The Black: Arrival

by Paul E. Cooley

  Chuckles shook his head. “Fucking douche.”

  Hoyt blinked at him. “Control. Code red acknowledged. However, we need more personnel—”

  “There will be no one in or out of HAL until the situation is resolved. Over.”

  She took a deep breath. “Understood, control.”

  “We are in contact with the personnel aboard the PPE rig Leaguer. They have a similar outbreak ongoing. We are hoping we will have more details soon. Give us a sitrep every thirty minutes. Over and out.”

  “Hoyt out,” she said.

  “You work with some real douchebags,” Chuckles said.

  Hoyt said nothing.

  “Well,” Mike said, “want to tell us what a ‘code red’ is? Or do I just take it to mean we are royally screwed?”

  Glaze giggled. “Mr. Beaudry? Your instinct is dead on.”

  “The fuck does that mean?” Chuckles asked.

  Glaze continued to giggle.

  “Get a hold of yourself, John,” Hoyt said.

  The man in the moon suit lifted his gloved hands and pulled off his helmet. Air hissed out of his suit.

  Hoyt grimaced. “Dammit, John!”

  “Like it matters,” Glaze said in return. “If they’re not already there, the cops will be outside.” He pointed at the exit. “They’ll be told to shoot anyone that comes out the door. And before long, soldiers, army and marine reservists, will get here from Ellington Field. And trust me,” Glaze said, “they will kill you if you step outside that door.”

  Chuckles laughed. “Great fucking weekend.”

  “We can’t leave?” Maeve asked in a choked whisper.

  Kate gritted her teeth. “So, Dr. Hoyt. What do we do now?”

  Hoyt’s cheeks flushed. “We stay here where it’s safe.”

  Chuckles glanced from the CDC woman to the others. Everyone looked exhausted and frightened. He turned to Jay. “You say this thing hates strong light?”

  Jay nodded. “Yeah. Anything that approximates natural light.”

  Chuckles grinned. “Then we should head to the new NOC. It’s got damned powerful lights. It’s going to be cold, but it will be a good place to hide out.”

  Mike shook his head. “To do that, we’d have to go upstairs. Remember what the second floor looked like?”

  “Well, what about a distraction?”

  “No,” Kate said. “We know it can see, but we have no idea if it can hear.”

  Chuckles held up his flashlight. “This is a good old, power-chewing, heat-creating halogen flashlight. And we have more of them upstairs. If we see it, we can make it move.”

  “We’d be better off somewhere with windows,” Jay said. “Take down the blinds when the sun comes up, let the light drive it away.”

  Glaze laughed. “And where the hell would that be?”

  “Conference room,” Mike said. “New building. Floor three. It’s in the corner and covered with windows. And they actually face east.” He checked his watch. “And that means we’ll have several hours of good light. At least until the sun goes down.”

  “We should just stay here,” Hoyt said. “When they determine the infection isn’t a threat, they’ll let us go.”

  “Look, Dr.,” Kate said, “you missed the show in the lab. The M2 attacked us. It’s going to figure out a way to come down here. And when it does, it’s going to absorb us just like it did to the other member of your team.”

  “She’s right,” Glaze said. “I saw it in the hallway. Mel, it’ll kill us.”

  Hoyt opened her mouth and then closed it. Chuckles thought the woman was going to slap her colleague. She rubbed her gloves together. The crinkling sound was loud in the quiet foyer. “Then we need a plan.”

  Something was sizzling. Cooking.

  Chuckles sniffed the air. The stench of rancid meat cooking over an open flame stung his nostrils. He raised the flashlight toward the ceiling and clicked it on.

  Mike’s light joined his. The ceiling tiles were still in place, but the sizzling sound increased.

  Hoyt grunted. “What is that—”

  “Shut up, lady,” Chuckles said. He cocked his head to one side. The sound wasn’t all that close, but was growing louder. He turned around toward the building’s interior and walked forward until he could see the elevator bank. He froze.

