The Black: Outbreak

by Paul E. Cooley

  A silence fell over the radio and the lab. Ellis only heard his own breathing, the patter of the rain outside, and the occasional muted crack of thunder.

  When Harrel finally spoke, he flinched. “Okay. Thanks, Ellis. Any recommendations?”

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice cold and stern. “Be far away from the thing when you hit it.”

  “Understood,” she said.

  Ellis sat down in the lab chair. He didn’t know what else to say. Finally, he thumbed the mic and said the only thing he could think of. “Good luck.”

  Chapter 58

  The fire-door to floor six was shut tight. She stood at the door, face nearly up against the window, holding an LED flashlight up to the glass. The strong blue-white light illuminated a wrecked wall. Sarah wasn’t certain, but it seemed the once white wall had been sliced and slashed again and again by something heavy and sharp. Exposed wiring glinted dimly in the light.

  “That explains that,” she mumbled.

  “Boss?” Givens asked from behind her.

  She stepped back from the door and faced her men. “I think Moore was a bit optimistic when she said this one was ‘huge.’”

  “What do you mean?” Schneck asked.

  “Goddamned walls look like a busted dollhouse.” Givens and Perkins exchanged a glance, but said nothing. She pointed at them. “You got some fireworks ready?”

  Perkins shook his head. “You’ll have to give us a few minutes. We can do it right here.”

  “Good. Get it done.” She looked at Schneck and Kilfoil. “We need to do a little recon. Kilfoil? You take point. Schneck and I will cover you.”

  Kilfoil paled, but nodded. “On it, Boss.”

  “Alpha? If we shout, you better come help.”

  Givens growled low in his throat. “Like a hillbilly on moonshine,” the Kentuckian said.

  Sarah rolled her eyes at him and faced the door again. Kilfoil stood beside it, rifle pointed at the floor, eyes focused on the door itself. She wasn’t sure how Kilfoil would do on point, but he’d certainly fare better than Schneck. If she was honest, neither man was anywhere near Alpha’s skill level, but Perkins and Givens needed to make weapons. Besides, she, Kilfoil, and Schneck weren’t going far. Just had to take a look around, or so she hoped. Schneck held up five fingers and slowly closed them one at a time. When there were no more left, he opened the door.

  The ambient light from the stairwell cut through the darkness. To a point. Kilfoil slipped through the doorway and turned in either direction playing his rifle light over the hall. “Fuck me,” he whispered.

  Sarah walked through the door and faced the opposite direction, her own light exploring the darkness. It was worse than she’d thought. What used to be the ICU might as well have been hit by a bomb. And a big one at that.

  Most of the walls were sliced, smashed, or piles of rubble. Metal and tile gleamed beneath her rifle light. Although her light only penetrated a few meters of the darkness, she saw the remains of medical equipment strewn everywhere. Stretchers, hospital beds, shattered glassware, medical diagnostic equipment, you name it, had been flipped about the floor as though from a child’s tantrum.

  “Someone pissed it off,” Kilfoil said.

  Schneck walked through the door, eyes wide. “Jesus. You ain’t kidding.”

  “Cut the chatter,” Sarah said. “Schneck. Take rear. Kilfoil? You still good for point?”

  “Boss,” he replied.

  “Well, let’s keep going in the direction you’re facing.”

  “Boss,” he said again. He paused for just a second as if gathering his courage, and began slowly walking down what used to be a hallway.

  Every few steps, Sarah pointed her flashlight at the wreckage facing the wall. Beyond the range of five meters, the darkness swallowed the blue-white light. Whatever destroyed the floor could be hiding in the shadows just beyond their vision, watching them, waiting until they came close enough for it to charge and devour them. She fingered the flashbang in her belt. The M84 had taken out a damned pool of the black shit. Their only HE grenade took care of the one that killed O’Malley. Dammit, but she wished they had that HE grenade back. If they’d known the creatures were flammable, they could have killed the first one with a single flashbang. Damn the luck.

