“So Silas, what happens next?” I asked in spite of it.
Silas turned to me. He appeared calm and nodded toward the surrounding jungle.
I said, “Is it through there?”
He stuck out his tongue and smiled at the same time.
I got up on one knee, took his hand, and uttered, “Okay then, lead the way, kiddo.”
He did.
44
Silas led me through the jungle, squatting as he walked, his little-boy phallus dangling between his legs. He was much easier to keep up with in this form, but he was still quite agile. He bounced around on bent knees and used his knuckles to steady his upper body like a chimp. As usual, he’d trot off ahead and turn around every few seconds to make sure I hadn’t gotten too far behind. An expression of adoration stretched across his face when he did this. I smiled back at him, even though my whole body ached like hell.
I stopped for a moment, took a bottle of water out of my pack, and drank half of it in one gulp. Silas waddled up to me and looked up expectantly. Foamy spit had gathered at the corners of his mouth. I held the bottle out to him, but he just stared at it. “C’mon,” I said. “Take it.” When he didn’t, I tipped the bottle over and let the water flow out in a slow trickle. Silas hopped underneath the stream and lapped it up. When he finished I re-capped the bottle, laughed, and said, “If you’re gonna be a real boy, you’re gonna have to learn the basic tenets of manners.” He yipped and bounced away.
We resumed our walk after that. Time seemed to gain a distinct lack of meaning – we could’ve been going for ten minutes or two hours for all I knew – while I focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Silas then stopped short. He jumped up and down and made strange yapping sounds. His hand waved off in the distance.
He saw something. He knew where we were. My nerves started to unravel once more. To reconcile this I said, “Okay, pardner,” in my best John Wayne voice – an impression Wendy constantly made fun of because it sounds like Bert from Sesame Street trying to be a badass. It seemed to help a little, but not much.
45
Very cautiously, Silas maneuvered through the thick underbrush and seemingly impenetrable wall of trees. The insects continued their refrain while my heart provided the backbeat, pounding in rhythm with their song and skipping a beat every now and then as it was apt to do. I had more than a passing fear that arrhythmia would be the end of me. I hadn’t taken my medication in two days. Hopefully that sensitive muscle would hold up.
Don’t go there, I thought. I couldn’t let self-doubt and uncertainty have rule over me. Not now, when I knew I needed my every sense to be sharp in order to make it through.
Silas yelped, performing a good imitation of the way he used to whinny when he wanted to go outside. He yanked me head-first through a patch of broad-leafed shrubs. I noticed movement above me and stopped. Silas almost lost his footing, his hand still wrapped around mine. I thought I saw a shadow up in the trees and panicked, thinking there might be another vine-snake hovering nearby, but when I hunkered down and glanced through the darkened branches I saw only the moon. Silas let out an annoyed growl and tugged on my shirtsleeve. I followed his lead and crossed through another thick procession of trees.
The jungle then dropped away and a huge wall took its place, blocking our way. We stopped before it.
Not a wall, I thought.
What stood before us, tall and impenetrable, was a mountain of rock.
46
What I’d assumed to be a mountain was actually a cliff face that ran as far as I could see in either direction. I could see the top of the rocky overhang, twenty or so feet above my head. It’s a gigantic plateau, I thought. I scanned down the wall and saw a strange growth of ivy climbing up to the summit, reminding me of the outfield fences at Wrigley Park. I wrapped my fist around my chin, tugged on the two week’s worth of hair that grew there, and shrugged toward my now-human sidekick.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
Silas sat there and stared at me while his chest rose and fell.
“Do we have to go over it?”
Nothing.
“Around it?”
Staring.
I rolled my eyes and pleaded, “C’mon, Si, give me a clue.”
The boy shook his head, something that any normal human might do, but seeing Silas perform the act struck me as otherworldly. The kid’s learning, I thought. He then shifted on his feet and sprang away from me in his ape-like gallop, only stopping once he reached the part of the cliff covered with vegetation. His shimmering eyes beseeched me to come over. I went as quickly as I could.
“What, we gotta climb?” I asked. Silas reached out and stroked the leafy green stuff with his fingertips. “Okay,” I replied, “climb it is.”
I clutched one of the thick, meaty vines. It was sticky and for a moment I thought it alive. I winced and tugged, testing its strength. It held. Placing one hand over the other, I pulled myself up a couple feet. My toes found purchase on the stone beneath the vines and I stopped to take a deep breath. I knew right then this was going to be a near impossible task. My abused body cried out in pain and fatigue overwhelmed me. Just the thought of having to do this for another fifteen feet made me cringe. I glanced down at Silas, who still crouched, looking up at me like I was nuts.
“You coming?”
Silas shook his head again and held out his hand. This time he didn’t touch the ivy but reached through it. He withdrew his hand quickly, as if the texture of the stone underneath frightened him. But then he did it again, this time spitting between his teeth with a strange, impatient hiss.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
Before Silas could give me another silent reply, I felt something strange. A breeze wafted over my nose and made me gag. It was a horrid, rotten smell, but nothing I’d imagine occurring in the middle of the jungle. No, this was more mundane, more…domestic, like the reek of an electrical fire. And it was blowing not from the open air around me, but through the vines.
