The Black: Arrival

by Paul E. Cooley

  “Kate! Wait!” She didn’t turn. Mike shook his head. “Goddammit. Okay, Chuckles. We need to turn off the security so we can move around. Get to the new NOC and get that done.”

  Chuckles dropped his cigarette to the floor and crushed it beneath his shoe. “I can do that in the old NOC too. And I can just yank the goddamned plug on the server room. Keep us from getting a fire in there.”

  “Okay. Move it.”

  Chuckles saluted and then ran down the hallway.

  Mike watched him go and then turned to the others. “All right. Let’s go. We need to get to the NOC.” Bill and Neil left the hallway and headed across the skybridge.

  Dr. Hoyt shook her head. “We’re still going to be trapped. In a small space. There won’t be anywhere to run.”

  Mike nodded. “Yup. Got any better ideas?”

  The CDC doctor thought for a moment. “No. No, I don’t. But how long can we stay in there?”

  “Until we freeze to death.” Mike’s smile looked like a sneer.

  *****

  His heart thumped in his chest. Another cigarette was already between his lips. A trail of smoke followed his quick steps down the hall. The comforting voices of the group had dissipated leaving him alone with only the sounds of the building’s labored heating system and rain pelting the exterior.

  It wasn’t until he was in sight of the door to the old NOC that the fear actually hit him. His mind filled with what he’d seen. The black fluid coalescing. The strange thing rising out of its center. The impossibly dark orb that seemed to stare at him. He shivered hard enough to grind his teeth. He’d noticed that the other CDC member, was his name Glaze?, wasn’t in the hallway a few minutes ago. Had that, that thing, eaten him?

  Chuckles walked to the door and held his hand against its surface. The steel-reinforced door was warm, but not hot. No fire. Yet.

  He swiped his card across the reader and it beeped. He crushed out his cigarette, exhaled, and then swung open the door.

  The usual blast of chill air was absent. Instead, it was a scorching desert wind. His face immediately flushed. After the cold of the hallways, the warmth was refreshing. For about fifteen seconds.

  He closed the door and hit the overhead lights. The sudden and intense illumination pounded his retinas and for a moment, all he saw was the after image of their glare. He closed his eyes and waited. When the bright flash faded into a dim glow, he opened his eyes. His mouth fell open.

  The server room was an absolute disaster. The heavy plastic stand-up supply closet was gone. Just. Gone. The only thing that remained of it was piles of metal computer parts. Melted circuit boards, prongs from chips, exposed copper wire, and dozens of other parts he couldn’t even identify were strewn across the floor.

  The ceiling tiles were all but vaporized. The shining, naked metal supports jutted out into space with nothing holding them. The light fixtures had mostly escaped unharmed, but bundles of fried network cables hung in a heap from the ceiling.

  His computer desk was gone except for skeletal, metal bands. The monitor had crashed to the floor. All the plastic from the display, his workstation, and everywhere else in the room had been vaporized. “So much for turning off the security,” he said to the empty room. Chuckles blinked at the mess. Light shined off the floor. He’d never seen it so clean. A mad laugh escaped his mouth and then stopped as he turned to the server racks.

  The metal was still intact. The plastic clips holding the shelves in place were gone, but none of the old machines had slid out of the racks. The air conditioning units were dead. The power cables had shorted out after the plastic and rubber surrounding them disappeared. Or dissolved. Or whatever the goddamned thing did.

  The eyestalk entered his mind again. His spine crawled with imaginary legs. Chuckles shook away the image, but the sensation stayed.

  He looked at the control box on the wall. The thing had eaten just about every other goddamned piece of plastic or rubber in the room, but the breaker box was encased in steel. He grinned at it and then pulled it open.

  The relatively new switches stared back at him. Before they were able to put all the servers in the room, HAL had an electrician in to reroute some cabling and bulk up the breakers. Chuckles stared at the big red handle. It was locked in the “ON” position. He reached out and put his fingers on it. He took a deep breath, said a silent prayer, and then flipped it in the other direction.

