After the Shift: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  The incline steepened about a hundred yards into the interior and was now obviously following the old route into the place. There were sections where wooden stairs had been constructed to make the going easier, and all along the incline were guardrails on both sides for people to hold on to. He passed a couple more waxwork miners in their perpetual tableaux of frozen work. Faces ruddy with sweat and streaked with dirt, picks in hands, eyes red-rimmed and vacant. They loomed up out of the dark as he descended like shipwrecked sailors whose bloated bodies were coming up from the depths.

  After moving another hundred and fifty yards down into the hillside, Nathan came to a T-Junction which led both left and right into worked-out galleries. To the left, the tunnel was crammed with equipment boxes, crates, and catering pallets of tins and dry goods. The Drymouth community was well-stocked—no wonder they hadn’t been concerned about how many provisions Nathan and the others took for breakfast. There were precious few lights along the walls into the storage gallery, but from what Nathan could see, apart from a narrow gangway, there wasn’t an obvious route to a place where thirty or so people could hold a meeting, so he took the other spur.

  Again, this gallery had been widened to allow tourists to go down into the depths of the mine to experience the claustrophobic atmosphere of the working conditions, but the ceiling here was much lower, and Nathan had to bend awkwardly to keep his head from scraping the roof.

  The lights were less frequent, and Nathan found himself having to squint to see as far down the tunnel as he could. The air was becoming thick and warm also, which came as a stark contrast to the world of the Big Winter, but here it was cloying and uncomfortable for his still recovering lungs. As he moved, having to bend lower, it became easier for him to make forward progress on his hands and knees. But the gallery was curving off to the left up ahead, and Nathan could no longer see where he was heading.

  Then, the lights in the tunnel flickered and went out.

  Nathan prepared himself for full darkness, but the tunnel wasn’t pitch black. Up ahead, around the corner, there was a dim, greenish glow. It pulsated and warped, throwing crazy shadows over the walls. It seemed other-worldly, completely unnatural, as if there was a silver edge to the glow which cut through its thin fingers of light.

  Nathan could just about see his hands on the floor of the tunnel, but that was about it. The rest of the gallery shifted between deep shadows and dim illumination as he knelt there.

  Should he go on?

  Or should he go back to the others and wait for Larson to come and harangue him for punching out Beard?

  The knot of anxiety in his gut pulsed with the light. He couldn’t imagine what kind of meeting was being held that needed to be lit in this way, but it sure didn’t feel right. Of all the things he’d seen since they’d left Glens Falls, this hands-down ranked as the weirdest, and it wasn’t getting any more explainable with his staying here.

  Back? Or go on?

  He’d come this far, so maybe if he just got to the curve in the tunnel and looked around it, he might get a better idea of what was going on. Pushing the growing sense of unknowable fear back down into his stomach, Nathan crawled on.

  The tunnel kept curving, and it was a good fifty yards more before he could see further than the vertical horizon of the wall. The green glow was, if anything, pulsing faster now, with the regularity of a tension headache. The enveloping darkness around it made it all the more intense, too—thumbing his eyes with its sickly shades.

  The tunnel now led another thirty yards, and beyond that, it opened out into a wide, black space that pulsed with the green glow. Nathan could only guess how big the chamber beyond the tunnel was; it wasn’t vast, but he estimated it might be perhaps twenty yards across to a far wall that was moving, like the tunnel he was in, between green tinged shadow and full darkness.

  Then there was a sound. Not voices exactly, but a murmuring that was redolent of low voices chanting something barely above a whisper. If the voices were saying anything, then there weren’t any words in there that he could pick out—he just heard a constant tone that seemed to be in concert with the lights.

  The floor of the chamber must fall away sharply, though, because Nathan had no chance of seeing what was going on beyond the tunnel’s mouth. He couldn’t even see heads moving about. All there was for him to see was the chamber, and the pulsing lights, and all he could hear, apart from his own ragged breathing on the syrupy air, was the tone—the human generated tone—emanating from the chamber itself.

  Nathan gnawed at his knuckle as he looked forward and then searched back the way he had come.

  The dark, the green pulse, and the noise seemed to come together in a perfect concoction to induce and amplify a heavy sensation of dread. As if it had been created specifically to make anyone in the vicinity fearful and on edge. Like the deep rumbling bass frequencies Black Metal bands had once used to heighten emotion and engagement in their audiences, or the way horror film music had given one all the cues needed to generate the correct emotions before the shocking revelation of the monster… the atmosphere in the tunnel seemed deliberately created to make anyone nearby reach the verge of panicking and running.

  Nathan began to edge backward, suddenly realizing that he was way out of his depth now, and there was no point in going on to see what Larson and his people were up to. Them making sounds and lights like this didn’t make you want to stick around because, pretty soon, someone would be welcoming you into their circle with beer and cake.

  He crawled back three more yards, and there he began to turn.

  And then he heard the child crying.

  From deep in the chamber, it was a hollow sobbing, with a keening wail rising up after that, floating down the tunnel like an accusation.

  Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.

  Or, that was what it seemed to be saying.

