by Mike Kraus
“What are those, David?” Rachel was intrigued by the contents of the container, which she had never seen before. David smiled broadly as he held up the computer, showing Rachel and Marcus the progress bar as the computer read the data on the chips.
“Back when these tunnels were used for maintenance, the transport carts had tracking systems on them that gave supervisors the ability to see where all of the carts were at the same time.” Holding up the small device from the plastic container with the screen on it, David continued. “Fortunately for us, the tracking systems also had a dual purpose: providing workers with maps of the tunnels. Over time, as the tunnels were used less and less, the tracking systems and maps weren’t needed, so they were stored on the carts in case of emergencies.”
“David, why didn’t you tell us about this before?”
David turned to Marcus, still smiling as he shrugged. “Sorry, but we didn’t have a cart, and I didn’t think about this until I saw Rachel driving it. It was a retiring worker who told me about them one day over lunch, and I forgot about it until now.”
“So you’re saying that this little device has maps of the entire tunnel system on it?” Marcus held the small device in his hand. It was twice the size of a credit card, three times as thick, and only weighed a few ounces.
David turned the screen of his computer for Rachel and Marcus to see. “Actually, the maps are here.” Copied onto the device from the memory chips inside the plastic container, the blueprints on David’s computer now showed dozens of tunnels snaking out from the laboratory complex. Tapping on a section at the bottom of the screen, David explained what they were looking at.
“We’re here in this plan, and these are the five tunnels you see here. The three on the right go a long ways out under the city, including the one that Rachel went through. The two on the left, though, join together in a quarter mile before sloping up toward the surface a few miles on.” Looking up from the computer, David turned and faced the two tunnels he was talking about. “These, then, are the way out.”
Rachel shifted nervously on her feet, keeping an eye on the tunnel she came from. “Okay, let’s get moving, then. Those things were on me pretty close for a while and they could be here any minute.”
Working in silence, Marcus and Rachel aligned the dolly and the transport cart, connecting them with several thick wires Marcus found coiled up under the passenger seat of the cart. Still sitting on top of Bertha, the strange woman didn’t utter a sound except for the occasional wheezing breath as her seat was jostled around. Checking the status of Bertha and the charge on the electric cart, David climbed into the back seat, satisfied that everything was ready to go.
“We’ve got several more miles left on this charge; more than enough to get us to the surface, I would think.”
Sitting in the driver’s seat, Rachel waited until Marcus and Sam were positioned next to her before she flipped the cart lights back on and slowly accelerated toward the leftmost tunnel. “Which of these will get us there the fastest, David?”
Consulting the blueprints on his computer, David shook his head back and forth. “Eh, it’s hard to tell. They look to be about the same distance, roughly. Either one should be good.”
“Why would they go in two separate directions just to join back together so quickly?” Marcus turned in his seat to look at David, who zoomed out on his view of the blueprints.
“Who knows. One of these tunnels might have been the original one I saw on the old set of blueprints, and maybe it wasn’t structurally sound enough to bring equipment through. They look to be the same size from what I can tell, though, so we shouldn’t have a problem either way.”
Between the headlights of the transport cart and the blue glow provided by the woman sitting atop Bertha, the tunnel was well-lit, though the silence was eerie. A faint whine from the electric motor, Sam’s panting and the occasional squeak or thump from the dolly behind the cart were the only audible sounds in the tunnel. Rachel felt nervous at the silence, but with no sign of the creatures ahead or behind them, she started to slowly relax. Even with the large device pulled behind the cart, they could still drive fast enough to outrun the creatures, though moving faster would put a large amount of strain on the wires holding the dolly to the cart.
The tunnel they were driving through was similar to the one Rachel had initially explored, with a few exceptions. The current tunnel was somewhat smaller and more dingy, having been built years before the other passageways. After passing by the intersection, the tunnel grew wider and taller, expanding out to the sides at regular intervals. In these expansions stood piles of old machinery, discarded years prior for more modern equipment.
Skeletons of the ages past made the tunnel several times eerier, and in the sharp shadows cast by the cart’s lights, Marcus could swear he saw movement shifting and jumping between and behind the equipment. Whispering to Rachel, he momentarily forgot about his anger at her as he tried to keep his voice calm.
“Are you seeing this stuff?”
Rachel glanced at him and nodded. “It’s nothing, though. Just a trick of the light.”
Rachel didn’t sound too confident in her assessment of the shadows, but Marcus sat back in his seat, hugging Sam tightly as he tried to focus on the path ahead. The cart was moving fast enough that even if there was anything lurking in the tunnels, it wouldn’t be able to catch them.
“We’ll be to the surface exit soon, from the looks of it,” David announced as they continued forward.
Of course, Marcus thought, once we stop, that’ll become a whole other matter.
