“What are you talking about?” Andy asked.
“I mean that your wife is dead.”
Andy opened his mouth but no words came out.
“Crazy bitch!” said Jerry.
Dr Gorman snarled and pointed her gun at Jerry. “This is all your fault. When Kane let three strangers down here, I knew it would all end in disaster—even warned him of such.”
Nessie placed her hands up. “Thandi, why are you doing this? Nobody here is to blame.”
Gorman laughed. “Are you fucking joking? Between them they managed to sabotage this entire facility. I watched Mrs Dennison myself open up the batling’s cell.”
“She wasn’t herself,” said Andy, tears in his eyes.
“Well, now she’ll never be anything.”
Andy lunged at Gorman but West shoved him aside just as a shot went off. Andy hit the floor, panting in anger. “I’ll fucking kill you!”
“I did your wife a favour. We’re all going to get ripped apart by the savage beasts that you yourselves released. It’s poetic in a way.”
“You’ve lost the plot, luv,” said Lucas.
“Yeah, she’s a bloody nutcase,” said Jerry.
“One more word out of you and I’ll shoot you in the stomach. Do you have any idea of the pain caused by your stomach acids leaking into your bloodstream and dissolving your organs from within?”
Jerry shrugged. “Is it as painful as listening to you talk?”
Gorman cocked her revolver.
Jerry flinched.
Instead of pulling the trigger, Gorman sighed. “Everybody sit down. West, place your weapon on the floor. I’ve noticed your trigger-finger twitching and I can’t say I care for it.”
West placed his rifle down on the desk and took a seat on a nearby swivel chair. He moved gingerly and Andy wondered if the man had been hurt.
“Now, we’re just going to sit here like good boys and girls until either Kane rediscovers his balls and destroys this place, or those creatures burst into the lab and rip us all apart.”
“Neither option sounds very appealing, Thandi,” said Nessie. “Is there not a third option?”
Gorman snarled. “Nessie, unlike you, when I pledged an oath to Deus Manus, I made the commitment to die one of two ways: defending this facility or destroying it. I will not try and escape. The only reward for doing so would be utter disgrace at what has happened here. While the rest of you may lack integrity, I intend to die with honour.”
“You speak of honour,” Andy spat. “You killed my wife while she was sleeping. You have no more honour than any other murderer.”
Gorman marched over to Andy, gun pointed down at him where he still lay on the floor. “How dare you speak ill of me. You came here and ruined my life, everything I worked for. I had plans, aspirations, and now they are nothing. All. Because. Of. You.”
Gorman pressed the revolver against Andy’s forehead. He reached up onto the table and grabbed a hold Sun’s hand. It was still warm. Then he closed his eyes. “Just do it already. Pull the trigger.”
“You don’t deserve an honourable death, Mr Dennison. You deserve to be executed.”
“Then do it,” he growled.
In Andy’s peripheral vision he spotted movement.
Gorman fired a shot but her arm was forced wide and the bullet buried itself in the ground beside Andy. She fired again, struck Andy in the stomach.
He fell to the ground, winded, but quickly realised that the bullet had lodged inside the thick book he had stuffed down his pants. He’d had a near miss.
Sun threw herself off the operating table and landed on top of Gorman. She let out a screech and began slashing and biting at the doctor. Gorman cried out for help, but no one stepped forward to oblige her.
Andy lay on the floor and watched in horror as his wife tore out Gorman’s eyes with her sharp fingernails. The resounding wail of agony was like grinding machinery.
Andy managed to get to his feet and grab his wife. He pulled her away from Gorman. She scratched and kicked like an enraged feline. Andy had to squeeze her tight in a bear hug to keep her from clawing out his own eyes.
West picked up his rifle from the table.
“No,” cried Andy. “She’s my wife.”
West sighed, turned his weapon on Dr Gorman who was writhing on the floor, blind and dying. He let off a single round, firing into her skull and ending her suffering.
