By the time Trask dragged Severin back to the control room, the clock on the control room wall read five minutes to three. Trask and Severin stood peering out through the window, Severin with a large flashlight. There were four short grooves and a slimy smear across part of the reinforced glass window.
Trask said, almost shouting, “I’m telling you, man, it just fucking landed on the window and started looking around in here. It looked right fucking at me and saw me, man. Like I was dinner. It was no stupid animal and I didn’t fucking imagine it!”
“Calm down, Trask, and enough with the language, for crying out loud,” Severin said calmly, although he was more annoyed than anything else. “I’m sure you saw something. Not to put too fine a point on it, you’re very high. I can tell. Are you sure you weren’t, um, drowsing and dreamed this thing up when something hit the window?”
“Fuck you, Severin. Look at the window. You can see the gouges in that shatter proof glass. You can see the slime from the tentacles. The thing was big. At least as big as a human torso. And it wanted in.”
Severin looked at Trask coldly.
“Fuck me? Keep a civil tongue, Trask. I don’t need to be out here at all.”
“Sorry, man. Really. This thing just really freaked me out. I know you’re one for reasonable explanations and, actually, I am too. But I know what I saw, and it wasn’t natural.”
“Just stay calm. We’ll figure it out, or…”
The clock chimed.
Trask’s head dropped into his hands.
“Shit,” he said. “The mess.”
“Are you going to pull the lever? The job is still the job.”
“You don’t think these are extenuating circumstances? I mean, what if there’s more than one? I don’t want to go out there if that thing is hanging around.”
Severin sighed.
“Look, just this once, I’ll go out with you. If you really saw something dangerous maybe the flood will kill it. I’m willing to bet it was a big rat or something. We’ve seen those before. We’ll take the pistols and get it done fast. But I want the favor returned the next time I’m on the messy shift.”
Trask visibly relaxed.
“I swear it wasn’t a rat, man, but, like you said, I’m pretty fucked up. Thanks, Severin. You’re really alright, man.”
Severin didn’t say anything. He reached over and pulled the fifth lever.
The LED turned green. Just as every day since they had come down the ladder, there was a distant metallic clanging followed by a train-like roar getting increasingly louder. The flood arrived as though out of thin air. Thrashing, foaming water crashed up against the grate and passed through, while all manner of detritus swirled and collided violently in front of it. This lasted fifteen minutes before there was more metallic clanging and the fifth lever slowly slid into its upright position. The LED turned red and the water began to subside.
Severin said, “Go get your gun and I’ll meet you in the HAZMAT room.”
The wall of detritus piled up against the grate was about twelve feet high, and the nature of the trash made Trask and Severin thankful for the level A HAZMAT suits provided for them. They were completely sealed from the environment and communicated via two way radio headsets.
Trask had opened the elevator door in the side of the canal. It was a 10X10 aluminum sided space. Severin had brought out a snow shovel and a pitchfork with him from the HAZMAT room.
“Which do you want? It’s all the same to me,” said Severin.
“I’ll take the snow shovel.”
Starting by the elevator entrance they began shoveling, pushing, dragging and scraping the accumulated trash into the open elevator. There was a lot of brush, but also broken furniture, tires, toys, clothing, shoes, bicycles, broken glass, unrecognizable electronics and machinery, an alarming amount of plastic bottles and aluminum cans and, predictably, dead animals in various states of decomposition and decay.
Some time past, they had settled on it being a one man job, seven days on and seven days off. The arrangement was ridiculous, considering it took less than half the time when they did it together, but Severin had come to loathe Trask to the point that he’d rather do it alone. Over Trask’s confused objections Severin had worked out the seven day system.
The elevator filled up and Severin pulled the lever. The door descended and the clank of machinery began as the elevator departed upward. They rested, breaths loud in one another’s ear pieces. After a few minutes the elevator returned empty and very hot – something that led both of them to believe that the trash was dumped into some kind of incinerator. They started working again.
