This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, are used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
MIND’S HORIZON
Copyright © 2019, by Eric Malikyte
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Eric Malikyte
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A MESSAGE FROM ERIC
PROLOGUE
It slithered from the dark, taking long, deliberate steps across the metal floor around Val. Val's eyes tracked the thing's pace, uncertainty painting her face—her body shivering with a fear so complete that Aden could almost feel it from the grating in the corridor she'd hidden behind.
Aden shuddered at the spines on its back. They pulsed and waved through the air, smacking against themselves like the quills of a porcupine. Aden had never seen it so clearly before; it had to be at least twenty feet long.
Val's eyes found hers in the dark. Her lips trembled, tears forming in her eyes.
Aden's fingers gripped through the grating, watching helplessly as the thing coiled around Val like a snake.
Val shook her head. "Run."
It reared back like a wolf, ready to sink its blackened teeth into its prey. Aden covered her own mouth, trying not to scream.
From within its shadowy head, seven eyes pulsed with eerie gray light the moment before it snatched Val's body up in its massive jaws and dragged her to God knows where.
But she did know; she knew all too well about that other place, a place that was between physical space and that nebulous void where dreams and nightmares dwell. Val's screams filled the concrete tunnel, lingering long after her body was gone.
The lights flickered and Aden was alone.
She'd read about that place in Weber's secret book, the one she'd stolen it from his room hours before the alarm sounded. She felt the leather cover with the tips of her fingers.
There had been a time before this madness. A time spent crawling through record stores, going to the movies, and spending entire days at the beach.
She'd give anything to return to that time now.
With tears pouring down her cheeks, Aden honored Val's last request, limping down the stone tunnel corridor, following signs that read TO CORE REACTOR. The sounds of her bare feet slapping against the concrete floor and her shallow, panicked breathing bounced off the curved walls of the corridor.
Her heart skipped a beat every time the lights flickered, and she thought: Maybe this is it, maybe I won't make it this time.
But each time it was only a power fluctuation, or the creature was testing her resolve, waiting for her sanity to break before it made its move on her.
At the start of the trials, the creature had seemed drawn to what they were doing. No one believed what they were seeing, and Weber waved off their concerns like they were nothing.
What had drawn it to them? She guessed that the occult nature of the experiments, and the levels of energy that they were playing with, acted like a beacon to the creature, the same way it must have been drawn to its prey eons ago when its alien masters unleashed it upon their enemies.
That too, was in Weber's forbidden book.
Aden came to the end of the hall. The door was already open. She entered, and the hatch closed behind her with a hiss.
Doctors Wong, Weber, and Abrams had managed to make it. The three of them huddled around the pulsing cylindrical fusion core in the center of the chamber. They were nursing bruises and wounds and bloody scrapes. Trivial things compared to the unknown fates of the others.
In the pale red light of the pulsing core, Weber looked decrepit and old. He was a pale shadow of what he had been months ago.
"One of the volunteers survived," Wong said, rising from her seat cautiously. She was little older than Aden was.
Volunteer, Aden thought. Is that really what we all were?
"It appears she has indeed," Weber said, a yellow-toothed grin spreading from ear to ear. "We can't wait any longer. We have to activate the final experiment protocol."
"We don't even know if it'll work," Abrams said, holding himself close, shivering. "What if that thing gets us while we're in the tanks? You said it...you said it used shadows as a kind of gateway into—"
"It'll get us if we stand around deliberating," Weber said.
"You're not suggesting it can shut down the core?" Abrams' eyes vibrated, as if his very notion of reality had been offended. Aden understood that feeling all too well.
"I'm saying we can't possibly understand what it can do." Weber approached the activation terminal. The others looked apprehensive, but none moved to stop him from entering the passcode. "I will spare you the details, but know that the beings that created that thing are well beyond us."
That at least was true. When they’d started this project, they had been five hundred, most of them "willing" volunteers from the outside. Aden remembered it well; how she had been given the generous choice of volunteering for a top-secret research project or being sent off to some prison by two MPs in an interrogation room. A death sentence, either way. All for the great crime of looting an abandoned grocery store to try to feed herself and her sister.
Now, only the four of them remained, and the last of her family was dead.
The lights in the core chamber dimmed to a hideous crimson, creating shadow where light once stood. Abrams, Weber, and Wong moved into the light.
They knew better than to linger too long in the shadows.
Nine cylindrical tanks rose from beneath the floor, gleaming metallic red in the glow of the dim lighting. Weber peeled his lab coat and coveralls off of his hairy, withered body. The others followed his lead—except for Aden.
Wong went into the tank first. She hesitated while putting on the breathing mask. "What if it doesn't work? What if we get liquefied like Daniels?"
