“Oh, for crying out loud,” Sam moaned for the hundredth time, and decided it was better to struggle on his own over in sector C, then it was to wait for Charlie. If it was up to him, the work would never get done. There had been days when he found his obnoxious friend chasing after the rats for hours. He chased the rats more than he did his job!
“Go on, Sam!” Charlie rattled over his shoulder as Sam stomped off. “Go do it yourself then! I’m busy anyway!” Then under his breath, “Exterminating.”
With nimble fingers, he pried the bolts off the vent cover and placed them by his feet, first the top two, then the bottom. The air ducts had been a problem since the Nest was born. The steel shafts that ran throughout the entire silo, connected every level, every room, including—to his dismay—the Pit. It’s how the rodents got around, making nests and breeding, procreating faster than they could stop them. He could smell them now as he plucked the vent cover off the wall and propped it on the ground. It was a putrid smell, like vile sewage, like rotten eggs, like death. It stunk like death.
He whistled into the shaft, calling to the rats like kittens. “Psss, psss, psss. Come here my little, fuzzy friends! Uncle Charlie’s got a present for you! A big ol’ gift to make your day a big ol’ happy one!”
Charlie’s chuckle cut short—a pair of eyes gleamed out of the darkness, staring at him. Blinking.
“A big one, aren’t you?”
His smile widened as he lifted the torch toward the vent.
“I got you now, you little . . .”
Sam was about ten yards away, maybe fifteen, when he heard the scream cut across the generator room like a cat with its tail caught in the door. It took him off guard, so much so that he dropped his tool box, sending its contents—gears, screwdrivers, cans of oil, metal parts—spilling all over the floor. There was a brief moment where he was worried, but not terrified. He figured the fool had burnt himself with the torch or got himself bit again. It would serve him right for the pleasure he got out of killing those poor rats. Personally, they never bothered Sam. To him, they were all just a bunch of rats trying to survive in the Dead World—but that quickly changed the second he rounded the corner. Terrified wasn’t the right word for what he felt when he saw Charlie sticking headfirst out of the shaft, feet kicking as—from what it sounded like—something was eating him, drawing him inside, crushing his bones. His legs went from kicking to convulsing to limp as blood sprayed from the shaft like a popped pimple.
There was a shriek, inhuman-like, sharp like that of a bird, and before Sam could run, something grabbed him from above and dragged him away into darkness.
* * *
Malik was halfway to the outsider’s cell, making his way through the detention center, when the power went out, immersing the entire Nest in darkness. Within seconds, the emergency generators kicked on, flooding the Nest in red flashing lights. Alarms wailed from every speaker, mixed with the droning voice of the emergency broadcast, advising everyone to evacuate to level fifteen.
All the color drained from his face.
He was too late. It was happening.
The radio on his belt buzzed. “Sir . . .” the voice came in choppy and unclear. “Inside . . . Here . . . They’re here!”
Malik grabbed his radio and clicked over. “This is Malik! Get everyone into the Vault and seal the doors! Find my son and make sure he gets there! Tell him to stay there and wait for me!” He repeated his message several times, screaming into the radio until one of the watchman, fumbling through the hallway with a flashlight, found him. He grabbed the man by the shoulders and told him the same thing. The Vault was their only way out and withdrew his gun. It may not save him from the Flesh Rotters, but it would buy him some time.
Malik stared after the watchmen as he scurried off, his orders drilled inside the man’s brain like a rusty nail. Whether he would follow them, was now up to him. Malik turned back to the hallway and the rows of cells that lined it. His heart thumped. Truth be told, he never liked the outsider, never liked the idea of bringing a stranger inside the Nest without knowing who he was. But now that he knew what he was, nothing terrified him more.
Most of what Arlington had told him was new to him. His father had died before he was born, and his mother, like most parents within the Nest, kept Operation Blackout a secret from their children. Now he knew why. Because their ancestors were monsters. Old Man Arthur had been right all along: Darkness was upon them. Come to take them. To bury them in the sins of their forefathers. It was Arlington’s fault. He welcomed this disease, he delivered them their death. And now it was up to him to stop it.
