by Casey, Ryan
The lights in the Main Building had long ago gone out. The room they were in was lifeless.
But there was an air of creepiness to it. Because Riley knew what were in the large test tubes around the room.
Orions.
He walked past them, slowly. Past their static forms as they hovered there in the water. They were dead, at least. Well, by the looks of things anyway. The power outage had put their machines to sleep. Which was a relief considering there were so many of them.
More than he could handle. More than he could deal with. More than any of them could deal with.
Ted looked on, eyes wide. “What the hell are these things?”
Riley looked at Ted. He sympathised with him; with his naivety. How simple the world once was when it was just humans and creatures. Simple creatures, too. Before the virus evolved. Before it took on so many forms.
Before it transcended everything Riley thought he understood.
“They’re Orions,” Riley said.
“Ryan who?”
“Orions,” he repeated, as they walked slowly through the room together. “Some kind of hybrid. The virus, a lot of governments knew it was going to happen. They’d prepared for it. And they’d developed… safeguards. Just in case. Measures to avoid the virus taking a hold. Looks like they underestimated just how strong it was. And how destructive their safety measures could actually be.”
Ted looked amazed. “It’s like… like a sci-fi.”
“What?”
“All of this. It’s like a sci-fi. And not a good one, either. Too many elements. Too many inconsistencies.”
Riley smirked. “All these years, and you’re still living in a world of science-fiction and video games.”
Ted sighed. “I wish I was just looking at it on a screen.”
They reached the door at the back of the room. Unsurprisingly, it was sealed shut.
“Shit,” Riley said.
“Didn’t you account for something like this?”
He glared at Ted. In all truth, Ted was right. He should’ve known the doors would still be sealed shut between the rooms.
Then he looked up at the ventilation shaft above.
“At least we’ve got another route through,” he said.
He dragged a chair over. Pulled it in front of one of those Orion containers. Looked at the glass. Looked at the beast beyond it—its tar-like skin, its devastatingly long teeth. He couldn’t believe how long these things had been hiding in here, unbeknownst to everyone. He couldn’t believe he’d been living in proximity to them for so long.
He climbed onto the chair. Then stretched out, reached up for the top of the container.
Pulled himself onto the top of it.
For a split second, he thought he saw the Orion move.
He ignored it because he knew he was just imagining things. It couldn’t be moving. It was dead.
He clambered onto the top of the container, pushed the shaft free, and then turned around to Ted.
“Well?” he said.
Ted glared at the container, at the Orion, that he was still clearly struggling to come to terms with. That he was struggling to understand—even though he’d surely seen so many horrors of his own in this world. “I… I don’t think—”
“You either get up here and come through these vents with me, or you stay down there. With the Orions. I’m sure they’ll make great company. What’s it gonna be?”
Ted looked at the Orions again, eyes even wider, colour draining from his face.
And then he cleared his throat and went to climb onto the chair. “Fuck it,” he said. “Fuck all of this.”
He got onto the top of the container. Climbed onto it.
And when he stepped over the middle of it, Riley heard something.
He heard it before he saw it.
Ted stepped on something.
A light on the container lit up.
Ted stopped. Looked down. Then back up at Riley. More fear on his face. “What have I done?”
Riley didn’t have to answer.
Not when something banged against the glass.
Riley jolted. Saw Ted wobble on his feet as he stood there, right atop the container.
“Ted,” he said. “Come here. Now.”
But Ted had frozen. He wasn’t moving. He was totally still.
Another bang against the glass. A sound of something cracking.
“Ted,” he said. “You need to—”
But then there was another bang, and this time water spilled out of the container.
Glass went everywhere.
And an Orion spilled out into the room.
Ted looked around at it.
The Orion stood up. Looked back at him.
Riley’s heart pounded.
“Ted,” he said. “Now!”
The Orion started running at Ted.
Ted turned and lunged for the shaft.
Dragged himself up.
The Orion leaped up towards the opening. Leaped further and higher than Riley had seen one do before.
Riley grabbed Ted’s arms. Pulled him up inside the shaft.
And when they were in, the Orion tried to squeeze in. Tried to push itself through.
But it was too big.
It was just too big.
Its human-like eyes stared back at Riley and Ted as they sat there in the shaft.
Looked at them with total rage, total fury, those long teeth glistening like needles.
“Fuck,” Ted said, barely able to speak for the shaking. “That—that was close. Way too damned close!”
Riley nodded. Then he went to turn around. “Come on. We need to find Peter. That Orion’s not gonna just sit around in here and wait to be let out.”
But as he went to climb further through the ventilation hatch, as he went to pull himself through with Ted behind him, he heard something.
A crunching behind him.
A sound of metal morphing.
Twisting.
Riley’s heart raced. He looked back.
And his stomach sank.
The Orion had folded its arms under itself.
