Blood Cell

by Shaun Tennant

  Josh didn’t see the doorknob move, but he heard it click. Still locked. The person outside tried again, harder, and the lock held true.

  The shadow changed again, but this time it wasn’t a matter of stepping away from the door. The very nature of the shadow itself changed. It faded, going from a solid, impenetrable black to a diffuse, transparent smoke. Like the shadow and the figure that cast it had somehow faded, becoming half-man, half-air.

  Josh spotted wisps of something dark moving in that narrow strip of light, like smoke billowing in from a fire on the other side of the door.

  “Jesus Christ,” Carlos said. “It’s coming in!”

  “What’s coming in?”

  Carlos brushed past Josh and went for the door. Josh hesitated. Then he felt Santos’s hands seize him again. Santos pulled Josh to his feet in a single heave, then slammed Josh so the side until he sprawled over the tabletop. He felt papers and pens beneath his body, and then Santos feeling along his body. Santos followed Josh’s flailing arms to the wrists, and pulled them down over the edge of the desk. There was a sound of clicking steel, and Josh felt cold metal on his wrists. He was handcuffed.

  Santos screamed for Carlos to get out. As Carlos opened the door and let the swirling smoke into the room, Santos whispered. “Maybe you really can help me escape. You’re gonna distract that thing.” Then he followed Carlos out the door.

  Thing? What thing could possibly make Santos Vega this frightened?

  Josh rolled off the desk, but discovered too late that his hands were not free to move. Between his wrists, the chain of the cuffs wrapped around the leg of the desk. He was stuck here.

  There seemed to be a pretty easy solution: just tip the desk on its side. But as Josh moved to slide his arms lower to the floor, he bumped the top of the computer tower. The desk had a built-in cabinet, and Josh was chained to the leg between the tabletop and the cabinet. Even if he tipped the desk over, he wouldn’t be able to fit that cabinet between his arms.

  The smoke was now so dense that Josh couldn’t see through it. It swirled like a blizzard and somehow Josh thought the smoke made a sound. The hair on his neck stood up and Josh thought he heard the sound of someone sniffing. Panicking now, Josh flexed his right hand back to dig into his pocket.

  In the hallway, Santos and Carlos ran at a full sprint to escape the fog. As they rounded a corner, Santos pointed to a doorway and they went inside. This was the multi-faith worship room, otherwise known as the chapel. There was a light on in here, and the men could see each other again. The walls of the room were decorated with a large wooden cross, a Star of David, and a crescent with a star. The space was carpeted, but there was no furniture out now. There were pews in a jam-packed storage room to the left.

  Carlos and Santos fought to catch their breath, and to ignore the expressions of pure panic they saw in each other’s faces.

  Then they heard the sound of pounding, angry footsteps racing down the hallway toward them.

  “Damn. It got through with Farewell quick,” whispered Santos. Carlos only scowled. He would have like to use Josh for an escape, not as bait for the monster.

  The footsteps stooped somewhere nearby, then they made a turn and rushed toward the chapel. Santos ripped the big cross off the wall and held it toward the door.

  “Get ready.”

  Carlos starting mouthing the Lord’s prayer.

  The door pushed open and instead of an undead monster, Josh Farewell rushed in. Josh was flushed from running, his eyes wide with the kind of jolting terror a person reserved for moments when the roof over their head collapsed or their tire fell off on the highway. He held the handcuffs in his right hand. When he saw Santos in front of him, Josh pulled back in surprise, almost fell backward, then whipped the cuffs at Santos’s face, but missed.

  “You want to try that again, asshole?” Josh demanded. Carlos shushed him, then tried to gently guide Josh away from the door. Santos didn’t move or speak. He just held the cross toward the door.

  Josh was beyond confused at this point, and twice as angry. But the sight of the prison’s most notorious gangster brandishing a crucifix as some sort of magic talisman was enough to make Josh stop and take a moment to catch his breath.

  “Ok, now somebody better tell me what that was back there.”

