The Pandora Room: A Novel

by Christopher Golden

  “Sophie,” Walker said. “You awake up there? Because Kim is right. We need to get our asses in gear.”

  Beyza and Sophie were practically holding each other up like a pair of drunk women on some bachelorette weekend in Las Vegas. As Sophie turned to respond, Beyza sagged forward. Without her friend to lean on, she tripped on her own feet and spilled to the ground. Beyza slid across the ledge, rolled over twice, and came to rest with her left arm dangling down into the river, the current tugging at her.

  Sophie nearly fell trying to reach her, but Walker managed to catch her.

  “All right, everyone just sit down for a minute,” Kim said sharply. “Just sit and catch your breath.”

  Dr. Tang knelt beside Beyza and helped her sit up, examining the scrapes she had suffered in the fall.

  “You’re the one telling us we’re not moving fast enough,” Sophie said, sinking to the ground.

  Walker coughed wetly. He scratched at the rash that had begun to spread on his neck. “And she’s right. But if we don’t take a minute to rest, we’re only going to keep slowing down.”

  Kim hated to lose even a moment, but her chest hurt, and she felt an ache in her throat as if everything had swollen. Even her eyes ached, but if she kept going, as long as there was an exit, she knew she could find it.

  But maybe not with the others.

  Staring at Sophie and Beyza, at Dr. Tang and Walker, she blinked in shock to discover she had just considered leaving them behind. Sickness had crept into her, but she had been exposed the least and so her infection had not planted its roots too deeply into her body yet. She could run, just get the hell out of there. Guilt flashed through her, but then she began to rationalize. She could get the contagion box out, get the jar and its dangers out. She could take Lamar’s journal from Sophie, so the information there would not be completely lost. Wasn’t that the whole point? To keep the jar and its story away from the hands of the jihadis?

  Could she do that? Leave the others behind? Could she leave Walker behind? It seemed dreadful to contemplate, and yet the logic resonated within her.

  A light flashed from the curve of the tunnel, back the way they’d come.

  Kim flinched as the cone of illumination struck her, and she raised her hand to shield her eyes. A voice shouted in Arabic. Kim looked down and saw that the light had settled on the contagion box, and instinctively she turned her back to protect it. A burst of gunfire sprayed the ledge and the wall to her right, sending shards flying. Some impacted her hazmat suit, and she felt the sting as something sharp jabbed her arm.

  Then Walker had risen up between her and the flashlight beam … between her and the jihadi soldier, the terrorist who had been scouting ahead for his group. He had to be a scout, because now he turned to scream back along the tunnel for help.

  Walker took aim and shot the man three times in the chest, one of the bullets taking out his flashlight, as if Walker had used that as his target. Then he turned and grabbed Kim’s elbow, running with her along the narrow ledge. Whatever exhaustion had struck him, whatever fog had drawn around his mind, adrenaline had woken him.

  Dr. Tang and Sophie grabbed Beyza and they ran, all five of them, no matter how deeply the plague had struck them. It was better to be sick than dead.

  TWENTY-SIX

  When the ghost came at Walker, he thought he could defend himself. They had been running and stumbling through the winding tunnel. Beyza had fallen again, and this time only Dr. Tang could drag her to her feet. Sophie careened forward with her arms outstretched as if she had been struck blind, but somehow she followed the light of her suit’s headlamp. Walker and Kim stayed together, leading the way, Kim’s light picking out the shadows and crevices.

  The river. Always the river by their side. It echoed and burbled. In places its level dropped, and Walker tried not to think about the fact that they had been going deeper underground instead of climbing toward the surface. With all the hills and valleys in this region, who was to say where the surface might be found?

  Shouts followed them and a few bursts of gunfire as if to frighten rabbits from the underbrush, but there were no rabbits here and no brush to hide in. Only the tunnel and the river that must have carved it over centuries. The jihadis went quiet again, perhaps not wanting to let their quarry know how much closer they had come, but Walker felt them gaining ground. The next shots that were fired would be at their backs.

