by C. J. Sears
That crackpot theory was better than the alternative. If the man had anything to do with this test, if he actually knew what was going on and how to resolve their situation, then they shouldn’t trust him. Michael had made that mistake once with Rhinehold. He wouldn’t fall for it a second time.
The enormous staircase past his second left turn may as well have been the Promised Land. Zachary’s instincts were right; here was the exit, brimming with the optimism of escape and cutting short the nauseating loop of the water-logged maze.
The former editor of the Lone Oak Gazette dragged both of them out of the water with ease as if he’d never swam at all. Traveling through the Labyrinth with the lingering threats of drowning or death by monster was an inconvenience rather than a race against time.
Michael didn’t know how or why, but Wayland Zachary had changed. This wasn’t the reluctant man they had entered the tests with. This wasn’t the man who had fired his father for claiming the newspaper’s harsh criticisms of the new sheriff were unfounded.
The fire behind the eyes of this quasi-reborn man couldn’t have been his own.
“You got us out of the Labyrinth,” Michael said, pondering how he should word his next question.
“I did.”
“How did you know where to go? Why do you say you’ve been here before?”
Shrugging, Zachary said, “I don’t know how. I just know. Those messages on the walls were so familiar. Like I’d seen them a dozen times before.”
“That doesn’t sound suspicious at all, no sir,” said Evelyn, her snarky attitude returning now that she didn’t have to worry about reliving her worst memory.
“I don’t see the problem here. We’re done with Test Chamber 2. We’re alive,” said Zachary, exasperated, rubbing the skin of his neck raw.
“And that’s another thing,” said Michael, realizing this had to be the third or fourth time he’d seen Zachary touching that spot. “Why do you keep massaging your neck?”
“It’s just a rash,” he said dismissively. “I get them sometimes when I’m anxious.”
“Michael, what if he’s…” said Evelyn.
She couldn’t allow herself to finish the thought. Michael knew where she was going, knew the screams, the blood, and the angry black masses were vivid in her mind.
“What if I’m what?”
“Infected,” answered Michael. “She thinks you’ve been injected with the Lone Oak parasite.”
Zachary laughed. “That’s bull. Why the hell would you think that?”
“Show us your neck,” said Evelyn.
“Why?” asked Zachary, backing up the steps.
“Just do it,” said Michael.
The feeling in his worn out leg and arm muscles returned. Assuming the older man wasn’t infected but wanted to push the issue, he might be able to subdue him. If Zachary did have the parasite inside his body, he could toss Michael back into the water faster than a one-pound bass.
“Fine,” said Zachary, “I have nothing to hide.”
He pulled his jumpsuit collar away, exposing the lesion on his neck. Michael and Evelyn stood on either side, peering at the reddened flesh. There was a needle-sized puncture wound an inch above the spinal cord.
Evelyn poked the tender hole with a long fingernail. Black blood oozed out, viscous, oily, and not at all human.
*
A lengthy staircase extended from the study’s hidden room to a corridor at the bottom. The glow of Hades suffused the path and beckoned them to its depths. A secret route this obtuse and this malevolent had to lead to the testing facility.
Kasey descended. Donahue couldn’t understand why she’d left the revolver upstairs. Sure, the passage was a tight fit, but that didn’t mean the extra firepower wouldn’t come in handy.
The blonde was overly blasé in her opinion. Kasey might think the biggest dangers were behind them, but Donahue didn’t agree. She retrieved the revolver and rejoined the federal agent on the lowermost step.
“Lose this? You make it a habit to throw away high-powered weaponry?”
Kasey thrust an arm in front of her. “Not now. We’re being watched.”
“By who? The Smiling Man?”
The red hue that pervaded the cold hallway went on forever. Nothing was observing them, not even a camera.
“Can’t you sense it? There are curious eyes in here.”
Now that she mentioned it, it did feel like there was something glaring at her. Was it sizing her up for food or sport? And what was that strange cackling noise she kept hearing?
