Kate said. “Now. Please let me go—”

  “No one leaves unless they’re in a suit,” Dr. Hoyt growled. “And not contaminated.”

  “We’re not contaminated!” Kate yelled. “We never touched it.”

  “It could be airborne,” one of the CDC drones said.

  Kate stood from the chair and walked up to Dr. Hoyt. “If it’s airborne,” she said, “we’re already screwed. Because this will have broken out on Leaguer. And if it’s airborne, the chopper pilots who took it off the rig infected more people. And so on.” Kate swallowed. “You’d already have thousands of dead bodies. It’s. Not. Airborne.”

  Hoyt flexed her fingers. Kate didn’t drop the stare, but she saw them in her peripheral vision.

  “Okay,” Hoyt said. “But we can’t prove that right now. We have to treat this like it’s airborne until we’re sure.”

  Kate’s lip quivered with anger. “Fine. Then do your job and get our people safe.” Hoyt said nothing, but her eyes hardened. “Now,” Kate hissed.

  “Dr. Cheevers. Where should we look for the others?” Hoyt asked.

  “Second and third floors.” Kate pointed at the phone. “We can call Mike and get him to tell everyone in the two buildings to meet at a common place.”

  Dr. Hoyt blinked. “Adjoining buildings?”

  “Yeah,” Jay said. “Connected with a skybridge. It’s supposed to be ready for us in a couple of months.”

  “Mike is in this building. There’s at least one more employee as well,” Bill said. “And a security guard.”

  The doctor’s moon-suit crinkled as she turned to her team. “That big foyer at the main entrance. That’s where I want all the employees.” She glanced at Kate. “All the non-contaminated personnel. Glaze? Dugger? Retrieve Dr. Cheevers’ daughter and bring her here. Then sweep the building and stay in contact. We’ll call Mr. Beaudry and get the message to everyone else.”

  “Okay, Mel.” A short, heavy beard graced the CDC man’s chin and his voice dripped with a Texan accent. “Come on, Glaze. Let’s do this.”

  The two CDC men walked to the door and headed out into the hallway.

  Hoyt turned back to the scientists. “They’ll get your daughter and then they’ll do their jobs. Can you call Mr. Beaudry for me?”

  Kate nodded. “I’ll do it. But you need to do more.” She took a deep breath. “That thing dissolves anything that isn’t metal or glass. And that’s not all. It started out as just a few liters. Now it’s huge!” The CDC doctor’s lips twitched. “Oh. You still don’t believe us.”

  “No,” Hoyt said, “I don’t.”

  Kate’s face flushed. She was so angry, her body sizzled. “I’m calling Mike. Then you’re going into the chem lab. And maybe you can tell us what happened. In the meantime, Neil? Show our CDC friend the SEM image.”

  Dr. Hoyt raised an eyebrow. “You scanned it?”

  “Yeah. We scanned it.” Neil grinned. “Want to see something you’ve never seen before?”

  *****

  Dugger waited until they’d left the quarantined hallway before snickering. He looked at his partner. Glaze’s face was locked in a grimace. Dugger pointed at him. “You believe that crap?”

  Glaze shook his head. “I don’t know, man. I mean, they sound insane.”

  “Yes, they do,” Dugger said. Houston CDC might not be Atlanta, but as the fourth largest city in the USA and one of t
he busiest ports in the world, the Federal government had made sure the presence was adequate. After 9/11, the worry had been anthrax or weaponized small pox. After Liberia, it’d been Ebola. And after Florida? Dengue Fever. The possible diseases entering the country were skyrocketing. Hell, if people didn’t start vaccinating their kids again, something like polio might kill an entire generation. Dugger hoped he’d be dead long before something like that happened.

  “How do you want to do this?” Glaze asked.

  “What do you mean?” They walked toward the foyer where Dr. Hoyt wanted them to set up triage. “Get the other team in here. Get them to set things up and meet me upstairs. Easy peasy.”

  Glaze grunted. “Easy— What does that even mean? Something redneck related?”

  Typical. Just what he expected from a damned Midwesterner. The man didn’t understand that swamps and mosquitoes and ridiculously uncomfortable heat were all part of the Houston experience. He whined during the summer, froze during the winter, and was a general pain in the ass. Maybe Glaze would head back to Chicago soon. Dugger certainly hoped so. The guy was talented, but Christ, you could only put up with so much bitching.

  “Look, partner,” Dugger drawled, “it means no problem. Comprende?”

  “Whatever, man.” Glaze rubbed at his arm. “We might need beds in here.”

  “Beds,” Dugger said. Enough of this shit. He wanted to find Dr. Cheevers’ kid and wait for the rest of the HAL personnel to get their asses down here. Sooner they had the place contained, the sooner everybody could go home. “Ain’t gonna need beds, Glaze.” He turned and walked toward the elevator bank.

  “Wait!” Glaze said. “Where you going?”

  Dugger twisted his hand into the shape of a gun, index finger pointing toward the ceiling. “Up. Isn’t that where the kid is?”