"Ask yourself what fate is worse," Weber said. "Flip a coin if it makes you feel better. But the protocol has been started, and once it runs its course, all systems will cut off and there'll be no way to reconnect them all without my passcode." He grinned, tapping his temple with a single yellow fingernail. "And I have them all locked safely away in here—which will be coming with me to our brave new world."
Abrams had already closed the lid to his tank, no argument, no complaint.
Say something, damn it! Aden thought. Her hand was clamped like a vise around the book in her pocket. She couldn't stop thinking about the look on Val's face the moment she’d gotten snatched up.
"Fine," Wong said, putting the mask on and descending into the tank. Her final look was one of uncertainty.
Weber closed the lid to her hatch for her, locking the l
atch tight before she could protest.
That only left the last subject.
Aden did not think of herself as a smart woman. How could she outsmart this man? A man who had stared into the abyss and somehow survived.
She was standing before him, hugging herself like Abrams had just been doing.
Weber's dark, sunken eyes and that look of total contempt for her was what gave her the strength to finally speak up.
"The others don't know," Aden said softly. "But I do. You unleashed that thing."
"Did I?" Weber said.
She nodded, and then did something that was a surprise even to herself. She produced Weber’s tattered copy of Messages from the Abyss from her coat pocket and fanned the pages out. His eyes were wild now; she could see his heart pounding through his protruding ribcage. "The things I saw, the things you had us chant...they're all in here. Every...maddening detail."
Tears broke from her eyes.
"You must understand, Aden, I only consulted that terrible book because it was the only way to get us out of this place. Do you know what's happening out there? The world of man is ending. With each passing day, the ice sheets grow nearer to covering the entire Earth, and when that happens not even this place will survive. There may yet be life remaining on this world when that happens, but it will not be human."
She shook her head. "Then why are there only nine tanks in here?"
Weber smiled, chuckling, wheezing, falling into a coughing fit. "Even Wong and Abrams failed to question that little detail."
"You knew that we wouldn't survive, didn't you?"
"Something like that." He turned around and started walking up the metal ramp to his tank. She could see his spine protruding through his yellowing, wrinkled skin. "But, you drew the long straw, didn't you? How lucky for you to have been one of the few to survive. I'd only intended for the best and the brightest to survive, and you certainly were not one of those."
There wasn't much time left. She would have to act fast. But what could she possibly do? Her eyes scanned through the chamber frantically, looking for anything that might stick it to Weber and his insane plans.
Her eyes fell on a lone fire extinguisher and the console Weber had just used to activate his final experiment protocol.
She screamed and ran to the wall, ripping the fire extinguisher out of its case, threatening Weber with it while still holding the tattered book of forbidden things in her other hand. "I could smash the equipment, I could smash everything, and then you'd be stuck here with that thing."
"And then you'd be stuck too, wouldn't you?" Weber chuckled. "Really now, what do you have to lose by joining us? There's more than enough room."
She looked back and forth, uncertainty writhing deep within her.
It seemed that Weber was done arguing, though. He submerged himself in the tank and stretched the breathing mask over his head.
Aden was walking over to the console when it broke from the shadows, pouncing like some twenty-foot hell-cat upon a reflective floor that refused to betray its reflection. Its spines shifted, and as it padded forward, its movements were jerky, almost like a stop-motion effect in some old movie. Its very presence was an affront to her sanity. Like it was both there and not there at the same time. Its pale gray eyes focused on her. Aden could feel her heart beating in her ears, the blood draining from her face.
I can't move, she thought.
It dashed at her, carefully winding through patches of shadow to avoid the light—snatching her up in its massive jaws in one terrible sweeping motion. She screamed, tasting the iron tinge of her own blood bubbling up from her throat as its blackened teeth skewered right through her torso.
The creature slammed into the wall; she could feel its teeth grinding into her bones, sawing them and tearing at her flesh. Just before she passed through the wall, through reality, she dropped the fire extinguisher and the book.
Too late, then, she thought. He wins after all.
I'm sorry, Val.
The next thing her eyes saw was a gray sky that had the consistency of a cancerous lung. She felt the creature's teeth dig deeper into her flesh. She could feel the blood draining from her body. Her head dropped lower, and she could see the horizon. It was an endless expanse of land, like sand dunes the texture of leather.
There were body parts everywhere. Severed hands, feet, whole torsos, each consumed by a mouth with jagged black and yellow teeth that seemed to be part of the land itself.
Then she saw two pale blue eyes staring back at her.
It was Val.
She was being chewed by one of those mouths in the earth, the soft blonde hair Aden had often caressed streaked with blood now.
