Flypaper: A Novel

by Chris Angus

“My God, you’re not going out there among all those monsters! You’ll be exposed to the disease as well as to being shot.”

  “If you stay here, you’re as good as dead,” said Huang. “There are too many of them. They’re going to get in and kill everyone.” He stared at the American with barely suppressed scorn. The man was obviously a coward. He’d be worthless in any fight, but . . . an extra gun was still an extra gun. “Besides, we’re not going outside.”

  “What?”

  “We’re going down into the underground dungeons. Our Buddhist friend here knows a way out through the caverns of the dead.”

  The monk was clearly agitated. Now he urged them to hurry. The sounds of battle were louder. The first attackers had penetrated the courtyard.

  Duncan also heard the sounds above. It was all the convincing he needed. He took the spare rifle Huang offered him and they followed the monk quickly down the stone steps into the lowest realms of the monastery.

  Far below the battle raging on the surface, Xuemin and his followers, carrying torches to light their way, pushed through the caverns of their long-dead brethren. They passed the crumbled brick chamber that had once contained the oval. It was not their destination. They had no intention of replacing the treasure in the wall and closing it back up. Xuemin had been searching for the answer to this mystery all of his very long life. He considered it his sacred duty to attempt to unravel its secrets, to determine for the first time what had killed so many of his predecessors.

  That this was precisely what Dr. Kessler had been attempting did not escape him. However, with the battle beginning to turn against them, he was determined to act in order to protect the oval. If he’d known several of his own monks were directing the battle, driven by their insane drive to return the object to the wall from which it had come, only to forget about it for another two thousand years, he would have acted even sooner. Such a thing could not be allowed to happen. Somehow, this strange, found object was behind everything—the death of his predecessors, the disease sweeping China and the world, the battle going on far above them. Xuemin knew deciphering the symbols inscribed on that smooth black surface was the key, and he understood Dr. Kessler had a better chance of succeeding at this than he did. First, however, it must be protected.

  They pushed on, past the wooden coffins and down ever danker corridors. The aged monk showed surprising agility and energy for his years, urging the others to greater speed. They descended a set of steps that ended in an underground cavern. Here, the temperature was much colder, and the stale, dank air stank of bat guano and decay. The monks paid no attention, hurrying on to a destination known only to them.

  Logan breached the monastery wall and stared at the scene, aghast. The courtyard was filled with stumbling, diseased attackers. They might have been an army of lepers, such were the disfiguring sores, ulcers, and abscesses that covered their bodies. Despite their condition, they seemed driven to reach their goal. Whatever inducements the renegade monks had devised to spur them on had been more than successful. Perhaps the sickness, in its final stages, rendered its deranged victims more susceptible to being controlled or directed.

  Gaoming, he could see, had done his job well. A barricade had been constructed between the angles of two buildings, one of which led to the dungeons below. The protective wall was eight feet high, and benches from inside the building had been brought out for the defenders to stand on so they could look down at those on the other side and fire upon them at will. Gaoming had also stationed riflemen in several windows of the building where they could fire down into the crowd.

  What Logan realized at once was there was no way for him to join his fellows, unless he was willing to fight his way through the crowd of attackers, which would have been suicide even if they hadn’t been sick. He ducked back behind the wall and worked his way around to the opposite side of the compound, found a way up onto the roof, and then clambered from building to building until he managed to reach the area being defended. He broke through an attic hatchway and moments later stood beside Gaoming and Alan.

  Their reunion was brief and sobering. A glance told Logan they’d lost close to half of their strength.

  “Where’s Diana?” he asked, his heart in his mouth.

  “I don’t know,” replied Gaoming.

  “I think she’s okay,” Alan said, as he fired a shot and killed a diseased, one-armed man who’d been attempting to climb over the wall. “I saw her, Marcia, and Leeanne go inside the building just before I brought my students over to reinforce Gaoming’s redoubt. I haven’t had time to go check on them, and I can’t imagine what they’re doing in there. The fight’s out here.”