  They continued walking until they met the far wall. Without asking, Kilfoil followed the corner around and they walked perpendicular to their original course. At least Kilfoil was somewhat smart about that. As long as she kept watch on their flank and Schneck was diligent about covering their asses, the ‘big bad’ would have trouble getting to them without being seen. The only question was how much time they had before it found them and attacked.

  She tapped her mic. “Alpha? Report.”

  “Working on it, Boss. We thought we had enough to make three fuses. We got lucky with two. Over.”

  “I’ll let Kilfoil set it on fire with one of his farts if that’ll help.”

  Perkins snickered on the other end of the radio. “It might come to that, Boss. Give us five minutes. Over.”

  “Acknowledged,” Sarah said. Kilfoil had flinched when she’d said his name. Not a good sign. If it were Perkins or Givens on point, they would have completely ignored her unless she addressed them directly. But Kilfoil was jumpy, unsure. She fought the urge to relieve him and take point herself. It was the one thing commanders were not supposed to do under any circumstances. The whole point of a commander was leading and organizing and that meant staying alive to keep others alive.

  And that worked so well in Iraq, didn’t it? a voice said in her mind.

  She ignored it and continued following Kilfoil.

  They were halfway around the building when he held up a fist. She and Schneck came to a halt, their spacing distance hardly changing. He held up one finger and then pointed to the floor a few meters away from him. Sarah played her light across their flank. Satisfied they were alone, she craned her neck to follow Kilfoil’s light.

  All the saliva in her mouth disappeared. Kilfoil’s rifle light revealed a hole in the floor. No, not a hole. More like someone had used Hulk hands to rip away the tile, shred the concrete like confetti, and leave a seven-meter-long ragged gash in their wake. The widest point of the egress was maybe six meters, although it was difficult to gauge with the puny lights. Sarah kept one hand on her rifle and pulled the stronger flashlight from her belt. She clicked the on button and played the light across the gap.

  The creature had not only shredded the floor, it had destroyed the air ducts, electrical wiring, and water pipes as well. For some reason, the water wasn’t pouring from the plumbing in a river. Instead, mere drops escaped the ruptured pipes. She wondered for a moment if Moore had shut off the water system in the building.

  Or just this floor, she thought.

  Kilfoil’s light bounced slightly weaving the shadows into a mess.

  “Steady, soldier,” she said. He didn’t acknowledge her voice, but his light stopped quivering. She approached the large hole in the floor with slow, silent steps. When her toes sat at the makeshift cliff’s edge, she took a deep breath and shined her rifle light into the hole. The light wasn’t strong enough to properly illuminate all the damage, but it was enough. Shards of concrete and metal lay strewn across the tile. Even in the dim light, she made out large divots in the floor below. The thing had smashed its way to the fifth floor and was now wandering below them in the nearly impenetrable darkness.

  “Shit,” Schneck said. “Thing’s gotta be huge.”

  She realized he was looking over her shoulder and nearly snapped at him. If they’d been in Iraq, she would have kicked his ass. But he wasn’t a soldier. Although he needs to start acting like one, she said to herself. “Back up, Schneck. Keep your light covering our ass.”

  “Boss,” he said.

  She felt him move away from her and pushed away the urge to check. Assuming they got out of this alive, it was time to let Alpha loose on the rest of the squad. Between she, Givens, and Per
kins, they’d get this team in much—

  GROAN.

  Sarah flinched. She trained her light across the wreckage below, but saw nothing move.

  “What was that?” Kilfoil asked, his voice high and shivering.

  “Hush,” she said. She waved the light in another circuit and then slowly leaned back from the artificial cliff.

  GROAN.

  The sound vibrated the walls. Is that steel bending? Is the goddamned thing taking out the load-bearing columns? That was an insane thought and she knew it. But still, she wondered. “Sounds like it’s all around us.”

  “Hell yeah, it does,” Schneck said.

  She tapped her mic. “Alpha?”

  “Yeah. We heard it, Boss. We’re coming. Over.”

  Sarah nodded to herself. Her boys better bring some good party favors. No question now—they were going to need them.

