by L. A. Cruz
Helia squeezed his hand. “They must have had a sense of humor.”
“Dark humor,” he sputtered.
Helia looked back to the tumult. There was squealing. Chomping. Slurping. Manny had disappeared, swallowed by the horde.
She couldn’t feel Dunning’s hand through the glove. She pulled it off and touched the side of his face. It was her dead hand, mostly numb, but she could still feel his stubble. Thanks to all the new arrivals, he hadn’t gotten a chance to shave. His face was cold and he was shivering.
“Make it out of here, Corporal,” Dunning said. “Find out who did this. Save the upstairs world. That’s a direct order. I’m pulling rank here.”
The creatures turned and backed away from Manny. She could see him now, lying on the ground, his chest torn open, his ribs heaving.
She yanked the glove back on. The creatures pounced and knocked her backward. Her helmet smacked the concrete, sending a painful ripple down her spine.
Some of the creatures held back and fought over Dunning's body. They pulled him apart. The others went for her. They clawed at her shoulders and pulled at her legs, trying to get their ragged finger bones in between her joints. Their teeth made impressions, like countless stabbings, all over the padded suit.
One of them crawled on top of her. A hole under its chin dripped blood onto her visor. Its pupils had fogged over with cataracts as the jellies melted together and its eyelids drooped. In life, the person had undergone a nose job, but now slivers of cartilage slid out of its nostrils.
She recoiled at the sight, pressing her head into the foam in the back of the helmet. “I hope your insurance didn’t pay for that, you son of a bitch.”
It chomped its teeth on her visor, a shiver-inducing screech as it scraped the hard plastic. Behind her, another creature was grinding its teeth on the top of her helmet as if it were trying to break the shell to get the meat inside a hard-shell crab.
Her blood thumped and echoed within the confines of the plastic shell. Her visor, fogged with heavy breathing, was streaked with blood. The creature directly on top of her reared its head back and then head-butted the visor, smashing its own face open, and tried to get inside.
The concussion sent a jolt rippling through her spine. All she could do was tense her body and pray to be somewhere else.
“It’s not real, it’s not real,” she whispered.
But it was very real. Another inmate hobbled over and swatted at the creature on top of her and took its place. This one pressed itself on top of her and ground its hips against the padding in the suit like an animal unable to control itself, some vestigial desire left in its limbic system. Then it snapped for her neck and she hunched up her shoulders to hide the small gap between the collar and the helmet.
Past the fog and the blood, she could see another creature going after what was left of Dunning’s torso. It was digging in between his ribs. Another creature bullied its way in and swatted the creature away with barely a flick of the wrist. The weaker one skittered backward across the concrete, picked itself up, and crawled toward them, but the stronger one hissed at it and smacked its lips.
They had become animals, no shred of humanity left. She might as well have tried to raise a wolf cub.
“What the hell was I thinking?” she muttered.
The last of her hope pulled away from her heart strings as if one of the creatures had gotten its hand inside her chest and was pulling out the roping that held her together. She was completely trapped. Trapped inside the suit and trapped inside the cellblock. Even if she could get out from under these vile things, her key card would not work at the door.
The creatures kept piling on top of her, sliding down, and clawing their way back onto the mountain of her suit. The pile was hot and heavy, their collective weight pressing down on her sternum and making it hard to breathe. They snapped at one another and bloody chunks and spatters and shards of ragged bones flew out of the pile like a corpse thrown in a wood chipper. Their bones popped and jutted out their shoulders and their clavicles snapped and broke through their neck skin as they fought for a bite of her flesh.
She tried to get a last look at Dunning, but could not turn her head enough to see him. She was consumed by a claustrophobia so intense, she felt as if she were zipped inside a body bag. She might as well have been buried alive, six feet of dirt raining down on her, pressing the breath from her lungs…
She felt lightheaded. Hot. Sweat pumped out of her forehead. It was too hard stay conscious. The creatures were pressing the breath out of her. She was slipping away. She caught glimpses of red light between shifting cracks in the frenzy and then her eyes rolled back and all went black.
CHAPTER 39
Helia gasped awake. She had passed out. Her shoulders were tight, still hunched from trying to protect her neck. Most of the creatures had given up, but two of them were still working at her bootlaces, trying to get at her feet. Their fingers had fallen off and their bones were protruding from the knuckles, and the two were getting frustrated and snapping at each other. Two vicious children, she thought.
She rolled her head to the side and tried to press the button on the side of her helmet. Unless the cameras were on the same circuit as everything else that had shut down, the control room should have been able to see what had happened. In fact, they must have been able to see. It wasn’t a power failure as Dunning had said, not if the cells could open.
She tried not to make any major movements that would draw the creature’s attention again and hunched her shoulders and cocked her head, trying to press the button.
It triggered static.
“This is Corporal Crane. Can anyone hear me?”
At the sound of her muffled voice, the inmates looked up from her feet. The other creatures that had left and were draining the remaining blood from Dunning—his corpse shriveled and deflated—crawled toward her again and clawed at her arms. One of them got its hands under her head and yanked her head back and forth, trying to pull off the helmet.
