Blindspot

by Michael McBride

  Grimstad yelled behind him and gunfire crackled.

  Ramsey couldn’t bring himself to so much as glance back. His movements felt sluggish, hampered by the heavy overboots and the floppy suit. His rapid breaths echoed like he was blowing into a coffee can. The dust swallowed Rockwell and Wilshire ahead of him, growing so thick that he could barely see their silhouettes, and then nothing at all.

  Grimstad’s shouts turned to screams and the prattle of the rifle abruptly ceased.

  A hazy rectangular shape appeared through the dust, wavering like a mirage at first as the swirling dust attempted to reclaim it. The ground slanted downward toward it. It looked like the entire area had dropped a dozen feet beneath its former level. He leapt over sharp crags and crevices, over toppled tree trunks and jaggedly fractured chunks of asphalt and concrete, toward the misshapen warehouse. Its eastern half had fallen, the roof jutting upward, while the western half appeared to have slid at an angle into the earth, its second story barely above the crater. Its windows were shattered, the frames crumpled, billowing dust as though gasping for air.

  This was where the nightmare had begun.

  Ground Zero.

  A clanging sound ahead and to his right.

  Rockwell was ascending a slanted set of iron stairs toward a dark trapezoid, the door that had once sealed it warped and clinging to the rail on the landing.

  Ramsey veered in that direction, crunching over broken glass and the fragmented remains of the building’s apron. He saw a corpse burned to such a degree that it had blackened and curled into fetal position, its skeletal jaws opened wide enough to swallow a softball. Muzzle flare strobed and he felt bullets streaking over his head as he reached the steps and hauled himself upward. The entire staircase shook and shuddered and threatened to pry loose from its moorings, which shrieked with the sound of shearing metal.

  Bullets ricocheted from the stairs behind him. He lunged for the landing and crawled under Rockwell’s line of fire. Wilshire reached for him from inside the ruined doorway and dragged him through, into the darkness. He could barely see the outline of a catwalk ahead of him, canted to the left toward the main warehouse floor, a massive pit with upturned concrete jaws into which the majority of the roof had collapsed, dragging broken crates and forklifts and even what appeared to be a panel truck with it. Crisp bodies peppered the entire area like the carcasses of so many ants fried under a magnifying glass.

  Ramsey pushed himself to his feet. The catwalk swayed precariously over the pitfall. A section of the railing wobbled and then fell, hitting the ground seconds later with a resounding clang. His footsteps echoed as he ran toward the closed door of a cantilevered room that must have once served as some sort of supervisory office, suspended above the warehouse floor. He reached the lone door with Wilshire right behind him and seized the knob.

  It didn’t budge.

  “Damn it!” he shouted.

  “Out of the way!” Wilshire said, elbowing him aside.

  Rockwell eased backward along the catwalk toward them, firing every step of the way.

  The knob made cracking sounds as Wilshire struck it repeatedly with the butt of his rifle.

  Rockwell’s carbine whirred and the shadows eclipsed the doorway to the outside world.

  With a resounding snap, the doorknob broke off, pinged from the catwalk, and careened over the edge. Wilshire raised his right foot and kicked the door once-twice-three times before it swung inward and struck the wall behind it with a thud that made the elevated walkway shiver.

  Ramsey ducked past Wilshire as the soldier spun, raised his rifle, and pulled the trigger in one smooth motion. Rockwell was already racing toward them. He dove under Wilshire’s muzzle and slid on his chest across the threshold.

  The clamor of nails on the iron catwalk filled the air, echoing in the confines.

  Wilshire shouted at the top of his lungs and emptied his rifle at the converging shadows as he backed through the doorway.

  “Help me move this!” Rockwell shouted, leaning over a heavy wooden desk that had toppled onto its side on the slanted floor.

  Ramsey hurried to the opposite end and groaned as he helped Rockwell lift it up onto a bank of file cabinets and maneuver it over what was left of the solitary window. He glanced to his left and saw Wilshire’s silhouette trying to wedge the door back into the crooked frame.

