The Loon

by Michaelbrent Collings

  The whole room oriented on the doorway instantly. Mitchell and Vincent each raised their trank guns to point them along with Donald.

  A tense moment passed, everyone in the room clearly worrying along with Mitchell about what might be on the other side of the thin piece of wood.

  A weak laugh filtered through the doorway, and Mitchell tensed. It wasn't Paul. It wasn't anyone good.

  He felt himself move toward Vincent, and was dimly aware of Rachel and Becky moving on their cot so as to be closer to the men.

  Safety in numbers, thought Mitchell. Herd instinct. We may be civilized, but in an emergency the veneer falls away and we act like the animals we once were.

  The door boomed then as something hit it with rocketing power on the other side. Mitchell was so scared he almost pulled the trigger on his gun. But he didn't, managed to control his spasming finger just in time, and instead waited for the sound to repeat.

  It didn't.

  "What was that, Mommy?" asked Becky.

  Rachel looked questioningly at Mitchell.

  He had no answer for her.

  BASEMENT

  Paul felt like the rug had been ripped out from under him yet again.

  They were in a lab, clearly, but not one that Paul had ever seen before. He wasn't up on the latest, but it looked like some sort of biotech lab. He saw the cage in the sweep of Jorge's flashlight; gestured to Jorge to point the light there.

  Ten feet or so on a side, bars that looked like they were electrified – though probably not now since the entire place was dark – with the same acid etchings that he and Jorge had seen on the door and floor of the generator shack.

  “Where the hell are we, man?” said Jorge.

  Paul did some mental calculations, trying to figure out what direction they had gone through the secret tunnel near the generator, then said, “Basement, I think.”

  “No, man, I been there. It ain't nothing like this.”

  “Next to it, then. The basement I've seen is awfully small for a place as big as The Loon. This would explain why.”

  And that was when Crane woke up and started shrieking.

  CRYING

  Becky pulled closer to her mother as a new noise sounded: a soft tap-tapping on the closed door to the room they were in. She remembered Daddy had tapped like that, oh-so-gentle on the door to her room, as though shy. That was before he changed, though. Before he started drinking and started to Turn Bad.

  “Maybe it's Wiseman,” said one of the guards, the skinny one with dark hair and a bully-look about his eyes. Not that the bully-look was there anymore; he just looked scared.

  Becky hoped it was Dr. Wiseman: she liked him.

  Apparently it wasn't Dr. Wiseman, though. And it wasn't Daddy, either. Not even the bad Daddy who had hit her earlier that day. This was something else. And though she didn't know the details, her young mind could tell from the way everyone was acting that this was something much worse than Daddy.

  A voice came through the door. As it did, the big bear-man, Mitchell, quivered and said, “Steiger,” under his breath.

  “Please,” said the voice on the other side of the door. “Please let me in.”

  The other guard in the room, the short round one, said a Bad Word under his breath.

  “Who is it?” said Mommy.

  The bear-man motioned for Mommy to be silent.

  “Please let me in,” said the voice. The tapping continued, and it was like the person out there was tapping on Becky's brain: it almost started to be a physical pain. The voice started to cry. “There's something out here. It's in the prison right now, but I'm afraid it will come back.” A sob sounded. “Pleeeease,” the voice moaned.”

  Then everyone jumped, even Mommy, who had been so brave and saved her earlier from Daddy, even Mommy who was never afraid of the monsters in the dark, even she jumped because the door slammed like it was being hit from behind.

  Again she was reminded of her father, but now she was reminded of him after he started to Go Bad, after he began to hit Mommy and look at Becky with looks that were ever stranger and more uncomfortable.

  The person outside hit the door again. The guards all took a step back, coming closer to Becky and Mommy. The skinny one looked like he wanted to talk, but Mitchell the Bear motioned him to be quiet.

  Mommy started to rock her, to coo and coddle, and for some reason that scared Becky most of all.

