“Whom,” Dominic corrected.
Danielle frowned and raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
Dominic furrowed his brow and shook his head. “Besides, you just saved me again, Danielle. Like ten minutes ago. So now I owe you another one.”
“Like I said, we’ll call it even.” Danielle looked over at James now. “You, on the other hand, you still owe me a couple.”
James frowned and nodded earnestly. “I know.”
Dominic laughed aloud, and with that sound, Danielle could see a spark return to his eyes. It was a flicker of the old Dominic that Danielle had just described, and she knew it was the flash they would need if they were going to bring Scott out of the lab alive.
“Hey!”
The shout sounded close, coming from the darkness to their left, in the direction where the soldiers had been congregated. Danielle squinted through the night, trying to find the source of the call, and soon a flashlight beamed to life. Seconds later, it was accompanied by the crunching of approaching footsteps.
“Where the hell have you guys been?” the voice asked. “And why are you just sitting there? We’ve got a fucking catastrophe over here.” The man spoke with just the hint of an accent, his tone calm and low, a striking contrast to the foul language he was using.
“The major ordered us to check the lab,” Dominic said. “We already know about the breach, but our orders are to lock down the lab first and then lend support.”
“Who gives a shit about the lab?” the soldier asked as he stepped into view. He was probably thirty, Hispanic, shorter than average but well-built, and his eyes were dripping with suspicion. “Nothing you can do in there anymore.”
Danielle wasn’t quite sure what that meant.
“And the Lab’s not gonna mean a fucking thing if we don’t track down the ones that got past.”
Danielle spoke up now, trying to sound authoritative, careful not to use any nomenclature that might give her away. “CO said you guys had it under control. Guessin’ that isn’t the case?”
The soldier tipped his chin up, looking even more skeptical than before. “Nah, it ain’t the case,” he said. He was staring past Danielle now to the seat beside her. “Who is that?”
Michael.
Danielle turned to see the boy hunched low in the seat, his face turned toward the door of the jeep, pretending to sleep.
“He’s, uh, we—”
“We found him in the cordon,” Dominic chimed in. “I saw him during my patrol, and we detained him. So now he’s my problem, and it’s the other reason we need to get inside the lab. He’s just a kid so orders are to make sure he’s taken care of. And, as you can see, he’s not doing so well.”
The soldier continued his study of Michael, the expression of doubt on his face unchanged. “Is he cut?”
“Says he’s not. And I didn’t see any blood when I caught him.”
“I don’t...” The soldier stopped mid-sentence, his attention caught by something in the direction of the bridge. “What the fuck is that?”
Danielle directed her gaze toward the bridge now and immediately saw the reason for the soldier’s distraction. Not yet halfway across the short span of concrete, running toward them with a face of despair and horror, was the CO from the shelter.
The major was still in his underwear with his hands tied in front of him, and behind him, perhaps fewer than twenty yards away, was a crab—an escapee from the cordon, no doubt—propelling himself forward, slamming its hands to the ground as it erupted forward, tracking the major like a missile of animal flesh, gaining ground with every bounding step.
The sight was surreal, and Danielle felt almost paralyzed as she kept her eyes fixed to the chasing crab.
The corrupted.
Next, a flicker of movement came from the grounds on the opposite side of the river, from the shelter where Danielle and James had tied up the soldiers and ordered them—upon penalty of death—to remain.
Danielle redirected her focus there, and her eyes immediately landed on the vision of two more crabs, this time emerging from the door of the shelter like a pair of attacking, white bees. They were furious in their gestures, their arms and necks spinning and flailing wildly, and even from that distance, Danielle could see the thick, red streaks that extended from their mouths to their chests.
And when they turned and began running toward the major, she knew he was as good as dead, and that they were all in very serious trouble.
“Get to the lab!” Danielle screamed. “Michael, go!”
The soldier who had approached them ignored Danielle and continued gawking at the approaching monsters, finally lifting his rifle to get a better view through the sight.
“Major Branks?” he whispered, disbelieving.
Then, in an instant, he seemed to figure out what was happening, and that the ‘soldiers’ beside him were the enemy.
But by then, it was too late.
As he turned toward the quartet of impostors, he was instantly met by Michael’s pistol, which Danielle held extended in her right hand, the end of the barrel meeting him just above the eye. “Hand it over,” she commanded. “Right now!”
The soldier hesitated for a moment, during which time Danielle cocked the hammer and pressed the barrel deeper. He sighed and lowered the rifle and handed it to James, who had sidled up beside him.
Danielle stepped back from the soldier now, keeping the pistol on him, and she checked the bridge again, where the crabs were halfway across and only steps from the fleeing major.
“Michael, get inside. Now.”
Michael hadn’t listened to Danielle’s original command, and his eyes now lingered on the bridge as well, captivated by the hunt.
“Michael! Now!”
Michael finally turned and looked at Danielle, and then he ran toward the front of the lab without looking back.
