by R. Brewer
“Be careful, Nick,” Christy called from below.
Nick turned to look at her, seeing her terrified expression. “Don’t worry, honey, we’ll be sitting by the lake by this time tomorrow.” He turned back to the doors, wedged his hands in between them and pulled with all his might. At first, there was no movement and Nick felt as if he would fail. Then, an inch at a time, the doors started to move, sliding apart. He gathered all of his energy and pulled hard, shoving them all the way into the recess of the wall.
Fester stood at ready with the gun aimed toward the opening.
Nick stuck his head into the dimly lit hallway and looked in both directions. “Looks okay so far,” he whispered. “Fester, I’m gonna crawl up there and you hand me the gun.”
Fester nodded, still aiming the gun past Nick.
Dragging himself into the opening, Nick pushed up to a crouch and scanned the hallway again. “Okay, Fester, hand me the gun.” Nick stuck his hand out and reached for it as something wet hit his arm.
Streams of saliva poured down as he looked up into the face of the thing clinging to the wall above Fester. It looked at Nick, then at Fester, its jaws snapping together, its putrid breath blowing down into the shaft. Suddenly, it made a move, lunging toward Fester, but the boy was ready, with the automatic weapon aimed into its open mouth.
Fester pulled the trigger, releasing a blast of bullets into its mouth, pulverizing the back of its head. Bullets ricocheted off the wall of the shaft, sending bits of shrapnel and the rotting brains of the creature spraying in all directions. The creature fell, sliding along the wall, slamming onto the top of the elevator just feet from where Evan stood holding Hunter. Evan kicked at it until it slid over the edge, out of sight.
Fester’s hands shook as Nick reached out and took the gun from him. “Good work, Fester. I’ll take it from here,” Nick said. “Let’s move.”
Nick pulled Fester, Christy and Noah into the hallway with him. “Stay here. I’ll get the fire hose,” he said, running over to the hose cabinet, about twenty feet away. He unscrewed the coupling and dragged it back near the door. Grabbing onto one end, Noah and Fester unraveled the hose and lowered it down to Evan.
“That should do it,” Evan yelled.
Nick watched as Evan fashioned a harness for Hunter. Evan looked up when he was finished. “Okay. I think we’re ready,” he said.
“Hunter, you stay still, boy,” Noah called down.
“Ready, guys?” Nick asked.
Noah and Fester nodded.
“Okay, slow and steady,” Nick said as they started to pull Hunter up.
The dog was barely off the top of the elevator when Evan called up to them. “Uh, guys?” he said, his voice wavering.
“What’s wrong, Evan?” Christy asked.
Nick looked down, seeing a clawed hand gripping onto the side of the elevator. Something from underneath was pulling itself up.
“Pull faster, guys,” Nick said.
Nick prayed that Hunter wouldn’t wriggle right out of the harness, but the dog seemed to sense the danger he was in and remained still. Moments later, they had him up at the top and were untying the hose. Nick looked over to see Evan climbing. Even though he was injured, Evan was moving at a furious pace, likely propelled by fear. The thing that was pulling itself up onto the elevator car hoisted its body all the way up and rolled over.
Nick gasped, recognizing the tattered remnants of Isaiah’s clothing clinging to what was now a horrific looking creature. It stood, its hands replaced by claws, Isaiah’s once kind face now a mass of torn skin exposing bone. Long dagger-like teeth jutted from its mouth. It looked up at Nick and snarled. Then, turning its attention to Evan, it leapt, its claws clanging against the bracing as it sprinted upwards.
“Evan, man, move faster,” Nick called out.
Sweat poured from Evan’s face as he momentarily lost his grip, sliding back a few feet. It was in that moment that Nick knew he would never make it before Isaiah caught him. Nick leaned as far over the edge as he could, but the severe angle of the shaft made it impossible to shoot Isaiah from above without taking the chance of hitting Evan.
“Fester, you take this,” Nick said, handing him the gun. “You have to shoot him once Evan is clear.”
“But it’s Isaiah,” Christy said, her voice trembling. “Oh, God,” she said, covering her mouth.
