The Enclave

by Karen Hancock

  “I already know how to open them!” Khalili told Garzi, apparently unaware that most of the Americans in the room at least understood Farsi even if they weren’t fluent speakers. Or maybe he didn’t care, seeing as, in addition to the American team, there was an army of lab techs on hand to assist with transport, some of whom Cam knew were actually security personnel. Rudy had warned things might go south in a hurry and to be ready.

  “You have lost your mind,” said Garzi to his subordinate. “We’ve already tried the blood thing and it didn’t work. It has become a bizarre obsession for you, Sayid.”

  “You’ve tried pig’s blood.”

  “There is no scientific rationale for any kind of blood being able to penetrate those pods,” Garzi pointed out. “This is wild, magical thinking and I cannot—”

  “It is not wild. All mythologies speak of the power of blood . . . to bind, to enliven, to free . . . And I don’t know how you can throw scientific rationales in my face, when you have no scientific explanation for anything about these sarcophagi. They defy all our knowledge— do things they shouldn’t, don’t do things they should.”

  “Sayid—” Garzi began.

  “It would also explain why they always make us think of blood when we are around them. And why we are always cutting ourselves.

  Garzi sighed in exasperation. “You have good points, Sayid,” he said finally, his tone one of toleration rather than sincerity. “And we will give this idea a more thorough trial once the Americans are gone. But right now is not—”

  “Right now is the perfect time!” Khalili interrupted. A knife appeared in his hand, and Garzi lurched back in alarm. But it wasn’t Garzi that Khalili cut. . . .

  Cam’s awareness reverted to Swain’s cavernous lab, chains hanging about them like silver lines of rain, shocked to his core.

  It wasn’t me! he thought in wonder. All this time . . . I didn’t do it. It was Khalili! The terrible guilt he’ d borne, not only for being the lone survivor of the catastrophe at Tirich Pazu but because of somehow coming to think he’ d been responsible, was not justified. He’ d blotted out that memory, perhaps because it was the start of a whole chain of horrors better not revisited . . . but not remembering, he’ d feared the worst.

  And now you know otherwise. You also remember how to open them.

  What?! He must be mistaken. Surely God did not want these pods opened. The voice must be one of the Nephilim, regardless of how it seemed. They had impersonated Andros with Zowan, so why not God with Cam?

  Do you think I fear them, my son? Do you think I cannot handle them? The Nephilim never called him son.

  “Open the gate,” Swain said, “so he can enter.”

  But the voice had to be one of the Nephilim. God would never ask him to do such a thing. They would destroy everyone here. Lacey. Zowan. Rudy and the team. It made no sense at all.

  My ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts.

  “Oh, Lord, no,” Cam murmured aloud. “This can’t be right. I can’t do it.”

  Will you trust me?

  This is insane! But now words from the sermon he’ d heard yesterday ran through his mind: “To find your life, you must lose it. What makes no sense to us is often exactly what He wants us to do. Remember in the Exodus, when the Israelites—two million people with all their goods and their livestock—were told to head away from the Nile into a waterless desert full of tombs?”

  They had a pillar of cloud guiding them, Cam noted.

  You have the Holy Spirit.

  What if I make a mistake?

  You think I can’t handle that? You think I can’t make myself clear to you?

  Cam drew a deep breath, his head spinning, his stomach cramping, his mouth dry as dust. How could he do this? If he was wrong . . .

  Swain stood on the other side of the bars, staring at him intently.

  Cam said, “I’ll need a knife.”

  Swain didn’t quite smile, but his lips tensed. “How about a scalpel?”

  “That’ll do.” Oh, Lord, I must be out of my mind. . . .

  You can’t hide from them forever, Cameron. As long as they are safe in their pods, they are a threat. . . .

  At Swain’s signal one of the workers hurried off to get the required implement and quickly returned to lay a steel-handled scalpel into Cam’s palm. As Cam stepped through the gate into the giant cage, he heard the latch clang shut behind him. Outside, the man at the web-spinner controls flipped a switch, and the nozzles overhead spun into motion, the apparatus moving slowly along the cage-top track but not yet distributing solution.

  Cam tore off his left glove and dropped it on the floor, then took the scalpel in his right hand. Fighting past the urge to stop and rethink it all, he retraced the cut that already lay across his left palm, the instrument so sharp he felt nothing. He handed the scalpel back through the bars as dark red blood oozed between the cut’s edges. When it started to overflow his hand, he stepped to the pod, turned his palm sideways, and let his blood spill onto the casing.

  “Blood?” Swain demanded indignantly. “What is this—some kind of joke?”

  Dribbled the length of the pod, the blood stood inertly in uneven drops and blobs for a moment. Suddenly it began to bubble and steam, then sank into the pod’s pebbled surface and disappeared.

  There was a sudden momentary jittering of the table and the cage bars around them, the technician alert and ready to switch on the feed for the webbing solution. But nothing more happened. The pod sat inert as before, the spinner head whirring and creaking overhead as it continued slowly down its track. Cam’s blood dripped from his hand onto the floor.

  “Do it again,” Swain said.