He thought about the underground laboratory where they found him. He still couldn’t wrap his brain around it: How could a person be infected without turning into one of those creatures? It had changed Dr Carter within a matter of hours, so why not him? But as much as he questioned it, he couldn’t deny it: Dr Carter. The Flesh Rotters. Arlington’s horrendous confession. Operation Blackout.
The answer was as clear as day.
The only doubt he had as he ignored the emergency broadcast and the flashing lights, nearing the outsider’s cell, intent on ending this, was Arlington’s last words: A cure. Was it possible he could be right? Could there be a cure, and if so, could the boy know where to find it?
If so, it would be a mistake to kill him. But was he willing to take that risk, was the question? The outsider, if he was what Arlington said he was, if he was the key to the virus, then he had to die. There was no question about it. He had to perish in order for the world to nourish. Arlington said it himself. He was the reason why the Flesh Rotters were there to begin with, whether it was for vengeance or to protect him, but either way, the boy had to die. But if he was going to die, it was going to have to wait.
The outsider’s cell was empty.
Chapter Sixteen
When the lights went black, the only thing that kept the room alive was the humongous hearth in Arlington’s office. Its flames danced off the walls, wrestling away the shadows as the alarms sounded. Someone or something had cut the power.
“What the hell is that?” the watchman squeaked, half his face caught in the bright glow of the fire, the other half lost in shadow. “What happened to the power?”
He looked at Karma as though she had the answer. After she didn’t respond, he grabbed his radio, but all that came through was static.
“Stay here,” he ordered her, and slipped out of the room. She heard the door lock from the other side, barring her inside the office.
She hugged herself. Despite the heat emanating from the fire, she felt cold inside, as cold as Mortimer Greenwood’s gaze, flickering in the firelight. Something was wrong, she could feel it in her bones. And yet, all she could think about was being banished. She’d be given a small backpack, a brief time to say farewell to her family—if Arlington allowed it—and thrown out into the Dead World alone. She doubted she would survive. After all, she had seen it, the desolate land, the ash and debris, the nothingness that inhabited above ground. If she was lucky, maybe she could find another silo, another Nest, but the chances of them opening their doors compared to killing her on sight were slim. And that’s if she got that far. Even if she could survive the Dead World, she could never survive the Flesh Rotters.
Voices sounded from outside the room. She waited, but the watchman did not return. His absence frightened her even more. First, Dr Carter and now the power. What was next? She didn’t want to think about it. The dark frightened her, but not knowing what was happening outside in the Nest was far worse.
She paced the room, trying to figure out what she was going to do next and stopped before Arlington’s desk. A moment of hesitation brushed past her like a gentle wind, and before she knew it, she was in his chair, rummaging through his desk drawers, one eye on the door, one on the desk. She didn’t have much time, she knew, but it was the only chance she would get to get the journal back. She rummaged through every drawer, foraging through paperwork and junk
, but the little, leather bound book was nowhere in sight. She looked at the hearth, wondering . . .
Something sparkled in the corner of her eye. She looked down and noticed a glint of medal from the bottom drawer. She reached down and pulled out a silver beaded-chain. A pair of dog tags was attached to it. She carried it over to the fire and read the name hammered in the tiny, steel plates: CPTN. BENTON, DAVID R., followed by a series of numbers.
Again, there was that name. The picture, the letter, the journal. What could be the connection? And then it hit her. Could General Harper really be Captain Benton?
“Oh my God . . .”
