Passage Graves

by Madyson Rush

  The guards outside unlocked the chamber door.

  Javan’s voice resonated off the walls. He was terrified.

  The captive wrapped the barbed wire around one hand, tightly circling the bones and pinning the end of the strand into his necrotic flesh. New sensations exploded in his mind. Pain was magnificent. There was a peculiar sense of peace within perfect anguish. Perhaps it was the knowledge that one could not sink deeper, fall lower, or endure more. The Lord had been surprised by this epiphany at Gethsemane. Centuries ago, hidden under prickly desert brush and olive trees, the captive watched as God atoned. In the garden, they both learned about the secrets of agony, the transcendental power of pain.

  He gasped with miserable delight. The wait was over. Buried beneath anguish was power, pain so severe, it could unlock the metaphysical world.

  The door swung open and slammed against the inside of the cell.

  Javan was out of breath. He saw the twine and called for his guards.

  It was too late.

  Convulsions racked the captive’s hand as he pulled at the twine. Metal sunk into hollow bones, which had long emptied of marrow. At once the captive was everywhere. His mind expanded like nuclear fission, a million particles bombarding every brain. He stopped their thoughts with his own.

  The guards turned on each other.

  Javan dropped to the floor.

  There was thumping recoil as the guns fired in unison. Bullets ripped through flesh, and the men fell dead.

  In one sweeping moment, the captive stood over Javan.

  The mark along Javan’s left side had begun to heal.

  With one disjointed finger, the captive traced the wound that ran from Javan’s missing ear, down his neck, over his heart, and along his arm. The skin split apart obediently, oozing the life force the captive coveted: blood. Blood was mortality. It promised the sweet possibility of death.

  Javan clutched his chest.

  No, this human was not a prophet, just a talisman of misfortune to mark the end of times. Like the others, Javan’s fate was planned with exactness. His purpose remained unfulfilled. So, the captive let him live.

  Using the last of his sickening power, the captive left the room, slamming the cell door shut with his mind. He limped down the corridor anxious to reemerge in the world, to rise up as if from death, to be born again so that all may die. Dragging his body up the stairs, he forced open the trapdoor, stumbled down the hallway and out onto the city street.

  Rain drenched his naked body, washing away the sludge of his mocked atonement.

  His savior, the silver twine, glistened under the street lamp.

  He stared at the night sky and laughed.

  God be damned.

  Chapter 8

  SATURDAY 2:06 a.m.

  Orkney Island, Scotland

  “Are you okay?” The voice sounded distant, but familiar.

  Thatcher opened her eyes.

  Marek hovered over her, out of breath. “Brynne, are you okay?” he asked again.

  “What happened?” She held her hand over her chest in a futile effort to slow the beating of her heart. “Was that us?”

  “I don’t know.” Marek helped her up.

  “My head is banging.” Thatcher cupped her forehead with both hands as they moved to the tent door.

  Outside, a flashlight beam danced around the nearby generators. Someone was trying to turn them back on.

  “Lee?” Thatcher called out.

  The stout British-Asian turned his flashlight toward her. Thatcher and Marek shielded their eyes. Lee lowered his light.

  “Is anyone hurt?” Thatcher asked.

  Lee ignored her as he tinkered with the generator panel.

  “What’s going on?” Marek said.

  “Bailey and Golke are getting Sonja back online,” Lee replied. “Whatever the hell that was, it shorted the whole system.” He flipped on the power grid, but the generators didn’t start. With a huff, he opened an internal access panel to the circuit board and began untwisting wires.

  “Was it an acoustic blast?” Thatcher asked.

  “Bloody well felt like it.” Lee shook his head. “Those tossers are always messing about when you’re not babysitting them.”

  “They’ve never done anything like this before.” Thatcher said.

  “Knocked me clean on my arse,” Lee snapped. “All I know is Donovon and I were outside and Golke and Bailey were alone with the cannon.”

  “Could it have been a resonance echo from the earlier round?” Thatcher regretted asking the question, already knowing the ridiculousness of that scenario.

