by Tim Marquitz
“The lights,” Gray’s voice rasps, barely audible over the sound of something thumping along the roof. “Hurry.”
He’s right, but it sickens me to leave his side. I do it, anyway.
It only takes a moment to find the gas can, and I cringe as my fingers close around the gore covered handle. I make my move towards the generator, barely able to keep my feet as I stumble over body after body. My ribs hurt, my mind reeling, but the job comes naturally. I unscrew the fuel cap, insert the funnel, and start pouring.
The primal screams seem so distant. The scraping of claws across the grated floor tells me they are getting closer, but I am completely focused. Pump the primer, adjust the choke, start the engine. I clench my hand around the ripcord, brace my knee against the generator, and pull as hard as I can.
The motor spurts, stutters, and comes to life for the briefest of instances before cutting out. I try again and again, but the engine refuses to ignite. Something tugs at my consciousness, pulling me from my focus.
“Behind you!” a voice shouts.
I try to turn but the pain of a dozen needles pierces my stomach. I’m hoisted off the ground and tossed across the room, crashing into one of the broken generators before falling face first to the ground. My chest feels as if it’s on fire. I can hardly breathe.
Claws click against the grated floor, approaching with deliberate steps. I reach out, searching for something, anything I can use as a weapon. There. My hand closes around something flat and sharp; one of the aluminum generator blades. Searing heat explodes across my back, and I am dragged across the floor. A gurgling chuckle erupts above me. The thing is fucking enjoying this.
It moves to my side, clenching its gnarled feet against the ground before it slams its talons into my side. I grip the blade tight, knowing I’ll only have one shot at this. The creature squeezes, and I howl with blinding pain. I struggle to gather my thoughts as it rolls me over, pulling me closer while its claws dig deeper inside me. I look up and meet hollow eyes staring back at me, its gaze penetrating my mind and my soul. My throat is parched, my mouth is dry, but my broken lips provide just enough fluid for this to work. I draw back my teeth and launch the bloodied wad into the nearest socket.
“See you in Hell!”
I let out a nasty roar and swing the blade. It curves through the air and barely slows as it slices through flesh and bone. Blood spurts from an arterial wound, lacquering my face in its warm, thick spray. The adrenaline drains from my system as the monstrous form falls away, releasing me from its hold. My body is racked by coughs. I’m barely able to move, but I’m alive.
I force myself to stand, tired muscles begging me to stay still. The workshop is bathed in a dim glow, probably from the torch on the shotgun, making it easier to navigate my way to the generator. I hear noises echoing throughout the station, and I know this is my last chance. I give the primer a single push and adjust the choke one more time. Wrapping my hand around the ripcord, I whisper a silent prayer, and give it an almighty yank.
The engine leaps into action.
I collapse against the nearest workbench. My exhausted body aches in places I never knew existed. The lights flicker to life, illuminating the workshop.
My heart stalls at what I see.
The walls run red. Rivulets of blood snake their way to the floor. The putrid stench is overwhelming, and I start to heave, the powerful muscle spasms inflaming my broken ribs. I drop into a crouch and hold myself, purging my mouth of the fouled saliva while trying to regain a semblance of control. I lower my gaze and examine the first body. Its chest is torn apart by a gaping shotgun wound. Under the faded light of the lamp, I can see this is not the remains of some hideous monster.
I know this person: Jessica.
My eyes sweep the room, identifying body after body. Mark: intestines spilling out through a jagged stomach wound. Tom, whose left side of his face is ripped to shreds by shotgun pellets. Paul is dead of a shotgun wound to the heart. His blood-soaked body stands out like a beacon, its throat slashed in the shape of a vicious smile.
The pieces fall into place as I gaze upon my tormentor. I got you, Dan, you worthless piece of shit.
I stay there a few moments, taking in the scene I’ve created, afraid to confirm what I know lies in wait for me. My thighs start to cramp, and I’m left with no choice but to face my fears. I feel nauseated as I hobble forward on unsteady feet. I inch toward the door, each step bringing me closer to my fatal mistake. I take a deep breath, hold it for what seems like an eternity, and step out into the corridor.
