Under Darkness (A Sci-Fi Thriller) (Scott Standalones Book 1)

by Jasper T. Scott

  “Good. Then we should have more than enough fresh bathrooms and clean carpets to go around. Everyone, follow me.”

  * * *

  The tiles and textured concrete around the pool were a gruesome mess. Compelled by morbid curiosity, Beth glanced into the pool as they walked by. Bits of gore floated in pink water. Melanie cried out as she noticed that, and her sobs followed them up to the lobby. The lobby was clean, brightly lit, and refreshingly cold. The air conditioners must have come on some time ago. Besides a few bloody hand prints on the doors and walls, there were no signs of the carnage from a week ago.

  Turning in a quick circle, Beth found her dad behind the reception desk while the survivors mobbed him.

  A hand landed on Beth’s shoulder. She jumped and spun around to see Don standing there.

  She flashed a scowl at him. “Don’t do that!”

  “Sorry,” he said, then jerked his chin at the reception area. “You think I can get another key card for my room? I lost mine.”

  Beth frowned and nodded. “We’ll ask my dad. Come on.” Speaking of lost key cards, she’d left hers in the suite. Had she shut the door behind her? She couldn’t remember. Maybe her dad still had his.

  Reaching the reception desk, she waved to catch her dad’s eye. He glanced up from the computer.

  “Don needs another room key.”

  “Room 321,” Don added.

  Bill looked up and shook his head. “The computer system is dead. I can’t program any new room keys.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Don asked.

  “No plan needed,” Corporal Gibson interrupted, walking over to the reception desk. “The doors were all open when we cleared the place. That EMP must have triggered some kind of failsafe.”

  “What happens when we open and shut the doors?” Allen asked. Beth glanced at the short, balding accountant. “Won’t that trigger the locks again?”

  “Yes,” Bill replied. “Don’t shut your doors unless you’re inside. If you leave your room and you don’t have a working key, you’d better wedge the doors open with something.”

  The crowd started grumbling about monsters creeping in while they were away from their rooms.

  “Corporal Gibson and his men will guard the stairs and elevators at all times,” Commander Wilde said, nodding to the stairwell. “Security won’t be a problem.”

  “There’s only six of you,” James objected. “There are three separate buildings, each with their own elevators and stairs.

  “I can help keep watch,” Don put in.

  “Everyone is going to stay here in the main building,” Corporal Gibson put in. “In fact, I want everyone on the same floor. Level three.”

  “What about our belongings?” Allen asked. “I’m down in building C, second floor.”

  “Get your things and relocate,” Gibson said.

  “Alone?” Allen asked, glancing over his shoulder with wide brown eyes.

  The corporal sighed. “Private Dekker!”

  “Corporal?” the other Marine in the lobby asked.

  “Escort the guests to their rooms. I’ll watch the entrances while Clarke and Kelly bring in the supplies.” Even as Gibson said that, the sliding doors on the pool-facing side of the lobby swished open and Clarke and Kelly came in carrying a heavy crate between them.

  “Copy,” Dekker replied. Scanning the group, he asked, “Who’s on the first floor?”

  “Me,” Melanie croaked and stuck up her hand.

  “Where to?”

  She pointed to the blood-smeared door beside the stairwell. “All right, follow me,” Dekker replied, shifting his shotgun to a two-handed grip, but keeping the barrel aimed at the floor. “The rest of you wait here until I come back.” Grumbles and murmurs of acknowledgment answered as he and Melanie left.

  Beth watched them go with a frown, then turned back to her dad. “Can I go?”

  Bill glanced at the corporal. “Mind if I show my daughter to our room? We’re up on the third floor, anyway, so I can help everyone get settled up there.”

  “Not scared of the bogeyman?” Gibson asked.

  Bill hesitated. “You guys already cleared the place, right?”

  The Marine shrugged and nodded.

  “Then I’m not going to worry about it.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll meet you up there once we’re all set up down here.”

