Beyond

by Phil Maxey

  Burt stopped the pickup at a junction and sighed. “There’s nothing here for us. I’ve seen war zones, and this is or…was one. The creatures won, we lost.” He turned to Abbey, but she was already half out of the door. “Where you going!” He half shouted. He half opened his door, when a loud shriek made him quickly pull it closed again. Shaking his head, he grabbed the assault rifle down the side of his seat, and opened the door again, looking up at the sky. A bird like creature, except with the head of a dog glided across his view, then disappeared amongst some ruins. He followed it with his gun, then ran around the pickup to see where Abbey had gone.

  He didn’t have to look far, she was crouched down near a man hole cover. He ran over to her. “What is it?”

  “There’s something wrong about what’s below us,” she said tracing her fingers over the smooth metal.

  Burt anxiously looked around them. “I don’t suggest we stay here for long, we’re exposed out here.”

  “I’m sensing E.L.F’s all around us.”

  “Okay? How’s that any different than anywhere else in this hell?”

  She looked up at him. “What’s different is I’m not sensing any below us.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Fiona drifted from cube to featureless cube looking for an end to the maze she was in. Her arms and legs were tiring due to the constant need to control her momentum so she wouldn’t career into one of the cells too hard. It reminded her of an old computer game she used to play as a child where you had to control the thrust of a small space ship.

  “I always did suck at that game,” she said to herself, grabbing one of the intake pipes all of the cells had.

  Another clanging noise rang out around her. By now she was used to the sound and ignored it while she looked at the metal boxes all around her.

  “This is not working, I need a different approach.”

  Making sure she had a good grip with her left hand she removed the E.L.F’s talon from her belt, having a quick look at its still sharp edge and brought it down on the smooth surface of the cell wall close to her. It landed with a thud then a scrape, the sound not traveling far. She struck it again, this time harder, a small tear appeared. She continued.

  “Don’t be a monster. Don’t be a monster.”

  She felt as if she was in some kind of surreal secret Santa game, not having any idea what present she was going to get when she managed to break into this particular well wrapped box.

  After about twenty strikes, a big enough hole opened up for her to get her fingers inside, and pull back a small flap.

  “Okay, that’s the outer wall, now the inner.”

  She poked the talon into the hole, raking it around, and then stabbed away. After a few tiring minutes, she broke through and a roar burst from the gap making her jump back, letting go of the pipe. Whatever was inside this cell was not happy.

  “Next cell then.”

  She steadied herself, then drifted back to the hole she had just created. The creature inside was growling and slamming up against the inner walls, even though the cell itself was not moving at all on the outside. She pushed the flap of wall material back, then spun around and pushed off with her feet and drifted the few yards to the next box.

  She could feel her strength waning, but working on finding something other than a monster inside one of the boxes was about the only thing keeping her sane. She took a deep breath then started striking the cell wall in front of her. This time it took longer to break through. Only silence greeted her.

  “Great, of all these boxes I had to choose the ones with the monster or—”

  A garbled noise that sounded like the Russian language but wasn’t, emanated from the hole she had created.

  “Hello? Is there someone in there?”

  More confusing words.

  Is that a dialect of Russian? “Are you talking Russian? I talk that, but I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  A scratching noise now came the other side of the wall. Whoever they were, they were trying to get out.

  “Yeah, you pull as much of this stuff off as you can from your side, and I’ll do the same from my side.”

  She tore away with the talon at the hole in front of her, suddenly a large piece came away, and two eyes were looking back at her. Two definitely not human eyes.

  “What the fuck—” She scrambled, pushing herself off from the cell wall and floated through the air, her back slamming into the cell behind her, without her eyes leaving the thing looking at her.

  It spoke again, pushing its head further into the light. Its face was human like in the sense that it was oval, but it had two mouths, one on each side of its face. There was no nose to speak of, and its eyes were larger than hers, with multiple pupils. Its skin color was a pale yellow.

  Fiona’s instinct was to turn and try to get away, but for some reason this creature, even with a face that would leave you with nightmares didn’t seem threatening.

  She leaned slightly forward. “I don’t understand you…” She then pointed to herself. “Fiona.”

  A hand with only four fingers, but longer than a humans appeared in the gap. And the humanoid thing uttered a noise which sounded like “Klept.”

  “Klept?” Said Fiona pointing at the being.

  It nodded.

  She pushed herself off the cell behind her and drifted forward until she grabbed hold of the pipe on the cell with ‘Klept’ in. “Okay Klept, let’s see if we can get you out.”

  I’m helping an alien escape from a space prison.

  A short laugh erupted from her mouth, making Klept lean back. She put her hand to her mouth, and cleared her throat. “Umm, sorry, just a strange situation for me.”

  She knew Klept wasn’t understanding anything she was saying but felt the need to keep talking anyway, maybe it helped.

