Darkness Trilogy (Book 2): Death In Darkness

by Alexander, Lee

  I nodded, knowing he meant the buddy system that the military was so fond of. Sometimes it was a ridiculous precaution. I had a feeling this was not the case, when a single person in an accident would freeze to death long before anybody noticed their absence.

  We trudged in silence for a few minutes, slowly climbing the hill toward the entrance hangar. The only sound was our footsteps and breath. Then Larry spoke, without turning his head.

  “Tell me what's up. Not like you to keep secrets, and definitely not like you to be as tall as me.”

  “Yeah, it's been... a crazy few weeks.” He gave a half laugh, but otherwise remained silent. I started catching him up on the previous two weeks, including my injury.

  “So after you got bit, you're suddenly growing and gaining strength?”

  “Yeah. It's fucking freaky.” I replied.

  “No shit. I'd be freaked if I suddenly put on seven inches and two hundred pounds.”

  We finally stopped at a bush that didn't look totally dead, somewhere up the hill from the main hangar doors.

  “Uh, what's this?” I asked. My breath fogged out, drifting away in the dead air.

  “First access port. We're to check that the doors are good, give the de-icer a top up, then run a quick test. If it's all good, then we move on.”

  “Well, pitter-patter.”

  “What's that?” Larry asked with some confusion. He knelt on the ground, rapping on the dirt. A hollow clang reverberated back.

  “Something from an old show my parents used to watch. Well, I guess I watched it a bit too.”

  “Give me a hand, will you?”

  I knelt next to him, and we wedged our hands into the crack he'd made. Ice crackled, resisting the force.

  “I've got a tool⸺” Larry started to say.

  “I've got this. Give me a bit of space.”

  Larry looked at me, then nodded. He stood back a step, and watched. I put both hands into the gap, then hauled against the doors. Metal groaned, then something gave with a sharp crack. The doors started moving smoothly. Once they were fully opened, I could see inside. A bizarre looking device, almost like a robot, sat in the center of the small well. Ice glittered on the metal, reflecting the light from our flashlights.

  “Handy. Alright, let's check the fluid levels.”

  A few minutes passed by, and the final test was completed. He cleared off a pad, then punched a few things in.

  “There's the problem. Nobody switched on the heater elements. Shouldn't freeze shut again.”

  He pressed a few more buttons, then stood. The doors slid shut quietly, looking the same as when we had arrived.

  “Two more of these, then the towers. Ready?”

  “Yeah. What was that thing in there?”

  “Some sort of defensive thing. I'm not gonna worry about that, my job is to make sure the doors open. Let's go.”

  He led the way along the hillside, climbing another hundred feet or so. The dirt was loose and crumbled easily in the cold, but was hard packed and frozen just below the top layer. As a result, it took a lot of slipping and sliding along to climb up the hill. We mostly stayed silent, except when he would occasionally give advice for moving.

  The second access door was frozen, just like the first. We went through the same motions, and once again got the heaters going. The third was a similar trek, taking another ten minutes to get to. The heater had already been turned on in that one, so it took very little work to bring to readiness.

  “Now the towers,” said Larry. I nodded and followed him. The first one was near the crest of the hill, some thousand feet higher than the hangar doors. The hike took a long time. I flashed back to climbing the stairs in the office building. I then found myself reflecting on how easy the climb was after my change.

  I finally got a view of the tower when we were just a few hundred feet away. It stood tall and thin, clearly a communications tower. I was amazed it still stood, especially after the storms that had ravaged the surface. Then I realized the spire of the tower was bare of any dishes. A single horizontal antennae sprouted from the top.

  “Is this thing any good?” I asked Larry.

  “Don't know. I'd guess not⸺ you can see where dishes used to be attached. Now there's just bare wire. I have to check and make sure there's no power to the tower. Don't want to be shorting it and spending electricity.”