“Severin,” said Trask weakly over the head set, “I think you should probably see this.”
Severin quit manhandling a clothes dryer into the elevator and walked back to where Trask seemed frozen in place staring at the pile of rubbish.
“What now, Trask?” he asked, testily, before he froze himself.
There was a human leg sticking out from underneath a pile of large brush tangled with cast-off sheets and clothing.
There was silence between them for several moments.
“Do you think it’s still, um, attached?” Trask asked softly.
Severin, who always considered himself the strong one, had to swallow the nausea crawling up his throat.
“I suppose there’s only one way to find out,” he said.
Using the pitchfork they, as gently as possible, cleared the brush and debris. The leg was still attached to a naked male body. It was in terrible shape. Included with the damage its tumble in the deluge had inflicted, it looked like an animal had been at it as well. Or animals.
The face had been stripped off and the eyeballs, lips and cheeks were gone. They could see naked skull on the cheekbones and where the nose had been. It looked like something had gotten into the skull through the nasal cavity.
The body had also been eviscerated. The torso had been torn open, exposing the ribcage, and all the major organs were gone. The devastation stopped there. Whatever had gone at it had left the body below the waist untouched. It was pasty white and only torn in places one would expect to find having been caught in a torrent.
Trask was hyperventilating. Severin made a concentrated effort to keep his cool, if only to show Trask up. When the authorities arrived, and he had no doubt they would, he didn’t want to be the one sedated sitting on the back of the ambulance.
“What do we do, Severin?” Trasked rasped. “They’ve ignored all our attempts to contact them before.”
Severin thought quickly. He had to at least maintain the illusion of being in control. Which, for all intents and purposes, placed him in charge.
“Let’s move the body over by the ladder and keep working. Once we’ve cleared the mess we’ll figure out a way to contact the people in charge. In fact, let’s move the body now. I’ll go ahead and start trying to get through. You keep cleaning the mess. I’ll come back down in twenty minutes or so, whether I can get through or not.”
They carefully moved the body over to the control room side ladder, and laid it out. Severin climbed the ladder and went into the HAZMAT room. It sealed and the chemical wash sprayed him down, cleansing the HAZMAT and personally making him feel cleaner. He removed the HAZMAT and passed through the hatch leading into the control room.
Once there, he looked out at Trask gingerly moving rubbish into the elevator. He actually felt for the guy. The monster hallucination followed by this had to have what healthy neurons he had left firing in a bad way.
Severin picked up the telephone receiver. He was greeted by the standard hiss and distant, muffled background voices. He didn’t know what to do, so he started yelling into the receiver.
“Hello! Somebody! We have a serious problem down here! Somebody has died! We don’t have a protocol for this! Somebody please pick up!”
This went on for some time. After what seemed like at least an hour, to Severin’s complete surprise, a voice answered.
&n
bsp; A female voice said, “Station 145, this is Control. What is the nature of your emergency?”
“Where do I fucking begin?” replied Severin, his composure cracking. “We’ve been down here for more than six months, longer than our contracts stipulated. I hate my partner, who’s become a junkie. We don’t know what date it is. We don’t know what’s going on in the world. I had a girlfriend when I came down here. God knows if I still do. What the fuck is going on up there?”
“Station 145, this is Control. None of these constitute an emergency. Your contract clearly stipulated that your term of service could be extended indefinitely. Isolation is of utmost importance to your work. Also stipulated in your contract. If there’s nothing else this is Control signing off.”
“No! Wait!” Severin cried. “We found a body, a human body, in the last bunch of trash that came down from the spillway. It was partially eaten. We need the police or someone down here. We don’t know what to do!”
“Station 145, this is Control. All detritus that washes against grate 145 is to be treated in the same manner. Placed in the elevator and sent up for incineration.”
“You’re kidding! This is a dead human body! There needs to be a police…”
Two shots cracked in the spillway, muffled by the airlock hatches and the thick window.