“You think he sent one of his monsters after us?”
“I know he did. The question is why can’t we see it? You can’t make something invisible. That’s not possible.”
Donahue heard the noise again and realized it was two different sounds mixing into one. The first whooped like a raucous cassowary. The second bleated like a dying sheep. Whatever it was sounded close. She expected to see its mutant face, but there was nothing there.
Coarse fingers brushed against her nose. They were scaly, bumpy, and dry. Not Kasey’s hand, not human.
She cried out and fell, discharging the revolver. The bullet missed, the volume of the shot vibrating her ear drums. Her unknown assailant vanished. Donahue was lucky she hadn’t shot the blonde by accident.
Kasey pulled her to her feet, awestruck by the creature’s swift attack.
“It’s a chameleon,” she whispered, barely audible above the ringing in their ears.
“Well, I figured that,” Donahue muttered, “but where is it?”
Jittery, she lined up the revolver with the end of the hall. The sight on the gun swayed with each breath she took. Her aim wobbled. The walls shifted. She squinted down the corridor past the sea of red lights, hoping to spot their chameleon retreating with its tail tucked between its legs.
Wait. Walls weren’t supposed to move. Donahue pointed the gun at a man-sized shimmer scrambling along the wall. Kasey dropped to one knee, training her pistol at the same section.
Both women fired. At this distance, the high velocity rounds ripped through flesh and tendons, shearing the monster’s right hand from its forelimb.
The force of the revolver blast frightened the creature. It shimmied down the hall, holding its bloody stump, disappearing into the wall.
Donahue released the revolver. In this cramped chamber, every fired bullet clanged like twelve Chinese gongs chiming in sync. The Browning was also loud, but not to the same extent.
“It’s not leaving,” said Kasey, “and I don’t think it’ll try the same tactic twice.”
During her recovery from surgery, Donahue had been unfortunate enough to sit through several nature shows. A few of them were about reptile behavior and natural camouflage. She had an idea.
“Get your flashlight out,” she said. “We’ll use the beams to confuse this thing’s coloring.”
“You think it’s got a refractory period?”
“We won’t know until we try,” said Donahue, clicking on her flashlight and putting it on the brightest setting.
Like a child batting a piñata, the lights swung to and fro, crisscrossing in the red mist of the dusty hallway.
The results were immediate. A pale, almost white body materialized amongst the unbroken reds. The creature paused when the flashlight shined on its beady reptilian eyes.
“Turn off the lights,” said Kasey “We’ll see how long that thing takes to recover.”
Every voice in her head screamed that it was stupid to let the freak merge with the environment. Donahue readied the Browning to fire.
The monster grumbled like a crocodile as its true flesh darkened, growing red again. Only six seconds had passed.
“That’s too fast,” she said. “Turn them back on. We’ll give it everything we’ve got.”
The dueling beams of the flashlight and the passageway’s glaring red bulbs clashed. The genetic conglomeration of man and chameleon whimpered, shielding its eyes with its one useable ha
nd.
“Now!”
Donahue squeezed the trigger over and over until she emptied her clip. Kasey fired the Glock, each bang resounding in the hallway as the shots impacted the convulsing flesh of the monster.
The thing had no chance to defend itself from the sheer onslaught of bullets. Plugged full of holes, it moaned and walked unsteadily, flailing its arms. With a final pitiful honk, the creature died. Blood pooled underneath its sagging carcass.
For once, they got a good look at its horrible body. Except for the scales, its arms and feet were normal. Aside from the somewhat elongated nose and mouth, its cranium was decidedly mannish. If it weren’t for the pebbled skin and oversized incisors, she thought it could’ve passed as a man with a minor birth defect.
Why would anyone create something like this? What purpose could it serve to create a man-lizard hybrid that could blend in with walls? It would’ve taken years of repetitive scientific application to engineer such an absurdity.
