by Jay Smith
As he spoke, I found myself drawn to the door at the far side of the room. Unlike the quarantine door, which had a frosted window pane inset to the top half, this was a heavy steel door with a number pad attached to the handle. It looked more like a refrigerator door set into the wall than a portal to somewhere else. I guess O’Neal noticed my curiosity because, before I left, he nodded to the door and whispered “0-1-1-0-6-8 .”
I’m sitting here on my cot with a go-bag. I have that code written on a slip of paper in case I forget it between here and the infirmary. I’m at a crossroads here. Honestly, I always believed that I would eventually – one day – die and that the world would go on with its deadlines and goals and milestones…I never thought that the world would die and I’d be forced to keep living in it. So many of us seem to be caught between worlds with no purpose and no plan. I refuse to live that way anymore. I’m not a guest or a refugee. I’m a prisoner. And now I want to know why.
Many things about this place make no sense, don’t add up and point to something scary at the root of it all. My next entry will reveal if I chickened out…or if I follow Molly into the dark and dirty catacombs of The Down Under.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - BY THE GRINDING OPPOSITION OF MORAL ENTITIES
Part 1
People up above know something about the Down Under. What I knew was that it was a secondary shelter, storage, plumbing and electric. It was where workers spent most of their time keeping the lights on and the pipes flowing. Every so often, supplies would emerge from the Down Under as part of our rationing plan. More food. More toiletries. Books. Medicine.
But it was a lie.
Four days ago I woke up in a cot, covered by a heavy wool blanket. I felt weak and foggy, with no real memory of anything as far back as wandering through the door separating the medical bay and the long tunnels and chambers underneath HG World.
The room was dim. I felt a stinging sensation in my left arm. Like every other part of my body, my right arm was slow to respond and hard to move. I was able to drag it over my belly and up to my elbow where I felt a needle and bandages. In the faint light I could see the outline of an IV bag suspended over me.
In the world where I live, being out of control or helpless is the most terrifying thing possible. You’re at the mercy of the world. And the world is cruel. Somehow, though, I didn’t feel the panic I expected. I was gravely concerned, of course, but the fact that feeling like a 300 pound sack of “duh” didn’t cause me to wig out made me realized that I had been drugged up pretty well. It didn’t seem like morphine or some euphoric – not that I know much about using drugs – but it just felt like that one beer beyond your limit just before the room starts spinning and your stomach starts turning.
It was like being drunk but in reverse. Usually, you feel that way and sleep it off. Here, I realized that I woke up to the worst of it and had to wait for it to work its way out of my system. The thought of my condition being permanent or the result of some brain injury did not cross my mind. My memory was shot. Even if I had wanted to scream or panic, my body just did not have the strength.
Without much else to do, I decided to start pulling together scraps of memory to put into a pattern. My clothes were different. I was dressed in cotton sweats, no underwear except socks. No shoes. No phone. No lights. No motor cars. Not a single luxury. If I’m lucky the same TV theme is in your head now as was somehow stuck in mine.
The quiet of the room was comforting. The darkness was broken by a small frosted window over a doorway. The squeaking of my cot underneath me did not echo hard, so I decided I must have been in an office with carpets, soft wood instead of concrete or naked drywall.
Actively seeking information keeps me calm. It keeps things real and manageable. Once the immediate concern about my safety was addressed - there were no flesh-eating monsters or men with guns around me - I could try to remember WHY I was in my situation.
The harder I tried to focus, the more foggy and disengaged my brain became. I could only focus on what was in range of my senses. Shredded memories. Feelings. Ghosts. Soon, however, I began to drift off and let go of the struggle. I found it easier to let the memories coalesce in my dreams. And, you know what? They did.
Part 2
I remember walking down stairs to a long, bowing tunnel about fifteen feet wide that ran the length of HG World's foundation. Its curving descent made it difficult to see more than forty or fifty feet before the floor of the tunnel disappeared from view into the ceiling. The walls up to that point were the bright bloody red of the HG World store brand. Every few feet you saw a sign aimed at employees - stenciled reminders of the "Five 'S'es" and the corporate values, work rules tacked to corkboard, scheduled long expired and shipping manifests for products they probably don't make any more. It was all pretty corporate. There was an employee break room to one side with empty vending machines and clean spots on dirty counters where microwaves and TV monitors had been. Down a bit further were locker rooms for the boys and girls.
When the floor leveled out, the dimly lit corridor went largely dark save for some small floor lights bleeding in from various doorways left and right. Every noise, every footstep was amplified by the hard concrete and plaster. I worried that the lights might be motion-triggered, which would give me away if I moved too far along the tunnel. At the same time I was worried that they weren't on a sensor, too. It felt like the main tunnel was taking me to a warehouse area because the floors were marked for forklift traffic and pedestrians to share. Knowing that the warehouse was to double as a civil defense shelter in case of a disaster, the complexity of the structure made sense.
