by Joe Hart
Sullivan felt his tears begin to lessen, something rising from within him inexplicably after all this time, dredged from the depths of his soul by the raking hand of death. “The day she died, I walked in the door and she was standing at the balcony. She had a dress on that I liked. I set the groceries down on the table and just stood there. She stared at me over her shoulder, the look in her eyes when she’d seen something terrible, and I just looked back. I didn’t rush to help her like every other time. I waited. I told myself later that it was my way of lashing out at her after she’d hurt me so many times, that I paused to show her I was strong, and she couldn’t scare me anymore. But a voice that’s still inside my head says I did it because I knew. I knew she’d do it.”
Sullivan let out a long breath that seemed to drain him of everything. He felt like a dried husk without anything left inside to hurt. “She jumped. I stood there for a split second, and then I ran, trying to catch her, but she was already gone.”
Sullivan reached over and touched Barry on the shoulder again. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you either.”
Barry’s eyes flew open and he gasped, grabbing at Sullivan’s arm.
“Fuck!” Sullivan cried and fell back, but immediately recovered from his shock and slid forward on his knees to Barry’s side. His friend’s eyes were so shot with blood that they looked black in the dim light. They rolled back and forth, searching with fear for something, and Sullivan glanced over his shoulder to assure himself that they were still alone.
“She’s here,” Barry whispered, his words strangled as something gurgled in his throat. “It’s time.”
Sullivan put a hand beneath Barry’s head and lifted it so he could look into the other man’s face. “I’m going to get you out of here, buddy. You’re going to be just fine.”
Barry’s eyes found Sullivan’s and held them, his cracked lips parted as small bursts of air escaped them. “No, you have to stop her, you have to stop the doorway! There’s no time for me!” Barry’s voice rose in pitch, although he lacked the strength to muster any real volume for his words.
“I won’t leave you,” Sullivan said, shaking his head.
“You have to, now. You don’t know what will happen if her kind comes through. They’re locusts. That’s why their world is dying, they’ve stripped it of everything. They’ll do the same here. They’ll eat and eat and eat until there’s nothing left. They multiply so fast. They destroy worlds.” Barry’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he coughed up milky white phlegm, which coated his chin. Sullivan wiped it away and put his other hand on Barry’s cold cheek.
“How do you know all this?” Sullivan asked.
Barry’s eyelids fluttered open and he moved his arm to his side and jabbed at his back. “She showed me while I worked with the other man to get the machine running. She connected to me.”
Barry pointed again to his back, and with growing horror Sullivan rolled him onto his side. He searched the pale skin there, and was about to turn Barry back over when he noticed a blackened bruise near his tailbone. When he leaned closer to inspect it, he had to clench his jaw to keep from crying out in shock.
The skin around the base of Barry’s spine was flayed away. Vertebrae even whiter than the rest of the agent’s skin poked free, like an island jutting from a bloodied sea. The wound was circular, and Sullivan could see strands of dark veins radiating outward into Barry’s lower back.
Sullivan laid Barry gently onto his back once again, and noticed his friend’s breathing was faster. A dry whistle emanated from him, as if there was a bone protruding somewhere inside where it shouldn’t be.
“Tell them I’m okay, tell them I love them and not to worry. You stop it, Sully. Stop it for me and for my family, for everyone.” Barry’s red eyes slowly rolled up until his eyelids mercifully closed over them. His emaciated body hitched once, and then sagged like a sail in a dying wind.
Sullivan’s breath withered out of his lungs as he pressed two fingers to the side of Barry’s neck. He waited there, hoping that he would feel a dull beat through the artery, but there was nothing. Sullivan’s face crumpled and he stifled a sob as he sat back. The weight of Everett’s and, now, Barry’s deaths was almost unbearable. He felt like a bridge having its support struts pulled away one by one. He imagined his mind would finally snap at any instant, and he would welcome the oblivion madness would bring. It would be a blessing to swim in its embrace and forget everything he’d seen.