  The clatter of nails grew deafening as their hunters surged toward the office.

  Wilshire shouldered the door and kick-kick-kicked it until it slammed closed.

  In the now-complete darkness, Ramsey could hear them on the other side, hurling their bodies against the door.

  “Give me a hand!” Wilshire shouted.

  Ramsey ran toward the sound of his voice. Wilshire leaned his back against the door, legs braced, trying to maintain his leverage as the door bucked against him. Ramsey shouldered the door, but there was no way they were going to be able to hold them out for long. The repeated impacts on the other side were ferocious and unrelenting, one after another after another. Ramsey already felt his feet slipping. A body struck the door with such force that it opened several inches before slamming closed again.

  “Find something to help keep this closed!” Ramsey shouted.

  “There’s nothing else in here!” Rockwell yelled.

  Ramsey heard the clack-clack-clack of nails scurrying past him on the other side of the wall. There was a banging sound from the window and the desk toppled inward. A brief influx of gray light around the edges. Ramsey saw a blur of motion as Rockwell launched himself against it, but another blow highlighted the seam around it again. Rockwell didn’t have a prayer of holding it up there on his own.

  More nails clattered along the walls and across the ceiling above their heads. Scratching, wrenching, gouging their way through the remnants of the roof toward the thin layer of drywall.

  They were going to die.

  “We have to do this now!” Wilshire shouted.

  “And just how the hell are we supposed to get out of here?”

  “I know what I’m doing!”

  “It’s too soon!” Rockwell said. “If we don’t get them all, we’re dead!”

  “We’re dead if we wait any longer anyway!”

  “What are you talking about?” Ramsey yelled.

  The door pounded him from behind and his feet slid. A hand forced its way through the gap. Its claws raked across his face shield. He shoved as hard as he could, but couldn’t force the door closed with the wrist in the way. A shrill cry of pain from whatever was attached to the wrist, so loud he could hear it even over the banging and clacking of nails.

  “We can’t hold them out any longer!” Wilshire shouted. “They’ll be through any second now!”

  The gap around the desk grew larger as a shadow struggled to slither through. Rockwell bellowed with the effort of trying to hold it in place, a battle he would inevitably lose.

  “I’m doing this!” Wilshire yelled.

  “Not yet! We don’t know where all of them are!”

  “In thirty seconds, they’ll all be in here!”

  “Then we have to wait!”

  “We do and we’re dead!”

  “Whatever you’re going to do,” Ramsey said, “you’d better do it now!”

  “Hold the door!” Wilshire shouted directly into his ear. “You have to buy me time!”

  “By myself? There’s no way—!”

  “Just do it!”

  “No!” Rockwell yelled. “It’ll be contained in here! It won’t get them all!”

  “The hell it won’t,” Wilshire said in an eerily calm voice, and stepped away from the door.

  The pressure from the other side knocked Ramsey back into the room. He tried to brace his feet, to gain any kind of leverage, but there was nothing he could do. Bodies forced themselves into the gap, widening it to the point that they were already beginning to shimmy through. Ramsey heard the clatter of nails on the floor directly beside him, claws carving into the trim an
d the wall, saw flailing appendages pouring through the crack in the dim light.

  A glint of metal from the opposite corner of his peripheral vision, where Wilshire crouched over his open backpack. He withdrew the large silver canister he had taken from Moya’s belongings. A series of red lights started to blink from a panel on its surface.

  “You have to go now,” Wilshire said in a voice so soft Ramsey couldn’t be sure he had even heard it.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Rockwell yelled. “You said you knew what you were doing!”

  “I do!”

  “You can’t trigger it now! We’ll all be killed!”

  “Then you’d better get going.”

  “Damn it! We’ll find another way!”

  “Ten seconds,” Wilshire said. “Nine.”

  Rockwell roared and leapt back from the desk, which tumbled inward after him. His rifle strobed. The sound of gunfire in the small room was like knitting needles piercing Ramsey’s eardrums. He screamed in pain and confusion. The rifle spat bullets, not toward the bodies clambering through the window where the desk had been or the gap that Ramsey could no longer seal off, but directly down at the floor at Rockwell’s feet.

