"Fucking wonderful."
Another thought struck me. "Gordon Couttis had epilepsy. I bet that’s why he was never part of the conspiracy. His condition likely prevented him from being possessed."
We entered the hallway leading to the wormhole. I'd abandoned the idea of using the elevator to Black and Brewed, believing it wouldn't respond to my touch, and I didn't see another passage out of the cavern.
Someone shouted behind us. Another person took up the call, and another. Some very angry people were about to give chase.
I pushed Frank along the hallway toward a door about fifty feet away. Like the others in this complex, it had a screen embedded in the flawless, impenetrable metal. Couttis and I had gone through it earlier.
Frank finally shook off the effects of the grenade and stood on his own. Sweat coated his face. He glanced over his shoulder at the sound of footfalls. "We're running out of time, Paco."
I approached the door and placed my hand on the screen. The surface felt warm, but that was it. No shock, no other unpleasant reaction. Nothing.
The door remained shut.
I looked at Frank. "We need one of those guys to open it."
"Couttis?" Frank said.
"Sure, but he's back in the cavern."
With an angry shout, Conrad Hunter charged into the hallway, followed by two worker bees.
"You have your gun?" I asked Frank.
He shook his head. "They must have taken it while I was unconscious. Not that it would have done any good. I ran out of rounds shooting the dolls." He reached into his pocket. "I still have two grenades."
"Save them in case we run into a mob," I said. "I say we go old school. You up for a fight?"
Frank's grin stretched nearly to his ears. "I thought you'd never ask."
Hunter charged at us, his expression a mixture of fury and wounded pride.
Frank advanced until the two collided near the intersection. Hunter threw a left. The swing was powerful but poorly aimed. Frank took the blow on his shoulder, letting the force spin him, and hammered Hunter with a right hook. The other man grunted. Frank was a strong man, despite his wounds. Hunter was about to find out how strong.
The two worker bees focused their attention on me. As they approached, one reached into his lab coat and withdrew a syringe. The other did the same.
Neither was as burly as Hunter, though the one on the right had a slighter build. He looked more like a nerdy professor than a fighter. The guy on the left posed a greater threat. He held his syringe with the ease of a seasoned knife fighter. As he advanced, his eyes scanned my body, presumably looking for an opening.
I had taken self-defense classes as a teenager. Nothing sophisticated—a few basic blocks and kicks, along with some release techniques. That was almost twenty years ago, and they hadn't covered syringe attacks.
The more experienced-looking bee shot ahead of his partner. When he was within striking distance, I snapped my rear foot forward. Not expecting a kick, the man couldn't block my leg fast enough, and the toe of my shoe connected with his solar plexus. Breath exploded out from between his teeth and he doubled over. Despite the blow, he managed to bring the syringe around and stab at my leg. His aim was reckless, and the needle skittered harmlessly off the hard surface of my tibia. I jerked my leg back, too amped up to feel any pain, and threw a punch at nerdy bee. He let out a panicked shriek and danced back.
In the middle of the hallway, Frank and Hunter grappled with one another. Hunter was bleeding from a cut above his eye and had added to the collection of scrapes on his face. Frank, his hands drooping more than I liked, panted like a man who had run a marathon. He was tiring, while Hunter looked like Rocky Balboa in the second round of a ten round fight.
Frank needed my help or this would end badly.
As my opponents regrouped, I thought of Toni and how she had cried in the shower when she realized she wasn't pregnant. I thought of how badly she wanted to be a mother, how badly she needed to be a mother. I thought of the joy she would feel when a human life was finally growing inside her, and the horror she would experience if an alien presence invaded its brain and took away what made her precious little baby so special.
I thought of what she would lose—what the world would all lose—if the aliens succeeded. Rage built up inside me. I let it grow until it was all I could feel.
The guy I’d kicked started to straighten. I grabbed him by the back of the head, my fingers twinning into his hair.
"Not today, asshole," I said, and brought my knee up into his face. The man didn't make a sound—he simply fell, blood flowing freely from his nose and upper lip. I’d hopefully taken the fight out of him.