  Carlos shook his head, his wide eyes always watching the door.

  “You wondered where everybody was,” Santos said.

  “That’s the thing that ate them.”

  Josh didn’t believe him. It had to be a joke. There way that this could be happening. Nonetheless, he couldn’t help but stare at the bronze half-bowls that were screwed into the wall on either side of the door. Those things are called stoups, and they exist to hold exactly one thing: holy water.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  John Norris was hiding in the dark among the dregs of society. In his worst nightmares, he never saw himself up in the stacks with the inmates, hiding under Mikey Woodcock’s bed. There were still a handful of inmates scurrying around the building somewhere, but Norris, despite his innate desire to find them and beat them down, could not pursue them. Not if he intended to live.

  For more hours than he could accurately count, Norris had lay here waiting and listening. He was certain that the warden would send in the cavalry any time, but somehow they never came. So all John Norris, Senior Corrections Officer, could do was hide out and listen to the screams. He’d come to Woodcock’s cell on purpose—it was high up on the third level and was likely to be full of contraband. He needed a weapon—a shank or a screwdriver would be fine—but all he had found were a couple baggies of pain killers. When he realized how defenceless he was, he simply slipped beneath the bed to wait things out.

  There had been a lot of screaming at first. At one point Norris had been surrounded by inmates, fighting for his life, and the next moment he was alone, listening to the scum screaming in agony as something marched its way through the pod, beating and tearing through everyone.

  He heard it growl like a dog. He heard it go the length of a hallway with only a footstep at the beginning and end of a fifty-foot distance. He heard it flutter like it had wings, and crunch like it was chewing on chicken bones. He sometimes heard the thing slurping, making disgusting wet sounds, vulgar sounds, as it picked its way through the bodies below.

  Mostly, John Norris heard nothing at all, and those times were the worst. There were long stretches that felt like hours where Norris could hear only his own breathing, and it was always too loud. Too conspicuous. But no matter how long he lay under the bead, the sun never came up. The SRT never breached the pod. Nothing ever happened.

  Norris’ back was starting to seize up. Somewhere in the riot, fighting for his gun or pounding on a punk rapist, he’s tweaked something. And now hours lying prone under this damned bed on this damned concrete had his muscles tightening up like a wind-up toy whose key got turned too far. Soon, he was going to have to leave his hiding spot just for the sake of getting vertical again. He opted to wait until the rain started up again, in order to mask any noise he made. He had to wait almost half an hour, but the weather obliged.

  He placed a hand on the bed frame and started to gingerly slide himself out from under the bed. He got about halfway before he thought he heard something. It was hard to describe, even in his inner monologue, what exactly he had heard. It was more of an intuition of hearing something than an actual signal from his eardrums. Nonetheless, he froze.

  Then it came again, louder and clearer—closer—a soft clicking sound. It was intermittent but steady, like a metronome. Click. Click. Click. Could it be a faucet dripping? There were plenty of taps in all these cells, but wouldn’t Norris have noticed a constant dripping before now?

  The source of the sound became clear when a male voice sounded out from the darkness. It was someone Norris didn’t recognize—vaguely foreign and unnaturally icy. This was definitely the voice of the thing from the mess hall. And it was calling to Norris.

>   “Officer... Off- iss- ser...” It called out in a sing-song fashion, taunting him like this was a child’s game of hide-and-seek.

  “I can smell you, officer.”

  Click.

  Click.

  Norris slid the rest of his body out from under the bed, but didn’t attempt to stand.

  “You smell different from the rest.” The voice was definitely on the third floor with Norris. It was coming straight for him, but still maybe thirty feet away from Woodcock’s cell.

  “You use different shampoo from the rest of them, don’t you, officer?”

  Click.

  Click.

  Damn it all, what was that sound?

  “You shower earlier in the morning than the inmates, officer. And with better soap.” Click. Click.

  “You smell like a woman, officer.”

  Click.

  Click. Norris realized the source of the sound: the man out there was tapping his fingernails on each of the cell bars as he walked. Every click brought him five inches closer.