Somewhere in North Dakota
9:18 PM, April 13, 2038
Stuck on the opposite side of the river from his prey, Samuel spent a few minutes grinding his teeth in frustration before pulling out a map to examine his options. Forty miles upriver, far from most large cities, was another suspension bridge, along with a railroad bridge he could use to cross if the suspension bridge was unstable or completely out.
Though the delay would cost him several hours in catching up with the intruders, Samuel forced himself to remain calm. Through nothing short of miracles, he had managed to keep track of the man and woman in their military vehicle, despite being far behind them for most of the pursuit. Any doubts that crept into his mind were immediately banished, replaced with the forced self-assurance that he would, without a doubt, catch his prey eventually.
A few hours later, as Samuel approached the crossing he was looking for, a glimmer of light appeared on the horizon directly ahead. Breaking through the darkness and the cloud cover above, it grew larger as he drew closer, coalescing into a series of several lights. The lights glowed and flickered, betraying their sources as campfires and lanterns hung from posts driven into the ground. Near each post stood a house, most of which were untouched, though a few were missing shingles and had broken windows covered with boards.
The lights in front of and inside the homes were bright enough to make out details even from a fair distance away, and Samuel slowed his vehicle to a crawl, analyzing the situation to decide what his next move would be. Having help to pursue the intruders would almost be too much to ask for, but when presented with an opportunity such as the one in front of him, Samuel wasn’t the type to pass it up.
Though it was late at night, the activity inside the houses was nearly instantaneous as Samuel laid on the horn of his vehicle. Shutters and doors flew open as men and women of all ages ran from their homes. Some clutched on to lanterns, holding them high as if that would somehow make the source of the noise visible. Others held brooms, baseball bats and Samuel even spotted a few shotguns in the mix. With his engine off and his vehicle hidden near a convenient collection of bushes, Samuel walked forward toward the people collected in front of their homes.
After a final check of the pistols tucked in holsters under his jacket, Samuel raised his hands halfway into the air as he walked forward into the light, smiling broadly at the people in front of him. Simpletons. Lo
ok at them all, standing there with their mouths open like they’ve never seen another person before. This will be far easier than I had hoped.
“Hello! Please, don’t hurt me; I really need help!”
Samuel tapped into the distant feelings of grief for his children as he spoke, giving his voice a soft and appealing tone. A practiced speaker, Samuel was a master of manipulation, and the individuals gathered around their houses instantly lowered their makeshift weapons. Stepping forward, an older man greeted Samuel, putting his hand out.
“Oh, thank God! Another survivor! We’re sorry; we thought you were one of those things out there.” Samuel took the man’s hand and shook it firmly, noting with satisfaction that the man’s voice trembled slightly when he spoke of the “things out there.”
“Oh heavens no! Those things… they’re horrible!” A few of the women in the group crowded around Samuel as he spoke, helping him to the nearest porch where he sat down, surrounded by everyone who had come outside. Samuel made a show of looking around at the people and their houses before continuing. “Where… where am I? What is this place?”
The man who spoke to Samuel originally nodded proudly as he answered. “This, good sir—by the way, what is your name?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m Samuel.”
“Well, Samuel, I’m Jonathan, and this is our home. We’re a small community, one of the new seed communities started a few years back, and I guess we got lucky, if you could call it that, when all of that nastiness went down a while back.”
“You live here?” Samuel exaggerated his incredulity, knowing full well that pockets of survivors could be nestled into small communities throughout the world. “How have you survived? And what about those… those things?”
Jonathan shook his head and sat down next to Samuel, speaking to the newly arrived stranger as he would a friend. “It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve made do, living off of our supplies and scrounging for what we can.”
Samuel saw an opening for him to start introducing the topic he wanted to discuss and he jumped on it.
“Well gosh, if you need supplies, I can help you. My vehicle back there’s got some stuff in it I took off these bandits that blew through my village a few days ago.”
A few gasps came from the men and women surrounding Samuel, and Jonathan put a hand on Samuel’s back, raising an eyebrow in concern. “Bandits? You mean that people are out there raiding?”
Samuel said nothing, only nodding slowly for dramatic effect.
“Well damn, as if we didn’t have enough to worry about.”
“I know, it’s terrible! We have enough problems and then people like that have to go and make things worse. I was actually chasing them down when my vehicle broke down just down the road there. Maybe if you can help me get it fixed, a couple of you folks can ride on it with me to hunt down these bandits and bring them to justice?”
Murmurs passed through the crowd, with the collective feeling being one of cautious negativity for the idea. Jonathan waited for the others to quiet down before he spoke.
“Well, Mr. Samuel, I’m sure we’d love to help, but if those bandits aren’t on their way here, I’m not sure we can spare the men to help you. We can sure take a look at your vehicle and see about getting it fixed up, though. Bobby here has some parts leftover from when he fixed up one of our cars to work. Maybe that’ll get you on the road again?”