  It wasn’t long before the hole was big enough for her to see most of Klept’s body, which much to her relief looked fairly human like, although he or she was extremely thin. They were wearing a one-piece dark purple suit of some kind of webbed material which didn’t reflect much of the ambient light around them.

  “Cool outfit.”

  Klept said some words. When they spoke the sounds came from both mouths on their face, giving the vocalization a kind of harmony which made it hard to hear the sounds clearly.

  “You’d make a fortune in the pop charts.”

  Klept looked bemused, or an expression Fiona took to mean that. She hadn’t realized that on meeting a species from a different part of space would mean learning everything from the ground up. But now that she was in that situation it was obvious that’s what would happen.

  She then realized it must be strange for them as well, with her odd single set of vocal cords.

  She let herself drift slowly backward and watched as Klept pushed through the opening in the wall and emerged outside. It was about six feet tall, so a few inches taller than herself. They both floated looking at each other.

  “Well this is awkward.”

  Klept pointed to themselves and then to Fiona, and finally into the distance to Fiona’s left. This was accompanied with more words.

  “You want us to go in that direction?” She nodded to her left.

  A word sounding like “Drire” came from Klept’s mouths.

  “Okay, let’s go.” She pushed off in that direction and Klept did the same.

  CHAPTER 8

  The sewers Abbey and Burt had been walking through were dark and foul smelling, but despite that felt completely safe for both of them. There was no sign of any E.L.F’s even having been down there, let alone living there now. They had been walking for half an hour, exploring the different routes offered to them, until they discovered a strange looking solid door.

  “What the hell’s that doing down here? It looks like a door to a bank vault,” said Burt.

  Abbey pointed her flashlight around the edge of it. “Doesn’t look like it was part of the original tunnel. I’m also not seeing any handl
e or keyhole. It opens from the inside only.”

  Burt looked at Abbey. “Could it be a bunker?”

  Before she could answer a noise came from beyond the door. A whirring of wheels turning and levers being pulled.

  They both began stepping back, while Burt’s grip of his assault rifle tightened. Finally a waft of warm air brushed past them and the door swung open towards them. An intense light flooded out of the gap.

  “If you got any weapons, lay them on the ground now!” Shouted a male voice.

  “Not laying anything buddy!” Shouted Burt back, crouching and pointing his rifle towards the light.

  Abbey stood frozen, glancing between her travelling partner and the glare of the flashlights ahead of her. She raised her hands. “We’re just lost down here, we mean you no harm. Who are you?”

  “Tell your friend to lay his weapon on the ground, we won’t ask again.”

  She looked at Burt who frowned, then while shaking his head took his rifle from his shoulder and placed it not far from him on the ground.

  One of the flashlights moved out of the doorway. Behind it the bearded face of a man in his thirties could just about be made out. “Where you coming from?”

  “I’m from the camp in Austin.” Abbey could see the mans face was one of confusion.

  “That’s still standing?”

  “More than standing, it’s thriving.”

  “But—”

  A woman stepped forward. “The General is going to want to see them. Get their weapons.” She looked at Abbey. “What’s your name?”

  “Abbey.”

  “I’m Lin. This is Joe. You’re lucky we were in this part of the tunnels or we would never have known you were here.”

  Abbey did her best to smile. Joe took her rifle and Burt’s.

  “Follow us, and stay close you don’t want to get lost down here.”

  They moved over the threshold into a cleaner looking tunnel, while Joe closed the three-foot thick door behind them and turned a large steel wheel until it locked tight.

  “How many are you?” Said Abbey following the older woman.

  “A lot.”

  “You all live down here in these tunnels?”

  “Not in these tunnels, no. It was obvious early on that the camp was not going to withstand the E.L.F’s that were attacking daily, hell during those first few weeks the attacks were constant, so construction started on a series of linked bunkers beneath the camp. Once the nukes took out some of the other camps, the decision was made to abandon the world above and to move to the bunkers.”

  “But there’s not been any communication from up here? Can’t you talk to the outside world?”

  “We prefer to keep to ourselves.”

  After walking for a few minutes, they moved past another equally solid looking door, and descended stairs into a larger well-lit tunnel. The door at the end was twice as big as those they had already passed through. It opened before they got to it and the sound and smell of life immediately struck Abbey and Burt.

  An unshaven man with a rile over his shoulder grinned, revealing missing teeth at Lin as she approached. “Mitch’s ain’t gonna like you bringing home stray’s.”

  “They have news about the other camps,” she said without looking at the man. He nodded while raising his eyebrows.

  Abbey and Burt walked tentatively forward and over the threshold into a chamber large enough to hold a large passenger plane. Stalls, tents and makeshift huts sat tight to each other across most of the floor, with small channels full of busy looking people slicing through at haphazard angles.

  Abbey leaned in to Burt. “There must be a few hundred people in this room alone.”

  “This is…was one of this bunkers main storage hangers, now as you can see it’s more of a market place with some people also living here.”