  A solid blow from behind knocked Ramsey forward. He felt the door swing inward behind him, opening the floodgates.

  They were going to die.

  He stumbled into the middle of the room toward Rockwell, who ceased firing and jumped forward, landing squarely on the floor at the point where gray columns of light erupted through the bullet holes. His entire body passed through with only the slightest resistance. There one moment, gone the next, Rockwell plummeted into the nothingness below.

  Ramsey thought of the gaping maw in the ground a story down, of the jagged remains of the roof and the concrete floor standing from it like fangs, of the scorched corpses littering the rubble.

  The flashing red beacons illuminated Wilshire as he stood and started firing, his features contorted by rage and terror. The horrible creatures converged on both of them in the flashes of light.

  Ramsey cradled his rifle to his chest.

  Took a deep breath.

  And dropped down through the hole in the floor.

  The muzzle of Wilshire’s rifle continued to strobe through the rapidly receding, ragged hole above him. He saw Wilshire dive toward the ruined floor. Too late. A flash of brilliant light illuminated the mass of bodies clinging to the sides of the office, scrabbling underneath and over the girders and support framework.

  The light pulsed and expanded.

  Blinding.

  Searing heat.

  Rising above him as he fell.

  Weightless.

  Down.

  Down.

  Jarring impact.

  Stars.

  The taste of copper in his mouth.

  Black.

  VIII

  The rhythmic whooshing sound of his pulse in his ears. A tinny hum. Beneath, a voice, calling to him from across a great distance, the words incomprehensible.

  His eyelids part. Crescents of searing light. He closes them again.

  Whoooosh. Whoooosh. Whoooosh.

  The pain. It ripples up his spine and drives a spike into the base of his skull. He whimpers and his mouth fills with blood. A cough, uncontrollable. Warmth on his face, running down his cheeks.

  The voice again. Closer. Distorted by the tinnitus in his inner ear.

  Whoooosh. Whoooosh. Whoooosh.

  He opens his eyes again. Spears of gray light, lancing straight through his pounding head. A shadow, its outline hazy, incorporeal.

  Sensation in his extremities, dull, throbbing. He’s reminded of his legs, his arms. Pins and needles in his digits. Heat. The trickle of sweat.

  Whoooosh. Whoooosh. Whoooosh.

  The voice. Deep, resonant, ricocheting inside his head with the Doppler Effect.

  He remembers. He remembers the light. Falling. The shadows.

  Dear God. The shadows.

  His rifle. Where is his rifle? It was in his hands. Where are his hands?

  He sputters. More warmth on his face.

  The voice.

  “Take it easy. Don’t try to get up too quickly.”

  Pressure under his shoulders, easing him up from the ground.

  He’s sitting, the blood racing away from his head. Dizzy.

  His eyes roll upward…

  “Stay with me, Dr. Ramsey.”

  The light, no longer blinding. Weak. It’s dark, not dark. Dim. The man in front of him. Shadow, not shadow. Rockwell. His silhouette. Blurry, not blurry. Smoke. A cloud of smoke hanging over him. Moving between them, through them.

  “What…?” The word forms, drips from his mouth on more warmth.

  The arm under his back, guiding him, lifting him to his feet. There they are. He sways, but Rockwell helps him ride it out. Dizziness fades. Not the pain. The pain is sharp. It helps to focus his mind.

  Make it stop!

  His vision clears.

  Small fires burn around him, flames flickering on the floor. Above him. He looks up and sees the office burning, now little more than a skeleton of scorched iron and smoldering timber.

  “Wilshire?” he whispers.

  Rockwell shakes his head. The shield over his face is cracked, spider-webbing his features, which shimmer with a crimson skein.

  “How…?” He shakes his head to clear it, to free the words. “The explosion…what…?”

  “Semtex,” Rockwell says as he turns away and walks into the swirling smoke. His disembodied voice trails him. “We need to hurry. We’re totally out of time.”