I felt a stabbing pain and turned.
Nerdy bee had stuck a syringe into my arm. Eyes wild, sweat slicking his hair, he hesitated, his thumb hovering over the plunger.
I took advantage of his hesitation and punched him in the throat. The delicate cartilage of his airway ruptured with a sickening crunch. His hands flew to his neck, clawing for air that would not come. His eyes bulged, his face purpled. With his lips moving but no words coming out, he crumpled to the floor. He would not be getting up.
I jerked the syringe out of my arm, the barrel still filled with fluid.
Mere feet away, Conrad Hunter pounded at Frank with blow after blow. Frank countered with a massive, two-fisted chop to the side of Hunter's head. The bloodied mayor staggered.
Stepping up, I stuck the syringe in the meaty part of Hunter's shoulder and emptied the contents into him. Seconds later he was unconscious. Some awful part of me wished he would die.
Prior to visiting Emersville, I had never done anything remotely life-threatening to another human being. Now I had killed someone—two, if Hunter died. I dropped the syringe, nauseated at what I had become.
Wheezing, his face marred by cuts and bruises, Frank checked Hunter for a pulse.
"Alive," he said. "At least we have that going for us."
"He tried to kill you."
"No." Frank's unblinking, alien eye seemed to contradict my shock. "The thing inside him did. We have no idea what the real Conrad Hunter is like. He might be a loving husband and father. At least he'll have a chance to be fully human again. If he can be fully human again." He rubbed his shoulder. "I owe you, Paco."
"Pay me back by getting us out of here."
"Where do we go now?"
I dragged nerdy bee's lifeless body to the door and placed his hand on the scanner.
The door remained shut. No surprise. Nothing in this place was ever easy.
"It probably uses some kind of recognition program," Frank said. "You need an authorized fingerprint or palm pattern or something to open it."
I gestured to Hunter. "I bet he has the proper clearance."
We dragged Hunter to the door and pressed his hand against the scanner. At first nothing happened, then a seam formed down the middle and the two halves slid apart.
Beyond was the long hallway leading to the Conveyance. I stepped inside.
"Hold on," Frank said, pulling Hunter into the hallway, followed by the dead worker bee. When I asked about the third guy, the one with the broken nose, Frank said, "Leave him. The trail of blood would show where we went."
"Where else would we have gone?"
Frank ran a finger over the cellophane-wrapped cigarette pack sticking out of his shirt pocket. I was surprised he’d managed to keep hold of it. "It might buy us a few minutes. They might wonder why we left him behind."
I didn't agree with his thinking but, lacking a better plan, I stepped away from the door. Frank joined me. The door stayed open.
"Any idea how it closes?" he asked.
I looked at the bodies slumped inside the doorway. "Maybe it has some kind of sensor, some way of preventing it from closing on someone." I grabbed Hunter's arm and pulled him down the hallway. Frank did the same with nerdy bee.
When we were about ten feet from the door, the two halves came together without a sound.
I released Hunter's arm. Frank did the same with his guy. The mayor was still breathing. Hopefully it would be hours before he woke.
The hallway extended for another sixty or so feet before branching left and right. I remembered the left passage led to the Conveyance. Doorways lined the walls, most of them closed. One was open. We approached it and looked inside. Stacks of cardboard containers lined the walls. I searched several for markings or letterings.
"Nothing," I said. "No shipping labels. No company logo. No customs stamps."
Frank lifted one. "Whatever's in it isn't heavy." He tore at the packing tape and opened the flaps.
What I saw made my heart race.
Proximity locks. The carton was filled with them, maybe three dozen, all nestled in a framework of silver metal much like an egg crate. Each lock had a thin wire connecting it to a device that might have been a battery.
I stared at the remaining boxes. If they all contained proximity locks, there would be thousands of them.
"It's the heart of their invasion," Frank said, rubbing at the area under his alien eye. The oddly bruised skin had grown and now covered half his cheek. I peered at the discoloration. It looked almost scaly. I touched it with my finger. "Does that hurt?"