  And Cam did. “It may be dead,” he said as he walked the length of the pod. “Or just too weak.” Relief washed through him. God had known the thing would be unresponsive.

  “Are you sure blood is the way?” Swain asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It can’t be dead!” the director cried. “Move out of there and give me that scalpel.” He tore off one of his gloves, seized the scalpel from the technician, and unlocked the cage door to press in beside Cam. There he slashed his own palm and dribbled his blood in the place where Cam’s had already disappeared.

  Right then Cam realized the Nephilim had ceased to call to him. Uneasily, he stepped out of the cage, backed away, and was starting to speak a warning to Swain when for the third time that day a deep boom rumbled from somewhere above. Everyone froze, looking upward as the floor shook, rattling the cage, the steel table, and the observation windows.

  One of the techs said, “Maybe there’s a thunderstorm going on up top.”

  A hissing, bubbling sound drew their attention back to where Swain’s blood was now smoking and sinking into the pod’s leathery surface, just as Cam’s had earlier. But as before, nothing more happened.

  Suddenly the intercom crackled: “Sir, we’re under attack! A military team has broken through the door from the Enclave into the EDL laboratory. They’re heading your way.” Barely had the voice finished when a floor-level door crashed open in the lab wall, not far from the observation booth’s metal stair, and five more security guards burst in. Three raced toward Swain, as the other two covered the open doorway.

  Cursing as fluidly and coarsely as any sailor, Swain threw down the scalpel and flew out of the cage to seize Cam by the front of his coverall. “Did you do this?”

  “I knew they would be coming eventually,” Cam said calmly.

  Swain shoved his face into Cam’s, teeth bared, free hand clenched into a fist, which Cam thought he might swing at any moment. He was interrupted by a loud ripping sound behind him, as of a huge zipper being worked.

  Cam’s gaze flashed to the pod in horror. It was now bulging and shivering, as if someone inside was pushing out. Another rip broke the silence; then a long, clawed hand covered with tarry ooze protruded from the pod, groping the air. It was not nearly as large as Cam had expected it would be
.

  In moments the Nephilim had fully emerged, covered in black goo, a scrawny, bony, stooped-over thing half the height of the pod that had held it—which still made it taller than any man in the room. It leaned weakly against the pod, then took a sudden gasping breath and coughed out a gout of black phlegm. Immediately its crest stood upright; its eyes opened and it turned to look at the people standing around its cage, mesmerized with disbelief.

  In that moment Cam realized Swain had left the cage gate open. The web-spinner tech, who had gotten out of his chair when the intercom announced they were under attack, now stood directly in front of the opening. He seemed to realize his peril at the same moment Cam did and was reaching to close the gate when the Nephilim charged out of the cage to seize him and bite away his face. In seconds it had torn off the man’s coverall and ripped away an arm, spraying blood everywhere. Cam watched in horror as fat droplets fell onto the neighboring pod, sizzled, hissed, and disappeared.

  Swain was already moving for the floor-level doorway beyond the foot of the metal stairway, his security guards closing in around him. The Nephilim, not about to let his food sources escape, dropped the first tech and lunged for a second, tearing off his head. The decapitated body fell spinning, blood pulsing out in long bright streams that fell upon the remaining pods. Meanwhile the Nephilim ignored a third tech, who was seeking cover behind the cage, and went after the group fleeing for the tunnel.

  Heart pounding so hard he thought it would burst from his chest, Cam backed slowly away, sidling between the chains in the hope they might obscure him from the eyes of the frenzied Nephilim. By the time he stopped backing up and made slowly for the offside of the observation booth, Swain and most of his guards had escaped, as had all the observers in the booth. The rest—all the techs and a third of the guards—were dead. And now, finally, the Nephilim fell to feeding.

  It was shortly interrupted by the emergence of a second and then a third Nephilim, both of whom immediately challenged it. The feeding stopped, and the battle for dominance erupted in a din of bellowing and shrieking. This, Cam knew, was his chance to get around the booth and back to one of the only points of exit. He’ d noted earlier that a space large enough to crawl through lay between the line of steel drums and the front wall of the observation booth, but it was as if the sound of the battle held him pressed to the side wall, eyes closed, fighting panic.

  By the time he’d nerved himself to move, the contest had subsided. A peek around the corner showed the first Nephilim to be discernibly larger than when it had emerged and clearly distinguishable from the other two—not only by its greater size but by its warm golden skin, the black goo having completely disappeared. It still had most of its kills piled around it, though its two companions had managed to steal a couple for themselves. For the moment the monsters’ need to eat overrode questions of how many corpses each would acquire and keep.

  What they had would not be nearly enough, though, so if Cam stayed where he was, he would not survive. The fourth and fifth Neph-ilim would soon emerge from their pods, both having been sprayed with sufficient blood to initiate the opening sequence. When they came out, he would go.

  That moment came sooner than he expected. As the challenging began all over again, he dropped to hands and knees and crawled as fast as he could behind the drums. Reaching the end of them, he dashed across the remaining five feet of wall and around the metal scaffolding to crouch at the foot of the stairway, thanking God he’ d not been spotted. Though the whole of the stair support frame now stood between him and the Nephilim, its open slatted structure provided only moderate cover. He couldn’t stay there long, and now he had another choice to make: should he bolt across the twenty feet of open floor separating him from the tunnel Swain had disappeared into, or climb the stairs to the almost certainly locked door into the observation booth?

