The Black: Arrival

by Paul E. Cooley

  He glanced at the electron microscope. “Mike. Go over there and look through the eyepiece. You should see nothing but black with a blue glow around it.”

  Mike rolled his eyes and did as he was told. He peered into the microscope. “Uh. Neil? All I see is a glow. There’s no black.”

  Neil opened his mouth and then closed it. He turned his head and looked over at the SEM. “Uh, Mike? Step away from the scope.”

  The boss stepped back. “Where is it?”

  “Get out your flashlight,” Neil hissed. “Turn it on and pan the floor. Look for anything that gleams where it shouldn’t.”

  “Dr. Illing? Are you there?” the voice said from the radio.

  “Control. Stand by,” Neil said.

  Mike pulled the heavy safety light from his pocket and turned it on. The white light glared into the floor, easily visible against the fluorescent blue from the overheads. He stood next to the SEM and trained the light around the area.

  “Focus on the sample container,” Neil said. He couldn’t keep his voice steady and his heart thumped in his ears. If it had escaped the slide, where the hell did it go?

  Mike pointed at the SEM. “Here?”

  Neil nodded.

  “Shit.” Mike’s light hit an impossibly clean, impossibly bright trail on the metal. He took another step away from the SEM as he followed the trail with his eyes.

  “Dr. Illing?” the radio squawked.

  He thumbed the speak button. “Control? We have a sample loose in the lab. I think there’s more in the chem-lab’s sample system. Plus whatever is left in the barrel. Over.”

  “Um,” Mike said, “the trail just wraps around the machine.” He killed the light and looked back at Neil. “Where the hell did it go?”

  “Understood, Dr. Illing. Leaguer’s encounters with the substance indicate it is highly flammable. If light doesn’t fight it off, you may need to resort to more drastic measures. Over.”

  Neil stared down at the radio. Fire. Light. Extreme heat. Maybe there was a way to fight this thing.

  “Neil?”

  Mike’s shaky voice pulled him out of his thoughts. Mike’s face was milk pale. Neil raised his eyebrows.

  The CEO pointed down at the floor. Neil followed his gaze. There. In the shadows beneath the microscope sat a tiny shape. Something amorphous. Something so dark it was like a hole into another universe.

  Neil tried to speak, but his voice came out in an unintelligible croak. He cleared his throat. “Mike? Get your flashlight back on.”

  “Yeah.” Mike gulped and flicked the switch. He slowly trained the cone of white light toward the shadows.

  As the light chased away the darkness, the black shape twitched. When the halogen light came within a few centimeters, the shape trembled and slowly flowed backwards further into the shadows.

  “Mike?”

  “Yeah, Neil?”

  “Blast it.” Neil took a deep breath and was a little relieved to see Mike doing the same.

  Mike slowly lowered himself to his haunches. He flicked the off switch. The halogen’s cone disappeared. He adjusted his aim and then flicked the switch.

  A bright, white spot appeared in the middle of the amorphous shape. Bubbles burst across its surface and the room filled with the crackle of green kindling. A sewer smell combined with burning rubber stung Neil’s nostrils.

  The shape’s edges split off from the burning center. Neil’s mouth dropped open. Two individual tendrils formed as their parent burned. Less than a few millimeters in size, they stayed in the shadows.

  The original, larger puddle had disappeared. The floor was scorched where it had been. “Mike?”

  “I see them,” Mike said. He pointed the light at the larger of the two stragglers. It exploded in a puff of smoke and fire. He switched targets with the same result. Three smudge marks were all that were left.

  “Dr. Illing?”

  The radio made them all jump. Neil thumbed the talk button without moving his eyes from the scorched floor.

  “Control, this is Illing. We have destroyed the sample loose in our lab. Over.” Mike kept his light focused on the floor. He seemed to be in a trance. “Mike?”

  The man turned to him. A little color was slowly coming back into his cheeks, but he still looked on the verge of passing out.

  “You okay?”

  Mike nodded. “Yeah. I mean—”

  “Dr. Illing. Are there any other samples loose? Over.”

