Crux

by James Byron Huggins

  But this time it was different. Rather, it wasn’t as strong or as insistent as the original battering the door to the collider corridor had withstood. In fact, this battering seemed weak and even hesitant compared to the incommensurate force that had almost torn the first sub-hatch off the steel hinges.

  The door was hit again.

  And, again, it was weaker.

  “So,” Isaiah said with curiosity and contempt, “you’re not the anchor man.” He continued to stare at the panel as the battering continued. “Some of you are stronger than others.” He nodded. “I figured.”

  Amanda was slowly finding her voice and, thank god, some control.

  “You figured what?” she asked evenly.

  “I figured that what the old Jewish scholars wrote about these entities was, more or less, fairly close to the truth,” said Isaiah. “From what I remember, demons are limited to the strength that was imputed in them when they were created, so what they were when they were created is all they’ll ever be. They can’t gain strength or lose strength. They just are what they are. It’s almost like predestined damnation. But I guess God knows what he’s doing.” He frowned, “Some were created with the strength of sergeants, and some were created with the powers of a prince. And there was one created with the strength and wisdom of a king and I don’t see any door stopping him. But as long as they keep that collider down, we might be safe.”

  “So you’re saying that thing can’t knock down this door?” Amanda was gazing up. “But it knocked down that big vault. How can it be strong enough to knock down that vault and not strong enough to knock down this door?”

  “The big one knocked the door down. This one isn’t strong enough.”

  Amanda’s eyes widened and she held up her arms as far as she could reach. “That thing was big as a house! It’s bigger than a gorilla!”

  Isaiah gently grasped her hand and turned.

  “Yeah, well, obviously they do come bigger.”

  ***

  “Hold it!”

  Roy had already whirled and leveled his machinegun—Janet still didn’t know what kind of gun it was and didn’t care—at a shape that silently appeared at the door of the Observation Room.

  “General!” Roy shouted as he rushed forward.

  Jackman fairly collapsed into a chair, gasping as Tanto quickly backed into room keeping his rifle trained on the corridor. “Jesus Christ,” whispered Tanto as he ripped a black balaclava from his head and swiped a forearm across his face. “God Almighty, major,” he shook his head at Roy, “we almost bought the farm, man.”

  “What happened?” Roy bent over the general. “General?” Roy snatched a large water bottle and thrust it in his hand. “General. Drink this.”

  Roy straightened, staring at Tanto.

  “Tanto? What happened?”

  Tanto slowly shook his head, “We ran into one of them, boss.” He took a few moments trying to breath. “And it just …”

  Tanto’s words fell away—with his expression—as Roy stepped to the door, glaring in both directions of the corridor. He turned back.

  “Tanto?” Roy stated more sternly. “Listen to me.”

  Eyes tight, Tanto moaned, “Jesus Christ!”

  “Tanto! Look at me!”

  “That thing killed Jake like—”

  “LIEUTENANT!”

  Tanto’s eyes snapped open. He took a moment, gazing about the room, before he focused on Roy and quietly asked, “Sir?”

  “Where are Jake and Picket?”

  Tanto clutched his vest with a bloody hand. “They’re dead, sir.” He took a moment to wipe sweat from his face. “They got killed when it ambushed us.” He stared widely and vacantly at the wall as he whispered, “I ain’t never see nuthin’ like that. It came out of nowhere and killed Picket before we even knew it was there. Then Jake got off a shot before it turned into him and ripped out his heart. And I mean it ripped out his heart through his vest! Then I hit it point blank with a grenade and blew its ass all the way down the stairs and we managed to seal the door before it climbed up to us again but damn, man. What the hell have these people done down here? That thing is the Devil!”

  Leaning back against the wall, Roy raised his face. Then he lowered it and shook his head before gazing steadily at Janet.

  “Check on the vaults,” Roy said without emotion. “See which ones are still standing.”

  Janet typed quickly and lifted her eyes to see Roy staring patiently and with perfect composure. He was not breathing heavy and his gaze was steady and clearly analyzing their vividly alarming situation without revealing any undue alarm.

  “Thirteen vaults are down,” she said clinically. “It looks like …”

  “The big one,” stated Roy.

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “It looks like the most powerful one is inside this corridor and the vaults aren’t strong enough to stop him. From what I can discern from a pattern, it looks like it’s just searching at random. But sooner or later it’s going to knock down the right door and find us. And if you don’t have enough ordinance to put it down …”

  She didn’t finish.

  She didn’t have to.

  Roy lifted the rifle, resting the stock on his hip.

  He bowed his head.

  “Yeah,” he said somberly.

  ***

  Isaiah stood over another shattered vault. He knelt and seemed to measure the claw marks, and finally nodded.

  “These impressions are a lot more distinct than they were at the last vault,” he murmured.

  Amanda asked, “And that’s important?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Because now we have proof that the first one we saw didn’t do this,” Isaiah stated coldly. “There’s obviously two of them. And the biggest one—the most powerful one—did this. Then it let the other one hunt us down while it went its way.” He raised his face to the corridor. “They seem to work in coordination. Like people. But one doesn’t necessarily know where the other one is or what it’s doing, so they’re not telepathic. Still, they seem to work in unison. Maybe they have some kind of language.”

