The Ghost Mine

by Ben Wolf

  And then Rodney’s face exploded.

  26

  An eruption of red and black splattered all over Dr. Handabi. Some of Rodney’s blood hit the floor only two feet from Justin’s boots, and some landed on Wallace and Janikowski as well. Rodney’s medical machines flat-lined and blared electronic warnings.

  Marylin gasped and screamed. Justin backed away from the door. Wallace and Janikowski stepped away from the exam table.

  Dr. Handabi staggered backward and wiped at his face. He cleared some of the blood and black stuff away, and he looked down at Rodney with his mouth and bright blue eyes wide open. Then he locked his gaze on Justin.

  The black stuff intermingled with the blood—it was moving. But not dripping off of Dr. Handabi’s body—the black stuff was moving up, back toward his face.

  Then Dr. Handabi shrieked. He scratched, swatted, and scraped at his neck. Then his hands moved to his face. Then to his shoulders. Then back to his face.

  Janikowski screamed next. His fingers raked over his face, then over his body. He twisted around and faced Justin and the others at the door.

  The black things crawling on his face and neck disappeared under his skin. They burrowed into his cheeks, his chin, his lips, his nose, his forehead. They attacked his eyelids and ears and mouth. Blood—his own—spurted from where they dug into his face.

  He screamed again.

  Justin backed away from the door, and it whooshed shut and latched, trapping Janikowski, Wallace, Dr. Handabi, the two androids, and what remained of Rodney inside. Janikowski and Wallace slammed on the door, but it wouldn’t open.

  As with Bartholomew’s office, Justin could see every horrible thing happening thanks to the exam room’s clear windows and door. Wallace collapsed first, followed by Dr. Handabi. Janikowski hit the floor last, but they all continued writhing and wailing for help.

  “We’ve got to do something!” Shannon swatted the panel next to the door, but it beeped in the negative.

  An electronic voice said, “This area is under quarantine. Access not permitted.”

  No one moved to help, Justin included. They all just watched. What could they have done anyway? Dr. Handabi—Pradeep—was his friend, but breaking in there meant releasing those tiny black things into the rest of the medbay.

  Marylin vomited again, and she staggered out of the medbay.

  Unfazed, the androids moved to aid Dr. Handabi and the guards. They administered drugs to each of them, and their bellows stopped, but their twitching and contorting continued.

  Within moments, it all stopped, and the androids shifted their attention to beginning to clean and sanitize the room as casually as if someone had dropped a mug of coffee.

  “Are—are they gonna be alright?” Shannon asked.

  Etya shook her head. “I do not hold much hope for them.”

  “We need to keep moving,” Gerhardt said. “It’s tragic, but they’re safe in there. Quarantines last for a long time, and if we lock the medbay behind us, the mutated things likely won’t get to them. Right now, we need to focus on getting ourselves out of here safely.”

  Stecker nodded, and so did Harry. Justin just stared at the carnage inside the exam room and at the androids sopping up the blood with now-red towels they’d retrieved from one of the cabinets inside.

  Then his eyes found Dr. Handabi’s. He lay parallel to the door with his head turned toward it. His vacant blue eyes stared at Justin, and his bloody mouth hung open, like he was trying to say something but couldn’t.

  Was he even alive anymore?

  Something pressed from inside Dr. Handabi’s lower eyelid. It pulsed, then it rolled up toward his eyeball. One of those black crawlers oozed out from under Dr. Handabi’s eyelid, skittered over his open eye, and dug a path under his upper eyelid, where it disappeared into his head again.

  Justin shuddered. He had his answer. Dr. Handabi was gone, along with Rodney, Janikowski, and Wallace.

  Losing Keontae was a living nightmare, but the last hour had been Hell itself.

  Something grabbed his hand, and he jerked away.

  Shannon stood there with her hands up. “Easy. You’re the only one left in here. I just wanted to see if you were coming.”