“Please, is anyone there?” she said.
There were no sounds in the helmet except for the banging and the clawing. It sounded like nails on styrofoam and her skin broke out in gooseflesh, even in the hot suit.
And then a crackle. “Crane? Is that you? Where the hell are you?”
It was a woman, but there was an edge to her voice.
“Pinder? Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me. Where are you?”
Helia felt a tiny surge of relief and kicked one of the creatures in the face. It snarled and went for her kneecaps, but she kneed it in the jaw and it fell away, only to replaced by another.
“I’m in the day room. The inmates are all loose. They’re all loose, goddammit. The Keepers are dead. Someone tried to kill us.”
It was quiet.
Helia’s chest filled with dread. Had it been Pinder? Had Pinder tried to kill them?
“Are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“What happened, Pinder?”
“I don’t know. Everyone ran from the control room.”
“Who opened the cells?”
“I have no idea.”
“You need to open the day room door.”
“I can’t,” she said. “Everyone’s evacuated. The elevator locks out in five minutes. You need to get out of there.”
“But the main door is locked!”
“I’m sorry, Crane. It’s protocol.”
“Unlock it.”
“I can’t. It’ll let them out. It’ll put us all at risk. Procedure is to lock the facility down and seal it off until they all die out. You know that.”
“So you’re going to leave me here?”
More quiet.
“The elevator locks out in five minutes,” Pinder said. “Whether you’re on it or not.”
“How do I unlock the door?”
More quiet. And then there was static.
"Pinder!"
No response.
> “You son of a bitch,” Helia said. She started counting. She wasted the next sixty seconds trying to control her breathing, trying not panic, trying to tell herself this wasn’t the end. The team had left her behind. Country before the individual. She swore up and down she would never do the same.
Four minutes left.
One of the inmates grabbed her right arm and pulled. Another grabbed her left. It was a tug of war. They wanted to pull her apart, to spill her insides like a piñata, and fight for the red candy.
Her sockets had reached their maximum stretch. Any farther, and they’d dislocate.
She twisted, trying to get up. Through the bars of cell twelve, she saw Manny. There was a gaping hole in his chest, but he was still alive. Or dead. Or unliving. Whatever the hell. He had dragged what was left of Dunning back into his cave of a cell and was hunched there, eating silently. After all his healing, after surviving the attack, he was the alpha male now. He had never been the alpha male in his entire life. The others had backed away from the cell and were left to claw for the yucky-tasting, heavily-padded scraps, that is Helia.
Three minutes left.
She had heard that young soldiers, injured on the battlefield and near death, often cried for their mothers. If that were true, then was it the same for young female soldiers? Did they cry for their fathers?
She thought of her mother sitting there in the wheelchair, watching television, and eating egg rolls. But had no desire to cry for her. Nor for her father. It was his own damn fault she was here in the first place. If only he had been someone more respectable; if only he had kept his shit together, gotten a real job, been a role model, then maybe she would have gotten a nice little job as an elementary school teacher or some innocent nonsense little girls were supposed to want—instead of thinking she could reform the world.
Blah, who was she kidding? She had always wanted to kick ass.
One more minute.
It was time to kick ass. Time to stop lying there, the victim. Her mind raced. She thought of the vents overhead. They were somewhere up in the ceiling. But they were impossible to reach. She couldn’t scale the walls. She had no ladders. Impossible.
Forty-five seconds.
Her confidence slipped. She didn’t belong in this world. She couldn’t think it, but she could feel it, deep in her chest. Enlisting, basic training, all had been to fill a void—one left by a lousy man. And to think, that idiot Fanning wanted to leave that all behind. For what?
A thought.
Fanning. Makab.
Major Makab had turned his body into a weapon. She could do the same. Why not? Women had been doing it for centuries. She had something that every creature in the cellblock wanted.
So why not use it against them?
The syringe was still in her pocket. The tube was empty, so that wouldn’t work, but she could open up a new vein.
It might work. She jerked both of her arms back and the sudden movement took the two inmates at her feet by surprise and they let go. She used the break to scramble to her feet.
The sudden movement drew the others toward her. They swarmed and caught her in the chest and drove her back against the bars of cell number twelve. She hit the bars hard, her helmet clanging. There were four of the creatures on her now, driving her backwards, pressing her back into the bars. She could feel her shoulder blades forced between the metal strips.
She turned her head enough to see Manny in the cage behind her. He was still eating.
“Manny,” she muttered. “Help me. Please.”
Manny paused in his eating. He looked up. In the fading red light, she could see the tattoo on Dunning’s hip. One hundred thirteen.
“Manny, please.”
He opened his jaw and roared. A deafening roar, bloody spittle flying from his sharpened teeth. The inmates backed off. She sidled along the wall, slipped into the closest cell, and pulled the bars closed.
Thirty seconds.