  “Well, it looks like a fight we’re going to lose,” said Logan. “We’ve got to retreat inside and barricade the building.” He looked up at the men in the windows above. “We need more men above to cover our retreat. Put some on the roof as well. As soon as they’re in position, we’ll move.”

  Gaoming ordered half his men into the stone building. They quickly took up positions and began to fire into the mass of attackers below.

  “All right, come on!” said Logan. “Retreat inside!”

  He stood by the door firing into the crowd as it began to knock over the barricade. As soon as the last of the defenders was through the door, he swept the line of diseased men stumbling toward him with gunfire, then turned, and ducked inside. Alan and three of the students immediately swung the heavy oak door shut and barricaded it.

  “Come on,” Logan said. “Let’s go up to the roof and see what they do next.”

  Gaoming, Alan, and Logan stood on the top of the stone building and looked down at the confusion below. The afflicted, deranged attackers milled about, seemingly without direction. Several hundred members of the decrepit army filled the courtyard or wandered randomly about. A few had evidently reached the end of their tether and had lain down to die.

  “They don’t look all that dangerous, do they?” asked Gaoming.

  Alan shook his head. “Shooting into that crowd of poor, dying people is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” He stared at the scene grimly. “They don’t seem to have much idea what to do.”

  Indeed, a few of the men pounded weakly on the heavy door of the stone building, to no effect. The handful of monks confronted by Logan must have been the guiding force. He hadn’t seen them again, and now the mass below seemed like nothing so much as an ant colony with a dead queen.

  “Cease fire!” Logan yelled to the gunmen firing from the roof and windows. He had little stomach for the continued slaughter either.

  “They’re not going to break in,” he said. “I guess we’re safe for a while.”

  “Maybe,” replied Gaoming. “But if they don’t go away, we’ll be trapped here, surrounded by disease. I don’t have to tell you we may already be infected from simply breathing the same air.”

  Gaoming remained standing, looking down at the milling crowd below. Logan and Alan slumped down and sat, leaning against the roof wall.

  “You suppose this sort of thing is going on right now all over Earth?” asked Alan.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Logan.

  “What a world. Makes me wonder what we’re fighting for. There’s nothing left to go home to. No way to achieve any sort of victory. Maybe we should just open the doors and join the poor, bloody bastards. What are we going to do? Stay barricaded in here until we run out of food?”

  They sat quietly then, and watched the sun rise slowly over the hundreds of bodies now littering the terraced fields below. What had once been one of the most beautiful and peaceful Buddhist monasteries in all of China was now little more than a scarred and blood-drenched battleground.

  Marcia peered into the gloomy cavern where they had so recently found the mysterious oval. The place gave her the shivers, with its stark pillars, dripping water, and crumbling coffins. A fitting enough spot, she decided, to come across what might be the first-ever evidence of another intelligence. A
fter all, she’d never had the greatest respect for intelligence as an evolutionary advance. It seemed to her it had only led to some of the greatest cruelty and destruction ever devised by living things. If the current state of the world outside was any evidence, the arrival of a new intelligence on the scene only affirmed this view.

  Leeanne slumped beside her. “They’ve gone through. Apparently this was never their destination. Do you think there could be another way out of here?”

  Diana was as puzzled as any of them. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why bring the oval down here? To hide it? To protect it?”

  “We’ve got to keep after them,” said Marcia with something less than enthusiasm.

  “I think so, too,” said Diana. “But we need to let the others know what’s going on. If there’s even a possibility there’s a way out down here, we need to tell them before they’re overwhelmed.”

  “I’ll go back,” Leeanne volunteered. “I don’t much relish this subterranean maze, anyway. If I’m going to die, I’d rather do it in the sunlight.”

  “If our people have already been defeated up above,” said Diana, “you may be going back to certain death at the hands of those monsters. I’d say it’s a Hobson’s choice if there ever was one. But it’s got to be done.”

