Wolfen

by Alianne Donnelly

  Great.

  “Help me get him inside.”

  “What?”

  “We can’t just leave him out here!”

  Like hell they couldn’t. “No.”

  She growled at him—actually growled, showing off some pretty unimpressive fangs—and dragged the roadkill around to her side.

  “We are not taking him with us!”

  Sinna dropped her burden and stepped over him to face off with Bryce, squinting against the rain. “Did it even occur to you that he might know where to find shelter around here?”

  “No!”

  “Look at him!” She pointed an imperious finger. “Clean clothes. Solid shoes.” She waved her arms wide. “Out here. And no weapons!”

  Bryce looked. The guy could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty years old, five and a half feet, if that, and scrawny. Yeah, his clothes were decent, but his brown hair probably hadn’t seen a comb in ten years. Grime was layered thick beneath unnecessarily long fingernails, and his buck teeth were some indeterminate grayish-yellow color.

  “So what?”

  “Bah!” Sinna turned her back on him, crouched over the guy, and slapped him across the face.

  Roadkill man moaned, groaned, and then wailed a drawn-out “Oooowwww!” while curling up into the fetal position.

  “Hey, are you okay? Is anything broken?”

  “Oh, God, help me! I think I’m dying!”

  Bryce rolled his eyes. “See? He’s fine. Let’s go.” He grasped Sinna’s arm to move her along, but she shook him off, her attention focused on mothering the wailing scat.

  “Can you tell me your name?” she asked.

  He mewled, and opened one eye to squint at her. “Randy.”

  “Randy, I’m Sinna. And this is Bryce. Can you tell us where you came from?”

  Randy looked from her to Bryce. “Home?”

  “Okay, and where’s that?”

  Randy giggled nervously. “You ran me over.”

  “You jumped in front of my car,” Bryce snapped.

  “I didn’t know there were any left alive, did I!” Randy argued and, hunching forward, he pulled a ratty little teddy bear out of his pocket. “Was supposed to bring this back.”

  Sinna looked worriedly at Bryce. “Are there children living with you?” The idea of little ones around this guy left a bad taste in Bryce’s mouth.

  “Emma and Annie need a fourth for tea.”

  “All right, come on.” Sinna helped the weasel sit up.

  “Sinna. Storm.” It was getting worse, but Bryce’s argument didn’t hold much weight, not while Randy petted that teddy bear of his as if he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone.

  “Noted,” Sinna replied. “Where is home, Randy? Is it close to here?”

  Randy lolled his head from side to side, then turned it into a nod. Not exactly a decisive answer. Something was off with him. A shifty fellow with buggy eyes that held an unnerving gleam when he looked Sinna over.

  “Okay,” Sinna said, oblivious to being ogled. “Which way?”

  Randy hugged the teddy bear inside his jacket, and lolled his head to look out down the road.

  Sinna pushed for more. “Over there?”

  Bryce scanned the area. “I don’t see anything.”

  Randy giggled again. “Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there.” He gasped suddenly, his eyes widening. “Do you wanna come see it?” He was asking Sinna.

  Bryce growled.

  Randy shied away with a low whine. “Or not. You know. Whatever.” His gaze twitched to Sinna then back to Bryce so rapidly it made Bryce dizzy. “I have books.” Another nervous giggle, as if he couldn’t help himself. “I have lots of books. And a stick figure theater. I made it myself. You wanna see? I’m sure the girls would love some company.”

  Bryce’s hackles stood on end at his tone.

  Randy laughed hysterically, but the sound cut short and a maniacal glint lit up his blue eyes. “I am king of the underworld.” He turned a proud grin on Sinna, and raised a grimy hand to scratch at his temple in a squirrely twitch. “I’ll show you.”

  Sinna looked at Bryce askance.

  He shook his head, held his hand out to her. “Let’s go, Sinna.” A crazy guy in the middle of nowhere, carrying a teddy bear? There was no part of this that wasn’t raising alarms in his head. His gut told him this was a bad place to be, and his claws itched to put an end to the vermin, but he hadn’t done anything to harm them—yet. And the way Sinna waffled, if Randy shed one tear, which he looked like he might, she’d relent.

