Two more crabs climb up behind the first two, entering with the same careless aggression, slowly but unceasing in their advancement.
“Oh my god!” Sydney yells. “Oh my god, it’s them.” This sentence starts as a murmur, and then it crescendos with each word that follows. “They’re inside. We have to shoot them!”
Jones frowns and keeps the gun pointed at Spence, but I can see a hint of concern steadily growing on his face. “They’re too far away. It would be a waste of ammo.”
“As I was saying,” Smalley chimes in, “maybe now would be a good time to go have a look around.” She throws a look over her shoulder. “Back there.”
I agree and begin walking back to the interior door where Smalley stands ready to go. I corral Sydney on the way, forcing her to move with me. Pam needs no motivation to go in the same direction and is already next to Smalley, waiting for the rest of us.
“Let’s go,” Jones says, walking Spence from around the reception desk, his hand still gripped tightly on the back collar of the man’s shirt. They take the wide route to get to the door, exiting the confines of the reception desk on the side opposite where the interior door is located and walking around to the front. As they reach the midsection of the desk, about halfway to the door, Spence thrusts his shoulders forward and bucks his head like a horse, and in less than half a second, he has easily broken free of Jones’ grasp and is making a run for it, away from us and toward the oncoming crabs.
“Hey!” Jones calls, and then takes a few instinctive steps in pursuit. But after three or four paces he stops abruptly, seeming to grasp the inanity of chasing.
“Spence, no!” Pam commands. “What are you doing?” The last cry is that of a lover. Or perhaps of someone who wishes to be. I study her face as I approach the door, her age and features, and the match with Spence suddenly makes sense.
Spence stops a little past the halfway point between us and the front entrance, which is just about far enough away that he no longer fears being shot. He then turns back, staring, first at Pam, and then at Jones. The crabs are still thirty yards or so away from him and, at the moment, still plodding forward, not quite attacking.
“We’re not going to hurt you, Spence,” I call. “We just wanted answers. That’s why we’re here. The people here have destroyed a lot of lives, mine included. We just want to know what happened. Why it happened. And how to leave this place and get back to life.”
Spence bows his head and puts his hand at the back of his neck. It’s a movement that signals both guilt and exhaustion. He lifts his head and stares at me. “I know. I know that’s what you want. And I can’t give it to you. Not the answers and not the escape plan.”
“Who then?”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t stay. If I’m here when she finds out what happened, she’ll have me killed. One of them will.”
“Killed?”
Spence shrugs. “It’s my job to keep this place secure. To keep any internals out. The breach of the lobby is one thing, that’s not entirely within my control. But the labs, that’s something else.”
Spence seems to be making an indirect plea for us to let the door close, to spare him the consequences that will come from allowing us to get inside. But that will never happen. We’re entering the lab area whether it means his death or not.
“Who are you talking about?” I ask. “If you’re leaving anyway, then just tell us.” But Spence has said his peace. He turns and looks back to the crabs again, measuring their distance from him, calculating how long he has until he makes his ultimate getaway. He’s got another minute or two it seems; the white ghosts continue their desultory throng of the lobby, unconcerned with the unfolding of our drama. But I’ve seen it several times now—the escalation to madness can happen in an instant.
I look from Spence to Pam and repeat my question. “Who is he talking about?”
“Mrs. Wyeth,” Pam says.
“Who is that?”
“She’s the supervising manager of the lab—kind of like the CEO of this place. She’s been gone since the blast. Everyone thought she was dead. Everyone thought she got caught up in the blast.”
“And you kept working anyway? You kept coming in?”
“We kept getting orders. The airlifts in and out continued. Companies don’t stop operating just because the boss dies.”
It’s not an exact analogy, but I let it go. “Who gives these orders?”
“The colonel. And others. People above him, I guess.”
“Nameless and Faceless?” I ask.
“Exactly.”
“And now she’s here? This Wyeth woman? Where was she all this time?”
“We still don’t know. She just showed up yesterday. Walked in like it was a typical weekday morning, coffee in hand, barking orders.”
“Spence said she would kill him. Is that true?”
“I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know why he said that. The people who run this place are pretty uptight, military types, but I’ve never seen or heard anyone being treated inhumanely” Pam’s voice is nervous now, like she’s about ready for the conversation to end as well.
“No? What about the thousands of people that were turned into monsters by this company? And then were prevented from leaving by armies at the borders. Does any of that count as inhumane?”
“Leave her alone,” Sydney says quietly, uneasily. “She didn’t do anything?”
“What kind of company is this? What kind of company produces weapons that kill innocent people? And whose management kills people that don’t do their job?”
“Welcome to D&W,” Sydney says with a nervous laugh, and then immediately begins to cry.
I look back to the entrance of the D&W building and watch as Spence begins his run to freedom. He takes a wide berth, nearly brushing up against the far wall of the lobby, and then sprints toward the shattered opening of the glass doorway. He steers clear of the crabs, passing them like he’s returning a punt in a college bowl game as he goes, dodging each of them easily before reaching the passage and exiting through the empty frame. Some of the white ghosts give a passive look as he flees, but they make no move to catch him. They’re halfway through the lobby now and advancing.
