“No shit!” she exclaimed. “Whoo!”
“What?” asked Sofia
Annie took a larger swallow before bursting out in a coughing fit.
“What is it?” Sofia repeated.
“Whiskey, bitch!” Annie announced. “The fucking Apex actually gave us alcohol.”
After taking another sip from the pitcher, Annie held it out to Sofia who waved a hand in refusal. Next, she offered it to Leon.
“No, thanks. I’m not a whiskey drinker,” he said. “Besides, I think we should stay sober while we’re here. I don’t think getting drunk is going to help us get through any of these tests.”
“Fucking wet blanket,” Annie swore at Leon. “But yeah. You’re probably right.”
Annie took another gulp from the pitcher, then replaced it on the table. As soon as she set it down, Malcolm snatched it up and downed a large mouthful of the amber fluid.
“That’s shit whiskey,” he pronounced. “But shit whiskey is still better than no whiskey. If the rest of you wankers are done with it, I’ll be happy to take custody of the bevvy.”
Malcolm slunk back to his chair and plopped himself down, settling the whiskey pitcher into his lap. Annie gave him a disgusted shake of her head while Sofia and Leon ignored the behavior.
Leon reached into the pot nearest to him and pulled out a small root vegetable that tasted like a boiled potato. He popped the tuber into his mouth and chewed. He happened to glance up and see Shoo pointing across the table at something directly behind him and he twisted in his chair to see what had caught her attention.
A new door had appeared.
The food in Leon’s mouth suddenly felt thick and gluey. He wanted to spit it out but forced himself to swallow.
“Is it time to leave?” asked Sofia. She had turned to see what everyone was staring at and also discovered the new door behind her.
“We, leave, can. Yes,” Hiss answered.
“But do we have to go? Or can we stay a while longer? Will the door disappear if we don’t go through it?”
“It, will stay. I think,” said Hiss. “We, a time limit here, do not have. I believe. You, to stay, wish?”
Sofia glanced at Michael’s body and shuddered slightly. “I can think of reasons to get out of here, but yes. I want to stay a while. This is the first place we’ve found with food and water. I think we could all use a rest, and by that, I mean get some real sleep. When we wake up, we can eat and drink a little more and be better prepared for whatever comes next.”
“We, sooner, the room, leave; then we, sooner, to home, go. But hurry, there is not.” Hiss glanced at Shoo for confirmation. She made a series of gestures that Leon could not follow before Hiss turned back to Sofia. “Hurry, there is not,” he repeated.
“If we’re staying a wee while longer, then I’m going to make myself a bit more comfortable.” Malcolm pushed his chair back far enough that he could lever his feet up onto the table. He took another drink from the pitcher in his lap, smacked his lips loudly and wriggled lower into the chair, trying to find a more suitable position for a nap.
Annie and Sofia relocated to the floor. Sofia sprawled out on her stomach, crossing her arms under her cheek, while Annie snuggled up beside her, laying her head on Sofia’s lower back.
“Do you mind?” Annie asked, settling in.
Sofia raised her head and glanced down at Annie. “No, but I can’t promise I won’t roll away while I’m asleep.”
Leon opened his backpack and removed the two empty, aluminum cans he had been carrying since early that afternoon. He placed the cans on the table, figuring it was no longer littering if he left them here with the rest of the meal clutter. He held out the backpack to Sofia.
“Here. Maybe this will make a better pillow than the floor.”
She accepted it with a grateful smile, then rolled it into a tube to tuck under her head.
Leon followed Malcolm’s lead and kicked his feet onto the table. Squirming down into the chair, he crossed his arms across his chest and closed his eyes. He didn’t know if he would be able to fall asleep. He hoped if he did, his slumber would remain dreamless.
CHAPTER 12
Leon woke rested and surprisingly refreshed from a fortuitously dreamless sleep. A glance at his phone told him it was a little past three in the morning back home, which meant that he had slept for almost seven hours.