“No.” Frank gave me a worried look. "Brad, what's going on?"
"It's your skin." I described how his cheek had changed. I also realized he hadn't seen his eye yet. Instead of trusting my words, I pulled out my phone, snapped a picture, and showed it to him. "The bruised area is growing, and that’s your new eye."
He touched the skin under his eye. "What's happening to me?"
"We'll figure it out later." I put the phone back into my pocket. "First, we need to find a way out."
Back in the hallway I counted the doors. There were too many. "We can't keep dragging Hunter around to use his hand. We need a better alternative."
Beside me, Frank muttered something under his breath. His face had gone pale, and his human eye was looking a little wild. He reached up and took the cigarette pack from his pocket. His fingers shook as he tore open the cellophane, shook one out, and jammed it into his mouth.
"Don't suppose you got a light?" he asked.
"You want to smoke? Have you lost your—"
"Do you or do you not have a goddamn light!"
I shook my head. "You know I don't."
"Just as well." He took the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it to the floor. "Stupid time to start back up."
"Pull it together," I said. "Those doors, we need to see what's behind them." I paused. "If Hunter was the one who took our wives, he might've brought them here."
"Wouldn’t Couttis have mentioned that?"
“Hell if I know.” I grabbed Hunter, hauled him to the next door, and used his hand to open it. Beyond lay a room, roughly twenty by ten, with walls that glowed faintly. Bunk beds were set against one wall, a table and chairs against the other. There was no one in the room.
We opened the next door and found what appeared to be a lab. I recognized an autoclave, centrifuges, banks of refrigerators. Pipettes and jars of chemicals. Rows of sealed test tubes. At the far end, an attractive woman with red hair stared at a computer monitor. She looked up when we entered, a frown marring on her pretty features.
"This area is off limits," she said. "You'll have to leave." Then she noticed Frank's eye and froze. A cell phone sat atop some notebooks. She went for it.
Frank bull-rushed her, covering the distance in seconds, too fast for a man his size. The woman, her eyes wide, opened her mouth to scream.
Frank grabbed her, spun her around, and pushed her face into the wall. He jerked her hands behind her back, and the scream never made it past her lips.
"Fight me, make any noise at all, and I'll break your arms," he said to her.
"You've escaped," she said, her tone dismayingly calm. "Unfortunate, but not a disaster. It's not like you can report to anyone." She smiled. "Besides, you'll be dead before the hour is out."
Frank wrenched the woman's arms upward until she winced. "Manners," he told her. To me, he said, "Looks like we found a research lab. Wanna bet on what's in those refrigerators?"
I opened one. Clear rectangular bottles filled with fluid lined the shelves. There were strange markings like glyphs written on each one. I couldn't read them, but I had a good idea what they said.
"I think we've found the virus."
Frank grinned. "Sweet. How do we destroy them?"
The woman began shouting. "No! NO! You can't!"
"Shut up," Frank said, pressing her more firmly into the wall. "We can, and we will."
I looked at the banks of refrigerators. There were over a dozen. There was no time to destroy them individually.
"We need something big," I said, my eyes scanning the room. "A fire, or an explosion. Something that would destroy the entire lab."
"What do you know about chemicals?" he asked me. "There are jars all over the place. Maybe the stun grenades can set them off?"
"I don’t know nearly enough." I had taken chemistry in college and barely squeaked by with a C-. "We need to find something we know will work, and we need it fast."
"Let's go, then." Frank spun the woman around. Her hair hung in wild strands. She glared at him, her green eyes burning with hatred.
"You're coming with us," he told her. "We need a hand with the doors."
* * *
Frank dragged the woman into the hallway and forced her hand onto the nearest pad. The door slid open.
We found another room filled with boxes. At least forty of them, each one presumably containing proximity locks.
We moved on, dragging the protesting scientist with us. The hallway ended at another intersection. One way led back toward the wormhole machine. I went down the other.