West pointed his rifle at the floor and looked at Andy. “How can we help your wife?”
Andy fought to keep a hold of Sun. She bit at his arm, drawing blood.”
“She’s like a wild dog,” said Jerry. “No offence.”
“We have to help her,” Andy said.
“You cannot help her,” said Sun in a voice that was not her own. “Her mind is lost to the shadows of our will.”
Sun broke free of Andy’s grasp and smashed her elbow into his jaw. He went sailing backwards into a wheeled filing cabinet.
Sun pounced on West just as the man sought to raise his weapon. She struck aside his rifle and shoved him backwards.
Jerry ran at Sun but was swatted to the ground like a fly.
Andy tried to grab her from behind again but she turned to face him. He grabbed her wrists and the two of them began wrestling.
There was a sudden clunking sound.
Sun recoiled.
Andy looked left to see Nessie standing in the centre of the room, holding a large metal box. It was the source of the clunking sound.
Sun recoiled again, shielding her face with a hand and screeching.
“What are you doing?” Andy said. “You’re hurting her.”
“No shit,” said Nessie.
Another clunk.
Sun dropped down to her knees.
“Stop it,” Andy cried. “What are you doing to her?”
The machine in Nessie’s hands began to wobble, its weight becoming a burden. “I’m trying to help her.”
“How?” Jerry asked. “What is that thing?”
The machine clunked again.
“It’s a mobile x-ray machine,” said Nessie. “At Samhain, Bub’s only weakness was radiation. Perhaps whatever fugue has come over Sun came be broken by the same thing.”
Sun screamed and yelled, trying to get back to her feet but failing.
“Stop,” Andy yelled. “You’re killing her.”
“If we don’t help her, then she’s dead already.”
Andy grabbed a hold of Sun and cradled her in his arms. Her pupils were dilated and her nose was bleeding. Her chest heaved in and out in pained gasps.
“Sun, Sun, please, just come back to me.”
“A…Andy?”
Andy’s breath caught in his throat. He spluttered, tried to find words.
There was one last clunk and then Nessie set the x-ray machine down on the table.
“Andy…what…?”
Andy smothered Sun’s face in kisses. “Sun, thank God. Are you okay?”
“I…I don’t know. What happened?”
“You don’t remember anything?”
Sun shook her head, her eyes rolling back and forth tiredly.
Andy had tears in his eyes, but his relief turned to concern as West slumped unexpectedly to the ground.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Kane woke up on the floor of his overturned office. His cherry wood desk lay on its side against the back room and his desk chair had fallen across his shins.
For the most part he was completely numb, save for a stabbing pain in his left elbow. When he looked he saw the bone sticking out of his arm. He winced and fought back vomit.
He tried to roll onto his good side but found it hard to move. He shifted his legs up…
Only his legs did not move.
He prodded and poked at his thighs and was dismayed to find that they were devoid of feeling. As much as he focused, his legs would not respond.
I should have buried us all when I had the chance.
Kane closed
his eyes and battled with the shame of what he had done. He had allowed his pride to contradict his duties. He had hesitated at a time where decisive action was required. It was a failure that he could not allow to stand.
I need to fix this. I made an oath to God.
Kane rolled onto his side and began dragging himself across the carpet. His legs dragged behind him like rubber tubing. Three feet away on the floor was Kane’s laptop, lying on its side. The screen was cracked, but lights on the keypad still blinked.
Kane’s vision went dark at the edges. He felt his heart beating in his chest. As he peered back behind him he saw that he was leaving a slick trail of blood behind him like a nightmarish slug.
Kane dragged himself the last few feet over to his laptop and rolled onto his hip. He reset the laptop into the correct position and tapped a key.
He held his breath as the cracked screen remained dark and the hard disk chattered and whined.
The screen flashed on.
Kane blinked. Then he began typing with one hand, his movements slow and jerky. He managed to login and bring up the facility’s systems.
