by Alton Gansky
He raised it.
I threw the axe in his direction. I wasn’t trying to hit him. I was trying to hit the control panel and maybe buy enough time for me to move closer.
He dove to the side and covered his head. There was the time I needed. The axe hit the control panel and bounced off. No damage to the panel. No damage to the axe.
Waterridge had dropped his weapon. Apparently seeing a firefighter’s axe flying at his head had broken his concentration. It had skittered several feet beyond his reach. He began a desperate crawl for it. I got there before he did, grabbed the gun, and stuck it in my waistband. I needed both hands for what I had to do next.
I retrieved the axe and studied the panel for a moment. Metal conduit and hollow aluminum pipes ran from the panel up the wall and into the ceiling. I laid into them with the axe.
“No!” Waterridge struggled to his feet.
Sparks flew. The vibration stopped. And the portal with its streams of creepy things and fog went empty. A few creatures that had been swimming down the fog-filled channel dropped like stones.
The vibration stopped, too. I was glad for that. For a moment.
Waterridge struggled to his feet. “You’ve killed us.”
“Sorry, pal, but the way I see it, I kept you from killing thousands of other people.”
“You’re a fool!”
“Sticks and stones.” That’s when I noticed it. There was a screech. Just one at first. Then another. Then several.
“How did you get in here?” Waterridge stepped closer and I wondered if I was going to have to deck the guy.
“Through the window. It was recommended that I not take the stairs. I think you know why.”
“We’re doomed.”
Another screech.
Waterridge was just a decibel two or so shy of screaming. “They’ll get in. The sound, the vibration, is what kept them from this floor.”
Uh-oh. “Why aren’t they here?”
“They’re not smart. They don’t reason. They don’t discuss things and make conjectures, you idiot. They are purely reactive. They’re sharks in bloody water. It will only take seconds for them to realize they can come in now.”
He was right.
Boy, was he right.
At first there was just one. I spied its bulbous white head peeking around a large piece of machinery. It moved slowly. A lion stalking. A killer whale eyeing seals. A shark circling. They might not be reasoning creatures, but they seemed to understand self-preservation.
I pushed Waterridge to the side and retrieved his gun from my pocket. A .22 caliber. I would have preferred something a little heftier. I pointed at the scout. It wasn’t alone. Another head appeared.
“Shoot!”
“Not yet.” There was no way this little gun held enough ammo to take on the hundreds of creatures that lurked in the fog. I could take down a few. Maybe a half-dozen if my aim was good. Maybe. Doubtful. It didn’t matter. Brenda’s prophetic drawing had already told me my fate.
“Shoot!”
“Aren’t you supposed to have some control over these things? You got the red robe and everything.”
“You put an end to that when you cut the power to my control panel. You doomed us.”
“You doomed thousands.”
The first creature floated through the fog. Several more appeared behind them, and they were showing signs of being less patient.
I pulled the trigger, and the bullet slammed into the head of the first one around the corner. I expected blood. Instead I saw a spray of yellow custard. If fear hadn’t occupied most of my brain, I would have tossed chunks right then and there.
The others scattered, more from the sound of the gun than the death of their companion.
Motion from the portal window caught my attention. Last I looked, creatures were falling past; now they were rising, sucked up to wherever the wide shaft went.
The first ones up were the last ones down. They were battered and broken. Dead. Then I saw a living one struggling against the flow. It was trying to swim down the fog column, but the riptide was too strong.
An idea started to grow, but Waterridge stunted its growth. He charged me and seized my gun hand.
“Let me have it.” I saw nothing but panic in his eyes.
I dropped the axe in my other hand and popped the architect in the nose. He staggered back two steps.
Something on the ceiling moved. I looked up. They clung to the ceiling tiles, claws holding them in place. There—were—hundreds of them, a quivering mass of putty-white bodies, their heads turned our direction, each mouth filled with barracuda teeth.
Waterridge took another step back. “No. No.” He raised his hands. “I command you to leave.”
That didn’t work. One dropped on his head and dug its claws into his eyes. The scream echoed in the room. I considered shooting the thing on its head, but I could miss and blow the man’s brains out. For a moment—God forgive me—for a moment it seemed the right thing to do.
Then one hit me in the back. They were coming at us from every direction. I drove myself back against the wall. Something squished. My back felt wet.
Another came at me flying five feet above the floor. I dropped it with a shot from the .22. Fighting was useless, but I wasn’t wired to stand around.
Waterridge was on the ground, writhing. Then the screaming stopped. Then the writhing stopped. All that was left was the sound of the feeding frenzy.
A creature hit me in the side. Its claws ripped through my dress shirt. My skin offered no resistance. One bit my arm. Another laid into my leg. I went down on my back. For every creature that dropped from the ceiling another appeared to replace it. There were five on me. Then more.
I fought. I punched. I shot one or two more. My blood flowed, and with it my ability to fend off the beasts.
Again, a motion in the portal demanded my attention. Creatures were being sucked up the shaft by the dozen . . .
I still held the gun. I could still see out of one eye. It took everything I had to move my arm enough to aim. The sound of the gun sent the creatures on me scrambling, but they would be back in a moment.
I fired again. And again. Then I could hear only the sound of dry firing. I was out of ammo. The glass had cracked, but not broken.
I rolled on my side. There was the fire axe two steps out of reach. Crawling to it, I took in in my right hand. My left wasn’t working very well.
A creature landed on my back. I was beyond caring. “I hope you choke.”
Using the axe for support, I pushed myself up. Another foggy latched on. I stumbled, but at least I stumbled in the right direction. Several more creatures hitched a ride. One thing I had noticed about them: They were very light. I guess you’d have to be to swim in fog.
