by Phil Maxey
A clank came from behind making her quickly turn again. “Sam?” she said to an empty room, just the flickering light from computer screens giving any indication of life. She took a few steps further into the area then heard it. It was faint, but it was real. A heart beat. She scoured the walls, walking quickly forward to look behind gurneys, desks and large pipes which fed the room all the time trying to locate the repeating tremor which was growing louder the deeper she moved.
Her head flicked towards the nearest of the huge vials. The sound was coming from within the liquid, she was sure of it and took a step forward as a shape began to take form within the swirling green substance…
Thin bones emerged, skeletal fingers scratching the inside of the curved glass. No thoughts moved through Jess’s brain as she watched the hand become a wrist, containing pink-red tendons then an arm which contained a patchwork of skin. Something was alive within the world inside the chamber, a thing which should have been dead. As the figure grew more defined the heart beat grew stronger and with it came an image of death. The body inside the capsule was more bone than flesh, but somehow it was animated. Across its face which exposed skull was a breathing apparatus, not that Jess understood how…
A thought came to her, something so obscene it took the strength from her legs and she collapsed to the floor as a cackling laughter emanated around the room. The thing behind the glass tapped and tapped and tears flowed from her mother’s eyes.
“As you can see, your child has been most useful. Her essence will be used to fuel my own children. To stop them from—”
It was just a moments thought, but it was enough for Jess to act on. As Rackham detailed why Sam was inside the acidic green prison, Jess grabbed one of the remaining office chairs and with a swipe, smashed it into the ten-foot glass sheet which shattered instantly. A wave of green liquid surged from the jagged hole, spilling across the floor, but what remained of Sam, hung, suspended from the top of the chamber by chains. Jess jumped up, ripping the metal links apart and embraced her daughter, bringing her to the ground, and laying her on the green glutinous surface.
The surrounding walls were changing, but Jess didn’t care as she caressed the strands of black hair hanging from the side of her child’s head. “Don’t try to talk… I’m here… I’m never leaving…” She gently pulled the plastic mouthpiece from Sam’s damaged face, as the teen’s eyes flickered, her mouth opening and closing but no words and hardly any breath emerged. Jess took what remained of her daughter’s hand in her own. “You sleep now. I love you. We all love you.” The fingers of her other hand slid across the other devices in her bag and rested on the switch to the explosive.
A rasping sound came from Sam’s exposed vocal chords. Jess leaned in closer.
“J….oooshhh….”
Jess leaned back slightly. “Josh? Josh is fine… Don’t worry. He’s far from he—” Her daughter’s face contained an expression of concern, her lips moved again. Jess got close again. “Gone… ffffooo…. Jossh…”
The blanket of grief lifted somewhat, replaced with shock and the familiar bubbling rage which she entered the room with. “Someone’s gone after Josh?” Sam’s head tilted slowly up and down. Was there less skull apparent? Jess cleared the tears from her eyes, then realized the bony protrusions in her hand felt different. She released her light grip and examined what were now exposed muscles. No bones to be seen. A spark of hope ignited within her. She had no idea how it was possible, but she had seen it already in herself and with the boy. Sam’s body was regenerating… Cells dividing, tissue growing, blood vessels doing their job once again. Her hand was now fully formed, her head mostly covered in hair, the holes across her torso, gone, replaced with pink patches of skin.
Sam coughed. “They’re… going.” The words came out as a low growl. She coughed and tried again. “Going after Josh!”
Jess pulled her jacket off and quickly placed it around Sam, her daughter placing her almost normal looking arms into the sleeves.
“Did you really think—”
Jess’s head flicked up to Rackham standing at the entrance to the room.
“— I would let such a useful specimen, perish? I was merely draining her, but I would have allowed her to regenerate so I could repeat the process.”
Sam crawled backwards while Jess stood, her hand still on the trigger within the bag. “You’re going to let us leave, and the others.”
An almost pained expression came to the thing fifteen-feet away. “Do you not realize how important, the gift you have is? Look around you! Witness its beauty!”
Before Jess could refute the madness the walls and ceiling came alive with motion. Shapes bubbled up from within the material, forming… creatures… animals… A humming bird broke free and fluttered around the room. A hiss came from the other side as a snake fell to the floor, slivered a few feet then instantly was reabsorbed. Within the creatures were flowers, a sea of color and scents. For a moment Jess was taken aback by what was being demonstrated. It was as if she was seeing the very formation of life itself, laid raw. The engine of creation. He was right, it was beautiful. She reached down, lending a hand to her daughter, who climbed to her feet, standing close then focused her attention back on the crazy scientist.
“You’re going to let us leave, and you can keep doing whatever the hell it is you are doing here. But my family are not—”
In an instant the surrounding motion stopped, being replaced with a flat, monotone gray.
“I was willing to share all of this with you! But unfortunately it would seem you continually be ungrateful!” Before Jess could react, Rackham’s arm raised then extended, covering the distance to her throat where his hand gripped and lifted her clear of the floor. She dropped the bag then flailed and punched at the stork-like appendage but with no effect as shadows loomed in her sight, her world growing dark.