SHUT DOWN FACILITY Y/N
Y…
EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS Y/N
Y…
TERMINATE FACILITY Y/N
…
Y…
CATASTROPHIC SHUT DOWN TO OCCUR IN 60 MINUTES Y/N
N…
IMMEDIATE SHUT DOWN Y/N
…
Y…
TERMINATION PROTOCOLS ACTIVATED.
Kane collapsed onto his back and stared up at the ceiling.
Then he died.
• • •
Jerry and Andy grabbed an arm each and got West up onto the examination table. The blood was coming from beneath the man’s uniform; the source was not immediately clear.
West growled as they poked and prodded at him, but he did not resist. Andy pulled up the man’s shirt to find a blood-slicked torso with a dark red wound at its centre. The books he had used as armour had not been thick enough to stop whatever had ripped him open.
“I-I got shot. W-when Gorman fired her gun.”
Andy’s eyes went wide. “Why didn’t you say?”
“Everyone was a bit…busy. I-I didn’t realise she got me so bad.”
Nessie knelt down and checked West’s back. She straightened back up with a grim expression. “No exit wound. The bullet must still be inside him.”
West let out a long breath.
“Get me a scalpel,” said Sun. She still sounded dazed, but was slowly coming back around to her old self. Andy’s heart swelled seeing that she okay.
Nessie set about the lab, searching in cabinets and cupboards. “Gorman was pretty stringent with her lab. I don’t know where anything is.”
“Just get me whatever you can find that might help,” said Sun.
“Let me help.” Jerry moved up alongside Nessie and adding to the search.
“Just hold in there, fella,” said Lucas. “You’ve cheated death this far, would be a shame to see you go now.”
West frowned at Lucas, but said nothing. It was clear from his expression that he was in agony but fighting it.
A siren sounded, loud enough to make everybody cover their ears.
Andy grimaced. “What the hell is that?”
Nessie looked at him. He rosy face suddenly turned alabaster. “It’s the facility shut down alarm.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we have about ten minutes before the place starts filling with cement. The Spiral is about to become a tomb.”
Andy shook his head. “Kane must still be alive somewhere. He would have done this. Jesus, we can’t catch a break. We need to get out of here. Somebody help me grab West.”
“Andy, lad,” said Lucas. He was standing beside West on the examination table. “I think the fella is going to rest right where he is.”
Andy walked over to see West’s gaping jaw and grey pallor. He checked the man’s neck pulse. And then sighed. “West is dead.”
“Then we need to get out of here right now,” Sun said.
“How,” said Andy. “Those things are still out there. The batling will be on us the moment we step out of the labs.”
Nessie patted the top of the x-ray machine and smiled. “This might keep the batling at bay.”
Andy nodded. “Okay, but what about the two suckers?”
Jerry picked up Gorman’s fallen pistol and placed it next to West’s assault rifle. “Anybody know how to use these?”
Andy shrugged. “I can probably handle the revolver. Not sure I’d be much use with the rifle.”
Nessie moved over to the rifle. She picked it up and ejected the magazine, examined it and then pushed it back in. She cocked the weapon and held it across her waist like a soldier on patrol. She noticed them all staring at her and gave a little shrug. “Let’s just say I didn’t always have my head in a book growing up. Dad was a bit of a gun nut.”
Jerry whistled. “Is it wrong that I find you kind of sexy right now?”
Nessie winked at him. “You’re just thinking about what other weapons I can handle.”
Andy cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should save the flirtatious banter for when we get out of this godforsaken place.”
Jerry blushed.
Andy picked up the heavy revolver and checked the cylinder. There were five bullets left. Then he stood in front of Sun and kissed her.
“What was that for?” she asked.
“To give me strength. If I’d lost you then there would have been nothing left for me to fight for. Long as you’re with me, I’ll fight whatever this screwed-up world can throw at me.”