I look back to Pam, whom I’ve decided is the more knowledgeable of the two women, the more experienced worker at D&W. “So what, you make chemicals here? Is that it? Is that what changed normal people into that?”
Pam closes her eyes and cups her hands around her mouth, sliding them down her chin and joining them in a praying position. “Look, we don’t work on the chemical side of things. Sydney and I are IT; we just keep the computers running. I’ve been here four years and Sydney was brought on a little over a year ago. We started hiring to prepare for some big event, and Syd and I were kept on as the emergency staff. Triple pay.”
I can see that Pam regrets stating the last part of her bio, as it lumps her in with the leaders that caused this. Greed, always the motivator. She bows her head and sighs. “Anyway, yeah.”
“What about Spence?” I ask.
“He’s the...was the floor manager. But I swear to god, we didn’t know what was coming. We didn’t know about the snow and the...destruction.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I swear. We knew as much as we needed to keep the systems going, and we saw things we probably shouldn’t have—of course, but that’s the nature of the job. But we’re not like the doctors here. The scientists. They’re...” Pam’s voice cracks and she shakes off the rest of her sentence.
“I would advise that you not let yourselves off the hook that easily. You are a part of this. You are responsible. Keeping the computers up keeps the process going. And that does contribute to the destruction. You said you saw things, and you’ve already admitted that you know about the monstrosity that occurred out there. While you’ve been seeing these things from your comfortable charter flights in and out of hell for the past few months, we’ve been living it.” My voice is as close t
o yelling as possible without actually being classified as such.
Pam and Sydney both look away, Sydney to the ground in shame, Pam to the sky, rolling her eyes in denial. “You don’t—”
“I don’t care!” This time I’m yelling, and I feel the desire to rush toward this woman and grab her neck with my hands, my thumbs pressing against her windpipe.
But the truth is, it’s not her fault. And I know as well as anyone how easy it is to gradually get sucked into something illicit, even abominable, and then to justify each day that passes, telling yourself again and again how it isn’t your fault, and, in this case, how you’re just trying to make a living and provide for your family. I don’t know Pam’s situation; maybe triple pay buys medicine that keeps her kid alive.
“I’m sorry,” Sydney says, now bawling like a child. Pam is crying too, and I can see the apology all over her face.
“What do you think fellas?” Smalley asks. You think that’s close enough?” Smalley motions in the direction of the approaching crabs, several of whom are almost three quarters of the way across the lobby. They’re still far enough away that we would make it through the door, but the margin of error is getting awfully thin. At any moment, one of them could get the trigger and decide to attack, and as I now know, the rest would likely follow.
“I think that’s right, Stephanie. Let’s go.”
Jones and I follow Pam and Sydney into the back of D&W laboratories, each of us brushing past Smalley who holds the door and then falls in behind us. But just before she allows the heavy door to close behind us, to seal us in like some destructive ancient god being banished back to his tomb, I look back to watch a dozen more crabs crawling in through the broken entrance of the building, their bodies woven together to look like one big mass of flesh.
And in that last instant, one of the early approachers breaks out from the crowd and begins to run full speed toward us, and they all begin to follow.
Pam turns back and enters a code into the door; not that it matters, I think, since the crabs still don’t seem to have figured out that particular skill. But still, the sound of the firing locks gives me a sense of immediate comfort. How we’ll ever leave this place, I can’t imagine at the moment, but that’s a problem for later.
We take two or three steps inside the pre-entrance to the main laboratory, and then the dull crash of the door finalizes our position.
“Guess you picked a good time to go, Smalley,” Jones says, motioning back to the closed door, where no doubt the crabs are now piling up against it.
“Just stick with me, Stewart, you’ll be okay.”
“There’s one more thing I haven’t told you,” Pam says suddenly, instantly destroying the flash of light-heartedness that existed.
“Yeah, what’s that?” Smalley asks.
“You remember Spence said his job was to keep internals out?”
“Yeah. What did that mean?”
“Internals. It’s the name they had for anyone inside the cordon who was still living—and hadn’t changed—after the blast.”
“So us then,” I say.
Pam nods.
“What about it? What didn’t you tell us?”
“Mrs. Wyeth, when she came back...” Pam stalls, as if rethinking her decision to tell us her secret.
“What is it, Pam?” I say, harnessing my professor voice, low and leading, like I’m trying to extract a shy student’s interpretation of Goethe.
“When she came back yesterday, there were a couple of internals with her.”
Chapter 10
The hallway behind the heavy steel door is long and straight, with flat white walls on either side, cutting off about two thirds of the width of the hangar. It looks like a hallway you would expect to find in a mental institution, the kind that in movies have small-windowed doors staggered every twenty paces or so, and behind each of those, straight-jacket-bound patients screaming nonsensically as the doctors pass.
But there are no side doors in this hallway, only one directly ahead, at the end of this corridor that seems to extend forever. It looks like we’re heading to some laboratory version of the gates of heaven.