  I grunted, then watched as he pulled a meter from his toolbox. It took a few tries, but he was able to get the leads into the right spots in the electrical box. There was no power going in to the box at all. He shut the cabinet and put the meter away.

  “Last stop. Some sort of tower. No idea what for.”

  “Gotcha. Glad I could help you out with all of this dangerous work.” I snarked.

  He laughed and led on. That leg of the hike was the longest yet, taking more than twenty minutes. When we arrived, I was amazed. It sat near the bottom of a shallow valley, and the tower was a stubby, thickset little thing. It was all of thirty feet tall, and perhaps twenty across at the base. It had four feet, much like a power line tower, but instead had little stubby antennae all over the four corners. As we got closer, I felt a curious tugging deep inside my gut.

  “You said you don't know what this thing is?”

  “Not a clue. I always get a weird feeling around it though.”

  I stayed quiet until we arrived. He opened the gate and stepped over to another main power cabinet. When he opened it, I was a little shocked. Instead of a mess of wires, there was simply a single closed box sitting in the middle.

  “Here's what confuses the fuck out of me,” Larry started. “There's no power going in that I can detect with my meter. Yet there's power coming out. Enough, I think, to power a significant portion of the base. This thing fucking scares me.”

  He pulled a heavy duty set of rubber gloves out, putting them on over his mittens. Then he fumbled with the leads for his meter until he managed to get them into his grip. I noticed the pull on my gut was stronger, standing under the tower. He got the meter turned on, then showed me the display. At the top side of the little silver cube, there was no power level. On the bottom, however, his meter read 'OL'.

  “Still working. 'OL' here means 'over limit'. I think it's generating something like twelve thousand watts, and at a few amps too. There's enough juice here to cook an elephant.” His tone was dry, almost clinical. However, I could hear a tone of fear, or perhaps respect, coloring his words.

  “Fuck that noise. We done?”

  He nodded and put everything away. When he shut the cabinet door, some ice broke loose. I could just make out the shapes of a few letters.

  “Hang on, Larry. What's that say?”

  “Uh... MF Array 1, Mark 3, I think. Want to check?”

  “Yeah. It's weird, that sounds crazy familiar.”

  He wiped down the cover panel to show the lettering. It read exactly as he had said. Something at the back of my mind stirred.

  “Let's get back. Something about this tower is unsettling,” I told Larry.

  “You don't have to tell me twice.” We set out across the icy ground. Forty-five minutes later, we got back to the access door we had used. Larry swiped a card across a recessed panel, and the doors clicked open.

  “Amazing, those electronics work in this cold?”

  “Yeah, I think they heat from inside the wall. Not like they can't spare a bit of electricity, right?”

  “One tower making twelve kilovolts isn't much for a base this size.”

  “No, but six towers is. I have two more to check tomorrow, and the other three the day after. It's split up by travel time. We were pushing the limit to how long they'll let me work outside.”

  We quickly changed back to our uniforms, and I was thankful to be out of the stifling clothing. Larry gave me another look as I hung up the jackets that were clearly far too small to have just fit me.

  “What's up with that?”

  “Well, somehow clothes just fit me. I haven't had t
o get any new uniforms.”

  “Lucky. I have a hard time finding any that fits me, and I've got to fight with Brandon over the stock that's available. If you threw in, we wouldn't have enough to outfit all three of us.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. How is Brandon?”

  “Better, since they let him keep Angel with him. I heard he's seeing a woman too, someone in administration.”

  “Nice. I'll have to keep an eye open for him. Shouldn't be too hard.”

  “Yeah, especially since you're pretty hard to miss yourself, these days,” he said deadpan.

  “True enough. What's next?”

  “That's it, we're done for the day.”

  “That's it? That was like an hour of work.”

  “Yeah, but it's one of the most dangerous jobs on the base. Want to grab a beer?”

  “Yeah, sounds great. Why did I have to go with you today though? You have it pretty well handled.”

  “Lazy fucker didn't come to work.”

  “Who?”

