Dead Space: Catalyst

by Evenson, Brian

  * * *

  But there was nothing in the pod that seemed useful. Nothing much in the room, either, as far as he could tell—he was, after all, in a prison, not the sort of place where it was likely that heavy weaponry would be lying around. He had just a few flares left. The plasma pistol proper had a number of charges, but it wouldn’t last forever. If there were many more of them, he was likely to be in trouble.

  How could it be alive? he wondered again. How could it keep coming at me even after I took off its head? Whatever these once-human bodies had become it was something very far away from being human. They operated in ways that he could not understand. And you couldn’t kill them exactly, it seemed, only reduce them to a certain immobility so that even though they were still moving they could no longer do much harm.

  And so what now? What else was there to do but make for the door, hope that the man who had been talking to him would manage to open it before another one of those things found him and tried to kill him?

  * * *

  At first he started off cautiously, trailing his way along the walls, but he quickly thought fuck it and began to run. If they were there, they were there, and perhaps moving quickly was as good a way as any of getting past them. He ran along the wall and down into the corridor. He did not turn left or right, but he made the mistake of looking left and saw the line of cells, lights still functioning in this part of the complex, caught a glimpse of a corpse collapsed in one, killed by lack of oxygen, as well as a few of the more humanoid creatures shambling down along the cells, away from him.

  He ran forward to the large doors, stopped in front of them, and whispered into his receiver, “I’m here. Open the doors.”

  He waited, but there was no response. He tried again, a little louder, hoping the noise wouldn’t attract the creatures down among the cells. Finally, came a crackling sound:

  “… ny inside, too,” it said. “Wave your hand so … know you…”

  What was that supposed to mean? Not knowing what else to do, he followed the part of the message he’d heard and waved his hand.

  There was a thunk and the doors began to slide open. But on the other side lay, he suddenly realized, not safety, but death.

  The room just on the other side of the door was scattered with corpses, some of them torn to bits, others more or less intact. And among them perhaps a half dozen of the humanoid creatures that he’d seen before. The moment they saw him, they hissed and started rushing toward him.

  44

  He fired the flare gun into the first one and it lodged somewhere near its hip, burning the joint of the leg away but not quick enough for it to fall before reaching him. He turned and ran.

  At first he was heading back to the central circle, but no, he realized, there was only one exit there, that was a trap. He swerved and headed down through the cell-lined hallway, only realizing after he’d started that he’d gone the wrong way, toward the creatures that he’d seen walking there earlier. He glanced back over his shoulder but it was too late to correct himself: the others were already nearly upon him.

  He sped up, running as fast and as silently as he could. There they were, three of them, up ahead, and he waited to fire on them until he was almost upon them and knew they had heard him. He faded right and they gravitated toward him and he fired the pistol at the one closest to him, trying to take out a limb or a leg, but failing. He fired the flare gun again, and struck one of them in the face, the head suddenly blooming into a ball of fire. And then quickly he veered left, rubbed up against the cells and rushed around them. One of them managed to strike him with his bonelike scimitar, but it was a glancing blow, strong enough to numb his arm and make him drop his flare gun but not enough to cut through his suit. And then he was past them and running farther along the curving hall, hoping he wouldn’t run in to more of them.

  “I’m still alive and running,” he said into the receiver, already mostly out of breath. “Maybe you can hear me, maybe you can’t. But if you can, for god’s sake, don’t shut the damn door.”

  He kept running, even though his lungs were burning. How much oxygen was left in the suit? The creatures behind him weren’t quite gaining on him, but they also weren’t losing much ground. If he slowed, eventually they would catch him. And then they would either kill him or make him into one of them.

  But he couldn’t go far enough ahead of them to make them lose interest in him. They had to keep following him, he had to draw them all away from the door while he circled all the way around and back to it.

  And then a terrible thought hit him. What if the corridor didn’t go around in a circle after all? What if he was soon going to hit a dead end?

  He tried not to think about it, tried just to keep running as long as he could, but the panic made him unable to judge how far he had run. Was he halfway yet? More? How much of his strength should he hold in reserve so he would be able to finish?

  He slackened his pace a little and one of them almost caught him. He sped up and then saw it, up ahead: the door. “I’m coming! I’m coming!” he yelled into the receiver. “Get ready to close it!” And then he ran all out and as fast as he could. He yelled “Now!” when he was still a little way away, fifteen or twenty feet or so, and was horrified by how quickly the doors started to close. Would he make it? He gave a last burst of speed and threw himself at them and through them, sliding the last of the way in and watching the door close behind him, crushing one of the creatures as it did so and keeping the rest outside.

  45

  He lay on the floor listening to his own harsh ragged breathing. After a moment he heard the hiss of air rushing into the chamber and the breather in his RIG shut off. The air here was safe to breathe.

  He stood up, retracted his helmet, wiped his face, and looked around.

  It was a large room, long, with a door to his right and a door to his left. The walls were smeared with blood and gobbets of gore scattered the floor. There were intact corpses here, and these he was careful with, making sure they were still human before approaching them. One wasn’t, but it had been torn apart and rendered harmless. He searched the human corpses for weapons. There were truncheons on a couple of bodies in riot gear, but he found nothing of use.