  The slamming stopped. This time the voice on the other side of the door was a whisper. “Becky,” it said, and Becky felt her stomach plunge. Who was this man? How did he know her name? Mommy breathed in sharply, and Becky knew that she was thinking the same thing. “You want to open the door for me, don't you, Becky?”

  Mommy laid a light finger across Becky's lips. Don't speak, the gesture said.

  The slamming started again, punctuating the man's words. “Little girl?” Slam. “Please...” slam “...open...” SLAM “...the...” SLAM “DOOR!”

  Then silence.

  And then the sound of footsteps walking away, followed by clanking down the scary stairs.

  Becky didn't cry.

  She held her Mickey Mouse light tightly in one hand, her Emergency Pack in the other.

  She turned her head into Mommy's chest.

  She wondered what was happening.

  She was afraid, oh so afraid.

  But she didn't cry.

  PHOTOS

  Jorge was holding onto Crane's legs – what was left of them. He and Paul had immediately lain the convulsing, screaming man on one of the work tables, Paul sweeping aside notes and files with impunity to lay the man down on the flat surface.

  Crane's body shook and shivered, bucking at Jorge, making him almost lose his grip. He did lose his grip for a moment, in fact, and his hand connected with the moist, charred nub that ended Crane's leg on one side.

  Crane screamed.

  But the pain must have acted like a slap in the face, or a dash of cold water, because his convulsions stopped suddenly, and his breathing, though far from normal, grew stronger and less strained.

  Crane began to cry.

  “This wasn't supposed to happen,” he moaned. Then passed out again.

  “Shit,” said Paul. “Look around. Maybe there's something in here we can give him for the pain.”

  “What am I looking for?” asked Jorge, utterly lost in the hi-tech lab.

  “Syringes, ampoules, stuff like that.”

  Jorge decided against telling Paul he had no damn clue what an ampoule was and started looking for anything that looked like it might have come from a hospital.

  A moment later, Paul said, “Jorge, shine the light over here.”

  Jorge did, and saw that Paul was looking through a group of files.

  “What is it?” asked Jorge.

  Paul didn't answer, but flipped rapidly through the files, lost inside them. Jorge looked over his shoulder and saw page after page of photos, dimly visible in the flashlight's beam. Something uniquely horrible stared up at him from each face. Some of the forms were recognizable as human. Others were mere pools of rubbery flesh and mucus. All were strange, all terrible. A date was written across each glossy photo.

  Paul opened another folder, this one full of papers. Lists, names, what looked like medical charts.

  “Oh, God,” murmured Paul. He pointed at one of the pages. “Plannings, May nineteen ninety-seven. Nanzer, April nineteen ninety-five. Allred. Leder. Ellison. Recognize them?”

  Jorge felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach. He did recognize them. “Those are the names of some of the escaped inmates,” he said.

  Paul compared the lists with the photos he still clutched in his hand. “The ID numbers match,” he said. Then, turning to look at Jorge with haunted eyes, he said, “Not some of the escapees, all of them.” Then he looked at the papers again, and shuddered. So did Jorge, though he was not sure why.

  “But they weren't escapees,” said Paul.

  “What, then?” asked Jorge
.

  Paul sat down at a nearby chair and started reading. He had to thumb through only a few pages to reach an apparent conclusion, and suddenly looked even more scared than he had in the generator shack or when they found Crane. He grabbed as many of the lists and photos as he could and shoved them all in a large manila envelope.

  “What's up?” asked Jorge.

  “We are,” said Paul. “First course.” He closed the envelope and moved back to Crane. “We've got to get back to the others.”

  “I don't think we could make it back through the storm,” said Jorge.

  Paul nodded, then motioned for Jorge to point his flashlight at the other side of the room.

  Jorge did so, and illuminated a stairwell that led upwards to somewhere unknown on the first floor.

