by David Coy
She had to pass within inches of him to get to the opener. Just as she passed by, he reached out and grabbed hold of the canvas bag by the straps.
He held the bag for an eternity and then started to pull her down to him by the straps. She watched the heavy weight of the phone come in contact with the rubbery ledge then move toward his pale leg. If it touched him, he might feel it.
He turned his little face toward her and pursed his lips. She strained away from the dead flower of his mouth then relented and kissed him a hard closed-mouth kiss. He let go then, and she came away with a broad smile on her lovely face as if she’d just kissed a lover she was crazy about.
“See you later, my king.”
She pulled the bag smoothly away, watching the spidery hand trail after it until it dropped completely off, landing with a limp plop on the ledge.
She didn’t realize she was shaking until she closed the seam behind her. She calmed herself and headed out.
Bailey knew something about the ship Gilbert didn’t. She knew there was some symmetry to the pattern of tunnels and tubes that ran through it. They weren’t random, although they seemed to on paper. The nerve bundle added to the sense of order she’d discovered; it ran directly down that large central tube, directly down the center of the ship, just like a spinal column, although it sometimes ran down into the floor of the tube to God-knew-where.
The central tube ran the length of the vessel from where Gilbert had shown it to her to the shuttle bay in what she now thought was the ass-end of the ship.
The tubes formed a series of interconnecting loops going out and away from the central tube that carried the nerve bundle. Along the loops were the chambers and holes that comprised the labs and other larger pockets, including the chamber she shared with Gilbert. Each of the large loops off the central tube branched out into smaller tubes and chambers. The tube housing Phil was one of the smaller tubes away from the central one, on the far side of it. As long as you knew which row, or ring of loops you were in, you could tell about how far you were from the nerve bundle. The wider the tube, the closer it was to the central nerve bundle. In short, as long as she traveled from smaller to larger tubes, you’d eventually find the central tube.
It wasn’t quite as easy as it sounded, since there were seams all over the place, and there didn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to how those were placed, except that the larger the tube, the fewer the seams. She’d yet to see a seam in tubes the size of the one she was in. She was guessing that there were no seams between Gilbert’s chamber and the shuttle bay as long as she didn’t go too far out from the central tunnel. She was also guessing that if she bounced from loop to loop, never changing tunnel sizes, she could travel the entire length of the central tunnel without actually traveling in it.
The shuttle bay was at the far end of the central tunnel. When she reached the shuttle bay she could traverse the midline of the ship and go over to Phil’s side. The fact that Phil’s tube was much higher than the shuttle bay was a mystery, but the ship was full of those. The small access tubes over the shuttle bay eventually looped back to Phil’s tube. She could travel that part with her eyes closed. She checked her watch. Perfect.
The only problem was that most of the areas she had to pass through, including the shuttle bay, were off limits—and she’d never actually traveled in those loops before—no one had.
“Fuck it,” she said, trotting along. “Fuck it. Fuck everything in it—just fuck it.”
* * *
Ned woke up with a long, low groan and twisted his bulk around slowly.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Phil said.
“Is that what it is?” Ned replied painfully.
“Something like it,” Mary added. “Would you like to eat?”
“Sure.”
He sat up and ate some canned vegetables and most of a can of beef barley soup. He still looked pale and felt clammy, and Phil saw that his appetite was lackluster. He only ate a bite or two of one of the chocolate-chip cookies Mary offered him. Ned normally would have eaten the whole bag of chocolate-chip cookies.
“How are you feeling?” Phil asked.
“Better. Lots better,” he said and tried to smile.
Mary and Phil exchanged looks. It was apparent he wasn’t doing well at all. Mary reached over and placed her hand on his forehead.
“A little warm,” she said to Phil as if Ned were asleep. “Not too bad.”
“I guess I’ll live for a while yet, eh?”
“You bet,” Phil said.
“Yep,” Mary said.
They munched for a while longer, chewing slowly and in silence, as if Ned’s lack of appetite had infected them all.
Looking at Mary and Ned sitting in the dim little alien cell, eating out of cans and bags, suddenly took on an unreal quality for Phil. He watched them eat and move and mindlessly read the words on the packaging and stare and chew some more. He could hear each crackle of plastic and clink of spoon against tin as if the sounds were coming from inside his skull. Behind Mary’s head was the round arch of the cell’s opening and beyond that, the dark wall of the alien tube they found themselves in. No nightmare he’d ever had was more bizarre than the images and sounds that now entered his eyes and ears. He realized then that he was merely seeing their situation for the first time as it really was.
He got up and went out into the tube and looked down it. A human head popped out of one of the cells like a mechanical thing, rotated toward at him, then disappeared in a blink.
He could hear voices, small, chattering human voices drifting out of one of the holes, and the sound grated on him. It was the sound of small animals, trapped and without hope.