  He shook his head and then winced. It wasn’t like they could see him. “No, Control. Nothing else loose. We have the large entity roaming the building, the sealed barrel, and whatever is in the dispensing system. Over.”

  Mike blew out a sigh and then chuckled. “We need to just set fire to the whole goddamned place.”

  Neil cocked an eyebrow. “I’d say that’s a last resort.” He pointed to the secure area behind the labs. “There’s enough flammable chemicals back there to blow a hole in the goddamned universe.”

  Mike nodded. “I know. That was the point.”

  “Dr. Illing. Is there any way to secure the barrel? Over.”

  Neil opened his mouth and then closed it. “What the hell is he talking about?”

  Mike shrugged and looked at Hoyt. The CDC doc was staring at the floor as if nothing had happened. Neil wasn’t even sure she was breathing.

  “Dr. Hoyt?” Mike said. She didn’t look up. Mike walked toward her and tapped her shoulder. She flinched, but did not break her stare with the tile. “Dr. Hoyt? Melanie?”

  It was the first name that seemed to snap her out of it. At least a little. She slowly raised her head and met his eyes. “What?”

  “What do they mean by secure?” Mike asked.

  She shivered. “Sample. Any virulent pathogen samples have to be collected.”

  Mike looked at Neil. “You tell them to fuck right off.”

  Neil nodded. “Control. There is no way to secure the barrel, the lab, or anything else. The M2 entity roaming the building can come back here at anytime. Over.”

  “Dr. Illing. It is imperative we have samples to study. Please find a way to protect the barrel and whatever remains in the dispensing system. Over.”

  “Fuck you,” Mike growled.

  Neil clicked the talk button again. “Are you out of your mind? This stuff destroys damned near everything it touches! You can’t take it out of here!”

  “Dr. Illing. If you do your job, we’ll get you out of there. Over.”

  “Job.” Mike spat out the word with a stream of saliva.

  “Control? Get us out of here. Now. And you can have your damned sample.”

  Pause.

  “Control?”

  No response.

  Neil looked at Mike. “You’re right. We have to blow this place. They’re going to let us die in here anyway and we can’t let that shit out in the world.”

  Mike turned toward the chem-lab and Neil followed his gaze. The room was a wreck of smashed equipment. When the M2 had escaped into the ceiling, it had left the place a ruin.

  “You know how to run the dispenser?” Mike asked.

  Neil nodded, although his boss wasn’t looking at him. “I do, yeah.”

  Mike turned to him. “Then let’s figure out how to torch this place. If nothing else, it’ll keep the big beasty upstairs from coming down here. I hope.”

  “That’s going to be tough,” Neil said. “We have halon systems in both labs as well as the secure area. They’ll put out a fire in no time.”

  Mike grinned. “Then I guess we’ll have to get creative.” He looked at Bill. The older scientist was still slumped in his chair, a look of pain on his face. “Still with us, Bill?”

  He raised his head and winked at Mike. “I ain’t dead yet.” The words came out in a huff of air.

  Neil put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “All right, Bill. Let’s start brainstorming.”

  *****

  A quick search resulted in finding a white, plastic box emblazoned with
a red cross. Jay swiped it up and brought it back to the unfinished chem-lab area. Kate followed him, her face a mask of concern.

  He handed it to Kate and she put it on the floor. She pressed her thumbs on the latches and the kit opened. An EpiPen, bandages, a tourniquet, and several packages of meds stared back. Kate sifted through the tough paper packs until she found what she was looking for.

  “There we go,” she said. She tore open the paper and shook out two caplets. “We don’t have any water,” she said as she offered the meds to her daughter. “So do your best. I know how much you hate pills.”

  Maeve groaned and then picked the caplets out of her mother’s hand. She popped them into her mouth, her face set in a rigid grimace, and then swallowed. She choked once and then exhaled.