Its body looked like it had elongated, somewhat.
And it was pulling itself through the ventilation shafts.
Teeth snapping just feet away from them.
Riley looked around.
Looked past Ted.
“We have to go,” Riley shouted. “We have to go! Now!”
Chapter Eleven
As they walked through the grounds in front of the Main Building together, Anna couldn’t quite get her head around the fact that she’d just had her life saved by Riley’s ex.
This world was batshit crazy. That much could not be argued.
The morning light was starting to creep up, illuminating the island. Anna was exhausted, but more through the roller coaster of an adrenaline spike she’d been through than anything else. She was cold. Probably the shock of what had happened—of what had almost happened. Her footing was wobbly, and her knees were shaky. Her heart was racing, and even though she was sweating, she felt cold. Really cold.
She took a deep breath and looked to her side. Alison walking alongside her.
She was surprised to see Alison looking like she did, in all truth. She wasn’t sure why. But she always figured Riley hadn’t been something of a charmer back in his time, especially from some of the stories he’d told.
Alison was gorgeous, there was no mistaking that.
But hey, she’d had the benefit of living in a world where they had a decent pair of straighteners and some fucking make-up for the last few years.
Alison looked at her, and she smiled. Sympathetically. Which irritated her even more. “You okay now? You could do with getting that blood cleaned off you. You’ll feel a whole lot better then.”
Anna turned away. “I’m fine. Just… just a close call, that’s all.”
“I can appreciate why you did what you did. But trust me. Riley’s not a man who can have his mind
changed.”
“Yeah. I’m well aware of that.”
Alison smiled. “Sorry. I forget you two are together. Still a strange thing to get used to, you know? I feel like I’ve missed out on a whole chunk of life here. It’s like I’ve woken up from a coma and dropped into a world I didn’t even know existed where the people I thought I knew aren’t the same anymore.”
Anna nodded. “Yeah, well. We’ve had to change. All of us.”
“Your eye,” Alison said.
Anna scratched the side of her head. “What about it?”
“How did it happen?”
Anna looked at her. Saw the way she was glaring at her like she was curious. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s a long story. Anyway. We need to focus on getting inside here somehow.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”
“Riley’s in there,” Anna said. “And by the looks of things, Ted’s gone with him, too.”
Alison tutted. Rolled her eyes. “They were always the same. Glued together. Riley sometimes pretended it annoyed him. Like Ted was a leech. Which he was, of course. But… but he liked it, deep down. Ted did a lot for him, back in the day. Helped him through a lot of shit. More than I ever could.”
“Because you left the country with his child and went to the other side of the world? Sounds like you had it really tough.”
Alison sighed. “Don’t judge me for something you don’t understand.”
“How dare you say I—”
“I mean it,” Alison said. “You don’t know what it was like to live with him. You have no idea how difficult things were. Because believe me, Anna. As nice and as heroic as he might be now… he wasn’t always that man. I’m glad he’s moved on. I’m glad he’s changed. And I’m happy for you. Really, I am. But don’t patronise me by pretending to know whether I made the right or the wrong decision all those years ago. I have a son whose dad adores him—his real dad, not just his sperm donor. He’s intelligent. Bright. Outgoing. And that’s because of the decision I made. He has a future. He has a happy childhood. Because of the decision I made.”
“So why did you come out here?”
Alison stopped, then. And Anna sense she’d touched something. Hit a nerve.
She looked away. Then back at Anna.
“Do you know what it’s like to have a question torturing you? A question you need answering? That you can’t just leave be? Like a scab, begging to be picked?”
Anna thought of how she’d felt about Riley when she’d been left for dead in Heathwaite’s Caravan Park. How determined she’d been to find him, to find some sense of closure, once and for all.
She nodded. “I know exactly how it feels.”
“Then you’ll know why I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to come back home when I knew there was a chance my family might be out here. That Riley might be out here. I needed closure. I needed to know. Looks like I got way more than I bargained for, huh?”
Anna smiled then. She realised she’d probably gone a little strong on Alison. But she was bound to be a little sceptical. Bound to be afraid. “My eye,” she said. “I lost it in a shootout a couple of months in. Riley… well. He thought I was dead. He did what he had to do to get out of that caravan site we were at. Didn’t see him for a long time after that. Spent it surviving in my own way. But we found our way back together in the end.”
“So you know how it feels to have someone walk away,” she said. “And you know exactly why sometimes, it’s the right thing to do. Hmm?”
Anna wanted to argue as she stood there and stared into Alison’s eyes.
But in the end, she could only smile and nod.
“Come on,” Alison said. “If we’re gonna get those two idiots out of this building, we’d better get cracking.”
They went to walk towards the entrance.
That’s when they heard it.
First, just a vibration in the air.
Then louder.
Propellors.
Engines.
Anna looked around. Looked up into the sky.
