by Maxey, Phil
She was a kid. It wasn’t fair. She should be home right now, ironically just ten or so miles away, chatting with Cass on the tablet. Gossiping over whoever was their favorite tv actor this week.
They all died...
A tear ran down her cheek as Joan pushed open the doors.
“What the hell…” The words fell from Joan’s lips.
Across a large room of flickering screens and refuse, a blue light methodically pulsed within Sam’s watery eyes. Her boot kicked something. She looked down at mess strewn across the floor of what appeared to be some kind of medical laboratory. A chaos of plastic, glass and papers filled every available space as if an explosion had taken place.
Joan’s attention though was on the far end of the room. “What is that?” she said to the figure of a man, some yards away.
Sam wanted to look at him, to see who was calling the shots, but she couldn’t take her gaze from the mass of organic material which was clumped across what appeared to be a capsule of some kind, standing at least ten-feet in height. Within was a misty swirling liquid and something—
The man had moved into the light, but she wished he hadn’t. One half of his face was covered in the same living tissue that covered the walls. She was sure it moved and slid, similar to what she had seen Joan’s face do hours before. The other, more human side of his face was a middle-aged man she didn’t recognize. He staggered forward, hunched over slightly, one of his hands in his pocket.
“What the hell happened to you?” said Joan.
“The vaccine had an unusual effect… as you can see. And the creatures attacked me before I could get here.”
Sam could tell the man’s appearance was a shock to the older woman. With some effort he turned to Sam and smiled. She took a step back.
“No, child… there is no need to be afraid.” He took another step forward, Sam doing the same in the opposite direction.
Joan held her ground. “You didn’t answer my question. What is that?” She emphasized the final word, pointing at the cylindrical apparatus.
The man turned to it. “This is the continuation of… the work that was done here…”
Joan walked closer as Sam walked further back then stopped when she realized she was getting closer to the living tissue on the walls. A small patch extruded in her direction. For a moment she felt as if she was underwater and was surrounded by a coral reef.
“Now the Keller child is here we can finish what… was started…”
Joan looked at him. “Okay Lucas, but what do you know about any of this science stuff? That was Rackham’s thing. And as far as I know he’s dead. You told me the thing’s killed him.”
“Yes… yes… but—”
As he talked Joan walked closer to the capsule and even from fifteen-feet away Sam sensed the older woman’s sudden jump in heart rate.
Joan shook her head then stepped even closer, peering through the swirling substance to what Sam couldn’t see. “No… it can’t be… He’s dead…” She looked at Lucas. “We killed Finn.”
Another misshapen smile crept across the man’s face. “Now the extinction gene—”
Joan’s head flicked towards the man. “Extinction?”
His smiled continued. “What else would we call Ellie’s genetics?”
She looked back to the capsule and what was taking shape within. “Why have you got Finn in…” she searched for the right word. “Whatever this is!”
“Finn was the one of you I had the most hope for. He truly embraced what he had become…” He turned to the back of the room and the girl who hoped she was hidden within the shadows. “And once we have extracted the parts we need from the Keller—”
Joan’s head flicked towards the man again. “Parts? You told me you just need to take a little blood from her.”
The smile had gone from the man, replaced with no emotion at all. “What I do with the child is not your concern. You are a soldier and you will be well compensated for—”
Confusion reined across Joan’s face. “You’re right I am a soldier. I completed the order you gave me. I kidnapped Jess’s Keller kid because—”
The sound of something bubbling made Sam slowly turn around, to look into the part of the paneling on the wall that was not in shadow. The material shifted, expanded and began to form shapes… was that a nose?… an eye came and went. Nausea came at Sam and she promptly grabbed at the side of a desk and heaved, but her empty stomach produced nothing.
—“You said she was important to fixing this mess, but I didn’t bring her here for you to—”
Sam heard the explosion of skin and bone, the ripping of clothes as she was looking at the floor, but she quickly raised her head, her eyes growing large, her dry mouth falling open. The thing that called itself Lucas was larger, broader. One of its arms was extended a full six-feet and was a tangle of vine like tissue and at the end its claw had Joan around her throat. The other thing, the one that called itself Joan, struggled to free itself, it too was different. Its arms flailed at the one holding it, its head bulged and shrunk, the features sinking into flesh then reappearing. Sam thought about running. This was her chance, but in all honesty she was morbidly fascinated with the scene in front of her. Two otherworldly things were fighting. When do you get to see that?
Lucas released his grip, dropping the Joan creature back to the floor, his arm retracting back into its sleeve. He turned to the capsule. “He will be my greatest achievement,” then swung around to Sam who backed into another desk behind her, knocking a burned out lamp to the floor. “Your family was always destined for greatness!”
CHAPTER SIX
8: 13 a.m. School of Bowlands.
Jess’s eyes were closed as she enjoyed the sun on her face but she felt no warmth. In fact, she felt nothing. She wasn’t sure if that was a response to possibly losing a child… for the second time. A psychological immune reaction to extreme grief. She was sure psychiatrists would make a fortune on a book about her mind.