Not like this… I can’t…
Sam watched the rage and fear flood her mother’s face as the oxygen supply to Jess’s brain diminished. Hope leaving with it. She looked across the room at the creature that pretended to be human and felt a fury she had never felt before. Moments before she was sure death was about to fully take her, but as she saw her mother struggling for life, something primordial was bursting to be let free. And then she understood. She understood it all. She looked at her own hand, now returned to normal then at Rackham’s. In a flash, her arm extended, her clawed hand grabbing his wrist and squeezed. A howl of pain came from the other end of the room and Jess fell to the ground, gasping for air. Sam quickly kneeled. “We can—” Something grabbed the back of her neck, pulling her into the air then flung her across the room, where she clattered against the wall, tendrils instantly forming across her arms and legs, pinning her down. “Mo—” Strands smothered her face, cutting her cries short.
Jess stood and surged towards the figure standing at the end of the room, without realizing she was growing in size, her arms and legs becoming thicker, muscles forming over muscles, moving faster and faster until she slammed into him, taking his body, the door and part of the frame into the next room, where they tumbled into desks and machinery alike. Scott raised his weapon, but just as he pulled the trigger to fill Rackham with holes the material covering the walls flicked out, grabbing the barrel as bullets streamed from it, sinking into the membrane covering the ceiling.
The clatter of gunfire was distant to Jess, her mind lost to rage as she lunged to grab Rackham’s neck, but eel-like his form folded, wrapping around her hand, then arm, creeping higher. Staggering back she smashed into a wall of monitors, extinguishing their light, trying to rid herself from the thing now smothering her shoulders. She could feel its grip, tightening, feel her ribs beginning to crack under the pressure as she slammed into pipes, cables and desks each instantly crumpling under the impact. Falling to her knees, she could hear it laughing, almost see a human face within the mass of tissue which now fully imprisoned her. Worse still, she knew they only had seconds before the bag
she left in the other room would explode taking them, the floor they were on and those above, with it. Straining every newly formed muscle she fought against the inhuman weight crushing her but her stamina was diminishing, her limbs fracturing.
And then it stopped. She flung the thing attached to her off, throwing it to the wall where it howled in pain, its form trying to reconstitute but instead parts dissolved as soon as they grew. She spun around to Scott holding the empty gasoline canister. He shrugged his shoulders.
“Sam!” she shouted, turning to run back into the other room, but her daughter was already in the doorway, staggering forward, her newly repaired body covered in lacerations. Without pause Jess scooped her up, placing her in her arms. “We need to leave!” she shouted once again running towards the stairwell, Scott in tow. In her mind she could hear the thing behind her, see Rackham’s thoughts. His mind was transparent but the agony which had momentarily allowed them to escape was dissipating, his insanity returning. She smashed through the final door, the membrane breaking like tissue paper. Luci and Sanchez were nowhere to be seen, but there was no time to consider their fate and with Scott she pushed her aching limbs to climb the stairs, higher and higher. Floor after floor came and went as she desperately tried to calculate how many—
A distant rumble gave her the answer. She knew they only had seconds to break out of the confined space they were in, making it into… She was falling. Masonry, rubble, dust, steel, fell with her within a cacophony of noise. In the dark she lunged with one hand, fumbling for anything to stop her and Sam’s descent back into hell, her fingers sliding across rough and smooth surfaces until just as she felt she had been falling forever, her hand caught a gap and she held on with everything she had…
The constant roar was replaced with silence. The air was thick with dust and even her improved vision couldn’t penetrate the absolute darkness which she existed in, but she could hear her daughter’s heart beat next to her own. “Sam? Sam?”
“I’m okay… I think… I don’t know… my head feels wet…”
“Can you climb up? Climb over me, find something above to get onto?”
Jess felt the weight on her change, her daughter’s hands gripping her shoulder then pulling herself up.
“I… can’t see much… I think there’s…” Sam heaved herself higher, holding onto what felt like the jagged corner of a ledge of some kind.
Jess felt lighter. She swung herself around, raising her other hand which was now free and with a pull, lifted herself higher, grabbing the platform Sam had just found. Spreading her fingers she touched rough, dusty surfaces. A wall, perhaps? Were they still in the stairwell? She had no idea. A clank sound came from high above, then another. She instantly recognized the morse code and pounded her fist into the wall but it just provided a dull thump.
“Here, use this,” said Sam, handing her mother a lump of brick which Jess instantly started to knock on the wall nearby. They both waited in silence for a reply. Instead dust and rubble fell from above. Jess scrambled to her side, covering Sam as small pieces bounced off her head and shoulders.
“Jess!” shouted Scott from somewhere above.
“Yes! We’re here!” she replied while looking up. A tiny point of light grew in size and swayed, left then right. “I’m with Sam, we don’t know where we are!”
“We think you’re on level four. The stairwell’s completely gone. You’re in the corridor next to it. Can you climb up?”