Seconds later, the screams of the major shattered the air like a rod of iron through stained glass.
Danielle wanted to turn away from the carnage as well, but she was compelled by the savagery, drawn to the finesse and speed of the monster as it leapt from the pavement of the bridge and enveloped its body around the torso of the officer, its thin, gangly arms wrapping around the large man’s neck before bringing him to the ground with ease.
The major continued to scream, even as his face smashed into the unyielding ground; within seconds, the other crabs were upon him, tearing at his clothes and skin with unrelenting hands and teeth, ferocious, angry, remorseless.
It was all over in seconds, but it was a long enough spell that the images would live forever in Danielle’s dreams.
Danielle turned her attention back to the soldier in front of her now, prepared to return the rifle since he was currently unarmed and thus defenseless from the attacking ghosts (though she suspected he had another weapon on him somewhere). It was a fool’s decision, she knew, but she simply couldn’t leave him stranded to die the way the major and his men had. She was already responsible for those three lives, and she couldn’t bring herself to allow another to end so easily.
But before she could make the offer, the soldier, without concern for the gun that was still pointed at him from behind, began a full sprint in the direction of his commanding officer whose arms had already been torn from his trunk.
Danielle had no intention of shooting him, of course, and, in fact, she felt a sudden and deep sympathy for the man. She felt pity for all the soldiers, really, including Davies and McCormick. They had lost touch with the good in their hearts. At least that seemed true for most of them, excluding, perhaps, those in the highest of ranks, those pulling the levers that kept this secret machine of death up and running.
And yet, despite the misguidances of the rank and file, there still existed admirable qualities in these men and women, things like duty and valor and solidarity. They were simply missiles who had been programmed toward the wrong target but whose lives still had purpose, even though many would pay that price in the end.
She watched now as the other three soldiers ran toward the bridge, without hesitation, head-on in the direction of the oncoming crabs as if prepared to meet them like Saxon soldiers repelling a horde of Viking invaders. Two of them had high-powered rifles, so, unlike the major and his subordinates, Danielle had no reason to doubt that the crabs would be dead within seconds.
And once the rogue crabs were eliminated, the soldiers would be back for her and her friends, and they would have little concern for Danielle’s current pangs of compassion. She and Dominic and James and Michael would be seen as traitors in their eyes, the reason for their current predicament, and potentially infected with the new strain of snow monster. Without question, they would be shot on sight.
A torrent of doubt flooded Danielle now, and she suddenly felt an urge to abandon the goal of rescuing Scott, to take the jeep and escape while they still had the window.
But even if she had wanted to follow her cowardice instinct, it was too late now. Michael was already inside.
Danielle steeled herself back to the present, ready to shift her focus from the bridge to the lab and Michael, who was already inside. For all she knew, he was already in the clutches of other crabs, perhaps even his newly converted father.
She turned to begin her run toward the building, but as she rotated her head, from the corner of her eye she saw a sea of white emerge from the tree line of the abutting forest, fifty feet or so from where the soldiers had just been gathered around the dead crab. To Danielle, it looked as if an avalanche had suddenly erupted from the border off trees, seeping out like melted marshmallow and now flowing directly toward the bridge.
Ghosts, an army of three or four dozen, who had likely been hiding in the gloom and watching the soldiers all along, waiting for the moment when their defenses became compromised or their attention re-directed—as it was now toward their major—launched their attack.
Danielle wanted to scream, to warn the men of the terror that was approaching behind them, to give them at least a chance of survival.
But she simply couldn’t take the risk. Screaming was likely to draw the crabs’ attention toward her and her friends, and even with the guns with which they were armed, it wasn’t enough to hold off so many; they would all be dead within minutes.
So, instead, she watched silently, helplessly, as the group of forty or more crabs flowed as one toward the bridge, like a rapidly moving cloud, a swarm of dusty ghouls, gaining on the unaware warriors with every breath.
“Let’s go,” she said solemnly, encouraging Dominic and James to hurry toward the lab.
Halfway to the front door of the large white building, Danielle heard the first gun shots, followed by a single scream. Whether it was the scream of the soldier whose head she had put a gun to only minutes earlier, or one of the others, she couldn’t know, but that first one was quickly followed by three additional cries, in rapid succession, each one more heartrending than the last.
2.
“Michael!”
Danielle’s voice was barely a whisper, but it carried through the chamber like thunder, seeming to drift into every corner of the space.
The inside of the lab was a giant, un-partitioned room, cluttered and well-lit, with walls and floors as white as the exterior of the building. Occupying the center of the large space was row after row of tables that had been separated into three columns, with each of those extending all the way to a barrier wall at the back of the building. On and around the tables was evidence of work and invention; computers and monitors, microscopes and robotic arms, notebooks and pens lying next to half-filled beakers.