  Which way? he wondered, and for no particular reason chose the door to the right.

  It led him down a long, deserted hall to a door marked INTERROGATION ROOM. Near the door was a corpse in riot gear, its head torn from its neck and discarded a little farther down the hall. He gingerly stepped over it and opened the door.

  The room smelled of rot, and the table in the middle of it was slimy with ichor or some other foul fluids. He ignored it, focusing instead on the metal cabinets around the walls. He opened these one by one, looking for something to use as a weapon. There were drawers full of gauze, surgical gloves, doctors’ coats with faded brown stains on their fronts, a set of scalpels, some equipment related to torture by electrocution. There were empty plastic buckets, surgical tubing. There was one drawer packed full of hypodermic needles, the light glinting off them eagerly when the drawer was opened. There were ampoules of various drugs, some to numb the pain, some to increase it, some to make you unable to talk, others to make you unable to stop talking. What went on in this place? he wondered, and thought again of his brother, wondered if he had been brought here and what they had done to him, what they had hoped to get out of him, and, finally, what they had reduced him to.

  There were two very large cabinets, and these he saved for last. One was locked, but he beat it open with the butt of his gun. Inside were larger implements of torture: a long curved hook on the end of a ridged metal pole, a branding iron with a self-contained heating apparatus, and a laser saw. He took the latter, switched it on, saw that it offered a foot-long blade. Yes, he thought, finally something useful.

  The other was unlocked, but seemed to be jammed. He tugged on it, then banged it, finally pulled hard enough that it sprang open, making him stumble backward.

  Insid
e was a man. His hand was bloody from holding the door shut, and his face had been smeared with gore. His eyes darted here and there, and even once the door was open he continued to crouch in the cabinet, pressed against the back wall.

  “D-d-don’t kill me,” he said in a small voice.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” said Jensi. “I don’t even know who you are.” He reached out, but the man batted his hand away. “Come on now,” said Jensi. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “There’s everything to be afraid of,” the man said. But, very gingerly, he eased his way out of the cabinet. He looked around the room. “James Waldron,” he said, and held out his hand. “I heard you,” he said. “I heard you searching through the drawers. I thought it was them.”

  “Do you know what’s going on?” asked Jensi. “How did they get in?”

  “They didn’t get in. They were already here,” said Waldron.

  “I saw the hole,” said Jensi. “You dug something up, didn’t you?”

  Waldron shook his head. His eyes were still darting about, unable to focus. “No,” he said. “They’re us.”

  “Us?”

  “They’re not aliens at all,” said Waldron. “That’s what I thought at first but it simply isn’t true. They’re dead humans who have been changed, transformed.”

  “That’s what the guy on the radio told me. But I didn’t believe him. Are you sure?”

  “Who told you? I’m sure,” said Waldron. “I saw it happen with Bill Ambler.”

  “Who is Bill Ambler?” asked Jensi.

  “Who was Bill, you mean,” said Waldron. “First he died, and then I saw him change. I saw his body jerk and stretch and crack, and then he was alive again, though not alive exactly, not in the way we understand that, and not Bill, either. And then I watched him kill Michael Stewart. And then Michael changed, too, and then I ran.”

  “How many are there?” asked Jensi.

  “I don’t know,” said Waldron. “Too many. But one’s too many.”

  “We have to try to get out of here,” said Jensi. “We have to try to find some safety.”

  “This is safety,” said Waldron. “We’re safe here.”

  Jensi shook his head. “There’s no food here,” he said. “We can’t last. We need to find someplace else.”

  “No,” said Waldron, and began to shrink and turn away. He started to babble, words coming out all wrong, offering bits and pieces of the stories of the deaths he had seen. No, he was saying, they must not go out there. One man decapitated, another lifted up on the scythes of one of those monsters, the blades thrust right through his chest. Another struck down by something like a flying bat that wrapped itself around his head and then with some sort of weird proboscis or tentacle broke open his skull. Another—

  But Jensi was shaking him, trying to get him to focus. “I know you’re frightened,” he was saying, “I know you don’t want to go. But we have to. It’s the only way.”

  Waldron shook his head. “If I go out there, I’ll die.”

  “I won’t let you die,” said Jensi. “I promise.”

  Waldron shook his head reluctantly, but slowly he allowed himself to be led toward the door.

  “Do you know my brother? Istvan?” asked Jensi on the way out. “Is he still alive.”

  “Istvan?” said Waldron, and nodded. He seemed much calmer now, as if he had accepted whatever fate awaited him on the other side of the door. “He was here for a while. Strange fucker, something really wrong with him. He’s really your brother?”

  Jensi nodded. “Is he still alive?” he asked.

  “They took him away,” said Waldron.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know,” said Waldron. “The people interested in him were scientists.”

  “Maybe the research facility?”

  “What research facility?” asked Waldron. “Is there one on this planet? I didn’t know. I was a prisoner of conscience—they didn’t tell me anything.”

  “He’s probably there,” said Jensi. “Unless they took him off the planet. But no, he’s got to be there.”