  Please. Please help me.

  Nathan knew it was his mind creating the words, but the implication was clear. There was a terrified, unhappy child down there, and Nathan was about to leave it to its fate.

  The harsh memory of Nathan almost leaving Syd to be taken across the ice by Danny in Detroit hacked up into his mind. He’d made the calculation back then that it was better for his family if he let Syd go and kept himself alive. It was a decision that he’d regretted harshly ever since that day, and now he was being placed in the same situation again.

  Could he leave a child in fear, or should he do something about it?

  The crushing weight of the decision pressed down on him, but in the end, it became not a hard decision at all—because now in the green light, with the accompanying tone of dread filling the space, the child’s sobbing was given voice.

  “Stay… stay… away from me!”

  The crying child was Tony.

  17

  It took Nathan a few moments to make sense of what he was seeing, and even then, it wasn’t something that could be easily taken in or processed.

  There was a huge, silver flying saucer in the cavern.

  It was fully twenty yards across, and the machine was bristling with antennae and chunky-looking tech. It was supported on four thick hydraulic legs, and there was a loading ramp that had been lowered from the belly to rest at an angle of forty-five degrees.

  As Nathan watched, white smoke began to belch from vents at the back of the craft, and the greenish-silver glow filling the chamber and lighting up the eyes of the residents of the Drymouth settlement came from a pulsing ball, maybe three feet across, in the center of the craft’s top side.

  The twenty adults in the room were knelt down on prayer mats and were facing the saucer. In between them and the craft were the children.

  Each one had been strapped into a chair facing the saucer. Their arms were behind their backs, and their legs had been taped to the legs of the chairs. Those too young and small to be sat on the chairs were in two pens just beyond the chairs. In the second pen, Nathan could clearly see Brandon, still swaddled
in his blanket, and at the end of the row of chairs, tied in like the others, there was Tony.

  The other children in the row were sitting quietly, mouths tightly shut of their own accord, unperturbed by the situation they were in—as if they were used to it and had experienced it many times before.

  Tony was struggling in his seat, though, trying to free his arms, and he’d managed to push out whatever they had put into his mouth to silence him.

  “Leave… me alone!” Tony was coughing now, and perhaps about to have another asthmatic episode. It would be the first for months if it came, and these freaks were doing this to Nathan’s son, putting his life in danger by stuffing whatever that was into his mouth and giving him cause for panic.

  Nathan wanted to get up and run into the chamber and gather up his children and get the hell out of there, but the presence of an MP4 and an AK-47 hanging from the shoulders of two of the men checked him.

  Now, one of the women had gotten off her knees and begun attempting to put the gag back in Tony’s mouth.

  “No! Please!” A hacking cough burst out of his mouth as he tried to catch his breath. “I have… asthma… please! I’ll stop shouting. Please! I promise!”

  The woman dropped the gag, which looked like it was made from cotton wool, and then placed a pair of earphones over Tony’s ears, and a close-fitting pair of dark glasses over his eyes. “No more trouble from you, you hear? No more trouble.”

  In the chair, Tony nodded, and Nathan felt as if his heart was boiling in seething lava.

  The rest of the children were already in their headphones and dark glasses, their faces turned toward the saucer ramp. Nathan scanned them again, just in case he’d missed Syd. She was certainly young enough in actual years to be included in this mad setup, but the way she carried herself and projected her hard-won maturity might have kept her from being included in this abomination. Nathan hoped that was the case. Not that her resisting Larson had caused injury… or worse.

  The clunk of feet on metal took Nathan’s eyes from Tony’s predicament in the chair, over Brandon in the pen with the other toddlers and babies, to the sound clanging from the saucer.

  Larson’s feet emerged first from inside the craft, but he was no longer dressed like the others. The material of his pants was silvery-white. His boots were white and clunky, like heavy ski boots that had been modified with metal plates in the soles. His hands were in thick white gloves, and his top half’s clothing was made from the same material as his pants. There was a huge, unwieldy, space-type helmet under his arm, and as he came down the ramp, Larson pulled earbuds from the side of his head and wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead with a gloved hand.

  He stopped at the bottom of the ramp and surveyed the scene in front of him, raising a hand in greeting. “I have returned from Calisto One.”

  There was a ripple of spontaneous applause from the gathered congregation. “I have spent nearly a week’s Earth-time with the Calistans, making preparations for our Transubstantiation. The Calistans are very pleased with our progress here. They have commended you all for your work and your resolve in re-educating the children.”

  Larson swept his free hand down the line of kids, ending with his finger pointing at Tony in the chair.

  “And the Calistans particularity welcome the new blood to the mission. Tony, I see, will need a strong level of instruction to get inculcated into the program, but Brandon is young enough for us to take him at this delicate time, and shape all his thoughts to the correct alignment. We have done well, my people!”

  The craziness of the situation began washing through Nathan with a tide of chilling energy. He couldn’t understand why the Drymouth residents were believing the pure BS that was spilling out of Larson’s mouth. But then, how had all the crazy, charismatic leaders of the past persuaded people to follow them? Koresh in Waco. Jones in Guyana. Manson in California. There were always people with the ability to turn minds to their fell purposes, however out of whack those ideas were.