  “Brandon. He's not actually lazy, just his kid is sick. Guess I forgot to mention that. Thanks for your help today though.”

  I nodded and we chatted amiably as we walked through the tunnels down to the third floor.

  Chapter 13

  Darkness +31, 2033

  Greater Seattle Area, Washington, USA

  Location Undisclosed, Base 13, Project Osiris

  -64°F

  1148 Hours

  Castillo had been in a coma for nearly a week now. After being gassed, he was aggressive all of the time. We eventually had to put him under full sedation for his safety and ours. We had him hooked up to a full suite of monitoring devices, which also meant he had a large number of wires and tubes attached to him. Several different IV lines kept him nourished and hydrated, but that was starting to become challenging.

  His heart rate remained unusually high, even under full sedation. His temperature remained high as well, with a low grade fever causing him to sweat constantly. We continued to pull blood every other day, checking the virus as it continued its destructive campaign against Castillo's immune system. He was thinning rapidly, even though he had very little waste of any kind.

  I watched him twitch in his coma, little rapid movements, like he was dreaming. I noted down his vitals as they read on the displays. When checking against previous recorded instances, he was still on a downward spiral. His fever was higher, while his heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration were down. His skin had even taken on a terrible ashy grayness. The pallor almost made him look like a zombie.

  Our efforts never wavered, and in fact doubled in intensity. We began trying methods to stabilize him. Ice baths made his vitals go crazy, while heating blankets caused rapid drops. I mentally plotted his vitals out at the rate they had been dropping, and determined he had maybe another day before his heart failed. His dog tags were resting on his chest. I watched them as they rose and fell in time with his breathing. I had read them carefully the last time I was in his cell. He was listed as Christian.

  I left the holding cells and broke into the active conversation in the lab.

  “Doctor Doore⸺” I started.

  “Allan, please, Dante.”

  “Yes, sir. I don't think we have much time left with Castillo. The rate his vitals are dropping at, I think he'll go into cardiac arrest some time tomorrow.”

  Denny and Karen both looked sullen. We had been fighting for weeks to save Castillo. It didn't help that Geno had had his funeral a few days after the incident. He had been incinerated in a private ceremony, and his body had been carefully isolated away from us. There was no chance of infection from his corpse. I think we had all felt the failure when the funeral had concluded.

  “Unfortunate,” said Allan. He mused for a moment. “Perhaps we should do something for him. Do you have any ideas?”

  I looked at Denny and Karen. They both shook their heads.

  “His dog tags list him as a Christian. We could bring a chaplain in to read him out.”

  “That is an excellent idea. I trust I can leave that to you?”

  “Yes, doctor. Is it okay if I leave now to go sort that out?”

  “Yes, of course, Dante.”

  I quickly left the lab. Right outside the lab I nearly ran into Bazua again. He had been walking past on his regular patrol.

  “What do you patrol for? Like, I get that this is a classified military base, but there's nobody left that's going to break in. We can't sell secrets or anything. What's the point?”

  “It's my job. I do what I'm told. That's how being a soldier works, Dante.”

  I nodded and continued on my way. I thought it over, and came to the conclusion that sticking to routine, even pointless ones, provide necessary stability in an otherwise overwhelming situation. I went across the elevator cavern to Administration.

  At the entrance to Admin, there was a desk with a sergeant on duty. She looked up as I approached. I wondered why the entrance to that section was so much more inviting than R&D.

  “Yes sir, is there something I can help you with?”

  “Yeah, uh, is there a chapel or something here?”

  “Yes sir, there's a non-denominational chapel on the third floor, opposite the gym near the mess hall. Is there anything else?”

  “No, thanks. I'll go take a look up there.”

  She nodded once and went back to reading something behind the counter. I turned and walked back through the elevator cavern to the stairs. A few minutes of walking later, I found the chapel. Just like the sergeant had said, it was on the opposite side of the mess hall from the gym facilities. What she hadn't mentioned was that it was tiny. When I opened the door, it led to a space with enough room for four pews, and an altar. There was nothing else.

