The Black: Outbreak

by Paul E. Cooley

  “Fuck me!” Perkins yelled.

  “Flashbang! Now!” Sarah yelled.

  Perkins pulled one from his belt, and pulled the pin. “Fire in the hole!” he yelled and threw the grenade past Kilfoil. It sailed over the fleeing man’s shoulder and into the waiting room. She closed her eyes and covered her ears.

  A brilliant flash of light pierced through her closed eyelids and a tremendous bang shook the world. A cloud of dust filled the air and ceiling tiles dropped to the tile floor. Ears ringing, Sarah looked out to the main entry way. The thing was still there, although it had retreated several meters, but it wasn’t on fire. With the lights out, it was impossible to tell if the damned thing had suffered any damage at all.

  Somewhere in the building, glass exploded and tinkled to the hard tile. Sarah raised her rifle to fire a shot, and then realized she had no clue what to aim at. Kilfoil lay at her feet in a crumpled fetal position. Blood ran from one eardrum. She reached down and pulled him further down the hall. Givens and Perkins had recovered and were training their lights on the creature. Neither fired; they couldn’t tell what to aim at either.

  It should have been impossible, but the waiting room beyond the hallway was even darker now. The lighter shadows disappeared as the creature swallowed them. Schneck’s body, a mere five meters away, was no longer visible.

  She pulled Kilfoil as far as she dared and then rose up. She reached for the flare in her belt and then realized she’d already used it. “Flare!” she screamed at Alpha. Givens had time to reach for his belt when the impenetrable darkness disintegrated.

  Strong, ambient light flooded into the waiting room through shattered windows. And then she saw the first stab of extremely bright light illuminate the thing in the waiting room. Her jaw dropped open.

  The creature was even larger than she’d thought. The shadows had lied about its size, and now she knew why. It stood over three meters tall. Instead of the squat shape the others had had, this one might as well be a wall of flailing, sharp bristled tentacles, eyestalks, and a dark carapace. Several pairs of mandibles clicked into the empty air as the creature turned to face the light. Plumes of smoke rose from the eyestalks. It began to move.

  The remaining walls crumpled as it tried to turn around in the cramped space. One of its tentacles hit the building’s outer wall. Brick, mortar, and steel flew into the dark, rainy night. It tried again to turn around. More smoke rose from its hard shell.

  Sarah finally realized she was standing there, her rifle nearly forgotten, mind frozen in horror. Moore’s voice in her ear broke the spell.

  “Lieutenant. Is the light having any effect?”

  “Yes,” she said dumbly.

  “You have ten minutes, Lieutenant.”

  Fuck. “Alpha!” she yelled. Givens and Perkins both flinched and then turned to face her. “If you have a plan for getting rid of that fucking thing, you better do it now!”

  “Gimme!” Perkins said pointing at something clipped to Schneck’s belt.

  She followed his gaze and saw the pipe bomb. With a deft pull, she freed it from the web belt and tossed it to Perkins. He pulled something from his pocket. Despite the noise in the waiting room, she heard the ting of a metal lighter lid opening. When she turned to look, she saw a silver Zippo in Perkins’ hand and a yellow teardrop of flame wavering in the breeze coming through the shattered wall. The fuse caught, sparks dropping off like a sparkler.

  “Fire in the hole!” Perkins yelled. He ran a meter forward, cocked back his arm, and threw the makeshift bomb at the black hulk.

  The bomb hit the ground directly beneath the retreating creature. Perkins and Givens wrapped themselves around Sarah and the injured Kilfoil. She tried to cover her ears, but she wasn’t fast enough.

  The low crump of the explosion rattled her bones, but it wasn’t nearly as loud as the flashbang grenades had been. The ringing in her ears intensified. She dimly wondered if she’d be able to hear anything ever again if they got out of this.

  Givens and Perkins released her and turned to the waiting room. Over their shoulders, Celianne saw a thick cloud of smoke fogging the large room. And through it, she made out the creature’s mangled silhouette.

  The bomb had nearly split the creature in half along its bottom. It scuttled backward on broken limbs.

  “We need another one!” she shouted.

