“This for real?”
Sophie cocked her head. “Looks real to me. It’s the best we’ve got.”
Walker turned toward Kim and stared at the contagion box in her clutches. It looked as if he meant to say something, but then he stepped through the hole and into the darkness. The hazmat suits had their own headlamps, and they had an additional two or three flashlights, but Walker didn’t wait for a light.
“You know this is a terrible idea,” he said.
“So is staying.”
He nodded. No arguing with that.
Just as Sophie attached the headpiece on Kim’s hazmat suit, they heard running and shouting and turned to see Beyza racing toward them from the direction of the atrium, desperate and broken and more human-seeming than Sophie had ever seen her.
Eyes wide, Beyza pointed at the hole in the wall. “Does that go anywhere?”
“We don’t know if it’s an exit—” Sophie began.
“Does it go anywhere?”
Now Sophie spotted Martin farther up the corridor, stumbling and pale, following in Beyza’s wake.
“There’s a river,” Dr. Tang said.
“Then fucking go!” Sophie shouted.
They went.
Through the new hole in the wall, one by one, the sick helping the sicker, they scrambled in desperation and determination. Sophie, Dr. Tang, and Kim were less agile in their hazmat suits, but their headlamps were vital sources of light. Walker took Martin’s flashlight and Beyza had her own, and yet the new tunnel seemed to swallow them all. As they stumbled and shuffled swiftly along the rough stone floor, descending a seemingly natural ridgeline within the cavern, the sound of gunfire vanished as if they had stepped into another world.
Even with her hazmat suit on, Sophie could feel a pressure shift in the air, like a storm was coming in. But this wasn’t humidity. It felt like malice, like the quiet minutes in the midst of a couple’s worst fight when words have proven useless. It felt like the eye of the storm.
“Sophie,” Walker said, coming up beside her. He found his footing easily as if their exodus did not frighten him, and she wanted to punch him for it.
“Not now,” she said.
“Something you should know.”
She snapped a withering glance in his direction. “Walker—”
The explosion rocked the mountain overhead and shook the floor beneath their feet, and Sophie came to a halt. Beyza and Martin froze as well, staring back the way they’d come.
“That wasn’t topside,” Beyza said.
Only then did Sophie notice the others had paused only a moment before they’d kept moving, as if the explosion hadn’t surprised them at all.
“What the fuck was that?” she asked.
Walker glanced over his shoulder, and he told her.
Rage swept through her. “You just blew up the Pandora Room? Are you—”
Beyza grabbed her arm and propelled her forward, hazmat suit crinkling. “They would have destroyed it, anyway. And we need to keep moving.”
“What did you see?” Kim asked, stumbling along with the contagion box in her hands.
“Infected people,” Beyza replied. “Jihadis. Ghosts.”
“They’re not ghosts,” Sophie snapped. “They’re just … manifestations.”
“Call them what you want,” Beyza said.
“They’re everywhere,” Carson rasped, and he caught his foot on a stone and nearly collapsed. Without Dunlap and Ruiz, he would have. “All around us. Killing each other. Beating and raping and stabbing and crying…”
Carson himself was crying bloody tears, and for the first time Sophie realized it wasn’t because of his sickness but because of what he was witnessing there in the tunnel as they fled.
The chill along her spine took root and did not go away.
Sophie heard the river ahead, and a moment later she saw the glow of her headlamp shining on the water. It was wider than she’d expected—perhaps fifteen feet across—and it rushed along swiftly. She wondered at its source, but there were hills and even mountains nearby, and she was more grateful than curious.
“Just follow the edge,” Kim said.
Sophie didn’t need to be told, but she wasn’t about to argue. The time for butting heads over who was in charge had long passed. The tunnel had a shelf on either side of the river, more than wide enough. On the near side, the rough stone bank ranged in width from just a couple of feet to perhaps a dozen. It might narrow dramatically as they went deeper, or vanish entirely and force them to swim, but they had no choice, and so they forged ahead. As the cave closed around them, every animal instinct told her to turn back, that going deeper led only to death, but she knew going back was no better.