  Tracy sat in the first row, reading a book. She looked around as I entered.

  “Oh, Tracy, hi. Been a while.”

  She nodded and smiled, but something seemed off. It didn't seem to reach her eyes.

  “Dante, how wonderful to see you. Are you here to worship?”

  “No, actually, I came to find the Chaplain. Are they around?”

  “No.”

  “Uh, okay. When will they be back?”

  “They won't,” she said curtly.

  “Okay... Tracy, can you help me out here?”

  “How so?”

  “Well, if the Chaplain isn't here, where are they?”

  “Oh, dead. They died while we were being evacuated from the office building.”

  My face fell.

  “I see.”

  “What did you need the Chaplain for?”

  “We have a patient. Castillo. He's in bad shape, and we think he's going to pass away soon. We were hoping to have a pastor on hand to pray over him.”

  “I can help you with that. I have taken over the responsibilities of the Chaplain for now.”

  She seemed curt, but she had always been a little blunt.

  “Great, uh, thanks. Someone will come get you when it's time, I guess. Will you be here?”

  “I am here during normal hours.”

  “Thanks.”

  I closed the door, trying to ignore the strange feeling in my gut. She seemed weirder now than when we had been evacuating. I thought back on when she had mysteriously reappeared at the office door. She hadn't been cold, but she hadn't been obviously infected. Still, her behavior was unusual.

  “Doesn't really matter. She'll read to Castillo and pray over him. It'll be fine.”

  Even I didn't believe me. I decided to put the thought aside, and grabbed lunch. I ate in the suite again, to avoid the stares. When I returned to the lab after lunch, I caught the doctors up.

  “There's no Chaplain on base anymore. Seems they died during the rescue effort that brought our group here.”

  “Unfortunate. What do you suggest?” Allan seemed genuinely interested in my opinion.

  “Well, while I was looking into the situation, I found the chapel. As it turns out, one
of my former co-workers now runs it. Her name is Tracy. She said she would be willing to sit with him.”

  “Do you trust her?”

  “To read to him, and pray for him? Yes. I don't know about having her in the lab though.”

  “Well, we cannot move Mr. Castillo out of his cell. Even in his current state, he is a potential danger.”

  “So we bring her here?”

  “Yes, I think that is the best course of action. You said it quite well earlier. There is nobody that would take our secrets, and nowhere to go if they do.”

  “You heard that?”

  “Yes, well, your voice does carry quite well, my boy.”

  I looked over at Denny, but he just shrugged.

  “Alright. We'll just have to send someone for her when it's about time. That'll probably be me, right?”

  “Perhaps. It depends on what we are doing at the time. Speaking of, did you finish that viral injection modification I asked of you?”

  I sheepishly looked away.

  “No, Doc. I couldn't get it to take.”

  “Very well, let's go over your work, see if we can correct it.”

  We spent the next few hours fiddling with a virus trying to get it to latch onto the current strain. We had no luck at all. I went home, feeling dejected again. Linda greeted me with a hug and kiss. We had dinner, and talked over our day. I told her of my failure to help Castillo, not caring for the rules around secrecy. She consoled me as best she could. I lay in bed, thinking over the problem for hours.

  When I did close my eyes, the lights seemed different. Disturbed. Flecks of purple and red were mixed in with the normal colors. When my alarm went off in the morning, I felt tired for the first time in weeks. I felt as if I hadn't rested at all. I dragged myself down to the lab, showing up first for once. As the doctors filtered in, they also looked fatigued.

  “Rough night?” I asked as they gathered.

  “I couldn't sleep for shit,” griped Denny. Karen and Allan nodded along. We set back to work. I broke occasionally to check on Castillo. His vitals were still dropping at a steady pace.

  “At this rate, he'll go this afternoon,” I said as I returned to the lab. The atmosphere was solemn.