They listened for a few moments to the hushed conversation that was going on nine floors below.
Rimmer shook his head. “I hear a couple of my men, Andy Dennison, and a few of Dr Gorman’s lab assistants if I’m not mistaken. No one else though.”
Jerry’s head dropped. “I hope she’s okay.”
“You really like her?”
“She was nice to me; seemed to like me. That’s pretty rare.”
Rimmer placed the radio down on the sand carefully and looked at Jerry. “Seems to me you set out to make people not like you.”
Jerry shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know why I do it. I’m just kind of an obnoxious dork.”
“No, you’re not. You act like an obnoxious dork so that people don’t like you. I think you do that because you can’t take people not liking you for who you really are. You can’t accept rejection so you make sure that nobody gets a chance to learn who you really are. Textbook single-parent upbringing. You feel rejected by your father and you developed natural defences against being rejected by anyone else.”
Jerry huffed. “I didn’t realise you had a side gig as a psychiatrist. How you know so much about me anyway?”
“I pulled up your file when you arrived. British Government only lists a mother for you, no father.”
“And you think you know me because of that?”
Rimmer twiddled with his beard. “No, I think that because I know myself. “I didn’t have a father either. Drifted through life, acting like an asshole, getting in fights, pushing people away. I joined the army just to separate myself from society.”
“So that’s why you’re such a hardass, then?”
“Nope, I’m a hardass because it’s my job to be. If I’m not, people die. I came to terms with who I am a long time ago. It comes with age. Back when I was your age, though, I was pretty screwed up.”
Jerry nodded and spoke quietly. “Are you trying to say I should cheer up, that things will be better in the future? Because I’ve heard all that shit before.”
“I’m no fortune teller. I don’t have a fucking clue what’s going to happen to you in the future. All I know is that you went running back into this hellhole as soon as you realised that the Dennisons might be in danger—people you’ve only known for a couple days. There’s a lot to be said about loyalty and courage like that. Made me realise there’s more to you than a wise-cracking limey.”
Jerry laughed. “Thanks. Guess you’re not the arsehole I thought you were either.”
Rimmer cackled heartily. He grabbed a handful of sand and through it at Jerry. “You’re lucky I don’t kick your ass.”
Jerry was still laughing when there was a thud against the cell door. Both men turned and looked up.
A man stood at the glass hatch, bleeding face pressed up against it.
“What the hell?”
“That’s Newman. I saw him get ripped apart earlier by that spider.”
Jerry looked at the man’s torn open face and swallowed. Then he watched as the Basilisk re-appeared in the hatch. It was holding Newman’s dead body by the neck.
“What’s it doing?” Jerry asked, jumping up and peering out of the glass window.
The basilisk grabbed a hold of Newman’s hand and shoved it against the LED screen beside the cell door.
“Oh, shit,” said Jerry. “It’s accessing the cell. You think she’s going to get in?”
The siren above the cell began to sound and the door unlocked with a clunk.
Rimmer drew his weapon. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure she is going to get in. I also retract my statement about not being a fortune teller. I can see the future very clearly now. We’re both screwed.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Now that all immediate threats were dealt with, Andy turned his mind back to his wife. Sun lay unconscious at his feet, a nasty looking gash along her forehead to match the sickly wound on her neck.
Andy dropped down beside her. “Sun? Sun, wake up?”
West popped a new magazine into his smoking assault rifle and came over. “Is she okay? What happened to her?”
Andy shook his head. “I don’t know. She was like the nurses, possessed or under some sort of mind control. I’ve never seen her act like that. I need to help her.”
“How?”
Andy fought back tears. “I don’t know. She’s been unconscious since Lucas blew the steel fence out of his cell and hit her.”
“Sorry about that, lad.”
“Bring her to my lab,” said Dr Gorman, entering from the rear of the conference room. “There are medical supplies there. I can see what I can do for her.”
Andy craned his neck. “Dr Gorman. I’m so glad you’re okay. Do you think you can help her?”
“Of course. Bring her.”
West helped Andy get Sun up off the floor and they carried her through into the lab complex. The area was completely deserted and seemed eerie without people in lab coats rushing around or staring into microscopes.
“In here,” said Gorman. “Set her down on the examination table over there.”
Andy did as instructed and carried his wife up onto the oversized padded table in the centre of the room—it was obviously wide enough to accommodate the inhuman creatures of the Spiral. Sun murmured softly as they laid her down but she did not awake. Her eyes were swollen behind her eyelids, stretching the delicate skin and making tiny red veins visible.
“What are you going to do for her?” Andy asked.
Dr Gorman quickly came towards them with a syringe pointed in the air. “I’m going to keep her out for the time being. The human body is far better at healing when it’s resting. Mixed with this tranquiliser is a broad-spectrum anti-biotic. Infection is the biggest fear with an open wound like this. Hopefully it will fight off whatever got into her and made her mad as well. Can you remove what’s left of that bandage, please?”