  “You think they can talk?”

  “Why not? People can talk. Why not aliens or whatever they are?” He nodded, “Yeah, I think they can talk. And they can plan. But even though they work together, one doesn’t always know what his buddy is doing, so they don’t have the same brain. And, like I said, they’re not telepathic.”

  “But how can we know that for sure?” Amanda asked. She couldn’t remove her eyes from the horrendous impact marks driven into the titanium vault. “I mean, what makes you say they can talk and communicate verbally but not telepathically?”

  “Because the other one would have already called for his big brother to rescue him from that stairway. And if his buddy had freed him, we would have run into him by now. He’d be hunting us down out of sheer revenge because I’m beginning to think that electrical line hurt him worse than I thought. So, obviously, they can’t check status with each other any better than we can. We have to talk to each other, so I’m thinking that they do, too. So we don’t know where it’s at, and it doesn’t know where we’re at. We’re both just wandering through this maze and we could bump into each at any time … or never.”

  “I like ‘never’ better,” said Amanda. “Come on, Isaiah. You’re a genius at this stuff, remember? Finding ancient books? Getting out of tight spots? You’re resourceful and brilliant? So how about getting us out of this particular tight spot?”

  Isaiah shook his head, “The only thing we can do right now is keep moving and hope we come across something useful. We’re not getting anything done here.”

  “I’m with you,” Amanda strode forward matching him step for step. “Did I tell you that I work for free?”

  Isaiah laughed, “You don’t mind wo
rking for me?”

  Amanda considered before she admitted, “Well, no offense, but your place could use a woman’s touch. Or, maybe, we’ll move up in the world and live like real people. Hey! That’s an idea! You ever lived in a real house with doors and windows and closets and stuff?” She laughed. “Maybe a wraparound porch? A little greenhouse? We can have a garden! Don’t you like to eat healthy food? I do!”

  Isaiah hadn’t smiled in a long time and remembered how sorrow was better than happiness, how mourning was better than gaiety.

  It occurred to him how everything he had ever learned seemed a bit tedious as Amanda genuinely lifted his spirit, and his spirit had been in a canyon for as long as Isaiah could remember. So, whatever this was, he wasn’t going to walk away from a potentially precious thing. That is, if he could get them out of here.

  “Actually,” he said, “I’ve never had a garden.”

  “Oh, really? Why not?”

  “Never cared to have one.”

  “You don’t like healthy food?”

  “Gardens die. Everything dies.”

  Amanda paused. “That’s sad, Isaiah. Is everything in your life so expendable? Don’t you have anything you really care about? Something you love?”

  “I care about staying alive. Never had much of anything else.”

  “Now you do,” said Amanda, her hand tightening on his.

  It was a long moment before Isaiah replied.

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  Isaiah had counted steps between vaults and knew the doors were shut every few hundred yards. And with almost eighteen miles of tunnel, that added up to a lot of vaults. And he hadn’t managed to bypass a single one, so unless they literally came across an open door, which was highly unlikely, this was a walk to anything but freedom.

  Still, with Amanda tightly clutching his hand, he said nothing.

  “Can I ask you something weird?” Amanda began.

  “I ain’t goin’ no place.”

  “Was that thing wearing armor?”

  Isaiah paused. “I’ve been wondering that myself.”

  “It happened so fast, I’m not sure.”

  “I’m fairly certain that it was.”

  “An ape wearing armor?”

  “Well, it’s not an ape. It’s actually a pretty intelligent entity. More intelligent than us, even. And if we’re smart enough to wear armor, I guarantee you it’s gonna be smart enough to wear armor.”

  “That makes it tougher to kill, doesn’t it?”

  “It makes it a lot tougher.”

  “Great.” Amanda paused. “Well, at least I’ve got you. Like you said.”

  Isaiah shook his head with a laugh.

  “Lucky me.”

  ***

  Tanto had recovered with remarkable swiftness and was leaning against the frame of the open Observation Room door staring alertly into the corridor, glancing this direction and that, a finger on the trigger of his rifle.

  General Jackman was finally beginning to collect himself and was gazing over the various monitors as if searching for something specific. But he had said nothing, and Janet felt compelled to ask, “General? Can I help you?”

  “Huh?” Jackman raised his gaze. “Uh, no, thank you. I was just trying to see if there was some way to blow those Semtex charges and survive the catastrophe.” He paused. “So far, I don’t see any.” He sighed. “Nobody down here lives if we blow those tanks. And you said there was no way out?”

  “Not unless I take this place out of lockdown. But, if I do that, then this creature escapes into the world. And I don’t think you want that.”

  “No,” Jackman shook his head with new energy. “It’s not. If we have to blow those charges, or the bomb itself, and bury this place under a billion tons of ice and dirt, then we’ll blow it to keep those bastards down here.”

  “Did you guys manage to set all the satchels?” she asked and was abruptly surprised that she hadn’t asked before now; she realized that absolute horror rather effectively overcame more pedestrian faculties like “reason.”

