Vessel, Book I: The Advent

by Tominda Adkins

Everyone stopped walking.

  "Thunder, maybe," said Corin. He looked to Ghi. "Would you be able to tell?"

  The thought had clearly never occurred to Ghi. He let his mouth hang open for a few seconds before giving an answer. "I―I'm pretty sure I would. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't."

  Hell, I could have told them it wasn't thunder. Thunder doesn't shake the ground so hard that you almost fall over.

  "And the screaming?" I demanded. I couldn't have been the only person who'd heard it.

  "That was just the wind," said Abe, with not quite believable assurance. His explanation did have some merit; no one could deny the cold gusts of air blowing through the old building, kicking up dust and swinging stray doors on their decaying hinges.

  We started walking again, much faster than before.

  The ground level was way bigger than I'd imagined on the way in. Since then, the gray daylight had diluted the solid darkness enough to let us see all the way to the far corners of the factory floor. My empty insides churned and sank when I saw a line of mismatched sedans, caked with drying mud, on the far end. I pointed at them with the hand I could still feel.

  Ghi and Corin looked at me.

  "I don't think those were here before," I said.

  Ghi and Corin looked at Abe.

  "Luna Latum?' Corin asked.

  Abe shook his head. "Doubtful."

  "Luna Latum?" I frowned.

  "Friends," said Ghi.

  More walking. More quickly.

  The quarry's administrative offices were walled off at the nearest end of the building, and beyond them was the fire exit through which my companions had entered. That would be the safest and fastest way out, they told me, less conspicuous than trying to break through the huge loading dock doors ahead, which were locked. They needn't have wasted the breath. Rip open the biggest, loudest door you can find, boys, I thought, and see if I care, so long as it leads out of this place.

  We reached the promised corridors after five more minutes of stop-start motion, pausing at every small sound. A set of flimsy steel doors stood open before us, frozen in mid-swing by rust, and beyond them glowed the dirty yellow beacon of fluorescent lighting. One by one, we stepped sideways through the half-open portal, breathing just a little easier. That much closer to getting out of there.

  This relatively small section of the building was nothing more than a few looping hallways―connecting offices, supply closets, bathrooms, all the smaller spaces that required walls. Most of the bulbs along the ceiling were burnt out or busted, and what little light the rest gave off was absorbed by the smudged, drab walls and dull metal doors. I kept my eyes on the dingy linoleum ahead of me and prayed for a swift exit.

  Corin compulsively checked his Sabre phone, even though it had done nothing to attract his attention. No buzzing. No messages. His lips were pressed into a hard line. "I don't like this," he said.

  No one liked this, but no one said a word. We wouldn't know if the others had made it out until we got outside ourselves.

  Turning the first corner, I picked up on a subtle, gradual change of pace. My anxiety skyrocketed. Corin and Ghi were looking at one another uneasily. They slowed down, breathing deeply through their noses, and then stopped altogether.

  "That's new," Corin whispered. "That wasn't here on the way in."

  Ghi shook his head.

  I saw nothing of note ahead. Just a hallway that split off into two directions at the end. Closed doors. Greasy walls. More old, humming lights. The smell, though. That couldn't be missed. I pulled the collar of Corin's coat up around my nose.

  "You mean the stench?" I mumbled.

  It was beyond rancid. It was rained-on roadkill bad. It was "the fridge broke while we were on vacation" bad. It was was the smell of death.

  Dead death.

  "I know that smell," Abe said.

  He tapped his fingers for a long moment while we stared at him, not wanting to alarm us with his words. When he finally embellished, it was with a very careful tone.

  "I think there's been a fight."

  Corin and I paused to consider his meaning. Ghi, on the other hand, started walking again, walking toward the smell. Ignoring the warning curses Corin hissed after him, he stopped at the hallway's end, put his hands to the wall, and leaned around cautiously―so unbearably slowly―to look around the corner.

  I held my breath, edging closer to Corin. We both jumped when Ghi threw a hand to his face and pressed his back to the wall. Whatever he'd seen, it was astonishing, and apparently disgusting―but not dangerous. He gave us one startled look before stepping entirely beyond the corner, a hand still mashed to his face in clear disgust.

