The Forbidden Zone

by Whitley Strieber

  "The past? How?"

  "I don't know. Except when you consider that the earth existed for billions of years before the first sign of what we define as life appeared, you can see that there's plenty of room for whole worlds to have come and gone and left not even a fossil behind."

  Then they saw a figure lying in the farther shadows. As they went toward it, Brian at once hoped and feared that it was Loi.

  It was a young man. The uniform told them where the judge's soldiers had come from: they had been facility guards like this one.

  Ellen turned to Brian, put her hands on his shoulders. They held one another in silence, two very frightened and lonely people.

  From deep within the complex came a rattle, followed by a long sigh. A wind rose from below, this one foul with odors neither of them had ever smelled before, thick, sour odors, complicated by dense sweetness. It stank like old meat, like rotted fruit.

  Then the direction of the air flow changed. What came down from above was fresh by comparison. "What gives, Brian?"

  "A ventilation system."

  "There's no electricity."

  "It isn't our design, Ellen. We vent with fans."

  The whole place was quietly breathing.

  2.

  The first contraction confused her. Despite all the years she'd spent on her back, she'd never given birth. At the Blue Moon Bar girls who didn't get aborted got taken down to the banks of the Chao Phraya River, and they didn't come back.

  She'd been aborted seven times, and that was the secret reason she was so fragile inside. Only the doctor had known. "Dr. Gidumal," she moaned, staggering along in the blind dark. "Sanghvi... Sanghvi Gidumal..."

  Now she held her belly, encircling it with her arms. Memories came to her aid, gentle and vivid, of the few good times she had known. But even these memories contained betrayal.

  When she was eight, her uncle had dressed her in a beautiful white bao dai that was scented with flowers, and taken her from the Chu Chi tunnels to Mai Thi Luu Street, with the Saigon Zoo at one end and the Emperor of Jade Pagoda at the other. Behind the pagoda flowering weeds choked the banks of the Thi Nghe channel, and their aroma scented the grounds. There had been small bells that tinkled peacefully, and incense that filled the air with the scent of old memories, and the gleaming bald heads of boy monks who had watched her with wide, calm eyes.

  In that pagoda was a very special and terrible place, the famous Hall of the Ten Hells. All the torments of the damned were portrayed there, the suffering of those so weighted with karma that they had fallen from the wheel of life forever.

  Her two years in the tunnels had taught her about maneuvering in wet and dark, and that training was indispensable now.

  She'd been touched all over by those terrible rough hands, and they had left something runny on her that had congealed and become sticky. More than bearing her contractions, she thought now about getting this stuff off her skin.

  She did not believe in the contractions.

  Brian Ky Kelly would not choose such an inauspicious time for his arrival. He was a glory child, intended to come at the very moment of dawn, under the protection of the sun and the morning star.

  Her legs seemed to weigh a thousand pounds, she didn't know where she was, where she was going. There were sparks in her eyes but nothing else, no light.

  She must have sinned too much with the perverts who visited the Blue Moon Bar. She had done many things repugnant to heaven and nature. But she had a baby! "I am with child," she cried, a shout she had often heard in the smoky dawn, when the American planes had sailed high and the firebombs had fluttered to the ground with the motion of silver leaves.

  She heard a woman sobbing, knew it was her, for there was no other woman here, nobody else so bad she had been sent to the black bottom of the Ten Hells. She knew she would burn soon, she could smell combustion in the air, hear fire rustling in the walls.

  Something brushed against her shoulder, then small threads began dragging across her chest. Reflex caused her to jump away, and the threads disappeared.

  She continued walking, trying to hurry now, using her tunnel skills. She kept her head low, waving her hands before her.

  Demons, demons, demons.

  She cast about in her mind for some deliverance, and found herself returning to the Emperor of Jade Pagoda. There also was a painting of the Guardian Spirit of Mother and Child. "I call on you to help us."