  Ramsey glances at his personal dosimeter.

  50 milliSieverts per hour.

  One-seventh of the rate at Chernobyl.

  Acute radiation sickness would soon set in.

  Nausea. Vomiting. Hemorrhaging. Erythema.

  Hurry was an understatement.

  * * *

  Ramsey’s head was pounding and he felt sick to his stomach. He couldn’t be certain whether it was a consequence of the fall, the radiation, or of what he was seeing right now. He walked through the aftermath as if through a dream. There were flames all around him, barely visible, lurking beneath the roiling black smoke of their own creation. Chunks of flaming debris still rained from the cantilevered office above him, striking the floor with explosions of glowing cinders. If there were any remains up there, he couldn’t see them. Whatever had once been Wilshire was now undoubtedly vaporized. Ramsey had tried to ascend the iron staircase, but the soles of his boots had begun to melt immediately and he feared compromising the integrity of his suit. That close to the heart of the blast, Wilshire would surely have been incinerated, but they owed it to him to continue to look for as long as possible. After all, it was the least they could do considering he had sacrificed his life for them. But they wouldn’t be able to search for much longer. They were already risking the stochastic effects of the radiation as it was. And the detonation would not have gone unnoticed. Soon, the entire area would be crawling with North Korean soldiers and—

  Another boom of rifle fire.

  The report echoed in what remained of the warehouse before rolling out through the demolished wall and across the surrounding field like thunder.

  That made three survivors now. Three of more than he cared to count.

  He shuffled through the smoke toward the origin of the sound and found Rockwell still standing over the body. His suit was spattered with blood that had already begun to clot with ash and dust. Ramsey placed his palm on Rockwell’s shoulder. Rockwell nodded before shrugging out from beneath it and walking away.

  Ramsey stared down at the corpse sprawled before him.

  Flames flickered from the ragged remnants of the clothing that reminded him of hospital issue-surgical scrubs. The skin beneath was scorched black, cracked, oozing amber pustulates. The small, bare feet were scabbed and riddled with briars and thorns. Caked with mud and soot. Elongated toes with hooked talons that doubled their o
verall length. Big toes that projected sideways from the others, opposable. The hands were slightly more proportionate, the claws merely sharp extensions of the existing nails. The fur on the arms and chest, the long hair on the head, all singed back to the skin. But it was the face that got to him. To both of them.

  It was the face of a child.

  Wide eyes shot through with vessels, golden irises rimmed with scarlet, too large. Even in death they reflected the light, like those of a nocturnal predator, which was obviously what this poor creature had been engineered to be. Tiny, bulbous nose. Lips barely able to accommodate the protruding chimp-like teeth. Only longer and sharper, more like those of a jungle cat. Whether more primate than human was irrelevant. They were still juveniles. Still children, for Christ’s sake. Bred to kill in a lab now collapsed beneath their feet. In defiance of the laws of man, of the Geneva Convention, of the will of God.

  What had been the goal? To raise an army? To augment an existing one? To use this arcane knowledge to convert soldiers into an unstoppable force?

  Ramsey prayed he would never know, for at what cost had this knowledge been obtained? What did this say about mankind as a whole that it was willing to subject its own progeny, if that was indeed what these creatures were, to such reprehensible experimentation?

  He looked away before he could dwell on the hole in its forehead, the tattoo of gunpowder around it, the blossoms of bone and gray matter that had been the only small measure of compassion bestowed upon this pitiful creation in its entire miserable life.

  A whimpering sound through the smoke. To his left. No. Behind him and to his right. God, how many more survived the explosion? Couldn’t they have been granted one solitary mercy?

  He stepped over severed appendages. Slender arms, the meat smoldering. Stubby legs that seemed to fold upon themselves. What he could only assume were the vestiges of tails. Flames slowly consumed the flesh, exposing the charred framework of bones.

  Rockwell’s silhouette towered over a supine form. It raised the stump of an arm in a feeble attempt to ward off the rifle directed at its head. The whimper became a shrill screech that was joined by several more from somewhere in the smoke.