A yell from the cavern snapped him out of his trance. He looked toward the glow of the light, and then back at the body before him. Flashes of the man Barry had been ran through Sullivan’s mind as he squeezed his friend’s shoulder one last time. The urge to take his body with him was overridden by what he knew Barry would say if he were still alive. Sullivan stood and stepped back into the tunnel, and felt liquid begin to run over his shoes.
Water poured down the grade above him, soaking the dirt floor as it flowed past, searching for the lowest point it could reach. He sloshed across the tunnel to the spot where he’d placed the shotgun and retrieved it before the ever-growing river behind him clutched the gun in its cold grasp. He once again made his way to the mouth of the passage and looked down.
The people were amassing in front of the oblong machine, their faces turned away from him, toward the far end of the giant cavern. Andrews stood there on a semi-flat rock that raised him above the rest of the waiting eyes. To Sullivan, he looked taller and stronger than he had in his office; his shoulders were no longer slumped and his back was straight. His hands were outstretched toward the crowd before him, and even from this distance, Sullivan could see the maniacal shine that glossed the warden’s eyes.
“Friends!” Andrews’s voice boomed and echoed in the rocky cave, giving a powerful resonance to his words. “This is the beginning! A revolution of the sort the world has never seen before! You are the beginning, and you’ll be hailed as visionaries in the new world!” Andrews lowered his hands and smiled at the faces upturned toward him, like a preacher doling out eternal salvation. “Death will be thwarted for your loyalty and disease will be wiped from our history, starting today! We will go forth bearing her gifts and renew the life of our new brothers and sisters!”
The congregation shouted in one voice, making a dissonance of repercussion that caused Sullivan to wince with its noise. Soon, the voices changed from exuberant shouts to a low buzzing that was laced with an underlying hiss. As Sullivan watched, he saw every person below him tip his or her head back and yawn widely. Tendrils erupted en masse from hundreds of mouths. They sawed the air as they whipped and caressed the faces of their hosts. Sullivan’s stomach turned at the sight and he felt his legs wanting to propel him up the way he’d come. He waited, as their humming chant rose in volume and the snapping appendages tore the air more violently.
A noise suddenly rose above the crowd’s song. It was a deep thrumming that Sullivan felt in his chest, the sound of a wounded whale crying out across miles of an empty ocean. Its bass vibration stuttered and ascended in pitch, until he thought his eardrums would rupture, and then it was gone. He waited a beat as the cavern fell silent but for the thousands of tendrils whipping in ecstasy, and then he saw it: movement in the ceiling high above them all.
At first he thought it was an illusion, a dancing of shadows amassing and then recoiling in the light, but then it moved downward along one of the huge stalactites. The shadow crawled languidly, not without purpose but with easy assurance of power. It crept into the glow of the work lights, and as its full form was revealed, Sullivan stopped breathing. It was like having a fractured picture become whole again and finally seeing it for what it truly was. In this case, it was his memories that were broken and rearranged within the dream of the other, dying world and the glimpse he’d caught of the thing near the fence.
It was long, at least twenty-five feet from tail to nose. Its general anatomy resembled a centipede, but instead of its torso being a continuous line, it was segmented into two par
ts. Its back half bulged with angular protrusions that were covered with black plates, much like a crab’s shell. Its tail then narrowed to a wicked-looking point that drew back on itself into a hook. The front half of its body was flared and shaped like an arrowhead. Multiple black spines shot out of its back, pointing forward, and Sullivan shuddered, remembering how they had looked poking from the water he’d almost treaded into the day before. Multi-jointed legs extended from its body every few feet; the two foremost limbs were thick and by far the longest. Both appendages ended in sharp tips that chipped and bit into the solid rock the creature climbed upon. Several smaller sets of legs curled tightly beneath its undulating body, seemingly protecting its plated belly. But it was its head that kept drawing Sullivan’s attention. Two soulless eyes the size of softballs perched at the far ends of a triangular skull. They were black mirrors without defined pupils, but he could see them shifting every so often to take in its surroundings. The skin of its head shone as if it were polished marble, and an open maw gaped below two hooked antenna. Its mouth was toothless and appeared soft. A shockingly human-looking tongue licked at its edges and flicked out into the air, as if tasting it.