  Another contraction came, and this time there could be no doubt: she was going to give birth in hell. At the drumming apex of the pain she sobbed and shouted out, "There is a baby here!" She had also heard this in the quivering waters of the rice paddies, when both sides would be firing bright-burning phosphorus bullets into anybody in a sun hat.

  She remembered how the peasant villages smelled in the rain, of rich, damp thatch and sweet cookfire smoke.

  Once or twice she thought she'd seen sparks ahead, flickering like candles. But they did not reappear, and so she knew that they were only lights from the tunnels of girlhood.

  She would not allow the lamentations that wanted to rise from her to stop her progress. Brian Ky Kelly was coming! She had to find the sun.

  Something trembled inside her, a flutter of the inner belly. Then a hot gush of something poured down her legs. She felt fluid sluicing along her thighs, as if the sea had come out of her. "Do not take my baby!" This had been the cry of her people when the guns roared. Bullets are blind, she remembered, and softly cursed heaven for not letting her keep her gun.

  She dabbed at her legs, fearing that this new gush was also blood, a fatal hemorrhage. She lifted the fluid to her lips, tasting, praying.

  It was the water of birth. "Help me!" Their baby would see the Hall of the Ten Hells, she had brought him here because of the evil of her life. As if he was already a dead man she grieved for him.

  She had heard it coming from under flattened thatch and fiercely burning fire, the cry help me. Usually the first answer was that of the mocking parrots. Often, theirs was the only one.

  Another contraction came, shooting down from the middle of her belly, causing her to arch her back and cry out, shaking her arms and her head. She nearly toppled back, then staggered forward. She had seen peasant women give birth squatting in a corner of a room, their faces without expression. When she squatted the pain was less.

  Finally the contraction passed. Unsteadily, she got to her feet. The way the floor of the tunnel trembled made it very hard to walk. It was like trying to march in a hammock. Worse, the whole place was covered with phlegm, lathered in it.

  But when she breathed in, she could smell the dear damp of thatch, the sweetness of a mud floor. She waved her arms about,

  but felt only the slick, oozing walls. There was no thatch here, no little hut where a baby could be welcomed.

  She was going to have him at the wonderful Ludlum Community Hospital! In one of the beautiful white rooms! Attended by nurses! "Don't forget me, everybody! Dr. Gidumal, I am in need! Dr. Gidumal!"

  A sound came like a child drawing the bow across the strings of a bar-woo, crackling and guttural.

  Instantly she swallowed her cries.

  The next contraction hurt so much that she fell to her knees. She was gasping, helpless, lost in the pain. But she would not scream, not if sound drew attention.

  When at last it had passed she could taste the salt of her own blood. To keep the screams in, she'd gnashed her lips raw.

  She did not try to go forward anymore, she was too exhausted.

  This strong woman, who had braved practically every obstacle there was to find a husband and bear a child, was finally being broken. Swelling pain engulfed her, starting down in her center, driving her to slump forward like an abandoned ragdoll. She pushed because she had to push, but every cell of her body wanted to protect her baby. As she arched her back, she raised her arms—and suddenly her hands were in contact with something complicated.

  It was cold and wet and warty, and it left a stick
iness like slobber in her palms. Gagging, she wiped them uselessly against her soaked jeans.

  She crawled then, a few feet, a few more. A slashing sound started overhead, as if somebody was opening and closing huge scissors. A shower of drips rained on her naked back.

  Something up there was drooling on her.

  She knew, suddenly, why they did not attack her, transform her into a demon with the purple light. They were waiting for the baby to be born. They wanted to eat his sweet and tender flesh. They were up there sharpening their claws.

  Crawling as best she could, she silently called on the Goddess of Mothers and Children.

  Another contraction broke over her with the power of an explosion, setting her inner thighs afire, sending spears of lightning up her back. She felt something tear within her, felt it give, and suddenly there was deep movement. She went forward to her face, kneeling now with her butt high, her shoulders against the floor. Pulling her jeans away, she reached under herself and felt, and there was Brian Ky Kelly's wet head in her hands.