  Beneath the harsh blue-white fluorescent lights, a stream of thick, black liquid squirted through the crack in the elevator doors. A curl of smoke or steam rose from the floor as the goo devoured everything on the tile. The puddle of black grew before his eyes. Chuckles stepped backward. A crunching sound joined the sizzling as a solid branch rose from the liquid. A black orb popped out. The insectile eye stared straight at him. The pool shuddered as a tentacle formed into a leg.

  He pointed the flashlight at the thing. The pool shuddered violently, but the stream of fluid kept coming. “Move!” Chuckles yelled.

  He ran away from the elevator bank and toward the emergency stairs. Chuckles didn’t wait to see if the others followed. The image of the staring eye and the blacker than black arachnid-like leg was all he could see as he pushed through the door and into the stairwell.

  *****

  Chuckles was yelling and running for the stairs. Kate heard crackling and spitting coming from the elevator bank around the corner. She knew that sound all too well. She grabbed her daughter’s shoulder and pushed her toward the stairwell. “Move!”

  At first, Kate wasn’t sure Maeve would or could. But the girl got her feet under her and started to run. Kate pushed her forward and kept a hand on her shoulder. The emergency door started to close when Maeve smashed her shoulder into it. Kate heard something pop. Maeve cried out, but didn’t stop running.

  Maeve took the stairs two at a time, her right hand holding her left shoulder. Kate wasn’t sure, but she thought her daughter was screaming. It was difficult to tell over the pounding of her heart and the sounds of yelling and terror behind her.

  When the stairs turned at the platform, she snuck a peak toward the door. Bill and Neil were halfway up the steps, Mike close behind them. Kate felt Maeve pull her arm and her attention snapped back to the stairs. Maeve was moving faster and Kate struggled to keep up. Her daughter was in pain, but she was nearly on Chuckles’ heels.

  When they reached the second floor platform, Maeve slammed into Chuckles’ back. He yelled in surprise, but didn’t turn. Instead, he pulled out his security card and flashed it front of the reader. It beeped. He opened the door and held it. “Go!” he yelled.

  Maeve ran through, Kate right behind her.

  *****

  Dr. John Glaze. A PhD in immunology. An MD with a specialization in virology. He was qualified to serve in any bio-lab on the planet and at any pharmaceutical company’s R&D. What he wasn’t qualified for? Fighting a goddamned oil monster.

  When the man called “Chuckles” pelted out of the foyer and to the emergency exit, his already overloaded mind did what it always did—it turned over the problem. Which, of course, led to the first rule of scientific curiosity—observation.

  Instead of following the panic wave and listening to the alarm bells going off in the back of his mind, he walked toward the elevator bank. The sizzling and crackling sounds barely registered in his forebrain. They were just more noise lost in the panicked yelling and screaming. His protective suit crinkled with each step. Somewhere in the universe, someone was screaming his name. The sound was coming through the radio, but it was just static compared to the maelstrom in his mind.

  The elevator bank came more into view. Something black slammed into the tiled floor. John stopped in mid-step. An obsidian multi-jointed leg with a three-taloned claw crunched as it took weight.

  He took a step backward. The sizzling sound faded into nothing, but the crackling sound intensified. His brain finally started to process it. The leg moved. Another leg appeared. And another. And another.

  John’s mouth opened in an O. His eyes widened. He stared at the thing in the elevator bank. Th
e word “black” was incapable of describing its color. Supported by seven legs, a ragged, oval shaped torso came into view. Eyestalks rose from its top. The blacker than black orbs at the end of the stalks stared at him with alien malevolence. He took another step back as tentacles sprouted from its sides. A serrated maw opened in its middle. The creature, silent except for the crackling as more tentacles burst from its middle, moved toward him. Its taloned feet clicked on the tile floor.

  The ancient reptilian part of his brain screamed in terror. More adrenaline rushed into his blood stream. John finally realized something—he needed to run away. But his feet remained firmly planted on the floor as the creature approached him.

  The open maw clicked open and closed in a death-metal rhythm. John tried to scream, but there was no air in his lungs. His vocal cords, like the rest of his body, were frozen in place.