  The servers died and the lights went out. The fans and the myriad of RAID arrays slowly spun down leaving the room in utter silence. Chuckles took another deep breath and then reached for the flashlight in his pocket. He turned it on. The halogen beam ripped through the complete darkness. He turned back toward the door to get back to the hallway and stopped in his tracks.

  That sizzling sound. That smell of cooking, rancid meat. It was back. He shined the light at the door. It was still intact. A sinking feeling hit his stomach. He knew where it was now. The only question was if it would let him reach the door.

  He slowly raised the light to the ceiling over the doorway. The tiles were gone and exposed pipes shined back at him. Chuckles slowly walked to the door. He heard something creak at the back of the room, but ignored it. If it was, well, that thing, he was pretty well fucked anyway. He was more afraid of the damned thing ambushing him as he tried to get out.

  Step. Step. Step. He was just a foot from the door. Just one more step and…

  Something sizzled. Chuckles spun around. The cone of bright light danced in his hands. A piece of metal fell from the ceiling and crashed to the floor. He shined the light upward and saw it.

  The creature was wrapped around the pipes. It had eaten through the supports holding one of the light fixtures. A curl of smoke rose from its liquid form where his light stabbed it. He stepped backward, but kept the light focused on it.

  The creature didn’t make a sound. It contracted and then slithered away from the light. He adjusted his aim and kept hitting the black form. It slithered further and further away until the light no longer reflected off its surface.

  Without changing his aim, he felt for the door handle with his free hand. He found it, grinned, and swiveled it. The lock clicked. Chuckles gently pushed and heard the welcome drone of the heater in the hallway. A sliver of ambient light filtered through the crack in the door. He pushed harder and slowly walked backward.

  He crossed the threshold into the hall. Something crashed down from the ceiling in the room’s far corner. Chuckles slammed the door, turned, and ran. The fluorescent lights that still worked came on as he pelted down the hallway. The hall echoed with the sounds of sizzling. He turned around, but kept walking backwards.

  The door to the old NOC hung off one hinge. A cube of black moved through the doorway.

  “Fucking douchebag!” Chuckles yelled. “Can’t dissolve it, so you’ll just knock it over?”

  An eyestalk sprouted from the middle of the moving black shape. As it squeezed through the space, legs, tentacles, and more eyestalks pushed out of its surface.

  Chuckles gulped. It was between him and the skybridge. Goddammit. How did he take a wrong turn? He laughed in the hallway and was surprised at how insane he sounded. He turned back around and resumed running.

  It was giving chase. He knew it was. Have to shut off the security, he reminded himself. But how the hell was he going to do that without a network? With the old NOC down, there was no WiFi, no internet backbone, nothing. He needed a terminal. He needed something he could login via VPN and get it done. What he needed—

  Chuckles took the next left and then headed into building one’s main conference room. The automatic lights came on. He cursed and killed the switch. Chuckles gently closed the door and locked it. He didn’t know if the thing could hear. But he had to take the chance.

  As fast as he could, he ran to the other side of the table and dropped to the floor. The heavy table was supported by a wooden cylinder on either end. Chuckles scrunched into the fetal position and held his breath.


  The conference room’s west wall, made of translucent glass, faced the hallway. He didn’t know if the creature was smart enough to actually look for him, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Chuckles closed his eyes and held his breath.

  He focused. And then he heard it— the click of taloned feet on the exposed concrete floor. Even through the glass wall, he could smell it too. Except for the click of its feet, the creature was completely silent.

  Knock. Knock. Scratch.

  As silently and slowly as he could, he exhaled and then sipped a long breath.

  Knock. Scratch. Knock.

  It was at the door and trying to get in.

  He silently cursed. He wanted to look. God, how he wanted to look. Was it there outside the glass? Eyestalks waving and trying to catch a glimpse of its prey? Did it know he was even in here?

