Vacancy

by Fredric Shernoff

  “I am. I’ve been here most of my life, Jim. If we even got past everyone working here, there’s the store to contend with. It’s not easy for most people to go back and forth without the moon cycles, and I don’t know if it’s possible for me to leave at all.”

  “We have to try. There are others here. Other people who matter to me, and other people who have been unfairly imprisoned here with nobody knowing they even exist. We can set this all right.”

  Dr. Mike stood up and stretched. “I’m willing to try. I’m willing to help you in any way I can. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up. You’ve done something pretty crazy, letting the forgemites in, but don’t forget that they’re as much a risk to us as they are to the guards. More so.”

  “What are they?”

  “They’re organic beings with limited sentience. Probably more of a hive mind than anything else. Some of the folks here think they formed naturally in this place, some think they are a native species from some version of Earth that came here and mutated over millennia. Who knows? What matters is they are absolutely the most frightening thing I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve only seen them from a pretty great distance.”

  Jim considered this. “The guards didn’t have much in the way of weapons.”

  “They don’t usually need them. The turrets have enough firepower to suppress the horde when the forgemites get too aggressive, and the people kept here don’t really have it in them to fight back.”

  “What about you?” Jim asked. “You never fought back?”

  Dr. Mike closed his eyes. “I did. God, I did. For a while. I’d come up with plans and tricks and anything I could to escape, but they always have the upper hand in numbers, and make no mistake— the guards are armed to some degree. Most of the people you see here aren’t actually guarding anything. Scientists and worker bees doing the government’s secret research. Eventually, after enough failed attempts, I just got used to being here. That’s what happens.”

  “Not anymore,” Jim said. “Let’s go.”

  Dr. Mike followed him out of the small apartment. They walked unimpeded to the front of the facility. Jim tried to open the front door but it was locked.

  “Shit! We’re stuck in here. Maybe if we go back to the room with all the switches—”

  “I’ve got this,” Dr. Mike said. He typed something into the panel next to the door. The machine beeped. “Go ahead, all the facilities should be open now.”

  Jim pushed and the door swung open. “How did you do that?”

  “I’ve learned a lot of things over all of this time. Some of it just by listening.” He smiled. “Some of it by overriding some of the controls on the tablet they gave me.”

  Jim looked with fascination at the pharmacist. The man had given himself access codes to the building even though he believed an escape attempt to be futile.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Dylan was dozing off when he heard a beep and a series of clicking sounds. He sat up. Nobody was standing in front of his cell. There was silence. He got up slowly.

  “Hello?” he called. “Anybody out there?”

  The siren that signaled the forgemites sounded again. So soon? He wondered if that was a normal occurrence. He thought he would ask the man assigned to guard him the next time he showed up.

  Dylan walked to the bars of his cell and pressed his face into them. He didn’t see anybody in the hall, but the cell door moved slightly as he pushed against it. Dylan stepped back, then pushed the door with both hands. It wiggled again. He grabbed the bars as tightly as possible and pulled to the side. The door slid open.

  The thought occurred to him that the unlocked door and the thoughts it was putting in his head could be some elaborate trick. Maybe it was a test; just one of the many experiments the government was undoubtedly conducting in the Forge. Still…

  Dylan stepped one tentative foot into the hallway. He didn’t know if his door was the only one that had somehow become unlocked, but he could tell that no other door was open. That didn’t mean much, since he didn’t think the occupants of the other cells were in their right minds. He walked down the hall and looked into the cells. He saw men flopped across cots and curled up in the corners.

  Finally, he saw whom he was looking for. Clyde was pacing back and forth. He still looked the part of the homeless man, but Dylan didn’t think that identity held power over him any longer.

  “Clyde!” Dylan called. Clyde froze in his tracks.

  “Clyde,” Dylan said again, “it’s me. Dylan. Do you remember?”

  Clyde looked at him. “Who are you? Can you help me?”