  The eyes of a small child fixed on Abbey, while her mother tried dragging her away.

  “How many of these kinds of chambers you got down here?” Said Burt.

  Lin pointed behind them at the large white words on the wall near the door. ’S12’. “It goes up to twenty four.”

  “And there’s other bunkers? How many?” Said Abbey.

  Lin went to answer when a commotion at the back of the chamber, made her straighten her back. “You can ask the general all you want.”

  Those in the spaces between the flimsily built structures, stepped to one side while three men and one woman, all in military uniform marched towards Abbey and the others.

  Abbey breathed in heavily, she had been in this situation before. Usually the kind of humanity that had survived the Cascade was exactly who you didn’t want in charge of a fast food joint let alone a community of people trying to survive.

  Two of the soldiers stood guard either side of a diminutive woman with graying hair, and a fair complexion. The woman stepped forward and held her hand out to Abbey. “I’m Brigadier General Jessica Mitchell,” she said with a southern accent. “But people call me Mitch. You two must of had quite some journey to get down here, how did you avoid our friends up top?”

  Abbey hesitated talking, she had no idea how much ‘Mitch’ knew of her kind.

  “We’re both pretty good with our rifles,” said Burt.

  Mitch nodded. “And you say you’re from a camp near Austin?” She looked back and forth between Burt and Abbey.

  “Yes, my…umm another general. General Elizabeth Trow is in charge there.”

  “I know of Trow. Damn fine officer from what I heard.” Mitch turned to the soldier behind her. “See, told you the human race was too stubborn to completely die out, that’s a bottle of the good stuff you owe me Mason.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Fiona looked at the huge cuboid form in front of her with Klept by her side. He was certainly more at home in zero gravity than she was, even with his incredible slim arms and legs. Without his help she never would have even spotted the aircraft hanger sized dark form amongst all the other smaller ones around it. She had decided that Klept was a male of his species, without having any proof that was the case, but she needed some stability in her mind about what he was.

  Klept uttered something and pointed to the lower corner wall of the larger box chamber which seemed to have some kind of pattern on it, although Fiona couldn’t see anymore than that from their distance.

  She nodded and went to push off, when Klept spoke again this time he sounded sharper in his pronunciation, and he waved his long arm in front of her.

  She pointed downwards. “You want me to stay here?”

  “Drire.”

  She nodded and Klept pushed off from the pipe he was holding and floated serenely towards the larger structure. He seemed to know his way around. Maybe he’s been captured before?

  A wave of fatigue flooded over her joints and limbs, and she shook her head trying to stay focused on Klept as he continued to float towards the monolithic shape in front of her. It wasn’t long before Klept looked just an inch in size, compared to what he was nearing. Just how big is that thing?

  Finally her fellow prisoner seemed to arrive at the wall. By a rough guess of how long Klept took to get there, she reasoned the structure was about two hundred yards away. Meaning it would be about five stories high. She wondered if it contained many floors or was just one big cell. If it were the latter she really hoped Klept wasn’t trying to let out, what was inside.

  She squinted and leaned forward to try and make out what Klept was doing. He seemed to be touching the wall in front of him, but not striking it, just lightly touching it.

  “What the f—”

  She let go of the cell next to her, as now it was gone, and floating just a few yards from her was a something which looked like a sea cucumber, but with thin spiny protrusions.

  Scrambling to turn around and get away from whatever was in front of her, she realized that the walls to all the cells around her had disappeared and instead thousands of creatures sat positioned in perfect rows and columns in this endless thre
e-dimensional maze of boxes.

  She started to feel faint. She was trapped, floating in space surrounded by unimaginable monsters. Her breathing started to get away from her, and the world around started to spin even though she was sure she wasn’t moving.

  Her back pushed up against something smooth and solid. Blinking and trying to focus on what she had hit up against, she turned and stared at a bear like creature with six legs, just a few feet away. She screamed and pushed her hands out in front of her, touching an invisible wall.

  Uh?

  Her fingers spread out and she pushed them more into what she was feeling but not seeing.

  The cell walls are still there…thank God…

  Her breathing started to slow. She realized she was drenched in sweat and rubbed some away from her forehead.

  She waved her hand in front of the bear creature, but it continued to look past her.

  He can’t seem me.

  She then had a thought. Can I find Zach and Raj?

  She looked at the cells closest to her but each contained E.L.F’s. Suddenly she remembered Klept and looked back to where he was, but he was gone.

  * * * * *

  Abbey and Burt stood inside a large room with multiple computer screens, and military personnel working at various workstations. In the center was a brightly lit table which displayed a map of the United States with a grid overlaid.

  General Mitchell stood at the head of the table. She pointed at Austin. “So you have come all the way from south Texas? Did you have an escort?” She said looking at Abbey.

  “Originally I did. We have an outpost in Kentucky.” The whole story was too complicated for her to recite right now and she was hoping there wouldn’t be too many questions.