The List

by Christopher Coleman

No one said a word as they stared at the barrier, watching the wall as if expecting it to melt away, or perhaps lift off into space.

  The thud boomed again and this time there was the faintest of noises accompanying it, a sound that was high-pitched and twangy, like the hidden harmony in a song.

  “Did you hear that?” James asked.

  “I heard it,” Dominic answered. “It sounded like a voice to me. Coming from behind the wall.”

  “Look!” Danielle pointed to the corner where the far wall met the back partition, and there, as clear as a housefly on an ice cube, was a large metal door with the words KEEP OUT written on the front.

  Dominic nodded. “Let’s go.”

  They walked quickly to the door and stood beside it, with Dominic taking the lead and resting his hand atop the knob.

  “What are we waiting for?” Michael asked anxiously.

  Danielle had a bad feeling about what was on the other side, but there was no point making a case of caution at that point. They were going through no matter what.

  “Be ready for anything,” Dominic instructed. “All of you.”

  Dominic turned the knob and pushed the door in slowly, and Danielle knew instantly by the smell that they were in for a show of revulsion.

  As Dominic pushed the door wide, a large room slowly came into view. It was the remaining section of the lab—which, Danielle guessed, was about a quarter of the building’s entirety—and, in seconds, she could see where the breach had occurred and the crabs had escaped.

  The back door—a thick, metal block that was at least twice the size of the one they’d just opened—was gaping wide, and a clear path to the world stretched out beyond it.

  The cool night breeze reached the interior opening almost immediately, and the moving air helped to moderate the odor of death that hovered somewhere inside.

  No one took a step toward the threshold, the instinct of restraint filling each member of the group like rainwater in a well, the atrocity beyond looming large in their imaginations.

  “I guess we have the answer to the question about the soldiers,” Dominic said, nodding toward the opening in the back of the room. “They’re not off chasing the ones from the cordon; they’re chasing the ones that were in here. I doubt they even know about the ones that escaped from inside.”

  That had been Danielle’s speculation, of course, but as she thought about the theory further, she remembered the major’s words and how he had blamed them for the breach. “What about the major?” she asked. “He said it was our fault that they were out. That we were responsible for everything.”

  Dominic shook his head. “I think he was speaking more...I don’t know, cosmically. That because we didn’t cooperate with the state or something, that’s why their experiment turned into the clutter of shit it is today. I don’t think he knew about the horde that escaped by the tower though.” He paused and then flicked his eyebrows. “Well, not until it was too late anyway.”

  “So, what happened in here then?” James asked.

  Danielle considered the question quietly, and then quickly surmised the lab workers had lost control somehow, had underestimated the intelligence of the crabs perhaps, and then the monsters had staged some kind of mutant mutiny, escaping from whatever restraints had held them shackled. And once they were out, the crabs had overpowered the staff in the room and escaped through the back.

  It’s just like at the gate, she thought. They had figured out how to open the door. Maybe it was as she’d expected: they were getting smarter.

  There was no way to be a hundred percent sure about her intelligence hypothesis, of course—it was possible that one of the lab techs had opened the door in terror after the melt down and then fled like a rabbit from a wolf, allowing the beasts easy access to the world.

  But she knew in her heart that wasn’t right. The crabs had opened that door, and they were the rabbits now, luring the soldiers from the camp, leaving it vulnerable, decimated.

  And what then? Did they just run to daylight, fleeing to the hills before wandering off to the next county, either west or north, bringing destruction to the unsuspecting civilians in their path? Or perhaps they had hidden and waited in the hills, preparing to double back to the river when the area was clear?

  The possibilities were too big to consider, too cataclysmic, so, instead, Danielle took a brisk step forward, pushing past Dominic and through the threshold until she gained the full view of the room.

  And the scene was as horrific as she had feared.

  The first object her eyes met was a hand, so cleanly severed it looked like a prop from a bad horror movie, though with a bit more detail perhaps, hair around the knuckles, poorly manicured nails.

  Within seconds, her sightline was filled with the entire massacre.

  Blood and clothes and thick chunks of flesh littered the floor in front of her, covering the ground like a beach of gore that led gradually to a sea of carnage. A headless corpse sat slumped near the center of the room, the dead torso bent forward, balancing itself upright, while other bodies—their heads still fastened to their necks—splayed wildly throughout the room, eyes bulging, appearing as if to be drowning in the slaughter. Everywhere were sections of ears and bones and breasts and necks, each body part lining the floor like pieces in an abstract art gallery.

  Danielle whipped her face around as if she’d been slapped and then hung her head, her eyes closed, trying to erase the images. She then turned and walked vigorously back to the interior door, exiting the room and gathering Michael along the way. Without a word, she led him to the front of the lab and the door through which they had originally entered.

  She stopped at the entrance and attempted to slow her breathing, which was now teetering on panic.

  “What did you see?” Michael asked

  Danielle closed her eyes again and took several more slow breaths, trying to focus on nothing but the flow of air in and out of her lungs. In a few moments, she felt gathered and then looked at Michael, answering, “It’s going to be okay. I promise. I just...I just ha—”

  “What did you see?” Michael repeated, his voice more insistent this time.