  Add Greg Larson to that list.

  Whatever had led these people down here to believe Larson was in contact with alien beings inside what was half filmset-prop and half adult playhouse, Nathan just couldn’t figure out. He just wasn’t wired that way. But couple the Big Winter with a sense of desperation, and a need to follow someone who they believed could rescue them from the apocalypse, and there would always be people who would follow.

  Many people were sad, desperate, and lonely—with holes in their lives that can only be filled, they would say, by outside influences. All you needed was the right words, the right environment, and the right props. Whether it was a cult religion or a cult alien overlord, there were people who would not question, and once you had them hooked…

  All that was very well, Nathan thought, as he looked down on the insane scene before him, but understanding it was one thing, and getting his children away from it, and out of the mine without weapons, backup, or a plan was quite another.

  Nathan tried to think through the situation logically. Tony, now that they weren’t trying to gag him, was in no immediate danger from the situation. Brandon seemed fine in the pen, and whatever was being piped into Tony’s ears wasn’t causing him any distress yet.

  Nathan thought back to how he’d watched the Drymouth residents going down into the mine earlier. The children had all been with them, so there was a good chance, when the meeting was over, that they would all be brought back up again. Larson must have known that Nathan would be murderously angry about having his children taken like this, and that was probably why the group had taken away their weapons that morning.

  If Nathan was going to have any success in effecting a rescue, it made more sense to wait—however much that hurt, to leave his children in the clutches of Larson and the others—until they made their way to the surface.

  Nathan screwed his fear and dread down, and began to crawl back up the tunnel, keeping his eyes toward Tony and Brandon until they were completely out of sight. The green glow in the tunnel lit his way to where the tunnel began to curve.

  He took one more look down behind him, and then he struck out toward the T-Junction.

  And that’s when Beard kicked him in the face.

  The big man had been coming the other way and had turned the corner just as Nathan had taken one last look back the way he had come.

  Beard’s heavy work boot connected with the side of Nathan’s head and sent him sprawling onto his back, with a stinging pain in the side of his head to match the bruise on the back of his head, and a painful ringing his ears. Beard was on him before Nathan had time to focus his eyes. Burly hands encircled Nathan’s neck, and the gray beard, stinking of old food and tobacco, washed its unpleasant stench into his nostrils.

  The man was taller and heavier than Nathan. He had the element of surprise, and had already disorientated Nathan with the kick to the side of the head, but there were two things he didn’t have.

  What Beard lacked was two children in the hands of a chamber full of crazies, and the desperation of a father determined to get them back by whatever means necessary.

  Nathan could feel Beard’s thumbs crushing his windpipe, but that didn’t deter him. He thrust up with his knee—twice—into the soft, yielding space between Beard’s legs. The big man gave a gasp, and the hands at Nathan’s throat relaxed momentarily. It was all Nathan needed to grab Beard’s wrists and twist his fingers away from his neck, and then pull Beard forward. Nathan smashed up with his forehead, crashing into Beard’s nose and popping the bone and cartilage there in one hit. Then Nathan turned Beard’s wrists over, and as his feet scrabbled for purchase, he flipped the man over and wedged him against the wall, kicking out with his knees, this time into Beard’s stomach.

  Beard opened his mouth to call for help, but Nathan was way ahead of him. Nathan struck sideways with his elbow and cracked Beard in the side of his jaw.

  Such was the desperate force Nathan had used that he felt and heard the bone fracture again
st the onslaught. Beard raised his hands to his mouth, forgetting Nathan in the moment of injury, and received another vicious, bone-cracking blow to his cheekbone.

  Nathan rolled up onto his knees. There was no way he was going to give Beard another chance to raise the alarm. He punched Beard hard, full in the face on his already broken nose as the man’s head snapped back. Then he grabbed two handfuls of wiry whiskers and struck the back of the man’s head on the floor as hard as he could.

  Again.

  Three times.

  On the fourth, he felt something give in Beard’s body, as if a bowstring that had been stretched taut had suddenly been cut loose. Beard’s body was limp now, and lifeless. The eyes rolled back into his sockets, blood seeping from his nose, and his chest had stopped moving.

  Nathan sat back, his hands shaking.

  Gathering himself, he felt for a pulse in Beard’s neck. He couldn’t find one. The man was dead. Skull smashed in, the life leaving him like an ejected pilot from a crashing airplane.

  Nathan knew he couldn’t leave the body here to raise the alarm, and so, pushing from his mind the disgust and regret that he’d ended up killing someone with his bare hands, Nathan stood up. Now in a part of the tunnel that gave him good clearance, he stooped and lifted Beard, knowing he had to focus on saving his sons, and he put the man’s lifeless body over his shoulder. Because the dead body had no muscle tension, it quickly became slithery and awkward. As Nathan moved back up through the tunnel, breathing hard, focused only on getting out, he had to stop several times to reposition the body and carry on moving.