  Randy scrambled to his feet, frowning. “Are you sure?” His whiny voice grated on Bryce’s nerves. “There’s no rain in the underworld. And it’s warm, too.”

  Lightning cracked across the sky. Randy snarled at it, shaking his head against the rain. “Come on.” He snatched Sinna’s hand and dragged her along after him.

  Bryce swore, grabbed his knives from the mule, and followed. Randy was surprisingly fast; he was across the road and in the middle of a field in seconds. Then they both just dropped out of sight.

  “Sinna!” Bryce roared. The earth gave way beneath his feet, and he slid down a muddy incline into some kind of underground cavern at least fifty feet below the surface. How the hell had the weasel gotten up there in the first place? But the issue was a minor one compared to being trapped in a closed-in perimeter with water pouring in by the gallons. Already a puddle had grown at Bryce’s feet.

  “Sinna,” he called again, squinting through the rain to find her.

  “Bryce!” she called back.

  There was a vault door twenty yards in front of him, and Randy, with Sinna in tow, was running toward it. With a growl, Bryce shoved to his feet and raced after them. Good thing the portal was so heavy; the weasel struggled to open it, and Bryce made it inside after them just before the little shit could slam the door in his face.

  Wrath flashed through his veins like the lightning outside, threatening to overwhelm his control. Bryce grabbed Randy by the throat, slammed him hard against the wall. “Now you die.”

  “What is this place?” Sinna’s odd tone of voice brought Bryce’s head around.

  He froze, breath locking in his chest, hand going numb enough for Randy to escape his grasp and drop to the floor.

  A long white corridor stretched in front of them, fluorescent lights buzzing softly overhead. The floors were smooth concrete, walls sporting a thick green stripe down the length of the hallway, with computer monitors, now dead and dark, built in next to every door.

  Bryce barely stifled a shudder when Sinna looked at him in question. He could taste her confusion in the air. With the weasel momentarily forgotten, Bryce dragged his feet toward the closest door, dreading what he knew was on the other side. He traced the transparent green symbol on the glass window, lost in time.

  Before his eyes, the door melted away and lights flickered to life on their own, illuminating a massive chamber filled with glassware and machinery. Shelves upon shelves lined the walls, each compartment holding a built-in synthetic sac. UV lamps shone through the liquid inside, providing heat and comfort, simulating womb-like conditions as closely as possible. There were creatures in them; fetuses in different stages of development, human-like on the outside, but evolving into something very different on the inside. Even blind and deaf, they turned toward the lamps for artificial comfort, while the monitors next to them tracked their development, keeping timelines and notes of anomalies.

  Scientists wearing white coats and face masks tended to the specimens, checking life signs and responses to outer stimuli. They touched the sacs and recorded the child’s reaction: whether the fetus turned toward the touch or shrank away from it, whether it moved or twitched. They didn’t talk to each other, all of them absorbed in their tasks. Each had his own assigned specimens, his personal responsibility, and no one wanted to lose a test subject to inattention.

  The massive center column was the processing unit that kept condition
s stable, altering each sac individually as needed, and delivering nutritional gel via a series of long tubes straight into the umbilical cords. It sensed when a fetus was hatch-ready; the gel flow became blocked and the cord severed itself naturally without human intervention. A signal beeped, alerting the scientist, and then the amniotic fluid was drained to leave a newborn lying still on the shelf, ready to be collected by an orderly and wheeled away into the nursery.

  “Bryce? Where are we?” Sinna’s voice was uneasy, muffled. She wasn’t asking for an answer but a confirmation of what she already suspected. It shattered his hallucination, leaving Bryce disoriented and chilled to the bone. He was breathing hard and staring through the little window into darkness on the other side.

  Randy was still yammering on in a long string of garbled run-on sentences while Sinna stared at Bryce, beautiful hazel eyes filled with dread.

  He didn’t know what to tell her.