“Let me take that.”
With a glance back, Sophie saw that Martin had come up beside Kim, gesturing toward the contagion box.
“You’re sick,” Kim said.
She was right, but Martin seemed to still be able to take care of himself. His skin showed a terrible rash and weeping lesions, and his cough had grown worse, but his eyes were clear in the flashlight beam, and he remained steady on his feet. Carson, on the other hand, looked like hell. He and Dunlap had already fallen behind a ways.
“Let him take it,” Sophie said.
“What if he drops it?” Walker asked. “Smashes it open?”
“You were going to blow it up,” Kim reminded him. “You don’t get a say.”
The tension between them thickened a moment, and then Kim slipped the box’s strap off her shoulder and handed it over to Martin. Sophie felt her heart break all over again, looking at this kind man. She would never have predicted the kind of courage he had shown her tonight, and she wished she could tell him how sorry she was for underestimating him.
“Go,” Dunlap called from behind them.
Sophie spotted something behind him and Carson, and for a moment she thought it might be the jihadis sneaking up on them, but it was only a shadow. Or a ghost. Her chest ached, and she rattled out a terrible cough and wondered how sick she was.
The river carried on, and so did they, but there was no way to know how long before the river brought them to the surface—or if it ever would.
* * *
Martin tried to keep his eyes down, watching the ruts and ridges in the rough stone ledge, with an occasional glance at the dark water running past. If he looked up, glanced around, he would see ghosts in the shadows. Their presence no longer frightened him; what he feared was their attention. Even his disgust at their actions had dulled. As long as they continued to reenact the crimes and horrors of the past, they would not be focused on him. He knew they were not the spirits of the actual dead, only memories of sins and hideous urges siphoned from the ancients, but whatever these things might be, they had a level of awareness and malice. He would do anything to avoid them noticing him.
The strap of the contagion box chafed his shoulder. It had been light when he had first taken it from Kim, but now it grew heavier and heavier. He felt the sting of the lesions on his skin, felt little liquid rivulets drooling down his skin and couldn’t be sure if they were sweat or some kind of bloody rot leaking out of him. The idea made him nauseous, but he kept putting one foot in front of the other because he had no other choice. He could walk forward or he could sit and wait to die, killed by the plague or by ghosts or jihadis.
Ruiz walked beside him, constantly glancing around, jittery and urgent.
“Don’t you see them?” Carson muttered.
Martin glanced over his shoulder and immediately regretted it. In the glow from Dunlap’s flashlight, Carson had the waxy yellow pallor of a melted candle. The shadows behind the two men shifted and came alive. Martin caught a glimpse of two ghosts, both women, one on the ground and the other laughing and pointing at her misfortune, then sneering and spitting on her. Harmless in comparison to some of the others, but then the ghost who was the subject of that humiliation began to turn her head as if to look at him, feeling his attention, an
d he whipped his head around to face forward. He nearly stumbled into Walker’s back but then lowered his gaze.
“What?” Ruiz whispered. “What’d you see?”
Martin didn’t answer. Looking at the stone beneath his feet felt safe, and if it wasn’t, at least he wouldn’t see the horror coming.
Carson kept mumbling about the ghosts. Martin wanted to ask Sergeant Dunlap why he didn’t just sit the man down, since there seemed no chance of Carson surviving. But the two men were soldiers, and Martin understood. There had been very few people in Martin’s life for whom he would have taken the risks that Sergeant Dunlap was taking. His parents, his little sister, maybe Sophie.
The moment this thought occurred to him, he realized how ridiculous it was. Dunlap wore a filtration mask, but he had Carson’s arm around him, which heightened the sergeant’s risk of exposure. Martin was carrying the contagion box on his hip, the Pandora jar inside it, and it was killing him.
Be honest, he thought. It had already killed you before you picked it up. And that was true. At this point, he had nothing left to lose, but he could help his friends. Help Sophie.
“Oh, God … please keep them away … their eyes,” Private Carson rasped.