Malcolm snored loudly in the chair beside Leon’s, still out cold. The half-empty whiskey pitcher sat on the table, propped precariously near the edge. Annie and Sofia had awakened sometime earlier and were talking quietly to each other on the ground behind Leon. The Many were also awake and discussing something among themselves on the far side of the room. Leon did not know if they had slept at all while the humans were unconscious. He had no idea if they even needed to sleep. So far, he had seen no evidence of it.
“Good, you’re up,” said Sofia. The two women rose from the floor and joined Leon at the table. “We were trying to be quiet because we didn’t want to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” he assured her. “I didn’t think I would be able to fall asleep, but I went out hard. My brain must have needed a complete reset.”
“Well, now that you’re awake, fix yourself some breakfast. After we eat, we should start moving again.”
Leon assessed the table, half expecting the food to have been replenished, and also half believing it might have disappeared altogether while he slept. He saw no changes from the mess they had created during their first foray through the offerings. The same trays and bowls of food remained. The only difference was the few items that had been warm earlier had gone completely cold.
They ate, then drank more water. The Many joined them at the table and ate a second meal as well. When they finished eating as much as they wanted, Sofia returned Leon’s backpack and suggested he should stock up with a few of the food items that could handle travel without making a mess in his pack. He agreed and, with suggestions from Sofia and Annie, he loaded his bag with bread, cheese, and some small fruits that tasted like apples but were blue and had an unfamiliar oblong shape to them. Unfortunately, there was no convenient way to carry any of the available water with them when they left.
“What about him?” asked Annie, tilting her head toward Malcolm, who snored on blissfully.
Leon sighed. “We can’t just leave him behind. I’m tempted, but we should wake him up.”
“Fine,” said Annie, then slapped the sleeping man across the back of his head.
Malcolm dropped his feet to the floor and lurched up from his chair. He stared blurrily around the room, momentarily disoriented and confused. “Where…? Ah, fuck. It wasn’t a dream. We’re still here.”
“Yup,” Annie told him. “Grab something to eat if you want it. We’re getting out of here.”
Malcolm put a hand to his forehead. “Ahh. There’s a tiny bloke with a mallet poundin’ the inside of m’ skull.”
“It’s your own fault for drinking too much,” said Sofia.
“Aye. That was real shite whiskey I was drinking last night.”
Malcolm picked up the pitcher of amber alcohol, brought it to his lips and took a deep swallow.
“What the fuck are you doing?” asked Annie.
“Relax, lass. There’s nothing better for chasing off a hangover than a bit o’ what put it there in the first place. I’ll be hale and ready to march in no time.”
Proving he wasn’t a complete idiot, Malcolm got up and drank from one of the pitchers with water still in it. He picked through the remaining food, taking a few lumps of cheese, meat, and bread, and mashed them together to form a rough sandwich. The rest of the group waited patiently for him to finish eating.
“Are we ready to go?” asked Leon, after Malcolm had taken one more sip from both the water and whiskey pitchers.
“Almost. Just need to take care of a little business.”
Malcolm moved to one corner of the room, fumbled with his pants for a moment, then urinated
on the floor. Leon frowned and was about to say something about Malcolm’s choice of bathrooms, but Sofia interrupted.
“Actually, I need to go, too. I don’t want to go on the floor in front of everybody, though.”
“Me, too,” agreed Annie. “Leon, can I borrow your jacket?”
Annie upended a soup tureen, discarding its contents under the table. She carried the tureen and Leon’s jacket to the corner opposite from Malcolm, then asked Sofia to hold the clothing up as a makeshift screen. As the girls worked together, Leon figured there was no sense being overly prudish since there was little chance of running into a men’s room anywhere nearby. He stepped into the same corner Malcolm was vacating and took care of his own aching bladder.
The Many watched with obvious fascination. An alien species that did not consume liquids must find the whole process of expelling excess fluids quite entertaining, Leon thought. Well, let them watch. It wasn’t as if the humans had many alternatives.