  “A resonance echo?” Lee frowned at her. “Hummer needs to know about this. He’ll expect a full report, so you better start documenting, Doctor.”

  Thatcher raised her shoulders. “Golke and Bailey should—”

  Lee cut her off. “I already told them to collect specimens. Who knows how many birds they’ll find before sun-up.” He let slip a grin and turned his full attention back to the generator.

  “Marek, will you give him a hand?” Thatcher asked.

  “Sure.”

  She bit her tongue. God, she wanted to unleash. Blow apart and put Lee in his place. If she said something, he would find some way to reduce her to nothing more than an over-emotional female. “Why’d I take this bloody job?” she whispered.

  Marek took Lee’s light and held it above the generator, enabling the engineer to use both hands. Lee connected a few more wires, and the large fans groaned to life. Seconds later, the overhead lights flickered on.

  “Tick tock, doctor,” Lee said, looking over at Thatcher.

  “I’ll contact Hummer,” she responded coolly. “Marek, will you help the boys collect specimens?”

  Marek whistled, trying to ease the tension. “Another day, another dollar.”

  Thatcher turned back toward the tent. More work, more memos to Hummer, more wretched aviary autopsies. It was shaping up to be a long day.

  “Dr. Thatcher!” Marek yelled as she disappeared into the tent. “Those dead birds of yours—you want ‘em in paper or plastic?”

  Thatcher waved him off, rolling her eyes as she caught his last words.

  “Yeah, she wants me.”

  Chapter 9

  SATURDAY 8:02 a.m.

  Stenness, Scotland

  The silence was booming.

  Curtains subdued the morning sunlight, only allowing it to enter at the window’s perimeter. David rubbed his ears, listening for the sounds of breakfast. No sizzle of ham. No crackle of fried eggs. No one shuffling around in slippers downstairs. There wasn’t even the hum of an occasional passing car along the street below.

  He twisted to see Darwin beside the open door. Curled in a tight ball, she was asleep. It had taken most of the night for her to calm down. He recalled waking a few times to her whining, but the door was open and she knew how to get outside.

  “Darwin?” his whisper cut the dead air.

  She was perfectly still.

  “Darwin?”

  She didn’t move.

  “Darwin?” David jumped from the bed and dropped beside her.

  She was tranquil, her chest motionless. He watched her, waiting, willing her to move. His throat burned. It was a throbbing ache that threatened tears. He slid his arms underneath her. Her body was limp and cold. Something had been wrong with her. The snapping, the lashing out. Her pacing, whining. Why hadn’t he done anything for her?

  He lifted her gently off the floor, holding her body tight against him.

  “Marta?” His voice tight with emotion.

  The house was quiet.

  He carried Darwin downstairs. Trace embers remained in the fireplace. The breakfast rolls sat uncovered on the dining room table. The clock on the wall had stopped ticking, the time frozen at exactly 2:00 a.m. He looked at his watch. The hands were suspended at 2:00 a.m.

  Dread replaced the lump in his throat.

  He set Darwin on the floor.

  Something
was wrong. Very wrong.

  Hurrying through the kitchen, he continued down the hallway to Marta’s bedroom. He knocked on her door. “Marta?”

  He pushed open the door, flinching as it creaked.

  Marta was tucked under a thick comforter, her back to him.

  “Marta?” His voice cracked again.

  She didn’t move.

  He stepped inside and placed one hand on the innkeeper’s side. “Mart—”

  Her body tipped forward. One arm dropped from the side of the bed, and the comforter fell from her face.

  David stumbled backwards into the dresser.

  Marta’s eyes were open, bulging with unnatural convexity. The skin surrounding them was spotted with an eruption of capillaries like red claws grasping her eyeballs. Her once-blue irises were nearly devoid of color, now a cloudy matter dotted with a few crimson bubbles. Liquid within liquid. Along her cheeks were two trails of blood, starting at her nostrils and soaking her pillow.

  David retracted, vomited. He caught the telephone cord hanging off the dresser with his elbow. The phone toppled to the floor. He picked up the receiver.

  There was no dial tone.