  The ledge grew narrower, wide enough for only one of them in some places, and then it broadened again, and here he launched into the closest approximation of a run he could manage with the plague settling into his bones. He felt the fire of lesions opening on his throat and saw them on his arms, and he ignored them and what they meant. And he ignored the ghosts …

  But the one directly ahead of him, the one standing on the ledge as if it waited for them, could not be ignored. It stared straight at Walker, head cocked to one side as if its neck had been broken. Where the light from Kim’s headlamp touched it directly, the thing vanished, but in the gloom of light reflected off the tunnel wall and ceiling, it seemed alive with malice, wisps of blue mist rising from its eyes, though the eyes themselves were oil-black pinpoints.

  When it lunged toward him, its lower body lost in shadow, flickering in and out of existence as it passed through Kim’s light, its head still canted at that awful angle, yet its eyes remained locked on Walker’s. He had been in a hundred fights, had faced would-be killers before, and though he knew this thing existed only as the waste that had been flushed from a human soul, still he charged to meet it. Feverish with plague, all he knew was that it reached for him, and if it could touch him, then surely he could do the same.

  Walker had never been so mistaken.

  It entered him with the force of a punch to the chest, staggered him backward. Blinking, he bent double and tried to vomit. Something filled him now, like nausea churning in his gut, and the only connection he could make in his mind was to times he had needed to be sick. He heaved, wanting it out of him.

  Walker felt it snaking through him, spreading faster than any poison. Images flickered through his mind of hands that were not his own, hands around throats, fingers clenched on the hilts of daggers, palms stained with blood. A jubilation rose in him unlike any he had ever known, a joyfulness that matched the day his son Charlie had been born, the day of his wedding, the moment of his high school graduation, the night he had discovered Sheila McTeague naked in his bedroom, a bow around her waist to celebrate his seventeenth birthday.

  No, not matched. This happiness suffused him so that he cried out and thrust his fists toward the ceiling of the tunnel in ecstasy. His hands flexed and opened, and he laughed with the freedom of it.

  Then he turned toward Kim, tore open her hazmat suit, and ripped off the headpiece. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and punched her in the side of the face with such force that she spun out of his grip. Locks of black hair hung from his fingers, dancing in the breeze that swept along the tunnel, and he laughed again as she spun on him, eyes wide, and screamed his name, not in fear for herself but in horror at what had become of him.

  Even trapped in the little space at the back of his mind where he’d been banished, where he now suffocated as the humming lust for cruelty filled his body, Walker could read Kim’s face and her intentions.

  “Fight it, Walker!” she said, cradling the contagion box against her ruined hazmat suit. Blue plastic hung around her, and she began to tear it away, keeping the strap of the box over her shoulder. “Don’t make me leave you here.”

  The cruelty inside Walker glanced over his shoulder at the darkness of the tunnel—their only way forward—and then faced the four women again. Beyza wilted to the ground. Sophie tried to make her stand, and she only shook her head, unable or unwilling to rise again. Dr. Tang hung back.

  Walker smiled so wide that he felt the corners of his mouth split and tasted his own blood.

  Again, Kim said his name. She did not turn away, did not try to run. I
nstead, she reached out a hand, her eyes pleading with him.

  He knew he loved her then, but only in that little space in the back of his mind. The rest of him wanted to rip out her throat with his fingers and paint his entire body with her blood. There was power in that, and he wanted every drop.

  The Walker inside wanted to cry out in grief and sorrow, but the outside Walker spat a mouthful of his own blood and lunged for Kim.

  * * *

  Sophie watched it happen—the moment the light went out in Walker’s eyes and some other, darker thing gleamed there. She had seen the ghost as it raced toward him, seen it vanish within him, and now she understood. Horror settled into her gut, driving out the terror she had felt only seconds before, and she found herself moving before she had made a conscious decision to do so. All thoughts of herself and her parents disappeared, and she found herself trapped in this single instant, this singular choice. The jar had sat on its altar down in the Pandora Room for so many centuries, an unexploded bomb full of malice and cruelty and disease, and her entire team had been in the midst of a slow-motion explosion ever since she had first set foot in that room. Frustration and anger, guilt and fear all swept up together and drove her to action.