“It’s not Isaiah anymore,” Nick said. “Evan, you have to catch this and not let go.” Nick held up the hose. He handed one end to Noah and wrapped the other end around his waist, wedging himself in the doorway.
Looking down at Isaiah gaining on Evan, Nick said, “Noah, don’t miss. Throw it now.”
“Catch it, Evan,” Noah yelled, throwing the fire hose down.
Evan reached out, missing the hose as it swung past him. Isaiah was almost at his feet when Evan launched himself off of the bracing and into the shaft, aimed for the swinging harness. He hit it in mid-air and grabbed, his hands sliding down until he reached one of the knots he'd tied earlier.
Nick braced himself for the shock of Evan’s weight pulling on him. As Evan swung through the air, the force hit Nick, threatening to buckle his knees until Christy wedged herself behind the door and helped him pull. Evan slammed into the opposite wall, hitting the bracing there, where he gained a grip and clung.
Fester fired, the retort of the automatic weapon echoing through the elevator shaft. Nick watched in horrified relief as the bullets tore through Isaiah’s body, knocking him off his perch. Isaiah fell out of his field of vision, hitting the top of the elevator with a sickening thud.
Wasting no time, Evan scrambled upward, toward Nick, who pulled him inside. He lay on the floor, breathing hard, pushing Hunter back as he licked his face. “Thanks, everyone,” he said.
After untying the fire hose from his waist, Nick stood and went to Fester, sliding his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Nick said.
CHAPTER 22
Jodie and Chuck climbed for about five minutes before they came to an access door. "Should I, or would you like to?" Jodie asked, pointing to the door handle. "I mean, if there are normal people in there, it might be better if I open it. If there's something else, you might be better at dealing with that."
"Why don't I come up there next to you and we can open it together?" Chuck asked.
Now, why didn't I think of that, she asked herself. Or did I? The lack of sleep and constant fear were taking their toll. Jodie wanted to lie down. In fact, she was starting to feel a little sick to her stomach, too.
"Jodie, are you okay?" Chuck asked. "I mean, you don't look too good all of a sudden."
She put her head down between her hands on the ladder rung. The cool metal felt good on her hot forehead. "I don't think the candy bar set too well with me, but I'm fine." Jodie moved to one side of the ladder. "Scoot up here, Chuck, and let's have a look."
Chuck stepped up farther on the ladder. His feet sat two rungs lower than hers, yet they stood eye to eye. For a moment, she thought she saw a faint glow developing again, then he cleared his throat and looked away from her.
"Ready?" Chuck asked.
"As we'll ever be," Jodie said.
Chuck turned the handle slowly and pushed the door open about an inch. A cool breeze blew in. Air conditioning. Jodie put her ear near the opening and listened, hearing nothing but the humming of machinery.
"It sounds like some sort of power generator, or something," she whispered. After a few minutes of listening for something other than the constant humming, Jodie pushed the door open and looked inside. She could see a room ahead through a wall of windows. It was filled with what appeared to be computer equipment. Colored lights flashed on another wall covered with circuit panels. An empty desk sat at one end of the room, a small lamp illuminating a stack of disheveled papers.
“That’s someone’s office, but it looks like they’re gone,” Jodie said. “I’m going to check it out. You’d better stay here for the
moment, Chuck. Those feet of yours are likely to ruin our element of surprise, if anyone's here.”
“Well, okay, but be careful,” Chuck said, extending a hand to help Jodie climb off the ladder and through the door.
Jodie pushed the door open far enough to slide through. Looking in both directions, she saw nothing but an empty hallway. She stood up and moved into the office, seeing no one, so waved at Chuck to join her.
Chuck stepped through the door and gently closed it behind him. His feet clattered against the floor tile as he joined her in the office.
“I don’t think anyone is around,” Jodie said. She opened a file cabinet drawer, finding it mostly empty. Closing the drawer, she went to the desk, seeing it covered with computer printouts. At the top of each was a name, followed by a series of numbers and letters that she didn’t understand. “Have you ever seen anything like this, Chuck?” Jodie pointed to the printouts.