Something startled her, a noise. She jumped out of Arlington’s chair and spun around, but nothing was there. It was either a ghost or a figment of her imagination. But then it sounded again, emitting from the other side of the room, hidden in shadow. She hung the dog tags around her neck and went to investigate. It was coming from the air vent. Something was rustling inside it. A bizarre stench filled the air, a smell that reminded her of the morgue back at the med ward. Maybe it was the rats, she pondered. Despite maintenance’s efforts to keep them out, they were always scurrying around the air ducts. She didn’t blame them. They weren’t the only ones afraid of the Flesh Rotters—
Boom! The entire vent shook. She stepped back. That was no rat. That was something else. Something big . . .
A hand fell on her shoulder and she jumped. It was the watchman. He looked frantic. “We have to get out of here,” he said. “They’re evacuating everyone to the Vault. We have to go. Now.”
The Vault? He grabbed her by the wrist, a little harder than he should have, and dragged her out of the room. She forgot all about the air vent when she saw the ruckus. The hallways were flooded, filled with people hurrying toward the stairwell. This was no power outage, this was mayhem.
“Come on,” the watchman barked over his shoulder. “Faster! Move it!”
They weaved through the crowd, and found the stairwell loaded, packed with people pushing and shoving their way up from the lower levels. Emergency lights flashed, swallowing them in darkness and spitting them out in shades of red; the alarms wailed, rattling her ears. The watchman let go of her to help a woman who had been knocked to the ground, screaming for help. Just then, another wave of people came bursting from down below and swept her away, carrying her up the stairwell and out of sight. She was pushed aside, spun in circles, and tossed around like a leaf in a windstorm. Finally, she saw a break in the action and pinned herself against the wall. The mob rushed past her, stumbling around her.
“Mom! Ben!” she cried out, searching the faces of those who raced past her, but they were nowhere in sight. Fear washed over her then. What if Arlington had lied to her? What if they had already been banished or worse—
“Karma!”
She spun around and found Varra, swimming through the crowd, reaching out for her. “Varra!” She latched onto her hand and pulled her toward her, using all her strength.
“What’s happening?” she shouted over the turmoil. “Why is everyone being evacuated?”
“It’s the Flesh Rotters,” Varra exclaimed. Her eyes were red and wild with tears. “There’s more of them. They’re attacking—"
Suddenly, a shriek cut through the air like a sharp knife. Shouts turned into screams and screams turned into mass chaos. Karma and Varra were torn apart as everyone came barreling through at once. People were no longer rushing but charging their way up the stairwell, rattling the entire structure, trampling over each other, pushing their way through. The stairwell moaned beneath their feet. Karma looked for a way out. People were diving for safety through the levels exits, others running for the Vault. There was a loud snap as the bolts broke free, one after the other, detonating like bombs.
Terror stretched across everyone’s face as the entire stairwell trembled and swayed. It was going to break.
Karma hooked her arm around the rail just in time, anchoring herself down as the metal warped and twisted away from the wall. Bodies rained down past her, screaming through the darkness, and with one final sigh, the stairwell collapsed into nothingness.
* * *
The timorous crowd streamed in through the large, steel doors of the Vault, guided by the watchmen who guarded it. People were crying, calling out the names of loved ones, searching for fathers and daughters, mothers and sons. Off to the side, a small group of nurses worked feverishly on the wounded, doing their best to mend broken bones or stop them from bleeding.
Ben’s brown eyes swept across their faces. Karma was not among them.
“Is she there?” asked his mother as she tried to peer over the heads of the crowd. “Do you see her?”
“Not yet.” He grabbed her hand and she followed. He didn’t want to lose her. He almost did back on the stairwell. “Come on. Let’s check farther down.”
With his mother’s hand securely in his, Ben trucked his way through the crowd. It was hard not to pay attention to the devastation that surrounded them. The Vault was filled with people quietly sobbing to themselves or staring off into the distance with a dazed look in their eye; others tried to console their frightened children or clung to their injured family members in desperation.