I leaned to my right, until I hovered above where Silas crouched, and kicked out with my leg. This time my foot didn’t connect with the wall – instead it pierced the vegetable curtain and entered open space. I breathed a quick gasp of surprise and dropped to the ground. Silas hopped up and down and, strangely enough, giggled. I raised my eyebrows at him and then plunged an exploratory hand through the creepers. Just as with my foot, it passed through the barrier, but this time I did hit something – something thin, cold and smooth; something metallic.
I pushed forward and the material pushed along with me. I heard a creak. Withdrawing my hand, I shrugged the rucksack off my shoulders and dug through it until I found the knife. The excitement of this strange discovery flowed hot in my veins, so much that I had to calm myself down before I sheared off a finger. Silas leaned over me, his heavy breathing causing a puddle of wetness on my neck. With my instrument in hand, I stood up and went to work.
It didn’t take long to cut through the ivy, which wasn’t ivy at all but green rope created from some sort of synthetic material made to look like ivy, artificial leaves and all. This sort of facsimile would’ve been the pride of any Hollywood special effects department, I thought. With this contemplation came the memory of Ricky Davenport. The old jealousy rose up, but I quickly squashed it.
To my wonder, behind the wall of faux ivy was something I never expected to see – a chain-link fence. I pushed on it and it gave. I leaned my head against it, pressing against the linked diamond patterns as hard as I could. It still gave but didn’t buckle. Again came a waft of ill-smelling air – with no barrier to block the passage of air, I caught the full force of it – and pulled up the collar of my shirt. Silas, kneeling beside me and playfully jabbing at the fence, crinkled his nose in disgust.
“Smells bad, huh?” I said through the musty fabric.
It looked like he nodded, which caused another of those paroxysms of amazement to come over me. I managed to smile, though Sil
as obviously couldn’t see it with my shirt covering my face. When he smiled, however, I did see it, and it melted my heart.
I got down on my knees and pulled him in close, holding him tight while tears ran down my cheeks. I’m still not sure why I took that moment to show him how much he meant to me, but he seemed to feel the same way. His thick body shuddered and he stroked the back of my nappy, snarled hair.
“I love you,” I whispered. “I…love…you.”
“Uv u,” he replied, and I hugged him even tighter.
I held him at arm’s length. He was beautiful. “What do you say we figure out how to get through this bad boy?” I said.
He smiled when I put him down. After that I picked up the knife and tried to find a way to get past the fence. There was no going back now.
47
Using the knife as a wedge, I was able to peel back enough of the steel hooks to tear a small hole in the gate. With that finished we crawled through, myself in the lead. Darkness engulfed us. The moonlight shone on the ground outside the portal but distilled almost immediately, fading like a ghost into the suffocating barrage of blackness. The rank air, a boutique of smoldering copper wire and decay, seemed to lessen, as if the process of drifting through the narrow opening compounded the odors.
Silas grabbed hold of my leg. His grip was strong but not tense, as if he simply didn’t want to lose me. I looked down the length of space I now found myself in and clapped. The sound of my hands smacking together returned to me four times. I didn’t know what that meant and felt foolish for announcing my presence to whatever was lurking out there in the dark.
I held my breath and listened. I heard Silas’s panting and a faint, almost undetectable hum that sounded like a fan.
Turning back to the portal, I knelt in front of the hole I’d created, groping through the rucksack in search of one of the flares Kaiser had packed. When I found one I ripped it out too quickly, bringing a can along with it. The can dropped to the rocky floor and clanked. I clamped down on it with my hand as fast as I could and listened, but there was no sound other than our breathing. I stood up, threw the pack over my shoulder, and lit the flare.
Bright orange light filled a space that turned out to be a tunnel. Its dimensions were the same as the gate barricading it – twenty feet across and fifteen feet up, extending far beyond the reach of the flare’s sputtering light.
I knew I had to go deeper into the tunnel, but I couldn’t resist the urge to check out the gate. I got down on my hands and knees and discovered a thin steel beam with a gap in it running from one side of opening to the other, then beyond. It stretched out to my right, hugging the inside of the cliff wall. The gate itself looked like a panel from one of those large crated dog pens. The thick, stainless-steel tubing that created the gate’s frame had metal rods soldered to it every eighteen inches or so, and those rods were fastened into the gap in the beam on the floor.
That’s when it hit me. It wasn’t a beam, but a runner. The gate was actually a huge sliding door.
“No kidding,” I whispered, and then pointed the flare at the ceiling. Sure enough there was another runner up there, too, along with an ancient-looking, chain-powered motor. The cords from the motor channeled into a metal cylinder that ran across the ceiling until it reached the wall to the left. At that point the tube descended and leveled out, forming a straight line running parallel to the ground and disappearing into the darkness beyond.
Silas tugged on my shirt, seeming confused but eager. The sight of actual technology caused my fear of the unknown to abate a little. I pointed at the electrical tubes. “Looks like they have power here, Silas,” I said. “Maybe this isn’t where we’re supposed to be. What if it leads to another bomb shelter?”