Gray lays there, his peaceful face unmoving, dead. No large chunks of flesh have been torn away by hungry monsters. Staring back at me from the center of his chest is a single shotgun wound. Blood spills in a pattern of interwoven streams. It’s my fault.
I fall to the floor beside him, overcome. I pull his head close to mine and yell incoherently. My tears splash against his beautiful face, and all I want to know is why. Why did he have to die? Why couldn’t it have been me instead?
A blood-curdling wail startles me back to reality, followed by frantic footsteps. I lift my eyes to see the only person who could make this situation worse.
“No, no, no, no, no! Get away from him!” Zoe shrieks, her feet scraping against the grate floor.
The light flickers, and the image of Zoe blurs. Shadowy elongated limbs sprout from her torso. I blink once, twice, and rub my eyes, but the image darkens and grows in front of me. That thing is not Zoe. It’s coming for the generator. It’s coming for me.
I reach for Gray’s pistol, still holstered in his belt loop. Taking it in hand, I work the slide action, chamber a round, and aim at the monstrous beast bearing down on me.
“I love you, Gray.”
The lights go out.
Dark Tide
Mark Lawrence
Ancient night. A cold place that has never known the sun. In the years that took man from the trees and gave him speech, this trench, this deep wound, has remained undisturbed. Nothing but slow currents and slower still, the grind of continental plates. Seven miles of dark water stand above these rocks. Seven empty miles.
“Careful now, you’re getting close.”
“Like I’m going to crash it.”
The Pandora rides the gentlest of ocean swells. Occasionally the waters slap against her iron hull, the only sound on a midnight ocean, starlit and calm.
“Careful!”
“Yeah right. Because I’m really going to drive my baby into the seabed after seven fucking hours getting her down there”
In a small cabin crowded with PCs, printers, spare propulsion units, power cells and a robotic arm that has never worked, two men peer at a monitor showing live video feed.
“OK, I can see the rocks now. Going neutral.” Kim Green looks too young for the beard sprouting from his chin.
~
Seven miles of fiber-optic sheathed in buoyant polyester joins his terminal to Prometheus. A delicate umbilicus pulsing with images and other, less tangible data. The robotic mini-sub maneuvers a yard above the floor of the ocean trench.
“Registering good telemetry.” Daniel McKay is older, a solid thirty. Earnest, reliable.
In the ancient night the Prometheus glides over a sterile landscape of black rock. The narrow beam of the nav-lamp scans the seabed.
“We should try the flood lights.” Kim thinks his beard makes him look like a young Cat Stevens. It doesn’t.
“Main lights are charged for go.” Daniel flicks two red switches on the console before him.
The Prometheus moves through cold, still waters. Its electric engines whirr. In the deep places there are things older than man, things that cannot be forgotten and so are better left unknown. In a street at the heart of Prague’s old town a witch-woman moans in her sleep. An old woman in the East End of London turns over tarot cards, Death, Tower Struck By Lightning, The Fool. A mystic in New York bleeds from her tear ducts and starts to scream.
The Promethe
us chugs along its course. In the ship above, Kim reaches for his coffee. He sips from a bitter cup.
“Lights are go.” He types the code.
In the darkest place a thousand watt bulb explodes with a white blindness of photons. Capacitor banks sigh as they release their charge. The shadows race away and a new day is brought to the depths. The first day.
“Neat.” Kim is pleased.
Over a forest in the Ukraine a vast flock of starlings starts to die. Their bodies fall in a light rain, by the hundred, and then by thousands in a deluge that paints the ground black.
“Keep recording.” Daniel stands and stretches his back. “Gotta go to the head.” He’s learned the nautical phrases already. Two weeks at sea and he’s Mister Sailor.
Kim watches his monitor whilst Daniel sets off along the central corridor to answer nature’s call. At the helm the Pandora’s captain smokes a cigarette and watches the compass spin.