  Images of a giant black shape swirled in her mind. She played her light around floor six. What looked like load bearing walls were still intact, although beat to shit. In some places, only shining steel or charred wood remained. She’d no idea what the ICU floor had looked like before the thing started its run of terror, but she was sure construction crews would be working to fix this for a long long time. If the goddamned building doesn’t collapse first, she thought.

  They waited in a silence broken only by cracks of thunder, the pattering of rain, and the building’s occasional inhuman groan. She wanted to stand at the cliff’s edge again so she could shine her light down there, but stopped herself. There was no point. It was down there, somewhere on floor five, and waiting for them—its next meal.

  Her private thoughts disappeared when she heard the sound of boots on rubble. She turned and saw the bobbing lights from Alpha’s rifles. The two men followed the trail she and the others had left. No one wanted to walk through the middle of the floor. She didn’t blame them.

  When they were a few steps away, Sarah finally saw Givens’ grin in the dim ambient light. “Okay, that’s not a good sign,” she said.

  Givens cocked an eyebrow and the grin widened. “What’d I do now, Boss?”

  “Nothing good, I’m sure. What’s the damage?”

  Perkins and Givens exchanged a glance. Perkins cleared his throat. “We’ve got oxygen. We’ve got three pipe bombs that’ll probably yield a stick or two of dynamite each, and a couple of other goodies.”

  “Fuses?”

  “Two pipe bombs with fuses. For the third, we’ll have to get creative,” Perkins said.

  “Oxygen,” Schneck muttered. The team turned to him. His face flushed red and he dropped his eyes. “Sorry, Boss.”

  “No,” she said, “spill it. What about oxygen?”

  He shrugged. “Was just thinking that maybe we could find some oxygen tanks.” He pointed to the mask sticking out of the rucksack. “Something larger than that.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “You’re right. Although we’ll probably blow up the goddamned building.”

  She clicked the mic. “Celianne to Moore. You there?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant. Go ahead.”

  The woman sounded tired. As if she had a goddamned right. She should be up here wandering the fucking—

  “Lieutenant? You there?”

  Sarah sighed. “Yes, Doctor. I’m here. The, um, creature has left floor six. It appears it decided to go to floor five.”

  “How did it do that?” Moore asked.

  “By creating one hell of a hole in the floor.”

  Pause. “Do you have any idea where it is?”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “Pretty sure I said it’s on floor five.”

  Moore sighed. “No reason for sarcasm, Lieutenant. But are you able to see it?”

  “Negative,” Sarah said. “Do your spotters have any idea where it is?”

  Pause. “Not exactly,” Moore replied. “With the lights completely gone, it’s extremely difficult for visuals. And infrared shows nothing.”

  “Nothing? No people? No monster?”

  “Nothing,” Moore repeated. “There were heat signatures just 20 minutes ago, but they’ve all disappeared. The only sources of heat on your floor are your people, the heat registers, and that’s about it. Whatever happened up there knocked out everything. Even the nuclear medicine department is blank. Which shouldn’t be possible.”

  “Why is that?”

  Moore paused again. Sarah imagined the woman trying to find a simple way to explain something technical. “Radiation. There are no radiation sources. At least none that we can detect.”

  “Christ,” Sarah said. “Well, I have a decision to make, Doctor. Either follow the beastie down this hole, or we attempt an ingress at the stair level. And that didn’t look good either.”

  “Which stairwell?”

  Sarah told her. “I saw a lot of damage through the fire-door. And no lights at all.”

  A flurry of clicks sounded through her headset. Moore was typing or doing something. Regardless of what it was, it was loud.

  “Okay,” Moore said. “I pulled up the reports. Just before the lights went out on floor six, the spotters noticed a large heat plume in nuclear medicine. It spiked very high several times, returned to normal levels, and then disappeared completely.”

  “Uh, come again?”

  “It disappeared, Lieutenant.” Moore’s voice was a flat line. “We don’t know how. And it’s not important how. What’s important to know is that it could have done something to the radiation. Or with it.”

  Sarah pursed her lips. She suddenly found herself trying to imagine The Incredible Hulk version of the thing. The idea was more than a little terrifying. “Like consumed it.”

  “Right,” Moore said.

