by Lee Goldberg, Scott Nicholson, J A Konrath, J Carson Black,
*
Dr. Belgium tapped his fingers on the desk, waiting for the President to get on the damn video phone. He heard movement far behind him and felt the hair on the back of his neck spring to attention.
Belgium swivelled around and stared down the Yellow Arm.
Bub had Andy.
*
Andy had never felt so helpless. Bub had him clutched tightly in one claw. The other was pressed over his mouth, the talons tickling the back of his head.
The demon looked surprisingly different; like a sea serpent or a long, thin Chinese dragon. His face was elongated, reminding Andy of the times as a child he'd pressed silly putty onto a comic book and then stretched and distorted the figures. But the bloodshot eyes and the evil grin were pure Bub.
“Has the bomb been deeeeeeeactivated?” Bub whispered, bathing Andy's face with decay.
He removed his claw so Andy could answer.
“No,” Andy stammered.
“Liaaaaaaaaaaar.”
Andy felt the talons dig into his sides. He was being crushed and couldn't draw a breath. Tears were squeezed from his eyes.
“It was shut off,” Andy whimpered.
Bub released his grip slightly and Andy gulped in some air.
“How do I get out of heeeeeere?”
Andy thought about the Green Arm, digging into the original tunnel. If Bub found out about it, it could very well mean the end of the human race.
“The Yellow Arm,” Andy said with as much emotion as he could muster. “There are four gates blocking the exit.”
“That’s the only waaaaaaaay?”
“Yes.”
“Liaaaaaaaaaaar.”
Bub moved his claw down Andy's body.
“Here comes the paaaaaaaaain.”
*
The phone rang in Yellow 6, giving Sun a major startle. She picked it up with more than a little trepidation.
“Bub's in the Yellow Arm,” Belgium's voice said in a whisper. “He's got Andy.”
Sun thought fast. Already in the enema was enough liquid sodium secobarbital to kill an elephant. She filled the remaining space with the potassium cyanide she'd been looking at and snapped on the nozzle.
Before opening the door she put her ear to it.
Andy was right outside, whimpering.
Sun took a lungful of air and swung open the door.
*
Bub had heard the phone ring and was ready for Sun. When the door flung open he had a long spindly claw outstretched to wrap around her.
What he hadn't anticipated was her weapon.
As the giant talons encircled Sun's body, she jabbed him in the wrist with some kind of small spear.
This amused Bub, but his demeanor quickly changed to shock when he felt the foreign liquid pulsing into his body, burning as it went.
What had she done?
He shoved Sun away, pushing her back into the Med Supply room, and then tossed Andy aside to yank the weapon out of his palm.
Bub stared at his hand, watching as the hole healed, but his expression was pure bewilderment. The nictating membranes over his eyes fluttered once, twice. His head swayed back and forth, and then his chin hit the ground with a SLAP.
*
“Run!” Dr. Belgium yelled at them from the Octopus, looking at them through the gate. But they didn't need to.
Bub was sprawled out on his face.
Sun limped out of Yellow 6, staring at the demon.
“Is he dead?” yelled Dr. Belgium.
“I’m not sure.”
She moved closer, reaching out her hand to take Bub’s pulse.
“Bad idea,” Andy grabbed her shoulder.
“We have to make sure he's dead. If not, I can get more drugs and...”
Bub's eyelids flicked open and his claw shot out at Sun.
Andy yanked her out of the way and they stumbled down the hall to the air conditioning vent. Sun went first, up the book case Belgium had pushed into the hallway for his ascension. Andy followed quickly.
Bub flopped over onto his belly and moaned, but he didn't chase them.
Maybe the bastard was going to die after all, Belgium hoped.
The computer monitor beeped. Dr. Belgium dragged his attention away from the Yellow Arm and went to the desk. The message bar read VIDEO INTERFACE ACTIVE and the President came on the screen. He looked as he always did; rosy cheeked and rested.
“I see Protocol 9 has failed,” he said.
Belgium frowned.
“We turned off the nuclear device. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but we’re all still alive.”
“I didn't like the decision, Dr. Belgium, but I don't regret it. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. You can understand that.”
“Yes I can, Mr. President. I can also understand what it’s like to live with innocent blood on my hands. It isn't pleasant. Though perhaps your political bearing makes you more tolerant of it than I.”
“You do realize the area still has to be neutralized.”
“Neutralized. That's a nice way to put it. Like spraying a smoky room with disinfectant. Five people have already been neutralized by this ill-conceived little project. I don't want the rest of us to follow suit.”
“I'm sorry, Dr. Belgium. My hands are tied.”
“Look, we've managed to knock out Bub. He may even be dead. And we got rid of the thing Helen turned into.”
“This is the way it has to be, Frank. We cannot allow for the slightest possibility that the occupant may escape. You knew this when you signed on at Samhain. You voluntarily accepted the risks.”
“Yes yes yes. But if there's a chance of saving us and still destroying Bub, shouldn't it be considered?”
“I am sorry, Frank. I truly am.”
He didn't look sorry. Not a bit. He might have been talking about the economy or the budget.
“How long do we have?”
