The Melting

by Christopher Coleman

  And the gun has dropped straight down to the floor past him.

  I turn to see the colonel grab for his pistol, but it’s too late for him—Jones has his own pistol aimed at the man’s chest. “You blink and you’re dead, motherfucker. And I’m really hoping you blink.”

  I walk to the opening of the cellar and look down at Tom and James, who are both beginning to stir, awakened by the ruckus above and the rifle that’s fallen in a clatter beside them. “Tom!” I call.

  “Help me, you bastard,” the soldier says to me, his voice pleading and desperate despite the impoliteness of his words.

  I reach down as if to grab his hand, hoping he’ll hang on long enough for one of the two men below to grab the gun. The fall will be a painful one for the soldier, but not likely fatal, and if he’s able to secure the gun, he’ll have Tom and James hostage and me in a tricky position.

  The dangling soldier falls for the ploy, perhaps underestimating my own will to survive and to sacrifice him in the process, and as he slides his hand ever so slightly toward me, raising the tips of his fingers, searching for my grasp like an ant’s antennae, I call again, “Tom!,” this time loud and authoritative.

  The old man’s eyes open with a start. There’s life in them, awareness.

  “Grab that gun, Tom.”

  He nods, shaking away the cobwebs from his brain, and he picks up the weapon and instinctively locks the next round into place. “Let him fall.”

  “No!” the soldier cries, and before the word has completely left the back of his throat, I nudge the toe of my boot to the fingers of his left hand, and he plummets to the ground below with a splat.

  Chapter 12

  One soldier is down and the colonel is contained. That leaves the second soldier who is currently in pursuit of Sydney. And Smalley is only a step behind him. There’s not a lot I can do to improve that situation other than to put my faith in Smalley.

  Which leaves only Stella.

  I have no idea if Stella is armed, but based on the flanking soldiers that were standing beside her less than two minutes ago, I’m guessing she’s not. She’s the scientist after all, and I get the impression that she would consider guns beneath her.

  In all of the mayhem, however, she’s managed to disappear.

  I check back on the men down in the cellar, and I can tell that the soldier is in bad shape, at least on his right leg from the knee down. His tibia is clearly broken, the white of the bone is glimmering and flecked with blood. He’s writhing in pain, and the sound coming from him is that of a wounded vixen, perhaps one caught in a hunter’s trap. But Tom is unmoved by the howls of agony and holds the gun steady and aimed, looking twitchy, ready to shoot.

  “Hold on, Tom, I’m gonna get you guys out. How did they get you down there in the first place?”

  “Had a rope ladder of some kind. Just flopped it over the side and forced us down.”

  I look at Pam, but she shrugs and shakes her head, indicating she doesn’t know the whereabouts of the ladder.

  I turn to the colonel, who stands as if bored by the whole display that’s unfolding, mildly frustrated that he’s allowed someone to get the drop on him. “Where’s the ladder?” I demand.

  The colonel squints and gives a thoughtful pose, looking up to the ceiling in contemplation, and then says, “You know, the last time I saw it I think it was up your ass.”

  I feel a primeval urge to move on the colonel, but before I can take a step, Jones is in front of him, the barrel of the pistol against the middle of the colonel’s forehead.

  The colonel closes his eyes, his mouth a flat, sterile line of resolve. “Do it.”

  Instead of firing, Jones slams his knee up into the colonel’s groin and then pushes him away. The colonel reels back a few steps and then collapses to the floor, rolling to his side in the fetal position.

  The assault is pure satisfaction, but it doesn’t help me with the ladder, though judging by the way the colonel looked down at Tom and James on his way over to Smalley, I’m fairly sure he doesn’t know where it is anyway.

  “I’m going to secure this asshole and then go track down Smalley,” Jones says. “There’s plenty of material here to keep him tied up for a while.” Stewart Jones gives me the look of a general, though I never did get the background on his rank or who he is exactly. “Pam, I need you to track down that ladder and get it down to them.”

