“You okay dear,” Ms. Gilly whispered. Sammi glared at Harold, seeing that he had moved again. Ms. Gilly followed her stare and waved at the air as if a couple of salt gnat had swarmed them. But Harold was more than a salt gnat. He was and always would be, evil.
“This one,” the leader said in a booming voice that pulled both Ms. Gilly’s and Sammi’s attention. “This one will go with you.” The leader pointed to Harold, whose mouth dropped open with surprise.
“Go inside?” Harold argued. “I’m not going in there!”
“With all do respect, I think I can handle this,” Declan countered. “He’s just going to slow me down.”
“Take him,” Sammi heard herself say. She could not explain it, but in her gut she felt that it was right. Declan whipped his head in her direction, his brow furrowed in disagreement. “He can help. He can carry Andie so that you can lead him to where you’re going.” Declan must have heard something in her voice, and he slowly began to nod, conceding.
“Then it is settled,” the leader forcefully exclaimed. “And this is as far as we go. As far as we need to go.”
Before Declan could say another word, Sammi wrapped her arms around him.
“You promise to come back to me,” she pleaded, placing his hand on her belly. “You promise to come back to the both of us.” Declan hesitated, saying nothing and leaving her pleas hanging, vulnerable. He shook his head, and she could see in his eyes that he could not promise her anything. She swung her hand, thumping it against his chest, but the fear took her strength. She collapsed into him, pleading that he stay.
“I’m going to do what I can to make things safe for you,” he told her. “To make things safe for the both of you.” And as he spoke, he wiped a tear from her face, kissing her long and hard.
14
“Try to keep up,” Declan shouted, listening to Harold scurry like a rat across the sand.
“This thing is heavy, you know,” he stammered. “And talk to me again like that and I’ll give you a fucking thump!”
Without thought, or any consideration for what it was that Harold carried, Declan turned around, and pushed him with all of his strength. Harold belted a piggy snort, but shock came into his face as he fell backward. To Declan’s delight, he heard the air shoot out of him in a single gust. Harold wheezed and gasped, and tried to roll onto his side.
Declan jumped up, straddling Harold and held him down. When Harold squirmed and swung at his arms, Declan pulled back and threw his fist, connecting with Harold’s jaw. Fire and lightning flew into his arm, causing him to shout out and pull his hand back. But what furthered his earlier delight was seeing that the punch had sent blood and a yellowing rotten tooth onto the black sands. Harold spat and cried out a mess of garbled threats, but then quieted when the taste of blood registered. Harold looked up at Declan—his jaw slacked and his eyes wide.
“Listen, I’m going to say this once,” Declan began. “The only reason you’re not dead right now is because of that bomb you are carrying.”
“You don’t have the balls!” Harold shouted, spitting a wad of blood into his face. Declan flinched and then wiped the drippy spittle from his face. He swung his fist again. At the last second, he pulled up just before landing his fist. He had hoped to have seen Harold flinch. He had hoped to send fear into Harold with the threat of more punishment. But Harold never moved—not even a blink—he was willing to take the punch.
Declan did something then that surprised even himself. He stood back and reached down to help Harold get back up to his feet. “I need you,“ he told him, feeling humbled by the sentiment. “I need your help.” But he couldn’t be certain how much he truly needed Harold. The sad truth was that Harold knew how to use the Andie-bomb, and he was not about to share that with anyone.
“I know you do,” Harold said, sneering as he pushed past him with a hard and purposeful nudge. “You need me, the bomb and of course, you’ll need this.” Harold held up the detonator, and then tucked it away in a pocket that he had fashioned to the front of his coveralls.
“Machine is straight ahead,” Declan said, wishing he had landed that second punch. “Let’s get moving.”
The VAC-Machine suddenly swelled, heaving as though taking a deep breath. And to Declan, that is exactly what he thought the machine was doing. Breathing. A groan followed, sending Harold backward in a fast stutter of cautious steps. Declan kept his footing, having seen the same before and knew what to expect. And as before, the sound was deafening, shaking the sands beneath their feet.
When the silence followed, a perfectly square door appeared in the machine’s belly—the sight of it encouraging them to step closer. The door quietly rode on a sliver of black and revealed the inside. Harold stretched his neck looking for Phil and Isla. The faint image of a man appeared at the entrance, peering around and waving them inside.
“He’s here to help,” Declan said, waving back to the shadowy figure. They approached the opening.
Harold reached out, extending his hand. Phil looked unprepared, shrinking back, unaccustomed to the interaction of others. After a second, the two shook hands briefly.
“Did the index card help?” But Phil seemed distracted, searching past the two of them as if looking for someone in the fog. “The index card!”
“Yes… yes,” he answered impatiently. “I’m sure they are a set of numbers for each machine. We have to go in now.”
“I have a bomb,” Declan exclaimed. “I’m going to take it to the soul and detonate it.”
“Emily… I mean Sammi. Is Sammi safe?” Phil asked, nodding but with uncertainty. “I would have liked to have seen her again. But it’s best that she is as far from here as possible.”
“She’s safe,” Declan confirmed.