  “Should take the edge off the pain,” Jay said. He smiled at the girl, but he was still shaking inside. What good were meds if that…thing came down here? They had to find a way out. They had to find some part of the building the CDC or FEMA or the goddamned military didn’t know about. Regardless of what awaited them outside, there was no way it could be worse than what they were trapped with. If they could just—

  “Jay?”

  Kate’s voice cut through his river of thoughts. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What did you say?”

  She gestured to the tripods. “These are all we have. If they get damaged, we’re screwed.”

  Jay nodded. “Also means we don’t have a way to drive it off. Can only stay in the circle of light.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “Remember what happened during the distillation test?”

  Jay shuddered at the thought. “It turned solid. And all the, well, all the life went out of it.”

  “Right. The distillation test is performed in a vacuum. So if there was no air, there was no way for it to burn.”

  Jay nodded. “Okay. So you think it’s flammable?”

  “Why not?” She glanced toward the shadows outside the semi-circle of light. “It shares some properties with regular hydrocarbons. And Sigler’s tests aboard Leaguer showed a very low boiling point. Maybe a flame will destroy it. Catch it on fire.”

  Jay thought for a moment. What she said made sense. If only they had a way to test it. He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We don’t even have a goddamned lighter.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “We’re chemists, Jay. And humans have enjoyed the privilege of fire long before they figured out how to write. I think we can manage.”

  He stood and looked out into the shadows as Kate had. The afterimage of the strong lights made his night vision non-existent. He clucked his tongue and walked beyond the circle. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, and the entire time, he kept imagining a long tentacle sliding across the floor toward his feet.

  He shook away the image, but couldn’t stop the shaking in his bones. The afterimage finally faded. In the shadows and dim light cast by the glare of the halogens, he made out saw-horses and tools. They had electricity. They could create a short-circuit, true, maybe some sparks. But what the hell could they set on fire with that?

  He suddenly wished Chuckles was down here with them. He might know how to overload the panels. Shit, he’d have a lighter. Then Jay frowned. “Kate?”

  “Yeah?” she said from behind him.

  “We can create a short circuit, maybe. But that might take out the lights entirely.” He slowly turned and blinked at her. “And then we’d have nothing.”

  Kate opened her mouth and then closed it. She nodded. “You’re right. That’s a bad plan.”

  He turned back to the room. There had to be something they could do. Some way to defend themselves.

  Something in the ceiling creaked. Jay looked upwards. Nothing moved. The vents and ducts were still and nothing black was hanging up there. At least not yet.

  A concrete saw sat against one of the walls. Drills and pneumatic hammers lay on the sawhorses. A metal stand held a jigsaw. The blade was sheathed in protective rubber.

  Jay continued walking forward. Something blocky lay at the bottom of the far wall. He pulled out his cell-phone and turned on the flashlight mode. He scanned the shadows. If it was down here, he was already dead—he was too far from the circle of light. He knew it, but the light made him feel a little better.

  Several rectangular shapes jutted from the box. He walked closer and then a grin slowly spread across his face. When he was close enough for the cellphone to illuminate the shape, he chuckled.

  “What is it?” Kate called from across the room. Her voice bounced off the concrete walls, words barely discernible in the impossibly long echo.

  Jay looked down. LED lights. All green. He pulled on one of the rectangular shapes. It clicked out of its slot. Heavy, he thought. He examined it beneath the light and started to laugh. “I got it,” he said.

  “What?” Kate sounded concerned.

  Jay turned to her and then found himself sprinting across the filthy, debris covered floor. When he reached the circle of light, he was out of breath, but damned near hysterical with laughter. “A battery,” he panted. “A goddamned power-tool battery.”

  She blinked. “So?”

  He wanted to yell at her in frustration, but instead his grin widened. “We can make this thing into a lighter. Sort of.”

  “How?” she asked. “You going to overload it or something?”

  He showed her the exposed contacts. “See those? We just need to connect some metal to them. It’ll throw off sparks. If we have something pretty flammable, we can create a little fire.”

  She shook her head, a smile appearing on her face. “Where the hell did you get that idea?”

