Julian didn’t think, didn’t consider, didn’t look at the encroaching wave of things that were spreading in his direction as the room filled with more and more of them. Wrenching his laptop bag from his shoulder, he moved closer and swung the bag by its strap in a looping roundhouse that threatened to over balance him with its momentum.
Twelve pounds of Alienware notebook encased in canvas and padding impacted with murderous force.
Pearcey hurriedly retrieved the gun, then turned to look at Julian and pushed him towards the exit again.
“Go, go, for fuck’s sake, get out.”
Julian heard the words as if from a distance, his ears still ringing from the detonations of the gun. He stumbled through the door and staggered a few paces into the corridor.
Pearcey was close behind him, slammed the door and produced a bulky bunch of keys and began rifling through them. The door shuddered as it was pummelled and scratched from the other side. He rammed a boot at its base and concentrated on the keys.
“Can you help out here do you think? I can’t find the key and block it at the same time.”
Julian scuttled to the door and threw his weight against it.
“You’re ...locking them in. The others, you’ll be locking them in.”
Julian was bending, hunched against the door, looking up at Pearcey.
The man was frantically skimming through the keyring and he continued doing so as he replied.
“The centre has been breached. There are other exits in that room. We need to secure our retreat. If we don’t lock this up pretty soon, you won’t need to worry about the others. Just jam the fucking door and shut the fuck up.”
Pearcey found the key he wanted and clicked the lock shut, backing away as soon as it was done.
“Come on. We have to get out.”
“Out? To the surface? Aren’t there more of them up there?” Julian asked.
“That doesn’t fucking-well matter right now, does it? Devil and the deep blue sea bubbeleh. They’re down here and we’re trapped down here with them. You’ve seen them. How long do you think we’ll last? Stay and find out if you want.”
Pearcey spoke to him like he was addressing a child.
A child he didn’t like. Not his own, someone else’s. A child that was irritating him and one that he might just walk away from. Or slap.
Another thudding impact shivered the door behind him and Julian heard an ominous crack as if something important was yielding under the constant bombardment. Pearcey was already walking away and Julian hurried after him, followed as he led them through a maze of corridors.
Before long they heard screams echoing ahead of them and as they rounded yet another ninety degree turn, they nearly fell over one of the creatures as it savagely ripped at something on the floor.
Blood and gore slimed the walls and vinyl flooring. The creature was devouring what was left of whoever had been unfortunate enough to encounter it.
Julian froze in horror and actually shrank back a few steps. It had been a man, the victim, but he couldn’t tell if he knew him or not. The only way he was able to recognise the fact that the person had been male was by clothing and footwear. Whatever lay there now was unrecognisable as an individual. It had become a bloodied rag of flesh and bone.
Without any discernible pause, Pearcey strode up to the thing as its head snapped round to glare at him. The gun was nearly touching its hairless skull when he pulled the trigger and killed it.
He stepped across the filth strewn floor and turned to Julian.
“We have to be quick now. The sound may attract them.”
A few more minutes brought them to a corridor that Julian hadn’t visited before. Pearcey stopped at a door on his left that opened onto a downward staircase.
“I thought we were going up top?” Julian asked him.
“We are. Gotta go down to go up though. The circle of life is full of contradictions right? There’s a storeroom below and some more passageways that lead to one of the smaller emergency exits at street level. An old exit.”
Pearcey spoke rapidly like he didn’t have the time for talking.
“I’m hoping it may be ...quieter there. Plus it comes out close to where I left my own car when I was ordered to the centre.”
“How did they get in?” Julian asked him as Pearcey started down the dimly lit stairs.
“How did those ...monsters get in here?”
The man stopped, the lower half of his body obscured by shadow. His face looked strained and impatient.
There were flecks of glistening matter in his closely cropped hair.
“Well, I’d guess somebody left a fucking door open somewhere. This place has been around since Churchill was giving the two fingered victory salute to anybody who cared to notice. Christ, you can smell his cigar smoke in places. There’re probably more entrances that have been forgotten about than ones still being used.”
He seemed exasperated by the question or, more precisely, the requirement of him to answer it.
“Look someone could have left an entrance open or one simply might not have been secured properly. This interim management complex isn’t as impressive as it sounds. It’s a rat warren from back when the big boys wore spats and bowler hats. The moth balls got dusted off when the mukmuks started flying planes into skyscrapers and then it was probably only because a couple of the old boy-network suits spotted the chance to lift a few of million from momma taxpayers ever-open purse. They didn’t take any of that terrorist shit seriously.”
Pearcey took a breath and looked to the grimy ceiling.
“I’m going for a disused exit that I have keys for. My motor is in an MOD car park close to that. You can come with me or you can stand here on your own thinking about it. By the way, the door at your back can’t be locked so if those fucking shrivs hear us or can smell us, who knows ...well, you’re the first in line to have a chat with them.”
Julian didn’t ask him how he knew about a disused exit. He had a feeling that Pearcey made it his business to know about that kind of stuff. The same with why the man would have left his car in a location that was positioned next to such a place.