  “Actually, you smell like several women, officer.”

  Click.

  Norris pulled himself to his feet, his back sending out jolts of pain that made it feel like everything down to his heels was throbbing in time with an AC/DC song.

  “I’ve been saving you for dessert, but the woman smell is so strong around here. I can’t help myself any longer. I have to have at least one bite.” The really terrifying thing was the voice was no longer coming from outside the cell. At some point, the taunting voice of that thing out there had seeped into Norris’s head. And as it spoke to him, he realized that he was hearing the voice where he would usually hear his own inner monologue. The thing was overwriting his thoughts. That was enough to scare Norris out of the cell.

  Outside the cell, he couldn’t see anyone in either direction. He was sure the sound of the tapping was coming from the left, so he turned right. It was another twenty yards to the stairs heading back down, but that was actually a shorter distance than the left side, so Norris was grateful. His back pain subsided, helped by what was surely a massive dose of adrenaline.

  The tapping continued, but now Norris realized that he could also hear footfalls behind him. Heavy, pounding, running footsteps. Norris didn’t dare look back. But the fucking thing kept its nails on the bars, like it was playing a piano on the railing as it ran behind him. Click-click-click. The metronome was in allegro.

  Norris almost made it.

  About five steps before the stairs, the footsteps caught up to Norris. He gambled, and swung around, left hand cocked. With an awkward, weight-shifting lunge, he threw a punch at the face of the man pursuing him. He struck hard flesh with a satisfying shwump sound, and followed it up with a right hand, this one thrown from stable footing. The man, or whatever he was, stumbled back, against the railing of the catwalk. Norris didn’t hesitate. With a practiced hand, he chopped the throat of the creature as hard as he could, making it instinctively reach for its own throat. This left the man momentarily defenceless, and Norris was able to do to this thing exactly what he’d wanted to do to an inmate for years. He tipped it over the railing, and dropped it off the third-storey catwalk. He shouted at it as gravity took over.

  “You need to learn who to respect!”

  When Norris had punched the thing, it was solid. It was flesh and blood. Tipping it over the railing required strength because this thing was heavy. But as it fell, it seemed light, as if it was falling slower than objects on Earth normally fall. It disappeared into the darkness below the second catwalk, and vanished completely. If it even hit the ground, there was no sound. It just disappeared into the shadows.

  Norris decided to turn around and run back to the far stairs, and climb down from there. As he jogged, his back-ache starting to flare up again, he couldn’t help the feeling of being watched. And when he was half-way down to the second tier, he heard the voice again. It was speaking aloud once again, but the quiet, taunting voice from before had become an all-pervading, demonic presence that echoed throughout the stacks. “I like you, officer. And now I’ve really got your scent!” The voice became a deafening laugh, a spiteful, arrogant laugh. He hadn’t beaten this thing. It was just hustling him. Playing with him. He started to run again.

  No matter how hard he ran, that laugh still echoed in Norris’ mind.

  *****

  Sally Peoples had spent her evening much like her erstwhile lover, Norris. She lay on the bed in her cell in solitary, locked away from the world, trapped within a prison gone mad. Like Norris, Sally had nothing to do but listen. The screams had gotten less frequent and there had been no footsteps outside of her cell since Josh had locked the bean slot and left her here. She had wanted it that way, begged for him to close the slots and hide her away, but now she was regretting it. If the slot was open, she could probably reach her skinny arm through and unlock the door. She could get out.

  Not that she wanted to.

  But the idea that she was now totally trapped in this cell, waiting for the police or the army or Josh Farewell to come for her, made her very anxious. This room had a bed and a toilet and nothing else. No food or water, no light except the pale moonlight that sometimes pushed through the heavy storm clouds outside the window.

  She felt bad for what she had done to Josh, taking away his chance to hide, but she simply couldn’t trust the man. He was a smooth operator; she had seen that in his visit to Quinn’s office. He seemed like a nice guy, but he was a career criminal. It was his nature to put on a kind face to get what he wants. And he wanted today was a night alone in the dark, locked in a cell with Sally. There was no way she was going to do that. Ever.

