The Melting

by Christopher Coleman

  Pam and Sydney both look away, Sydney to the ground in shame, Pam to the sky, rolling her eyes in denial. “You don’t—”

  “I don’t care!” This time I’m yelling, and I feel the desire to rush toward this woman and grab her neck with my hands, my thumbs pressing against her windpipe.

  But the truth is, it’s not her fault. And I know as well as anyone how easy it is to gradually get sucked into something illicit, even abominable, and then to justify each day that passes, telling yourself again and again how it isn’t your fault, and, in this case, how you’re just trying to make a living and provide for your family. I don’t know Pam’s situation; maybe triple pay buys medicine that keeps her kid alive.

  “I’m sorry,” Sydney says, now bawling like a child. Pam is crying too, and I can see the apology all over her face.

  “What do you think fellas?” Smalley asks. You think that’s close enough?” Smalley motions in the direction of the approaching crabs, several of whom are almost three quarters of the way across the lobby. They’re still far enough away that we would make it through the door, but the margin of error is getting awfully thin. At any moment, one of them could get the trigger and decide to attack, and as I now know, the rest would likely follow.

  “I think that’s right, Stephanie. Let’s go.”

  Jones and I follow Pam and Sydney into the back of D&W laboratories, each of us brushing past Smalley who holds the door and then falls in behind us. But just before she allows the heavy door to close behind us, to seal us in like some destructive ancient god being banished back to his tomb, I look back to watch a dozen more crabs crawling in through the broken entrance of the building, their bodies woven together to look like one big mass of flesh.

  And in that last instant, one of the early approachers breaks out from the crowd and begins to run full speed toward us, and they all begin to follow.

  Pam turns back and enters a code into the door; not that it matters, I think, since the crabs still don’t seem to have figured out that particular skill. But still, the sound of the firing locks gives me a sense of immediate comfort. How we’ll ever leave this place, I can’t imagine at the moment, but that’s a problem for later.

  We take two or three steps inside the pre-entrance to the main laboratory, and then the dull crash of the door finalizes our position.

  “Guess you picked a good time to go, Smalley,” Jones says, motioning back to the closed door, where no doubt the crabs are now piling up against it.

  “Just stick with me, Stewart, you’ll be okay.”

  “There’s one more thing I haven’t told you,” Pam says suddenly, instantly destroying the flash of light-heartedness that existed.

  “Yeah, what’s that?” Smalley asks.

  “You remember Spence said his job was to keep internals out?”

  “Yeah. What did that mean?”

  “Internals. It’s the name they had for anyone inside the cordon who was still living—and hadn’t changed—after the blast.”

  “So us then,” I say.

  Pam nods.

  “What about it? What didn’t you tell us?”

  “Mrs. Wyeth, when she came back...” Pam stalls, as if rethinking her decision to tell us her secret.

  “What is it, Pam?” I say, harnessing my professor voice, low and leading, like I’m trying to extract a shy student’s interpretation of Goethe.

  “When she came back yesterday, there were a couple of internals with her.”

  Chapter 10

  The hallway behind the heavy steel door is long and straight, with flat white walls on either side, cutting off about two thirds of the width of the hangar. It looks like a hallway you would expect to find in a mental institution, the kind that in movies have small-windowed doors staggered every twenty paces or so, and behind each of those, straight-jacket-bound patients screaming nonsensically as the doctors pass.

  But there are no side doors in this hallway, only one directly ahead, at the end of this corridor that seems to extend forever. It looks like we’re heading to some laboratory version of the gates of heaven.

  There aren’t doors along the wide hallway, but there are several golf carts littered about, their purpose obvious.

  “I’m guessing those aren’t functioning at the moment?” I ask aloud, almost rhetorically.