This was it. My last effort. The last thing I would do in this life. I refused to waste it. The biting and clawing increased. The frenzy was beginning.
I lifted the axe, turned the pointed end out, and put my body into the swing.
The axe head bounced off the glass, and the axe fell to the floor.
“I tried, God. I tried.”
The glass gave way, its pieces imploding into the shaft. Wind. I felt wind. Then I keeled over.
There were screeches. The air whistled through the room and around the edges of the portal. One by one, then two by two, then by bunches, the creatures were pulled into the open portal. I couldn’t tell if it was the wind or something else dragging them away. I didn’t care as long as they left. They made it clear they didn’t want to go.
The fog that filled the room went with them. It was like watching milky water go down a drain.
The fog-swimmers clinging to me sloughed off. Glad to see them go. I turned to where Waterridge had gone down. There were still bits and pieces of him left.
For a few moments I watched fog and creatures sail by, but keeping my eyes open was becoming more work than I could manage.
“I’m ready, God. I’m ready . . . to . .
. go . . .”
The green and the white of the room dimmed to black.
Epilogue
How are you doing, son?” Allen Krone walked onto the balcony and sat in one of the outdoor chairs. He had a right to. He owned the chair, the balcony, and the eight-thousand-square-foot house overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The house was in the northern part of San Diego County. We had been here for two weeks and had full run of the place. Krone and his wife stayed in one of their other homes.
“I’m doing okay, sir.”
“It looks like you’re healing up nicely.” Janice brought a tray of ice tea for us. Krone did a lot of entertaining, he had said, so there were plenty of chairs. Daniel sat on the deck playing a video game on his phone.
“The healing is slow, but I shouldn’t frighten too many children.”
I wore shorts and a white t-shirt. The scars on my neck, arms, and legs were visible reminders of what had happened earlier that month. The rest of the scars were hidden by clothing. I’d be wearing long-sleeve shirts and long pants for a good many months. The plastic surgeons told me the scars would fade, and those that don’t can be handled with a little surgery. Somehow that didn’t seem important.
I studied our host for a moment. “You’re looking pretty good yourself, Mr. Krone.”
“I keep telling you it’s Allen. And I feel good. Thanks to you.”
“Not me, sir. God does the healing. I’m just a washed-up football jock.”
“Not in my book, young man.” Krone looked over the ocean as if seeing something no one else could. “You are the bravest man I know. Your friends, too.”
“Eh, they’re all right, I guess.” That got a reaction.
“I thought we had lost you,” Andi said. She kept her eyes closed and her face toward the sun.
“I thought I had lost me, too.”
I don’t remember my friends finding me, but they tell me they came looking when the fog disappeared. To be honest, I still have trouble understanding how I can be alive.
It had taken some time before we could discuss what had happened. Two of the guests at the retirement party were RNs. They stopped the bleeding. Once the fog was completely gone and we were able to contact others, Krone had his private helicopter flown in from Montgomery Field, which had been far enough outside of downtown San Diego not to be affected by the fog.
“Any word from the mayor on the city’s condition?” I asked. I didn’t want to talk about me anymore.
“He’s being tight-lipped about such things. They can’t explain the loss of life, the power outages. The official word is that this is an ongoing investigation. Local police, the military, the FBI, Homeland Security, and groups I know nothing about are investigating. There is no reasonable, logical answer.”
“Trust me,” the professor said. “I know reason. I know logic. Nothing of what we’ve experienced makes sense. It is, nonetheless, real.”
“What do these people want?”
The professor always fielded those kinds of questions. “We’re not certain. We’ve seen them try to control the thinking of people. At times it seems as if they want to make our universe theirs. This time they unleashed organisms to kill and to cause terror. They’ve also used microscopic organisms to infect people and animals.” The professor shrugged. “I’m starting to wonder if our worlds aren’t so different that we can’t understand what they’re doing. I know one thing: The Gate isn’t finished with us.”
“What I don’t understand,” Krone said, “is Brenda’s gift. You told me she is never wrong, yet Tank didn’t die.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Brenda said. “I’ve been pretty bummed about gettin’ that wrong.”
“Hey!” I smiled when I said it.
“You know what I mean, Cowboy. I’ve grown . . . oh, what’s the word?”
“Fond of me,” I suggested.
“No, that’s not it. Gimme a sec. Got it. I’ve grown to where I can tolerate you. That’s it. Anyway, I think I have an answer. I’ll let the professor tell you if I’m right or wrong. He’s going to anyway.”
“You can count on it, Barnick.”
“I think Tank changed the future,” she said slowly. “What I drew was true. Tank made a new truth. I don’t know how. Maybe he just powered his way into a different outcome.”
“That’s deep,” the professor said. “Especially coming from you. Just like some physicists think that if there are multiple universes, there may be multiple futures.”
Changed the future. As I thought about Brenda’s words, it occurred to me that that’s what we’d been doing all along. Changing the future.
I caught the professor looking at me. “I’m glad Tank is still with us.”
“Aw, gee, Professor. You’re gonna make me blush.”
“Don’t get a big head, Tank. I just don’t want to be left alone with these two women.”
“You love us, too,” Andi said.
Brenda was a little more direct. “Shut up, old man.”
“For the last time, I am not old!”
“Ancient.”
I’ll let you guess who said that.
Selected Books by Alton Gansky
By My Hands
Through My Eyes
Terminal Justice
Tarnished Image
Marked for Mercy
A Small Dose of Murder
A Ship Possessed
Vanished
Distant Memory
The Prodigy
Dark Moon
A Treasure Deep
Out of Time
Beneath the Ice
The Incumbent
Before Another Dies
Submerged
Director’s Cut
Crime Scene Jerusalem
Zero-G
Finder’s Fee
Angel
Enoch
Wounds
www.altongansky.com