“The insane brain of a half human mother…” she whispered, then scoffed but quickly stopped in case the outburst became sobbing which would never end.
A groan came from one of the things two stories below. She opened her eyes and looked down, over the wall of the school roof to creatures. Twenty? Forty? She didn’t know for they kept moving behind the nearby buildings and vehicles, before reappearing and growling or bellowing out into the chilled morning air. Either way, they appeared to be constantly circling the school she was in, as if they were patrolling, waiting for her to leave and kill her.
She looked up, above the other rooftops, then trees and could just see an impression of a city many miles ahead.
Sam…
She choked back a tear then suppressed the emotion which came with it in fear that it would overwhelm her and she would collapse into a catatonic state.
She’s alive… she’s alive…
She almost didn’t hear the footsteps come up the narrow metal staircase and then the door open behind her.
“Sanchez, might have something,” said Landon.
She remained looking out over the landscape. “Have something?”
“Yeah, a way into the city.”
She turned around. “There is no way into the city. It’s hopeless!”
Landon shook his head and walked towards her. He reached out, trying to embrace her, but she walked away.
“I… No… Please…”
“He think’s he can fly us in…”
The idea was so absurd that she almost laughed, instead she looked at her husband with a tinge of anger. “What?”
“Turns out the ‘import, export business’ involved flying things over the border.”
Her anger was increasing. She raised her arms. “Where is there a—”
Landon slowly smiled, raising his hand and pointing across the roof to the northwest. “There’s a small airport over there…”
She looked away again, shaking her head then looked back. “Is this rea
l? He really can fly us in?”
“Yup.” He walked to the wall near to her and looked down. “We just need to lose these things and get there somehow.”
This time they both heard the footsteps and looked to the rooftop exit. It sprung open with Sanchez and Esther emerging.
“So we got a plan as to how we’re going to make it the three miles to the airport,” said Sanchez. He looked at the woman next to him.
She let out a slow breath. “Looks like you’ll be going on without me.”
“What do you mean?” said Jess, leaning back on the wall, something Landon wasn’t comfortable doing with the creatures circling not far away below.
“Esther is going to jump in Bertha and like the pied piper lead all of those monstrosities away from here,” said Sanchez “We then use your pickup and get to where we need to go.”
A dangerous emotion was beginning to replace the numbness inside Jess. Hope. She ignored it and looked at the two strangers risking their lives for her daughter. “Thank you.”
*****
8: 26 a.m. South Denver. Biochron headquarters.
The straps were tight. Too tight. The fabric already making Sam’s wrists and ankles sore. Her eyes were closed, the darkness of the inside of her eyelids preferable to the room she was in.
Parts…
It was a throwaway word for the monster that called itself Lucas, but death for the girl clothed in a medical gown and attached to the gurney in what looked to Sam like a surgical theater, except this one had smears of blood and other, living matter across the walls. She didn’t feel sick anymore. She didn’t feel anything anymore. She died some hours before. She was sure of it and this was hell. She was to be tortured for all eternity by a literal mad scientist.
A fizzing came from somewhere above, accompanied with flashes through the thin skin covering her pupils. In her mind she wanted to believe it was a fly or a moth interfering with the light in the ceiling. Yes that was it.
Don’t open your…
She opened her eyes. Something was crawling across the florescent tube ten-feet above. Directly above her. The same ‘something’ which covered most of the walls of the facility. Tendrils reached out, pulling, growing… she closed her eyes again but refused to think about her family. That way lay madness, instead she thought about her room in the apartment in Denver. Her favorite pair of pants, the bright red ones with the silver buttons, and then on to her small bookshelf where she kept the books she had read a hundred times but always returned to, despite the binding coming apart.
No matter what they do, I have my things. They are still there. Still in the—
A noise came from somewhere in one of the myriad of corridors, outside.
This is it. He’s coming to take my parts…
Her stoicism was failing. She wanted to throw up again, but this time she couldn’t bend over, she couldn’t move at all. She would drown in her own vomit. Perhaps this was also part of the torture? To repeatedly die in horrible ways.
The door creaked while opening but she didn’t look. It didn’t matter.
“Sam! You alive?”
She opened her eyes, which grew large at seeing Joan. The older woman was busy pulling the straps from her legs.
“What…” The flicker of shock which became hope, quickly dissolved. This was part of the torture. Make her think she was escaping.
“Come on! Sit up, quick!”
Sam did as asked, but remained strewn across the bed.
“What are you doing? We have to go!”
“I know this is not real. I know you’re just—”
An arm stretched around Sam’s back and pulled her forward, making her topple off the side of the bed and land awkwardly on the ground, where her bare foot slid on something warm.
“I’m risking my life for you, kid! Stop messing around!”
She looked up at the older woman. “You’re… helping me?”
“Yes! But not if you don’t get your shit together! We don’t have long. Are you hurt? Can you walk?”