  He exploded out onto the street.

  The countryside was covered with death. Bodies of sheep, rigid and misshapen with rigor, were strewn in every direction. Images of hell burned in their popping eyes. From Marta’s inn to the hills beyond Stenness, the land was entirely wet, wooly death. Morning mist twisted off the earth like apparitions dancing over putrid decay.

  He heard a scream. A voice swallowed by the wind.

  Where did it come from? There was someone else alive.

  David ran across the road, his mind foggy, his body stumbling over the sheep carcasses. He leaped onto the porch of the neighbor’s house. His fists pounded the door.

  The handle was locked.

  Grabbing a wicker chair from the porch, he smashed open the living room window. Glass shattered with a terrible crash, falling over him, cutting him. He heard the scream again. He was definitely not alone. He climbed through the window. Up the staircase, he hurdled two, three steps at a time. Panic gave way to dizziness, and with one misstep, he fell and his left knee split apart against the top step. He dropped to the floor, grabbing his leg, trying to ease the searing pain of exploded ligaments. His kneecap dislodged, the bone was misaligned from the rest of his leg.

  With a groan, he forced himself to stand.

  He limped into the nearest bedroom. A young girl was tucked under frilly sheets. Her hair was a frizzy mess loosely pinned to one side with a pink barrette. Blood trailed from her nose and ears. Her eyes were wide like Marta’s.

  The scream throbbed in his ears.

  Where was it coming from?

  There was another bedroom down the hall. Inside, a man and woman were dead. Their sanguine fluid soaked the sheets.

  David fell against the wall, his chest heaving.

  Again, the scream. This time louder, piercing his mind.

  He tore downstairs, back through the broken glass, and out into the street. His knee refused to bend. Pain shot up his leg as he forced himself forward. Down the road. Past Marta’s, spinning this way and that. The only sound now was the biting northern wind.

  Finally, another shriek, louder than the last.

  It caused him to stumble and fall. His hands scraped against the asphalt. He hugged his injured leg. Blood soaked into his pants.

  The scream circled his head, twisted around his body, and strangled his throat. It enveloped his heart and then pierced it. His logical mind sifted through the chaos, until he shuddered with startling clarity.

  The scream was his.

  And there was no one left to hear it.

  Chapter 10

  SUNDAY 1:55 p.m.

  Orkney Island, Scotland

  “Almost done,” Marek said, making minor modifications on his laptop.

  Thatcher squinted, wishing she had remembered her sunglasses.

  The uncommonly sunny day cast blinding light off of Sonja’s chrome. Their sonic pulse generator, a dome-shaped conductor that siphoned into a long cylindrical tube, was positioned on a mount the size of a truck bed and facing west. She was aimed at an array of transducers and microphones that monitored frequency, pressure, and amplitude over a 6-mile area.

  Thatcher stretched her neck until it cracked. She hated it when people did that, but standing over dead birds for fourteen hours meant it was well-earned. Her temples were still throbbing from the strange pressure wave that had pulsed through their testing grounds earlier that morning.

  Donovon turned to Thatcher and winked. His Irish cheeks were as perpetually rosy as his disposition. “All we have to do is reset a few calibrations. Fortunately, Sonja sustained no damage from the ‘resonance echo.’”

  Thatcher lifted an eyebrow. “It was a resonance echo, then?”

  “Nobody knows for sure.” Marek shrugged. He looked over at Bailey, who was kneeling in the grass crouched over a field computer trying to block the sun’s glare from his screen. “We’ll be ready in five, right Ballistics?”

  Bailey didn’t respond. Only in his early twenties, the asocial genius had a handful of Oxford doctorate degrees under his belt: nuclear chemical engineering, applied vibrational physics, fluid mechanics. When it came to weapons technology, he was a complete Anorak. He knew everything.

  “Ballistics?” Marek chucked a pebble at the back of Bailey’s monitor and signaled at Thatcher. “Show some respect, man.”

  Bailey looked up from his computer. “Sod off, mate. If you’re in such a hurry, then give me a hand.” He adjusted his black horn-rimmed glasses and tossed a clipboard across the grass to Marek.