Silas squinted and scrunched his face.
“Yeah, dumb question,” I said. “You did lead us here, after all. So you ready?”
At this, the boy who’d been a dog hopped up and down, wearing an awkward, strangely sarcastic grin. He grabbed my hand and together we walked into the gloom.
48
The tunnel seemed to go on forever. We marched onward, following the electrical conduit. The ceiling gradually lowered and the walls closed in until the tunnel was ten feet square.
My nerves, which had calmed a bit at first, began playing with my head. Every time I heard the tiniest click my heart jumped. Most times it was nothing but Silas scraping a heel on the ground or kicking a loose pebble. I picked the boy up and hummed to ease my tension. I wasn’t surprised when my brain chose that damned Art Lonnigan song. The words repeated over and over in my head while my throat provided the melody through closed lips. Silas lay his head on my shoulder as if I was singing him a lullaby.
Then, an amazing thing happened – a glow appeared down the way. I walked slowly. The tunnel took a sharp right turn, and once we completed that rotation there were lights above us, beam after beam of buzzing fluorescent bulbs. The makeup of the tunnel also changed, with the natural rock and sand giving way to dull, smooth, gray metal. The shift came on so quickly that it seemed like we all of a sudden entered a completely different world. The odor of burnt wiring intensified.
“Maybe it is a bunker,” I muttered as I lowered Silas to the ground.
We started walking again after I snuffed out the third flare. Silas’s bare feet slapped against the steel floor, kicking up dust. That’s when I realized that dust covered everything, from ground to ceiling. There were footprints pressed into the grime, but they seemed old, perhaps years so. I frowned at Silas. If he’d been wrong in leading me here, we’d have wasted one more full moon.
A click sounded up ahead, making me jump. I drew the knife, the blade gleaming in the fluorescent light. I could see my reflection in it, something I hadn’t seen in three days. I looked like some scared-as-shit mountain man.
Silas urged me to keep walking, so I took a deep breath and followed his lead. The buzzing of the lights above grew louder and louder, the stink became greater, until the combined sensations threatened to overthrow my thoughts. It was bothering Silas, too, as he kept swatting at his ears as if he was being attack by mosquitoes. If this doesn’t stop soon, I told myself, we’re turning around and going back.
The corridor rotated again, and this time we came upon something I hadn’t expected – a large door with no handle and a pulley mechanism at the top. It looked like one of those heavy-duty types installed in industrial buildings, the ones that would drop down in the event of a fire or some other disaster. Or a blast door perhaps, like those seen on space stations in science fiction movies.
There was an instrument panel on the right wall. I approached it, wiped the dust from the monitor, and stared at the screen. Enter Password, it said, a green cursor blinking below the words. I stepped back and glanced over the panel. A placard hung there, coated with decades of floating waste. I swabbed the gunk away with my shirtsleeve. Dread washed over me when I saw what the sign had to say.
WARNING
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
PROJECT D.R.E.D.N.O.T.
Domestic Recon and Elimination Droid:
Nocturnal Operation Tactics
“No shit,” I murmured.
Silas uttered his low, guttural approval.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
He gazed up at me with those beautiful eyes, smiled, and slapped the wall below the console. I nodded, thinking that I didn’t give the little guy enough credit. He understood way more than I could’ve guessed.
I stared at the screen. The blinking cursor taunted me. “I don’t know the password,” I said. “You have any ideas?”
He shrugged and slapped the wall again.
I grunted, said, “Fine,” and placed my fingers over the keypad. It was a smallish construction, about two-thirds the size of my laptop at home, and I felt the sting of old familiar when I touched the keys. There it was – the same old blockage, the emptiness that had stifled my creativity for years. My mind went blank and I groaned.
DREDNOT, I typed.
The screen blinked, INCORRECT, then said, ENTER PASSWORD again.
I tapped my fingers on the keys, punched in OPEN SESAME, and then offered a half-hearted chuckle.
INCORRECT
NICELY
INCORRECT
SHITHEAD
INCORRECT
“Bastard,” I muttered. In anger I typed, YOU SUCK BALLS.
Once more the screen repeated, with annoying abruptness, INCORRECT.
I stepped back. Frustration caused my heart to race, my shoulders to heave. I fought the urge to smash the damn machine, to rip a section of the electrical conduit off the wall and pummel it again and again. To be honest, I might have done just that…if not for Silas.
He crouched, facing the door, rocking to the beat of an invisible drummer. I heard something strange yet recognizable come from his lips. It was barely audible beneath the buzz of the fluorescents. I knelt down behind him. What I heard made me cringe, both from surprise and displeasure.
Silas, who’d been a human boy for all of a half-day in his life, was humming as I had – and it was the bridge to that damned Art Lonnigan song.
An idea popped into my head after I came to grips with what my boy was doing. No way, I thought. That can’t be it. It’s just too…unbelievable.
With logic objecting to my every move I went back to the keypad. I ran through the lyrics in my head. It wasn’t so hard, seeing as it seemed like I heard that tune every time I turned on the radio for more than a year by that point. My fingers brushed the keys.
Silas: A Supernatural Thriller Page 19