“Oh, shit, “Severin said.
“Station 145, this is Control. If there’s nothing further this is Control signing off.”
“No! Wait…” but the hiss was back.
Trask worked dispiritedly for a time after Severin left, poking at the rubbish piles with the pitchfork half-heartedly.
“Fuck this,” he finally said to himself. He dropped the pitchfork and drew the pistol. It was unwieldy in the suit gloves, but he was finished keeping it holstered while he was out here alone.
Severin was taking a long time. Trask wanted to look over through the window, but was afraid to take his eyes off the remaining rubbish pile. It still took up half the width of the canal. There were rustling sounds in there. He was shivering. He needed a fix.
It was after the third time that he checked the clip on the automatic that he looked up and saw the eyes. The faceted things were looking out at him from a half overturned drawer covered with half pulped cardboard. It was disturbing, but what really got to him was the second set of eyes, just over the first.
He forgot about needing a fix. The fear faded, threatening to turn to panic, but from some reserve he didn’t know he had, a fight instinct came rising up. He was completely calm and steady as he slowly raised the pistol and fired into the shadowy drawer.
There was a shriek and garbage exploded out at him. He was hit hard in the chest and knocked over backwards. He dropped the pistol. There was the sound of clattering on the catwalk, then clacking on the concrete headed into the direction of the spillway.
He didn’t break down. He expected to lose it, curl up into a fetal position and cry, but he didn’t. He stayed calm, focused, and shooting up stayed in the back of his mind.
After retrieving his pistol he brushed off and noticed the front of his HAZAMT was torn, shredded really. There was no pain or any indication of bodily harm. He quietly thanked the designers of Level A HAZMAT suits.
The pile of detritus seemed quiet, so he focused his attention on the darkness of the canal fading into the direction of the spillway. Not long after he heard Severin coming through the airlock.
It took Severin ten minutes to re-suit up in his HAZMAT, make sure the seals were in place, and close the inner airlock. As soon as his two way headset picked up the signal he yelled, “Trask, what the hell is going on out here?”
“It’s back, Severin. Or maybe there’s more than one. It moves fast, but I winged one with my first shot. We need a shotgun. I’ll put it on the list.”
Trask sounded completely calm and collected, not at all like his usual demeanors that ranged from morose and spaced out to hysterical, depending on how long it had been since he had fixed on Dilaudid. They had switched places. Severin was the one losing his mind now. He gritted his teeth and opened the outer airlock door.
“What’s all this yellow, jello-y stuff all over the place. It leads off down the canal.”
“The thing’s blood, I think. I said I winged it. But wherever I hit it, it was moving fucking fast. Tore up the front of my suit. I need to go change into the spare before we do any more. I don’t want any of that shit actually touching me.”
Severin was too flustered to object to Trask’s use of language. After cursing a blue streak himself while on the phone he decided he didn’t care.
“I don’t think there are anymore of the things in the mess, and the two that I tangled with headed down the canal toward the spillway, so I’d focus my attention that way. Make sure your pistol’s drawn and keep your ears open.”
With that, Trask climbed the ladder and disappeared into the airlock.
He stripped out of the ruined suit in the HAZMAT room and checked the flannel he was wearing underneath. There was not so much as a tear. Either the HAZMAT more than lived up to its reputation or the thing must have been really moving. If it had sunk those claws into his torso he didn’t doubt the thing would be eating him right now.
Severin was no good with a gun. Trask could tell. The political types were good at talking about them, but, in his experience interviewing them for his novels, not a single one had even fired a pistol in their lives. There were exceptions. Trask just knew Severin wasn’t one of them.
He checked his watch. By his estimation he had about a half hour before Severin would come looking for him. He went to his quarters and lifted the lid off the back of the toilet. Dangling from a string was a ziplock bag containing 5 ampoules and two syringes wrapped in cellophane. He fished it out and removed an ampoule. Replacing the lid, he went and retrieved a syringe, needle cap on, from between the mattress and the box spring of his bed. There was another ampoule there but he left it alone.