  Before Marek could grab it, Thatcher picked it up. She studied the chicken scratch of formulas. “Okay, Marek, four times 6.8 meters squared times the full sphere at r squared…”

  “1.8496.” He could do the math in his head. “That’s Sonja’s sound intensity along the axis of propagation.”

  Golke stopped fiddling with the conductor components of the cannon. “In other words, ‘boom.’”

  Bailey mocked Golke’s thick Greek accent. “You so funny, Golke! You try make joke?”

  Golke briefly met Thatcher’s eyes and turned a turnip shade of purple. Although handsome, with a dimpled face and a mane of thick black hair, the scientist suffered from an Achilles’ heel of acne that destroyed his self-confidence. Golke was the newest addition to the team. Hiring a sound equipment technician had been Donovon’s idea. Director Hummer got onboard after learning the engineer was willing to work for free.

  Bailey finished calculating the computation. “1.8496.” He nodded at Marek, minimally impressed.

  “How you like them math skills, doc?” Marek wiggled his eyebrows at Thatcher. “And you thought all I was good for was picking up a few dead birds.”

  “A few?” She shook her head. “Now I am questioning your math skills.”

  “Smart arse,” Donovon chirped as he helped Golke adjust Sonja’s range.

  Thatcher’s cell phone rang. She unclipped it from her belt and stepped away from the group.

  From the corner of her eye, she could see Marek run a finger across his neck, signaling the worst. Hummer’s reaction would depend entirely upon his mood, and Hummer was never happy.

  “This is Thatcher.”

  “Everyone in Stenness—dead,” Hummer’s voice cut out.

  “Sir?” she asked, confused.

  “—shock wave you felt—everyone in Stenness is dead.”

  Thatcher looked at Marek, then at the cannon. She backed away from the acoustic weapon.

  “Disarm Sonja immediately,” Hummer ordered. “We leave for Stenness at 1700.”

  Chapter 11

  SUNDAY 5:40 p.m.

  Stenness, Orkney Island, Scotland

  “Bloody hell!” The Land Rover flattened another sheep carcass on the roadway. Hummer was driving. Armored inside and out, tightlipped and devoid of emotion, he was t
he perfect military mechanism for suppressing a disaster of this magnitude.

  The vehicle reached the hilltop overlooking Stenness valley.

  “Looks like a war zone,” Marek whispered, sitting beside Thatcher.

  Stenness was unrecognizable. Blanketed with sterilized plastic, the out-of-date community had joined the present day in a sudden violent rush. White tents bubbled over the expanse, providing makeshift laboratories, containment rooms, temporary living quarters, and storage for the swarming National Chemical Emergency Centre officials dressed in contamination suits.

  “It’s a full deployment.” Hummer’s chiseled frown sagged even lower. “NCEC has garrisoned the place.”

  Lee turned off the highway and stopped in the pasture-turned-parking lot.

  Thatcher took off her seatbelt. “Have they found any leads?”

  “No.” Hummer was stone-faced. “And they won’t.”

  She sat back. Her heart fluttered with panic. Tension was building in her shoulders. The whole bloody mess twisted her stomach into knots. Hummer was already certain their team was responsible. She hated to admit the scenario was even plausible. Their test site was nearby, but there were safeguards in place. Testing Sonja at levels that rivaled a disaster of this magnitude was strictly prohibited.

  “Suit up,” Hummer said, stepping outside.

  Thatcher zipped up her hazardous materials suit, pulled the bulky plastic helmet over her head, and exited the SUV.

  A man half the size of Hummer rushed to the group with a digital clipboard in hand. “Are you with NEMA or INTERPOL DVI?”

  Hummer shut the driver’s door.

  The man’s eyes darted back and forth behind the glass shield of his helmet.

  “Wait, gentlemen!” he shouted at Marek and Bailey as they opened the back of the Land Rover and started removing equipment from the cargo hold. “I need names and authorization before anything can be unloaded.”

  Marek and Bailey looked to Hummer. Hummer waved at them to continue.