  She pulled his hand from the window, uncovering the Greek letter Sigma. It gave her pause, but then she grasped the handle and pushed the door open. The lights didn’t turn on, but they didn’t need them. In the chamber’s cavernous darkness, thin plastics billowed on the sudden shift in air like ghosts. Machinery and computers sat neatly stacked along the sides, the half-built central processing column dark.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked. She’d been so young when Chernobyl imploded, he didn’t know how much she would have remembered.

  Sinna shook her head.

  “It’s a hatchery,” he grated. “We’re inside a den.”

  Just like Chernobyl. In the heart of California. It wasn’t finished yet, by the looks of it. Whoever had built it must have run out of time, but the layout was almost identical—same corridors, same markings, same equipment. Same scent of stale air and disinfectant.

  Sinna shivered. “How many of these damn places are there?”

  Bryce’s jaw popped when he opened his mouth wide to unclench. “We’re getting out of here. Now.”

  Randy giggled. “Getting out… Hee-hee.” He dropped the smirk when Bryce glared at him.

  “Come on, Sinna.” He wasn’t about to stay here another second. He took Sinna’s hand and rounded on Randy, who stood between them and the way out.

  “The entrance is useless wet,” Randy said quickly. “It’s flooding already, you saw. You’ll never make it up. Besides. Tea.”

  Breathing hard, Bryce turned the other way. If this place was a copy of Chernobyl, then there would be several emergency exit hatches around the facility. He knew what to look for; it was only a matter of looking. “Let’s go.”

  Randy raced after them. “But the girls are waiting!”

  Bullshit. If there had been children, Bryce would have heard them. Children made noise.

  “Don’t you want to stay a while and warm up? It’s storming outside!”

  “He has a point,” Sinna said, teeth chattering.

  “You don’t like being underground,” Bryce reminded her.

  She tugged at his hand. “Yeah, but I like storms even less.”

  “Yes, yes. Listen to her!” Randy cried.

  Bryce huffed and shook himself off. The smell was getting to him, burrowing under his skin. The faster they got out of here, the better. “I’ll find us another shelter.” He picked up his step, keeping Sinna close.

  “We have heat! And food!” Randy shouted, jogging behind them. “And there’s water, too, and music, and books—stop!” He raced ahead to block Bryce’s way again. “Please don’t go yet. I-I-I—there’s nobody else.” He blinked rapidly, buggy eyes pleading. “Just for a while. Just until the storm blows over.”

  “Move,” Bryce growled, “or I will go through you.”

  “I have a nook! It’s nice and cozy, nothing like this. Over there a bit. I hate this place, anyway. Too. You know. It’s creepy and shit. Like, all smooth and polished like.” Another nervous giggle. “At least let me show you.” His eyes kept darting to Sinna. “She’s cold, man! Shaking like a leaf. You gonna take her back out into that out there?”

  Bryce hesitated. Sinna was shivering. They had no shelter up top, and it was freezing. The den was abandoned; no threat here, except for an unstable little human Bryce could snap like a twig if push came to shove. The logical choice was to stay. It’s what Aiden would have done.

  Sinna met his gaze, pale as a sheet, lips turning blue. “There’s light,” she said. “And heat.”

  Randy nodded in frantic agreement.

  “Besides.” A hard shiver made her go rigid. “A facility as sophisticated as this one must have tons of useful stuff. We might find something to repair the mule.”

  Bryce swallowed down a desperate growl. “It could be hours before the storm passes. Can you handle being underground for so long?”

  “Can you?” she countered.

  Her steady gaze centered him. She smelled of rain and cold, but the soft underlying thread of fear was faint. Sinna wasn’t scared. Why would she be? She didn’t remember.

  Bryce took a deep breath to calm the fuck down.

  It didn’t work. His veins throbbed with a steady whump-whump-whump, like a weird air pressure fluctuation. He couldn’t shake it. “Ten minutes.” He could hold it together for that long; enough to warm up, but no more.

  Randy clapped his hands with glee. “It’s this way!”

  They followed the weasel back the way they’d come, to another branch of the hallway. He ran ahead, stopping every once in a while so they could catch up, hopping in place as if he’d had too much coffee. His gaze never settled. He kept making weird whiny noises, and when he wasn’t whining, he talked—a lot—like an attempt to make conversation, but very little made any sense, and he often answered himself without waiting for a response from Bryce and Sinna. It made for a constant stream of background noise that wasn’t easy to ignore.

