by Tobias Wade
From within the darkness beyond the wall, a set of withered old hands emerged. They were far too large to be human, and appeared burned.
That is when Seth began to scream. He didn’t stop.
Attached to each hand was a withered set of arm bones, four feet long. They, too, appeared burnt to a crisp. The smell of char, sulfur, and cooked meat began to permeate the room, but the rest of us did not dare budge.
The burnt bones ended in an elbow, and were followed by another set of blacked bones. The flayed remains of gristly flesh jiggled from them, with pieces dropping to the floor as they passed forth.
A second pair of elbows emerged, and another set of bones beyond that. The barbecued, fleshy arms now extended ten feet outward.
The third pair of elbows had emerged before the hands began to wrap themselves around Seth. The fingers were able to ensnare his entire shrieking body and lift him off the ground.
I almost felt sorry for him as he was pulled forward into the dark. His cries echoed into the chamber beyond in a way that told us it was very, very deep. I shuddered as the toes of his shoes dragged along the ground while he struggled to move. A glance showed me that Olivia had allowed a solitary tear to drip down her face, but nothing more.
The arms retreated as the darkness swallowed them up again. Just before his toes slipped over the line and into the abyss, Seth Lang’s head rolled back. He stared, unblinkingly, at me as the darkness swallowed him for good.
His screams seemed to disappear down a long distance, quickly getting farther and farther away. When they were almost too faint to hear, they suddenly changed into a childlike, whimpering sob. It sounded miniscule and sad in the unfathomable darkness.
The man in black nodded to Olivia, and the doors slid shut once again. The four of us were left alone in the room.
I almost felt sorry for Seth Lang. But the truth is that he knew what he was getting into. All of us did.
That fact would terrify me for the rest of my life.
***
I rode the elevator back up with Olivia and Jake.
I was smoking again. I swear, it’s the only thing that keeps me sane in this place. Quitting would have been the death of me.
Olivia pressed the “P” button. She looked up at me and allowed a half-smile. “That kind of work can be emotionally exhausting, Mr. W,” she said quietly. “Don’t you think it would be better if I had help?”
The elevator gave its obnoxiously cheery “ding,” and the car stopped. The doors opened wide to the floor with the surgical tables. I said nothing.
“I’d love to have some help. That’s all I can say. Now please stop pestering me with questions about Target C.” She stepped out of the elevator and into the room without a backward glance.
Before the doors could close, I noticed that the doctor with the cornflower blue eyes was conspicuously absent.
Jake broke my reverie. “G, please, Mr. W.” He looked at me oddly.
I pressed the button for the top floor, and we began to rise. Jake turned to face me. “There’s one important issue I’d like you to address,” he prodded firmly.
I looked him in the eyes and raised my eyebrows as the elevator dinged again, and we walked into the main lobby.
And that’s where I saw him.
The blue-eyed doctor was waiting. He stared at me, licked his lips, and withdrew the pad from his pocket. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, what he was doing when he bent down at Janine’s desk to begin writing.
The stolen files sat in my briefcase, heavy as all the collected sins of the world. I had the Quarterly Analysis, the Great Cipher, the medical files, and so many Easter Eggs for those willing to look.
He knew it.
There was no saving my ass. But if I’m being perfectly honest, I knew that on Day One. It’s true for us all.
If I were quick, I could make it out of the building, send this detailed explanation that I’m writing out to the Greater World, and maybe even hide the briefcase.
And that’s what I’ll do with the rest of my life. My employers will be very unlikely to give me a dishonorable discharge, even after twenty-six years here.
So this last little bit is important. With all the strength I could muster, I put on a shit-eating grin.
“I believe you had a question, Jake?”
He responded with a scowl. “Paul Mancrest was a trusted employee, a decorated SEAL, and the colleague I respected more than anyone during my years at Moirai.”
I nodded in affirmation.
He eyed me closely before continuing. “Captain Kyle’s mind is so gone that he believes he visited the goddamn moon with Paul, is sitting there now, and watched Paul float into space. The Moirai-induced panic at York had everyone convinced they were being overwhelmed by vicious sea creatures. But that was all a hallucination, right?”
I nodded once again.
His eyes began to cut into mine. “Then how come Paul’s brutalized body was found at the York Test Site with his head split down the center and his face encrusted with fucking barnacles?”
I smiled, sighed, then stepped back into the elevator. The doors closed while Jake Hammond was staring daggers in my direction.
***
Closing the front door behind me was like finally turning off the faucet after a particularly warm and necessary shower. It just felt so good to leave the filth and gunk behind me.
The stolen information rattled innocently in the briefcase. Who would think that so much power lay in a thing so small?
I was halfway down West Bale Path when I decided to detour into the field. I walked over to a nearby bale, then sat down with the briefcase at my side and leaned against the hay. I took a moment for myself.
I pulled out yet another cigarette and lit it as I faced the western sky.
What a day.
It was a few minutes before the distant rumble of the vans began to roll across the field. Cars aren’t supposed to travel down this road. Not when all the rules are being followed.