  Givens didn’t wait. He ran from the hallway and into the waiting room. When he came back, he held another pipe bomb in his fingers, the hand thrust toward Perkins. Perkins opened his palms and Givens tossed the bomb to him. Must have grabbed it off Schneck’s body, she thought. A second later, Perkins ran from the hallway and toward the beast.

  It was completely out of the waiting room now, retreating to the other wing, but the thing hadn’t managed to get out of range. Perkins skidded to a stop 10 meters away, lit the bomb, wound up like a pitcher, and threw the remaining bomb.

  She followed its arc through the air and for a moment was sure it would fall short. She was wrong. The cylinder hit the tile and skittered across the slick floor. She turned her head and waited for the explosion. The floor trembled and another cloud of smoke obscured the retreating thing.

  Sarah pulled Kilfoil around the corner. He looked up at her in a daze. “Stay here. Don’t move.” Instead of waiting for his reply, she rounded the corner and exited the hallway at a full sprint. Givens and Perkins stood side by side, their rifles pointed at the ravaged thing.

  Her feet crunched on what looked like pieces of charcoal briquettes. Over to the side, she saw the end of one of the tentacles embedded in sheetrock. They hadn’t destroyed it, but they’d sure given it some payback.

  She reached her men and stood next to them, panting. “We hurt it,” she said.

  “Not enough,” Givens said. He pointed at one of the dense, black chunks of the creature’s skin. “How many pieces of it can we blow off before it fucking dies?”

  “Does it matter?” Perkins said. “We need a bigger bang.” He held up the last of the makeshift bombs. “We don’t have a fuse for this one and it’s not enough to destroy that damned thing.”

  Givens glanced at his partner. “Plan B?”

  Perkins nodded. “Plan B.” He turned and ran back into the waiting room.

  “Wait!” she yelled.

  The man ignored her and kept running. She turned her eyes to Givens’. “What is plan B?”

  The Kentuckian grinned. “You ain’t gonna like it, Boss.”

  Shaking her head, she returned her gaze to the large open area that connected the two wings. The creature was now in full darkness again, hiding in the shadows some twenty meters away. The ambient light cast by the powerful spotlights wasn’t enough to fully illuminate the area.

  She tapped her mic. “Moore? We have it on the run. It’s hurt and it’s moved into the hospital’s other wing.”

  “Acknowledged,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “Still in the same wing. My boys are prepping a weapon.”

  “I hope it’s a good one,” Moore said. “If not, then in seven minutes, I’m sending mine in.”

  “Give us more time!” Sarah shouted into the mic.

  Pause. “I’ve done all I can, Lieutenant. The drone will be in range in a few minutes, and once it’s there, it’s out of my hands.”

  A rattle and crunch caught Sarah’s attention. She turned just in time to see Perkins run a wheelchair out of the hallway. A large metal tank sat in the seat. He’d used straps from a hospital bed to secure it.

  “That,” Givens said with a grin, “is ‘plan B.’”

  Perkins rolled the wheelchair to a stop and mocked wiping sweat from his brow. With his helmet on, the gesture was comical. “We’ve tried flash bangs, high explosives, and homemade pipe bombs. I raise you,” he said slapping his gloved hand against the metal cylinder, “something with a little more bang.”

  She turned and glanced back at the entrance to the darkened wing. “And how do we do this?”

 
; “Use me as bait,” Givens drawled, “and then I’ll roll it right up its ass.”

  “And I’ll light it,” Perkins said.

  “And how are you going to do that?” Sarah asked. “We don’t have a fuse.”

  Perkins shook his head. “No fuse.” He patted the rifle hanging from his shoulder. “But a bullet from this guy might do it.”

  Givens pointed at the bedsheet on the wheelchair’s seat. “And we can light that just in case. Either way, pure oxygen is going to burn. And trapped inside the cylinder,” his mouth opened wide and showcased his dingy teeth, “it’s a deadly explosive. As good as several sticks of TNT coupled with a flechette bomb. If nothing else, it should blow the goddamned thing to bits.”