Chuck picked up the paper and stared at it for a moment. “I saw something like it when I was talking to old man Tyler one day. You know, the coroner in Mountain City?”
“Yes, of course I remember him. Poor guy,” Jodie said, thinking it had been less than two weeks since they’d found old man Tyler’s body. She felt like she’d lived a whole lifetime since then.
“I think it’s genetic code,” Chuck said. “There was this case when I first started police work in Mountain City and a printout for genetic testing came to my office looking like that. I had to take it over to Tyler to ask him what it was.”
“Well, you know more than I do. We ordered a lot of DNA testing at the FBI, but I’ve never seen the results in this format before. We usually only looked at the summaries. You know, match, no match and the percentages.”
Chuck continued to stare at the printout. “I’m sorry to say that I can’t make heads or tails of this, though. If it really is genetic test results, then this person had twenty-five pairs of chromosomes instead of the usual twenty-three. I don’t think that’s possible.”
Chuck handed Jodie the printout and she folded it and stuffed it in her pocket. She sat down in the chair behind the desk and pulled on the pencil drawer. Locked. “Can you give me a hand, Chuck?”
“Oh, sure,” he said, walking around the desk next to her. “You might want to move back.”
“Yeah. Good idea,” Jodie said, standing up and stepping out of the way.
Chuck reached down and yanked on the drawer, which remained locked. “Tough little thing, aren’t you?” he said, pushing his metal-clad finger into the lock and shoving it all the way into the drawer. He yanked again and the drawer came free. He pulled it all the way out, finding it completely empty. “Does it make sense to you that someone would lock an empty drawer?”
Jodie moved closer. “Not at all. Let me see what I can find.” Chuck backed up and she stepped next to the desk and sat down in the chair again. She reached into the drawer, feeling all along the sides, finding nothing. Next, Jodie felt along top of the drawer opening, but came up empty-handed. “One last place to look,” she said, pushing the chair back. Jodie knelt on the floor and looked at the bottom of the drawer. “Got something here,” she said, peeling back tape to reveal a key card. “Well, this could belong to about a million and one things.”
Chuck sighed. “We better hang onto it, though. You never know, right?’
“My sentiments, exactly,” Jodie said, slipping the card in her pocket. “What do you say we go exploring? It doesn’t look like there’s anything here to help us.”
“Yeah. Let me fix that drawer, first,” Chuck said. “Don’t want to tip off anyone that we were here.” Grabbing the lock, he pushed the entire assembly back in place and smoothed out the kinks he’d made in the metal. Jodie thought if the person who used the desk didn’t look too closely, they would never know it had been tampered with. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Got any feeling for which way to go?” Jodie asked.
“None at all. You lead, I’ll follow,” Chuck said.
Great, Jodie thought. The blind leading the blind. She pulled out the map for the underground installation and unfolded it, trying to figure out which direction to go. She didn't believe that Mei was gone, taken away in a ship, as David had told Fester. Jodie felt as if she could sense her presence for some reason, but feared they would never find her in this labyrinth of corridors. Hearing the sound of someone opening a door, she folded the map quickly. She could make out two voices as a man and a woman approached from down the hallway. “Someone’s coming,” Jodie said. She stepped back, bumping into Chuck.
“There’s nowhere to hide,” he said.
“Let’s move to the other end of the hall into the shadows,” Jodie said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and they won’t see us.” More like, maybe they’ll get lucky, she thought. Who knew what Chuck would have to do if they saw him.
Chuck stepped as quietly as he could, the tile grinding under his feet. Moments later, the two people emerged from the shadows and entered the office. Jodie could overhear them talking and moved up closer to the window to see inside.
“Michael, your desk is a mess,” said the woman, the only one of the two Jodie could see.
Michael laughed. “I’ve been sorting through the records we need to keep. We’re supposed to pack it up later today and move into the cryogenics wing. Ted wants us to prep the population sample trays.”
Jodie wondered if Ted could be Ted Renfro, whose name she’d heard more than once lately.