She unzipped her suit and ripped off her glove and pulled her arm out of the sleeve. She pulled out the tube, now empty, and tied it around her upper arm. Then she grabbed the syringe and without thinking about the consequences, poked it into the vein on her right wrist and wiggled it back and forth. The vein opened up. She pulled out the needle and it gushed. She held her arm down and leaked a puddle onto the floor.
She had only minutes before she bled out.
Twenty seconds.
The inmates didn’t back off for long. They smelled the blood and jumped at the bars. She stuck her arm back into the sleeve, gloveless, and yanked open the cell door.
“Come and get it, you bastards!”
They raced into the cell. She twisted out of the way and squeezed past as they pounced on the blood on the floor and lapped at it, their tongues long and twisted. She slammed the cell door shut behind her, throwing it hard enough that it rebounded.
There were four more creatures coming at her. She ran around the perimeter, leaving a trail of blood. The creatures followed. Then, she ran toward the main door. There was only one chance to get this right. She had to use their momentum against them.
They came in fast. She smeared the knob with blood and then stepped aside. The first one, the fastest, leapt at the door knob, and she brought up both fists, and as his jaw opened to swallow the blood on the knob, she pounded the back of his skull with all the strength she could muster.
Its head and its skull broke against the knob and the force was enough to break the latch away from the door.
Five seconds.
There was a tiny hole of red light where the knob had been attached. She raised a leg and kicked the knob off, breaking open a larger hole of light.
Her heart sank. Through the hole in the door, she could see the empty elevator shaft.
Her count must have been off. She was too late.
The elevator was already gone.
CHAPTER 40
The slower creatures were closing in now. She turned away and bled on the floor beside her. They diverted their course and gave her a moment to try to unlock the door.
But there was only one chance. If she messed up, it was over.
She unzipped her suit, pulled her bleeding arm out the sleeve, and stuck the slender wrist of her weakened arm through the hole. She groped around the side of the wall and felt for the keypad, her fingers tingling. It was so numb, she could barely feel anything.
The creatures finished licking the blood and turned back toward her.
“C’mon, c’mon,” she said to herself, feeling blindly for the card reader. She didn’t know the code. Not that it mattered. She felt the grid of keys and ripped it off the wall.
It beeped a rebuke.
One of the creatures grabbed her and shoved her against the wall, her exposed shoulder driven into the steel door, the ragged edge—where the knob had broken away—slicing her arm open.
Pinned against the wall, blind to the task, she fumbled with the exposed wires on the other side of the door. A tangled clump came away from the wall and there was a spark, a click, and a mechanism inside the door relaxed.
“Get off me!”
She whipped her head forward and smashed the creature who had pinned her to the wall in the face with her helmet. Its nose broke against the shield and the creature collapsed. She whipped her head to the right and smashed the next creature in the chin and its jaw broke off and it collapsed on top of the other creature.
“Cuddle that,” she said.
She yanked her arm out of the hole in the door. Her arm was a ragged, bloody mess, the skin around the elbow torn away, but there no time to worry about it. She stuck her fingers inside the hole and pushed the deadbolt back. Then she yanked the door open and slipped out and slammed it behind her.
She was in the chamber hub now. It was dark and red, emergency lights only. A creature slammed the door behind her and she pressed her back to the door to keep them inside the day room. Her suit was half-falling off and the small of her back got wet as they tongued
the hole where her arm had left blood.
Ahead, the elevator shaft. Everything else was locked. The shaft was the only way out. She’d have to make a run for it. But she’d never make it in the bulkiness of the suit.
She took a deep breath. She was whoozy, teetering. All the blood loss was taking its toll. She blinked twice, regained composure, and then yanked the suit down to her ankles, stepped out of it, and left the smelly fabric in a pile on the floor.
“Good riddance.”
More creatures attacked the door behind her. It nudged open a crack and she pushed with all the strength in her legs to hold it back. It opened wider and she pushed harder.
“Jesus,” she breathed.
She couldn’t hold the door much longer. Now was the time. She pushed off the wall and sprinted for the elevator. At the wall, she mashed the UP button.
Nothing.
Behind her, the cellblock door flew open.
“C’mon, c’mon,” she said and mashed the elevator button again.
Still nothing.
It was over. Locked out as Pinder had said. She pulled the gate aside and leaned into the shaft. A cold wind blew from the bottom and made her skin contract. The elevator was nowhere to be seen. Overhead, maybe. She could only assume it was all the way up at the surface where everyone else had escaped before it locked.
Behind her, the creatures fought through the door. She took a step back and then dove into the shaft and grabbed the elevator cables. She climbed hand over hand, the cut in her wrist screaming and squeezing out more blood.
Beneath her, two of the creatures leapt into the shaft and grabbed for her ankles. She yanked her boots up to her chest and the creatures missed and fell down the shaft into the darkness. Their snarls faded and there was a dull thump as they splatted at the bottom.
She summoned all her will to climb, her arms aching. She gripped the cable with her boots as if she were in gym class and shimmied up, inch by inch.
Her wrist kept dripping. The creatures below leaned into the shaft and stuck out their tongues like lapping at the rain.