  With his other hand, he beckoned us all. Only after turning the corner did it hit us like a wall, too, both the smell and the sight.

  "Jesus," Corin breathed.

  "What happened to them?" Ghi hadn't taken his eyes off the scene.

  I gagged down the urge to dry heave and dove into my sweatshirt. Would this never end? Had I not seen the worst already?

  No, I hadn't. Because this was hell. I know a thing or two about hell now. And in hell, there is no worst. Hell is knowing that there is always the potential for things to be worse, increasingly, over and over and over again without limit.

  And in hell, worse is always just around the corner.

  I was aware, even without being told, that they couldn't hurt us. None of them were moving. They were mere carcasses, finished shells, no longer Hollows. That part of them was gone, done away with somehow. There was nothing left to them, no black matter to animate the bodies.

  Or the pieces.

  If I had to guess, I'd say about fifteen. Some of them were easy enough to count, clearly identifiable as individuals. Skeletons with skin, and not in a starved sense, but a literal sense. All their flesh was compressed tightly to the bone, like cling-wrap. Not a molecule of air remained in any part of them, as if it had all been drawn out by some terrible and instant vacuum.

  The rest were impossible to count. Blobs of skin lay ballooned beyond recognition, stretched to translucence, popped, scattered. A bloated stomach here, a ruptured face over there, littering the floor. The memory of the guy in the body bag seemed appealing in comparison, fond even. There was nothing in my imagination capable of doing this. And yet the proof was lying in bits and shreds at my feet.

  Too close to my feet.

  I backed up a few paces, still holding my breath. Abe brushed past, moving straightaway to the closest carcass, and knelt down to examine it. Ghi followed, and Corin passed them both, picking his way to the corner of the L-shaped hallway, where most of the carnage seemed to converge. I stayed exactly where I was.

  "These were old, very old," Abe muttered, prodding a ribcage wrapped in greasy brown flesh. "No blood whatsoever. And the smell. The smell can sometimes tell you. Fascinating."

  Ghi hunched over behind him, staring at the corpse's blind, cavernous eye sockets, the mess of inverted cartilage that had somehow been a nose before. He fought hard to swallow before he could say what he was thinking with appropriate firmness.

  "I think Jesse did this."

  Jesse? I panicked at the thought of him anywhere near this place or these things. The image would not register.

  But Abe nodded. "I agree. Sucked the air right out of them. Or expanded it. If I had to guess, I'd say he had a tangle with them, alright."

  "And I'd say he won." Ghi stood up and turned, almost tripping over a set of imploded remains.

  "I hope you're right," said Corin. He was standing at the end of the hall, staring down a shorter, dead-end hallway with a blank and sternly composed expression. "Abe?"

  "Yes."

  "You said there was no blood?"

  "That's right."

  "Come here, please."

  All three of us approached him, not just Abe, which didn't seem to please Corin. He said nothing, though, and as we drew closer, one of my feet slipped out from under me. I managed to latch onto Ghi's elbow be
fore falling onto anything disgusting, and glanced down. I'd slipped over a splatter of blood, a sticky pool of scarlet shining under the harsh lights.

  I steadied myself and looked down the shorter hallway. Blood cut a trail down the floor and painted a broken smear along the wall, forming a ruddy chain all the way to the solitary door at the end.

  The next few seconds were a race to that door, all four of us fighting to be the first to reach what we each dreaded seeing. I knew what would be on the other side, and I knew that it would cost me the most. I think that's how I got there first.

  I flung the door open, hitting something on the floor with it. A blast of air instantly whipped the hair out of my face, and for one confused instant I thought I had stepped outside. I saw movement and nearly screamed before realizing that it was my own backlit reflection in a mirror. Water was running, and a strange, rhythmic rumble beat against my eardrums. While clambering for the light switch, I nearly tripped over him.

  The lights hummed on and I saw a small bathroom. He'd left the sink on. Murky, clay-colored water brimmed over its edges and streamed to the greasy tile floor, close to his head. There wasn't a strand of blonde left unstained. All of it was either clay brown, blood red, or black. The blackest black.