The harsh light from the floods paints the seabed in stark shadows. Prometheus glides on, past a yawning sink hole.
Kim reaches for the joystick. In Berlin twin sisters, blonde and twelve years old, go into epileptic fits. Neither will recover. In Vatican City father Alphonse Riticio notices the holy water boiling in the fonts at the Basilica.
Kim steers Prometheus toward the hole, a rocky gullet several yards across.
Across the world babies wake screaming. Many will never sleep again. Others lie quiet and grow cold.
~
Daniel returns from the head. He feels a sharp sense of unease. The corridor to the operations room seems to stretch away from him. His footfalls make no sound.
A black thread links the Pandora to the heart of darkness seven miles below.
Daniel reaches the comms room door. He doesn’t have to knock, but he pauses, he raises his hand.
“Kim?” His voice sounds too loud.
He reaches out to touch the door, tentative, as if he expects a static shock.
“Kim?” He can’t do it, he can’t bring himself to touch the door.
One by one the corridor lights go out.
~
“The fuse has gone,” Alan said It seemed a likely explanation.
“You kids okay?” he called out loud enough for them to hear him in their bedrooms.
“The Nintendo isn’t working, Dad!” Sarah shouted back.
“I’m getting the flashlight,” Ben hollered.
“No!” Jane from the kitchen. “Stay exactly where you are and let Daddy fix the lights. I don’t want to be cleaning up the mess after you blunder into everything.”
Alan felt his way along the hall wall. The kids should have been asleep, not playing video games. “Shit!” He banged his knee on the phone table.
“You alright, dear?” Jane sounded closer. Not following her own advice.
Alan’s fingers found the catch on the basement door. “I had a fight with the table,” he said.
He opened the door. The smell of damp earth hit him. They’d had the basement fully finished five years before, plastered walls and a concrete floor, but it still stank like a root cellar. The flashlight above the door came on with a feeble glow that died away within seconds.
“Damned batteries.”
The wooden stairs creaked as he went down. It seemed to get colder with each step. He found the fuse cupboard by touch, on the wall at the bottom of the steps. He counted along the switches. If it wasn’t the damn fuses he’d have to get an electrician in, and he wouldn’t be seeing much change from $200 just to get one of those guys across the doormat.
The last switch was down. Alan flicked it up. Nothing happened.
“Shit.”
He’d spent three years at the University of Boston studying earth sciences, and his college education took him as far as flicking a switch. After that he was fresh out of ideas.
“Thanks Dear.” Jane’s voice from up above. “I’m going up to bed now.”
He noticed the glow illuminating the first few steps up by the door. He patted the wall beside him for the basement light switch.
Click. “Let there be light.” If one switch fails ... try two.
Alan scanned the crowded basement, cardboard boxes left over from the move six years back, some yet to be fully excavated, the shelves against the far wall. He needed some batteries for the flashlight.
He shivered. It didn’t feel like autumn upstairs, but down here it felt like time to fire up the furnace. He checked the toolbox under the fuse cupboard. Sometimes he left spare batteries there. He spiked his finger on a loose staple.
Alan lifted the box onto the stairs. The basement’s light was just a bare forty watt bulb and his own shadow kept getting in the way of his search.
He stopped rummaging. Slowly he turned his head back toward the center of the basement. He’d seen it when he lifted the toolbox, but the image didn’t sink in for several seconds.
Between two of the house-moving boxes, a black puddle. If they’d had an oil furnace he might have thought it a leak, but its surface returned no light, no gleam.
Alan walked across, his head bent so as not to scrape the beams.
A black puddle. Or a stain?
He didn’t want to touch it. No reason, but he didn’t want to put his fingers into that blackness.
He tore a cardboard strip from the flap of the box closest to him. A chill of revulsion crawled up his arms as he reached out to brush at the puddle ... stain?
The cardboard came away clean. Just old gray cardboard. No stain, no oil, no dirt. He let it fall.
