Hatch

by Kenneth Oppel

  “Do not try to attack us,” the guard said. “We will shoot instantly.”

  —What do we do?

  That was Siena asking. Some of the kids were already obediently lying down on the floor. Seth didn’t blame them.

  Another guard pulled four black hoods from a pocket and flung them into the room. “Flyers, you will pull these over your heads. Now.”

  —Those block us, Seth said. No telepathy. No sound weapon.

  —We can take them, Esta said.

  —What if they shoot first? asked Vincent.

  Seth worried about the same thing. They were all crammed into a small room. All the guards had to do was squeeze a trigger and they’d hit someone.

  “All right!” he told the guard. “We’re putting them on.”

  Slowly he bent down to pick up the hood at his feet. This could all go terribly wrong.

  —Seth, what’re you doing? Anaya said.

  —Pick up your hoods, he told the others. Esta, you and I are going to take the guard with the buggy eyes. Siena, you take the one on the left. Vincent, guy on the right.

  There was no way he was having a hood over his face again. He picked it up.

  Behind him came a wet rasping sound. When he turned, something was oozing out of the escape shaft. Glistening yellow and black, it kept coming, foot after foot, like some disgusting toothpaste squeezed from a tube. Finally it flumped onto the grate with an echoing clang.

  “What the hell’s that?” cried the buggy-eyed guard.

  The thing lifted itself so it filled most of the hatchway and looked out into the room. If it was even looking. It didn’t seem to have eyes, or anything resembling a head—until its mouth opened wide.

  When Seth saw the spiraling sets of teeth, he knew instantly this had to be the same wormy thing he’d seen in Dr. Weber’s lab. This one was a grown-up. It began to hump into the room. One of the kids threw a chair and hit it in the mouth. The worm didn’t even flinch, just ate the chair, plastic, metal, and all, inhaling it with its spiral of teeth.

  Seth jerked at the sound of gunshots and saw the guards’ bullets slug into the worm’s corrugated flesh. No effect. Kids were screaming and scrambling out of the way as the worm moved through the room. All the guards’ guns were aimed at it.

  —Now, Seth said.

  Guards clutched their heads; guns clattered to the floor. The buggy-eyed guard jerked backward so violently he fell, gun firing into the ceiling a few times before his shaking hands lost their grip.

  With surprising speed, the worm surged toward him and swallowed him up to the thighs.

  “The keys!” Anaya shouted aloud.

  Before Seth could stop her, she raced to the guard, grabbed him under the armpits, and tried to haul him free.

  There was a thump, and from the escape shaft a second worm bulged out and into the room.

  “We need to go!” Darren was shouting.

  Seth ran over to help Anaya. But they might as well have tried to save the guard from a black hole. The keys on his belt jingled violently as he thrashed. Soon the worm’s teeth would gobble them up. Anaya darted out her hand and snapped the ring off the belt. The worm’s serrated teeth cut a deep gash in her skin.

  “Anaya!” Seth cried out as she yanked her hand clear.

  He saw the worm falter and give a small shiver, as if it had tasted something disgusting. But only for a second. Seth didn’t think it was possible for the thing’s jaws to get any wider, but they did. Its body surged forward, devouring the guard up to his neck.

  “Elevator!” Anaya shouted to everyone. “I’ve got the key!”

  Everyone poured out of the room and back to the elevator doors. Anaya plunged the small key into the lock, turned it. A clank, and a metallic whirring.

  Waiting for the elevator doors, Seth thought he’d lose his mind. His gaze bounced between the doors and the corridor, which was still clear—

  Until there was a man. Gun in hand, he’d stepped into the T-junction at the far end of the corridor. He stared straight at them. Seth felt all the kids press closer against the elevator doors.

  —It’s Paul! Anaya cried out.

  Seth could hear other voices, still out of sight around the corner, calling questions to Paul: “Are they there? Do you see them?”

  —I’ll drop him! Esta said.

  —Wait! Petra said. He said he’d help us!

  Paul didn’t lift his gun and take aim. He only turned his head to the unseen guards and said, “Nothing down here! They must’ve gone to Wing L!”