  “I’m Dylan Merchant. My girlfriend Emma and I tried to help you. We pushed you back into the store before the purple darkness came. Does any of that sound familiar?”

  “I’m sorry,” Clyde said. “I don’t really remember anything.”

  Dylan seized the bars to Clyde’s cell and pulled. The door slid open just as his had done. Clyde looked shocked. He backed up a few steps deeper into the cell.

  “Clyde,” Dylan said, “we’ve got a chance to get out of here. Somebody opened our cells, and that siren…there’s something going on here and we need to move.”

  “Where will we go?” Clyde asked. “I know nothing. Even that name you call me doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You don’t remember anything? Not your life or what happened to you in the store?”

  Clyde shook his head sadly. “I don’t remember anything happening in a store. I remember waking up in the Forge. And I’ve been here since. I don’t know how long that’s been. Many days, but not hundreds.”

  “We can fill in all the blanks later,” Dylan said. “We need to move while we can. I think I remember the way out of here, but we need to track down the women’s facility. I’m not leaving without my girlfriend.”

  “She’s here too? How did you kids end up down here?”

  “It’s a long story, Clyde. Like I said, there will be time for that later if we can get to safety.”

  Clyde looked at him cautiously, then took a few steps forward.

  “That’s right,” Dylan said. “That’s good. We’ve gotta get moving.”

  Clyde reached the edge of the cell and Dylan put a steadying hand on the man’s arm. He gently guided Clyde out of the cell. Clyde looked around. “I don’t know much about this place. Nobody talks to me here.” He turned to Dylan. “I heard you. You and that guard were chatting. That’s really the first conversation I’ve heard since I’ve been down here.”

  “I don’t know much about it either. It’s supposed to be for people who were lost in time. I’m down here as a courtesy or something like that.” Dylan walked to the next cell. A man sat weeping along the back wall.

  “What are you going to do?” Clyde asked.

  “Help me with the door. We’re going to let all these people out.”

  “You sure they’re safe? Will they come with us?”

  “We don’t need them to come with us. It’s about doing the right thing, Clyde. That’s why I’m here.”

  Clyde nodded. “Okay. Let’s get them out.” He looked over his shoulder. “The siren…”

  “The guard said there are creatures living in the Forge that try to get in. I don’t know why it’s going off now but it’s providing a good distraction for us.”

  “The creatures aren’t dangerous?”

  “I don’t know,” Dylan said. “Hopefully we won’t have to find out.”

  They opened all the cells in the hall. None of the inhabitants took much notice. Dylan and Clyde walked to the front of the prison building.

  “The guards are all involved with the creatures?” Clyde asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dylan replied. “They aren’t here. That’s all that matter right now.’

  The doors to the prison complex were unlocked. Dylan and Clyde pushed through and stepped out into the dark world of the Forge.

  Outside, the siren blared its warning louder than ever. Amidst its ceaseless
wail, Dylan could hear other sounds. Gunfire. Screaming.

  Dylan surveyed the area. He could see the path that had brought him to the prison building. Beyond that, the web of the Forge extended in all directions. He could see people running on far distant ramps.

  “God,” Clyde whispered. “What the hell is happening?”

  Horrible creatures were attacking the people on the ramps. He saw what looked like a large dog chase a man and pounce on him. After that, Dylan looked away. “We have to get to the female prison,” he said.

  “How can we get past all of that?” Clyde asked.

  “There are a ton of paths. We just have to pick carefully.” The words felt hollow as he said them. Since he’d taken those first apprehensive steps outside his cell, he’d been coasting on the excitement and rush of freedom. Now, seeing what awaited them, he was petrified. He had no clue which path led to the place where Emma was being held. He didn’t even know what that facility looked like. And they had no weapons to protect them against whatever had been unleashed in the Forge.

  Clyde was looking at him with hope, and that made him feel worse. He and Emma had returned to the store and gotten themselves into this whole mess to finish their rescue of Clyde. Now here he was, leading Clyde out of the Forge, but with no clear and obvious way forward, and a great likelihood that he would get both of them killed.