Sun laughed. “I never saw you as one for grand speeches.”
“Before we got married, I had nothing important to make a speech about.”
“Time to go, me thinks,” said Lucas. “If what the young lass says is true, then you only have a handful of minutes to get yourselves out of here.”
Jerry hoisted up the mobile X-ray unit. Nessie turned the safety off her assault rifle. Sun held a table leg they had brought from the library in one hand and a scalpel in the other.
The troops were ready.
“Okay,” said Andy, getting a firm grip on the revolver. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Nessie led the way, seeing as how she had the biggest weapon. She led them through the corridors of the lab complex, heading towards the conference room. The silence that followed them was eerie; but despite the lack of sound, each of them knew that chaos and bloodshed filled every floor of the facility.
They reached the door to the conference room. Nessie unlocked the door, nudged it open. Jerry was right on her heel, staying close to her. Andy held onto Sun as he moved with his revolver pointed ahead. Lucas took up the back, unarmed as always.
The conference room was empty.
The siren was louder and there was a flashing strobe light spinning on the ceiling, but there was no other movement or sound. All of the room’s computers—the one’s still left standing—had switched off, leaving the room in near darkness. LED floor strips lit up amongst the debris, pointing a path towards the elevator. Not that the route offered any salvation.
“Where have they all gone?” Jerry asked.
Nessie scanned the room with her rifle. “I don’t know. Keep your eyes open.”
“I know where they’ve gone,” said Andy. “They’re trying to get out of here, same as us. The batling must know that the place is going to self-destruct.”
“He probably wants to join up with his buddies from the other facilities,” said Jerry.
Andy stopped. “What do you mean?”
“Rimmer told me that there were batlings at other facilities—they just showed up like they did here.”
“The cave paintings,” said Nessie. “The pictures of all the batlings leading armies of monsters.”
“That’s what all of this is about,” said Andy. “The batli
ngs are trying to liberate an army. We have to make sure nothing escapes this place. Bub’s planning to start a war on humanity.”
“What if the other facilities have all fallen like this one?” asked Jerry. “What the hell will we be returning to even if we managed to get out of here alive?”
“We can’t think about that. We just have to focus on getting out of this place and making sure nothing gets out along with us.”
“Okay,” said Nessie. “Let’s head for the library. That shaft is our only hope of getting out of here.”
Andy grimaced as he stepped over a gobbet of flesh on the floor. There were puddles and swamps of gore everywhere; not to mention the mutilated bodies of the suckers that had been gunned down by West and Rimmer.
“Do you think Rimmer’s still alive,” Andy asked. It was almost a stupid question, but the fact was that nobody had seen him die.
“I hope he did,” said Jerry. “We had a bit of a bromance going on.”
Rimmer appeared before them, stumbling out from behind an overturned computer desk. His neck had dropped forward and now jutted out in front of him like a Halloween lantern on a stick. His beard had become a slick, glistening rope flesh that thrashed about like a newly-acquired limb.
“Something tells me he didn’t make it,” said Jerry.
“He certainly looks a bit under the weather,” said Lucas.
All around Rimmer, the random gobbets of flesh began to vibrate. Andy watched in horror as a pool of blood at his feet began to coalesce into something more solid. The glistening puddle rose up, first forming a pyramid-like shape, but then reforming into something else entirely, something indescribable. It looked like a spider, but had as many legs as a scuttling millipede.
“I don’t know what that is,” said Jerry. “But I really don’t like it.”
“I need one of my books,” said Nessie.
“No time to do research.”
“No, I mean so I can splat that disgusting thing into oblivion.”
Rimmer lunged at them, his head hanging out in front of him and his slick, thrashing beard taking on the shape of a dagger.
Andy shoved Sun behind him and fired off his revolver. The kick almost took his shoulder off, but he fought the sudden, unexpected pain and managed to fire again.
Holes in the Ground Page 41