Samuel nodded and smiled while seething inwardly. He was wasting valuable time bantering with these people, and all the while Leonard and Nancy were getting farther and farther away. It was obvious from how the group was acting that they weren’t interested in helping him on his mission, but they also weren’t about to just let him go on his way. Each moment that Samuel spent off the road was another moment that the trail of his prey grew colder.
Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | David Landry
9:05 PM, April 13, 2038
The slope up to the surface turned out to be a steeper grade than Rachel had anticipated. It slowed the cart down to a crawl, forcing Marcus, David and Sam to get out and walk to lessen the strain on the motor. The electric whine grew more high-pitched as the cart crept up the slope, the wheels slipping from time to time on the worn portions of the floor. Ahead of them, though, a few hundred feet away, stood another large metal door like the one they had to break through to get into the tunnel system in the first place.
At the top of the slope, just in front of the door, was a flat spot no more than 15 feet long, barely enough room to park the cart in front of the door. Rachel had to force the cart into a corner at an angle to keep the heavy dolly from sliding backwards down the slope. A set of double doors were near the steel door, leading into a small storage room off of the tunnel, though the transport cart was too wide to fit through them. Jumping out of the cart, Rachel stepped next to Marcus and David, who were already examining the steel door.
“What’s it look like? Same as the other one?”
“Yep. Same mechanism and everything.” David looked back to the woman who was still atop Bertha. She hadn’t moved or said anything in hours, and aside from the blue glow she gave off it was easy to forget that she was even there. Marcus and Rachel followed David’s gaze, watching the woman who stared straight ahead with empty eyes.
“Can she do it again?” Marcus whispered to David and Rachel, though they were close enough to the woman that she could hear them quite clearly. If she did hear Marcus’s question, she didn’t respond.
“Excuse me?” Rachel stepped forward, speaking louder and directing her voice toward the woman. “Can you get this door open, like you did before?”
“Rachel, no! Her memory!” Marcus grabbed Rachel’s arm to stop her, but he was too late. The woman looked down at them, tilting her head slightly as she replied.
“Did what before?”
“Shit!” Rachel hissed, spinning around and beating her fist against the steel door in frustration. Asking the woman to recall something she had done before was, as they had learned, a trigger for her memory of the event to vanish. Whether the memory would come back on its own was up for debate, but for the moment, the woman couldn’t help them with their dilemma.
Marcus leaned back against the door. “Now what?”
The answer to Marcus’s question came from an unexpected location and unwelcome form. A loud snarl filtered down from the tunnel behind the group, bouncing off of the hard walls and floors. Rachel immediately snatched up her rifle from the electric cart and took up a position next to Bertha, aiming her sights down the length of the sloping tunnel. With only a flashlight to pierce the darkness, she could see no more than a hundred feet from where they stood. No signs of movement were visible, but the snarls and growls continued to echo, growing louder every moment.
“Are you two ready for this?” Rachel spoke to Marcus and David without looking over her shoulder. A nervous groan came from David while Marcus simply unholstered his pistol and took up a firing stance next to Rachel.
Without warning, the mutated woman who had been sitting motionless on top of Bertha jumped off, landing noiselessly in front of Rachel and Marcus. Rachel shifted her aim to the woman momentarily, afraid that Mr. Doe was once again in control. The woman made no movement toward Rachel and Marcus, but merely looked down the tunnel in the direction of the noises.
“David, get working on that door.” Rachel spoke softly to David, who peeked out from behind the front of the cart where he was hiding. “I don’t care what it takes; just get it open before this situation gets any worse.”
David rose hesitantly and went to the door, trying to find any way to activate the panel that was mounted on the wall nearby. The mutated woman had overridden the panel on the previous door before David had even had a chance to look it over. He wasn’t about to open this door in the same way that the woman opened the last one, but there were still a few things he could try.
David pulled out his handheld computer from his jacket pocket and turned on the screen, intending to t
ry to connect it to the panel via a short cable. When the screen of the device flickered to life, though, a red flashing icon at the top of the screen was the last thing he had expected to see. He stared at the icon for a few seconds before tapping on it, bringing up a new window with long rows of text.
Turning to Rachel, he held the computer out, completely forgetting about the door. He yelled at her, startling her and making her turn to face him. “Rachel!”
“What? What’s going—” Rachel’s face paled as she saw the handheld’s screen just a few feet away. David’s next statement confirmed her fear and made Marcus’s stomach turn as he listened.
“There’s a high bandwidth signal that just started coming from her!” David pointed at the mutated woman, who still hadn’t moved.
“She’s sending a lot of data out and getting some back, as well. From the amount of information going back and forth, there’s no other answer; it has to be Doe!”