  “Are you looking for him?” asked Waldron. “Don’t bother. He’s probably dead and has become one of these things. You find him and he’ll try to rip your head off. If I were you, I’d be worried more about saving my own skin than about finding my crazy brother.”

  “No,” said Jensi, as much to himself as to Waldron. “He’s still alive. He’s got to be. How could I have gotten this far if he was already dead? He needs me. He needs my help.”

  Waldron shrugged. “You’re a fool,” he said.

  * * *

  They walked back down the hall, Waldron always behind him, one hand on Jensi’s shoulder, always anxious, always nervous.

  “How do you get out?” Jensi asked.

  “Control room probably has a door to the outside,” said Waldron. “I think it was locked. I heard one of the guards say so before one of those creatures killed it. There may be other ways out, I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve ever been in this ring.”

  “Ring?”

  “That’s what we call them,” said Waldron. “Sometimes we call it a three-ring circus and sometimes it’s the three circles of hell. The prison is the two on the inside and this outer ring is for the guards. They watched us from here, controlled us.”

  “Were you the one who contacted me?” asked Jensi.

  “What? No,” said Waldron. “How could I have done that?”

  “If you were sending a signal, where would you send it from?”

  “I don’t know,” said Waldron. “Must be the control room.”

  “Waldron, we may be all right after all.”

  * * *

  He had a hard time getting Waldron to cross the gore-spattered room. He had begun to mumble under his breath and tried to turn back and screamed when Jensi dragged him across, but in the end they managed it. Through the door on the other side was another hallway, curving slightly. They followed it around, slowly.

  And then, suddenly, there was a moment when Jensi felt a wave of pain wash through him. He grunted and stumbled, nearly went down, and his head began to throb. There again was his dead mother, standing before him, looking at him this time. As he watched her a sluglike flicker of blood leaked from her nose and down across her lips. She licked it away.

  “Jensi,” she said. “Help me. I must arrive at what awaits me.”

  “You’re not real,” said Jensi. But he was having a hard time believing she wasn’t real. She looked so genuine, so much like she had in life that part of him couldn’t quite believe this was a hallucination. It had to be something more.

  “Jensi,” she said, and reached out for him.

  And then something heavy struck him on the side of his head. Woozy and disoriented, he fell to his knees, looked up just in time to see Waldron’s boot kick him in the face. He fell back.

  “No, father!” Waldron was shouting. “No!” He was waving at the air with one hand, pulling on it as if it were palpable, and flailing about a loose riot helmet with the other. And then his voice changed, becoming nervous and weak, the voice of a little child.

  “Where are you?” Waldron said. “Where have you gone?”

  “Waldron,” Jensi managed to say, as he started to scramble up. “Stop. There’s nothing there. You’re hallucinating.”

  But then Waldron turned to him and looked directly at him, a strange glow in his eyes. “Ah, daddy,” he hissed. “There you are.”

  “No,” said Jensi. “I’m not—”

  But Waldron was already upon him. He brought the helmet down hard, but Jensi brought his arm up and blocked it. Pain shot through his arm, his hand going numb. Waldron kicked him in the side and then Jensi was half up, swaying upon his feet, groping for his pistol. “No, Waldron,” he said. “I’m not him!”

  “You need to die, father,” said Waldron, his voice a strange croon. “And this time you need to stay dead.”

  He started forward
again. Jensi circled, trying to stay out of reach. “Stop or I’ll shoot!” he claimed. He had the pistol out and was aiming it, but Waldron didn’t even seem to notice it. He only had eyes for his father.

  And there, over Waldron’s shoulder, distracting him, he saw the flowing white figure that was his mother. “Jensi,” she said. “Why don’t you come?”

  His concentration had been thrown just enough so that when Waldron rushed forward he found himself unable to get away. He fired twice, trying to hit him in the legs, just trying to bring him down, but the first blast hit him in the stomach and the second in the hip. He fell onto Jensi, but whatever had been driving him forward seemed gone now and he did not strike out.

  Jensi rolled out from under him, turned him face up. The wound in the stomach was bad. He moved Waldron’s hands to cover it and try to hold the blood in, keep him together. The bullet in the hip must have struck some sort of artery. That wound was pumping out little gouts of blood. He pressed his hand against it to try to stop it, but he knew it was too late.

  Waldron looked at him, his eyes hurt and confused. “You promised you’d protect me,” he said.

  Jensi didn’t know what to say. “I’m so sorry,” he finally offered.

  Waldron stared at him as if he hadn’t heard. He lifted his blood-soaked hands away from his stomach and stared at them, the blood meanwhile starting to pump from his stomach. His face was very pale. He let his hands fall.

  “What happened?” he managed to ask. And then he died.

  * * *

  So many dead, Jensi thought again, so much loss. He should not have told Waldron he could protect him. He couldn’t protect anybody, and if he’d left Waldron back where he had found him the man would still be alive. How many more deaths would he end up being responsible for?

  He arranged the body, straightening the legs, smoothing the arms down the sides. He took a moment to contemplate his work, and a moment to dedicate his thoughts to Waldron and wish him well. And then he left.