Kasey had said the Smiling Man and his associates wanted to create the next generation of soldier. This was a failed bio-weapon, an organic culmination of the evil that men were more than happy to thrive on in their quest to gain power.
It was the only answer Donahue had. She reloaded the Browning. Kasey gathered the revolver off the floor. Together they jogged down the corridor and heard the telltale swoosh of rushing water.
*
The Overlord’s glorious moment of triumph crumbled to dust. The dismal performance of REP-02 proved that the suits at the company were right; the bio-weapons division was an undeniable failure.
FEL-01 had downed one of the test participants, but her inability to cope with darkness made her half as useful as she should’ve been.
In the flooded Labyrinth, OCT-03 pursued the four remaining subjects, but the Overlord doubted even his star pupil could pull off such a feat.
AVI-04 was not viable for defending this facility from the encroaching federal agents. His hollow bones would be obliterated by their firepower. MON-05 had potential, but not enough to consider her an asset.
The company cultivated dozens of other prototypes through the years. Most of them had either been disposed of or otherwise relocated. None would be helpful here.
The Overlord smacked his forehead repeatedly. It felt as if there was this tangled knot in his brain, limiting his ability to think and mount a counterattack on the intruders. The night had started so promising, but now everything was bile drowning in shit.
The tests were no longer his priority. He didn’t care if any of them lived or died or if the Founder’s Formula worked or it didn’t. He was even sick of this damn house and its dumb layout. All he wanted was his life and the parasite. Everything else could burn in an inferno.
Or, he mused, a controlled explosion. Per company protocol, he’d rigged the facility with wired explosives. The failsafe was installed in case of contamination and corporate espionage. It was designed for emergency use only.
Emergency or not, the Overlord would blow this place sky high. All he needed was thirty minutes. Once activated, the self-destruct sequence would detonate in a specific order, starting with the subterranean levels. Control went last.
After he downloaded the system files, he could extract with the parasite. The company would have to settle for incomplete data. No way was he risking his neck for suits and ties who couldn’t fathom the true nirvana at their fingertips.
He glanced at the clear vial containing the parasite. It projected a kind of wraithlike luminescence.
The Overlord entered the code, unlocking the device that held the vial in place. His heart beat in nervous anticipation. Almost twenty years had passed, but he never forgot the wondrous sensation.
A real smile, a genuine grin that was not the surreal mark he bore, came over his face. He gripped the top of the capsule with his undersized hand. Such beautiful power. If he could only drink from that well again…
No. He couldn’t take the risk. Those agents were coming for him. He had to be ready.
DARK WATER
“Back away from him, Evelyn!”
She was already on the move, having witnessed the familiar black blood of the infected up close and personal only two months before.
“What’re we going to do? We don’t even have weapons. What if he’s already under its control?”
Michael pulled her close, guarding her against the inevitable attack.
The dark water in the confines of the Labyrinth bubbled. They didn’t have time to debate this. Deep in the false saltwater river, the monster prowled.
Zachary gazed at his hand, covered in inhuman blood. Seeing the sheer terror of unbelief in that man’s eyes, Michael almost felt sorry for him. But he knew better than to project anything but pity on Zachary. Anyone infected was as good as dead already. When the parasite took over, you lost yourself. You became a childlike dependent, beholden to the whims of a compromised mind.
Zachary sputtered with the indignity of a failing plane engine. His breaths came in ragged puffs of incoherence as he struggled to rationalize his condition. Michael wouldn’t blame him if he jumped in the water to take his chances with the creature. No one wanted to be under the thumb of something so invasive, so alien.
Arm wrapped around her waist, Michael escorted Evelyn up the stairs. Zachary dawdled, unable or unwilling to follow them. Good. Michael didn’t want to watch for a knife in the back. The freaks gave him plenty to worry about.