If the National Guard or whoever needed to mobilize a lot of materials in short order this would be the way to do it without driving through the relocation area up top. It would also keep things from getting looted by the refugees. I doubt they ever planned for the actual emergency or had time to staff the lower level appropriately because I never saw the Army or FEMA here...just the shiny happy faces of the HG World management team.
I couldn't be sure where I was in relation to the store above me or how far down the slope had taken me. The walk was disorienting, especially with the distraction of every sound and trying to see in all directions at once.
Dark and empty was not what I expected. Maybe I expected albino mutants working the steam generators or super-intelligent apes spinning metal release valves and studying us up above. I really had no choice but to keep moving, keep looking. There were many doors casting a dim light through gaps at their base or through frosted windows. I decided that if I tripped a light or set off an alarm I could still claim I got turned around or thought the door out of the medical bay was a bathroom. Depending on who they sent from up above I could pull it off. The thought occurred to me that it might be one of the workers down here, someone I never saw before. But maybe they would understand. After all there were supposed to be workers down here, right? Plumbers and electricians... people with strong backs and good with tools… they were down here to work, too. Slightly reassured by my own lies, I took steps forward.
No lights clicked on. No alarms sounded. No red lights or buzzers. I pulled out my cell phone and shook it awake. Once unlocked, I held the face of it up to each door to see if there were markings.
I don’t know how far down the tunnel I walked or how many doors I checked. Between the odd echoes and the growing fear of being found in the dark, I just kept going and looking, not sure what I expected to find, driven only by my curiosity which, for the moment, silenced my fears but left my head swimming like you’d feel in anticipation of a date or a job interview.
The first sound of scurrying brought that fear right back and that’s when things get muddled. If the sound of tiny claws on stone wasn’t enough to scare me back, the sudden tickle of fur and whiskers on my ankles that was the end of my Nancy Drew adventure and the start of what was probably a very funny Daffy Duck fit. I found my way through an unlocked steel door with a handle I literally fell d
own on and opened by sheer stupid crazyfits. My fear of falling down to eye level with vermin caused me to grasp at the handle and carry the door open as I tried to untangle my feet and legs. Graceful.
Light filled the hallway, revealing a terrible little gang of rats, the vermin incarnation of Burgess’ savage Droogies. I say that because the one staring at me looked exactly like a hairy Malcom McDowell down to the psychotic glare on his sneering little plague-carrying face and his beady little eyes framed by long black lashes. I HATE rats with the kind of irrationality that drives ministers to speak in tongues and makes Skrillex popular with freshmen. There could have been a coven of witches and ghouls in that chamber and I would not have cared. I crabwalked around the door and out of the corridor, thankful that the door itself shut before any of the droogie-rats could find a penis sculpture to chase me around with.
Coincidentally, as my comfortably numb recollection of events brought me to that point, my memories seemed to come alive as the room flooded with bright light. It took me a moment to realize that the light was real and not in my imagination and that the shape standing in the door might be a very bad person intent on doing very bad things to me. In my current frame of mind, however, I was happy enough it wasn’t a giant rat.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – PROJECT ARGENT
The door to my room opened suddenly flooding the room with harsh yellow light. I closed my eyes on reflex and when I opened them again it was dark once more. The only difference was that I knew there was someone in the room with me. I could smell musk and cleaning chemicals. It made me think of my high school janitor, Mr. Foose. For the longest time, neither of us said anything. I wasn't in a panic, but I was very concerned that my visitor might turn out to be Hank the Pimp. Or Manager Jack. Eventually, I heard a voice...smooth and elegant direct from grandma's easy listening station.
"Hello, Miss Woodbine. A few housekeeping issues first. You are my prisoner. Not a guest. Not a refugee. What you become in the next few days is entirely up to you. Be good and we might have a place for you here in the Down Under. If not? Depending on how big a pain in the butt you prove to be, we may just have to up your medication to the point where you’re more value as a once-was human being. Now…”
He stepped into the room a little more, but it wasn’t enough to get a full picture. He thrust his hands into his pockets and continued as the door slowly closed behind him. “You are in my office right now because we have no other place to put you. Since you are a clever girl, I've decided to drug you into submission rather than sit you in a locked office until we figure things all out. Please hum or grunt or something if you hear and understand me."
I tried to give him a sincere suggestion to go sit on a Coke bottle, but I could only manage as gurgle and a cough.
