The Forbidden Zone

by Whitley Strieber

  There was something very different perched on its broad armored carapace, something with huge fly's wings and compound eyes.

  The head of this creature turned toward them.

  The gaze was so terrible that he gasped as if struck a blow.

  Then the thing took flight, came buzzing straight across the small room.

  Like quicksilver Loi stepped through a door. She'd been standing right beside it, poised, waiting for the thing to commit itself. "Brian, fast!"

  He went racing after her. Her light darted about. "There's a desk," she said. "Block the door."

  No sooner had he shoved it against the plywood door than it began to leap on its hinges. Her light flashed from wall to wall. "This is a trap, Brian."

  He was looking at the equipment. There was a forest of wires and switches. Here and there were piles of gel filled with the blurry remains of body parts.

  He swept the tangle of wires with his eyes. This wasn't his area of expertise, but he knew enough about modern switching techniques to understand a fail-safe system. There were three switches, meant to be thrown at exactly the same time. He stretched, strained, but could not touch more than two of them. It was an "agreement" system like the one used in missile control centers. "Loi, help me with this."

  He had to get it turned on. But which side of the forbidden zone was this control room on? Would the breaking of the link catapult Brian and his family into that other world, or leave them here? Best not to think about that now.

  The door cracked loudly. In a moment it would burst.

  "Brian, we've got to find a way out!"

  "Loi, it's our only chance. You have to do this!"

  "What do I do?"

  "That switch—stand there—turn it—"

  The door came off its hinges.

  She turned the switch, but not at the right moment. "Honey, we have to do all three at the same time."

  Two of the arms came into the room, swarming along the ceiling, their claws cocked wide.

  "One, two, three—now!"

  Something started groaning. A generator? Pumps? He said a silent prayer. Clanging followed, from above, from below, and suddenly a crackle of energy, the hum of one generator starting, another harmonizing with it, a third starting.

  Light.

  He stood before them with all the dignity of a dark god, this tall, segmented presence—

  He came toward them, the buzzing roar so loud that he could not hear, could not think. But the baby regarded him with slow eyes, calm and full of peace.

  He faltered.

  Loi and Brian saw that they were standing before an awesome tragedy, something proud that had fallen lower than any human being had ever fallen.

  He had been glory itself, once, when the world was very, very young.

  But then he raised his eyes, and in them there was no glimmer of defeat. Rather, he seemed full of... laughter.

  With a long, crackling sigh of static, the waveguide started.

  Then they were moving, they were sweeping through a blur of changes, into the very well of loneliness and Brian knew that the control room had indeed been on the far side of the zone.

  They came to rest in a huge square, a place miles on a side. It was paved with gigantic blocks that reminded Brian instantly of the Bimini Roads, thought to be an ancient geologic formation in the Bahamas.

  Loi gasped with surprise, the baby coughed on the yellow, clogged air. A hundred yards ahead there stood a ruined building, once massive, but now tumbled down, its exposed chambers jammed with oozing egg sacs. Thick masses of glowing, red-legged insects swarmed across them, tearing into them and wolfing the contents with complicated jaws.

  A high gabble of mad language thundered, and Brian saw that the creatures were so desperate for food that they were eating their own young.

  Overhead, wings droned as thousands more flew round and round, seeking something, anything.

  This was the heart of the matter: this desperate, dying world was trying to escape its extinction. That was what this was all about.

  Using their obvious brilliance and their bizarre science, these creatures had made a link with the living earth, and sought now to possess it and so cheat the darkness that had them in its grip.

  Then Brian and Loi were seen. Every eye turned at once, every body grew deathly still. Pincers opened, chitin rattled ominously.

  Brian grabbed Loi. Then he saw something truly amazing to him, something that he could not even begin to understand, not for all his knowledge of time and its miracles, and of hidden worlds.

  Somehow, the baby in her arms was still connected to their own world, indeed had never left it. It was not an obvious thing, but rather something in the shimmer of light about the child's body, and in the quiet wisdom in those eyes.

  We are born to our lives in clouds of wisdom so great that they are an innocence unsurpassed. The wise child knew, if he did not see this place, then—for him—it would not become real.

  The dead brown sky split down its middle, exposing a darkness spotted with stars and rolling great planets, a vision of such scope and awe that Brian went to his knees. For the face of God is not a simple thing, nor small, nor made in any image that is known.

  Swimming there in the good reefs of stars was the familiar blue earth of today.

  The whole mass of creatures saw at once what lay in their sky. A great rumble went through them, a shriek, a hiss, then the blasting drone of wings as they rose in a body, attracted as if to dancing fire.

  The things buzzed and roared and struggled.

  But their future wavered. Seemingly inside Brian's own mind, the waveguide itself groaned, and the link between the worlds began to falter. He understood what was happening, and why it felt as if it was at once inside him and everywhere: the waveguide was allowing the fundamental order of the universe to be restored.

  The earth of the future wavered in the sky. A loneliness like the hollowest hour of an autumn night filled him. His soul ached for the earth that was his own. Beside him his wife choked out a sob.