What he did do was go after him into the stygian gloom and descend one crumbling flight of stairs after another. He lost count of how many stairs, the darkness and surreal horror of where he found himself scrambled his thoughts, disorientated him.
The stairs eventually ended in a dimly lit room.
Long and low. All it contained was an assortment of dust-laden boxes. Sagging with mould, gradually disintegrating over who knew how many years.
As they neared the end of the room, a boom echoed from above, reverberating down the stairs like some portentous toll of the bell.
They both turned and peered into the gloom as sounds of descent drifted to them in the dead air. Pearcey seemed to arrive at some decision as the gun appeared in his hand and his arm rose across Julian’s chest and pushed him back. Julian merely stood where he was put and stared vacantly ahead, expectant and terrified.
The man that fell into the room was bloodied and bedraggled. He faltered on the last few steps and tripped. Rolled away as two whip thin monstrosities landed cat-like at the foot of the stairs behind him.
Part of the man’s scalp hung down over his face like a wilted flower. His smart casual shirt mirrored his face, flapping remnants drooped over his once beige chinos. Even in the inadequate lighting, bone was visible through the bites on his torso and shoulders.
Pearcey recognised him, indeed had escorted him to the complex. He recalled the file on the man and his polite and engaging personality on their brief acquaintance. Richard Singh was mid-twenties, successful, a logistics expert, part-time soldier. Mixed race. Nepalese mother and English father. Summarised on the report as an over-achiever, reliable, competent and resourceful.
There was little of that vitality evident in the man now. He was on his last legs.
Hard to know if he even saw them in the gloom. He was def
initely aware of the things behind him and began to crawl towards Julian and Pearcey in an effort to outdistance them. The two creatures watched him, crouched, a hunting pair, limbs balanced on cold damp brick.
Poised.
In for the kill.
The first leapt at the prone man a fraction before Pearcey fired. It was ripping and clawing at its prey as the bullet whined and ricocheted lethally around the room.
Muzzle flash flared and danced in Julian’s eyes, noise battered his ears in the enclosed space.
Pearcey fired again before the second creature could jump and it angled backwards, hit high in the right of its body.
The man on the floor screamed as the first creature ripped and tore at him. The sound of the screams were muted in Julian’s ears, distanced by the concussive blasts of gunfire, like sound heard through air that had suddenly thickened, become denser.
He covered his ears with the heels of his hands after the first shot. Wanted to close his eyes as well.
He didn’t. He simply couldn’t. Couldn’t not bear witness to what was happening, however much he wanted to. However much not seeing this would be better. However preferable it would be to not have this obscene tableau forever embedded in his mind. He didn’t understand how Pearcey could function, make decisions. Didn’t know how the big man could even think.
And Pearcey moved fast. Not as fast the creatures but fast nonetheless. Frighteningly fast if objectivity had still been solely based on the human perspective. He went in closer and he went in very quickly.
The thing atop Richard Singh reared to meet him, parts of the man’s stomach still clenched between its jaws. Thankfully, the blasts of the gun had also deafened Pearcey to the dreadfully wet sounds that accompanied that action. Pearcey shot it between the eyes.
He swivelled to meet the second creature on his left, up and mobile despite being hit once already. He shot it twice.
The first shot shattered its mouth and drove it to ground again. The second punched through its offensively crenelated skull and burst its brain against wet brick.
Pearcey turned and hooked a boot under the dead creature that lay half on top of Richard Singh. He hefted it, only managing to move it partially off the man.
Knelt down and observed the twitching man. Looked him up and down and whispered something quietly that Julian couldn’t hear. Then stood and walked swiftly to Julian, roughly grabbing him by the sleeve and propelling him into the shadows.
Neither of them spoke.
<><><>
A series of doorways and passages followed. More bare brick, oozing moisture and the stench of deep earth. Less and less light. Julian sensed furtive scurrying movement in the shadows.
He hoped it was rats. Much as he hated them, he hoped to God it was rats. The sense of scuttling movement receded as Pearcey flicked on a flashlight but Julian felt that it was still there, just waiting for the light to go away.
The insipient panic was hovering. He could feel it. Just as clearly as he could feel that paused motion in the shadows. The panic was like the power failing when he was in the shower. Except it worse now. Magnified, made bigger by the experiences of the last minutes. Or perhaps it was hours, Julian couldn’t tell anymore. However long it was, it seemed like an eternity since he’d fumbled out of the shower.
The disorientation, the barely held at bay panic, was a blanket slowly settling over him. It was huge and grey and threatened to numb his mind and still his body. Leave him stuttering and misfiring, stranded and lost below the earth.
Never mind the mutations, the monsters. He didn’t like the dark, he didn’t like rats and crawling things, and he didn’t like the damp-rot stench that filled the air down there. Could feel it clinging to his clothes and permeating his mouth and nose, getting inside him. Dirtying him, infecting him, filling the spaces between his cells with its swirling decay.
At least we wasn’t alone, he had company. Although he wasn’t entirely convinced that he liked Pearcey either, as far as it went. Pearcey seemed almost as unknowable and dangerous as the mutated people.