Andy peeled away the rancid shreds of bandage from his wife’s neck and almost gagged as a jet of yellowish pus leaked out.
“The wound is bad. We’ll have to clean it.” Dr Gorman spoke with one of her nearby lab assistants who had survived the encounter in the conference room. The young man set about collecting alcohol wipes and a bottle of rusty coloured liquid, and then he got to work on Sun’s wound.
“So,” said Dr Gorman, “would anybody care to share with me what in damnation is going on in this facility. All of the cells are open, on all floors. General Kane has no doubt set the emergency protocols to begin and we have a mere matter of minutes to live.”
Andy’s eyes went wide. “All of the cells are open? How do you know that? And what do you mean, we’re all going to die?”
Gorman strode across the lab to a desk in the corner. She tapped her sharp index finger against the computer monitor there. “I have a computer. That’s all I need to know what’s going on around here. I accessed the floor cameras and witnessed the cell doors opening myself. I also checked the root directories to see what Kane’s recent activities on the network were.”
“You can’t do that,” said Ward. “Kane will have your job.”
“And perhaps I would care, if not for the fact that Kane entered the facility’s destruction command. The Spiral is about to become a large chunk of concrete beneath the ground.”
Andy felt the colour drain from his cheeks. “We have to get out of here.”
“Impossible. The elevator is on lockdown and there is no way to resume control of it. Even General Kane himself is set to perish.” There seemed to be the glimmer of a smirk on the woman’s face as she said that.
“Well, can’t we stop the destruction sequence?”
Gorman shrugged her shoulders. “Only Kane can do that, I’m afraid. He initiated the sequence and only he can reverse it. It’s his facility after all.”
West sighed. “If all of the cells are open, there’s no way Kane won’t destroy this place. He has to. He took an oath. We all did.”
“I fucking didn’t,” said Andy. “I’m
getting my wife out of here, no matter what.”
“A noble sentiment,” said Gorman. “But nobody is getting out of this place; not us, and—more importantly—not the scum that we swore to contain down here.”
“So why the hell did you even bother trying to help my wife? Why give her antibiotics if she’ll be dead within the hour?”
“Because I am a doctor, and it is my duty to provide care. Besides, Kane may well change his mind. If he does not abort the sequence, then he will die right along with everybody else. It’s only at times like these that we can know the true measure of a man. If he has a backbone, we die. If he’s weak and cowardly, then we may just live out the evening.”
• • •
Kane sat in his office and rubbed at his forehead. The men and women outside in the Nucleus were close to panic and the only thing keeping them under control was the handful of loyal security guards who believed as much in the oath they had taken as he did.
It is our duty to die if it means keeping the facility secure. The creatures inside this hole simply cannot be allowed to surface.
It is the only way.
I have no choice.
Still, the deaths of the men and women left inside the Spiral was enough to burden any man’s heart. Many of them had devoted years of their life to the Order and to die now, so hopelessly, was an affront to their loyalty.
It’s all their fault. That English fool letting out the mongrel and then Mrs Dennison letting out the batling. They no doubt had something to do with all of the other cells opening too. Dr Gorman was right. I should have listened to her.
Now Thandi’s locked me in this hole to die with everybody else.
Perhaps I deserve it.
I’m going to die a failure. After so much distinction; this is how things are going to end.
Kane looked at the camera feeds on his computer. He hovered randomly over each thumbnail to bring up the individual feeds. He watched Dr Gorman take control of a small group of survivors on subbasement 10. He saw Rimmer and Jerry cowering inside a cell on subbasement 1. He witnessed the bloodshed on all other levels in between. The inmates were loose in the asylum and the masters had become the slaves.
At the top of Kane’s computer screen was the countdown for the Spiral’s containment measures. 8:52…8:51…8:50…7:49…
Less than ten minutes to live. A life Kane had been truly honoured to have lived. Being a guardian, a keeper of secrets was the pride of Kane’s life. He would leave this world knowing he had performed his duties admirably, and that when things had gone wrong, he had done what was right—even if his last assignment had ended in disaster, he hoped that his colleagues would see that.
He would see the countdown through. Nothing inside the Spiral could be allowed to live. All must die.
It was for the greater good.
I’m a hero. A hero in the truest sense because almost nobody will ever know of my sacrifice.
God will greet me with open arms.
Kane picked up his phone from its cradle and dialled in the number for his counterpart in Tallahassee. It would be good to say goodbye to an old friend. Nobody should die without having said a few last words.
The phone rang.
And rang.
Odd, Robson always picks up. Calls get routed straight through to him wherever he is.
It was some time before the call was answered. When it was, it was not his old friend Robson speaking but a woman.
“General Robson?”
“No, no, this is Hilary. I’m the logistical head of this facility. Who am I speaking to?”
“General Kane. Where is Robson?”
“I’m sorry to report, General, that General Robson is dead.”
“What? Impossible?”
“I’m afraid not. We have had a serious security breach at our facility. We’ve lost more than half our personnel. I am initiating destruction sequence now and evacuating—if that’s even that option anymore.”