  Neither was terribly appealing. Well, Lord? What do you want me to do?

  Suddenly another great boom sounded, this one the loudest and strongest of all. The concussion blew out the “impact-resistant” windows of the booth above him, shook the walls, and rained glass, dust, and bits of rock upon him. The blast startled the Nephilim out of their quarreling, and to Cam’s horror all five turned to stare up at the booth.

  Was that Rudy’s team blowing the heavy doors between the orange and red sectors? Probably. For a moment he thought to warn them lest they come blundering into the fray and certain death, then realized Rudy would know better. . . .

  When nothing further happened, the Nephilim turned back to each other, and the bellowing began anew. Seconds later, seven soldiers in full body armor came rappelling out of the empty front window frames of the observation booth, even as its side door exploded outward. Two more soldiers exited through the latter and raced down the stairway, past Cam and around into a flanking position, firing their weapons as they went. Meanwhile the rest of their team laid down covering fire from the booth, all of which was, of course, useless, as the Nephilim’s skin sent the bullets ricocheting every which way.

  Cam watched the monsters rise to meet the intruders, the younger ones energized by the entrance of fresh meat yet unclaimed. Then someone from the booth fired a rocket-propelled grenade right at the feet of one of the recently emerged Nephilim. It blew the scrawny, black-coated monster ten feet into the air and backward across the steel tables and their now-empty pods. Knowing there was nothing he could do to help the soldiers, Cam charged up the stairway into the gutted observation booth, pushed through the unlatched door into the meeting room, and pulled up in shock to find Rudy slumped against a wall, bright red blood glistening in a huge splotch across the front of his chest.

  “Rudy?” he cried, his voice lost in the chaos of noise.

  His friend looked up at him just as the thunderous booming of multiple explosions set the floor jumping and bucking. Cam was knocked off his feet by a powerful blast wave as the prep room disappeared beneath a mound of stone and dirt and the lights went out.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  New Eden

  As Lacey and her companions returned down the tunnel from the physical plant and the familiar form of the mall’s island appeared at the end of it, she prayed that Zowan was right about the alternative route through the Sanctuary. And that it had survived the earthquake.

  It still irked her to think of all the time they’d wasted trying to convince the wives to leave. Only Andrea was with them, and she hadn’t needed persuading. If they’d left when Rudy had told them to, they’d have gotten away. As it was they had just reached the intersection below the physical plant when the world heaved beneath their feet and the tunnel had collapsed before them.

  That was when Zowan recalled the small robing room he and Cam had found off the Sanctuary, which he thought might lead up to the surface.

  There were more people in the mall now than before, and it was from them Lacey and the others learned that the entire Justorium had collapsed in the tremor, burying all who had been inside. Lacey thought it was a miracle the mall hadn’t collapsed, as well, given all the cracks and gaps that now marred its ceiling plaster. As she examined it, she noted the wives standing at the Residence’s now glassless window, barely visible in the darkness behind the metal scrollwork, stubbornly holding to their prison.

  Zowan led the way up the mall, glass crunching under their feet as they hurried toward the Sanctuary, which appeared to be intact— though the statue at the foot of the ramp had fallen over, and one of its pair of large frosted glass doors hung askew. They told those they passed of a possible exit from the Enclave, but were met with the same hostile obstinacy they’d encountered with Father’s wives. Even with their world falling down around them, the Edenites refused to believe there might be something better elsewhere, clinging to the familiar and the comfortable.

  Lacey and her group had just reached the front court when the crunch of feet on rock and glass echoed out of the lower corridor, and a bright circle of hand lamps approached rapidly through the
dusty darkness. Soon the party was revealed to be a cadre of dust-coated Enforcers and black-tunicked Institute security guards moving en masse around Parker Swain. Swain was much the worse for wear—face and hair spattered with blood, clothing torn and dirty. His expression was one of livid fury.

  He and his group surged past Lacey and her friends, heading straight across the court for the upper corridor. Either he didn’t recognize any of them—entirely possible given their own coating of white dust—or no longer cared.

  Seeing him, though, the others in the mall, mostly older folks and children, cried out with joy, and hurried to meet him. “Oh, Father! At last you’ve come! We have prayed and prayed for your return!” They told him about the Justorium and all the people killed and trapped.

  Swain blew by them all, telling them he had more important things to deal with. He left them standing openmouthed in his wake and was only brought to a stop when he came face-to-face with one of his zig security officers. “The tunnel to the helipad is blocked, sir,” the bodyguard gasped. “We can’t get through.”

  Swain swore emphatically, did a half-turn back, then barked, “What of the chopper? Is it intact? Is it flyable?”

  “I don’t know, sir. We’ve had no communication with the helipad at all since the cave-ins. The lines are all down. But people in the hall near the Justorium said they were using it to evacuate the injured.”

  “What? By whose order?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I don’t even know if it was true. It’s a moot point now if we can’t reach the helipad. I suggest you take the Sanctuary exit.”