“Operation Slim Bob has already begun. It will reach completion in eighty-seven minutes.”
“Can we have more time?”
“That's impossible.”
“No chance of a rescue?”
“Your country recognizes the sacrifice you're making, Frank. May God be with you.”
Belgium rubbed his eyes and let out a deep breath.
“There is another favor, a personal one, that I would like to ask.”
“If it is within my power, consider it done.”
“It is within your power, Mr. President. And you could even do it right now.”
“Yes, Frank?”
“Go fuck fuck fuck yourself.”
Belgium hit the disconnect button.
“Eighty-seven minutes,” he said softly. “That isn't enough—”
CLANG!
Belgium jumped six inches out of his chair and spun in the direction of the noise.
Crouching in the Orange Arm was another creature. Bigger than a hippopotamus, covered head to toe with coal-black scales. The thing cocked its head and stared at Frank with a bloodshot eye the size of a dinner plate.
It was on all fours, and its back nearly touched the hallway ceiling.
The animal moved backward, much quicker than Belgium would have anticipated for something so large, and then reared on its hind legs and charged the gate again.
CLANG!
The ground shook and Belgium watched in amazement as the titanium gate bent slightly inward.
“What the hell is that sound?” Andy asked.
The biologist turned and saw Andy and Sun were now in the Red Arm. The Orange Arm was to their right, so they hadn’t noticed the latest complication.
CLANG!
“It's, um, proof that things can always get worse. We'd better hurry.”
“Get out of there, Frank,” Sun said. “Meet us in the Green Arm. What's Bub doing?”
Belgium tore his eyes away from the ramming demon and looked down the Yellow Arm.
“He's still there. But he's... changing.”
“How?”<
br />
“I think he's turning back to his regular size.”
“Good, then he can't get through the vents.”
CLANG!
“I talked to the President. We only have about eighty-five minutes,” Belgium said.
“Find the digging equipment. We need to get the blueprints.”
Belgium nodded. He stole a glance at the Orange Arm gate.
CLANG!
The lower half was bending away from the doorway.
Belgium hurried into the duct, not daring to look back again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“Check that cabinet,” Sun told Andy. “They're in a brown folder, legal sized, about an inch thick.”
Sun was pretty sure she'd filed them away rather than left them in one of her growing piles, but she wanted to double-check. She quickly sorted through the large Samhain pile on the desk, then for caution's sake went through the Bub pile.
Something caught her eye.
Not the blueprints, but an old report on Bub's stool samples. She picked it up, trying to figure out what her subconscious was trying to tell her.
Since Bub had been brought here, he'd had several bowel movements while in the coma. Back in 1921 the stool had been analyzed with a newly acquired mass spectrometer, which found it contained an ample amount of uranium.
It hit Sun like a slap. Now it finally made sense. What she'd been searching for in Red 3. How Bub had been buried in Panama. Why it took him so long to wake up. His spaceship, the hieroglyphs...
“The hot rock,” Sun said.
Andy looked up at her from the file cabinet.
“It's uranium. Bub's got such a highly advanced genetic structure, he's very sensitive to radiation. Radiation destroys DNA, it kills cells. The ancient Mayans probably covered him in uranium ore when he was sleeping. That's the hot rock they were referring to.”
“It put him in a coma, and they buried him,” Andy said. “It fits with the glyphs.”
“But there's more. The capsule, his spaceship, had lead in it. To protect him from the iridium in deep space. That’s why he’s been in a coma so long—it took him that long to get all of the uranium out of his system. The radioactivity slowed his metabolism down to a crawl. And being here made it even worse.”
“How?”
“Look around,” Sun said, picking up a handful of files. “X-rays. Thousands of X-rays. The X-ray machine was invented before the turn of the last century. They bombarded Bub with radiation on a continuous basis up until the 1970s. I'm surprised he didn't glow in the dark.”
“Why'd they stop in the 70s?”
“Two guys took over, Meyer and Storky. They did other tests on Bub. But not anything involving radiation. I wonder why...”
But Sun realized she already knew.
Dr. Meyer had died of cancer. Kaposi's sarcoma. A malignancy of the skin. He continued to work at Samhain through his illness, getting radiation therapy at the compound. Radiation in cancer treatment had to be carefully monitored. Meyer couldn't have worked on Bub if there was radiation involved. The human body could only handle so big a dose without getting sick, or dropping dead.
“Is the X-ray machine still here?” Andy said. “Maybe we could use it as a weapon.”
Sun shook her head. “We've got something even better than that. Let's find those blueprints.”
“It was a green folder?”
“Brown.”
“Like this?”
Andy held up the folder full of blueprints. Sun hurried over and spread the folded document out over the floor.
“There,” Andy said, pointing at some faint gray lines. “In Green 11. See the wall there? The lines continue beyond that. I'll bet that's the tunnel.”
“How thick is that wall?”
“Got me. Probably eight inch cinder block. Could be even thicker.”
“Let's go,” Sun said, folding up the blueprints.
They left Red 3 and hurried down the hallway. Sun tried not to look at the blood stained walls and tried not to breathe the smell of violent death. Poor Rabbi Shotzen. There were bits of him everywhere.