  He sighed. “I think we should get going on the main path up, then detour to the left away from where those guards got attacked.”

  He started walking and heard Clyde shuffle into step behind him.

  “Don’t move, kid.”

  Dylan turned, knowing the voice before he saw the face. Murphy was standing at the far end of the platform, having arrived from another path Dylan hadn’t even seen. The agent was approaching them with his gun pointed directly at them.

  “I don’t know how the two of you got out, but now I have to decide what to do with you.” Murphy stepped closer. “See, I could send you right back in to your cells… but you’re a bigger problem than I had even anticipated, and a part of me thinks the best thing to do would be to make you disappear completely.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” Dylan said. “We just want to get out of this place. We just want to go home. We aren’t going to be any trouble. We don’t want anything to do with any of this anymore!”

  “Not your choice, kid,” Murphy said. He drew ever closer, his gun still floating between Dylan and Clyde, who hadn’t said a word. “You had your chance a long time ago, but you had to come back. Your rights are gone. This is my world. Everybody here answers to me.

  Dylan looked at Clyde, wondering if the man was even understanding the gravity of the situation. Clyde’s eyes were wide and scared, but they weren’t looking at Murphy or the gun. Dylan tried to follow Clyde’s gaze. In the distance, a creature crouched at the far end of the platform.

  It was covered in dark grey fur and its eyes glowed a hideous yellow. Foamy drool poured from its lips. It was the size and rough appearance of a very large dog, but the crouch reminded Dylan much more of a large cat. He knew that all of that was just his brain’s attempt to find a familiar category for something wholly unfamiliar. This was a forgemite, something not of his world or any other.

  “What are you staring at?” Murphy asked. He turned slowly, and saw the creature. Dylan saw Murphy tense.

  Everything happened very quickly after that. The forgemite charged forward with blinding speed, and pounced on Murphy. His gun skittered away and Dylan grabbed it. Two other forgemites emerged from their hiding place in the darkness. One tore a chunk of Murphy’s leg out with its teeth, tossed the flesh in the air and swallowed it down. Dylan felt his stomach roll.

  “Clyde!” he called. “We need to go!”

  Clyde was staring at the massacre with a blank expression. Dylan tugged on him. “Go, Clyde! Now!”

  One of the forgemites turned its head. Dylan felt fear wash over him. He slapped Clyde across the face and the man blinked in shock. That was all there was time for. Dylan started to run. Then he heard Clyde scream. The forgemite had Clyde’s left arm in its jaws. Dylan aimed the gun directly at the creature’s face. Just as it ripped off Clyde’s arm below the elbow, Dylan fired. The bullet punched through the thing’s forehead. It screeched and stumbled away a few steps before it fell over with a thud.

  Dylan grabbed Clyde again and dragged him as hard as he could away from Murphy and the two living forgemites. Clyde had stopped screaming but his blood was pouring out rapidly. Dylan hoisted him on his shoulder and moved as fast as he could toward the main ramp. He kept looking for signs of additional forgemites, but none seemed to be in the vicinity.

  He put Clyde down as carefully as possible and pulled off his own shirt. He tied as tight a knot as he could around what remained of Clyde’s arm. He wished he had some kind of emergency training or knowledge, but all he had to go on were rough ideas gleaned from countless television shows.

  “Are you with me, Clyde?” he asked. Clyde was ghostly pale and stared blankly into the space over Dylan’s shoulder.

  “Damn it!” Dylan felt tears in his eyes. “Damn it, Clyde! We came back for you! We were supposed to save you!”

  Clyde’s eyes rolled back in his head and he closed them. His breathing slowed and then stopped completely. Then his skin became translucent, then transparent. Dylan gasped as he saw Clyde’s insides, and then even they started to fade away. In seconds, he was gone, leaving nothing but his clothes and Dylan’s torn and bloodied shirt.