  “You got any more lights?” asked Paul suddenly, clearly deep in thought. Jorge shook his head. “Great,” said Paul. A moment later, he said, “All right, we're going up the stairs. As soon as we're on the first floor, you turn your light off.”

  “What?” bellowed Jorge. “Why?”

  A new voice answered: Crane's voice. The doctor was still on the work table nearby, still obviously in incredible pain, but he sounded coherent once more.

  “Because if you keep the light on,” said the doctor, “it will kill you.”

  VENT

  Steiger walked down to the first floor and into Crane's office. He had been here, of course, doing a session with Dr. Wiseman in the larger space whenever it was available – whenever, as Wiseman had so nicely explained to him one day – the owner of the institute was away on business, which was fairly often.

  That was why Steiger knew exactly what he was looking for.

  The vent.

  It was right above Crane's desk, several feet to a side. A tight squeeze, but Steiger knew he could get into the ventilation ducts and start really having fun.

  STAIRWELL

  “Just up here,” said Crane from Paul's arms. The words were slurred, and Paul knew that Crane was on the verge of passing out again. “My...office,” he said.

  He got to the top of the stairs a moment later, and saw that whatever had happened to the door of the generator shack had also happened here: the door to the secret lab had been torn out, burn marks evident on its surface.

  “What the hell's going on?” asked Jorge.

  “Later,” said Paul. “Keep quiet until I say otherwise.”

  Jorge looked like he wanted to argue, but to his credit just nodded.

  “Where are we?” Paul asked Crane in a whisper.

  “Up the stairs is my living quarters,” answered Crane. “My office is through there.”

  So that's how you disappeared this morning, thought Paul to himself. You must have been working in your little Dr. Frankenstein lab down there. But out loud he only said, “Jorge, turn off your light and make sure you stick close."

  Jorge nodded and the place went black.

  DUCT

  Steiger had made it. It was tight, and he hadn't been able to reattach the vent behind him, but he was now inside The Loon's air conditioning ducts.

  Suddenly, he heard voices. He recognized them almost instantly, even though they were whispered. It was Dr. Wiseman and his friend Jorge.

  “How long do I gotta keep quiet?” whispered Jorge.

  “Long as you want to live,” said Wiseman. “Shut up.”

  Steiger almost turned around; almost dropped down on them to wreak a bit of merry havoc. But he decided against it. For one thing, he couldn't do that without just backing out and jumping blind, and he hardly wanted to be tranquilized and returned to his cell at this stage of the game.

  For another, he had far more interesting prey to pursue.

  So he waited until he heard Wiseman and Jorge pass through the office, then began crawling.

  “Don't worry, Becky,” he said quietly, so quietly a mouse would have mistaken the sound for just another noise in the wind. “I'm coming, dearest.”

  REALIZATION

  Jorge followed Paul through the lobby. Paul had him turn on the light once, just briefly, to survey the layout, and both of them had uttered short curses when they saw the destruction: blood, that strange scarring on the floors, the door to Crane's office in shards.

  They went through the door to the first floor staff facility hallway, and Paul had Jorge flick the light again. Just quickly, but Jorge had seen Paul glance at the door that led to the prison tunnel. It was just a quick glimpse, but Jorge saw Paul's face change, as though the doctor suddenly understood something. Jorge wanted to ask what Paul was thinking, but before he could Paul said, “Move,” and the two of them held Crane between them as they ran up the metal staircase.

  PROBLEM

  Rachel felt for a moment as though she were sitting in the “Mush Pot” during an old game of Duck, Duck, Goose: Mitchell, Vincent, and Donald were all sitting around her in a protective ring. Though she had to admit she had never heard of a game where the people on the outside all held drawn weapons.

  She supposed she should have felt protected, with the men on all sides of her and her daughter. The opposite was true, however: she felt more alone and weak than ever before.

  Everyone tensed as a light knock sounded outside the door. “It's me,” came a voice, and everyone relaxed. It was Dr. Wiseman, she recognized his kind tones, though his voice was now stretched and strained.