“A bomb, you say?” Phil asked enthusiastically and looked over the package in Harold’s hands. “The soul? Yes, Yes! That will certainly prevent the machine from kicking over again. And if we connect with the other machines, we’ll bring this whole thing to an end. Now, we have to hurry!”
“Andie,” Declan said, raising his hands to take the Andie-bomb from Harold.
“No way,” Harold declared, a look of abandonment in his face. He stepped back, shielding Andie as if protecting a treasured find. “I’m doing it!”
“Hurry… you must hurry,” Phil repeated, louder. “Bring him in if you need to!
“I don’t have a choice, do I?” Declan asked, disgusted. Harold shook his head and then sneered, knowing that he was going to get his way.
Before they entered into the machine, Declan touched the outline of Sammi’s lock of hair. With it, the zombies would leave them alone—after all, Sammi and the baby were far from the machine: safe.
Harold won’t be recognized though, he thought and remembered their dwelling door. It never opened for me, not without a part of her.
Declan pulled out the pouch given to him by Ms. Gilly. He gave the torn index card, and the dried blood a quick glance, wondering if it would work the same. Someone had mentioned Ms. Gilly’s chosen, an executive that traveled to the machine. It’s his blood on the index card. Hurrying through the machine’s opening, Declan stuffed the pouch into the front pocket of Harold’s coveralls, his hand brushing against the bomb’s detonator. “Carry this and don’t you lose it. Keep it safe in your pocket. You’ll need it so that they let you pass.”
“Uh… Who?” Harold asked, hesitating at the entrance. Phil rolled his eyes, slowly swinging an arm behind Harold and motioning for him to come inside. “Who will let me pass?”
“The zombies,” Phil sang in a lively warbled voice. A laugh slipped from his lips as he bounced his brow up and down. “Welcome to the fun—fun—funniest funhouse in town!”
15
“What are these?” Isla asked, tracing the numbers on the index card. “I recognize the printing.”
Phil glanced around Isla’s lab, taking in the mess. The zombies had left nothing untouched: broken glass, flipped tables and chairs turned ove
r. He sighed at the sight of her lab journals—tossed wildly and splayed open—looking like a parade of dead butterflies thrown across the floor.
“I’m sorry about your lab,” he told her and pulled a chair up, fixing the backrest before sitting next to her. “I’m sure we can salvage most of it. After all, we’ll need the lab when this is over. There’s so much work to do.”
“Need the lab?” she asked and rolled her chair closer to him. He could feel Isla’s presence—her smell and warmth. Her lips parted, and her face shined with hope. “Need my lab for what?”
Phil was suddenly caught off-guard and felt a flutter inside him that he hadn’t considered in centuries. A faint notion awakened and at once he became strongly aware of his own heartbeat. It was then that he realized he was attracted to her.
“Well for starters,” he began and nervously reached down to pick up some of her journals. “A lot of those zombies are going to be waking up.”
“I don’t follow,” she said with an intriguing tone.
“Aware… like us.”
“Oh, that’s right.” A slow frown stole her smile. “But that is a lot to work to do. Especially if it is just the two of us.”
“We’ll figure it out, but first things first. The index card?” Phil asked. “I think they are the numbers to the other machines… the access codes.”
“Could be,” she acknowledged. “But what makes you think they are to the other machines? Could be to other blood samples.”
“Well, we built seven machines, and there are seven sets of numbers,” he told her.
“You have the first part right,” Isla interrupted as she tapped away at the screen. Her small fingers were perfect for working the terminal’s touch interface. Within moments, she had navigated to parts of the machine’s internal systems that he had only seen the software engineers working. She threw screens filled with source code upward, scrolling through pages and pages until finding what she wanted. With a flick of her wrist, Isla highlighted a few of the passages, copying and pasting them into the empty fields on another screen. He sat, mesmerized by the swiftness of her work. Isla pointed at the screen, reading the code aloud. She scrolled further and then grunted, unsatisfied by what she had found.
Isla swiped at the screen, sending the source code into a black abyss. She tapped harder and faster, and Phil could sense her frustrations growing. More screens appeared, showing him that she had navigated further and deeper into what the systems engineers called the operations kernel—a central component to how the core systems functioned. “There it is,” she yelled and then clapped a hand over her mouth. “I have it, and just need to copy that over for safekeeping, and we’ll be able to get in.”
“Which part?” he asked, distracted by the screen’s amber glow on her beautiful face. “I haven’t seen this part of the system since the original engineers worked it. What part of it are you in?”
“I’m deep… way deep,” she answered. “You were right about the numbers. These are the location numbers to the machines. And they are also the access codes, letting me get in.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them,” she answered, hopping up and down in her chair, carried by the enthusiasm of her quick accomplishment. “I can even navigate to the different terminals.”
“What!” Phil dropped one of her journals he had been holding and rolled his chair closer to the terminal’s screen. “Very impressive, I thought I knew all the moves. What can you do in there?”