  “How will we get him out?” she asks, obviously referring the soldier.

  “Not at the top of my list of concerns, Pam. We’ll do our best. First things first, though.” Jones ducks his head a bit so that he is at perfect eye level with the woman. “Find the ladder.”

  Pam gives a wide-eyed nod, indicating she’ll at least give it her best shot.

  Jones looks at me. “Go find her, professor.”

  “You find her too, Jones. Find Smalley. We’re getting out of this place.”

  Jones and I give simultaneous nods, and as we begin on our separate missions, a banging sound rings from the back of the hangar, near the rink. No doubt it’s Stella, and I hold the possibility high that she’s trying to lure me.

  “Be careful, Dominic,” Jones says, and then, a propos of nothing, looks down and gives a quick shake of his head followed by a smirk. “I wonder what it would have been like to grow up with a name like ‘Dominic.’ Pretty cool, I would imagine.”

  “Well, Stewart, I suppose it made me softer than if I had ended up with something less cool. Maybe instead of being a teacher—with all the air conditioning and summers off—I would have been a hard-ass soldier like you.”

  Jones gives me a piercing stare now. “You’re far from soft, professor. Now let’s do this.” And with that, he takes off down the corridor toward the front of the building, following in the wake of Sydney and Smalley and the second soldier.

  I move quickly but cautiously toward the sound in the back, and when I reach the hockey rink and look through the glass, I’m immediately mesmerized by the white crabs milling around inside. The snow lining the rink is high, up to their shins in some areas, and when they move, they’re as slow as sloths.

  “I’m here, Stella,” I call to the emptiness beside the rink, “so tell me how you want to play this? Before you answer though, full disclosure, you should know that your colonel buddy is in zip ties, and one of your soldiers has a shattered leg and is staring at the business end of his own rifle. And in another minute, I’ll have the other one too.”

  I wait for a reply, but none comes.

  “This is over,” I continue. “The experiments, the company, all of it. You’ll go down as the biggest mass murderer in the history of the country. But lucky for you, it’s this country, and you might get to live.”

  A few of the crabs look over at me through the glass, apparently responding to the sound of my voice, wearing the same expressionless look they always seem to have. At least until they’re activated, triggered to aggression.

  But these crabs seem virtually harmless in this frozen environment. The temperature is frigid back here, even on this side of the glass, and it’s clearly the snow and cold that has these crabs so calm, just like Stella said.

  It’s the warming that agitates them and turns them nasty.

  And with the warming comes the melting.

  It’s already started, Stella revealed as much. The snow is disappearing, and when it’s all gone, the crabs will die. But in the meantime, as they go through their transition from docility to death, they become the ravenous monsters from the student union, the ones that formed a ladder of their bodies and came in through the shattered window on the day Naia and I left.

  The thought of the crabs’ almost certain demise buoys me though. The world hasn’t come to an end after all. We, in Warren and Maripo County were simply the unfortunate chosen ones on whom an almost indescribable madness was tested. But it’s ending, soon, and now we need only to wait out the virtual spring that is right around the corner. They’ll be no more explosions, no more chemic
als released into the air which turn the sky to white and then release fluffy flakes of poison.

  I walk further around the perimeter of the egg-shaped rink until I come to a door in the middle of one of the long sections. The door opens into a tunnel that leads out into a round room in the middle of the rink. From that central room, I can see that several other walkways radiate out in four or five different directions, like the spokes of a wheel, which end in similar rooms to the hub in the middle. This is the penalty box, I presume.

  The walkways and rooms are open at the top, but there is a protective glass, which starts about three-feet high and extends up at least ten feet.

  The rink door that opens into the main walkway is closed, but, judging by the unlocked deadbolt and the accompanying chain that snakes limply from the door to the floor, it’s accessible.