Andy bent down and picked something up. A disposable lighter. He flicked it once, and the flame shot up two inches.
“Want to break for a smoke?” Sun asked.
Andy put it in his pocket. “Might come in handy.”
In Red 14 they cleared off a desk and pushed it out under the ceiling air vent in the hall.
Sun went first, hiking her shirt up over her face to make breathing in the dusty duct bearable. It was slow going, and to get to the Green Arm they had to pass over the Orange Arm, the ominous CLANG from below becoming louder and more frightening.
When Sun crawled over the grating she looked down, nervous to see what was making so much noise. It made her catch her breath.
The creature was simply massive. Those titanium gates wouldn't be able to hold up to a monster like this. This demon looked like it could eat a tank. How many of these things would Bub be capable of making if he escaped Samhain?
“What is it?” Andy whispered behind her, touching her leg.
“Shh!”
The awesome beast stopped in mid-charge and lifted an ear to the ceiling. Sun held both her breath and her bladder as it stared up at the vent she was perched over. One of its enormous eyes inched closer, squinting into the darkness of the duct. It got so close Sun could count the dark blood vessels that squiggled around its black cornea, each the width of a pencil. The demon blinked, then turned away and resumed its attack on the gate.
“Are you okay?” Andy nudged her.
Sun exhaled. “Yeah. Don’t look through the grill.”
Sun continued forward, making the decision that if she did have to die, she wasn't letting Bub or this giant loose upon the world.
“Holy shit.”
Andy had apparently looked through the grill.
“Keep moving.”
“We’re in hell, aren’t we? We’re actually trapped in hell.”
“Let’s just hope Frank found those shovels.”
*
Dr. Frank Belgium opened the door to Green 5. He knew Green 6 and 7 contained medical equipment, Green 8 was the freezers, and Green 9 was the dry goods storage. This was the only room left to check.
Luckily, he hit the jackpot.
It was a large closet, and the overhead light didn't work. But stacked in the corner, gathering dust, was the excavation equipment. Picks, shovels, axes, hoes, and even a sledgehammer.
“Frank?”
Belgium spun around, looking for the voice.
“Up here.”
Sun was poking her head down through the ceiling vent. He helped her climb through, and then they both assisted Andy.
“I found the equipment,” Belgium told them. “Where's the cavern?”
“Green 11,” Andy said. “Let's move.”
“I want to check on Bub,” Sun said.
Andy checked his watch. “We’ve only got sixty-two minutes to dig out of here and get a safe distance away.”
“We need to see what he’s doing.”
Belgium watched Sun and Andy exchange a meaningful glance. He wished he had someone who looked at him like that.
Maybe, if he lived through this, he’d join a dating service.
If he lived through this.
*
Sun walked down the Green Arm toward the Octopus. She stopped at the titanium bars and pressed her cheek to them, looking left.
CLANG!
The ramming beast was almost through the Orange Arm gate.
She switched cheeks and stared at the Yellow Arm. Bub had his hands on the bars. His yellow eyes locked on hers.
“No meeeeercy for yoooooou.”
CLANG!
The giant demon burst through the Orange gate and went barreling into the Octopus, knocking over tables, chairs, and millions of dollars in computer equipment. Then it sat in the center of the Octopus and stared at its master, awaiting direction.
; “You’re neeeeeeeeext.”
Sun tried to focus. They needed time to break through the wall and escape, and couldn’t do that if Bub was on their tail.
When in doubt, tell the truth.
“There are four other titanium gates blocking the exit to the outside. You don’t have time to come for us.”
“I have tiiiiiiime,” Bub hissed.
“No, you don’t. Since the nuke didn’t go off, they’re going to drop one on us. A big one.”
Bub sneered, his horrifying features becoming even more revolting.
“Liaaaaaaaaar,” he spat. “You will beg for deaaaaaath.”
The ramming beast pawed at the floor, then launched itself at the Green Arm gate. The shockwave jolted Sun backward.
That didn’t work out as I’d hoped, she thought.
Sun flew into Green 11. Andy was attacking the concrete wall with a sledgehammer, awkwardly holding it with his left hand, and Belgium was having a time trying to figure out the proper swing of a mining pick. They were both sweating, and for their labors they'd only made a few cracks in the cinder block.
“I need help. Fast.”
“What's wrong?”
“Defense,” Sun said, thinking about the demon breaking into the Green Arm. “We're about to have company.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Bub believed Sun. Her government would have a back-up plan. He stared at the four sets of bars preventing his escape and felt anger welling inside him. Anger, and an emotion he hadn't known in millennia of existence.
Fear.
Strong as the beast was, it wouldn’t be able to get through all of these gates in time. Which meant is was within the realm of possibility that Bub might actually die.
The thought was horrifying. At the epicenter of a nuclear explosion the temperature was hotter than the sun. There was no way he could protect himself from that.
Humans. How had these miserable hunks of carbon gotten so smart so fast? Sun had hurt him with her poison. Hurt him almost as much as those filthy Mayans did with their uranium ore. Bub could no longer alter himself to fit into the air duct—his body was busy trying to heal. Now, to add to his injury, he might actually have to comprehend his own death.