Another blast of its stench rocked Sullivan back from the edge of the cavern and left him in the dark, gagging and near hysteria, as he watched the creature finally articulate onto the cave floor. Its head turned in an insectile manner toward Andrews, who smiled and bowed to the abomination. Again the deep vibration hammered the air in the cavern, and Sullivan wondered if the warden could understand it, for the man nodded and gestured toward the mouth of the tunnel.
Panic lanced through Sullivan as the thing turned in his direction and scuttled toward him at an alarming speed. It spider-like legs tore into the floor and propelled it forward like a black wave.
It was coming for him.
Andrews had somehow known he was here and communicated it to the horror. She would pull him from the tunnel like a man stabbing a pickle from a jar, and then devour him, to the tumultuous cries of her horde.
Sullivan stumbled back farther and slipped in the water that now rushed around him. He fell and aimed the shotgun toward the mouth of the passage, waiting for the monstrous head to fill the space. Seconds ticked by. Nothing appeared. He pulled himself to his feet, all the while keeping his sights trained on the opening before him.
The floor of the cavern came into view and he stopped, crouching as he realized how close she was. The creature had her back to him, and at this distance he could now make out intricate designs in the black plates of her armored hide. What he’d thought were large interlocking shells he now saw were made up of many smaller diamond-shaped scales that moved and flexed with every shift of her weight. The spines that appeared hard and immobile were, in fact, twitching forward and back with jerking movements. He watched in awe as she sat back, balancing on her tail to unfold the short legs beneath her stomach. What at first he’d thought was a protective measure he now saw for what it was: she was holding something.
Her legs uncurled and released the naked man she clutched to her belly. He stood on wobbly legs, which threatened to release him to the floor. In many ways he resembled how Barry looked: he had no hair and his skin was whiter than new snow. Skin sagged at his buttocks and stomach, which suggested extreme weight loss. Although his head fell to his chest as soon as he was free of the thing’s embrace, Sullivan was still able to recognize him.
It was Dr. Arnold Bolt, the missing nuclear physicist.
Bolt wavered again and began to tip, but then something shot free of the thing’s mouth and slid behind him. It was like the man had been electrified. Every muscle in his body tensed and flexed through his thin layer of skin. His head snapped back and his mouth flew open in pain. And just as suddenly, he relaxed. The scientist turned in a short circle and walked to the control panel mounted to the rear of the machine.
A pale rope extended from the thing’s mouth, attached to the base of Bolt’s spine. Sullivan could see some sort of coupling between the man’s tailbone and whatever extended from the thing. Barry’s wound suddenly became all too clear and Sullivan shook his head, anger rising up within him. They were marionettes. It was using people like puppets to do its bidding. Sullivan watched as the machine began to hum and a few loud clicks resounded from its shrouded interior.
It was starting; he had to move now. Sullivan ran through his options as fast as humanly possible and came to the same conclusion each time. There would most likely be no way he would live through this. His only hope was to destroy the machine and then fight until he was overwhelmed by the monstrosity below or its acolytes. Sullivan steeled himself, loaded four more shells into the shotgun, checked that the safety was off, and stood. He said Rachel’s name one time in his head and stepped out into the light.
A snapping sound came from the machine and there was a flash of light that lit up every surface in the cave. A wave of heat hit Sullivan in the chest and he heard his hair and eyebrows crackle as they singed at their ends. He fell back and landed in the mouth of the tunnel, and stared down at the scene before him. The crowd was parted to either side of the machine’s barrel, and they all watched something at the far end of the chamber in awed silence. Sullivan drew his eyes to where they looked.
A hole as black as a patch of night sky had appeared where only a large pile of rocks and boulders were before. Its surface was flat and about ten feet across. Its edges waved like water, and at its oily center the darkness within moved and swirled hypnotically.