  I walk past the door toward the back of the rink, where, about fifteen feet past, a giant wall rises from the floor to the massively high ceiling, and extends across the entire width of the hangar, cutting off this section of the hangar from the rest. It looks almost identical to the wall that separated the lobby from the section of the hangar I’m in currently, though this one seems to be made of concrete.

  I walk up to the wall and place my hands against it, feeling the cold, black stone against my palms. The side of the wall I’m on is only a fraction of the entire building, so whatever is on the other side makes up probably three-quarters of the rest of the facility. I can see a door in the wall about twenty paces to my left, and I’d like nothing more than to enter to the other side. But I can’t spend time exploring now. Right now, I need to find Stella.

  I turn around now, and, as if the thought of my former companion was itself a summons, I see Stella standing against the rink. The second soldier, the one who was chasing Sydney, is standing beside her, his rifle high on his soldier and pointed at my chest.

  Sydney is below him on the floor, her feet and hands tied. Smalley and Jones are nowhere to be seen.

  “Curiosity killed the cat, Dominic. You don’t really want to go over there anyway. That’s where the helicopter lands, and you never quite know when it’s coming. They tell us one day, but it’s usually the wrong one. I think they keep us guessing on purpose.” Stella looks over at the soldier. “Escort him to the penalty box, Aaron,” she says.

  “Where are they?” I demand. “What happened to Jones and Smalley?”

  Stella shrugs and then nods to the soldier, giving him permission to answer.

  The soldier mimics Stella’s shrug and says, “Sydney was easy to catch, she’s back in—”

  “I don’t give a damn about Sydney!” I interrupt, yelling now. “Where the hell are my friends?”

  The soldier pauses and says calmly, “They ran right past me. I caught Stella, stood behind the door, and watched them chase after me into the lobby. I thought about picking them off from behind, couple of shots to the head, but that could have gotten messy, maybe even led to some kind of firefight. It was easier just to lock them out. They’re on the outside again. Without the code, there’s nothing they can do to get back in.”

  They’re not dead, that’s the takeaway. I may never see Jones and Smalley again, but at least they have a chance to get out once the melting takes place and this ultimately ends. I have to believe that.

  “Let’s go,” the soldier named Aaron commands, and he motions me back toward the entrance to the penalty box. He stops me in front of the door, and Stella continues walking on, back toward the corridor between the offices.

  I watch her go, and then look at Aaron. “Do you know what’s happened, Aaron? On the outside, I mean? I guess you do, right? How could you not?”

  Aaron keeps his eyes fixed and demeanor stoical.

  “You’re going to die, soldier, and I don’t mean fifty years from now. This event, and your complicity in it, is going to be what kills you. But you can do the right thing before you go. And maybe by doing the right thing you’ll save yourself, who knows?”

  The soldier blinks and shifts his jaw to the left, a sign that maybe my words are at least having a small effect on the man’s conscience. He says nothing.

  I turn back to the hockey rink and study again the desultory beasts inside. Nineteen of them, that’s what Pam said, and there seems to be no pattern or reason to their clusters or movements. They look despondent, hopeless, and for the first time in ages, I recall that all of these things were people once, people who had friends and families, many of whom were spared from this cataclysm and now live somewhere on the outside mourning the death of their loved ones.

  But they’re not dead. Not quite. They still have working muscles and organs, lungs to breathe and hearts to pump blood. And they feel pain, perhaps the most indicative quality of animal life.

  But though they aren’t dead, these crabs, these beings that I’ve come to fear and hate and pity, are not human. Not anymore. They’re modern-day mutants, humans that have devolved into mindless, speechless savages. With many of the same characteristics, yes, but different in too many ways to continue calling them human.

  Lost in the existential thoughts of these beings, I’m brought back to the present moment by the sound of a grunt from behind me, followed by the sound of Stella’s voice, barking commands.