Martin shuddered. Instinctively, he began to glance over his shoulder again, but then he stumbled over a jutting bit of stone. Weak and weary, he pitched forward and crashed into Walker’s back. His hands closed tightly on the contagion box, but he tripped again and began to fall. Walker turned and caught him by the elbows. Martin went down on one knee and cried out as his kneecap struck the rough stone, but the rest of him stayed upright.
“Watch it, Martin!” Walker snapped. “If you drop that thing—”
“I’m sorry. I tripped over—” Martin began, and then his chest erupted in a cough so deep and ragged that it left him exhausted. He remained on one knee, sagging as Walker stepped away from him with wide eyes.
“Shit,” Walker muttered. He reached over and lifted the strap from around Martin’s neck and removed the contagion box from his possession. “Let me take this. It was stupid of me to let you carry it. We can’t take the chance.”
“Someone who’s already sick should carry it,” Martin argued.
Walker glanced at Taejon and Ruiz, then shot him a hard look. “We’re all sick, kid.”
Martin relinquished the contagion box. He was right. Even if some of them showed more symptoms than others, there seemed no way to avoid this plague and the ghosts that came with it. Walker had Carson’s assault rifle over his shoulder already—he had taken it when it became clear Private Carson was too ill to be much use with a gun—but while he let the gun hang at his back, he clutched the contagion box close to his abdomen to keep it from jostling too much.
Walker caught up to Dr. Tang and Beyza but stayed well behind Kim. Whatever their tension sprang from, they weren’t going to resolve it today.
Whispers came from the river—not from the water, not the rush of the current, but from the other side. Martin took a rattling breath and kept his gaze downcast. But the muttering from behind him grew.
“Shut up, Carson,” Dunlap growled.
Still, Martin did not look back. He felt the two men behind him, the dying private and the grim sergeant. Their presence seemed too close, as if they dogged his heels, and Martin wanted to run ahead to catch the others, although he knew his own progressing illness would make him unwelcome among them.
“Don’t you see it, Sarge?” Carson muttered. “The blade … his blade is sharp. It’s right here with us. It’s looking at you.”
Martin began to cry. He didn’t want to listen to Carson anymore, didn’t want to be underground. He wanted to be back on the dairy farm with his family and never go underground again, maybe never be inside. He could sleep under the stars and breathe the fresh air, he could have music and laughter.
When Carson whimpered, Martin could not help but turn around and look. He saw the ghost with its strange headdress and the rough cloth wrapped around it, saw the curved dagger in its left hand as it reached for Carson. The blade sank into Carson’s chest, but it did not cut him, did not stop there … the ghost sank into him, and Carson stood up straight and rigid as if electricity had just surged through him.
“Hey, man,” Dunlap began, reaching out to him. He hadn’t seen the ghost.
“Sergeant, don’t!” Martin shouted.
Carson turned on Dunlap. The frailty of illness had fled his body, and he grinned as he grabbed a fistful of Dunlap’s shirt with one hand and tore away the man’s filtration mask with the other. Dunlap twisted, trying to escape his grasp, and smashed a fist into Carson’s jaw. Lesions split into fissures in the man’s face, but Carson seemed not to feel it. He grabbed hold of Dunlap with both hands and hurled him aside with such force that Dunlap struck the tunnel wall.
With a gleeful whooping, Carson barreled at Martin. Wheezing, Martin raised his hands to defend himself but was seized with a fit of coughing that doubled him over. Carson laughed and shoved him aside.
Martin wheeled, trying to grasp at him but missing. He fell on his ass, helpless as Carson lunged at Walker, reaching for the contagion box. In that moment, Martin knew it had all been for nothing—the Pandora jar would be shattered, the plague released in its full potency, along with the darkest parts of an entire civilization’s human nature … those that were not already loose in Derveyî.
Walker turned his back and dropped to one knee, using his body to protect the contagion box and its contents the way a man might defend his own child. Carson whooped again, but before he could reach Walker, Taejon was there. Martin felt a flicker of relief as Dr. Tang, Sophie, and Kim all started shouting and Beyza followed Taejon, ready to fight with her bare hands, ferocity lighting her face.