  “Great. Any advice?” She paused for a second and then added, “I’m serious.” The pause lingered. Sarah was afraid the voice wasn’t going to speak again when it finally broke the silence.

  “That depends. What are your supplies like?”

  “We have—”

  GROOOOOAAAAAAANNNN.

  A slow vibration rattled her bones. A few of the remaining ceiling tiles slid out of their frames and crunched on the gleaming floor. Glass shattered in one of the wide windows facing the street.

  “What was that?” the voice inquired.

  The rattling crescendoed and then slowly trailed into nothing. She felt drunk. Moore asked the question again. Sarah took a deep breath and then let it out before trying to speak. “The building.”

  Pause. “The building? How much damage on floor six? How much on five?”

  “You tell me. Floor six is wiped out. I don’t know if the creature cracked some load-bearing pieces of the structure, or maybe damaged them below us.”

  “That’s not optimal,” Moore said.

  No fucking shit, Sarah thought. “Is this building getting ready to collapse?”

  “Unknown,” Moore said. “But this new development accelerates the timeline a little bit.”

  “What is she talking about?” Kilfoil asked.

  Sarah shot him a withering glance and then looked at the hole in the floor. “How much time you giving us?”

  Pause. “I have three contingency plans in place. Two of them involve turning the building into a dust cloud. The third is your team. In twenty minutes, I’m going to have to make the call. And that means you have that long from now to clear the building of any hostile organisms.”

  Sarah looked at her team. Team Alpha’s faces were expressionless save for their narrowed eyes and tight jaws. Schneck and Kilfoil both looked terrified. “Acknowledged.”

  “As soon as the floor 5 is clear, let me know.”

  “Roger that. And as soon as you decide to drop a goddamned bomb,” Sarah said, “let us know.” Moore didn’t reply. Sarah tapped her mic again to make sure Moore couldn’t hear them.

  “How we doing this?” Perkins asked.

  Sarah kept her eyes on the huge hole in the floor. “We don’t have any more rope,” she said, “so rappelling down is out
of the question.” She met his eyes. “We have to go through the stairwell.”

  Givens sighed and spun on his foot. “Carry it this way, carry it that way,” he mumbled.

  “Shut it,” Sarah said with a grin. “Before we go anywhere, I want your toys disseminated.”

  Perkins pulled the rucksack from his shoulder and laid it on the floor. He pushed the oxygen masks aside and handed one of the pipe bombs to Schneck, the other to Kilfoil. He held up the one without a fuse. “I’ll hold on to this one if you don’t mind, Boss.”

  “How are you going to set it off?” Schneck asked.

  Perkins smiled. “The old-fashioned way.”

  “Let’s move, people. Alpha, you’re in lead again. Givens, you make goddamned sure you let us know if you see something.”

  “Boss,” he said.

  “Kilfoil, cover our ass.” He nodded and looked a little relieved she hadn’t asked him to take lead. “Schneck, you and I are piggies in the middle. Get ready to provide cover if it’s needed.”

  “Great,” Schneck said. “With my pea shooter and one mag of ammo.”

  Sarah punched him in the shoulder, hard. Schneck’s grim expression flattened. “That’s enough, soldier. We have less than 20 to make this happen. So let’s make it happen.”

  Chapter 59

  After Ellis signed off, Harrel stared down at the three weapons sitting on the desk. Two of them were typical stun guns, the kind where you had to make physical contact with the person you were trying to shock. The third was a Taser that fired leads at a target. After contacting the target, the Taser sent thousands of volts through the leads to shock the hell out of the nervous system.

  You don’t even know if that thing has a nervous system. Not that it mattered. Even if it had something analogous, Ellis’ experiment proved the thing would detonate before it knew it was dead. She hoped.

  Not for the first time, she wished they had a proper lab, a viable containment solution, and the bravery to study the damned things. Nothing about the creatures made much sense, but if they were able to unravel what they were and how they worked, she was convinced the human race would suddenly know much more about their universe. Chiefly that they weren’t alone and that other forms of life existed. If, that is, it’s actually alien. “Shit. What else could it be?”