by Phil Maxey
She looked at him. “What? It’s my—”
The space where her daughter had been was empty.
Another crash came against the garage shutter, which rippled in reply.
“Not going to hold,” said Luci.
Scott climbed back up into the driver’s seat, fired up the engine and reversed until the back was up against the shuddering barrier. He climbed back down, joining the others. “Not sure how long that’s going to help.” He looked to the entrance to the guard lockers, shaking his head. “Really did not want to be back here… ever.” He looked at Jess. “Any idea what floor she’s on?”
She touched her temple hoping the buzzing from the things outside and within would quieten, to allow her to better concentrate on the task at hand. “I don’t know…”
“Right. Then we go level by level.” He took a step forward before she spoke again.
“He’s here…”
“Who?”
“The thing you thought was Lucas Winters. I think it was Rackham.”
Scott’s brow tightened. “I don’t know what that thing was, but it wasn’t the chief crazy.”
“I’m telling you, it was him. I don’t know how he looked the way he did. But I’m sure.”
A brief glance moved between Scott and Luci.
“Okay then.”
They all moved forward into the hallway, sliding the beams of their flashlights across the lockers. They looked the same as before.
“What… is… that…” said Luci.
Everyone else swung their lights, joining her’s, towards the entrance to the stairs, some tens of feet away. The gap had been replaced with strands of what appeared to be blue-green skin, or muscle. None of those standing aghast could make sense of it.
“Is there another way down?” said Sanchez, a tinge of fear in his voice.
“There’s a staff elevator on the other side of the building,” said Scott. “I’m not full of hope that it will be any better.”
“If we could even get to it,” said Luci.
Sanchez looked back to the membrane, his mouth moving, lacking words to describe what he was seeing.
Jess walked forward and with a scythe of the barrel of her weapon tore holes in the organic material which flapped and waved then suddenly slid back together. She shook her head, turned, jogging back to the garage and retrieved the container of gasoline, picking up another and handed it to Scott. “This should work.”
He looked at the mostly full jug. “This is our defense?”
She ignored his question, walked to the former door to the stairwell and splashed some of the yellow, strong smelling contents on what was blocking their way. Steam rose while holes appeared, the sheath falling to the floor. She almost wished she hadn’t acted, for now their lights were illuminating the small space on the other side.
“You want us to go into that?” said Luci.
Every inch of the walls, ceiling and floor was covered in the same material. A slime soaked covering which appeared alive with welts and constantly moved as if beneath its surface were an infinite number of microscopic creatures.
Without another thought, Jess walked over the threshold, her boots sinking an inch into the soft, fleshy substance. She waited a few seconds, expecting it to come alive and attack her, but instead it simply continued to throb and pulse. “It’s safe. We have to go down to the next level.”
They reluctantly followed, each having to pull their boots from the floor as if they were walking through viscous mud and descended.
Jess approached the entrance to more staff quarters. This door was only partially covered by the inhuman substance and was partially open. She poked her light into the gap but something told her, her daughter was nowhere within the deep shadows of the other doors in the corridor beyond. She turned, shaking her head. “She’s not on this—”
A clang echoed from below, making everyone flick their weapons towards the new set of stairs they were about to move down, and then lower as Scott peered over the edge, hoping his flashlight strapped to his weapon would illuminate the six-floors to the basement level, but the light gave up after three. “Why do I get the feeling we’re being watched.”
Jess walked down the steps. “Because we are.” She knew what covered the interior of the Biochron underground labs was an extension of the chief scientist. If hell truly could exist on earth, Rackham had found a way to bring it to life. And Sam was down there, being held by something that was no longer a man or even human. This was his domain and despite the creatures’ efforts to kill her… or worse, absorb her, she knew now she had made it here, he would try to capture her and that gave her an advantage. Not much of one, but it was something.
They arrived at floor two, the numbers increasing the deeper they moved. She briefly moved near the membrane-covered door and kept on going.
“Agh!” screamed Luci, jumping back and into Sanchez.
He swung around. “What?”
“The wall! Or whatever the hell this stuff is. There was an eye! Like it was full of them!” She fumbled the straps on her backpack open, pulling out one of the bricks then held it towards what she had just seen. “Look what I got! Yeah you watch! See what happens when all of this goes—” She flinched, pivoting as Scott placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Luci…”
She sighed. “I know… it’s cool. I’m cool… we’re here for the kid…”
“Yeah… We got this. Let’s keep going.”
Jess had seen what Luci had. It was as if the entire complex had become a living organism. Perhaps the creatures above ground were the same, just extensions of an insane mind. Perhaps that would mean—
A wave of skin and tissue bulged out, engulfing Sanchez, his arms and legs flailing but instantly losing the fight as it sucked him back, slamming him into the wall.
Scott and Luci grabbed his hands, pulling with what strength they had as new strands continued to grow across his arms.