As Leon finished up, he heard Annie yelling at Malcolm. She was screaming at him to stop. Leon turned in time to see Malcolm kneeling next to Michael’s body and pulling off the leather jacket tied around the dead man’s waist.
Malcolm stood with the jacket in his hand, grinning at Annie. “C’mon, luv. It ain’t like he needs it. He don’t feel the cold much anymore.” The big man slipped one arm through the sleeve of the jacket, frowned, and pulled it back out. “Hell. Too small. Ah well, it was worth a try. Here, lass. Something to remember your dead boyfriend.”
Malcolm tossed the leather jacket at Annie. It fell onto the floor at her feet and she quickly bent over to snatch it up. She glanced to where Michael lay on the floor, perhaps debating placing it back over his body. She decided to keep it. Annie slipped the coat on and pulled it around herself as though she were cold.
“I think I’m ready to go if everyone else is,” Malcolm said. He walked to the door, humming a tune to himself. Leon recognized the song but couldn’t initially remember where he’d heard it. When he at last recalled the title, his stomach twisted and bile rose in his throat. It was an old melody he had heard on the radio many times while listening to the 80’s pop stations as a kid. The song was by a band named Queen.
Another one bites the dust.
Whether Malcolm was making a bad joke, or he was giving a warning to the rest of the group, Leon shuddered at the implication. Not only did Malcolm not seem bothered by Michael’s death, he seemed happy about it, and his elation made a twisted kind of sense. Michael had been the only one in the group to challenge Malcolm physically. He had been the only one to keep the dangerous man in line. Michael had also been the one to alert everyone that Malcolm was an escaped prisoner.
With Michael safely out of the picture, the big man felt more secure; perhaps he even thought he was now in charge. There was no one left in the group that he considered a threat.
Without consulting the others, Malcolm turned the door’s handle and pushed it open. “Come on, now. Keep up. Let’s see what comes next,” he said over his shoulder, then stepped through into the white hallway beyond.
The pattern by now was familiar. At the end of the hallway was another door, and that door led them into the next challenge. The group filed through without pause or discussion. The expectations of them were clear and there was no point to additional delays.
They exited the hallway to find themselves in a space equal in size to the alleyways the rockadillos had occupied. This room had a ceiling however, rather than opening directly to the sky as the other rooms had done. The roof overhead looked like polished gray marble. It was as smooth and featureless as the floor and walls around them, giving Leon the impression of stepping into the barrel of a gun. A square barrel, yes, but the analogy still seemed accurate. Surprisingly, the interior of the elongated space was completely empty. Whatever their next challenge might be, he could not see a barrier to their progress. The lack of an obvious threat did not relax Leon. He would rather know up front what he was facing, but it seemed this time identifying the challenge before it killed them was going to be part of the test.
The only markings on the bare, grey walls were three pairs of parallel black lines that ran from floor to ceiling on the right-hand side, matched by a mirror-perfect set on the left. Each double line had about five feet of space between them, and each pair was spaced at least a hundred feet away from the next.
“I guess we got lucky this time. It looks like we finally got an easy one,” said Malcolm, moving further into the room.
“Wait,” warned Hiss. “This, easy, never is.”
Remembering the trick Michael had tried in the dining hall, Leon retrieved the ball he carried in his pack. After resettling the pack over his shoulders, he hefted the ball and considered the distance he would need to throw it. There was no way he was going to reach the far wall. He knew that. The room was longer than a football field, and Leon had never had a strong throwing arm. There was good reason the only position he had ever played on his high school baseball team was spectator. If he was lucky, with a good roll, he might get it halfway to the end of the hallway. There was also going to be no bounce back, so he only got to try this once before they would have to risk walking through the empty room.
“Let’s see if anything happens,” he said, more to himself than to any of the others.