And then she saw it.
There was a helicopter approaching.
Getting ready to land.
“Expecting anyone else to follow you?” Anna asked.
When she looked at Alison, she noticed something.
She’d gone pale.
Deathly pale.
“Alison?”
She looked into Anna’s eye with her wide stare, and she grabbed her arms.
“We need to get away from here.”
“What—”
“We need to get everyone away from the landing site, and we need to hide. Now!”
Chapter Twelve
“Get moving, Ted. We’ve got to get moving. Now!”
Riley raced his way as fast as he could through the ventilation shaft. He didn’t look over his shoulder at Ted to see if he was okay. He couldn’t afford a moment’s lapse in attention, as much as he wanted to know that Ted was keeping up with him.
Because if he took his eye off the ventilation shaft ahead of him, it could be the end.
Because the Orion had worked its way into this shaft.
And it was closing in on them.
Fast.
Riley could hear it worming its way through the ventilation shaft. He could hear its growls, its snarls, its doglike barks as it closed in. Riley had seen how these things moved in the past. He’d seen how ruthless these things were.
All he could do was keep on moving as quickly as he could.
He squinted into the darkness. Because that’s something else that was making progress difficult. This shaft. It was dark. Totally jet black.
He knew he needed direction. He knew he needed to be working his way down, because down was the only way to get to Peter Hillson.
But right now he’d take any direction. He’d take anything.
He threw himself forward when he felt something hit his face.
The shaft.
It had stopped.
He felt to his left. To his right. No way either way. Put his hands above. No opening there either.
And in an awful moment, Riley wondered whether this was it. This was the end of the road. This was where the Orion slaughtered them in such a merciless way.
The end to his story. The conclusion.
No heroism to it.
A pointless end.
He finally found himself turning around, and his stomach sank even more.
Ted was right behind him, panting with fear.
And just beyond Ted, the Orion.
It had contorted its body in ways Riley didn’t think were possible. Dislocated its shoulders, using its long, sharp nails to drag itself along.
It was wormlike. Slithering down the ventilation shafts. Only one target in mind.
Them.
“What do we do?” Ted said.
Riley sat there. Heart pounding. Staring into space.
“Riley,” he said. “What do we do?”
Riley looked at Ted, and he prepared to tell him the truth. That there was no way. That this was the end for them now.
“It looks like we…”
And then he felt it.
The grating.
The grating under his fingers.
He looked down.
Saw a glimmer of light from somewhere below.
And then he looked at Ted. “We need to go down.”
“But—”
“No buts. We need to drop down. Now!”
Riley banged on the grating as the Orion continued to drag itself towards them. And Ted joined him, too. He knew Ted’s trepidation. There was no knowing how far this shaft dropped. No knowing whether it was just an endless tunnel that ended in their death.
But if they stayed here, death was certain.
He banged against the grate even more. The Orion was just feet away now. Just inches. And Riley knew it was only going to fall down with them.
But anything was better than being trapped
here.
Anything was better than the certainty of what was coming.
“It’s not moving,” Ted said. “There’s—there’s no way it’s moving.”
“It’s moving,” Riley said.
“It’s—”
“It has to.”
He looked at the Orion. Looked into those human-like eyes, which would always fill him with dread.
And then he looked back at the grate beneath him, and he lifted his fist.
“Here goes nothing.”
He smacked down all his weight on it.
A shift.
A sudden shift in weight.
The floor beneath him giving way.
And then falling.
He felt himself gliding through thin air.
And he didn’t know how far he was going to fall.
He didn’t know when that drop was going to arrive.
He didn’t know a thing.
But at least they’d made it.
At least they were—
A smack.
A smack at Riley’s side.
A cracking sensation in his ribs.
The breath pumping out of his lungs.
A moment’s respite.
And then Ted slamming into Riley’s body.
“Fuck’s sake,” Riley said, pushing free of Ted. “Thank the Lord you’re not a fat bastard anymore.”
Ted clambered away, too. “Apocalypse has its perks.”
Urgency kicked up in Riley, then. The silence. The lack of movement from above.
“Where’d it go?” Ted said, staring up into the darkness, echoing Riley’s thoughts.
Riley looked up, too. “I don’t know. But we need to get out of here. As long as we’re in here, we’re not safe.”
He turned to the grating in front. Rattled at it. It wasn’t budging, of course.
So with hands shaking, adrenaline pumping through his system, he unscrewed the shaft. Pushed it away.
And then he stepped out, Ted too.
And that’s when they heard it.
The movement above.
The banging around in the ventilation system.
“You wanna screw that back on?” Ted said.
Riley leaned the grating against the opening. “Trust me. No point. Like tearing paper for these things.”
They turned away, then. Riley looked at the room he was in. There was blood on the floor. Dead bodies. A sour smell in the air.