  She heard the jihadis shouting farther along the tunnel, but those voices seemed far away as she threw herself at Walker. As he reached for Kim, Sophie tackled him, drove him against the wall, and the two of them fell onto the rough stone ledge. Her left shoulder struck a jutting rock, and she felt her hazmat suit tear. It didn’t matter—nothing mattered now. Pain shot through her shoulder, but Walker had landed harder, whacking the side of his head on the ledge.

  Sophie hauled back and punched him. Blood and dark spittle flew from his lips. His eyes had begun to turn red as she hit him again, and then a third time, breaking two fingers. The hatred slipped from his face, just a little, and she saw he was in a daze. Sophie leaped up, hauled back, and kicked him hard in the side.

  Kim called her name, voice full of fear and concern, maybe for her or maybe for Walker, despite that he’d reached the last stage of this impossible contagion.

  “Go!” Sophie shouted at her and Tang and Beyza.

  The others started past her on the ledge, teetering on the edge of the river, Dr. Tang holding on to Beyza and almost forcing her to move. Beyza looked so sick now that she would have to be carried if they went much farther.

  Kim hesitated, clutching the contagion box against her.

  Then the rest of the jihadis came around a corner of the tunnel, back where their advance scout lay dead. They shouted in fury and opened fire. Bullets chipped holes in the tunnel wall and the ledge, some plinking into the water. Sophie whipped her head around to stare for a heartbeat, and she saw them—saw in the light from her headlamp that some were already badly infected, saw the ghosts swarming around them.

  Kim ran past her, bullets whining around them.

  Sophie turned to follow her, but a sneering Walker reached out and grabbed at her ankle. He used her struggle to drag himself to his feet, took a fistful of her clothing, and spun her around to face him, his grin tearing farther at the corners of his mouth. Red tears slid down his face. He grabbed her throat and squeezed.

  She tried to appeal to whatever part of him remained behind those eyes, tried to get him to see the jihadis coming for them. She twisted, tried to get his body between her and the terrorists, but too late.

  Bullets struck them both. Sophie felt one punch through her side, then another hit her from behind, exiting out through her left shoulder, and she stepped right off the ledge and into the river.

  The last thing she saw as the black water swept her away was Walker tumbling in after her, bullets zipping into the current in pursuit.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Walker thrashed in the water, unable to control his own body. He twisted and began to swim with the current, lit up with the desire to inflict pain. The lust for it kept his eyes open in the darkness, seeking Sophie. A glimpse of the glow of her headlamp reached him, but it winked out, and the current dragged him deeper. He struck a rocky outcropping, twisted around again, and much of the strength left him. On his lips, he tasted the blood streaming from his bullet wounds. He coughed underwater and swallowed a lungful.

  Only then did the hate begin to seep from him. Fear became his new infection.

  When he kicked his legs and tried to swim for the surface for air, he could not tell if it was his own desire to live driving him or the fear of this ancient cruelty, the horrid relic that had settled into his flesh.

  He burst into darkness, no sign of any light. The echoes of gunshots danced from the ceiling overhead, but they were dim and muffled. Walker choked up water, gasped at air, and the last of his strength left him as the pain of his wounds dug in deep.

  He sank into the river, and it carried him away.

  * * *

  Dr. Tang saw Sophie floating by, and she knew what they had to do. The gunshots were so loud in the tunnel that she wanted to do nothing but duck her head and scream. But Beyza could not go on without her. She glanced back, expecting to see the jihadis appear behind them in the tunnel any second. Instead, her light found gray figures staggering and floating toward them, blue mist in their eyes. Whatever violence and perversions these ghosts had been perpetrating on one another moments before, they had new targets. The sickness had rooted deep now, and however these ancient sins had grown awareness, they yearned to fill the space inside human flesh again, to infect again.