  Mitchell leapt to the door, the big man unlocking it and pulling Paul, Jorge – thank God, Jorge was alive and well – as well as the burden they carried between them into the room before closing and re-locking the door once more.

  Rachel gasped as she realized that what her brother and Dr. Wiseman were holding was a man. And she gasped again when she saw his legs, horrible stumps that were oozing pus and blood around charred flesh. She covered Becky's eyes with one hand, turning her gently into her chest so she wouldn't see the nightmare.

  Paul nodded to Mitchell, who shoved aside the things on Dr. Bryson's desk to make way to put the man he was holding. The man moaned, but appeared to be unconscious. And no wonder, with such horrific wounds.

  “What happened?” asked Mitchell.

  “Not one hundred percent sure yet,” answered Dr. Wiseman – Paul, he had told her to call him.

  As soon as the wounded man was on the desk, Jorge practically jumped across the room to engulf Rachel and Becky in a huge hug. “You two all right?” he asked.

  Rachel felt herself nod, though inside she was screaming at her little brother for asking such a stupid question: of course she wasn't all right. Who could be all right in this situation.

  Jorge looked at Mitchell. “Marty ever show up here?” he asked the big man. Mitchell shook his head. Jorge appeared downcast. “Maybe he's still –“ be began, but Mitchell cut him off gently.

  “If Steiger's out, you can bet Marty's gone.”

  Then another voice sounded: the man on the desk, whose face was so pale it practically glowed even in the dim light of the flashlights in the room. “Steiger's not the problem,” Crane said.

  DIFFERENTIATION

  Paul spread the papers he had brought up from Crane's secret lab beside the doctor. Mitchell and Vincent watched him while Donald kept the door covered. Rachel and Becky were sitting as far from the door as possible, looking only at Paul or Jorge from time to time, but avoiding everyone else's gaze.

  Paul wanted to go to the mother and her child, to comfort them if he could, but he knew that would have to wait. Because survival wouldn't.

  Mitchell pointed at the photos of men and not-quite-men and puddles of goo. “What are those?” he asked.

  At the same time Vincent picked up one of the photos. “Paxton,” he said. “Didn't he get out like a year and a half ago?”

  “No,” said Paul shortly. “None of them did.” He looked at Crane, anger colder than the storm outside welling up within him. “You weren't studying psychopathology here, were you, doctor?”

  Crane hesitated a moment, and Paul
could see the man weighing his options. Apparently he decided that candor would provide him with a greater chance of self-preservation, because he finally said, “Differentiation.”

  Everyone was silent. Paul had no desire to break the quiet, he was too angry.

  Finally Rachel said quietly, “I don't understand.”

  “You and me both, lady,” said Vincent.

  Paul looked at them. “All the cells in our bodies start out from two, originally.”

  Crane jumped in. “The sperm and egg essentially join to create one new cell. And that cell splits in two. Both the new cells are exactly the same. Those cells split. Now there four, still exactly the same.”

  “What's the point?” asked Donald quietly from his position in front of the door.

  “The point is that eventually they aren't the same,” said Crane. He must have seen the lost looks on Mitchell's and Vincent's faces, because he continued, “Eventually, the cells change. It's called differentiation. They differentiate into skin cells, hair cells, heart cells, and so on. But originally we all start as one cell, and that cell changes eventually into myriad different types of cells. Hair cells, skin cells, blood cells: every other kind of cell we use in our bodies in fact. But originally, those cells were all the same. So theoretically our cells could change their makeup and become something else, if we could just figure out the way to tell them to do it.”

  “So you...” began Mitchell.

  Crane's grimace of pain became a smile of pride. “I figured it out.”

  “What does this all have to do with us?” asked Rachel.

  “What he's saying,” answered Paul grimly, “is that we've got something worse than Steiger to worry about. Something that can turn parts of itself...” his voice faded, as he was unsure how to communicate what was happening.