“I’m not sure about all of the terminal commands, but see this over here?” she asked and pointed at the screen. “That is the machine that is closest to us. And then this one over here? That is the machine furthest from us. Look at the layouts, they are identical.” Isla went on, tapping at the screen, flying through each machine, establishing a presence on them so that she could easily jump from one to the next with the tip of her finger. Phil sat back continuing to be impressed by her quickness and technical savvy.
“Isla, what exactly do you do here? he asked, curious to know more about her. “Isla’s fingers slowed, but she didn’t turn around. Phil saw a look of anxiety in the screen’s reflection. “I mean, you’re not like the others. Not in the least. You must be doing something that is important enough for the machine to bring you back so many times.” He picked up one of her oldest journals, plunking it back down on the table. And while her tapping resumed, he could see the reluctance reflected in her expression.
“I analyze the ore from the mining, and then recalculate the alignments,” she finally answered. Phil understood the kind of mind she had. She was like him—maybe too much like him. As if to confirm this, she quickly added, “And I’m the best at it. I’m always the best.”
“Well, it looks like you’re the best at this too,” he suggested, motioning to the screen. “I’ve never been able to get this deep into the system.”
“I had a pass,” she said jokingly. She smiled at him, trying to make him feel better. “You would have gotten as far I did if you had the numbers, too.” Her hand was on his knee as she spoke and before turning back to the screen, she winked. The flutter he experienced earlier erupted and caused his heart to skip.
“Try accessing that machine,” he told her and realized he was starting to feel nervous. An urge to jab his leg came to him and he pushed it away, trying to stay focused, stay normal, just for a little while longer.
“Sure thing,” she said. “Should be as simple as…” And as she touched the screen, a new view surfaced that he immediately correlated to the rooms and corridors around them. It was the master floor plan for their level. The urge to cut came again, but this time there was more pressing the need—much of it from what he had done over the centuries. He traced the outline of a corridor, guiding his finger to one of the rooms. His mouth went dry, the stain of a bad memory still fresh: still a nightmare.
I wish I didn’t remember everything, he thought and tried to think of anything else.
“There it is!” Isla’s sweet voice pulled him back.
“I want to shut it down,” he said firmly. “We’re going to access all the machines and take them down at the same time.”
“But what about the failsafe—” she began and then paused, thinking, working the complication like a puzzle. “—but if you stop the mining on all the machines, the failsafe can’t trip. Still, I’m not sure we can do that.”
“Why?” he asked. “We have access.”
And as he spoke, Isla continued moving around the labyrinth of the other machines, searching. The amber colors began to blur as she moved in and out and up and down.
“That’s what I thought. I’m right,” she concluded gravely. “We can’t do it… not alone anyway.”
And while his heart weighed heavy, there was a light in her eyes that he recognized.
“No problem is unsolvable,” he said. “Is it?”
Her eyes swung up in a swift roll, enjoying the challenge. “Well, I do have an idea,” she answered. “That is my room. See it?”
“Yes,” he told her. “I see it.”
“We agree that we can’t shut all the machines down at the same time,” she continued.
“Correct. The failsafe will trip,” Phil nodded. “By the time we get to the last machine, it will have detected that the first machine is offline, tripping the workflow to put it back online—”
“But, what if someone at each machine takes it offline for us… all at the same time,” she interrupted him. Phil considered this, shaking his head. To him, the idea was too simple. Isla furrowed her brow. “Why not? Just think about how the code works.”
He worked through the failsafe logic, recalling that all of the machines employed the same design—he had insisted on it, proudly. But what he had never considered was the scenario Isla proposed. A slow smile came to him.
“I knew it,” she yelled and slapped his shoulder. She looked triumphant.
“But it has to be at exactly the same time!” he warned. He rubbed his s
houlder, unaccustomed to being touched, but did not shy away from her.
Isla rocked back in her chair, her head moving up and down with her finger bouncing against the phosphorous glow.
“Can you talk to them?” he asked abruptly.
“Talk to who?” she asked. “You mean the other machine?”
“Talk to the person in the room—this room,” he answered. Isla glanced at him briefly, but then looked back again, having seen a concern that he tried to hide.
“I can try,” she answered, her earlier enthusiasm, carrying forward. “How about I start with something simple.”
Isla tapped on the screen, touching the floor plan and the lab they were sitting in. But this was the floor plan of the machine closest to them. A small rectangle popped, opening a small window. A cursor appeared inside, winking at them, waiting for her to begin typing a message.
“That was easy enough,” Phil said, surprised by what was on the screen. “Hmmm, interesting. I don’t remember the software engineers building a chat capability.”
“A what?” Isla asked. Phil realized that he was likely the only person that remembered a world with text messages and chat windows.
“It’s a small application that lets you talk,” he explained. “You just need to type and the message will show up on their terminal. A chat.”
“Simple enough,” she said, understanding. “Here goes.”
H—E—L—L—O.
They waited. And after a minute when there was nothing, his heart sank. Without somebody at the other machine, synchronizing, the machines would surely stay online.
“Try the next one,” he instructed impatiently. He read the numbers from the index card and watched as Isla typed them in. Quickly, she accessed the machine and navigated the floor plan, flying through the maze of rooms and corridors until landing on her lab. Again, she typed:
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