“Get it… off.. me!” he shouted, straining every muscle he had to pull himself free before a blanket of oily liquid smothered him and he found himself falling forward as the gasoline burned the organic material and his skin alike. He jumped away from the wall, or as far as he could get being in such a confined space, then wiped his face. He looked up at Jess, her face illuminated by Scott and Luci’s flashlight. “Thank you.”
She looked at them both. Hold your arms out. They both knew the reason and quickly did so as she poured the remainder of her container over them.
“Same for you,” said Scott, unscrewing the lid on his and poured some over her.
“The dryer it gets the less effective it will be,” she said. They all looked at what was left in Scott’s jug, which was half full.
Luci walked to the top of the new set of stairs. “Let’s find your kid.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
3: 41 p.m. Town of Newgrove.
Landon looked through the dark, smoked window of the bank, across the intersection to the train freight cars, which spanned his entire view. He was in a large office area, just beyond the lobby and five others sat on desks and chairs around him.
“Track goes all the way down to New Mexico to the south and Texas the other way,” said Owen.
“The engine working?”
“Sure is.”
“Going to be useful after tomorrow,” said an elderly man, introduced to Landon as Dale.
A gray-blonde, middle-aged woman scoffed. “If those things have gone.”
“Well there are none around here anymore,” continued the old man. “That’s a good sign.”
“You all from this town?” said Landon to whoever would answer.
“Some,” said Owen. “Others been drifting in since the plague started.”
“You’re in charge?” Landon had been sizing up the stout, fifty-something since he first set eyes on him, and nothing about the older man’s demeanor gave him any caution. But still, he watched his actions and listened to every word. He wasn’t about t
o hang around another cult leader.
“I am,” said Owen. “Have a cattle ranch just outside of town. I don’t pay much attention to the city news but then these… things appeared, started killing the stock. Then…” He sighed. Landon had seen the same reaction on many a face over the past few days. “Then people started to change… until it was just me and few others in the town, left.”
A younger man, seated a bit further back looked at Landon. “You say you’re from Denver?”
“Originally, yeah.”
“Me too. Were there many with you?”
“My family...” Landon knew he had made a mistake. But the words had already left his lips. Now he just needed a good explanation as to how it was possible four members of the same family were immune. He didn’t need his wife’s mind for maths to know the chances of that were remote. He decided to go with honesty. “There was a vaccine…”
Owen wasn’t the only one that shifted in his chair. “Vaccine?” said Owen. “So you don’t change?”
Landon nodded. “Yup, and no I don’t have any. I wish I did… my wife is currently in Denver trying to get more.”
“Why aren’t you with her?” said Dale.
Landon held up his now dark blue hand. “I wanted to. But she’s with another group. We arranged for me and the other two to head south, find somewhere to wait.”
“You got any feeling in that?” said Owen.
Landon shook his head.
“Then I reckon it’s time you met Doc Barker.”
“So she’s coming here with the vaccine?” said the woman.
“That’s the plan if they can get to it, but we all just need to get through the next twenty-four hours and we won’t need it anyway.”
The room fell quiet. Landon knew what he’d just said had holes in it, but he wasn’t about to be completely honest as to why Jess was in the city. That could come later. After the six-days period was up and his family were back together.
Owen smiled. “Well, we appreciate the supplies. You’re welcome to wait here until this situation is over.”
*****
3: 51 p.m. Biochron complex.
Jess thought she was used to the stench which the virus created material released into the air, but as she moved off of the last step to level six, even she held her breath. She stood for a moment, trying to dredge up memories of the layout, sliding her beam across the wall, stalks, tendrils and other shapes she had no explanation for, all of which shrunk as the light moved over them then quickly grew again in the dark. At any other time and any other place, what she saw about her would have been the subject of decades of study, but in that moment she felt nothing other than rage for what her family had been put through.
The layers which covered everything were thicker here, making the space she and the three others could move within even smaller.
She looked at the door she had escaped from days before.
“She in there?” said Scott, trying to stifle a cough.
She wasn’t sure. There had been no more visions, or whatever they were. When she saw Sam on the ground floor and no one else had, she concluded the stress of the situation was making her hallucinate. But as they descended she wondered if maybe there was something else happening within her mind. It had been altered by the virus, that much was obvious and so had Sam’s. She also knew the creatures could communicate beyond their five senses. Could she and her daughter do the same? Was Sam trying to reach out to her?
That meant Sam was still alive, the only possibility Jess would allow herself to believe, even though deep down, somewhere dark and numb she also knew her daughter might no longer be breathing.
He needs her alive…
Another fact she didn’t understand, but knew to be true. Rackham wanted Sam for some awful reason. But whatever it was, it would have kept her alive. Jess just prayed as she turned to descend to the lowest level of the underground complex, that it was still the case. That somewhere below was Sam, waiting to be rescued. She would also deal with Rackham, once and for all. The man that had ended most life for some reason that didn’t matter. She nudged the pack on her back, feeling the weight of what it contained.