  The thing extended its legs and rose to its full height. John craned his neck upward. The three-meter tall thing loomed over him, its mouth nearly level with his head. He managed another step backward before the tentacles streamed out past him and then met behind his back. The creature’s mouth puckered from the slick, fluid torso. Jagged black spikes jutted forward. John fell backwards. The tentacles behind retracted.

  A tremendous force slammed into his spine. The smell of burning fabric hit his nostrils just before he saw one of the tentacles bursting from his chest. A gout of blood jetted into the thing’s mouth. John screamed in pain and raised his eyes. The thing’s mouth was darker than anything he’d ever dreamed possible. His eyes wide with pain and wonder, reflected nothing but the absence of light. When the thing dragged him into its crunching maw, the pain was bright, but brief. Metal fasteners, the innards of his radio, and fillings pattered to the floor.

  *****

  When the thing attacked Glaze, he’d been frozen in place. When the man’s body dissolved into its maw, Jakob’s brain finally kicked into gear. He could run. He could fight. Unfortunately, he tried to do both.

  He skinned the Glock from its holster and backed away from the creature. He jerked the trigger. The concussion in the closed space instantly deafened him. From five meters away, every bullet hit the nightmare.

  An impossibly sharp, hooked tentacle twitched as its end disappeared. The next round went through the creature’s middle and into the wall. Another round severed an eyestalk. The rest of the bullets missed the solid protrusions.

  Another eyestalk popped out. The severed tentacle crackled as it lengthened and a new sharper hook appeared. He was still walking backwards when he hit the wall. The creature gathered itself. And then it charged.

  Jakob’s finger kept pulling the trigger, but the only sounds in the foyer were the clicking of the thing’s taloned feet on the floor. No more rounds. No more weapons. The creature opened its maw and then it was on him.

  *****

  She watched John walking toward the elevator bank. Dr. Melanie Hoyt screamed for him to stop, but he kept going forward. She moved to restrain him and then stopped in her tracks. A black spidery leg came into view and her resolve shattered.

  Dr. Hoyt turned and ran as fast as the suit would allow. She kept screaming Glaze’s name and hoped he was following, but didn’t turn around to look. Whatever the thing in the elevator bank was, she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to know anything more about possible infections or quarantines. She just wanted the hell away from it.

  They had to let the world know. They had to inform FEMA. They had to—

  The emergency door was swinging back on its hinges. She slammed into it and it opened back up. The latch caught a loose fold of her suit. Melanie came to a dead stop as the tough fabric held her fast. Screaming, she grabbed the suit with her hands and pulled. The strong Tyvek fibers resisted at first and then started to part. Air rushed out of the suit.

  She jerked her arms as hard as she could and the suit finally came free. She twirled around and her eyes caught sight of the horror walking out of the elevator bank toward her partner.

  As its tentacles rushed forward and through John’s torso, one of its eyestalks craned toward her. Melanie screamed and slammed the door behind her.

  Someone was shooting in the foyer. And screaming. She had to get out of here.

  The suit’s boots were hardly the best for running, let alone up stairs. She more waddled than ran up the metal and concrete. When she reached the first landing she peered down at the door. She could see movement through the pane of shatter proof glass inset into the door. The thing was there. Waiting. She didn’t know if it could get into the stairwell and didn’t want to stick around to find out.

  She continued up the stairs and came to the fire door. Her hands scrabbled at the door handle. She pulled, but nothing happened. The door was locked.

  She screamed and banged her hands on the door. It was like punching stone, but she barely felt the pain in her knuckles.

  They weren’t going to let her in. They were just going to leave her for that thing. She could hear it down there, smashing into the door. She was their escape plan. It would break through the door, through the walls, and climb the steps on its taloned feet, to pierce her with its hooked tentacles until its impossibly black teeth crunched her—

  The door opened and nearly knocked her down the stairs. A hand reached through and grabbed her arm. She fell through the doorway and crumpled into a heap on the bare floor.

  She looked up into Mike’s bright eyes. He looked scared to death. She knew how he felt.

  She turned toward the door. It was closed up tight. A hand touched her shoulder and she screamed. She whirled around. Mike raised his hands. “You okay?” he asked.