I smiled to myself.
Something tells me that they’d like to have a chat.
I don’t think it will be a social call.
Take a note, folks, I slid the briefcase underneath the hay. If anyone’s looking, it’s a stack next to a black rock that has no earthly business being there.
I like to think that they’ll overlook the briefcase in the hurry, and that someone out in the greater world will come across it first. It is, after all, me that they’re seeking.
But even if they do pick it up, that’s small potatoes. The important thing is that I got my message out to all of you. And it’s too late to change that now.
The vans are getting closer. So I’ll finish typing this up on my phone as I lean against the hay, and I’ll make sure it gets out before they get me. Think of this as my last will and testament.
Because you’re the only people likely to care that I’m gone. So I sit back and take in the view. The orange sky casts the peaceful verdant hills in a vibrant hue, and the frozen Midwestern ocean of rolling grass is pockmarked only by intermittent shrines of hay. The stillness of the scene before me is a paradoxical homage to time’s merciless drive, and I take it in, all at once, because every moment that passes is dead forever. And this moment, as I enjoy a guilt-free cigarette under the orange sky, is possibly the very best moment of my entire life.
I’ve complained a lot about this shithole, but truth be told, it’s just so beautifully quaint that I want to fucking cry. So I lean my head back against the hay and wait, peacefully, for the moment that I can no longer prevent, as the sun begins to set over West Bale Path.
X is for Xenophobia
Claudia Winters
From birth, it was stressed to me that interacting with the Outside World was detrimental.
No particular explanation for it, other than we were different and they would hurt us. Childish ways to explain away such large concepts, but I was a chil
d at the time. At fifteen, I’m old enough to be in charge of our Defense and Preservation team. I oversee the manufacturing of guns and ammo and knives and other such things. Usually, though, I’m in the field with the active defenders.
It’s a simple enough job; we shoot at cars driving through to warn them away. Not at the tires- that would stop them, defeating the purpose- not at the windows, but at the sides. I used to never question why we went to the extreme of shooting at them, or why we had to drive them off when they were on their way elsewhere regardless. Back then, I was a good girl who did as was told. The adults, who never seemed to do much of anything, held this air of authority that persuaded you to listen to them, despite their apparent lethargy.
And listen we did. And everything was all good and well, up until Smickey fucked up.
He’d say later he sneezed, which caused the barrel of his gun to twitch slightly upward, for just a second. This would have been fine and dandy were it not also the critical second when he pulled the trigger. Even from our sniping positions, we could see the crimson stain that bloomed in the car’s interior, as well of the screams of the other occupants. Then the car’s path started to waver. Smickey had not only directly shot an outsider, but he’d shot the driver.
The terrified cries rose as the car careened off the road, whipping up desert sand. Then the passenger appeared to have gained some sense of rationality, because a few seconds later, the brake screeched, and the car came to a swift halt. There was silence from us, and cries from them. Smickey, realizing what it meant a bit sooner than the rest of us, raised his goggles and wiped his face, body quivering in sobs.
There was uncertainty on how to handle the situation. The adults would be elsewhere- nowhere convenient- and someone had died. We cautiously began emerging from our sniping positions until a woman forced open the passenger’s side door and belligerently shouted into the desert, calling us cowards and murderers. Half her face was red, and her expression was the opposite of pleasant. She shouted threats into the heat, prompting Smickey to cry even harder. Then another passenger, unsteady and wary, stepped out of the car and placed a hand on her shoulder. We remained hidden as the third person withdrew something from their pocket.
A phone.
They were calling the cops.
As a leader, the best thing to have done in that situation was conceal all signs of weakness on my part, but terror and immense guilt drove me to abandon my position and run, the others quickly scooping up their weapons and following me back to town. When we got back, much to the confusion of those heavily at work, we kept running, past our houses, past the crater (the one we never received explanation for). We just kept running until exhaustion overtook us.
Even on the far edge of our town, we could see the red and blue lights approaching from the horizon. Smickey threw up, tainting the sand beneath his feet. Running in the heat was exhausting enough, but to cry while doing so… As I observed the expressions of the rest of the ragtag squadron, I noticed a few more sets of glistening eyes, some already beginning to overflow.
I took a few seconds to allow my head to cool. Then I addressed my team. “Guys… I’m sure you’re already aware that a member’s mistake is the team’s mistake. That means Smickey’s fuck up is our fuck up.” They nodded. “Whatever Smickey did… we all have to head back and take responsibility for it.” I knelt next to him. “Smickey, things are going to be alright, but we have to head back now.” He nodded, sniffled, readjusted his goggles, and stood. Dejected, we traversed the abrasive sand together.
Upon our arrival, there were immense vibes of dread and fury from the other children. Many of them hung around the doorways of their respective homes, not daring to make themselves vulnerable to the wrath of whatever deadly outsiders we’d drawn here. Many of them, without saying anything, regarded us as traitors. They’d seen us run, and not one of them weren’t eager to see us face retribution at the hands of the adults.