  Justin glanced over Shannon’s shoulder. Harry stood at the door, waiting for her. Justin found Shannon’s forest green eyes again. He longed for the serenity he found in them, but no amount of wishing could ransom him from the living death around them.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “I’m coming.”

  Outside the medbay, they met up with the others.

  “I sent Bartholomew and Gerhardt ahead with Marylin. She wasn’t handling things well,” Carl said.

  “What do you mean, you sent them on ahead?” Shannon asked.

  “To the common area. Or the cafeteria. Whatever you call it.” Carl waved his hand. “He’s going to address everyone gathered in there and mobilize them toward the exit.”

  Stecker nodded. “Smart. Clears a path for you by the time you get there.”

  Carl glowered at him. “I prefer to think of it as ‘women and children first.’”

  Justin shook his head. Carl only cared about saving his own ass. Everyone knew it.

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” Harry started down the corridor. “Let’s go.”

  Shannon followed him.

  “At least this will all be over soon,” Stecker muttered.

  Justin nodded. He hoped Stecker was right.

  Laithe Gerhardt entered the cafeteria behind Bartholomew and Marylin. They were almost out, and once he got clear of the mining complex, he’d submit his immediate resignation.

  He’d seen limbs blown off, men vaporized, and watched shrapnel shred soldiers during the Third Copalion War thirty years prior, but he’d never seen anything like what had happened at ACM-1134 in the last hour. Laithe sure as hell didn’t ever want to see anything like it again.

  Inside the cafeteria, hundreds of mine employees sat at the dozens of long Plastrex tables inside. Twenty or so scientists sat near a handful of admins who had either survived or entirely avoided the slaughter at the admin offices, and many, many more miners and other blue-collars took up the rest of the table space.

  They chattered with each other, and a nervous energy permeated the room. Perhaps some of the admins had somehow gotten wind of what had happened and started spreading rumors.

  Laithe spotted a few of his off-duty security guards in the crowd and was about to rally them to the front to help ensure an orderly evacuation, but Bartholomew called him over to the small platform in front of everyone.

  “Laithe, grab me the comms transmitter,” he said. “And help me get everyone shut up.”

  Laithe nodded and headed over to the comms terminal embedded in the wall. He retrieved the transmitter, entered his access code, and tapped the transmitter to test it. The thunk-thunk-thunk of his fingers resounded throughout the cafeteria.

  “May I have your attention, please?” He repeated his request, this time forcefully, and the room quieted. “I need all security guards present to come up to the front. I will debrief you personally. Everyone else, please direct your attention to Mr. Morgan at the front of the room.”

  About two-dozen security guards emerged from the crowd and met Laithe near the front. Meanwhile, Bartholomew began explaining the situation in terms so vague, the issue could’ve been anything from an outright catastrophe to something as trivial as a network reliability issue.

  “Listen up,” Laithe said as quietly as he could get away with. “All you need to know is that our first priority here is getting everyone evacuated safely.”

  “It’s that bad?” one of the guards, Hal Michaels, asked.

  Normally Laithe would’ve ripped him a new one for interrupting, but he didn’t have time.

  “Conditions in the complex have deteriorated enough that we have no other choice.” Laithe pointed at five of his guards. “You five, head into the parking garage. Make sure the hovercraft are rea
dy to start hauling people out of here. Then direct people to board when we send them out.”

  The five guards headed toward the double-doors that led to the parking garage.

  “The rest of you, help me make sure we get everyone out. We’ll do a sweep through the workers’ residence halls to look for stragglers, and then we’re out of here, too.”

  “And so, at this time,” Bartholomew continued, “I’d like all of you to form an orderly line and begin filing out to the parking garage where the hovercraft will take you back to the spaceport for the time being.”

  Bartholomew ended his spiel by motioning toward the doors connecting to the parking garage. Then he blinked, furrowed his brow, and lowered his hand. He looked at Laithe.

  Laithe turned around. The five men he’d sent to the parking garage stood at the doors, trying to wave them open. They should’ve opened on their own, but they didn’t.