  They clasped hands tightly, then separated. Leeanne watched as Marcia and Diana disappeared into the gloom of the cavern. Then she turned, holding her own torch high, and began to head back.

  After a few minutes, she heard someone approaching. Could it be the diseased attackers already? She searched frantically for someplace to hide, but it was impossible here in the narrow corridors. In the end, she just stood quietly, awaiting whoever or whatever was approaching. When Huang, Zhong, Duncan, and one of the monks emerged out of the gloom, she could hardly believe her eyes.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Has the battle been lost?”

  Huang snorted. “It will be soon enough. We’re getting out while we can.”

  “You’ve left the others to fight by themselves?” She looked at Duncan. “I can’t believe you’d do that. If it wasn’t for Logan and the rest, you’d be dead already. You’re deluded if you think you’re safer with this bunch.”

  “We can’t defeat those diseased people,” said Duncan. “Just the act of fighting them exposes us to the same awful fate. If there’s a way out of this madness, I’ll take it and to hell with all of you.”

  Huang looked at her curiously. “What are you doing down here alone, anyway?”

  There was no way she was going to alert this traitorous crew to the presence of her friends ahead. Or of the monks for that matter. She’d trust Xuemin light years before she would Duncan—or Huang.

  “I—I guess I had the same idea you did—that there might be another way out. But there’s nothing but more endless corridors and caverns. I gave up. I’m going back to die with the others.”

  “Come with us,” Duncan said. “Our robed friend here says there is a way out. Any chance is better than going back to that.” He glanced nervously over his shoulder.

  Leeanne edged away from them. Now she feared they might decide to force her to accompany them. Huang reached out and grabbed her wrist. Leering at her, he said, “It would be a waste to leave you here to die.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. With all that was happening, Huang still had one thing very much on his mind. She lurched backward, at the same time thrusting her torch at his face. He screamed and fell back, flailing his arms against the flames. In the moment of confusion, she dashed into the darkness.

  She ran through the gloom, bouncing off the walls. Fortunately, she couldn’t get lost here in the corridors. There was only one way to go—up. She could hear Huang cursing at her in the dark, but there was no way they were going to lose any more time by going after her, back toward the pestilence-ridden crowd above.

  “Logan!”

  Eric turned at the familiar voice.

  “Leeanne, where have you been? Where’s Diana?”

  Leeanne was leaning against Alan who looked like he wasn’t going to let go any time soon. “I thought I’d never get out of those dark corridors,” she said. “We were following Xuemin and the other monks. They’re all gone, Logan. The monks. They took the oval and left through the underground caverns. Marcia and Diana kept after them. I came back to tell you.”

  Gaoming came forward, his face filled with concern. Yä Ling was beside him, a position she’d not budged from since the violence had started. “I wondered what happened to the monks,” he said. “They just seemed to disappear when things got out of hand. I’m surprised at Xuemin, though. I didn’t think he’d cut and run from his own home.”

  “They didn’t cut and run,” said Leeanne. “It’s not like that at all. They took the oval with them. I don’t know . . . I think maybe they’re trying to save it from the attackers. It has some power over the monks—especially Xuemin.”

  “Do you really think there might be a way out underground?” asked Yä Ling.

  “It’s possible. I also ran into Huang with Duncan and Zhong. They were trying to escape and had a monk with them who’d told them there was a way out.”

  “Duncan!” Logan spat. “I wondered where he’d got to.” He glared down at the attackers below. They’d begun to look more organized. Then he looked at the outer monastery wall and swore. Standing there, once again controlling the attack, were the monks he’d left alive. He cursed his failure to dispose of them when he’d had the chance. Obviously, they had regrouped, and even now a dozen of the sick warriors, once more seemingly guided by an invisible hand, brought up a sort of battering ram and began to pound on the door.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.