Sullivan leapt to his feet and shouldered the shotgun, meaning to shoot the machine’s controls, although it seemed pointless. The doorway was open and he deduced that the machine had nothing to do with what happened now. Bolt still stood transfixed behind the sighting shield, but he suddenly slumped forward, steadying himself with two weakened arms as the thing behind him detached its probe. All at once the air was alive with swinging tendrils that erupted from the thing’s mouth. Each ropy arm was almost as long as the creature itself, and tipped with different shapes of razor-sharp bone. As he saw one tendril that ended in a blunt stump, Sullivan remembered the object from Alvarez’s mouth. He lowered the shotgun, in shock, watching the snake-like appendages lash out and begin to slash at the scientist’s soft flesh.
Blood and tissue flew in all directions. It looked for a moment like the physicist was caught in a man-sized blender. Bolt tried to scream as his legs attempted to give out, but the creature stabbed a twisted barb through the man’s chest and held him in place as it worked, cutting off his cry before it ever left his mouth. Soon, the whiteness of bone became visible in the glow of the lights. One of Bolt’s arms fell from its socket and was carried away, only to be shoved into the waiting mouth of the creature. A second later both of his legs were ripped in different directions by the prying arms, and were consumed. Red and blue intestines spilled free of the scientist’s stomach and were wound into a ball before disappearing into the thing’s gullet. Sullivan watched, mortified, as Bolt’s head, surprisingly free of gore and cuts, came loose from his shoulders and fell. It was snatched in midair at the last instant by a lancing tendril that drove through one of the man’s eye sockets.
The last of the scientist’s body vanished, as though he’d never been there, and the creature’s dancing feelers retreated out of sight into its mouth. Sullivan raised the shotgun again to fire, the smell of blood heavy in his nostrils, but then noticed a flowing movement beyond the machine.
The crowd was kneeling on the rough floor, their heads all turned in the direction of the doorway, where something moved deep within its folds. A hinged black leg poked out of the hole and rested its pointed tip on the ground. After a few seconds, the rest of the creature became visible and slid free of the oily doorway, as if being born into the world. It was half the size of the original creature, but otherwise identical. Its black carapace shone in the light, and it made a mewling sound that sprung goose bumps across Sullivan’s flesh.
The thing beside the machin
e scuttled toward the doorway, knocking several men over as it hurried through the crowd. The two creatures met in the center of the floor and locked eyes, their movements becoming slower and more graceful. They leaned from side to side on their long legs and both emitted a low humming that was more felt than heard.
Sullivan swore and leapt down the short steps in front of the tunnel’s mouth, landing in a puddle of water and gore from Bolt’s remains a few feet from the machine’s control panel. The water’s flow leaked all the way past the base of the stairs and was expanding quickly. He skidded to a stop and huddled for a moment behind the protective shield. His mind spun with thoughts of how to stop what was happening. He’d missed his chance to destroy the machine, and now there was another creature to contend with. He tried to control his rapid breathing as he stood and peered over the top of the panel, through the sighting shield.
The creatures had finished their greeting, and now the smaller of the two extended itself up as tall as its legs would reach, behind its larger mate. A slit in the smaller creature’s belly opened and Sullivan realized, without a doubt, that it was male. A jutting protrusion roughly four feet long extended out into the open air, its rigid form pulsing in the low light. The tip of the organ dripped a grayish fluid before it disappeared into a fold of flesh beneath the female’s thrashing tail. The male wrapped its crustacean-like legs around the bulging female’s body and hugged her close as his entire body shuddered.
Sullivan fell back to his haunches, abhorrence thick in his chest at the sight of the two alien beasts mating. He had to do something now. The puddle that he knelt in finally crept to the bottom edge of the machine and kissed the metal there. A hiss of steam and the smell of ozone met Sullivan’s nose. He looked down to see the water bubbling around the first inch of the enormous gun’s housing. The steam scalded his flesh beneath his pants leg and he moved back, an idea taking shape in his mind. He risked another glance through the sighting shield and was alarmed to see that the two creatures had uncoupled and were both facing the doorway, which now fluttered more forcefully at its edges. Several more sets of legs appeared in its opening and began to descend to the floor. Without another moment allowed for thought or consequence, Sullivan stood, his eyes finding the red button at the center of the console. He slammed the heel of his hand down on it.