“What the hell is happening over there? What’s going-”
“It’s the faustling. Somehow it escaped. It let all of the other prisoners free. They slaughtered most of us before we even knew what was hap-”
The line went dead.
Kane replaced the handset carefully and stared into space.
5:37 left on the countdown.
Chapter Thirty
The batling watched over its newly-risen army with pride. Many of the creatures it fondly remembered; remembered breathing life into their original ancestors. Those original hordes, raised to purge the earth, had been magnificent. Their descendants were but poor replicas, but they would do. Hatred for humanity was instilled in their hearts and that was all that was needed to ignite the inferno of war. This time there would be no outcome other than humanity’s extinction.
The time of man was at an end.
But there was a matter of some urgency to deal with first. The batling sensed the sudden doom in the hearts of those yet living. They all feared certain death, but not at the hands of claws and teeth; something even more certain, something that was quickly approaching.
As was the case with Samhain, the batling had no doubt that the men of the facility would seek self-destruction. There was a single man who could potentially end the batling’s glorious slaughter before it even got started.
The general.
The batling flew down the corridor of subbasement 10, forgetting about its quarry within the rooms beyond momentarily. The Dennisons could wait until later.
It reached the elevator at the end of the corridor and immediately wedged its claws into the gap between the metal doors. It proceeded to force them open until a gap big enough to pass through appeared.
The elevator was not present in the shaft. The batling swooped upwards into the empty space. It spiralled higher and higher, passing floors that were filled with more bloodthirsty warriors ready to do its bidding. Eventually it came upon the elevator, blocking its progress further.
Like a lead ball spewed from a cannon, the batling wrapped its wings around itself and pierced right through the floor of the elevator. The doors inside were already open, allowing the batling to shoot straight out into the Nucleus and spear the nearest human.
The woman screamed as she was torn apart from the neck of her blouse to the belt around her trousers.
The other humans in the room scattered in terror as the batling swooped into the air, towering above them all. Even the men with guns dove into hiding.
That’s it, worms. Scream, scream so that I may bathe in your fear as I spill your guts to the floor.
But there was no time to waste with simple pleasures. There was only one rancid human the batling was interested in.
The batling swooped in a circle, taking in its surroundings. At the far side of the room was a glass partition. Behind it was…
Geneeeraaal.
The batling dive-bombed a nearby human and then accelerated towards the office at the back of the room.
The general looked up from his desk just in time to see the batling smash through the glass window of his office. He immediately leapt up and opened fire with a bulky silver revolver.
The batling cartwheeled in the air, dodging every bullet until the general’s weapon was empty. Then it swooped down and slashed a furrow across the old man’s forehead. The blood flowed in a thick sheet, coating the general’s face and sending him back down into his chair, panting and wide-eyed.
“Whateverrr you have done, Geneeeraaal, undo it. This facility cannot fall. Your job is to protect it.”
The general wiped blood from his face. “My job is to bury you alive. And that’s just what I am going to do, you…you abomination.”
“Undo it, now!”
“It’s over. You’re going to die in exactly,” the general glanced at his computer. “Two and a half minutes.”
The batling laughed. “It is not over. It is only just beginning. We are many. You are a soldier and yet you seek to run, to take the easy way o
ut. If you were an honourable man you would live and fight in the days ahead.”
The general wiped more blood from his face. His thinning grey hair had now turned crimson. He panted in fear. “W-what do you mean?”
“That this is just one battleground of many. If I fall then others will take my place. This is not humanity’s last stand. Your actions here today are inconsequential, and yet you seek to die from them.”
The uncertainty on the old man’s face was delectable. Putting doubt into men’s hearts was one of the greatest joys of the batling’s kind.
“Put a stop to it, General, and I will allow you to live another day. I will give you the chance to die an honourable, soldier’s death—in battle, not an office cubicle.”
The general shook his head. Blood droplets flew everywhere. “No, I cannot. I made an oath.”
“You made an oath worth ssshit to a God worth nothing. Deus Manus has been but a thorn in the side of the true creator. Soon we will resign it a footnote in the history of a new and glorious world. Enjoy your death, General. It has meant truly nothing. You will not even be remembered.”
The general sat up in his chair, a pained expression on his crimson face. His fingertips reached out in front of him.
• • •
“Sorry to inform everybody,” said Dr Gorman, “but I’m afraid we have just about a minute to live.”
“What?” said Andy. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that a sixty second warning just popped up on my computer screen. The facility is about to start filling up with cement.”
Andy grabbed Sun by her shoulders. He had to talk to her, tell her she loved him. It couldn’t end like this, with her sleeping.
Maybe that’s for the best.
“Nice knowing you all,” West muttered. He placed his assault rifle down on the floor at his feet and sat back in a swivel chair that he had found himself into.
The remaining lab assistants all began to sob, men and women both. The Irishman, Lucas, stood calmly with his hands clasped together in front of him.
“Thirty seconds,” said Gorman.
Holes in the Ground Page 37