  And then he disappeared in the direction of the voices.

  The elevator doors opened and kids started pouring inside. Seth exhaled in relief and followed them.

  ANAYA JABBED THE G button, and a dim light flickered behind it. The elevator was crammed. She didn’t know how many people it was supposed to hold, but she hoped they weren’t too heavy.

  “Why aren’t the doors closing?” Petra demanded, stabbing at the button.

  Down the corridor, a worm lurched out from the escape-hatch room. It was grotesquely swollen. Its blunt head turned away from the elevator, then toward it. With a slippery surge, it came at them.

  “Close the doors!” screamed Paolo, the bespectacled runner.

  In slow motion the doors began to shut. Crushed against the back of the elevator by a mass of bodies, Anaya watched as the worm humped closer. Anaya saw teeth, so many teeth. Finally the doors clanged shut. The elevator shuddered as the worm slammed against it.

  “Why aren’t we moving?” Petra wailed.

  The sound of a hundred knives being sharpened filled the elevator.

  “It’s eating its way through!” Charles yelled.

  “Go already!” Anaya roared at the elevator.

  With a lethargic rumble, it began to rise.

  “Thank God,” breathed Petra.

  “We’re going up,” Anaya said, like she needed to say it to make it real.

  She looked around at all the tense faces. Adam and Jen were talking with some of the other runners. Letitia was crying, in relief or terror, Anaya wasn’t sure. There was Charles, scratching nervously at his hairy face. Darren, checking his tail. Esta, using her sharp feathers to help cut off Siena’s and Vincent’s casts. Petra, staring at the control panel, like she could make the elevator go faster. Her eyes settled on Seth, tearing a strip of fabric off his hospital gown.

  “Here,” he said, passing it to Anaya. “For your hand.”

  “Thanks.” She wrapped it tight around the bleeding wound and knotted it. “What were they going to do to you?” she asked quietly.

  In the dim light, Seth’s face looked hollowed out, his eyes haunted.

  “Operate on my brain. Take out the transmitter.”

  Anaya was mute with horror. She heard Darren mutter, “Holy crap.”

  Seth said, “Ritter thought it might stop us changing. Make us normal again.”

  “Really?” Petra asked intently.

  Esta cut her a scathing look. “Oh, you want to go back, Petra? See what your buddies can do for you?”

  “Esta,” Anaya said, trying to head off another fight. She was a little bit afraid of the other girl now—a bit afraid of all the flyers, to be honest, after what she’d seen in the cafeteria. She hadn’t been able to stop the guilty questions from surging into her head: What if they are dangerous, just like their cryptogen parallels? What if they like destroying?

  Petra glared back at Esta. “They’re not my buddies. Anyway, I was right to trust Paul. He saw us and didn’t come after us!”

  “It’s true,” Anaya said. “He got rid of the guards.”

  “He’s probably the reason the alarm didn’t go sooner,” Petra said. “He’s helping us escape.”

  “We haven’t escaped yet,” Esta said.

  “We can handle whatever they throw at us,” Darren added, then looked at Petra. “I saw you sting someone.”

  So had Anaya. She looked down through the forest of legs and saw Petra’s tail giv
e a nervous twitch. That tail was the bane of her friend’s existence, and now it turned out to carry a toxic sting.

  “I got someone, too,” Darren said proudly. “Bet you’re pretty glad you have that tail now, right?”

  “It doesn’t kill them, does it?” Petra asked worriedly.

  “My guy was still breathing. Only paralyzed, I think. I don’t know how long it lasts.”

  “It didn’t work the second time I tried,” said Petra.

  “Maybe it takes time for your body to make more venom,” said Anaya.

  Looking queasy, Petra nodded. “Awesome.”

  The elevator jerked to a standstill, but the doors didn’t open.

  “We there already?” Petra asked.

  Anaya shook her head. “No. Something’s wrong.”

  Anaya gulped as the elevator dropped a little. From deep below came the anguished sounds of metal twisting.

  “Is the worm eating stuff?” she asked. She’d been trying not to think about what it might be doing.

  The elevator shuddered.

  “If it eats through the cable, we fall,” Charles said.