Giant aluminum ducts ran the length of the ceiling and connected into various metal chambers that had been hung near the building’s support columns. Fluorescent lights lit up the room like a football stadium, and the glare from them sent a wave of pain through Danielle’s head. It had been a long time since she’d seen fluorescent lighting, she realized, and it was having its way with her.
What was missing from the room, however, were people. There wasn’t a soul; it was as if the place had been suddenly abandoned, mysteriously, a Lost Colony of scientists.
On each side of the lab, running the length of the room along each wall, were tall, clear chambers, about seven feet high and circular in design, like giant pneumatic tubes. Danielle hadn’t noticed them at first, but now they struck her like a hammer, sending a shiver of sickness through her belly and torso.
She took a few steps to her left, toward the side wall that was closer to her, until she was standing in front of the tube that was nearest the entrance. It was empty, but as she studied the strange tube further, she got the general gist of its purpose.
They were built to hold people—or crabs, perhaps—though for what purpose exactly she couldn’t decide.
Danielle moved down to the next tube, and then the third, examining them more closely. These next two chambers were of the same design, also empty, and each had a set of narrower tubes hanging from the tops and sides of the interior, devices used for breathing purposes, maybe, or possibly as a channel to fill the chamber with fluid.
She looked across the room now, over the busy tables and view-obstructing columns, and on the opposite wall, about four chambers from the back, she saw something move in one of the chambers.
“What are these things?” James asked, still studying the tubes nearer to them, not noticing Danielle’s gaze. “Are these for people?”
Danielle didn’t answer, her eyes still fixed on the movement in the far chamber. She took a few steady paces across the lab and then, steadily, she began to run.
Danielle maneuvered nimbly past the long tables, vaguely anticipating some mutant creature—the result of some black-ops research, maybe—to leap from behind one of the tables at any moment and began to gnaw upon her neck.
But she reached the occupied tube unmolested, and as she viewed the contents, she felt a scream begin to burgeon in her throat. She threw a hand across her mouth and closed her eyes, shaking her head.
“No,” she whispered. “Please God, no.”
Seconds later, a voice from beside her asked, “Who is that?”
Danielle opened her eyes in horror and looked down at Michael, instinctively putting her arm around him as her eyes filled like a lake.
“Don’t look,” she said.
But Michael moved out of her arm and studied the tank further. “Do you know him? Dominic?”
Danielle was confused at first, and then she realized Michael was in denial, unwilling to accept that she hadn’t saved his father after all, that he was instead floating like flotsam in a tube in front of them.
She looked back to the chamber, to take in the reality for herself, and instantly realized it was she who was wrong.
The man inside was black, like Scott Jenkins, but upon further inspection, she could see this person was older, sixties maybe, and quite a bit shorter than Scott, likely some other poor citizen of Warren County who’d had had the misfortune of surviving the snows and staying alive for months after.
About his condition, however, she was not wrong.
The man’s eyes were wide, frozen in fear and confusion, and Danielle could only imagine the terror that had gone through his mind at the moment of his death.
The chamber itself was filled with a thick, yellowish liquid that was certainly some type of preservative, and the corpse floated in it as if drifting through space.
“I don’t think so,” Dominic answered. “He doesn’t look familiar. But...look at his face. His features. They’re...”
“Coming apart,” James finished.
Danielle studied the corpse’s face further and she could see what her friends were referencing. The man in the chamber was missing his right ear, most of his hair on both his head and face, and his right eye wasn’t the dark brown color of his left, but rather the black onyx of the crabs’.
“It’s like he was in the process.” Dominic swallowed and took a deep breath. “I guess we
know what this place is for then.”
“They’re trying to stop it?” Michael asked. “Trying to find a cure?”
Dominic frowned. “I wish I thought that, Mike. And I suppose it might be true in a way. But I’m guessing they’re more concerned with controlling the change than curing it.”
Michael nodded, though it was clear he didn’t fully understand. “So, is this where all those ones that attacked the bridge came from?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I mean, all the soldiers that are supposed to be guarding this place are gone, right? Chasing the things that we let out of the cordon? So, if they’re chasing the ones from the cordon, where did all the ones come from that came out of the trees? The ones that attacked the bridge?”
Danielle understood Michael’s point, but she quickly realized he had his theory backwards. He was right in that the soldiers had been chasing crabs, but the ones they were chasing had escaped from the lab not the cordon. The ones from inside the cordon were the ones that had attacked the major and his men, the ones that had hidden in the forest, waiting to ambush.
Either way, though, it all ended in the same place, which would eventually be a catastrophe for the world.
“Where is everyone else though?” James asked. “If that’s true, that the soldiers ran off to hunt the crabs, why aren’t the...I don’t know...scientists still here? Or whoever was running the show in this place? I doubt the same people who were conducting these experiments ran off to hunt those things down. Seems like a different skill set to me.”
A dull thud came from somewhere deep in the building, beyond the back wall, and the group turned as one toward the sound.
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