“Good old Ted,” the woman said. “Always wants everything done yesterday and doesn’t think he needs to help anyone get it finished.”
“Well, I’d just as soon get out of here quicker, anyway,” Michael said. “We’ve been on lockdown for what? A week now? I’d like to see the daylight at some point.”
“Vitamin D shots not enough for you?” the woman asked.
“Not nearly,” Michael said. "All this darkness wreaks havoc on my sex drive."
"I bet I could fix that for you," the woman said.
The woman moved out of her field of view. Jodie could hear the chair scraping across the floor and the obvious sounds of heavy, passionate breathing. She wanted to throw up. To come all this way and be stuck waiting in the dark while these two copulated on a desk seemed so unfair. She found herself wishing she could just go in and shoot them so that she and Chuck could move on. Sounds of papers, a cupful of pencils and a metal inbox tray hitting the floor rang out as the couple staggered toward the desk, tearing at each other's clothing while trying to get into position. Jodie turned away from the sight as best she could. She didn't really want to watch them, but found herself doing it anyway.
The desk started to creak and groan rhythmically as the man thrust himself upon the woman, lying naked and spread eagle, gripping onto the edge of the desk. The stapler next to her head bounced up and down, eventually falling to the floor. Jodie looked up at Chuck, whose facial expression seemed to indicate disgust. She noticed something else, too. Chuck was growing a beard.
She was just about to mention his facial hair to Chuck when the couple reached the pivotal moment of their exchange, crying out in ecstasy. Jodie wondered if the woman had faked it.
"Do it again," the woman begged.
Yes, obviously, she did fake it, Jodie thought. "We can't," the man said, putting on his clothes. "We're already late for our meeting."
"Shit," the woman said. "Well, then, right after. Promise me."
Jodie turned her head as the woman reached into the front of the man's pants. For a moment, she thought they were going to go at it for a second round, until he pushed the woman to arm's length. "You're such a sexy babe," he said. "Right after, then."
Sexy babe? Who even says things like that? No wonder I'm nauseous, Jodie thought. They moved out of sight again for a moment and she heard the sound of a zipper, followed by a file drawer opening and closing. “Here are the printouts we'll need. The classified group is in lockup. I just need to open the security vault. Let me get my key
card.”
I hope that’s not the same key card that’s in my pocket, Jodie thought.
“We can use mine,” the woman said. “Let’s go.”
As the footsteps came closer, Jodie pushed a little bit closer to Chuck, deeper in the shadows of the darkened hallway. The light in the area they were in grew noticeably brighter as the man and woman walked toward the exit, buttoning and zipping their clothes. Once they were completely dressed, the woman smoothed her hair down and they exited through a door. Jodie realized she was leaning against Chuck, whose body had begun to take on the glow of a warm fire. She moved away from him, ever so slightly.
“I guess we know which way to go now,” Jodie said. Looking up at Chuck, she could tell he was embarrassed. “You know, Chuck, you really know how to put on a show for a girl,” she said, grinning. “We’d better get going if we want to find out where they went.”
“Sorry about that,” Chuck said. “I don’t know if I can do anything about it, though.”
“Well, it would be quite beautiful if it wasn’t putting us in mortal danger,” Jodie said. Looking up at his face, she was surprised to see dull spots appearing on his otherwise gleaming metal. We’re both looking worse for the wear, she thought, but there was no time to dwell on that now.
They approached the door and opened it slowly. It led into an auditorium-sized room with high ceilings and bright overhead lights. Jodie could hear people talking behind a thick plastic sheet that hung from the ceiling; separating the rest of the room from a corner where something was being sprayed down by a half-dozen people in what appeared to be hazmat suits. She walked farther, coming to a narrow gap between two plastic sheets, and slowly pulled one back to see what the focus of everyone’s attention was.
Ahead of her, suspended above the floor about two feet, was what looked like an airplane. Flat and matte black in color, it hovered over a platform, seemingly unsupported by anything except the air beneath it. Workers clad in white and yellow suits sprayed the vehicle with some sort of gaseous powder, coating it in a white film.