When he was finished he replaced the cap on the needle and returned the syringe to its hiding place next to the ampoule.
Now that he had gotten right he felt more confidence in what needed to be done next. He went back to the HAZMAT room and had the suit half on before he remembered the list.
“Shit,” he said to himself.
He removed the parts of the HAZMAT suit he had put on and went to the commissary where, on the table, was a pad of paper and two markers. Green for Severin, black for Trask. He wrote down, in black, “level A HAZMAT suit,” “12 gauge pump action shotgun,” “50 shells 12 gauge shotgun,” and “15 10mg ampoules hospital grade Dilaudid.” He followed the list with, “EMERGENCY SITUATION: hostile wildlife that survives the daily drainage. One employee (Trask) attacked. Request relief.”
It was then that he realized that he hadn’t needed to take off the bottom part of the HAZMAT to do any of this.
Dilaudid, he thought, Shit. Gotta hold it together. Whatever this is, it’s serious.
He put the list in the dumbwaiter and pulled the lever. The door slid shut and it was gone.
Trask returned to the HAZMAT room and found Severin.
“Where the hell have you been?” Severin asked coldly. “You tell me there’s dangerous wildlife out there and then leave me alone for almost an hour?”
“Fuck you. You left me out there for more than an hour. I was making the list,” Trask said fuzzily. “Shotgun. Shells. Replacement suit. Sending it up.”
Severin grabbed Trask’s chin and looked into his eyes.
“And shooting up, you miserable asshole.”
“You haven’t seen the fucking thing yet, Severin. Once you do I bet you’ll want to share.”
“Just suit up,” growled Severin. “I want to get this straightened out so I can get some sleep before I come on shift.”
They found three more bodies in the same condition as the first before they shoveled and manhandled the last of the junk into the elevator compartment an hour later and sent it up for incinerati
on.
The corpses were laid out in a row in front of the control room ladder.
“I don’t know what to do,” Trask said. “I mean, if we send these up for incineration aren’t we breaking some kind of law? And I don’t want to bring them into the bunker. There’s a reason they make us wear these suits when we come out here.”
Severin didn’t say anything for a few minutes.
“Severin, man…” Trask started.
“Shut up. I’m thinking.”
Trask heard skittering noises in the darkness up toward the spillway. Severin either didn’t hear them or didn’t react.
“Holy shit, Severin!” Trask yelled, causing distortion in the headsets. “Didn’t you hear that? We’ve gotta figure something out! Something out here wants to fucking kill us. Kill us and eat us!”
“Shut up, Trask.”
Severin would never show it, but he was losing it himself. He had no idea what was going on, where the bodies were coming from, or why their employers seemed so unconcerned about the situation. He hadn’t signed on to dispose of corpses. In fact, he hadn’t signed on to deal with any kind of garbage. It was $125.00 an hour plus time and a half overtime per shift to operate simple functions from a sewage control room 100 feet underground for six months. He took the job because he wanted to be able to afford a nicer apartment in Manhattan.
Obsessing over who to sue would have been first in Severin’s mind if the situation had been different. Instead he was just scared. Very, very scared. He took great pride in his logical mind, and this situation defied all logic.
He was stuck in a bunker 100 feet underground. In spite of the evidence to the contrary that he had been ignoring it had been longer than six months. The job was nothing like its description. He had no contact with the outside world. His co-worker was a successful writer who had given up writing to shoot up Dilaudid. He had taken up reading every shitty anti-terrorist espionage novel to roll off the presses to have some idea, any idea what was happening in the world. One involved ISIL stealing The Declaration of Independence, for Christ’s sake. Not exactly The New York Times.
Onyx Neon Shorts Presents: Horror Collection - 2015 Page 3