Jess felt the wall then higher, using the distant glow of Scott’s flashlight to give her some hint of what lay around her. A pit of darkness was inches from her boots, but the outline of a doorway was opposite. She reached out grabbing Sam’s hand, and both crouch-walked forward, ducking beneath pieces of ceiling that had fallen. “I think we can get to the…” An itch made itself known at the back of Jess’s mind.
“What? What is it?” said Sam, in the darkness, by her side.
“It’s… probably nothing. Let’s keep—”
A warm breeze swept across them both and with it came a sound, as if someone or something had let out a breath or sigh.
“I can’t see you,” shouted Scott. “Where are you?”
Jess placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “Go ahead, but be careful.”
“Okay…”
As Sam moved towards the stairwell, Jess kneeled near the void, stretching her senses into the pervading darkness. Something was down there. She could feel it. She leaned forward a touch more, grasping the end of the ledge. At first she thought the sound rising from below was the sound of the continuing destruction, that in the depths the underground complex was still collapsing in on itself, but then it formed something recognizable… a word which became a name.
“Jooossshhh…”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
4: 46 p.m. Heavercroft School.
Josh stood on the roof, near the small wall which ran along the edge and looked across the parking lot, road, fields and finally to the silhouette of trees against the coming night. His mother had told him that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and that was where he was looking. The direction where his family were, many miles over the darkening horizon. He wanted to believe he would see them again one day, but that was not how things worked in the new world. The world where monsters were real and people died. He had a feeling there was something wrong with the old man in the diner. He wasn’t sure if it was a smell, or just an itch at the back of his neck, but something told him to be wary of the mustached, heavyset man, just a few tables away. It was why he reacted before the others. They got it, though. Only one monster today.
He knew he should go back downstairs, into the empty halls and tell Meg where he had gotten to, but he wanted to keep his distance from others. People turned into things. Better to stay away. The people that had arrived the day before were now separated. Some staying inside their vehicles, others making sure the doors to the classroom they had picked out for their family were secure. Josh wasn’t sure if that was to keep people out or to protect those on the outside. Either way, since the incident in the diner the smiles had slid from peoples’ faces, even though he knew they were excited that there was only around a day and a half left for the virus to do its work.
He wondered if the vaccine he had been given would last, and if not, what it would be like to be a monster? Would he know he was one? Maybe if he thought really hard, he could be different. Not like the things he had seen terrorize people.
A creak came from the entrance to the stairs behind, the door opening before he could hide. Daryl came out, instantly spotting him.
“I’m sorry. Vance said—”
Daryl held up his hand. “It’s okay. Meg just asked me to track you down, make sure you were okay.”
He frowned, turning away. “I can take care of myself.”
Daryl walked to his side, both looking out over the nearby fields to the far treeline which rested on a slight incline. “Oh I know. But she worries.” He held up the radio to his mouth. “Found him. Over.”
A sigh with a ‘thank you,’ came from the speaker.
Daryl leaned on the wall. “Great view up here. How far you think we can see?”
Josh looked to the far trees, trying to guess. “Five miles.”
“Really? I think it’s at least a hundred.”
Josh giggled then realized Dary’s expression had changed. “Are you alright?”
A brief smile returned to Daryl. He nodded. “Yeah, just being on a rooftop… brings back memories of a few days ago.” He swung around, looking to the east and the pinks and mauves strips which peeked out from behind dark clouds. “When you wake up tomorrow, it will be the last day of all of this. And then… no more virus and no more monsters.”
“You think all the monsters will be gone as well?”
“Yeah, sure. Why not?”
Josh didn’t have an answer. “Do… you think my mom and dad will be coming back?”
“Of course!”
Jos
h could tell Dary’s reaction was exaggerated. He frowned again, looking away.
“Hey. I only knew you and your parents a bit before this past week. But damn, since then… I’ve never seen people fight so hard to keep their family together. I mean, it’s literally the end of the world, and Jess and Landon are out there fighting to find Sam, and I know they have found her. I’m sure of it.”
“Maybe…”
Daryl placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You hungry? I think I found a stash of chips in the staff room downstairs.”
*****
5: 01 p.m. Biochron complex.
With every heave and strain, Jess thought about what she heard three floors below. She was almost at the top of the crater which used to be the stairwell. Part climbing on the pipes and masonry and part being pulled up by gripping some electrical cabling that Scott and the others had thrown down. Sam was already at the top with them. How quickly she clambered up the jagged collapsed walls and ceilings was pleasing and unnerving in equal measure to her mother, but Jess had other things to be concerned about.
Scott leaned over the edge, his gloved hand becoming apparent in the glow from a flashlight. She grabbed it and climbed over the edge. She immediately recognized the difference to when she was last there. The air was full of dust and had a smokey aroma, but the distinctive stench from what had covered the walls was gone. She stood and moved close to one, then in almost disbelief ran her fingers across the smooth painted surface.
“Yup. No more gunk,” said Scott.
“Like it was never there,” said Sanchez.
“Sorry we weren’t down there,” said Luci. “We couldn’t hang around.”
Jess turned around, nodding. “It’s fine. Better you weren’t.”