They kept going, silence between them and around them, slowly slogging through one darkly dank place after another. Julian completely lost track of time. Had no idea of direction. All that anchored him to the world was Pearcey’s brooding presence and the beam of light that spilled from the torch in Pearcey’s fist.
Eventually they started ascending another stairwell until they came to a heavy old iron door with a wheel lock in the middle of it.
The numb unreality encircling Julian like a steadily tightening noose began to loosen a little. Just a little, enough to make breathing less of an ordeal and enough to stop his heart thudding like a jack-hammer against his ribs. Some of the realness of him began to reassert itself, however weak and shocked.
“They can’t have got in here ...it locks from this side. If it’s one sided that is?” Julian ventured as they paused at the door.
His voice felt foreign and flat in his own ears, as if it had been unused for days, or weeks.
“Yeah, it is. And I know they couldn’t have got in this way. I checked from up top three days ago and it was secure. Only came this far down but it fine. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to run across any of them as we get higher.”
The security man stopped speaking as they heard a dull bang from below and behind.
“Open it up,” he told Julian as he turned back the way they’d come. Directed the beam of the light down the shadowy stairwell.
Julian grasped the wheel with sweat-slick hands and strained to move it. It wouldn’t budge.
“Pearcey ...sorry, Carlton. I can’t get it to turn,” Julian said helplessly.
The light was thrust into his hand and he was shoved unceremoniously to one side. The man spun the wheel like it was a loose ring on a child’s toy and heaved the door open. Julian felt the torch snatched from his hands and watched as Pearcey quickly scanned the area beyond the door and then returned to the top of stairs and shone the light downwards.
He stood listening.
Something was moving down there. Back in depths that they’d already traversed, something was coming after them.
“Go. Go on through,” Pearcey said quietly.
Julian stared into the blackness past the airlock door and had to force his legs forward. There wasn’t sufficient illumination to see more than a few feet and even that was just a murky gloom afforded by ambient luminosity from the flashlight. The thought of blithely strolling into that darkness was about as attractive as the thought of leaping blindfold down a lift shaft.
“Will you fucking-well move sweetheart?”
Pearcey’s voice was an urgent hiss at his ear that made him jump. He could feel the heat of the man’s breath on his skin, as undeniable as the tense annoyance in his tone.
“Whatever’s up there, there’s definitely something behind us. I don’t know what the fuck it is but I’d prefer not to just stand here with my thumb up my arse waiting to find out.”
Julian hesitantly moved forward as he heard the door swing shut behind him. The flashlight threw patchy light up another staircase.
“Get up there as quick and quiet as you can Jules. Don’t dawdle, don’t fuck around, just move.”
They tip-toe ran up what seemed to Julian like an endless sequence of steps. Grit underfoot and dust cloaking their clothes where they touched the walls. Finally reached another landing and another door with a wheel for a lock. These entrances reminded Julian of some ancient hatchway on a decaying submarine. Strong seals, perhaps even airtight at one time, before rot and rust had done their inexorable work. The situation had that claustrophobic submerged quality that he imagined would result from being trapped in a metal box under tons of water. He was drenched in sweat that was only partially due to the exertion. Hands on knees, breathing hard.
Pearcey paused on the landing, breathing not as laboured as Julian’s but sweat still sparkled below his hairline.
“Not as fit as I us
ed to be,” was his only acknowledgement.
“Just what do you do Carlton? Holte said you were a security officer ...but you carry a gun. You shoot like you’ve been doing it forever, like it’s second nature to you. Like you do it in the real world, not with a game controller. You not only know about secret passageways in government bunkers but have keys to open them. Senior politicians talk to you like you could do them a favour.
What are you, a spy? Dark ops incognito doing a spell on the home front?”
Pearcey turned and coldly appraised him.
They were nearly touching in the small space. Perspiration strong and mingling between them. Eyes white in the darkness.
“We really haven’t time for this Julie but if it’s going to help me stay alive with you in tow, I guess it might be worth it.
So ...let’s get something straight before we go any further. Don’t go getting off on the idea that I’m some sort of badass from a Hollywood action fantasy. I’m just a bloke, a nobody.
I was in the army and I work ...worked, for the government. I don’t think there’s much government left anymore so I’m out of a job from what I can see. I can look after myself and I have a gun and I know how to hit something with it.
But ...and it’s a big old but, baby.
That doesn’t make me the fucking black terminator and it doesn’t mean that I have some superman survival powers.”
Whether he was or not, Pearcey appeared angry and, up this close, he was intimidating.
Julian held up his hands and couldn’t keep a wavery vibrato out of his reply.
“Oh God, don’t get me wrong. Don’t misunderstand me Pearcey ...Carlton.
Please don’t do that. I’m grateful to you. I ...don’t know how I’d have made it ...but ...well, given the circumstances.”
Julian shrugged hopelessly.
“I just want to know who you are. What to expect from you.”
The man continued to stare at him. Finally spoke.
“I’m divorced because I can be an asshole and I haven’t seen my kid in two years because I can be a dumb asshole. I don’t have any answers and I certainly don’t want you thinking that I’m going to be your fairy fucking godmother. Or I’ll be able to rescue you if things go tits up.”
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