  Jackman slowly nodded, “Yeah, but we still have one satchel.” He shrugged. “We always hold one back in case we need it for an emergency. And six of those Semtex charges are enough to destroy that collider, anyway.”

  “Is it true they can’t be disarmed once they’re initiated?” asked Janet to make small talk; the truth is, she really didn’t care. She simply wanted to talk about something besides the horror stalking them through these corridors.

  “If someone has enough time, sure.” Jackman gasped as he shook his head. “But it’d take a U-Haul full of circuit breakers and two weeks of planning. So with the time and resources they have down here? Nah. They can’t defuse them.”

  “How about the demons? Can they defuse them?”

  “Personally I don’t think those bastards are any smarter than we are.”

  “Just asking, but is there some other way to turn them off?”

  “Sure,” Jackman nodded. “Every satchel has a code that will turn it off right up to the last second.” He heaved a deep breath. “But I learned this morning that Roy and Tanto encrypted the codes last night making it ten times harder to turn ’em on or shut ’em down.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “So that nobody, including any American intelligence source, could remote detonate them to make sure we do the job their way.”

  “But isn’t that violating orders?”

  “Yeah,” Jackman grunted. “But in this gone to hell situation you gotta improvise. Anyway, he told Tanto that if he wasn’t back with both you girls in thirty minutes to go ahead and blow the place and all of us could die together.” He laughed, “But, then, that’s Roy. He’s a cowboy. He wasn’t about to leave you behind. Neither of you. None of us, neither. And I admire that. I truly do.”

  Janet laughed.

  “Yeah,” she said quietly, “I do, too.”

  “Look!” Jackman violently pointed at a monitor. “That must be the crew Whitaker warned us about. That’s Amanda Deker and that guy, Isaiah. How the hell did those two idgets get down here?” He stood, leaning heavily on the desk. “Those stupid flatfoots! Like we ain’t got enough problems down here!”

  Janet looked up as Jackman finished and saw a medium-sized, muscular man accompanied by a petite woman in a black dress walking slowly up a corridor. She checked the readout as she shouted, “Roy! Get over here!”

  Roy was across the room.

  “What is it?” he asked, dead calm.

  “Those are two innocent people,” Janet said with renewed energy. “That guy is this woman’s bodyguard and she’s here trying to find out how her sister got killed. You remember them from the file, right?”

  He nodded once.

  “We can’t let leave them out there, Roy.”

  “Any way to reach them without raising the vaults?”

  “No.”

  “Damn it.”

  “What do we do?”

  Roy released a deep breath, jaw tightening.

  “Where are they now?”

  “They’re four vaults down to the south and they’re about to reach a dead end. There’s no access panels. No electrical ports. And that vault is still standing. When they get to that wall, there’s no place to go.”

  Roy’s lips moved silently before he murmured, “Four vaults. If the spacing remains the same, which it always doesn’t, that’s probably about half a mile. So that’s five minutes down there, five back. And I’m betting those things can move faster than we can. Is there any way to lure those creatures away from this section of tunnel?”

  Janet started at the screens before saying, “I can probably lure them away with light. Give them a taste of the outside. That’s where they want to go, anyway, isn’t it? Then I can shut the doors again after you get back
here with these guys.”

  “The creatures can’t get out through the escape tunnels?”

  Janet shook her head, “Absolutely not. The tunnels are closed by blocks of steel that can theoretically withstand a ground-zero detonation of a nuclear blast.”

  Roy straightened.

  “Use the lights,” he nodded. “Lure them toward the escape tunnels.”

  “You’re going after these guys?”

  Roy lifted the heavy ballistic vest over his head and laid it on the desk. “Tanto’s in no shape. But before you begin opening the vaults between me and them, shut off the lights in this section of tunnel for a couple miles in either direction. But leave the lights on for whatever section contains me. And I’ll be moving fast, so keep up.”

  “Got it.”

  Janet began tripping lights as Roy removed extra clips, his bandoleer of grenades, his helmet and, finally, his kneepads. When he was finished, he looked like a modern ninja minus his equipment.

  “Reducing your weight for speed?” she asked.

  “Uh huh.”

  “I think you’re missing something.”

  “Won’t be the first time,” Roy muttered. “What now?”

  Janet took a moment before she said, “What if speed doesn’t work and you run slap into one of them without your rifle and grenades?”

  Roy shrugged, “If I run into it, I’ll do my best. They spend a million dollars training us to not feel fear.”

  “Wow. Does it work?”

  Roy raised his face.

  “Nope.”

  ***

  Amanda, remarkable, had recovered her powers of reason.

  “Tell me this,” she said. “What, exactly, are we looking for?”

  Isaiah was gazing along the floor and walls as they slowly strolled as if searching for signs that the creature might be close.

  Isaiah responded, “What?”

  “I said,” Amanda repeated, “what are we looking for?”

  “Oh, well, we’re looking for unlocked doors, that’s for sure. And we’re looking for any sign that it might be close to us.”

  “Like what kind of sign?”

  “Blood.” Isaiah shrugged. “Do you remember how blood seeped through that crack in the door leading from the collider? It hurt itself. It’s bleeding.” He nodded, “Yeah, this thing’s a lot stronger than us but it’s limited. Just like us.”