  Bill smiled tightly and turned to Hanna and Akela, the surviving housekeepers. “Would you please join us on the third floor?”

  “What for, Mr. Steele?” Akela replied.

  “Someone’s got to mop up the blood,” Don replied.

  “I redy tell ya, we no gonna clean up dat shit.”

  “Where do you live?” Bill asked.

  “Koloa,” Akela replied.

  “And yet you’re getting to stay here for free. We could just as easily send you home.”

  “Not free if we gotta clean wittout pay.”

  Hanna nodded her agreement with that sentiment.

  Bill growled. “Fine. I’ll help. Get a bucket and a mop please.”

  “How we gonna clean wittout water?”

  “She’s got a point,” Don replied.

  “We’ll use sea water for now. Mind lending a hand?”

  Don shrugged. “What else have I got to do?”

  “Let’s go. Beth, stay here and wait until we’re done, okay?”

  “Okay,” Beth said. She watched as her dad and Don left with the two housekeepers, all of them heading for the nearest supply closet. Dragging her eyes away, she looked to Commander Wilde and stared at him, her eyes blinking in a daze.

  “Something on your mind, ma’am?”

  She was trying to figure out what she should do next. She desperately wanted to know if Toby was okay, but who could she ask about that? She’d need to talk to whoever had cleared the bodies from the resort. Failing that, she could walk over to his house, but that might not be safe right now. They said all the aliens were dead, but who really knew for sure? Maybe she could find some way to call him. Beth reached into her pocket for the only personal belonging she’d taken to and from the Port Royal—her cell phone. The battery was long dead, but she held it up for the commander to see.

  “Do you think the cell network is back online?”

  “No clue, ma’am. You’ll have to power your phone on and see for yourself. “My guess is that the EMP will have fried the cell transmitters just like it fried everything else.”

  “So how is the power back?”

  “The grid probably has more redundancy built in, or at least plenty of replacement parts on hand. Everything else is going to take more time to get up and running again.”

  “Great.” Beth’s chest filled with bitter air, and she went to sit on one of the empty couches in the lobby.

  While she was over there, she heard the familiar rumble of a car’s engine slicing through the steady tromping of Marines’ boots. Beth turned toward the sound and saw a rusty white van pull up outside the front doors of the resort. The Marines all stopped what they were doing and turned to look. Van doors slid open, and a pair of people in bulky canary-yellow suits climbed out.

  “The CDC is here!” Commander Wilde announced. “Everyone get ready to provide samples.”

  Chapter 26

  “How have you been feeling?” the CDC worker asked as she took a sample of Beth’s blood.

  “Fine.”

  “No symptoms?”

  Beth shook her head.

  “Not even psychological effects from the trauma? Have you been sleeping well?”

  “Well, until today I’ve been sleeping in a cramped bunk room on a ship. Not very comfortable.”

  “Have you had any nightmares or panic attacks?”

  “What’s a panic attack?” Beth asked.

  “Racing heart, feeling dizzy, can’t breathe, sweaty hands, unreasoning fear...”

  “No, but you might want to talk to Melanie. That sounds like her.”

  “I’ll be sure to
do that,” the CDC worker said. “Open wide.”

  The woman in the canary-yellow suit came at her with an extra-long cotton bud and swabbed her tongue with it. Beth watched as the woman slipped it into a clear plastic tube and snapped on a blue lid.

  “What’s your name?” the woman asked.

  “What’s yours?” Beth countered.

  “Ashley.”

  “Beth.”

  “Beth...?”

  “Steele.”

  Ashley nodded and used a black sharpie to scribble on both the tube with the cotton swab and the vial of blood she’d sucked from Beth’s arm. “Thank you, Beth.”

  Ashley began turning away, but Beth stopped her. “Wait.”

  The other woman’s eyebrows fluttered behind her mask. “Something wrong?”

  “The Marines said you guys cleaned up in here.”

  The woman cringed. “I didn’t, thank God, but some others from my team were assigned to clean-up around the landing sites.”