  “No,” Pam says, frowning as she shakes her head. “The supply copters bring fuel for the generators regularly, but they don’t want us using the power for luxuries like golf carts.” Pam uses her ring fingers and pinkies to make air quotes on the word ‘luxuries,’ and I almost laugh aloud at the gesture. I make an absent note to myself to steal the move if I ever get out of here.

  “So you have electricity then?”

  “Yeah, of course,” Sydney says, “how else would the doctors, or any of us, be able to work? And how would they have kept them alive?”

  “Who?” It’s Smalley, and her voice lacks all remnants of playfulness.

  Pam and Sydney exchange looks, and I can see a quiet acceptance between them, an understanding that all of this is about to collapse so holding back now is senseless.

  “Them,” Sydney says matter-of-factly, and then gives a shrug. “The changed.”

  “That’s a pretty euphemistic term,” I say. “You make it sound like these people had a bad reaction to Botox or something.”

  “It’s what we call them. It’s what they are.”

  “You have some of them here then?” Jones asks, his question the more obvious one, the important one at the moment.”

  Pam nods, “Oh yes. Nineteen of them now.”

  “Nineteen? Why that number?”

  “There were close to fifty when we started.”

  We’re only a few steps from the end of the corridor now and the interior door which no doubt leads to the business section of our adventure. But I’m not quite ready for the showdown. There’s a chance—a good chance—that none of us makes it out of this building, and I want to know as much as I can about what happened. “So the rest of them, they were killed during experiments or something?”

  “Something like that?”

  “You seem to know a bit more than you let on originally, Ms. Pam,” Smalley adds. I was thinking the same thing.

  “I know that it happened—the blast and the people changing afterwards—and I know about that experiments were done after. And are still being done.”

  “Like Ms. Smalley said, that’s quite a bit more.”

  “But I don’t know why. I’m IT, I told you. Sydney and I offer tech support. But there are only a few of us still here now and...I guess things have gotten a little cozy. People talk get a little more comfortable with their secrets.”

  “But not about what the purpose of all this was? I find that hard to believe.”

  “It was just Spence and a few of the other doctors who kept coming here, even after Ms. Wyeth disappeared, and they didn’t ask questions. I think they believed if they never heard directly why it happened, that somehow they would be exonerated of guilt. Just taking orders, I guess.”

  “So like Nazis then?”

  “Like I said, there are people much higher than Spence and the doctors, or even Ms. Wyeth. I’m sure she knew more, but not Spence. He was just kept on to manage this place: coordinate the copters, order supplies, that kind of thing. Make sure the trains ran on time. But they never told him about any of the reasons.”

  “How can you know that? For sure?”

  Pam’s eyes soften, and I can see in them the pain from earlier, during Spence’s escape, and it’s obvious now that a fair bit of pillow talk took place between the two of them. “I know.”

  We finally reach the door at the end of the corridor, and, like the interior lobby door, it too has a keypad on the wall to the right of it.

  “I’m assuming you know the code, Pam?” I say, the exhaustion in my voice unmistakable, even to my own ears. “Because this would have been a whole lot of work for nothing.”

  “I do.” />
  I look over to Jones and Smalley and then back to Pam. “Let’s do it then. Let’s find this Wyeth lady.”

  “I need you to put the gun to my head,” she replies, no trace of humor on her face, no hesitation in her voice.

  “What?” Jones asks.

  “Listen, like you, I don’t know how any of this is going to end up. But if it ends with the three of you dying, I don’t want us to be seen as accomplices to your infiltration. I’ll help you as much as I can—we both will—we understand that what happened in this county is horrible and illegal—a cataclysm—and the people responsible for it deserve to be punished. Severely. Maybe they even deserve to die.” Pam dips her head for a moment in thought and then looks up again. “Yes, they do deserve to die. But you also don’t know these people. You’ve seen what they were willing to do just to create this...I don’t know, weapon, I guess?

  The word ‘weapon’ smashes against the inside of my brain, and I know now that there could be no other purpose for the creation of the crabs.