  Bryce kept an eye on Randy in case he was leading them into a trap. Without proper air currents, Bryce’s nose was all but handicapped; he scented whatever was in his immediate vicinity, but that was it. He kept back at a distance, trying to see farther ahead, but Randy’s weaving back and forth was distracting and Bryce couldn’t concentrate. Their footsteps echoed, making it sound like they were being followed. His hackles hadn’t settled since he’d stepped foot into the compound, and he was pretty sure they wouldn’t until he was back out again.

  “How are you doing?” Sinna murmured.

  He grunted, and Sinna hid a smile against his side.

  A few yards ahead, the polished interior ended abruptly at a tunnel that had been dug in preparation to expand. Where fluorescent lights didn’t reach, a series of electric lanterns hung from hooks, wires stretching between them like streamers. It was still better than the hallway. At least with solid earth beneath his feet and rock to either side, Bryce could pretend it was a naturally formed cave rather than that hell hole back there.

  The tunnel led to a hollowed-out cavern, just like Randy had said it would. A decent-sized room with a nine-foot ceiling and blankets serving as a door. An electric heater warmed the area from one corner, and a worn-out couch sat in the other. Metal racks were propped against the wall, holding stacks of books, some old DVDs, board games, and an ancient radio that was obviously busted.

  The throbbing was worse here, and Bryce realized it wasn’t in his head.

  Sinna touched the rock, frowning at him. She felt it, too.

  What the hell was it?

  “And this is Annie,” Randy said, introducing a filthy porcelain doll with one eye missing and paint chipped off of her lip. “And Emma.” The other doll was naked, made of plastic and rubber, with hair half-torn out, half-sticking up. She smiled at nothing, faded eyes staring off into space.

  Sinna edged around the creepy tea party setup to the heater. Bryce hung back, scoping out the terrain. Only one way in or out of the room; a possible death trap if the weasel wigged out on them.

  “How did you find this place?” Sinna asked. Good girl. Get him talki
ng.

  “I fell in and they hired me,” Randy said distractedly, then turned to frown at her. “How do you find places?”

  “How long have you been here?” Bryce asked to break his stare.

  “Twenty years.”

  “That long?”

  “Two days. No?” Randy giggled that nervous laugh of his. “My calendar broke, see?” He pointed to the cracked face of a wall clock. So much for information.

  “Oh-kay.”

  “Do you know how big this place is?” Bryce asked. Did he even know what it was, what it would have been used for?

  Years ago, when they’d landed in California for the first time, the kids had been sequestered in holding pens, but they’d still heard the soldiers talk. No one had ever mentioned going south. They’d always talked about north, Montana and the aboveground den. It made no sense. Even unfinished, this facility would have been much better suited for survival. Why hadn’t they come here?

  Randy’s eyes glazed over. “Sometimes you take a wrong turn and it never ends.”

  Bryce and Sinna looked at each other. Sinna, squeezing water out of her hair, made swirling motion around her ear with her fingers. Yeah, she got that right. “Do you know who built it?”

  Randy blinked, gaze turning cagey as it darted between them. “Why?”

  Bryce hitched a shoulder. “Curious.”

  Randy scratched his head. “Aliens.” He yanked out a book and it fell open onto the floor, glossy pages settling left and right of the spine with two wavering up in the middle. A black-and-white image caught Bryce’s eye, and as Randy continued to rifle through his things, yammering on about space ships and experiments, and how the dolls appointed him custodian before the neighbors had moved in, Bryce picked up the book and stared at an image of a scientist and a child no more than three years old. The little girl looked confused, disinterested, her head turned sideways and eyes staring off into space, but her hands were raised to clumsily mirror the whitecoat. Underneath, the caption read: Subject Gamma 1 learning American Sign Language.

  Old resentment left a bitter taste in the back of Bryce’s throat. The photo illustrated the only formal education the den subjects had ever been granted: communication. Those children deemed safe to socialize had been taught five different languages at the same time, including ASL, so they’d understand the international crew of orderlies and whitecoats when they talked.