At least we die together, Aden thought.
The creature stopped moving.
She looked down at a crevice in the leathery ground. It opened to reveal a mouth filled with serrated teeth, and an acrid smell like decaying flesh forced its way up her nostrils. She could see down its throat, an endless tunnel of teeth and shifting muscles.
"Please, no," she said, grabbing at the creature as it dropped her into the pit. "No!"
Knives dug through her stomach and chest as she was impaled on a set of teeth. She stared up at the creature. Its seven eyes gave her no comfort as the mouth closed on her like an iron maiden slamming shut.
I hope he fails, she thought, as consciousness faded. I hope the abyss swallows them all whole.
CHAPTER ONE
A cold wind assaulted the frozen tundra and dark clouds broke above the snowy Southern California mountains, revealing a fading sun, struggling to find its noonday place in the dim Summer sky.
Frost clung to Ira's facemask, accumulating on her goggles and threatening to freeze the ventilator shut. She wiped the frost away, tossing it to the snowy ground. Even with her snow gear, the cold threatened to dig deep into her bones—like death's cold fingers. She almost wished she'd have worn more layers before embarking into the frozen wasteland she used to call home.
There was a numbness to each of her steps; the feeling in her legs had long since evaporated from her tired muscles. The frigid wind stabbed down and clawed at the layers of her clothing. She crossed her arms and tilted her head toward the ground. For a moment, she longed for a time when she could drive to the store to get what she needed, a time before the old world had been erased by miles and miles of white nothingness.
Only a little further, she thought. I know I saw a building from the other side of the ridge.
She forced her muscles to keep working for another thirty minutes before coming to a stop at the edge of a large icy hill. Her hands found her knees, balancing her weight as her breath steamed through her facemask. Her watch read the temperature at negative ten degrees Fahrenheit. She couldn't linger here for long; her body was far too exposed to the biting cold. If the wind decided to flare up, it could flash-freeze her skin in an instant if she wasn't careful. She checked herself over to make sure she was fully covered, all the way up to her nose.
Life hadn't always been like this, desperately scrounging for supplies, hoping against improbability that the ice hadn't overtaken every portion of her city. The change had been rapid. The memory was fresh in her mind. One night, the stars had gone dark, the moon had clouded over, and the sunrise had become dim and tainted—nebulous.
The next morning some scientist was on the morning news talking about something called a "space cloud" and how his career was at risk just for talking about it, that the Feds didn't want the information out there. That program had left a terrible sickness writhing in her gut.
Life was over.
It hadn’t taken long for the ice sheets to claim most of Canada and some parts of the upper portions of the United States. Mountains, forests, rivers, and even entire cities had been crushed beneath walls of ice four times larger than the tallest building on Earth. That had been nearly three years ago. For all she knew, the glaciers could be nearing her location any day now.
Nature's bulldo
zers, she thought.
She shuddered. Once that happened, nowhere would be safe—unless you were a fish.
Ira stood up, reached inside her pack for her multi-spectrum binoculars, and felt the lenses tap against her goggles. She increased the magnification by fifty percent.
There it was.
Down the hill and across a parking lot covered in about twelve feet of snow. The snow made an abnormally shaped slope over the top of the department store's roof, but it was still intact.
That snow was going to be a problem: there was almost fifty feet of it crushing down on the ceiling. The supports probably couldn't handle that much weight. Ira looked at her stomach and grimaced beneath her facemask. If the ice hadn't already caused a cave-in, she probably had enough time to find what she needed.
"Ira." Eddy's voice called over the CB. "Ira, do you read me?"
She fumbled with the CB receiver on her belt; she held it close to her mouth. Stupid gloves. "Yeah, I read you."
"Good, you took off so fast, I didn't get a chance to catch up with you. What's your location?"
"I'm outside an old department store, probably a few klicks away from you."
"Wow, there's a store that hasn't been covered yet?"
"Kind of. I'm gonna go in before the roof collapses."
There was a pause; she could almost imagine him face-palming. "How much?"
"How much what?"
"How much ice is covering the roof?"
She walked toward the building and squinted her eyes. "About fifty feet, give or take, but I think most of it's fresh."
"Ira, don't risk it. If that roof collapses while you're inside, there's not a damn thing I can do to pull you out."
"You'll just have to break the bad news to Nico, then."
"He'll kill me!"
She paused, considering the building. Crackling noises in the ice she was standing on caused a thrill of fear and adrenaline to overtake her. She persisted forward carefully. The ice had long since shattered the front windows of the store, bending and shaping the metal to its will. There was a small hole near the top of the window frame that wasn't covered in snow—that's where she could get in.
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