  Brian looked down at his baby, innocently nursing at Loi's breast. The child's eyes met his with a frankness so total that it made him start back in amazement. But there was also tremendous compassion, an openness of spirit that made the old father sob aloud.

  Then the angelic presence of the baby focused him, focused Loi, and they saw that they could not be here, they did not belong here, and nothing could keep them here.

  Hope filled them like a rich and dizzying oxygen, and they felt the exhilaration of flight, soaring up, high above the great plaza, the tremendous stone city of the past. Brian saw that it swept to the horizons with its huge shadowed structures, the great blocks with their tiny, frowning windows, and the deep, lightless streets.

  Evil had filled every soul in this whole vast place, and they were all corrupt, and so the baby rose above them like a bubble rises in a swamp, and his parents rose with him.

  Then they were back where they started, in the dripping, tiny room that housed the control point.

  Had it all been a hallucination?... or a wish—something from his mind?

  The thing they both now thought of as the demon was coming forward in joy and pride, his wings whirring, his long arms spread wide, to greet the horde of his kind that he had so confidently expected to appear.

  Instead, Loi and Brian and their baby appeared. The growing power of the waveguide had severed the link between the ages, and the baby's innocence had brought the little family home.

  The demon shrank back.

  Then Brian saw why: the creature had known better than they what would now happen. A disaster began to unfold. Dark, torn objects started dropping out of thin air—steel-spring legs, pieces of wings, heads with mouth parts still a-scramble, glowing, pulpy abdominal segments.

  First the pieces dropped, one here, one there. Then they fell in greater numbers, and the demon was jostled by them, moved to protect himself with his cable-thin arms. Then they poured out
of the air, and he was thrown back, his howl a jet at full throttle, covered by an avalanche of his own ruined kind.

  When he recovered himself, he began moving toward Loi.

  Brian pushed his way through the slippery mass of body parts. He had to protect her.

  "Brian, no!"

  "Get ready to run, Loi."

  Closer he went. He could see the segments pulsing, opening and closing to expose bright blue oxygenating organs. This was a primitive creature indeed. This body had been molded when arachnids were the highest form of life on earth. But those eyes—they were very, very smart.

  Then Loi did the unexpected, jumping farther than Brian would have thought possible. "Come quick, Brian!" She dashed through the door.

  Then what? He'd face that later.

  As they ran the lights flickered, and he shuddered with dread. The facility was full of water and in poor repair.

  This wasn't over, not at all. If the waveguide failed, or if the demon decided to stop chasing them and destroy it, then all their effort would be for nothing.

  They ran up a spiral staircase that had been revealed by the light. In moments Brian's breath came short, his chest burned.

  Again the generators ground low, again the lights dimmed.

  Little Brian was in full cry, his mother trying to comfort him even as she raced upward.

  They reached another surface—and found organic material everywhere lying in limp folds, quivering and dissolving before their eyes.

  The outpost he had so carefully fashioned for his people was disintegrating and dying. There was a meaty odor of human blood here, and Brian and Loi both knew that the destroyed creatures in this part of the facility had once been their friends, the people of Oscola and Towayda. Ellen's voice echoed in Brian's memory.

  "At least they've died," Loi said. She was also breathing hard.

  Brian fought for his bearings. He had no idea where to go to find the exit. But there were limits: they had reached a catwalk, and it only went in two directions. Again the lights flickered. Brian listened—and heard behind them the telltale buzz and clatter of the oncoming creature. "I don't know where the hell we are!"

  "We try this way," Loi said.

  "You're sure?"

  "Just come!"

  The buzzing was followed by a great, cawing cry, very different from the roars of anger that had come before. There was blood lust in that cry.

  They hurried along, Brian keeping his head down to avoid being knocked senseless by a protruding valve or pipe end. In the light he could see that this place was little more than a few hastily dug tunnels.

  They entered a slightly larger room. Brian was amazed: incredibly, Loi had taken them to the main entrance, and there was the elevator shaft. "How did you find this?"

  "Too many tunnels in my life, Brian."

  He started to push the elevator button, to bring the car down for them.

  "No, it's too much of a risk. He can get control of the car from down here."

  Brian looked up the shaft. "You can't climb all the way with the baby. It's over a hundred feet."

  "I'll carry him as long as I can. Then you do it."

  They started up. Brian's chest pain, which had diminished, now returned. His arms shook and his muscles were jelly. Sweat poured down his face. His scars tormented him.

  They reached the bottom of the elevator cab. A shaft of light shone down from inside. "I'll pull myself up. Then I'll reach down and take the baby and help you." They were fifty feet from the floor of the shaft.

  At that moment there boiled up from below a great, pale cloud, glowing purple within. The lights flashed.

  Brian clambered frantically into the car, turned to get the baby. She handed him up, then came herself, moving with the supple grace of a cat.

  Absolutely without warning an arm reached out of the gel-covered remains of poor Bill Merriman and grabbed the baby.

  Loi threw herself into the mess. She tore at the arm, dug into the gel, throwing gluey body parts over her shoulder. Merriman's enormous glasses sailed past, an eyeball sticking to one of the lenses.

  Brian pulled at the mess with her, and together they got their baby back.