  She considered the plan for a moment. Something about it bothered her. It sounded good, but the thing was huge even after they’d nearly blown it in half. And now it was badly wounded. How would it react? Would it stay far away from them? Would it attack? Or would it try to escape? And if it did, how would it do it?

  The sound of the storm blew through the empty window panes. Sarah shivered and realized it wasn’t out of fear, but good old-fashioned cold air. Then it hit her.

  “What’s to keep the damned thing from just jumping out the windows? I mean, I imagine it could survive the fall.”

  Givens shook his head. “How the hell would it get out there? I mean, it’s fucking huge. Besides,” he said and pointed at the black crumbs scattered across the tile, “if bullets and bombs do that to it, I don’t think it could survive the fall at all.”

  “Unless it turned back into liquid,” Sarah said. “It could just stream out the windows.”

  Perkins shrugged. “I think we’re both ready to hear alternatives. You got one, Boss?”

  She thought for a moment and then shook her head. “No. I don’t. But if we’re going to do this, we need to cut it off. It can’t absorb? Dissolve? Whatever. It can’t wreck the glass unless it uses its tentacles, right? So if we keep it in the middle of the room, block any possible egress, then we should be able to do whatever we need without worrying about it.”

  “The only worry is that it doesn’t go for it.”

  “Or,” Givens said with a nod to his partner, “where to hide when the goddamned thing explodes.”

  She pursed her lips. “We’ll need to scout first. Figure out what things look like.”

  “I’ll do it,” Givens said.

  She shook her head. “No. You won’t. It’ll take two of you to execute this. And you two are better suited for it than I am.”

  “Bullshit,” Perkins said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said with a wave. “I need you two to get this thing ready. Stand by and if you hear me firing and yelling, you guys better come running.”

  “Boss,” the two men said in low voices.

  The corner of her mouth twitched. “See you in a few minutes. And get ready. If I can, I’m going to lead it to the intersection. No windows there. No way for it to get past us.” They didn’t reply.

  She checked her lights and flinched when Perkins dangled something over her left shoulder. Two flares. She grabbed them and stuck them in her belt. “I’ll stay in contact. But if you think the worst has happened, do the best you can. We don’t have much time.” With that, she stepped forward out of the ambient light flooding through the windows.

  Chapter 65

  The world was a place of pain and smoke. His lungs burned and so did his skin. The jumpsuit had protected him from the worst of the heat, but it hadn’t been designed for extreme temperatures. He knew one suit leg had melted which accounted for the searing pain up and down the backside of his calf and thigh. But the burns weren’t the worst of it. It was the broken ribs making it difficult to breathe.

  He still wasn’t sure what he’d seen. When Harrel first blasted the thing with the Taser, blue arcs of electricity danced off the creature’s carapace. The thing shook as though it was being electrocuted, but it recovered. And then it started going after Harrel through the doorway.

  He’d screamed for her to hit it again, but seconds had passed without anything happening. Just as he was getting ready to yell at her, ask her what the fuck she was doing in there, the arcs of electricity started again. Only this time, they looked like lightning bolts.

  The creature’s carapace had started to disintegrate, large flakes exploding off and turning into dust. Some part of Mathis’ mind had told him to get behind the wall. He’d listened to it. It was the only thing that had saved him.

  An instant later, a gout of fire and debris had flown past the wall. His right leg hadn’t been completely behind cover, and the force knocked him sideways as well as burned his suit. When he’d hit the concrete floor, something snapped in his chest, or rather several things. If he had any intact ribs left, he’d be surprised.

  He felt the urge to cough from both the smoke and his aching lungs. Better not, he told himself. You may have punctured a goddamned lung. What he should do is stay right here on the floor and wait for help. But as that bitch Moore had made very clear, no help was coming until they rid the building of all the creatures. Speaking of.

  Mathis held his chest as tightly as he could and tried to sit up. The tsunami of pain forced a muted scream from his mouth. Christ, but that hurt. He tried again and managed to get upright. He breathed through his mouth in shallow gasps and then finally struggled to his feet.

  The world tilted and he nearly lost his balance. He felt moisture on one side of his face. Mathis raised a hand and gently touched at his right ear. The hand came away bloody. “Busted my goddamned eardrum,” he said aloud.