  He laughed. “Boy Scouts. We used steel wool for fire starter when it was too wet to catch kindling. The stuff burns pretty well. Got it from SOS pads.”

  “Oh, man,” Kate said. “We don’t have any steel wool.”

  He shook his head. “No, we don’t. But what we have is a room full of dust, wood chips, and,” he said pointing at his shirt, “threaded fabric. We cut the thin t-shirts into strips, unwind the threads as best we can, and then,” he licked his lips, “we pray.”

  “And what are we going to use for metal?”

  Jay frowned. “We could try folding some aluminum or something like that.” He turned back and looked around the floor. “Someone has to drink soda down here.”

  Kate looked lost in thought. Jay knew how she felt. Materials. They had plenty to start a fire. But what they hell were they going to use to create the circuit?

  She glanced over at her daughter and then smiled. “I’ve got it,” she said. “The suits. They have metal woven into them.”

  Jay smacked his forehead. “That will work. Metal threads.”

  “Okay. We have a plan. So let’s get moving on it.”

  Their shared smiled disappeared as the ceiling creaked. Something banged in the ducts. They traded stares. And then they started working.

  *****

  It didn’t take long to come up with a plan. The only difficult part would be making it out alive. Neil didn’t have high hopes for that.

  The secure area had halon systems that would be nearly impossible for them to sabotage. Even if they managed to get on a ladder and smash the sensors, he wasn’t sure that would keep them from going off. Hell, the system might read their tamper attempts as an actual incident and gas them all to death.

  Of course suffocating can’t be any worse than being eaten alive, Neil thought. He shivered. The whole situation was ludicrous. If he hadn’t seen the M2 first hand, he’d never believe such a thing was possible. An organism that acted like a hydrocarbon, but was capable of absorbing damn near anything as food and changing form? Not possible. Something that could hide its atomic form from an electron microscope? Again, impossible. No one would believe it. If he pinched himself enough times, maybe he’d wake up. You are awake, he told himself. You just wish this was a nightmare.

  He, Mike, and Bill had brainstormed how to accompl
ish their task. Hoyt was still lost in her own little world and only answered if they called her by her first name. Neil didn’t think she was ever going to snap out of it. In a way, she had it easy. At least she had already accepted they were going to die. Neil still had hope.

  For the most part, Mike had only nodded while he and Bill came up with the plan. But Mike definitely understood what they were going for. Even better? He approved. And that was the kind of leader he’d been for HAL. He hired good people, let them figure out the problems, and gave them whatever resources they needed to succeed. In this case, they had all the resources they could want. The trouble was execution.

  Sabotaging the halon systems came first. The halon tank was located in the secure area and surrounded by a metal shield. Getting past it required a pair of bolt cutters and some elbow grease. The real trick was disconnecting it. And, of course, bleeding the entire system.

  Bill was still in his chair at the front of the lab. The old scientist was clearly spent. If they had to move fast, he was going to be more of a hindrance than Hoyt. When you pulled on her, at least her legs worked. Bill, though, had torn something. He wasn’t going anywhere fast and he was too big for either Mike or Neil to carry. If things went to shit, Neil planned on just pushing him through the hall in his goddamned chair. He hoped like hell it didn’t come to that. Every time he imagined doing it, a laugh tried to crawl out of his throat. If it did come to that, he doubted he’d be laughing at all.

  Mike stood next to the metal shield, a large pair of bolt cutters in his hands. He faced the barrel at the other end of the room. The barrel. The M2 barrel. PPE’s very own plague. Neil was closer to it, eyes focused on the orange ribs. They seemed to have, well, ballooned a bit, like something was pushing on them from inside. The image of tentacles bursting through the top and eating him flashed through his mind. He shook it away.

  “You okay?” Mike asked.

  Neil nodded. “Yeah. Just don’t like being close to that shit.”

  “I know the feeling.” Mike tested the handles of the cutters. They moved easily. The suicidally sharp, serrated teeth slid by one another as he closed it tight. “Yup. This will do just fine.”

  “So we cut the lock. And then we cut the pipe.”