  "Let's go," he said. They scrambled up through the hatch to the top of the elevator. He had the baby.

  With a massive clank and a whang the lift cables around them went taut. The elevator began to move downward. Light like a purple sun blasted up from around the car, getting brighter as they dropped.

  The ladder was whipping past. "Jump on it," Loi cried.

  They leaped, grabbing, clutching, their fingers slipping, holding.

  With every ounce of energy they possessed, they climbed. The elevator clicked again and began to return.

  "Faster, Brian!"

  He fought for every rung of the ladder, tortured by the possibility that he would drop the baby, grabbing for rungs with just the fingers of his left hand. His heart chugged, his breath bubbled.

  The car clicked as it came, and the clicks got quickly louder.

  Harder they climbed, still harder. But it was no good, Brian could see the car not twenty feet below them. "Loi, as it comes past, jump on the roof! But don't let yourself fall through the hatch." He listened. Click. CLICK. "Now!"

  Another second and he followed her. She groaned as he landed hard on her. A pain shot up through his leg. He clamped his jaw shut. The baby in his arm cried out in surprise.

  "Inside, quick!"

  They climbed down into the car.

  A moment later it jerked to a stop. Now a doorway was there before them, but this would only last an instant. Now that they were in it, the car would be brought back down. Brian pressed his fingers between the doors.

  He tugged as hard as he could. The doors began to open. But then the elevator moved a couple of inches and they stuck. There wasn't a foot of clearance. Behind him Loi made a stifled groaning sound. He turned. The gel was rising like a slow wave up the back wall of the car. In it the remains of Bill Merriman were coming to life again, but this time they were transforming, moving together, the arms growing thin, the skull changing form, huge compound eyes forming—

  He was coming, and in doing so revealing yet another strange ability. He was forming another version of himself out of the man's remains.

  They had to get through that door and they had to do it fast.

  The baby was easy: Loi pushed him through and set him on the floor outside.

  Struggling madly, jerking, twisting, flouncing, she forced her way out. Her breasts stretched agonizingly as she dragged them through, and her own howls made Brian scream, too.

  Brian could not make it. He pushed, he shoved, but he was trapped. The creature began to touch him. He felt the purple light beginning to flicker against his back.

  Loi pulled and he shoved. His head came out between the doors, then his shoulders. He felt her strong fingers grab him, digging into his scars. "Go on without me," he screamed, "I can't make it!"

  She tugged first one shoulder and then the other, and he came by inches.

  Within the car there arose a great roaring buzz.

  Then he realized that he was out. He was out and crawling, his face scraping dirt.

  A long, thin arm came out behind him.

  Loi had found some tools and smashed the arm with a shovel, and its surface cracked like a beetle's crisp armor.

  Brian realized that she must also have pried the doors with the shovel.

  Behind them, the elevator hopped and jumped. Purple light flooded it.

  The lamps overhead dimmed, died, then returned, glowing low and weak and red. There came a horrible silence, as if the whole world waited. But Loi gave a shout of joy: not far away was the light of a tunnel entrance.

  They had reached the surface.

  At that moment a great moan rose, from below, the voice of evil stripped naked. There was fierce hunger in it, for the dimming of the lights meant that the waveguide was weakening, and he was gaining strength again.
r />   The cry rose and rose, echoing into the depths, filling the air with its coarse, buzzing savagery.

  They covered their ears, they screamed to drown it out.

  It ended with the suddenness of a passing storm, and then they heard a scuffling as if of rats, and the sighing of movement in the chambers of the old mine.

  He was coming. More slowly now, but still coming. The lights stayed .

  They moved as fast as they could, dragging themselves toward the entrance, too tired to talk. Brian was sick inside, sick with fear. Now that he knew what was trying to get through, the whole thing was even more awful. What a hideous, hideous fate his experiment had offered the world.

  Behind them the scuffling movement of the ravaged demon was getting louder. Brian turned, and could see him in the long corridor, a shrunken, struggling shape all twisted and full of angles, coming along the floor with slow, snake-like undulations.

  They went out the facility's entrance, which had been skillfully hidden in the woods between the judge's house and the mound.

  They entered a ravaged world.

  The alien forest of barrel-like trees was now a desert of sunken bladders. Everything was disintegrating and falling away. Here and there great legs were still attached to huge, dissolving bodies. Shells and carapaces lay scattered about among the leaking, shriveling remains of the trees.

  But there was a new scent in the air—new and yet familiar. When dawn is sweet, this is its sweetness. The sun was on the point of rising. Behind the black, torn silhouette of the mound, the morning star floated in pale blue air.

  They walked a few steps and sat down. Brian's heart was thundering and his breath was much too short. Loi came beside him and put her free arm around him. Their baby was nursing again, completely content.

  "We've got to get help," Brian said. "The facility's got to be kept running!" He could not continue. His grief for his little family expanded into grief for all the world.

  "Brian?"

  "Yes?"

  "You hear that?"

  He listened. "Oh God, no." It was the unmistakable sound of humvees. They struggled to their feet. "Loi, I can't go on."

  "Yes you can! You have to!"

  No. This was the end for him. "I'm sorry."