“A trick of the light . . .” Alan didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.
Jane would be upstairs by now, cleaning her teeth. The kids’ lights would be off. It was late. He felt tired. He yawned. He told himself he felt tired, that it was late, that he could check it out in the morning. Deep down though, he just didn’t want to be alone in the basement a moment longer. Forgetting all about batteries Alan went back up. He took the stairs three at a time.
~
“Seeya!” The front door slammed. Alan glimpsed Sarah as she sprinted out the front gate toward the school bus on the corner.
He folded his paper and reached for his coffee. Across the table Ben looked up from his bowl of cornflakes, his red hair still in sleep shapes. “Do I haveta go to school after the dentist, Dad?”
Alan resisted the urge to ruffle Ben’s head. “See what your mom says, Benny-Boy.” Privately he thought any six year old should get as many days off school as possible. But then again he didn’t have to supervise if Ben stayed home.
He laid his paper down and went into the hall. The black pool kept swimming back into his mind. He was being ridiculous and he knew it. The lounge window caught the morning sun, bright squares on the carpet. He could hear birdsong outside.
It might be some kind of leak.
You have to check it out.
You’re being silly.
He opened the basement door and went down on unwilling feet.
In the space between the two boxes the concrete looked a darker gray. Nothing of last night’s black pool remained, just a shadow. He nudged at the patch with the toe of his shoe. The top layer of concrete fragmented, leaving a dusty scrape.
Damp. Rising damp.
Alan shrugged and turned to go. He took the steps one by one. Did damp do that to concrete? The phrase ‘concrete cancer’ echoed in the back of his mind—he’d heard it some place and it sounded kind of right.
~
The phrase returned to Alan as he drove back that night. He edged his Corolla forward, the beams of his headlights hard on the trunk of the Lexus in front. Traffic out of Midport was always hell. Once again he congratulated himself on convincing Jane they really didn’t need to live on the coast. Ten miles inland and the real-estate got cheap enough to give you some elbow room. The lights changed in the distance. Nothing seemed to move. The traffic really was hell tonight.
His cell phone buzzed.
“Hello?”
/>
“Hi, Jane. Speak up will you, darling, it’s a bad line.”
“Soon. Well soon if I can ever get off route seven! It’s mad out here.”
“Put it in the oven for me will you, darling.”
“He did? Good. Great.” No cavities for Benny-Boy.
“No, no, just tired. Had a hell of a day. All kinds of weird shit.”
“Okay, love you too.”
Alan clicked the phone shut. He switched the radio over from the tunes on 908 to the news on WAFM, both stations seemed to be suffering from the same static. He’d been hoping for some word on the traffic but the reports were full of the mining disaster at the pits out past Stafford, and some story about the ferry to Getchen Island getting itself sunk in calm waters.
“Concrete cancer.” He should take another look . . .
~
“Is it still good?”
“Great.” Actually an hour in the oven had left the cod bake rather dry, but ten years of marriage is an education on when to employ a truthful answer and when not.
“You alright?” Jane took the chair opposite and sat at the table. She smiled. She looked tired but very beautiful.
“I’m good,” Alan said. “Just a bit distracted. Two cop cars shot past me just out on Elm Lane. Must have been doing ninety, blue and reds flashing. Never seen that round here before.”
“It’ll be in the Chronicle for the next month!” Jane grinned. “They can milk a parking offense for a front page story.”
“And I saw Jim out front,” Alan said. “I said ‘hi’. Gave me an odd look.”
“Odd?”
“I dunno, it was just odd.” He chewed another dry mouthful. “I’ll go over and see him later. See how he’s getting on with his latest project.”
“Daddy?” Sarah was standing at the doorway. She looked pale.
“Honey?” Alan got up. She calls me ‘Dad’, not ‘Daddy’. Ever since she turned nine.
“Daddy.” Sarah hugged herself. Dark hair across her face. Dark eyes. “I don’t like the noise.”