Ben envied them. God, how he envied them. He was so afraid for Karma that he couldn’t stop blaming himself. The last he heard of his sister was that she had been involved in the attack and had been taken directly to the decontamination chamber for testing. No one would tell him if she had been infected or not. They wouldn’t even tell him if she was still alive. If it wasn’t for Jax, Malik’s son, who came to him shortly after they took her, he would have never known that she was taken to Arlington’s office after being tested, which only meant one thing—his sister was clean. She had to be. But where was she?
“She has to be here,” said his mother on the verge of tears. Her hand was shaking in his. It hadn’t stopped since the moment the alarms sounded. “Maybe we missed her back there. You don’t think they would leave her down there, do you?”
“Keep looking,” is all he said. He didn’t have the heart to tell his mother what he really thought—
“Ben!”
He spun around, hoping to see his sister bouncing through the troubled crowd, but it wasn’t her. It was her best friend, Varra. She rushed over to them, throwing her arms around his mother.
“Thank God you made it,” she said. Fresh tears filled her eyes. “I saw Karma. She was looking for you guys on the stairwell, but I lost her in the commotion.”
Ben looked at her. “What commot—”
Suddenly, there was an explosion as people came bursting through the Vault doors, rushing past the guards. The watchmen were screaming for everyone to get back, to take it slow, but no one was listening. There was a shriek, followed by screams. Something crashed outside of the Vault, something loud, and the watchmen began to close the doors—
“Look!” Varra cried. “They’re closing the doors! They’re locking everyone out!”
There was no time to think, no time to register the stupidity of the stunt he was about to pull. He let go of his mother’s hand and barreled his way through the mob. Nobody tried to stop him, nobody could, nor did they care. They were too frenzied over the descending doors, threatening to crush everyone. Dozens of people fought against them, wedging themselves inside the ever closing gap, trying to weasel their way through. Ben was the only one fighting to get out. Someone called his name, but he ignored it.
The doors drew closer, the gap grew smaller: Three feet. Two feet. He saw an opening. There was only a foot of space left. It was now or never. He braced himself, plowed past the others, and bolted through the entrance—
The doors snapped shut behind him.
Chapter Seventeen
Karma’s eyes fluttered open, blinking away the blurriness. Her head pounded; her body ached, caught in the folds of twisted metal. The stairwell lay in a heap all around her, her arm still hooked over the railing. It had saved her life. She
sat up, inspecting her limbs. Other than a few scrapes and bruises, surprisingly, she was okay, especially considering the fall. Only if the others had been so lucky. A dozen lifeless eyes stared back at her, mangled in the broken stairwell; people she recognized, people she had grown up with.
“Help!” she called out, her voice rising up the empty shaft. “Someone please help me!” She could see nothing but darkness, nothing but hopelessness.
A shriek sounded from nearby. Immediately, she stopped yelling for help and listened. It sounded again, closer this time. Quickly, she fumbled through the wreckage, looking for a way out. What she really needed was a way to the Vault, but with the stairwell busted and no power to the elevators, she was stuck.
Another shriek pierced the air, coming from all directions. Her foot snagged on a piece of jagged metal and she fell on top of someone’s body, twisting her ankle. It took everything in her not to scream. She crawled across the body, refusing to look at the face, and over pieces of bent metal and dead bodies until she came out on the other side, surrounded by passages. Her ankle more than throbbed, it screamed with pain. No sooner she took a limp forward, something grabbed her, dragging her into the shadows.
She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand silenced it. The outsider pressed his body against hers, pinning her to the wall. He raised a finger to his lips, his face inches away from hers, and motioned for her to be silent.
A massive black form dropped from the ceiling, landing only yards away with a sickening crunch on top of the body she had crawled off of. Karma’s eyes followed it as it crept toward them, glistening with wet blood all over its face. The Flesh Rotter was twice the size of Dr Carter with black eyes and disfigured features, missing an ear and half its face. It sniffed the air like an animal, drawing closer.
The outsider spread his arms out around her, covering her as best he could, pressing his body against hers, she could feel every muscle. What was he doing? she wondered.
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