  “It was...” She took another gaping breath, exhaling slowly. “It was very bad, Michael.” Her voice wavered now. “I don’t really know how to—”

  “Danielle!”

  The voice came from the back room—the Murder Room, as Danielle would always remember it. It was Dominic.

  Danielle let her eyes linger in the direction of the call for a moment, as if considering whether to answer. Finally, she said to Michael, “Stay here. I’m going to make sure everything is...okay.”

  “But it’s not okay, is it?” Michael’s voice was laced with despair. He moved to one of the lab stools beside him and sat. “Remember what you told me, Danielle. You were going to bring him out. You were going to bring him back to me.”

  “I know I said that, Michael, but—”

  “Danielle, there’s someone alive back here!”

  Danielle couldn’t help but let her lips drift into the tiniest of grins as a set of teardrops suddenly materialized, perching at the edge of both eyes. Before Michael could say another word, she turned and ran back to the door that led to the massacre.

  As she approached the entrance, she saw James standing outside, his face as white as chalk, and she knew he’d made the mistake of entering and was now back outside again, recovering.

  Danielle rushed past him and through the door for the second time, now hopeful as she lifted her eyes above the floor and to right side of the room where Dominic was standing.

  The walls.

  She had been so hypnotized by the destruction on the floor below her that she hadn’t noticed the walls of the room, which were queued with the same clear tubes that had lined the walls in the front of the building.

  And inside one of them was a man.

  A black man.

  And he was alive.

  There was no doubt about it this time. I
t was Scott Jenkins.

  3.

  “Scott?”

  Danielle yelped the name, startled, not quite believing the man in front of her was actually the subject of their mission.

  Scott Jenkins’ nose was barely an inch above the fluid inside the tank, and hearing his name, he lifted his chin so that his face just cleared the liquid. His eyes were slits, exhausted, and he appeared to be naked, though the murky yellow solution was nearly opaque, clouding his lower body. To Danielle, it looked as if he were floating in a vat of rusty urine.

  Scott’s eyes met Danielle’s for just a moment, but they shifted away quickly, as if he didn’t recognize her. He then looked at Dominic but lost interest in him just as quickly. His eyes darted to the ceiling for a moment and then to each side of him, down the rows of tanks. Danielle thought he looked mad, and if he had witnessed the obliteration in front of him—which she couldn’t imagine he hadn’t—how could he not be?

  Scott looked back to Danielle again, and then his eyes immediately drifted just over her shoulder, where they stopped and transformed into a gaze of longing and sadness. He coughed once and then started to cry.

  Danielle turned to see Michael standing behind her, his cheeks flooded with tears.

  “I’m guessing this is him?” Dominic said.

  Dominic’s words were a mood-breaker, but Danielle was grateful for them. They didn’t have time for sentiment; they had to get moving.

  “How do we do this?” Danielle asked. “How do we get him out of there?”

  “I’ll assume you’re asking me because you think I know? And you would be wrong about that.”

  “What? Haven’t you been in here before?”

  Dominic shook his head. “Been on these grounds many times, but never actually stepped foot inside.” He paused a moment. “I’ve been to a place very similar though, except that spot was a bit more airplane hangar than laboratory. I’ll have to tell you that story some time. Over coffee, maybe?”

  “Not breakfast?” Danielle bantered. And then, “So you’ve never seen these tubes before?”

  He shook his head again. “Nope.”

  Danielle walked to the tube that held Scott and studied it in full, scanning it from top to bottom and then back to the top. “Look there.” She pointed. “See it. It looks like it latches in the back.”

  In the back of the tube were three sets of thin hinges equally spaced from top to bottom. She let her eyes adjust through the liquid until she spotted the cut in the plastic that formed the huge rectangle of a door.

  “Do you see it?”

  Dominic nodded. “I guess we just open it then, right?”

  “What if it hurts him somehow? To just take him out so abruptly?”

  Dominic shrugged. “I don’t know, Danielle. What choice is there?”

  As Danielle considered the alternatives, a sound of pattering footsteps came from just outside the back of the lab.

  Danielle instinctively grabbed Michael and pulled him down, kneeling with him next to the tube. She then motioned for Dominic to do the same. He followed.

  From their angle in the room, Danielle could only see about half of the opening in the back door, but as she continued to stare toward it, she saw the first crab pass the opening, followed by three more. They seemed to be unaware of the open lab though, instead focused in the direction of the other monsters that had escaped from the area.

  They’re going to join them, Danielle thought. They’re going to ambush the soldiers from behind, trapping them. And then an afterthought. I hope they bought a ton of ammo.

  Two more crabs entered the frame of the door and disappeared, and this time Danielle counted a full minute. She then counted another, then one more, allowing time for any other straggling members of the cordon group to pass.

  But no more came into view, and after another minute passed and she felt it was safe, Danielle finally stood from her crouch, never taking her eye off the door. Finally, she looked down to Michael and encouraged him to stand with her.

  Danielle checked the door one last time, an afterthought before preparing to continue with the rescue of Scott. And just then, a moment before she shifted her eyes away from the rear entrance and back to the lab, the bony, white shoulder of a final, trailing crab appeared in the doorway.