  She turned onto her side, her back, took Brian onto her belly, grabbed a corner of her blouse to shield him from what was above. It came closer and closer, until its hard, warty shell pushed against her belly, her breasts, the still, hot body of her baby.

  She pulled him out from under it, felt a pain within herself, realized that he was still attached to the umbilical cord. How to unfasten it? Women must do it somehow, poor women without the simplest tools. She reached down and by stretching took it into her mouth. It was slick, salty, tasting faintly of blood.

  Before she could bite down there was the whisper of a blade, very close.

  The parted umbilical cord fell away.

  She was so exhausted that she couldn't raise herself, could hardly hold him against her breasts. He was squirming, his little hands clutching. "Oh, Brian," she said, "oh, Brian."

  Suddenly he was taken from her. A cry tore from her throat. She grabbed for his disappearing body, missed, ended up with her hands clutched against her chest. Even though she was drained dry, she still found enough strength to hammer against the knobbly breast of the thing above her. "Give me my baby!"

  There was a crack of sound, sharp and quick. Brian went "Oh! oh!" He gasped, wet, rattling. He cried again, breathed, gasped. Silence. Then he mewed like a kitten.

  She hammered the hard body, kicked, screamed. Then a new sound, softer, more easy. He was cooing. As gently as a butterfly dropping through the jungle gloom, he was laid back upon her. She clutched him. He was breathing now, short breaths, very quick, and his arms and legs were moving a great deal.

  She took her right nipple and moved it against his face. Despite the dark his lips found it right away.

  The air was cold and dank, and all they had was her blouse to warm them. "Brian, my husband," she whispered in wonder, "you have a son."

  Behind her she noticed a flicker of light. Turning, she felt a deep warmth in her bones. She'd suffered so much and was so tired that the pleasure almost knocked her out.

  But she knew this pleasure, she knew that purple light.

  Now that they'd made sure the baby was out, they were bringing their cooker.

  Clutching her baby to her breast, she began to slog along. The machine came hissing closer, moving easily. As it came she could hear it sizzling and popping.

  Soon the purple light began to touch her back. She sighed, fought down the desire to stop and let the sweet relaxing heat wash over her. She must not let them get her baby!

  She ran right into a familiar figure: she knew this coarse hair, these thin, steel-hard arms. Frantically, she pushed away, falling to the floor, bouncing in the giving slickness.

  Behind her the purple light strobed furiously. Ahead there was a slurping noise. In the purple flashes she saw a wet cable as thick and alive as an animal's long tongue. As it appeared, it made the sound of a boot being drawn from the sucking bottom of a swamp.

  Behind it the compound eyes, in their thousand lenses, were flickering, purple images of a filthy woman with a baby.

  Then wet cable was pressing directly against Brian's face and flooding it with that terrible light. She snatched him away, but the cable came too, as if the end of it had been somehow glued to his face. The light flickered, the machine crackled and sputtered, a horrible stink of heat filled the air.

  Her baby kicked, he waved his arms, he mewed like a kitten in ecstasy.

  Loi could not stop the light, could not detach the cable without pulling her baby's head apart. From deep inside her there came something basic and raw and furious, the tidal wave of savage love that links a mother to her child. Instincts that she didn't even know she possessed came bursting to the surface.

  She screamed and screamed and screamed. And as she screamed, she slammed a fist into the cable that was linked to her son's head. He was so tiny, so full of innocent magic, nobody had any right to do anything but cherish him.

  There was no time, if she didn't break that connection, he was going to be destroyed. She leaned forward and bit the cable, clamping her jaws like two steel blades. The surface of it cracked and something like hot glue oozed into her mouth. It tasted sweet and alive and stank like old vegetation, the wet rot in the depths of a peasant's compost.

  There was a flash of fire that made her groan with pleasure, and suddenly the baby was free in her arms. Wasting not a moment she turned and hurried away from the sparking machinery.