When they reached a door, he thought about locking it behind them to keep Zachary away. He couldn’t. Yes, the man was infected with a controlling parasite. Yes, he had exhibited questionable knowledge of the tests. But he was still a human being, not a monster.
Between the bedroom confinement, the odd marine tube, limestone cavern, and the flooded maze, Michael had long given up predicting where he would end up next.
The room they were in now surpassed anything he could’ve anticipated.
The Overlord had rigged up an artificial battlefield. Makeshift sandbag fortifications dotted the horizon like blemishes on the smooth face of the desert grain. A massive dune rose out of the sandy sea, formed by hands and mechanical instruments rather than the weathering of air and water. The ridge ran the width of the room so they couldn’t see the exit.
A massive glass pane and a chest-high wall separated Michael from the vastness of the desert imitation. A big red switch on a panel underneath the glass demanded his attention, but he ignored it for now.
This whole place was not only surreal, not only dreamlike, but certifiably nuts.
“They say insanity is doing something over and over expecting different results,” he said to Evelyn, “but I think this has to figure in somewhere.”
“No doubt,” she said.
She had to know they’d made the right decision.
“There’s nothing we could’ve done for him,” he told her. “He’s one of them. If we’d stuck around, who knows what he’d do to us.”
“Yeah, but what if it’s benign or something? Maybe he’s infected, but he can’t hurt us because it didn’t take.”
He shook his head. She meant well, and he understood her concerns, but this wouldn’t help their escape.
“It’s a parasite. We’ve seen what it’s capable of and we know it’s not friendly. We couldn’t take the risk. Besides, I didn’t lock the door, did I? If he wants to follow, he can, come what may.”
“I guess you’re right,” she said, turning away and walking over to the switch. “What do you think this will do? Summon a giant, mechanized scorpion?”
It wouldn’t have surprised him if it did, but he said, “I’ll bet it opens the glass so we can go inside. The Overlord probably wants us to fight something in there.”
“What’s he expect us to use?” asked Evelyn. “Our wits? Fists? The power of imagination?”
“Those,” Michael said, pointing to a set of five automatic rifles leaning against the first fortification.
Evelyn
glared at it with suspicion. “Doesn’t he realize that the first thing we’ll shoot if we get out is him?”
Michael shrugged. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”
She pounded the switch. Just as Michael thought, the glass pane receded into the wall. A gust of previously compressed hot air billowed against their wet clothes.
“At least we’ll be dry,” said Michael, entering the artificial desert. “I didn’t want to trudge through the Sahara in squeegees.”
“Yeah,” said Evelyn as he pulled her through, “I thought about stripping down to my underwear, but this microwave ought to do the trick.”
“I wouldn’t have minded,” said Michael, cracking a smile.
“Oh, I know,” she said, winking, “but I don’t think the Overlord needs any more entertainment.”
That loud-mouthed clown could do with a little less voyeurism to smile about. It was bad enough their captor got his rocks off watching torture; he didn’t need to add titillation to this unholy show.
Their own grins disappeared as grim reality set in and they arrived at the first set of sandbags. Both of them picked up a weapon. Michael couldn’t identify the make, but it was heavier than he imagined. He figured that meant it was loaded.
Holding the gun didn’t fill him with confidence. The closest he’d ever been to something like this was in a video game. There were no re-spawns in real life, no second chances.
“Michael,” squeaked Evelyn, lowering her gun.
“Yeah?”
“Whatever happens, I’m glad I’m with you.”
He wanted to wrap his arms her, to hold her close forever, but he didn’t dare drop the rifle. The evil that pervaded the maniac’s bizarre playground wasn’t any lesser in this seemingly empty desert. Whatever unthinkable horror inhabited this room, Michael was sure it harbored no notions of love—only violence and the stench of death.
He settled for a kiss and the promise of a few drinks when all of this was over.
*
“And here I thought we might go for a dip in the pool,” said Kasey as they overlooked the cement crater that had been drained minutes before they arrived.