  The creature took a step as if to follow in the path of the others, but before it disappeared into the night, it stopped and lifted its head, searching for a smell, or a noise perhaps, some movement of molecules that had drifted in on the wind at just that moment.

  The crab stood in place for several seconds, hunched and chasing the scent or sound, until finally it turned and faced the building. It lingered there for a few beats and then moved to the threshold of the door.

  Danielle pushed Michael back to the floor, dipping down beside him a second later, but just before she dropped, she caught a passing glimpse of the crab’s black eyes. Perhaps it was her mind’s concoction, but they appeared searching, hungry.

  “Shit!” Dominic whispered, now crouched next to them. “It’s inside.”

  “It’ll leave,” Danielle answered; it was more prayer than belief.

  From their position on the floor by the tube, they could no longer see the crab, but they could hear it as clearly as a gong as it moved through the doorway and forward into the wide space of the room. Danielle imagined its chimp-walk gait, its spastic head and neck and eyes, and she knew it wouldn’t be long until the mutant made its way toward the slaughter its brothers and sisters had wrought.

  “Where is your rifle?” Dominic asked.

  Danielle looked to the floor, and when she didn’t see it there, she immediately remembered that she’d left it back by the front door with Michael. In her haste to see Scott, or whoever it was that was still alive in the Murder Room, she had forgotten to grab it.

  “Shit!”

  Dominic nodded and held up his pistol. “All right, stay close then.”

  They continued listening to the erratic scurrying of the crab as it searched the lab, banging into stools and carts and white boards, and later sounding as if it were attacking various pieces of furniture, testing them to see if there was life somewhere inside.

  Suddenly the lab went quiet, for just a moment, and then the slapping of bare feet on tile began to crescendo quickly. Danielle knew it was only a matter of seconds before the crab entered their corridor and they would meet it face to face. She didn’t have a weapon, but Dominic was armed, and she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to fire on sight. And if his aim was pure, that would be that.

  Dominic held the pistol high in front of his face, like a cop entering a drug lord’s nest, his hand steady, level. The footsteps of the crab sounded just around the corner now, and Danielle could almost see the white goblin before it entered her vision.

  But then, for a reason Danielle couldn’t have guessed, it stopped. Just when the showdown seemed destined to come to a head, the sound of the crab’s feet ceased.

  Seconds later, the slapping rhythm began again, this time fading with each moment that passed. It was backtracking in the direction of the door, and after another thirty seconds or so, they heard a stool move on the opposite end of the lab, near the door that led out of the lab and into the night.

  Danielle held her breath and stood, just to about three-quarters height, tall enough to see over the worktables. She stared toward the door, and there she could see it, the crab, shuffling out the door, giving up the hunt.

  She waited until it was fully outside, and then she gave it another few beats until the crab was completely out of sight. She nodded. “Okay, it’s gone. But we got lucky. We need to make this happen now.”

  Dominic and Michael stood, and Danielle immediately rushed to the back of the tube, committed not to waste any more time.

  She felt along the plastic outer shell and quickly found the lock. “Michael, stay in front where your father can see you. Talk to him. Tell him he’s going to be okay.”

  Michael paused. “Is he?
”

  “Yes,” she answered emphatically, and then, “I think so.” She turned to Dominic. “You stand beside me. When I open the door, you need to be here in case he falls. I’m not sure how he’s standing up right now, and I don’t want him to collapse and crack his head open.” She paused. “Do you think there’s a blanket in here somewhere?”

  Dominic looked around the room until his eyes fell on the back wall and a red package next to a fire extinguisher. He nodded in that direction. “Right there,” he said. “Fire blanket.”

  “Perfect. Grab it.”

  Dominic sprinted to the wall and grabbed the blanket and was back in position next to Danielle within moments.

  Michael was well into the story of how he and Danielle and Dominic had come to be there, and how he had used his dad’s truck to kill some of the monsters by the cordon fence.

  “Not gonna punish me for taking the car without asking, are you dad?” Michael asked. But Scott wasn’t in on the joke, not there yet, and he only shook his head in response to the question.

  “Ready?” Danielle asked, but before anyone could answer, she took a step to the side of the tube, lifted the pin on the latch, and opened the door.

  The fluid gushed through the opening like a waterfall, flooding the surface by the tube in large splashes before flowing into the lab and shallowing out into the open space, finally becoming little more than a thin, wide puddle across the floor.

  Danielle watched with anticipation as the water level in the tube decreased rapidly, and soon she could see that Scott was, in fact, being kept upright artificially, held in position by two restraints, one under each arm. The manacles were holding Scott prisoner, she knew, but they were also the reason he hadn’t slipped beneath the yellow solution hours earlier and drowned.

  Danielle averted her eyes as Scott’s nude body became exposed, but the moment the water reached about shin level, she squeezed into the tube and unlatched the restraints on either side, freeing him.

  His body collapsed straight down, but Dominic was there to catch him, as instructed, and he quickly wrapped Scott in the blanket and led him down gently to the floor. Dominic kept the man’s head turned, keeping him from witnessing the slaughtered scientists that were only a few feet away.