He threw the ball as hard as he could, launching it in a high arc. There was a deafening crash. The sound of hard metal striking metal rang through the air, like a forging hammer on an anvil. Leon jumped and Annie screamed behind him in frightened surprise. The room had suddenly become a third of its size. The opposite wall was now only a hundred feet away.
Leon searched for the black lines he had seen earlier, but instead of three pairs of markings, he could find only a single black line. Climbing the side walls from floor to ceiling was a black strip spaced inches away from the new ending wall. Although he had no idea what had happened, he realized that the lines were significant to this challenge. They were markers. To what, he had no clue.
As the group tried to make sense of the sudden change in room size, a new piece of the puzzle revealed itself. The wall in front of them shuddered and began to rise into a recession in the ceiling. The room had not shortened after all. Instead, a wall had dropped between the first set of marking lines at a speed too fast for their eyes to track. The transition had been so fast, it appeared as if the wall had materialized in front of them from out of nowhere. As the steel barrier leisurely trundled up into its former position, Leon saw his ball, popped and flattened on the ground beneath it.
“I think I know what our next test is,” said Leon, staring at the crushed ball. “Any ideas how to get past a wall that drops faster than we can run under it?”
“The trigger, find. Then, perhaps, disable?” suggested Hiss.
Leon nodded agreement. “Okay. I was hoping for a little more detail in your suggestion, but you’re right. I think those black lines on the wall probably have something to do with triggering the wall. That, or they’re there to indicate where the wall comes down so we don’t accidentally wander under it. Let’s start with that.”
Leon took a deep breath and shuffled cautiously forward. He inched one foot out in front of him, then dragged the other behind, hoping if a wall they had not yet seen suddenly dropped, it would be satisfied with taking a few toes rather than squashing him outright. He made it all the way to the first black line without any mishaps. The others followed, staying directly behind him. They treated the room as though it might contain a series of land mines, and as long as Leon made it through safely, they could walk in his footsteps and reasonably expect to survive as well.
On closer inspection, the black line was more than decoration. The material forming the line was a different composition from the rest of the wall, not merely a darker strip of color. Leon placed one hand on the smooth grey surface and slid it forward.
“Brace yourselves,” he warned his companions.
As soon a
s his middle finger broke the plane of the black stripe, the wall slammed to the ground with the same resounding crash of metal on metal. Leon jumped back instinctively despite the fact he was already a safe distance away. Had he been under the wall, he would never have been able to move fast enough to avoid it. Nonetheless, he did a quick check of all fingers and toes to be sure he remained intact.
“One. Two. Three…,” Hiss counted after the wall dropped into place. As he counted out “twelve” then “thirteen,” the wall lifted from the floor and climbed up toward the ceiling. Hiss stopped and began counting again from “one.”
“The wall, thirteen seconds in place, rests,” Hiss said when an audible click announced that the wall had fully recessed into its previous position. “The wall, twenty-four seconds, climbs.”
“Is that helpful?” asked Sofia. “Does that tell you anything?”
Hiss touched a small hand to his chin. “Not yet. I, at the moment, only facts, accumulate.”
After warning the group, Leon repeated the experiment a few times. The wall struck the floor, lightening quick, at the slightest touch of the black strip. It consistently remained closed for thirteen seconds, then took twenty-four seconds to recess into the ceiling. Each time it reset the group heard the same final “clack” as though an invisible latching mechanism had activated to hold the massive slab in place. Leon pondered the timing, trying to figure a way past the obstacle based on this information.
“Hang on, I want to try something,” he told everyone. He touched the black strip again.
The wall appeared and Leon waited until it started cycling up into its housing. Before it could completely disappear into the ceiling, he touched the strip again. The wall immediately fell back into place, even though it had not yet fully reset. So much for that idea, he mused. He had thought maybe they could run under the wall during the twenty-four seconds it took to rise, but attempting that maneuver would get them all killed. Anyone trying to run underneath would be smashed the moment they crossed the trigger line.
Testing Grounds (On Dangerous Grounds Book 1) Page 17