Here we found a short corridor with three doors, one on either side and the third at the end.
Frank grabbed the woman by the hair and jerked her head back. "What's behind those doors?"
She winced in pain. "Supplies. Spare equipment. It's another storage area."
"Our wives," he said. "Where are they?"
"I don't know," she said. Frank yanked her head back until her neck bowed. "Honestly, don't know!"
Behind us, the sounds of pursuit could now be heard. They must have found the bloodied bee. Several voices yelled. One might have been Couttis's.
"Pick one," I told Frank.
Dragging the woman to the right-hand door, he said, "Open it." When the woman refused, he grabbed her wrist. This time she fought him. She kicked and bit and tried to break free.
"Let me go!" she yelled. Then, in a louder voice, "Down here! We're down here!"
I exchanged a curious look with Frank. "She doesn't want us to go in there."
Frank nodded. "Which makes it the most interesting place is this cesspool." He forced the woman's hand to the door. At the last moment, she made a fist.
"Open your hand."
"Help!" She was screaming at the top of her lungs. "Down here! Help!"
"Open your goddamn hand!"
"Fuck you!"
Panting from the effort of restraining her, Frank said, "That's not ladylike, which excuses this." He punched her in the forehead. The woman crumpled. He pried open her hand and pressed it to the pad.
The door opened.
* * *
Toni and Kerry lay on cots similar to the ones we saw in the other room. Their eyes were closed, and bright blue blankets covered them to their waists. Their shirts were pulled up, exposing their torsos. Small, sticky pads like EKG leads were stuck to their skin between their belly buttons and the waistband of their pants. Thin wires connected the pads to proximity locks sitting on a table next to them. Two women, two locks.
It was the next step Couttis spoke of: the attempt to convey an alien mind into a fetus.
In addition to her lock, Toni had an IV pumping a cloudy, yellowish fluid into her.
Frank grabbed Kerry by the should
ers. "Honey, wake up."
I rushed over to Toni. Her face looked pale, the skin beneath her eyes muddied by dark circles. I shook her.
"Toni," I said. "Wake up, it's me."
Neither woman responded. I lifted Toni's eyelids and checked her pupils. "I think they've been drugged."
Out in the hallway, the scientist groaned. She was starting to come around.
Worse, the echo of footfalls was growing louder.
We were almost out of time.
Panicked, I pulled the IV from Toni's arm, grabbed the wires attached to her stomach and yanked them free. Frank did the same with Kerry's wires, then kicked the table. The proximity locks flew across the tiny room.
"Fucking bastards," Frank said. The dark, scaly skin now covered half his face. Streaks of green stretched down from his alien eye like the colorings on a snake. "What were they doing to them?"
"The locks act like a repository, holding the alien minds." I pulled Toni to a sitting position. "They were transferring those minds into the babies." I began gently slapping Toni's face. "Come on, Toni. Open your eyes."
Frank threw me a puzzled look. "But Toni isn't pregnant."
"Remember the test she asked us to buy?" We had stopped at a drug store to pick up a pregnancy test. I couldn’t recall what had happened to it. Probably left in the car. "I think she's finally going to be a mom."
"After all this time? Isn't that stretching coincidence?"
"Not if the soap we bought acted as an aphrodisiac and a fertility drug." I returned my attention to Toni. "Wake up, dammit!"
Toni began to stir. Her eyes fluttered, but they didn't open.
Frank lifted Kerry until she sat upright. He rubbed her arms, slapped her wrists.
Kerry's eyes opened slightly.
"Frank?" she said, her voice muddled by whatever drug she had been given.
"I'm here, honey," he said. "I'm here."
Beside me, Toni finally opened her eyes. She lifted a hand to touch my cheek. "Brad?"
I allowed myself a quick, relieved smile, and pulled her to her feet. "We have to leave."
She nodded. "I know." Her hand drifted to her belly. "I'm pregnant, Brad. We're going to have a baby." Tears filled her eyes. "Do you know what they've done? What they're doing? It's evil!"
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