“I got a real bad feeling about this,” said Luci, her voice slightly distorting as the sound waves struggled through the thick air.
As they came around the second to last landing, Sanchez swung his light downwards to the lowest floor in this hell. “What’s that?” he said. A feint blue glow lit the constant flow of patterns permeating the ever changing walls and floor.
Jess slowly descended. “Bioluminesence. Whatever is on these walls, is creating its own light…”
“Like jellyfish…” said Luci.
“Yes…”
Jess stepped off the last step and looked at the door.
“Er… I just realized something,” said Scott, waving his weapon from one strange protrusion to another. “Where are the monsters?”
The same thought had occurred to Jess many floors up, but the answer she kept to herself, until now… “We’re looking at them. They’re all around us…”
Luci wasn’t the only one whose eyes grew large, her weapon and head flicking from side to side, wall to wall. Jess though was only focused in one direction. The vague shape of a door, a few feet in front of them. She took a step forward.
“Hey, wait, we need to use the—”
The blue-green tendons and skin pulled back, slithering to the frame, leaving perfectly clean steel. They all looked at her.
“Did you do that?” said Scott.
“I told you, he knows we’re here.” She walked the remaining few feet and pushed down the handle. She had seen a few painted scenes of hell in her time, sometimes up close in galleries from the medieval minds, but none of them came close to what the confined area through the doorway contained. Hands and other human and animal appendages formed and dissolved across the walls, floor and ceiling as if she were looking into the mind of Mother Nature herself.
Luci backed up. “Nah uh… I’m sorry, Jess, but this is as far as I go. It’s suicide going in there.”
Scott looked at Sanchez for support but he also took a step back. The soldier shook his head, looking back to Jess and what lay beyond the open door. “Just me and you then.” He stepped to her side. “Let’s get this done.”
“We’ll be here,” said Sanchez.
Luci looked at the ever changing walls. “Yeah…”
Jess walked forward into the room, instantly feeling the warmer air. As she did the few inches of pulsating tissue on the floor ahead, split apart, leaving just the tiles, hardly stained.
“Just when this couldn’t get any freakier,” said Scott, making sure to stand in the same empty area as the woman in front of him. “So er… Rackham is controlling all of—” The threshold he had just passed, closed then tendrils and strands, reached across the door’s surface, until that way of escape was gone. They both turned back to the end of the room, where another door had appeared.
“So we—”
Jess walked forward.
“— Okay, we go where he wants us to then.”
Jess could feel the fear of the man behind her, not just from his voice but also his increased heart rate and sweat. Her heart though remained steady, as resolute as her mind in its goal.
The new door opened by itself and they moved through it to the largest room they had seen so far, despite whatever covered most of it. Some corners and tops of desks peeked from gaps in the moist membrane and computer screens somehow still functioned across the walls. There were no other doors though, or if there were, they were being hidden from the two human imposters for now.
“So glad—”
Scott almost jumped in the air, his weapon being raised at Rackham’s voice which was echoing across the room from hundreds of human mouths which formed and instantly dissolved in the surrounding walls and every other possible surface. Several expletives came from his mouth, but Jess only had attention for what was forming in front o
f her.
“— You could join us, Mrs. Keller...” Fingers… then hand, wrist, forearm, followed by stomach, groin, hips, chest all grew from bone, then sinew, nerves, muscles and finally skin until a naked Charles Rackham stood fifteen-feet away. His facial scar had gone. His appearance as fresh as if he had just been created, which he had.
“Where’s my daughter?”
Rackham smiled, lifting a hand away from his body. Organic substance stretched up from the floor, covering his fingers then arms and the rest of his body until he was clothed in a kind of smooth, silky black material.
She removed the pack from her back, unlatched the flap then reached in. Her fingers finding the first of the explosives, and pushed open the plastic covering of one of the switches.
“You think, what you have in your bag will be sufficient to put an end to me? After all you have seen?”
“I’m going to ask one more time. Where is—”
He frowned, turning with a sigh. “Yes. Your offspring. I was hoping you would be more cooperative after how all of this is because of you. And your lineage.”
Jess could feel Scott looking at her, but didn’t care. How everything came about was something that would matter to historians in ten years’ time. Her finger felt the cold metal of the switch. “Give me my—”
A door sat at the end of the room, which wasn’t there a moment before. It slowly opened. The space behind was better lit than the room they were in and was less threatening in appearance. The substance which smothered every inch of where they were, was largely absent. From the equipment she could tell it was some kind of lab but what was at the end of it was nothing she had seen before outside of Saturday night movies. Large capsules filled with a green liquid. It somehow made sense considering what she had walked through to get there.
Rackham gestured towards the doorway. “Go. See for yourself how useful she has been…”
Jess looked at him, his smirk chilling her heart. She ran forward, through the doorway then stopped, looking for Sam, but she was nowhere to be seen. She spun around. “Wh…” The doorway had been removed, replaced with membrane. Was this the plan all along? Trap her in hell forever? Torment—