14
F ollowing her plan, she’d taken five loops now, and hadn’t run into any opposition. She was well into the areas that were off limits, but she didn’t care. She was on edge, twitchy. She felt as if the walls themselves were somehow aware of her trespass. At the last juncture she’d past, her feet went cold when she glimpsed her own shadow cast in an unexpected place.
She checked her watch.
She had no way of knowing exactly how many loops she had to traverse before she came to the last one. If she were right, that one would terminate at the central tube just in front of the opening to the shuttle bay.
She’d passed many openings that were clamped shut with seams, and she wondered briefly what was behind them; but she left to her active imagination alone the gruesome discoveries those chambers promised. The chamber coming up ahead, however, gave her no choice but to view the contents firsthand. The large seam was bloomed open. The sound of alien machinery buzzed and hissed out of the chamber like angry, biting flies.
The tube she was in measured close to twelve feet in diameter. The opening to the chamber was easily ten feet wide itself; the largest she’d seen. She looked around for another option and found nothing. If she was going to make it to the shuttle bay she had to go right past it. She moved slowly up to the edge of the opening and peeked inside.
She’d never actually seen it before, so it took her a moment to match it up to the description Mary gave of it. She felt the actual sight of it, the reality of it, bounce off her belief system like a flat stone off water then slowly, inexorably sink in. She felt herself blanch and she leaned on the wall for balance.
There was living material, bits and pieces and chunks and strips of living things all over the lab. Some of it hung in odd racks, neatly, like samples. The flattish table structures were covered with it; and as she scanned the objects on the closest one, she could make out a human head sectioned open in neat symmetrical layers like a classroom model.
They keep it alive. It’s all alive.
She watched an unattended strip of flesh on the table curl up suddenly at the ends as if it had just been put in a hot frying pan. As she watched, the realization slowly sank in that all the bits and pieces and chunks of flesh were moving, squirming, vibrating or twitching. She looked more clos
ely at the disembodied head and prayed that it couldn’t be so. Her prayers were squashed flat when she watched the slack lips twitch and the one remaining eye in that ruined head blink slowly.
She’d heard once as a kid that if you cut off someone’s head, they could still see for exactly twenty seconds. The memory of that formerly fascinating fact made her sick.
One entire wall of the chamber was covered with large containers that grew out of the wall like gigantic pods. Through translucent, milky glass, she could see shapes of living things floating in them, some obviously human and some obviously something else entirely. The slow movement of limbs inside the pods suggested that whatever was in them was still alive. As she looked at one, a human face drifted out of the white fog and seemed to look out forlornly, then sank away and disappeared like an apparition. Another contained just pieces of what was formerly a complete organism, the parts drifting and undulating like strange fish. Against another wall were strange alien containers that looked like organic bird cages. Inside them were the sick fruit of the aliens’ gruesome labor; things not quite done, things made of a little of this and a little of that. Some looked oddly like the thing that had killed Jim, but not quite. Some looked as if they’d been thrown together with no plan, with limbs clawing the air at odd, useless angles. In one cage, the thing inside it, something about the size of a bat, flopped wildly against the floor and bars like some bizarre wind up toy. It moved with such frenetic intensity that she couldn’t begin to tell what it was. She sensed that the movement wasn’t entirely voluntary.
This was the laboratory Mary had talked about; the place where they tried this or that. It was the place where they tested and tried to do new things.
She saw three aliens in the lab, but no goons. The aliens, as always, were very intent on the tasks at hand. That didn’t mean they were blind. What it did mean was that if she timed her dash just right, she might be able to get past the opening without being seen.
She had to act fast. The longer she was in the tube, the greater the chance of being caught. She knew they wouldn’t just ignore her if they caught her in this section of the ship. In all likelihood, they’d carry her right into the hellish lab in front of her. She peeked around the corner again and found two of the aliens where she’d first seen them near the back of the chamber. They had their backs to her, standing close together working on some unfathomable task.
The other one, though close and facing her way, was bent over a squirming piece of flesh, poking at it with probes in one hand; and, in the other, irradiating it with strange light. Its head was covered with alien gear and what looked like goggles that protruded out at least a foot from its head.
There was no better time than now.
She checked her watch and prayed a silent prayer. Then, after taking a few more deep breaths, she held her breath and just walked normally across the opening to the other side. When she was across, she had to clamp her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming out the tension. She felt her knees go momentarily weak as if the bones had softened in them.
She forced strength back into her legs and trotted off.
She went about two hundred feet more in a long loop that terminated precisely where she’d predicted the last loop would—right at the juncture of the central tube and the opening to the shuttle bay. She could see through the opening to the large vertical plate separating the staging area from the air lock and knew the area was empty.
She checked her watch again.
She’d known the shuttle bay would be empty even before she’d set out for it. Using her watch and pen and paper, she’d calculated exactly when the shuttle bay would be abandoned based on her last recorded time of a shuttle arrival, which she clearly remembered from her surveillance. She was there squarely in the window when no activity would take place. She had time to spare—and for the moment, sanctuary.
