Death and Taxes

by Galen Surlak-Ramsey

  “There’s a first time for everything, no?”

  Nick tapped the rotund man on the shoulder. “Can I try?” he asked, motioning to the computer. “I might be able to get these doors open so we can leave.”

  “You are not authorized to poke around our system,” Gaston scoffed with a furrowed brow. “Now go away and let me concentrate.”

  “I thought I might help.”

  “I know my way around the computer.”

  “I hope you’re good under pressure then since we’re about to have company,” Clarice said as she motioned to the camera’s display.

  “Oui, I am,” Gaston replied.

  Moments turned into minutes, and nothing changed except for the color of Gaston’s skin. Pale, evidently, wasn’t the whitest someone could turn.

  Clarice groaned and leaned against the wall. “God, just let him try,” she said. “It’s not like we didn’t grab your precious data and jar already. And from the looks of things, it’s not going to matter anyway.”

  Gaston looked over at Dr. Forbes, and when he received a reluctant look of approval from the doctor, he slid out of the chair. “Fine. Let us see what you can do.”

  Nick jumped into the hot seat, flicked his wrist to loosen his fingers and assumed the hacking position. It was a position much easier to take this time around as Gaston provided his network ID and password, removing any need to bypass security.

  Clarice watched him navigate, proud as anyone could be. She didn’t understand any of the menus and directories that were flying up on the screen, but given the expression that the two researchers wore, she surmised he was doing quite well. She also wondered if they’d guess he was responsible for the mess they were in. Neither, however, made any comments. “Well?’ she asked after another tense minute.

  “Almost there, I think,” Nick said.

  A loud thud snapped everyone’s attention away from the computer. Plastered against the Plexiglas was what was left of a disfigured man, bloodied, soiled and most definitely dead. It flopped around, beating its hands sporadically against the walls and door.

  “This is no good,” Clarice said after several more zombies joined the first. She glanced about the room, looking for something—anything—that could be of use. “So how long until they break in?”

  “This is a security station,” Dr. Forbes stated. “That Plexiglas can hold a dozen elephants before cracking, and the door isn’t coming down with anything less than a brick of C-4.”

  “I don’t think a dozen elephants would be enough for all of them to eat,” she said. “They’re just going to sit out there till we die.”

  “Which means we’re safe,” Dr. Forbes said. “Relax.”

  “No,” Clarice replied. “It means we need a way out. Either that, or we’ll have to eat each other until help arrives. It’s not like we have a lot of choices, now do we?”

  Nick laughed and took a momentary pause from his work to throw her a glance. “Planning on drawing straws, Ms. Optimism?”

  “Don’t be silly. Fatty here should go first. He’s big enough to feed us all for weeks if we eat light and salt him.”

  “I think not,” Gaston said. “Why should I be the one who should die? I have done nothing to you.”

  “You mean aside from keeping us locked in this hellhole and wanting to turn us into your little pincushions?” said Clarice.

  “You have no idea what we do here,” Dr. Forbes said. “Our work saves lives.”

  “I think I’ve got a pretty damn good idea what you freaks do here.” Clarice wrapped her thumbs around her belt loops and tried to resist the urge to break both their noses.

  “Knock it off,” Nick shouted. “No one is leaving at all if I can’t work, and since we’ve both agreed to part ways after all this, let’s leave things be, okay?”

  “Fine,” Clarice said, crossing her arms over her chest. She eyed Dr. Forbes and Gaston, daring them to further the topic. Dr. Forbes kept quiet, but held her glare, while Gaston simply turned away.

  “Okay, I think I found the problem.” Nick leaned back in the chair and pointed at the screen with a pen. “There’s no power to the motors for the door.”

  Dr. Forbes looked confused, almost shocked. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “You can tell it has power just by looking at it. The lights are on.”

  “No,” Nick replied. “According to your online schematics, or rather the notes left by whoever designed them, you can have enough power for the terminals, scanners and status lights, but the actual motors require much more draw. And since you’ve only got one barely working generator right now, it can’t fill the needs of everything. Basically, the security doors are heavy, and the motors don’t have enough juice to make them move.”

  “Then let’s shut things off till we have power, yes?” Gaston said.

  “I don’t know if we can do that,” Dr. Forbes replied. “Most things power related are mechanical. We’d have to go around and flip individual circuit breakers by hand.”

  Gaston fidgeted with his shirt and began to think out loud. “And what about the egress system? And the destruct device?”

  “We’ll need a lot of juice for both,” Dr. Forbes answered, rubbing his beard. “If we’re down to one generator that’s going to be a problem.”

  “We could try getting another generator back online,” Nick suggested. “I mean, I don’t know how that would happen, but if we could, it would probably do the trick. The floor plans have one about fifty meters away.”

  “Assuming it’s not damaged it’s a straightforward procedure to fire it back up,” Dr. Forbes said with a smile. “I like it. And I must say, I’m disappointed in myself that I didn’t think of it first.”

  “All of this speculation is worthless at the moment,” Clarice said as she pointed at the horde outside the window. One of the zombies snarled, reinforcing her point. “It’s not like we can stroll on over there, because if you think I’m opening this door and pushing my way past dozens of them, you’ve got another thing coming.”