There aren’t doors along the wide hallway, but there are several golf carts littered about, their purpose obvious.
“I’m guessing those aren’t functioning at the moment?” I ask aloud, almost rhetorically.
“No,” Pam says, frowning as she shakes her head. “The supply copters bring fuel for the generators regularly, but they don’t want us using the power for luxuries like golf carts.” Pam uses her ring fingers and pinkies to make air quotes on the word ‘luxuries,’ and I almost laugh aloud at the gesture. I make an absent note to myself to steal the move if I ever get out of here.
“So you have electricity then?”
“Yeah, of course,” Sydney says, “how else would the doctors, or any of us, be able to work? And how would they have kept them alive?”
“Who?” It’s Smalley, and her voice lacks all remnants of playfulness.
Pam and Sydney exchange looks, and I can see a quiet acceptance between them, an understanding that all of this is about to collapse so holding back now is senseless.
“Them,” Sydney says matter-of-factly, and then gives a shrug. “The changed.”
“That’s a pretty euphemistic term,” I say. “You make it sound like these people had a bad reaction to Botox or something.”
“It’s what we call them. It’s what they are.”
“You have some of them here then?” Jones asks, his question the more obvious one, the important one at the moment.”
Pam nods, “Oh yes. Nineteen of them now.”
“Nineteen? Why that number?”
“There were close to fifty when we started.”
We’re only a few steps from the end of the corridor now and the interior door which no doubt leads to the business section of our adventure. But I’m not quite ready for the showdown. There’s a chance—a good chance—that none of us makes it out of this building, and I want to know as much as I can about what happened. “So the rest of them, they were killed during experiments or something?”
“Something like that?”
“You seem to know a bit more than you let on originally, Ms. Pam,” Smalley adds. I was thinking the same thing.
“I know that it happened—the blast and the people changing afterwards—and I know about that experiments were done after. And are still being done.”
“Like Ms. Smalley said, that’s quite a bit more.”
“But I don’t know why. I’m IT, I told you. Sydney and I offer tech support. But there are only a few of us still here now and...I guess things have gotten a little cozy. People talk get a little more comfortable with their secrets.”
“But not about what the purpose of all this was? I find that hard to believe.”
“It was just Spence and a few of the other doctors who kept coming here, even after Ms. Wyeth disappeared, and they didn’t ask questions. I think they believed if they never heard directly why it happened, that somehow they would be exonerated of guilt. Just taking orders, I guess.”
“So like Nazis then?”
“Like I said, there are people much higher than Spence and the doctors, or even Ms. Wyeth. I’m sure she knew more, but not Spence. He was just kept on to manage this place: coordinate the copters, order supplies, that kind of thing. Make sure the trains ran on time. But they never told him about any of the reasons.”
“How can you know that? For sure?”
Pam’s eyes soften, and I can see in them the pain from earlier, during Spence’s escape, and it’s obvious now that a fair bit of pillow talk took place between the two of them. “I know.”
We finally reach the door at the end of the corridor, and, like the interior lobby door, it too has a keypad on the wall to the right of it.
“I’m assuming you know the code, Pam?” I say, the exhaustion in my voice unmistakable, even to my own ears. “Because this would have been a who
le lot of work for nothing.”
“I do.”
I look over to Jones and Smalley and then back to Pam. “Let’s do it then. Let’s find this Wyeth lady.”
“I need you to put the gun to my head,” she replies, no trace of humor on her face, no hesitation in her voice.
“What?” Jones asks.
“Listen, like you, I don’t know how any of this is going to end up. But if it ends with the three of you dying, I don’t want us to be seen as accomplices to your infiltration. I’ll help you as much as I can—we both will—we understand that what happened in this county is horrible and illegal—a cataclysm—and the people responsible for it deserve to be punished. Severely. Maybe they even deserve to die.” Pam dips her head for a moment in thought and then looks up again. “Yes, they do deserve to die. But you also don’t know these people. You’ve seen what they were willing to do just to create this...I don’t know, weapon, I guess?
The word ‘weapon’ smashes against the inside of my brain, and I know now that there could be no other purpose for the creation of the crabs.
“So if they’re willing to do that, what do you think they’ll do to protect themselves from going to prison? Or getting a lethal injection?”
Jones speaks up, tipped off by some other portion of Pam’s explanation for her request. “Who exactly is back here? You said doctors and a woman—and the white monsters, which I assume are locked up somewhere. Is there someone else we should be aware of?’
Pam looks down again and over at Sydney, whose eyes are wide, riveted on her co-worker, trusting in whatever she decides to do.
“There are three soldiers. Armed obviously. Military-grade rifles. And then the Colonel and Mrs. Wyeth.”
“And the ghosts—the Changed—I’m right to assume they’re caged?”
“Most of them are in a large open room at the back of the arena, with glass paneling all around. Think of a hockey rink, except instead of ice, the floor is covered with snow.”
“Arena?” I ask.
They Came With The Snow Box Set {Books 1-2] Page 20