  That was all Anaya needed to hear. “Let’s get out.” She pointed at the maintenance hatch in the ceiling.

  “And then what?” Petra demanded.

  “There’ll be a ladder or something in the shaft.”

  Someone shrieked as the light suddenly went out. Anaya got jostled by frightened, shouting kids. Breathless, she had a terrible memory of being trapped inside a pit plant. She could almost feel the walls closing in on her.

  She staggered off balance as the elevator rattled side to side, like it was being shaken by its cable.

  “It’s gonna eat us!” someone wailed.

  Anaya jumped straight up and punched open the ceiling panel. Mercifully, a pale light filled the elevator from an emergency lamp in the shaft. She jumped again and this time grabbed hold of the sides and hauled herself out. The top bristled with wheels and pulleys guiding cables. With huge relief, she spotted skinny rungs on one side of the shaft, leading up. Far overhead was a line of faint light. The doors. It wasn’t so far, not really.

  She ducked back inside the elevator and reached down a hand. “There’s a ladder. Come on.”

  The elevator shook and dipped again, and a few kids hollered.

  One by one she helped pull them through the hatch. The runners didn’t need her help and made the jump on their own. She sent Seth and Charles up the ladder first. Between the two of them—claws and feathers—she figured they could get the shaft doors open from the inside.

  “Fast,” she told them as the elevator shuddered. Metallic croaks and shrieks rose up from the shaft. Everyone needed to be off before the cable snapped.

  “Hurry up!” she heard kids yelling at the climbers above them.

  She helped out a swimmer called Ravi and sent him on up the ladder. It was just her now. From below came a crack and the elevator dropped—and kept dropping. Cable shrieked through the pulleys. Anaya’s instinct was to lie flat and hold on for dear life, but she forced herself to jump at the rungs flashing past. Her timing was lousy.

  A rung struck her under the chin; another knocked her in the stomach, winding her. Gasping, she flailed about, missing another rung as she plummeted. Her hands clawed hold of a rung, and she held tight, shaking all over, as the elevator crashed at the bottom of the shaft with an echoing boom.

  Chapter Thirteen

  BURSTING THROUGH THE DOORS, Seth was dazed by the vast twilight sky, the warm, pine-scented breeze. It was suddenly summer. Metal masts and satellite dishes towered around him. Behind him, the other kids poured out into the antenna farm.

  Hungrily, he filled his lungs. His legs trembled from the long climb up the shaft. He felt hollow and tired to his core. But he remembered their plan and hurried to the fence. With his feathers he began cutting a vertical gash. After making slashes across the top and bottom, he peeled the chain link back like a door.

  “Go!” he shouted, holding it open.

  Charles was the first to duck through, followed by a stream of others.

  “Where now?” Charles asked from the other side of the fence.

  Seth had no answer for him. Had they ever really imagined they’d make it so far?

  Anaya, he knew, wanted to find her parents and Dr. Weber; Esta had said they should hide out and avoid all cities and grown-ups, because there was nobody they could trust. He felt torn between their two positions.

  Beyond the fence the ground was strewn with dead stalks of black grass. And in the surrounding forest he saw cracked yellow vines among the branches. The whole area must have been sprayed with herbicide. He remembered what the new kids had said about Spray Zones. The bunker was definitely in one of them, though it hadn’t stopped black vines and pit plants from invading. Or the worms.

  The antenna farm was at the top of a hill, and the land sloped down to a parking lot and a helipad and what must be the main entrance to the bunker itself: a corrugated metal shed built into the side of the hill.

  —We need to get away from here, Esta said at his side.

  —I know.

  There were still lots of kids waiting to go through the fence. And he didn’t want to do anything before he talked to Petra and Anaya. Darren went through the gap, and Seth looked around anxiously. There was Petra, but where was Anaya? With relief, he saw her emerge, panting, from the elevator room. Last one out.

  When finally everyone was outside the fence, Seth said, “We need a plan.”

  “No kidding,” snapped Paolo.

  “There’s cars in the parking lot,” Adam said.

  “You know how to steal a car?” asked a swimmer called Seema.