  Sally crawled from the bed to the heavy steel door. She didn’t want to walk because of a fear that her footsteps would be audible. When she reached the door, she leaned into it, cupping her hands over her ear. She closed her eyes and breathed slowly, focusing on any sounds she could pick up. After a few minutes in the dark, she heard a man’s laugh echoing through the building. Whoever he was, he laughed like a mad scientist.

  A minute after that, she heard shuffling footsteps. They were close, maybe even inside ad seg. There was a sound like a whisper, and it seemed so close, a trick of the ear making Sally think the voice was inside the cell with her. Stupidly, she opened her eyes to turn back to the empty bed and soaking window, just to make sure she was alone.

  Something thumped. The door and the walls actually shook with the impact. Was that the SWAT team? Was she saved? But there was no police officer talking to his team, no sound of men sweeping through the corridor. But after a beat, there was another thumping sound. And another and another. It was a brutal, violent sound just outside. After a long series of anvil-like thumps, she head a screeching of steel against steel, and then the violent clang of a metal door hitting the concrete floor.

  Jesus Christ, she thought, something just tore its way into the solitary block. It didn’t have the keys to get into this wing of the building, so it just powered through the doors.

  A few moments later, the sound returned. This time, the force struck against Sally’s door.

  It bumped her hands off the door and sent her scrambling back toward the bed. Something was on the other side of her door, and it was punching the door so hard it had left a dent on her side of the heavy steel. Then there was another thump, and another. The top corner of the door deformed inward and pulled away from the frame, allowing a crack of yellow light from outside to get in.

  The thing that was outside, with its superhuman strength, struck the door again, the sound of the impact ringing loudly in the small room. Sally clamped her hands over her ears, pulled her knees to her chest, and stared at the door in stunned horror as it was struck again, and again. The hinges and the deadbolts started to give. With a final heave, the door broke free from the concrete wall and clattered to the floor of Sally’s cell. And standing in her doorway was a massive silhouette of a man, and behind him, a much smaller silhouette. S
ally screamed.

  “Sally?” asked a man’s voice. Sally had to shake her head to get the cobwebs out.

  “Matt? Matt Williams?” The little silhouette stepped around the big one, and Matt Williams stepped into the pale moonlight. Just to make things even more surreal, he was holding half of a broomstick. “Jesus Christ, Williams.” Sally stared at the giant still standing in the doorway.

  “It’s alright, it’s fine.” Williams was talking to the man, not to Sally. “She didn’t mean to scream at you.” Williams grabbed the arm of the man, and pulled Thomas Turner into the light. Williams turned to Sally. “I promised Thomas I’d come back to check on him.”

  “You... you punched down my door?”

  “Actually, I kicked it,” the giant man said.

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t have the keys.”

  Williams came over to Sally, resting his hand on her arm. “I don’t know how the hell you got in here Sally, but we need to get the fuck out. When I came for Thomas, he had to kick his way out since my keys are gone.”

  “You mean these?” Sally asked, holding up the key ring.

  “Yeah,” said Williams, taking the keys from her hand. “Then Thomas just started to break into your cell too, saying there was a woman in here. I thought he was nuts until I saw you.”

  “Williams, I know it’s bad in here but don’t you think I was safer hidden behind that door than I am now that you kicked it down?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “What gang in the world could possibly be so horrible that it could break into a cell like this? They wouldn’t even have known that I’m here.”

  “The gangs are dead. Everybody’s dead.”

  “John? Have you seen him?”

  “Norris? Son of a bitch left me for dead during the riot. Haven’t seen him since.” Williams saw Sally shrink at the thought. He needed her to move. “Sally, there’s something in here with us. The thing that’s in here now...” Williams wasn’t sure how to describe it to anyone who hadn’t seen it. “This thing would go right through your door. Right under it. It’s a man, but it turns into fog or smoke or something.”