  “Landing sites?” Beth asked.

  “Areas where the landers came down. They were the hardest hit. The aliens didn’t wander very far. Good thing, too, or there’d be a lot more casualties.”

  Beth nodded absently. Those details weren’t important to her right now. “I’m looking for someone,” she said. “Is there any way I could get to see the bodies?”

  “Are you sure you want to? It’s pretty gruesome.”

  “One of the staff here was my boyfriend,” Beth explained. “He’s missing.”

  Ashley hesitated. “We have the bodies stored at the center right now. We haven’t actively tried to ID them because of how few vehicles are still working on the island. The identification process will likely involve photos rather than physical visitation at this time. It’s safer that way. We don’t know if any of the bodies are contaminated.”

  “Can I get a look at the photos?”

  “We’re still collating all of the data.”

  “Please. I need to know what happened to him. What if you take me to the center to see the bodies?”

  Ashley shook her head. “It’s against protocol unless you’re coming in for isolation or additional testing. But if you volunteered for some tests, maybe... you’re one of the ones who came in direct contact with the aliens, right?”

  “Yes,” Beth lied. “They tried to suck my face off.” The welts on her dad’s and the others’ faces were gone now, so the doctor wouldn’t know that she was lying.

  Ashley nodded. “That’s great. Well, not great, but having a volunteer will help a lot. There are some samples we haven’t been able to collect yet.”

  “Can’t you just force people to give you whatever you need?”

  “Not without proof of an actual pathogen. Orders are to wait and see if anyone develops symptoms before we start violating freedoms.”

  “You think it will come to that?” Beth asked.

  “I hope not, but don’t worry. In practice, most people with actual symptoms are happy to cooperate. Until then, blood and saliva are the only samples we can easily get. We have collected a few fecal and urine samples, though.”

  Beth’s nose wrinkled. “Is that what I’m in for if I volunteer?”

  Ashley shook her head inside her suit. “We could really use a CT scan and a spinal tap, but so far no one has volunteered for that.”

  Beth winced. “Isn’t that dangerous?” Beth asked. “I mean, a spinal tap? That sounds bad.”

  “Not dangerous, no. A little bit painful, especially if you develop a post-lumbar puncture headache, but I can give you something for that. Anyway, if you scratch my back, Miss Steele, I’ll scratch yours. You want a look at the morgue, and I want a look at your cells.”

  “So that’s how it’s going to be,” Beth said.

  “I’m afraid so. Do you have a parent or guardian who can sign their consent?”

  “My dad.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Getting water at the beach. We have a plumbing problem.”

  “I see. Well, we can see what he says when he comes back.”

  Beth shook her head. “Get me the forms, and I’ll take them to him while you finish collecting samples.” She’d forged her dad’s signature plenty of times for school. Besides, it wasn’t as though anyone here would actually know what his signature looked like.

  Ashley hesitated.

  “You don’t have them with you,” Beth guessed.

  “No, we do, but I still need to talk to my supervisor.”

  “So get me the forms while you talk to your supervisor,” Beth said.

  Ashley favored her with a slight frown. “You must really love this boy. All right. I’ll see what I can do. No promises, though.”

  Beth nodded. “Thank you.”

  Chapter 27

  “You want to go where with them?” her dad asked, his dark brows drawing together as he leaned against their kitchen counter.

  Beth stood just behind the door, arms crossed over her chest, impatient to get on her way. “To the quarantine center. It’s in Lihue, next to the airport.” She’d already forged all the necessary consent forms. “I have to see if Toby is there,” Beth explained, swallowing past the sudden lump in her throat.

  “By checking all the bodies in the morgue? That sounds traumatic.”

  Beth shrugged. “I’ve seen worse in movies.”

  “That’s not the same, Beth. And what if he is there? What then? That image will be stuck with you forever.”

  Beth hesitated, trying to fight back the rising tide of darkness his comment triggered inside of her. She shivered and shook her head. “I need to know.”