  Dylan stood up and looked around. The vastness of the Forge was more than he could comprehend. A hundred yards away was what remained of Murphy. Dylan wondered if only the deceased who had been lost from the world vanished as Clyde had done. Several other forgemites joined in the feast, and as he watched the creatures attacked each other, fighting over the victim.

  Dylan scrambled in the opposite direction, up a long series of ramps. He didn’t know where the women’s complex was, but until he had his bearings, he felt that up was a far better choice than down. He crested a large ramp, and then the ground leveled out in a massive stone bridge leading toward an equally massive building.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jim and Dr. Mike wandered through the hidden passageways of the Forge. For someone who claimed to have spent most of his decades-long imprisonment inside his apartment cell, the pharmacist was strangely familiar with the network of pathways.

  “How do you know where we’re going?” Jim asked.

  “Once I hacked their mainframe, there wasn’t much I could do without attracting attention, but there was plenty to learn. Sadly, I had all the time I needed. I memorized schematics of buildings, layout maps of the quadrants…I’m well-versed in this place, Jim.”

  “So where are we headed?”

  “That’s what I’ve been debating.”

  “Would you care to discuss?” Jim asked. He kept looking around for signs of the forgemites or the guards, but other than the siren and occasional bursts of gunfire, there was nothing around them.

  “Well, we could head toward an exit. There are several other than my store, but under most circumstances all of them would be heavily guarded. Nothing in or out. Right now, maybe that isn’t the case.”

  “Okay…so what is it you’re trying to figure out?”

  “I don’t know if I can leave at all, given what happened to me. And it might be that I could only leave through the store, or maybe the store is the only one I can’t leave through. I have no way of knowing and I’m afraid we are pushing our luck to think we could get more than one stab at this.”

  “What about the other people held captive down here?”

  “All the doors are open. They have every opportunity to get out just like we do.”

  “Yes,” Jim said, “but they don’t have you. They don’t know where to go.”

  “I know you have people in here you care about,” Dr. Mike said. “I do too. My employees and their families were forced down he
re after the incident in 1989. I want to see everyone get out but we simply don’t have the ability to do any more than we’ve done. We don’t know how many of the forgemites got in or how many are still alive. As long as they keep fighting the guards we’re okay, but either of those sides could find us at any point and then it’s all over. We have to get ourselves out and figure out the rest later.”

  “I can’t accept that,” Jim said.

  “Accept it or not, we have to keep going.”

  They continued through the maze of halls, bridges and ramps. A few times Jim saw skirmishes in the distance, usually attracting his attention through bursts of sound and light. For the most part, it looked like the forgemites were getting the upper hand.

  They came to a wide expanse. It was the largest platform Jim had seen, and it held the largest structure. “What is this place?” he asked.

  “This is the main prison. It’s the place for all the people that the government felt had to ‘disappear.’ According to diagrams I’ve seen, it’s divided up depending on gender, family status, and the nature of the crimes. Some of the people, like my employees, they were given something resembling homes, just like I had my apartment. Then there are some…terrorism suspects, mostly, who are not kept in the best conditions.”

  “People are kept there forever?”

  “Depends. The baddest of the bad are just housed there temporarily, then they get assigned to the bubble extending from my store. New identities are forced on them, and they stay in those forever. Unless they lose their minds from the process, in which case they end up in a different building back down here.”

  “It’s insane,” Jim said.

  “What is?”

  “All of this. What the government does. And they only know about any of this because of that goddamned store.”

  Dr. Mike winced.

  “What?” Jim asked. “What did I say?”

  “I get your feelings about everything that’s happened. It impacted my life in horrible ways. But that store was special. I had no family to speak of, no friends other than my customers. My store, my ability to help people, and my experiments, that’s what comprised my life. You need to remember who the real enemy is here, Jim. It’s not me and it’s not the store. It’s this place and the government assholes who think they can use it to get away with whatever the hell they want. They’re the ones who need to pay.”