She trotted across the staging area to a point directly under the small access tube. She removed the canvas bag from her shoulder, then her shirt, then her pants, and stuffed them both into the bag. She looped the bag’s strap around her neck and swung it out of the way.
Then Bailey opened her palms, spread her legs some and made her suckers exude the thick fluid that would help her achieve the required adhesion. When she did that, it felt something like working up a mouthful of spit from dozens of mouths.
She placed her palms high against the wall, as she pressed her belly against it. She willed her new anatomical enhancements to stick fast; then by carefully reversing the adhesion from belly to hands and back again, she began to climb the smooth, vertical wall.
She climbed by inches, and it took her a few minutes to work out the perfect rhythm, but once she had it down, she was soon making good time. It was hard work, and the amount of fluid she had to exude was far more than she’d anticipated.
That, combined with the loss of water from sweating, quickly took its toll. By the time she was three-quarters of the way up, she was dying of thirst. She’d thought about bringing a bottle of water with her and now wished to hell she had.
By the time she reached the access tube, her hand suckers were nearly dry.
She climbed over the edge then flopped down into the tube, panting and sweating. She lay there and rested until she thought she could move again.
Recovered from the exertion, but still overheated, she left her clothes in the bag and scooted down the tube naked. She was soon dripping sweat as if she’d been rained on.
Thirsty.
If she didn’t get to some water soon, she was sure she would go mad.
Her main concern now was making herself heard when she reached the seam. Yelling and screaming through it to the other side was an untested idea; and if she were wrong about it, the entire trip would be for naught. Worse than that, the dripper at the far end of Phil’s tube was the only water she knew of in this end of the ship. If she couldn’t get to that water, she didn’t think she’d be able to walk, let alone slime her way back down the vertical wall of the shuttle bay.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d known it was going to be a one-way trip. She just hadn’t admitted it to herself.
The seam was just up ahead. She hoped she’d have enough strength to pierce its tissues with her voice.
She saw the thing at the same time it saw her. It was the legs that shocked her most. They stuck out from its round body at almost right angles and put it in a stance like a Sumo wrestler. The human arms protruded out of its chest from the same point like strange, thick antennae. Its flesh was mottled gray and pink; the color of one of those gray things and the color of sunburned skin. The combination on that round body gave it the impression of being a grotesque globe with legs. Its head was human, or mostly so, and she could make out an expression of dim loathing in it that chilled her.
It was easily three hundred pounds, and it was right in her way. There was no way around it.
She approached it cautiously and tried to be non-threatening. She didn’t know if it would attack. It looked sick to her and filled with malice, but it was, or had been, human.
“Hi,” she said and smiled. “I’ll just be getting past you here, okay?”
She started to inch past it, keeping her distance, trying not to touch it. She wished she had a weapon.
The creature’s mouth twisted around and the tongue worked. Sounds came out that were nothing close to words and more like the mindless babble of the insane.
“That’s nice,” she smiled and continued to move past it. That close, she could see surgical scars crisscrossing the thing’s bald and soiled head. A chill of fear went through her.
The creature reached one long arm over the other and grabbed Bailey’s wrist with one swift, fluid motion. The grip was very tight, the touch dry and cool. The sense of danger went off the scale.
“Let go, please,” she said, not looking right at it.
The thing cocked its head back and forth and grimaced, the loose lips coming back over long, stained teeth lik
e a horse’s. More of the unintelligible babble poured forth, mixed with a deathly sick stench. She couldn’t make sense of the sounds, but the sense of lunacy came through loud and clear.
The creature brought Bailey’s arm up to its face, turned its head to get a good angle and tried to bite a chunk out of it.
Bailey’s reflex was so sudden and powerful that nothing could have held the arm. She would have pulled it right off had the thing’s grip not broken.
She ran for her life, feeling naked and vulnerable and wishing she’d kept her clothes on if only as a thin veil against the thing’s onslaught. She moved her legs as fast as she could. The loss of water and the exertion of the climb had taken its toll, and she felt herself slowing with each step. Utter, draining fatigue rolled over her seconds later.
There was no place to go, no looking glass to pass through, or rabbit hole to hide in—no asylum—and she cried and screamed from the injustice of it.
A desperate plan came to her like a burst of odd-colored light. She stopped in her tracks, stiffened and wailed and raged her anger and frustration at the only fucked up choice left and waited for the monster to catch her. It wouldn’t work unless she let it catch her. Goddamn it!
The thing was surprised by the fact that the prey-food had stopped moving. It reached out and clamped a hand on her neck and yanked her around. To rend and tear and feed was its only desire. It reached out with its other hand and didn’t so much touch her breasts as test them for strength and resilience.
It felt to Bailey as if her breasts were being massaged by a machine and each deep, rolling probe of the monster’s fingers hurt her. As the thing squeezed and mashed and pulled at her flesh, Bailey concentrated, blocked out the horror, and worked up what fluid she had left in her hand suckers.
The thing put both hands on her waist and squeezed. It felt like being in a vise and she groaned from the pain.