  The sounds stopped. Bolts of pain rose up his spine and he grimaced. He couldn’t hold the position for long, but dammit, he wasn’t stretching until he was sure that thing was gone. Time crawled. He tried to keep track of the seconds, but lost count. Finally, blessedly, he stretched out his legs and straightened his back.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. It had plenty of battery, plenty of signal. Thank God he wasn’t in the damned labs. He’d have no network, no cell, nothing. Shit, not even a landline. Chuckles grinned at the phone.

  A few taps and he turned the phone into a WiFi-hotspot. If Mike had let him choose the right goddamned VPN provider, he could have done this shit on the device. He exhaled another breath and then peered around the cylinder. There was nothing on the other side of the glass. The lights in the hallway had already gone dark.

  Chuckles sighed and finally realized how fast his heart had been beating. He inhaled and exhaled slowly through his nose. The thumping in his ears subsided. When he thought he could breathe normally again, he pulled himself to a crouch.

  The workstation was at the end of the conference room. He checked the angle from the glass. Unless someone was standing adjacent to the door and looking in exactly the right direction, he’d be hidden.

  Forty-five seconds, he told himself. That’s all you need.

  As he duckwalked to the workstation stand, he went over the steps in his mind. He reached the end of the table and stopped. He checked his phone one more time. The hotspot was live. When he reached the machine, he’d have to select the WiFi, type in his password, and use the web-browser to login into the virtual private network.

  The VPN was the one damned piece of technology he’d already clustered into the new NOC. He clenched his free fist. He just hoped the connections from the NOC could talk to the building’s security system. If not, they were screwed.

  He raised his head over the table just high enough to look at the door one last time. The lights in the hall were still off. Wherever it had gone, it wasn’t there and that’s all that mattered.

  Standing up was a bad idea. He knew it. And he sure as shit wasn’t going to do it. He duckwalked past the table and to the workstation. With every step, he was closer to the pulsing HAL logo on the screen.

  He swung his head back to the door. The lights were still off. Chuckles grinned and gently pressed the spacebar on the keyboard. The HAL logo melted into a login screen. He typed in his username/password and waited. The system thought for a few seconds and then flashed an error message. “Unable to authenticate.”

  “Douche,” Chuckles whispered. Without the network, the computer couldn’t contact the authentication server to look up his credentials. He typed in the root password. The login screen disappeared and dropped him to the maintenance interface.

  A few clicks and he added the computer to his WiFi hotspot. Seconds later, he was logged into the VPN and bringing up the security system UI. While he waited, he snuck another look around. The lights in the hallway were on. His breath caught in his throat. As he watched, the lights flicked off. He blew out a sigh and focused on the terminal.

  He navigated to the security software. As fast as he could, he killed the card readers in the labs, the loading dock, and the readers on the second floor. That would allow everyone access to building one without restriction. Building 2? That was trickier.

  With the switchover half-done, the software could only access the main offices and not the lower floor or the new NOC. Chuckles brushed a sheen of sweat away from his forehead, readjusted his cap, and pulled out a cigarette. He lit it and checked the window again. Nothing there. Lights off. Everything good.

  He opened a terminal, typed in his credentials, and started grepping the security processes for the floor. The new building’s software was radically different than the old. It took him a few minutes to find them. He stared at the process responsibility list.

  The new NOC and its halon system were controlled by the same goddamned thread. Killing the NOC’s security access would take out its fire system too. Chuckles scowled at the screen. If they made it out of this, he’d have to change that right after he strangled the tech who set it up that way.

  Something creaked in the ceiling. Chuckles looked up in the darkened room, but saw nothing. He went back to the screen. The first floor of building two wasn’t even open yet. The fire doors worked, but that was about it. With a few keystrokes, he eliminated the card readers in the new building.

  His phone buzzed. He swung his eyes over and looked at it. The system had sent him several texts saying security was offline. That was fine. He brought up the daemon list once more, and double checked it. If he forgot anything, they’d all be—

  Chuckles stopped in mid-exhale. A small stream of smoke crawled from his nostrils. Something was sizzling. And even through the acrid taste and smell of tobacco, that sweet and sour stench of cooked rotted meat stung his nostrils. The sizzling was louder.