  Her dad sighed. “I guess at least you’ll have closure. How will you get back?”

  “Ashley will drive me.”

  “Who’s Ashley?”

  “One of the doctors. The pretty one.”

  “Fine, you can go, but I want you back before dark.”

  “It won’t take that long,” Beth lied. It was already 4:00 PM, and Ashley had said it would take at least a couple of hours to do the tests. Add in travel time and time to check the morgue, and that put her at or past sunset.

  “Good.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because Commander Wilde was saying there’s a chance some of those Crawlers are still out there, and if they are, they’ll be waiting until the sun goes down to come out.”

  A stab of dread shot through Beth at the possibility of running into one of the aliens again.

  “Be careful,” her dad added.

  “I will.”

  * * *

  The drive through Koloa was surprisingly normal other than the lack of cars on the streets. Pedestrians were out everywhere to make up for it, but there were no signs of the bloody massacre Beth had expected.

  “How many people died?” Beth asked from the back of the van.

  Ashley made an attempt to turn her head from where she sat in the driver’s seat, but the hazmat suit restricted her movement. “A little over a thousand,” she replied.

  “A thousand one hundred and three,” her colleague added from the front passenger’s seat.

  “Will I have to check them all?” Beth asked, swallowing thickly.

  “No,” Ashley said. “We have them organized by gender, apparent age, and the location they were found—among other criteria. Since about a tenth of the casualties occurred at the Koa Kai, those cadavers practically have a whole tent to themselves.”

  Beth felt sick at the thought of walking among those mutilated bodies to find Toby. Hopefully he wasn’t there. Either way, she would definitely see some familiar faces—guests and staff from the hotel. “Do you mind if I open a window?” Beth asked.

  “Go ahead,” Ashley replied.

  She slid the back window open and pressed her nose against the screen. Floral fragrances wafted in, and tall grass rustled loudly with the wind of their passage.

  The ride to the CDC camp took Beth down a familiar three-lane highway. It was the sam
e route her bus took to and from school every day.

  The CDC camp had been set up on a soccer field just outside the Lihue Airport. Beth knew it well. She’d played there with her team almost daily before getting kicked off for missing too many practices. Now big, rectangular white-canvas tents dominated the field. As they drove to a familiar gravel parking lot, Beth spotted dozens of CDC workers walking between those tents in their canary-yellow suits.

  “Do you always have to wear those suits?” Beth asked Ashley as the driver parked the van.

  “You mean the hazmats? We have to wear them whenever we leave the clean rooms. We wouldn’t be much use if we got infected, too.”

  Infected with what? “What if no one is actually infected?” Beth asked.

  The driver hopped out, followed by the worker in the passenger’s seat.

  “Then we’ll be out of here soon, and the quarantine and travel ban will be lifted,” Ashley replied as she pulled open the sliding door beside her and climbed out. Her partner went next, lugging a case full of samples. Ashley waved for Beth to follow.

  She jumped out and followed Ashley and the other CDC workers through an open gate in the chain link fence that ran around the field. A pair of men in familiar blue camo-patterned uniforms guarded that gate. They glanced curiously at Beth as she walked by, probably wondering what she was doing wearing a Navy uniform.

  “They’re not wearing hazmats,” Beth said.

  Ashley shook her head. “No, they were sent to the island before we got here, so there’s a chance they’ve already been exposed. We have them helping us guard the fence to make sure no one sneaks in and compromises the facility.”

  “And in case there are still any of those creatures out there?” Beth suggested, remembering her dad’s warning.

  “That too,” Ashley confirmed.

  They broke ranks with the other doctors as they crossed the field. Ashley headed for one tent, her colleagues for another. Beth began to feel nervous about what was coming. She hadn’t even taken the time to read the forms she’d signed. What were they planning to do to her?

  “Are we going to look at bodies first?” Beth asked hopefully.

  “No. We’re going to the clinic,” Ashley said.

  So much for that. “What about the other doctors?”