Sam nodded in disbelief.
“Good. I don’t have your clothes. I don’t know where they are. But there’s a whole city of that shit above us. You ready to go?”
Sam nodded again, her mind a swirl of emotions and questions, the latter she was afraid to ask in case Joan changed her mind.
The older woman moved back to the door, pulling it open slightly and looked outside. She waved Sam closer. “Stay very close to me.”
“Okay…”
Sam hadn’t remembered much of the space outside the surgical room. Her mind was lost to terror when the thing carried her inside, then secured her to the bed. But the corridor was in flux, with walls of continuous movement. Ripples became faces which became tentacles, then snapped back to form a seething froth. They were going to have to move past it but Sam’s feet felt like lead.
“Now. We go now!” said Joan, pulling her hand.
They both ran down the center as parts of the wall bulged in their direction. Sam looked back and immediately regretted the decision. A human eye at least a foot wide was looking at her. She froze. Her appendages being drained of any will to move the rest of her. A hand grabbed her arm and tugged her through another set of double doors. She was running now, behind the older woman without any idea of where they were going. The light above flickered, giving her only glimpses of what covered every inch of the ceiling and most of the walls and floor. It squelched beneath her toes. Its stickiness wanting to absorb her, but she forced her feet off the ground and ran with Joan through another single door, this one leading to a narrow corridor and then finally stairs. Thankfully, the walls here were clearer.
She looked up into the multiple floors above them and ascended, both of them pushing their modified arms and legs to their limits to climb as high and fast as they could. Landings flashed by, with names and numbers of floors stenciled on the empty patches of wall until finally they arrived at the top.
Instead of opening the door, Joan looked back down over the guardrail to the lower floors. “I think we’re good.” She turned and ran to the door and pushed it open. There was a rush of cooler air and Sam knew where they were.
They stepped out into the underground parking garage and just a hundred-feet away from the SUV they have driven there in. Sam’s heart jumped. She was shaking as they ran towards it, her legs having the consistency of jello and collapsed against the passenger’s door and fumbled to open it.
Joan unlocked it from the inside and pushed it open. Sam staggered forward, falling onto the seat and struggled to lift her arm to close the door but did so, just before the truck surged backwards in an arc.
“I can’t believe… we… did it…” Tears ran from her eyes.
The screeches from the tires echoed off the smooth walls as Joan drove them up a ramp, towards a square of intense light. Sam’s mind was full of questions as to why the former marine who had gone to all that trouble to kidnap her was now helping her escape. Maybe she wasn’t the monster that she seemed to—
The truck lifted off the ground as they burst from the garage into the early morning light. Snow had been falling and for an instant before the dark mass slammed into the side of the SUV, her mind was filled with the smiling face of her little brother.
The world was a tumbling blur of pain and screeching. When it stopped she was no longer inside the car, but on the cold wet concrete of the road, looking at her arm bent in the wrong direction.
A creak of metal warping helped bring her attention to her right. She flipped over, her left arm shooting agony into her shoulder. The SUV was upside down with part of the front missing. The door flew back and out staggered Joan, blood oozing from various lacerations which seemed to be sealing as Sam watched. The older woman looked at the girl on the floor and started to move in her direction, when a screech rang out making her flick her head, back along the road.
Sam looked in the same direction, her heart sinking on seeing what lurked there. Clumps of legs
and arms, held together with torsos that appeared to have no definite form. The things. One of them was walking towards them, becoming more human the closer it got.
“I won’t let you kill her, Lucas!” screamed Joan at the newly formed being. “I don’t know why you want to do that. That was…” The older woman stopped, pierced by an idea that was obvious now she thought it. “It’s you…”
The thing which claimed to be Lucas was larger than when Sam last it. A good foot taller, and its clothes were ill fitting amongst arms which had layers upon layers of muscles. More than any bodybuilder she had ever seen.
He smiled. “So now you know who I am, you will also know that I cannot let you leave with the child.”
“Why… do you…” Another thought hit Joan, this one more terrifying than learning the identity of the thing in front of her. “You don’t want to fix this mess… you want to—”
The Lucas creature moved with a speed Sam could hardly believe. A blur which slammed into Joan sending a spray of blood across the powder white street, but Joan somehow survived and transformed, both tumbling into the SUV, spinning it around such was the strength of the impact.
Run Sam… run…
Sam couldn’t tell if the voice was inside or outside her mind, but it prompted her to try and stand. As she pushed her right hand into the soft ice, screeches and growls came from near the truck and she looked on, mouth agape at the two things fighting. They had long since given up their human origins and were now two amorphous shapes that swiped and scythed with claws and teeth which appeared and were gone just as quick. One moment Sam thought a giant octopus was attacking a dog headed creature which morphed into a huge human with multiple pincher like limbs which was tangled with a snake?
Run…
She backed up, holding her useless left arm, almost tripping up the curb. One of the masses of skin, bone and muscle seemed to be faring worse than the other and it fell back against a tree, making the wood creak.