  From around the corner, something scraped against the floor. At first, he thought it was more phantom noise from his damaged ears, but the sound continued. It wasn’t rhythmic or continuous, but more of a staccato scraping followed by seconds of silence. He took a deep breath and immediately regretted it. A lightning bolt of pain drove the air from his lungs and whistled through his mouth. Yup, that was a good sign of a punctured lung.

  He kept his arms tight around his chest and staggered slowly to the corner. If the thing was still alive, he was dead anyway. He couldn’t run, couldn’t hide, and there was no goddamned place to go anyway. But he wanted to see. Had to see.

  The scraping sound continued as he reached the corner and then it stopped. He paused for a second, waiting for it to start again. It didn’t. He was too tired to feel much of anything other than pain and the unreal disconnectedness of shock. He sipped a breath, groaned, and then stepped past the corner. The sight of the floor made him forget all about the pain.

  When he and Harrel had originally reached the security office, the concrete floor outside the reinforced steel room had been clean and blemish free. A three meter, ragged swath of concrete had disappeared. Bent rebar jutted from the hole like broken ribs.

  Pulverized concrete dust covered everything including the walls. The ceiling was a wreck of blasted tiles, wiring, and metal. The explosion had savaged the ductwork, twisting the relatively thin aluminum into incomprehensible shapes. Only one emergency light remained lit. The others had been completely destroyed by the explosion.

  But the real shock was the security door. The heavy plated steel was warped inward on one side. It no longer fit in the frame. He blinked at it and then realized it was partway open. He nearly jumped when gloved fingers appeared through the gap and the door scraped open again.

  “Harrel?”

  “Mathis? You alive?”

  He limped to the door, placed a hand on the warped side and pulled. The door scraped against the concrete and moved another centimeter. He tried to pull harder, but the spectacular lightning bolt of pain through his chest stopped him. He stumbled backward moaning in pain.

  “Mathis? What’s happening?”

  He turned, put his back to the wall, and leaned against it. “I’m broken inside,” he said. A curl of blood streamed down his lips. “I can’t move the door.”

  Harrel sobbed on the
other side of the door. “Is it gone? Tell me it’s gone?”

  In spite of the pain, he grinned. “We got it. We got it.”

  “Good,” she said. He barely heard her voice, but she started yelling into the radio. “Moore! We killed it, but we need help. Now!”

  Mathis didn’t hear the response. He slowly slid down the wall, whimpering in pain. He blinked once. Twice. And then his eyes closed and the darkness had him.

  Chapter 66

  The dark had never been her favorite. As a child, she’d spent countless sleepless nights staring at her closet, wondering when the boogeyman would come through, sporting a snarling parody of human features. Each step forward brought the cloud-painted closet door from her childhood directly into her mind. It was cracked open, long, sharp, gnarled claws tapping and scratching through the gap, rending the paint into tatters.

  Sarah willed the image away. Her father had told her there were no monsters. Society said there were no monsters other than human ones. But they were all wrong. What hid in the hospital, the black thing, was a true monster, a childhood terror realized in destruction and death.

  Her boots crunched on less and less matter. She was exiting the blast zone from the last pipe bomb. The remaining ambient glow disappeared into the shadows. She took a deep breath and tried to keep her hands from shaking. The blue-white LED light punctured the strengthening darkness, but only for a few meters.

  Waving her rifle slowly from side to side in vertical diagonals, she did her best to illuminate the path while looking for sign. The only way she was going to live through this was seeing the threat before it was upon her. But even if she saw it, that was no guarantee she’d be fast enough to escape.

  Silence. Except for the wind and rain battering at the windows, this wing of the hospital might as well have been a tomb. The LED rifle light illuminated shattered walls, the metal remains of furniture, and metal litter strewn about the tile floor. She continued walking forward, all too aware she was heading in the direction of another surgery waiting room. Her skin prickled. Sarah stopped and cocked her head to listen. Nothing but the wind and the rain. Goddamned thing probably doesn’t even breathe, she thought.