"Excellent," he replied. "The stuff making you goofy is a cousin of Rohypnol, which – at the present dose - makes you sleepy and makes your brain all marshmallowy soft and gooshy. It can be a lot of fun, but I’ve had three of my workers abusing it, so I hope I don’t have to keep you on it too long.” In fact, it was much like an episode of Scooby Doo. It was colorful and amusing, sometimes funny with moments of spooky thrills and gave me the munchies. It also made it hard to pay attention to my speechifying captor. “I do not plan to hit you with another dose,” he continued, “unless you give me reason. I understand repeated doses can start eating away at your brain. What else..? As far as anyone up top coming to look for you, I’m sorry to report that you are officially deceased as far as they are concerned. When the managers found out you were here...well some of them wanted you to be dead for real. But I like smart people and I consider your discovery of our operation to be useful to us."
At his mention of being “dead” I started drifting. I was dead? What did that even mean? If I was dead to everyone upstairs, they wouldn't look for me. Did that make this place Hell? The drugs in my system muted my growing fears, but the implications were clear in my mind. Worse, I realized the growing pressure on my bladder meant I would have to communicate with this guy somehow and soon.
"By the way, my name is Paul. Without revealing too much I will just say that I'm the one person down here you do not want to upset or disappoint. I have all the keys to all the doors. Some doors just should not be opened."
I thought I heard a knock at the door - weak, as if afraid to disturb us. Paul kept talking in his Light Rock announcer voice until a second, louder round of knocks took his attention.
"Yes!" he barked. "Come in already."
I tried to keep my eyes open this time and was rewarded by the image of a figure coming through the light toward me. In my weird brain state, I thought it might be the angel come to collect me now that I was dead. The door shut and the red-purple spots in my eyes kept me from focusing on anything. And then I heard something wonderful.
"It's dark in here," said my Red Molly.
"So it is," Paul observed with a thick layer of condescension. "Feel your way over to my desk and turn on the lamp. Not the main lights."
It's weird. Through all the things that should have gotten me excited or made me afraid, even the revelation that the world thought me dead I was not moved to cry out or leap from the bed...but four words from Red Molly electrified my entire body. I struggled to turn my head and follow the sound of her footsteps across the carpet. I tried to call out to her, but could only mouth the words "Molly, it's me!" And I waited for the click of a switch that revealed – those damned spots in my eyes. I tried to look around them, squint to see her face, but it took a while to adjust to the new light. Soon, though – there was my Molly in the glow of a shaded desk lamp. She looked at me and I felt warm, felt...good again. I think she saw my smile because her frightened expression warmed just a bit. I got to look into her eyes again and was glad to see her alive and unharmed.
I was only aware that Paul had still been talking when he mentioned Molly’s name. Molly and I both shifted our attention back to him. He was still in shadow near the door. “You know Miss Molly, don’t you Jill? After all, she’s why you’re down here, isn’t she?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Molly is one of our workers here in the Down Under. Until recently, she was our go-between. Maybe I should wait to explain all that when you’re off the loopy juice. Molly was able to slip in and out of both worlds pretty much like a ghost for a long while. Of course, then you had to go raise a fuss about her going missing.”
Molly was bed side at that point checking my saline bag. With her back to Paul, she winked at me, but maintained a stoic expression. She still looked haunted, but seemed also at home with herself. She moved my head and looked me over carefully. I didn’t know what she was looking for. Paul kept talking, but I was just so happy to feel her hands on me again. Her hand brushed my cheek and I wanted to turn my head and kiss it. I didn’t know how much Paul knew about…well, about us. I let the moment pass as Paul continued.
“Molly is also officially dead. So she’s stuck down here with us, too. As a sort of prize for your curiosity and tenacity, she’s going to be taking care of you until we figure out what to do with you. She’ll be doing the cleaning and the feeding and …whatever else you need. Consider it my apology for, well, how you got here.”
Molly’s hand brushed through my dirty, tangled hair. She was close enough that I could whisper one word to her. She leaned in and I inhaled…oh god it was so good to be with her that close again, but I was sorry to spoil any magic of the moment by whispering my word:
“Pee?”
Paul left us alone. On his way out he barked at Molly like some plantation master which, of course, did not endear him to me. But he promised that I wouldn’t be sedated again if I promised to be – quote – a good girl. I wanted to get a look at him, but as Paul opened the door to the hall, Molly filled my line of sight with the most wonderful, wicked grin. I lost all interest in my host and captor.
She knelt down next to the bed so she could whisper in my ear. “It’s okay,” Molly whispered. “He can be a dick, but he’s rea
lly a good guy. He has to be tough on everybody because there’s so much at stake.”
There was too much information coming at me at once, so I tried to get Molly to back up a bit to the basics. “W-where are we?”
“This is the Down Under. I…I can’t believe you came here after me, Jill. Why?”
“W-why not? M-missed you.” I wanted to tell her more, but I wasn’t ready. I just enjoyed the moment. She wiped a tear from my cheek. She held my hand. She kissed my forehead softly and sat down beside me on the bed.