Taejon aimed his gun at Carson’s chest, finger on the trigger. “Get it together, man. Don’t make me—”
Carson ripped the weapon from Taejon’s hands with such strength that the sound of his fingers breaking echoed off the wall. Whatever was inside him had only one use for that gun; Carson turned it around and smashed Taejon in the skull with it, then followed him to the ground and began to club him in the head with the butt of the rifle, again and again.
“Fucking bastard,” Martin rasped, not knowing to whom or to what his own words were directed. He staggered toward Carson.
Beyza and now Sophie tried to go around Walker, but he blocked them, shouting at them to stay back.
Martin knew why. Taejon’s skull lay open, cracked apart like an eggshell, a pool of blood matting his hair, gray brain visible in the strange glow from the flashlights and headlamps.
Ruiz shoved Martin aside. Sergeant Dunlap took three strides, raised his gun, and shot Carson in the back of the head. He whirled and pointed his gun at Martin.
“Kim, I need your goddamn flashlight over here!” he snapped.
With the crinkle of her hazmat suit, Kim lumbered past Walker. Through the plastic face mask, the pain in her face showed clearly as she avoided looking at the two dead men at her feet.
Martin narrowed his eyes when her headlamp pointed directly at his face. Dunlap’s weapon remained steady for several long seconds.
“I’m fine!” Martin protested. “Jesus, Sergeant, I swear I’m…” He burst into a fit of coughing.
“You’re far from fine,” Ruiz said.
Martin wanted to disagree. Instead, he launched into another fit of coughing and fell to his knees, pain shooting through him as he struck the stone ledge.
“Shit,” he groaned. His gaze turned toward Carson’s corpse. “I don’t want to be … I can’t be that.”
Walker and Kim stood over him, backlit by the headlamps on Sophie and Dr. Tang’s hazmat suits. Beyza lingered in the shadows, her half-darkened face etched with pity. Then she began to cough as well, and they all looked at her.
“I’m fine for a while yet,” she said. “Can we get out of—”
Sergeant Dunlap hushed them. They glanced at him sharply, and
he held up a hand for silence. Martin craned his neck to listen and realized that beneath the hiss and burble of the river beside them, he could hear the punch and crack of gunfire.
“They’ve found our exit,” Walker said. “They’ll be after us now.”
The jihadis, Martin thought. And they’d be moving faster than anyone infected with this contagion or wearing a hazmat suit.
He struggled to stand and reached out to Walker. “Give me Carson’s weapon.”
Sophie stepped forward. “Martin, no.”
She didn’t come within eight feet of him, but even with the light and shadow bouncing around the cave, even with the ghosts darting in and out of his peripheral vision while committing horrors Dante had only imagined, he could see the emotion on her face. The fear for him, the fondness, even love of a sort.
“I’m not getting out of here,” he said. “I might as well be useful.”
Behind the mask of her hazmat suit, tears welled in her eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t … better.”
Martin studied those eyes. “We were friends, weren’t we? In the end.”
“We were. We are,” she promised.
He nodded. “That’s all right, then.”
A few seconds passed in silence, all of them watching him, and then more gunfire could be heard. The infected were being killed—that was the only explanation he could think of for those shots—but the jihadis would not be stopped by them.
Walker set down the contagion box, working quickly, and then handed over Carson’s weapon. “You know how to use this?”
“I can aim and pull a trigger.”
Walker nodded, then picked up the contagion box again.
Dunlap moved up next to Martin. “I’ll keep him company. We’ll buy you as much time as we can. Just get that goddamned jar away from here, and don’t put it in the hands of anyone who’ll use it. This can’t go farther than Derveyî.”
Martin expected the others to argue, but the world had made them pragmatists. Even Ruiz just looked down at Taejon’s corpse and turned away.
“Thank you,” Kim said, her voice muffled inside the suit.
The Pandora Room: A Novel Page 29