  He was still warm, was mewing in her arms, and as she scuttled along she ran her hands over him, feeling his little face, his skin, seeking any sign of damage.

  There was none. They had not been able to change him. Her mind raced, turning this over and over again. Of course, the baby had no evil in him, he was innocent, he was not accessible to demons.

  She had to get him out, and there was a chance now, a little, tiny ridiculous chance.

  Behind her there were squishing sounds, then a great, roaring, furious burr of a voice. Was it speaking words? She didn't know, didn't stop to wonder.

  She hurried along the giving floor. She was a tunnel rat again, eight years old and very scared, moving with swift efficiency through the dark.

  The great, buzzing roar rose again, and she knew that the demon was in motion now, it was coming fast, bearing down on her like the tiger in the night.

  Eighteen

  1.

  Ellen and Brian heard screams. They raised their candles but they could see nothing beyond the immediate jumble of machinery. The screams faded into the sound of dripping water, which was the chief problem in this ruined place. The water ran along cables, down conduits, fell in streams from the low ceiling, splashed, poured, creating a nervous chorus.

  They were well below the water table, perhaps sixty feet down. Pumps had once kept the place dry, but no more. The sweating walls were covered with cables and blue conduits. The floor was made of steel mesh, underneath which could be discerned the shapes of several small machines.

  "Generators," Brian said. "This is where they got their power." Overhead, bulbs in black steel cages remained unlit. He knelt on one knee, produced a quarter from his pocket and dropped it through the mesh floor. It fell a few feet, ringing against the equipment, then splashing into water.

  It was all so small, so confined, so... pitiful.

  "If nothing's running, Brian, why is this still happening?"

  "I know it's hard to understand. Our people created the link back in my old lab in Ludlum. This facility is designed to break it. Which is why it has to be turned on."

  He started down the catwalk, reassured by her clattering footfalls that she was following him.

  He hadn't gone twenty feet before the light of his candle fell on something strange. "Stop."

  Ahead was a gray substance hanging in folds like a curtain. He touched it and found that it was soft, giving. When he pushed, it tore, the pieces dropping lightly away. An odor came out, of mold and acid.

  "I don't think we should go in there, Brian."r />
  He gazed at her, a curious peace in his eyes. She'd seen this expression before. Her father had worn it on his deathbed.

  The odor stung their noses and made their eyes itch. A greasy taste settled into their mouths, as if their tongues had been painted with a paste made from vinegar and toadstools.

  He stepped through the rip in the curtain, his feet squishing into the spongy surface beyond. "It's wet. Gooey."

  Nausea stirred in her.

  "We'll only have one chance," he said. "If that."

  She came up close behind him. "I want some exact information. What are we looking for? What do we do when we find it?"

  "We've got to get to the control room. Start the thing up."

  "What if we can't?"

  "Then we can't."

  They set out, two miserable people huddled over faltering candle flames. They had to wade rather than walk on the mushy floor.

  "It's like the interior of a nest."

  "It is the interior of a nest. These creatures are modeled on the same paradigm as insects."

  Soon they came to a depression that turned into a sort of hole, fleshy and soaking. He reached in, touched the pliant, slick wall. There was a curious sensuality, a feeling of life.

  He pressed himself into the opening. "Here goes something."

  Ellen watched as he went feet first into the blackness. Instantly he disappeared, leaving only the orifice behind, gray and gleaming in the light of her candle. She could hear him sliding wetly along. "Brian," she said. Her throat was tight, her skin tingling in the fetid, acidic air.

  There was no answer.

  Sweat began trickling down her face. He was gone. Just like that, he was gone! "Brian!"

  She was in here all alone. She couldn't bear this, she had to get out. She had to get out!

  No, wait. Don't panic. "Brian, answer me!"

  Silence.

  He was gone and she was in terrible danger herself. At any moment whatever had gotten him was going to come out of that hole, and—

  She backed away. She was getting out of here.

  "Ellen."

  "Oh my God, Brian! I thought—wait a minute, where are you?"