When we got to the center of town, a cop car was parked precariously close to the crater, and that rather large woman- red curls taking on a life of their own as she ranted- screeched that this wasn’t a safe town, that it was barely a town, and that it was full of savages. She had some odd looking things on her wrist that made a large racket as she waved her arms in emphasis, and I briefly wondered what military purpose they would serve until I realized they glinted in our direction. A chubby finger was pointed at us as she cried, “They’re the ones! They killed Daniel!”
We couldn’t hide the weapons we were carrying, and anticipated the worst from the two officers eying us sternly. They were about to close in on us when a man, dressed entirely in black appeared from nowhere (or so it seemed at the time), and muttered a few words to the officers. “We’ll have to let them go. They’re just kids,” one told the lady and her friend.
“BULLSHIT! THESE FUCKERS KILLED OUR FRIEND! THESE BEASTS SHOULD BE TRIED FOR FIRST DEGREE MURDER!”
“Ma’am, calm down. Come with me-”
“NO! WHAT YOU’RE SAYING IS BULLSHIT, SHERIFF HAMMOND! BULLSHIT!”
“Ma’am, I had to go far out of my way to come out here, so I need you to comply.”
The black-clad man put a thin hand on her shoulder, saying, “Wrath is a sin.” And as though his hand were a vacuum for emotion, her rage seemed to dissipate, and she followed him obediently into the main hall.
The cops were gone not soon after, but the man in black stayed.
He later introduced himself as Minister Meisberger, and announced to us all that changes would occur in our town. As he described these changes, it infuriated me to no end how the adults drank up every word of his, as though each word was sacred. These were the people who’d warned us for years against the outside world, but were willing to accept the presence of this man without question. He began to lead the other adults in their unknown work, and we children avoided him at every possible turn. Theories spread that he’d hypnotized our helpless parents, but I imagined the arrival of this mysterious man indicated something far worse.
Controversy spread through us children- at least those of us uncomfortable with the change- from what could be gleaned from the adults. There were whispers of a certain “Moirai Initiative” and a “Second Landing” that made us question whether our little crater had been the site of the supposed first landing. This didn’t explain why the Initiative representatives- unnerving officials clad in uniform blue shirts and white pants- were here, or what Meisberger had to do with them, and since any motives were unknown to us, we kept a fair distance from Meisberger and the cleanly dressed people flocking him. The people with the Initiative’s insignia, sometimes referred to as Blue Shirts.
Soon after the height of the gossip, some of us started disappearing. The number of adults remained the same, but the children vanished. No one had any idea of where they might have gone, but one kid suggested they’d run to the city to escape Meisberger and his Moirai lackeys. Someone else immediately refuted his claim by insisting whatever lurked in the city would’ve been more threatening than a few Outsiders in our town. Our parents had always told us so, after all.
I stayed up past curfew once, to investigate the disappearances.
The first thing I noticed was that my parents weren’t in bed, or home at all, when I went to check on them.
The second thing I noticed was Smickey’s thin, hesitant figure being led by the shoulders (by a group of local adults and Blue Shirts) toward the town hall.
The third thing I noticed was that my parents were among them.
The fourth thing I noticed, following them inside silently, was that there was a loose wood panel in the back left corner of the hall’s interior that opened to a ladder.
The fifth thing I noticed was that it was a really long ladder.
The sixth thing I noticed was that falling into the dark void below me would’ve been my very worst fear, if I wasn’t so afraid for Smickey.
The seventh thing I noticed was a metallic
smell drifting up from below that didn’t quite match that of the machinery where we manufactured our guns.
The eighth thing I noticed- how suddenly the ground came up. I nearly cried out in fright because I half expected the ladder to continue for infinity.
The ninth thing I noticed was how the cold metal of the ladder was quickly replaced with overwhelming warmth, uncharacteristic of our desert nights.
The tenth thing I noticed was how much I shivered regardless.
The eleventh thing I noticed was the large mechanical monstrosity that appeared as I turned a corner out of a long, dark tunnel. I couldn’t much describe its shape, but the number of blue glowing lights and cables strewn about was ridiculous.
The twelfth thing I noticed- or realized, actually- was that the adults, who could never be found during the day, must have been working on this.
The thirteenth thing I noticed was something akin to a metal platform with restraints on it.
The fourteenth thing I noticed was how much blood coated it.
The fifteenth thing I noticed? Them dragging Smickey towards this thing, to be swallowed up, forever.
The sixteenth thing I noticed were his childish screams of terror. I couldn’t blame him, actually. I wanted to scream right along with him.
The seventeenth thing was how much he struggled against his seniors turned captors. It actually brought me pride, despite the circumstances. I hoped he could free himself so he and I could run away and escape whatever plot the adults were going to throw us into.
However, the eighteenth thing I noticed was that they injected something in his neck to still him. After that, it was no chore to place him on the table.
The nineteenth thing I noticed was the ominous looking tube slithering up him, embracing his head.
The twentieth thing I noticed was how very much blood the process drew from him.