  Melanie shivered as she tried to get hold of herself. “Yes,” she managed to say. He offered his hand and she let him help her to her feet.

  “Let’s go,” he said and pointed down the hallway. She blinked at him. With a frustrated sigh, he grabbed her hand and pulled her. A moment later, they were both running.

  *****

  They stopped in the middle of the hall. Mike was out of breath. No matter how much time you spent in the damned gym, running for your life took it out of you. And dragging Hoyt’s stunned weight hadn’t helped. Hands on his knees, he couldn’t help but smile as he dragged in deep breaths. He’d have to talk to his trainer. He was obviously not getting the proper exercise for life-threatening situations.

  Kate leaned up against the wall near the skybridge, her arms circled around Maeve’s neck. The girl’s left arm hung limply at her side. Tears of pain and fear had stained her face. Mike knew how she felt.

  Chuckles looked ready to pass out. And then he did something Mike didn’t think possible. He pulled a cigarette from his front pocket and lit it. “That’s better,” he wheezed.

  “You have to be kidding me,” Mike panted.

  “Nope,” Chuckles said. His emotionless face betrayed little. He exhaled through his nostrils in jittery streams. He gestured to the bare walls. “Was that what did this?”

  Jay nodded. The chemist was as pale as the lab coat he wore beneath his chem suit. To Mike, he looked like he’d aged a century since Friday afternoon. “Had to be.” He swung his eyes to Kate’s. “Yeah?”

  She nodded and looked at Mike. “That’s what we were trying to tell you.”

  Mike shook his head. “That thing came out of the goddamned barrel of oil?”

  “It’s not oil,” Kate said. “I don’t know what it is. We have no clue.” She looked at Neil. “What do you think?”

  The bio-chemist grimaced between sharp breaths. “Chuckles. Give me a damned cigarette.”

  Chuckles raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. He pulled out the pack and handed it to Neil. Neil’s shaking hands popped open the pack and slid one out between his fingers. He put it between his lips. The flick of the lighter wheel echoed in the hallway. A teardrop flame appeared in front of Neil’s face. He dipped the cigarette into the flame, took a deep drag, and coughed.

  Bill laughed. “Be
en too long for you, Neil.”

  Neil choked back another cough and then dragged again. He held the smoke in his lungs for a moment, and then blew out a cloud. “Yup. That’s just what I needed.”

  “After a panicked run up the stairs? Are you out of your mind?” Kate asked.

  Neil laughed. “When you’ve seen a goddamned oil monster, all bets are off.”

  “Knock it off,” Mike said. “What do you think, Neil? What the hell is it?”

  The bio-chemist shrugged. “I don’t know. But I think we need to get somewhere safe.”

  “The new NOC,” Chuckles said. “That’s my vote. Just grab a damned parka first.”

  “How long until the sun comes up?” Mike asked.

  “A few hours,” Jay said. “Although the goddamned clouds are going to make it a bit dim.”

  “Mom?” Maeve asked. “I want to go home.”

  Chuckles’ phone made a klaxon sound. The tech pulled it out of his pocket and stared at the message. “Okay, Mike. You have a decision to make.”

  “What’s that?” Mike asked.

  Cigarette between his lips, Chuckles breathed deeply. He blew the cloud of smoke to the ceiling. “The old NOC might be on fire in a few minutes. And if that happens, we have to rely on the halon system. And there’s no telling if that fucking thing damaged it.”

  “Let it burn,” Neil said. “Maybe then the goddamned assholes outside will get us the hell out of here.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Dr. Hoyt said. “They’ll let this place burn and be thankful for it.”

  Bill shook his head. “No, no, no. They won’t. Why would they let—”

  “Code Red, Mr. Field. It means we are expendable in order to keep an unknown biological infection from spreading.” Hoyt bit her lip. “And I can’t say I blame them.”

  “Mommy, I want to go!” Maeve yelled.

  Kate cooed in her daughter’s ear and then looked at Mike. “I’m taking my daughter to the new NOC. Now.” She turned and started through the skybridge.