  More gunshots rang out, but the eyes of those cruelties chilled Dr. Tang more than fear of bullets ever would.

  Beyza stumbled again, went down on one knee, and from the pure weight of her, Dr. Tang knew they would not make it another step.

  Kim had gone ahead a few paces, but she turned and came back for them, reached for Beyza’s arm with one hand while holding the strap of the contagion box with the other.

  “No,” Dr. Tang said, half glancing at the ghosts as she dragged Beyza off the ledge. “Hold on to the box; don’t let the jar break. And for God’s sake, hold your breath.”

  Lugging Beyza with both arms, she fell into the river.

  Whether or not Kim followed, she could not be sure. Only in that moment did she realize that she should have made the other woman go first. After all, Kim had the jar. If she didn’t survive this, it wouldn’t matter if the rest of them got out.

  Not for long, anyway.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sunlight.

  Walker slit his eyes against the glare. His head pounded, and his body felt empty. Pain clawed at his right thigh and at the left side of his chest. Screams crawled around in his throat and lungs, churning, lurching to find a way to be heard.

  A shadow loomed over him. His eyes opened slightly, lids and lashes tacky with dried blood. The sun had been blocked by a man in a uniform. The man’s mouth moved, but in Walker’s mind, the words were the wretched wail of microphone feedback. Sunlight haloed the man’s head.

  Walker grabbed his jacket, dragged himself up onto his knees, wrapped his hands around the man’s throat, and started to squeeze, baring his teeth with a snarl.

  The man used the butt of his gun to knock Walker the fuck out.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Dr. Durand …

  Sophie came slowly to wakefulness and wanted nothing more than for sleep to claim her again. Her eyes had yet to open, but she felt the sound begin in her chest, a low moan, the saddest sound she had ever heard—and it came from her.

  “Dr. Durand?” the voice said again.

  Her entire body hurt. Bright, vivid pain radiated from her shoulder and her side, and she recalled the impact of the bullets punching into her flesh. The smell of her own blood filled her nose, but not only blood … fumes.

  A sound raged behind the moaning in her chest and the person calling her name, white noise that blanketed everything, so that whoever it was might be beside her or blocks away. Her body swayed, the hard surface beneath her swayed. Vibration came up thr
ough that surface and rattled her.

  Sophie opened her eyes. She had a mask on, but as she inhaled, she realized this was not the filtration mask. The man kneeling beside her wore a hazmat suit, but the face she saw through the plastic shield was unfamiliar to her. He leaned a bit closer to her.

  “Dr. Durand—”

  “Sophie,” she rasped. “Anyone … trying to save my life … gets to call me Sophie.”

  She started to cough. The man glanced up, and only then did Sophie realize someone else knelt on her other side. A woman in a hazmat suit, also a stranger, injected her with something.

  The fear in the woman’s eyes woke Sophie’s own fear, which rose above the pain. She stared at the woman.

  “Am I … gonna die?”

  “We’re doing everything we can,” the woman said, but the words sounded hollow, like a blessing from a priest who’d lost his faith. She had obviously said these same words a thousand times and expected to say them thousands more.

  “My journal,” she rasped.

  “It’s right here. You haven’t lost it,” the man said, plucking Lamar’s journal from where it had apparently been left, tucked beside her. He pressed it into her hands, and she held it to her chest, wondering how much water damage it had sustained, wondering if it would still be readable, and if she would ever understand Lamar’s choices.

  “Rest, Dr. Durand,” the woman said, taking her hand, her own sheathed in latex. “We’ve given you something to help with the pain. Everything else we’re working on.”

  Sophie wanted to thank them, but a numbness slipped through her body that felt wonderful and terrifying at the same time. She wanted to be awake and aware, but she would trade those wishes for whatever pain relief these people could provide.

  The journal clutched against her breast, she slid into shadow with only a sliver of hope. As the last of her awareness blinked out, one thought followed her down into unconsciousness—the people treating her were alive and well. Wherever they were taking her, there were no ghosts here.