  I turn back and look across the hangar to the corridor of offices, and there, emerging from the long hallway, is the aggressive gray crab from office six. The crab is hunched over, not on all fours the way they tend to move naturally, but bent at the waist, like some beat-down geek from a turn-of-the-century circus. Stella is behind the crab, barking at the creature as she pushes her arms forward, shoving them towards the back of the crab’s head.

  As Stella and the twisted crab approach me, it starts to come into focus what is happening. There’s a shackle around the crab’s neck, a manacle, and coming from the back of the metal bond is a long, stiff bar that stretches at least five feet before ending in Stella’s hands.

  Stella and the beast move quickly toward me, almost running now, and for a moment, I think Stella is going to pull back on some trigger and release the crab from its metal bind, allowing its momentum to send it towards me in all its rage. And with the armed soldier still present, serving as Stella’s protection, this possibility seems very real.

  Instead, they just continue coming, Stella shoving and agitating the crab with every thrust, the thing’s black eyes, normally expressionless, wrinkled in anger as it tries to turn its neck back to the source of the agitation. But the device in Stella’s hand makes it impossible for the crab to turn, frustrating it further.

  Stella suddenly stops the crab about eight feet from me. The thing is about at the level of my waist, and it doesn’t meet my eyes, so preoccupied is it on the metal constraint around its neck.

  “Open it,” Stella says to me, motioning to the penalty box. She pushes down on the rod and lowers the crab’s head almost to the ground, holding the tool in position the way one would hold a shovel in preparation for digging a hole.

  “What are you going to do, Stella?” I ask, having some idea.

  “I told you I wasn’t done. There’s so much more to learn from them, more to study. Now open the door and get inside. I won’t be stalled. I know time is running out for me, but it can still happen.”

  I’m not quite sure what ‘it’ means in Stella’s sentence, but I take a deep breath and turn to the door of the rink, opening it and stepping through to the walkway that leads down into the hub in the middle. I shut the door behind me.

  “I didn’t tell you to close the door, Dominic.”

  I don’t respond or move to re-open the door.

  “Move to the center and stay there.”

  I hold Stella’s eyes a moment longer, thinking of something to say, something that will persuade her to re-think the murder she’s about to commit. But I can see there’s only madness behind them.

  “Shoot him, Aaron.” Stella says calmly.

  I raise my hands immediately in surr
ender, staving off Aaron’s shot. I can see the look of doubt in the soldier’s eyes, and the relief at not having to squeeze the trigger. I walk slowly to the hub, but I when I reach the middle of it, I turn around quickly, watching the entrance with angst, nearly hyperventilating as I wait to see the unfolding of my execution.

  Aaron lowers the rifle and opens the door to the penalty box, and then takes a huge step to the side as Stella shoves the metal rod forward, pushing the crab’s head and neck until it reluctantly creeps inside the contained area. Then, with a yank of her rear hand, she releases the claws of the manacle from the crab’s neck.

  The crab instantly spins back toward Stella and lunges at her, but Aaron is quick with the door, closing it just in time and bouncing the beast back inside the walkway.

  The creature attacks the door relentlessly for a full thirty seconds, at least, but then, getting no results, it finally turns to the open space that stretches out in front of it. I stand at the end of that space with my heart racing like a hummingbird’s, and a brief flash of my mortality enters my mind, a recognition that my life is going to end in a matter of seconds. And there’s little doubt to it, really. I don’t have the strength to fight this thing, and I’m not sure there’s a human alive who would. It would be like grappling with a deranged chimpanzee; maybe the strongest man in the world could deal with it, but that’s not me.

  And there’s no real chance of escape. I’m literally trapped. No matter which one of the five tunnels I run down, once I get to the end of it, there’s nowhere to go from there.

  My mind suddenly clears, and I think of my backpack, which, miraculously, is still in my possession. I don’t remember exactly what’s inside still, so before I make my final flight for life and sprint down one of the spoked sections, I fling my bag from my back and unzip the main part of the case.