  “What about the ventilation?” Nick asked as he punched the keys on the computer once more. “Could we slip through that to get where we need? It works in the movies.”

  “Just because things work in the movies doesn’t mean they will work here,” Clarice said. “Twenty bucks says that even if you guys could get up there, you’ll come crashing through the ceiling or get stuck in a vent.”

  Nick turned the screen toward the rest of them and pushed his suggestion harder. “Look at this. The duct drops down right here in a room next to the generator. We could crawl through, jump down, start it up, and find a way to the egress room. They’re dumb, right? I doubt they would even know we left the room.”

  “No, we can’t,” Clarice replied. She motioned to the small vent overhead. “I could barely get in that, and there’s no way you will, let alone these two codgers. Fatty here would probably get stuck halfway in, and we’d need a crowbar to pry him out.”

  “But as you said, you could do it,” Dr. Forbes pointed out. “A girl in as good a shape as you ought to be able to wiggle through.” He looked her up and down, causing her to shift uncomfortably. “What are you, fifty-five kilos or so? That’s not too bad.”

  “Oh no,” she said, backing up, hands held defensively. “You guys aren’t volunteering me for this nonsense. Come up with something else.”

  “It’ll work,” Nick reassured. “It has to. You’ll be fine.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Clarice grabbed a small pamphlet and threw it at him. “It doesn’t have to work. There’s no law out there saying that it has to work, and there’s certainly no recourse we can take if it doesn’t. And it’s really easy for you to tell me what I should do. You get to sit back here and do nothing.”

  “For a secretary you’re rather stubborn about not helping,” Gaston commented. He muttered something under his breath about her and parfaits, but Clarice didn’t pick it all up.

  “Being stupid isn’t the same thing as
helping,” she said, placing her hands on her hips. “And as long as we’re pointing out responsibilities, none of this is my doing at all. My only mistake in all of this was applying for the wrong job and following my loon of a boss out here.”

  “Yes, well, no one expected any of this,” Dr. Forbes said flatly. “But my dear young woman, at this point, the reality is that we’re stuck in this room, and we can’t get to where we need to be until that generator is back online.”

  “And then what? Let’s say I go and do whatever it is and it all works. You guys still need to get out, and we all need to get down the hall.”

  “The extra power might help the network out, too,” Nick added. “I mean, I don’t know what’s still offline or malfunctioning due to the lack of juice. We might have some more options at that point. We might be able to lure them away if we had more tools at our disposal.”

  “Fine point,” Dr. Forbes praised. “Right now, however, I think it’s best we tackle one problem at a time. We’re safe in here anyway. So once you get the power back, just crawl back over, and we’ll work on our next step.”

  “And if I don’t fit or can’t make it all the way?” Clarice asked.

  “We won’t know that until we try,” replied Dr. Forbes. “Let’s not defeat ourselves before we even give it a go.”

  Clarice didn’t say anything at first. Her thoughts tried to argue around the present reality in an attempt to stave off their concocted solution. Reality, as it had been known to do from time to time, didn’t budge. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this,” she finally said. She opened the bag, rummaged around and pulled out her Pittsburgh Pirates scrunchie to tie her hair back with. “This is most definitely not in my contract.”

  “Did you even have one?” Nick asked, jumping on the tangent absently.

  “No,” she said. “Not like that matters anyway.”

  “That’s a girl,” Dr. Forbes said, obviously trying to boost her morale. “Make it a game, and you’ll have fun with it. We could even time you, and you could see how fast you could work yourself back.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “A game,” he repeated. “You know, things people do to pass the time and entertain themselves?”

  “Yes, I know what a game is,” she said.

  “It’s a psychology trick I read about,” Dr. Forbes explained. “If you distract yourself while doing something that induces stress, you’ll find that whatever it is you’re doing becomes much more bearable. It’s like engaging your brain’s autopilot.”

  “And how am I going to see? I doubt there are any light bulbs in the ducts.”

  Gaston fished around his pocket. “Take my penlight,” he said, handing it to her.

  Clarice flipped the light around in her hand, giving it a brief inspection. “How do I get there? I mean, through the vents.”

  Nick looked back at the screen. “Go straight,” he said while tracing the route with his finger. “It’ll branch about fifteen yards down and go right. That might be tricky because it looks like a sharp turn. After that just keep going, and you should stop right at the room.”

  “And how do I start the generator?”

  “If memory serves there should be instructions posted there,” Dr. Forbes said. “All the breakers will be in a large, black box embedded in the wall. Inside the box’s door should tell you what you need. Dial extension 1261—that’s here—if you need help.”

  Nick wheeled the chair under the air vent, stood on it carefully, and removed the panel. “Are you ready?” he asked, hopping down.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” Clarice answered.

  Nick stayed motionless and looked deep into her eyes. “Be careful.”

  “You know I will,” she said. She then gave him a quick hug and kiss. “But for the record, if they do get me, I’m coming after you first.”