  “What the hell’s the matter?” Laithe stormed over to the doors.

  “Sir, we can’t get the doors open.” Hal Michaels pulled on one side, and another guard named Blake Harding pulled on the other. “They aren’t responding to overrides, either. It’s like they’ve been shut off.”

  Laithe could see clear through the doors, through the holding area between the parking garage and the cafeteria. The double doors segmenting the parking garage from that holding area stood open, and he could see pale, blue light emanating from deep within the parking garage.

  The lights in there are supposed to be orange, though.

  Laithe used that parking garage on a regular basis. Along with Bartholomew, Marylin, and a few others, he was one of the few employees privileged to live outside of the complex in an apartment connected to the spaceport. It was about a thirty-minute commute, but he valued the autonomy, and the company had gladly obliged him as part of his compensation package.

  The parking garage door is open. That’s where the light’s coming from. The planet’s blue surface and the blue star it orbited created that effect. Either that, or the emergency lights inside the parking garage were blue, but Laithe doubted it.

  No, it had to be coming from the outside. And this door was the only safeguard keeping the planet’s toxic, non-terraformed atmosphere from getting into the mine.

  “What seems to be the problem, Gerhardt?”

  Laithe turned back to Bartholomew, who held the transmitter close to his chest. “I think the complex’s external door is open. The shield doors separating the containment area between the cafeteria and the parking garage are still open, too, so these doors are closed as a failsafe.”

  Bartholomew’s voice flattened. “So we’re stuck here?”

  “Unless we can get the external door closed, yes. I’ll bet our IT friend can fix this for us.”

  Bartholomew raised the transmitter to his lips. “It’ll be just a few minutes, folks. The network issues we’re having are keeping the complex’s external door open, so we’re going to wait for tech support to get here to fix it. In the meantime—”

  The overhead lights snapped off, and the room plunged into darkness. In the next breath, the emergency lights clanked on, and the panicked murmurs resumed.

  Laithe’s heart rate accelerated. Not this shit again.

  Bartholomew continued talking into the transmitter, but he’d failed to realize it had stopped working, and his unreasonably calm voice wasn’t breaking through the dull roar of the miners, scientists, and admin folks yammering away.

  Laithe turned back toward the parking garage. Had the ghost, or whatever it was, knocked out the last shield and accessed the common area sub-network?

  Bartholomew fought to regain control of the crowd, but with the help of some of Laithe’s security team, he managed to get them quiet. He tossed the transmitter aside and loudly exhorted the crowd to be calm. He lied and said the power outage was part of IT’s efforts to get the complex’s outer door shut so they could evacuate safely.

  Laithe wanted to believe him, but the hissing noise coming from all around him told him otherwise. He looked up.

  Clouds of black gas issued from the ventilation ducts and shafts into the cafeteria.

  27

  Alarms droned from down the corridor, and red lights flashed ahead of Justin and the rest of the group. Carl and Noby hung back with Etya, Garth, and Shannon, and Stecker, Harry, and Justin hurried forward, sidearms ready.

  When they reached the door to the cafeteria, they found it locked down. Through the small window in the door, Justin saw black phichaloride gas billowing down onto the throngs of people inside. His eyes widened.

  “What’s happening?” Carl asked from behind them.

  “The ghost broke through the last shield,” Justin replied. “He’s in here with us now.”

  “We can’t get out this way. Neither can anyone else,” Stecker said.

  “What?” Carl snapped. He surged forward and shoved past Harry and Justin.

  Noby followed him and formed a human barrier between Carl and the rest of them.

  Carl’s shoulders slumped, and he stepped back from the window in the door. He closed his eyes and exhaled a long breath. “Bartholomew’s in there, isn’t he?”

  Stecker nodded. “So is Gerhardt.”

  Laithe’s heart pounded faster. Think. You can find a way out of this. Forget Bartholomew and the rest of them. If you can escape, that’s all that matters.

  First step: get your filtration mask on. That’ll buy you some time to navigate the room, maybe find a way out before they begin to turn.