  He looked at the terminal one more time to make sure everything was off. It was. He turned around and froze. The ceiling at the far end of the room was melting. A large, thick column of black ooze slowly drained from the ceiling onto the carpeted floor.

  As slowly as he could, he inched his hand toward the flashlight still in his pocket. It wasn’t there. His eyebrows rose and he frantically searched the room with his eyes. There it was, by the table. Must have slid out of his pants when he was curled up like a baby. He flung the cigarette to the floor and dove for the flashlight.

  Chuckles grabbed the light and rolled to the right. His finger clicked the button and he shined it at the wall.

  The column of black was already spreading. Two eyestalks stared at him beneath the halogen’s glare. Curls of smoke rose from where the light touched it. The creature moved to the right. Chuckles followed it with the light.

  Dark curls of foul-smelling smoke belched from the eyestalks. Burning particles danced in the air before dropping to the floor. The eyestalks crackled and retracted into the mass. At the same time, a smaller eyestalk rose from the center of the amorphous shape.

  Chuckles slowly backed up. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the thing and kept the flashlight pointed at the new eyestalk. Acrid smoke curled from the appendage. The tall black blob jiggled and then shifted to the wall.

  He saw the door out of the corner of his eye. The lights in the hallway were still off, but that didn’t matter. He had to get the hell out of the room. The halogen seemed to keep it from rushing forward, but the beam wasn’t powerful enough to really hurt it. What douche suggested this would work?

  When he felt he was far enough from the table, he shuffled sideways. His left foot connected with the leg of a chair. He cursed and slowly retracted his foot. The blob was still jiggling, smoke continuing to rise from the appendage.

  He rounded the table and cursed again as one of his feet hit the end of a power cord. Goddamned conference room douches always dicking with the cables. With each step, the cone of light was more faint against the impossibly black shape. The smoke had damned near ceased.

  The thing crackled and a leg appeared. Then two more. The creature expanded. Hooked
tentacles popped out of its middle. More eyestalks appeared. “Fucking douche,” Chuckles said.

  He ran to the door, swung it open, and pelted down the hallway. From behind him, he heard a crash, tumbling metal, and the sizzle of it melting through something.

  Chuckles rounded the corner and sprinted to the skybridge. Just had to get to the new building. Just had to get there.

  The next corner would lead him to the skybridge. Lungs burning, Chuckles sprinted. He reached the corner, turned, and then screamed.

  The thing stood before the skybridge, a wall’s worth of rubble behind it. It was goddamned huge! Its bulk of tentacles, mouths, legs, and eyestalks filled the entire hallway.

  He stumbled to a stop. One of the mouths flashed its black fangs. He pulled up the flashlight and pointed it at the thing while he backed away.

  Smoke belched upward. It backed off a step, but the tentacles seemed to be getting longer. Chuckles’ heart raced in his chest and his mouth filled with the taste of bile. The creature had backed off enough to show a narrow sliver of the skybridge entrance.

  Chuckles took a step forward, the flashlight alternating between the eyestalks. The creature backed off a bit more. He sneered at it. “Don’t like the light after all, do you, douche?” he said to it.

  The creature responded by growing two more mouths. The eyestalks bent toward him. The incredibly black orbs at the end glared at him. He could feel the hunger in them.

  Chuckles took another step forward. More smoke belched upward. He jumped as a klaxon alarm started up. Water sprayed down from the ceiling and the hall became a dizzying kaleidoscope of crimson and blue-white light.

  The rain from the sprinklers washed over the creature and the rest of the hallway. The water streaked across his glasses and he could barely see through them.

  The creature’s mouths grinned. Either that or it was the drops of water skewing his sight. Either way, the damned thing seemed to be laughing.

  Chuckles aimed the light at the end of one of the eyestalks. The orb burst into flame and was immediately doused by the sprinklers.