  “So if they’re willing to do that, what do you think they’ll do to protect themselves from going to prison? Or getting a lethal injection?”

  Jones speaks up, tipped off by some other portion of Pam’s explanation for her request. “Who exactly is back here? You said doctors and a woman—and the white monsters, which I assume are locked up somewhere. Is there someone else we should be aware of?’

  Pam looks down again and over at Sydney, whose eyes are wide, riveted on her co-worker, trusting in whatever she decides to do.

  “There are three soldiers. Armed obviously. Military-grade rifles. And then the Colonel and Mrs. Wyeth.”

  “And the ghosts—the Changed—I’m right to assume they’re caged?”

  “Most of them are in a large open room at the back of the arena, with glass paneling all around. Think of a hockey rink, except instead of ice, the floor is covered with snow.”

  “Arena?” I ask.

  “That’s what we call the main section of this building, just on the other side of this door. The building is a converted hangar, and like a hangar, it’s all very open. And they didn’t build any lower ceilings when they renovated it, so it kind of feels like you’re in a stadium or arena.”

  “What kind of office building is wide open? Aren’t there offices?”

  “Yes, you’ll see. They put up all these privacy walls to create offices and...other types of rooms, so once you walk through the main area, there are a bunch of separate rooms all lined up leading to the back where they keep the changed. It’s laid out kind of like a shopping mall, the holding room at the back is the food court, I guess. But with the ceilings as high as they are, the place feels like you’re in a cavern.”

  “What’s the point? What are they doing with them?”

  “Who?”

  “The ghosts...crabs, changed, whatever.”

  Pam shrugs and frowns, as if the answer is so obvious as to be unexciting. “Studying them. Trying to figure out exactly what they created. And—I can’t know this for sure—but I think they’re trying to learn how to train them.”

  Smalley scoffs and shakes her head. “Jesus.”

  “And these internals you mentioned,” I say, “the people from the outside, who are they?”

  “I don’t know.” Pam shakes her head feverishly, as if remembering again that there are, in fact, new visitors to their building, other than the three of us. “I barely saw them when they came in. They were with the colonel and Ms. Wyeth and one of the soldiers, and they took them away to one of the rooms.”

  “How many were there?”

  “I saw two. Both men. Looked like maybe a father and son. Grandfather maybe.” I have no further questions at the moment, and Pam recognizes the lull and steps to the keypad, preparing to gain us entry. And then she pauses, folding her hands properly down in front of her. “I won’t do this without the promise. I won’t punch in this code unless you promise that, if and when we’re seen, you’ll stage this so that Sydney and I look like your prisoners.”

  Jones puts his hands up, a signal that says what other choice do I have? “Okay, I agree to that.”

  Pam takes a deep breath and nods, confirming the deal.

  “But you need to give us a chance in there. I need to know more about the layout. I need to know where the soldiers are.”

  Pam nods again. “They always keep two soldiers on the roof, at the far end of the building by the landing area. They’re mainly looking for any approaching hordes. The other soldier patrols the perimeter of the building, so, lucky for you, he must have been at the opposite end of the entrance when you showed up.”

  “Why didn’t they notice us when we drove up?” Jones asked. “Or when the ghosts showed up in the lobby?”

  I don’t know, but I can tell you there isn’t much action around here—or at least there hasn’t been lately.”

  “Why is that?”

  “They’ve been trying to cordon them off in different sections of the county. Trying to block them off so they can’t just roam free. I think they realize they’ll eventually get out, so they’ve been corralling them in bridges and barns and any large structures they can find.”

  “And they’re succeeding in that?” Jones asks, “Is that what you’re telling us?”

  “I don’t know what goes on out there, not really, other than what we see from the air. But I do know the soldiers guarding the building haven’t had much to do. I catch the one on the perimeter at least once a week planted somewhere on the side of the building smoking—and not always cigarettes—and who knows what’s going on up on the roof. They could be sleeping for all I know. But the perimeter guard, he’ll be making his way around to the front at some point. And he’ll see the...”