  Laithe pulled it from his belt and slung it onto his head. The faceplate sealed to his face.

  He glanced over at Bartholomew, who’d done the same thing. Marylin stood next to him, and she also donned her mask.

  But in a room occupied by a couple hundred people, three masks wouldn’t be enough. Not nearly enough.

  “Stay calm, everyone,” Bartholomew yelled with his hands outstretched. “Check the doors. Perhaps there’s another way out.”

  The crowd was way ahead of him. They rushed to the exits, into the kitchen, over to the walls, desperate to escape.

  But everything was sealed shut because of the alarms. It was hopeless. The alarms had sealed the room to contain the gas inside.

  People had already started coughing, and some had turned toward Bartholomew and Marilyn with desperation in their eyes.

  Shit.

  Step two was getting the hell out of there. He had no chance of survival if he stayed in there.

  Laithe drew his repeater and ducked back toward the parking garage exit. If he could get to his hovercar, he could get out. It had its own air supply, and he might even be able to save a couple of people as well. He pointed his repeater at the glass doors and yelled, “Move!”

  The five guards standing by the doors parted, and Laithe fired off three quick blasts. The repeater kicked in his hands, and the glass doors shattered.

  Hal Michaels rushed in first. Laithe followed, but he could already see why his plan wouldn’t work. The metal safety doors ratcheting shut to separate the parking garage from the holding room. Once those sealed, no one could get out until the door on the complex’s exterior closed.

  As Laithe slowed, Hal barreled forward. Laithe called for him to stop, but it was too late.

  Hal dove for the middle of the doors. They slammed shut on him hard, severing his left shoulder, arm, and half of his upper torso from the rest of his body with a sickening crunch.

  Hal yelped, and blood painted the interior of the doors. Then he slumped to the floor, his eyes wide.

  Laithe and the other guards turned back. Then the remaining guards faced him. They’d tucked their mouths and noses into their shirts once the gas started, but Laithe knew it would only buy them a few extra seconds of breathing, if that.

  From the fear in their eyes, they knew it too.

  And he was wearing a perfectly good filtration mask.

  He bolted back into the cafeteria, and the guards closed in on him. O
ne of them, Blake Harding, lunged at him from the right and got ahold of Laithe’s collar. His other hand reached for Laithe’s mask.

  Laithe brought his right arm over Blake’s and bashed his elbow into Blake’s left eye socket.

  Blake’s grip faltered, and he fell. Laithe barely missed a stride, and he kept running.

  Back on the platform, Bartholomew pointed his repeater at those approaching him from the crowd. They stalled for a moment, but then they stampeded toward him even faster than before. Bartholomew fired several blasts into the crowd—into his own employees—but it didn’t stop them from grabbing Marilyn.

  She screamed and shrieked, but they ripped the mask off of her face in seconds, and it disappeared beneath a pile of scraping, scrambling, thrashing bodies.

  Laithe hurried toward the platform. If his guards caught up with him, they’d do likewise to get his filtration mask.

  Bartholomew didn’t last much longer.

  Despite the repeated plasma shots, the crowd overwhelmed him and tore at him like ravenous wolves. They beat him, kicked him, pulled on his limbs.

  His plasma repeater clattered off of the platform and landed nearer to Laithe than anyone else. They stripped Bartholomew of his mask, and his final screams cut through the fracas.

  Laithe snatched up Bartholomew’s lost repeater and wielded one in each hand.

  The crowd had mostly collapsed, but a few remaining people still pursued him. He unloaded blast after blast into them as he approached, carving a path through the cafeteria.

  He ran, leaped, and landed on the bench of one of the Plastrex tables. It wobbled a bit, but he hopped onto the table itself and ran along it. He jumped from table to table between hordes of choking workers, scientists, and admins reaching for him through the black haze.

  Laithe’s heart thundered in his chest. He had to get out of there somehow. He had to escape.

  The doors were all locked. The kitchen had no exits. The room had no windows.