  With that, she hoisted herself into the ducts.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Clarice discovered a significant problem while traversing the ventilation ducts, that problem being that the engineers who designed them had expressly stated that the air ducts were built only to allow the passage of air. The user manual that came with the installation would have made this clear to her had she been privy to a copy. The preface read:

  Thank you for purchasing the U-Flow 349b air duct system. We hope that you will find great joy and happiness in its use. Before you familiarize yourself with its many options, please be advised that the U-Flow 349b has only been designed to allow the passage of air (78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 1% misc.) from one area to another. Other gasses may be substituted for air, but please see your local contractor for details. U-Flow 349b systems, however, are not designed to allow the passage of any other object. Please do not attempt to transport liquids or solids of any kind throughout the system as this will void your warranty. This condition applies to non-intentional / situational transport as well, such as hostile alien life forms or human survivors seeking to escape. If you would like such transportation options, please see our model U-Flow 449 series.

  The difference between the 449 and 349 series wasn’t just one hundred. The 449 series came with reinforced paneling, heavy struts, and extra headroom for those long crawls. Clarice would have been grateful for the latter at any point. However, when the paneling broke free near the end of her journey, she would have opted for the foremost in a heartbeat.

  Her fall was broken by a well-placed desk, which served as a perfect bullseye for her shoulder. Somehow Clarice managed to suppress the urge to scream during the rapid descent. She congratulated herself for that small bit of self-control. If the sound of her dropping through the ceiling didn’t attract any unwanted attention, she didn’t need to chance it again by adding a few decibels of her own.

  Clarice fumbled around in the dark, pushing aside a few unknown objects, one somewhat malleable and wet, and grabbed the penlight that had rolled under the desk. The light cast by it was weak, and its lack of illumination was even more pronounced now that she was out of the vents.

  Carefully she made her way around the dark, examining what she could as she happened past it. There was a now broken desk, and off to the side were a couple of overturned chairs. A body lay still in the corner.

  Clarice repeated that to herself, a body in the corner. She jumped backward, letting out a small yelp as she lost her balance and hit the ground. Clarice scrambled as far back as she could, hoping that the door out would be wherever she ended up. Instead, she met one of four corners. For a long time, she sat still, too petrified to move. If the corpse across from her wasn’t interested in her now, she wasn’t about to make herself more appealing.

  Eventually, Clarice turned the penlight toward the body, and the corpse still showed no interest. She inched closer, taking care to keep a healthy distance from it and gave it a proper inspection. Several bite wounds marked its arms and shoulders. Its right hand clutched a large pistol, and the left lay off to the side, soaked in blood. Its head drooped forward and was missing a large section from its temple.

  Clarice drew closer still, her nerves now battling both her curiosity and her want of a gun.

  “I’m just going to borrow this, Rob,” she said, reading the ID badge. She bent down and plucked the revolver free. Clarice knew it was silly to say, but it made her feel better. She had been to a shooting range a few times growing up and didn’t feel completely awkward handling the firearm. A quick look into the gun’s cylinder showed that it had three bullets left.

  “Don’t suppose you have any more?” Clarice asked while she rifled through its pockets. Thankfully, the corpse didn’t answer. Unfortunately, all that it had was lint.

  Clarice searched the room once more and found only the exit. She cracked the door and peeked out. When she was satisfied that the hall was empty, she ducked out toward the generator room. It wasn’t terribly hard to find. It was, in fact, right next door as Nick said it would be, and there was a large sign that said Generator Room above.

  The gene
rator room was well lit. A few of the ceiling lights flickered randomly, but there was more than enough light for Clarice to see that she was the only one there. The machinery was complex and intimidating for the young secretary, but it looked intact. There were dials, boxes, switches, knobs, levers, pipes, and fans of all shapes and sizes, and those were just what were stuck on the walls. In the center of the room was an overgrown toolbox that someone had plastered with vents and cables, and Clarice could only assume that this was the generator itself. On one of the nearby support beams was a small red phone. Clarice picked it up and dialed 1261.

  “I’m here,” she said as the other end was picked up.

  “Good girl,” Dr. Forbes praised. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, but I banged up my shoulder,” she said, glancing down at it. “Looks like I’m bleeding, actually.”

  “From?” the doctor asked with concern.

  “From crashing through the ceiling,” Clarice replied. She ignored the ache. “I also found a gun on a dead guy.”

  “What kind?”

  “It says it’s a Colt Anaconda,” she replied, turning the weapon over. “Bad-ass, mammoth looking thing. I just hope it’s not bad luck.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Clarice shrugged. “I just got the feeling that the guy I found it on wasn’t the original owner.”

  “Hmmm,” Dr. Forbes replied. Whatever it was he was now thinking, he wasn’t sharing it with her. “Do you see the box we talked about on the wall?”

  Clarice looked around from her position. “I think so,” she finally answered.

  “Open it and start everything up,” he replied. “If you need help, come back to the phone for further instruction.”

  “Okay, one minute,” she said. Clarice ran over to the wall to the breaker box. It opened easily, and instructions were indeed on the inside of the cover. They read:

  To initiate a manual start of the reactor, please see section 19.39 of your user manual. User manual can be found online or with the software provided.