  They followed Leeanne who, as much as she didn’t relish going back into the caverns, felt far more comfortable with Alan by her side and the others in tow. There were only a dozen or so soldiers left, along with a handful of the students. All together, they numbered fewer than twenty souls now.

  Logan oversaw the barricading of the doors into the dungeons, though it was certain their efforts would do no more than slow down the attackers. He made sure everyone carried as much food as they could. Fortunately, the building also contained the monks’ stores of bread and cheese.

  Then they headed down the long stairwells and corridors into the caverns. Somewhere ahead, Logan knew, was Diana. He didn’t like to think of her down there in the dark, chasing Xuemin past the coffins of the dead. But at the same time, he felt a stab of pride. She’d be all right. She was a survivor. Like him.

  Marcia and Diana had come a long way since separating from Leeanne. They had to be deep underneath the Bogda Feng Mountains by now. The entire mountain range was like a massive chunk of Swiss cheese, carved by some ancient volcanic activity.

  “If there’s a way out of here,” said Marcia, “we better find it pretty soon, or we’re going to end up in Mother Russia.”

  “Shhh! Listen!” said Diana. “I hear something.”

  They were at the entrance of still another massive cavern. Their torches gave no sense of the size of the structure as the light dissipated after only a few feet. But the strange, distant sound of water falling from a great height gave a hint as to the size of the space they were in.

  Suddenly, Diana gasped and pointed. “Look! Up there.”

  Far above them, hanging in the darkness, was a light, a torch.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s got to be the monks,” said Diana. “No one else besides us would be stupid enough to be down here. There must be some way up the opposite side . . . a trail or ledge or something. Come on.”

  They worked across the vast open space, twice having to wade through small streams of water until they came to a cliff wall.

  “Damn!” said Marcia. “This thing goes straight up—it’s sheer.” she held up her torch, but it allowed her to see only about fifteen feet above her head. “How the hell could anyone climb this? A mountain g
oat couldn’t climb it.”

  “Let’s move farther along. There’s got to be some way up.” They walked a hundred feet keeping their hands on the wall on their right, then returned and began to do the same in the opposite direction. This time, they went no more than a dozen yards before Diana felt something hard and cold. She held her torch up high and stared at the last thing she’d expected.

  “It’s a bloody ladder!” she said.

  Marcia looked at the thing. It was a ladder, all right. Iron rungs, very ancient-looking, strapped somehow into the stone. “Whew! That’s going to be some climb,” she said.

  “No point in putting it off.” Diana started to put her foot on the bottom rung, then stopped. “We can’t climb while holding the torches. Looks like we’ll have to leave them behind.”

  Soberly, they extinguished the torches and were plunged into total blackness. But there was no other way to tackle the climb.

  They went up a long way. Marcia, who suffered from a fear of heights, found it no trouble at all to climb in the dark, unable to see the bottom. Perhaps she’d discovered a new way to be a mountain climber, she thought. Just wear a blindfold. Maybe that blind man who’d climbed Everest hadn’t been so crazy after all.

  Finally, Diana reached for the next rung and grasped only empty air. A moment later, she was sitting on a flat stone floor. She leaned over and helped pull Marcia over the top. They sat together catching their breath.

  Suddenly, a light flickered on and Marcia heard a familiar voice. Then Xuemin stood beside them. “Stand up and come this way,” he said.

  They followed the old monk as he led them toward a growing field of light in the distance. At last they entered a large room carved out of the rock. Both women halted and stared with their mouths wide open.

  The room was at least thirty feet long and twice as wide. It was lit by oil lanterns that sat on massive wooden tables. But these weren’t the only source of light. At the far end of the room was a large, cave-like opening that gave an incredible view out across the mountains. There were many of the long, narrow tables, each covered with what looked like ancient scrolls neatly piled in some ordered fashion. Simple, straight-backed chairs surrounded the tables, and the walls of the space had been carved into a series of shelves, also filled with scrolls.