  “What is it?”

  “I was just thinking about what you said, how they were coming through the door of the lobby just when we were entering the corridor here.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Terrence probably did get to the front. He probably ran smack into them.”

  “Oh my God.” Sydney whispers, now understanding Pam’s point.

  The soldier—Terrence—whose job it was to secure the ground perimeter of the building, likely walked right into the oncoming horde of crabs as he was making his typical, uneventful laps around the perimeter of the D&W building. It was a place largely untouched by the virus of the white ghosts. Until now. Until we showed up. Maybe it was the sight of our RV that brought them; perhaps they were scouting us from the woods of Gray’s Grocery, and then followed us along the interstate. Or, more likely, it was the noise of the crashing windows that drew them.

  “Terrence is dead, isn’t he?” Sydney asks, and I quickly make another romantic connection, this time between Sydney and the guard.

  Despite the potential tragedy, I have no urge to console Sydney. The truth is, I’m grateful to have one less soldier to deal with. And if the other two guards on the roof are as inept as old boy Terrence, maybe soldiers won’t be an issue at all.

  “We’re doing a lot of speculating,” Smalley says, trying to restore some faith. “We don’t know anything about what happened, and there’s nothing to do about it now anyway. Maybe Terrence and Spence met up and are on their way to Cabo.”

  No one laughs at Smalley’s attempt at levity. Pam simply turns to the keypad and lifts the Lucite cover protecting the device.

  For just a moment, I feel a bit sorry for Pam and Sydney, knowing that two people they’ve come to know over these past several weeks, whom they’ve formed some kind of bond, are now likely dead. Just as the members of my group likely are. Tom and Stella. Danielle and James.

  With the thoughts of my friends—as well as my dead wife and mistress—my sympathy for them fades quickly, and in its place, a new stoicism sets in, a new disgust at what has occurred inside this giant, wicked palace. Pam and Sydney and Spence and Terrence, and everyone that works here, are, at least in part, culpable for the destruction of Warren County and
beyond. “One more thing,” I say.

  Pam turns and meets my eyes, saying nothing.

  “I need to know where Ms. Wyeth will be.”

  Chapter 11

  The deadbolt fires through the locking mechanism and unlatches the door with a bang. As Pam pushes the door wide, I expect to see a phalanx soldiers standing in a line, waiting for our arrival, rifles raised and aimed at our heads, the little laser sights quivering ever so slightly in the middle of our chests.

  Instead, beyond the door, there is only the enormous room Pam described, though perhaps undersold a bit, and the smell of chlorine. In another life, the smell would have reminded me of an indoor pool, or perhaps a freshly cleaned floor, but now it only reminds me of Sharon.

  The size of this new area is at least as large as an airport terminal, except instead of the bustle and brightness of an airport, the place is dark and empty, as if the terminal had been abandoned fifty years earlier.

  This section of the D&W building mimics the expanse of the lobby area, except instead of the thin carpeting and minimalist decorations of the lobby, which was at least an attempt to make the room look civilized, here there is only cold, concrete flooring below us, above us an endless pattern of exposed girders. The space is breathtaking in its vastness, and the lighting is so dim that I can’t see all the way to either of the walls that border us on the sides. For all I know, there are two, symmetrical lines of armed guards along the perimeter, watching us at this moment, baiting us into some chemical trap.

  But for all the darkness beside us, forward it only extends for the first fifty yards or so. Beyond the empty stretch of space in front, I can see the dividing walls of the offices, as well as the reflection of light from the glass windows. These are obviously the makeshift rooms that Pam spoke of earlier.

  There is no second story space in the hangar, at least none that I can see from here, but spanning the front of the first set of offices, running from side to side above the height of the open ceilings, there is scaffolding which forms a metal walkway. On either side of the scaffolding are ladders leading up to the walkway.