  “The roads aren’t safe anyway!” Letitia said.

  Everyone was talking at once now.

  “Where even are we?”

  “We need a map.”

  “We need a phone.”

  “We should call the cops on these guys.”

  “Are you crazy? The cops are all in on it!”

  “I want to call my parents,” said Siena.

  There was a small pause, as if everyone had the exact same yearning thought.

  Seth locked eyes with Esta.

  —We have no parents to call, she said. It’s just us.

  He knew there was no plan that would make everyone happy. The kids’ nervous energy crackled from them like electricity. They wanted to go. Any second, they were going to split apart like unstable atoms.

  A helicopter tore out of the darkening sky and skidded through the air overhead. Blinding beams of light stabbed down at them. Squinting, Seth glimpsed two soldiers crouched in the hatchway, rifles raised. They’d open fire any second. The helicopter turned and hovered low overhead, deafening him.

  Through the swirling grit and plant debris, Seth could barely see. A few kids jostled him as they bolted for cover. Where was Esta? Where were Anaya and Petra? Someone grabbed him by the hand, pulling hard.

  —Come on!

  Together, he and Esta pelted for the woods.

  PETRA COWERED AS THE helicopter made a slow, thunderous turn overhead. Caught in a tornado of dust and panic, she shielded her eyes and glimpsed masked soldiers perched in the helicopter’s hatchway.

  And suddenly, leaning out past them: a woman.

  Like the soldiers, she wore a pollen mask across her mouth and nose, and she was so unexpected, so out of place, that it took Petra’s brain a few seconds to accept that it truly was Dr. Stephanie Weber.

  Dr. Weber pulled off her mask and was shouting something that Petra couldn’t hear and pointing at the helipad, where a second helicopter was already landing.

  —Anaya! Petra shouted silently. Anaya! Did you see her?

  —Yes!

  Anaya stumbled out of the swirling dust, and Petra gripped her tight in jubilation. It seemed impossible as a dream. How had Dr. Weber found them? And now she was here with two helicopters to rescue them.

  —We need to tell ev
eryone! Anaya was saying. Tell them it’s safe!

  It was darker now, and the blinding lights lancing from the helicopter only made it harder to see. Confusing shadows bounded across the hillside. Petra looked all around at the mayhem of panicking kids.

  She shouted at them out loud and then silently:

  —Go to the helicopters! They’re here to rescue us! Pass it on!

  Darren nodded at her, but she wasn’t sure how many other kids got her message. Maybe their heads were too filled with their own noise and fear. Even if they did hear her, would they believe her? Why on earth would they think military helicopters would help them?

  Where was Seth?

  With growing panic, she scanned the hillside. He should be easy to spot, the only kid in a hospital gown. When she tried to find him telepathically in her head, she saw no flicker of his light. Was he already too far away? Or was he busy talking to someone else, probably Esta?

  The helicopter carrying Dr. Weber drifted off toward the helipad now, and the soldiers were waving at them to follow.

  —I can’t see Seth! she said to Anaya.

  —Me either. Maybe he’s already down there.

  A small group had reached the parking lot, and the kids were watching the helicopters from behind parked cars. It was dark and they were far away, so Petra couldn’t tell if any of them was wearing a hospital gown.

  From the main entrance of the bunker, a lone man came running. He wasn’t in uniform, but he gripped a rifle. His mouth and nose were covered by a pollen mask. He turned up the hillside and headed straight for her and Anaya.

  Petra froze. How she wished she had the power to stun people with sound. Her tail gave a restless swish and she hoped she had more venom now.

  “It’s Paul!” Anaya cried.

  In the beam from the passing helicopter, Petra recognized him.

  “Get on those helicopters!” Paul shouted.

  “We can’t find Seth!” she yelled back.

  “I’ll find him. Go! Ritter’s guards are coming!”

  Paul continued up the hill, shouting to the other hybrid kids and pointing at the helicopters.

  “You can trust him!” Petra shouted at them.

  She glanced at Anaya, feeling sick, not wanting to leave until they knew where Seth was. The second helicopter had landed now, its rotor blades still turning. Some kids were nervously drawing closer.