by Jason Luthor
I don’t even want to think about Jackie. She’s in even worse position, if she’s even alive. I really believe that jump she made had to have been a long drop, but Tommy keeps telling me we can’t know that until we get there. I get the concept. I just feel there’s so much pressure on me to find her. This is my thing. This is what I do. I’m supposed to solve the puzzles we run into, so why can’t I crack this one? Maybe Tommy notices that, lately, even though he keeps trying to make me feel better, nothing is working. I mean, the boy doesn’t talk about certain things unless he really has to. He blames it on the relationship he had with his dad. That makes sense to me. That man was a pretty nasty guy. Between all their fighting, and his dad occasionally locking Tommy up in the closet—which is absolutely crazy, by the way—it makes me realize I probably had the most sane family of any of us. Still, even if he has a hard time being open about a lot of stuff, he forces himself to talk when he wants to. Tonight, for instance.
So, I don’t know. I’m just sitting there, staring at my tablet like I think Jackie’s voice is going to pop through it. It’s not even on, so I’m staring at it like a dummy. I must not be paying attention, because out of nowhere, I see Tommy just pop into view. I almost go bowling over in my chair, which isn’t exactly something you want to do when there’s a thin layer of Creep all over the ground. He actually jumps forward and grabs me before I go collapsing onto my back. I’m left barely sitting there, halfway to keeling over, with him holding onto my arm so I don’t get soaked. “Thanks,” I tell him. He’s smiling. I guess he gets his jollies from me screwing up, but he yanks me onto my feet. “Guess I owe you one.”
“Owe me?” he asks as he pulls up a slightly sturdier chair. The living room of the apartment we’ve camped in doesn’t have a lot of available space for sitting down, if you catch my drift. Creep is on everything. The chair’s decent enough though. He pulls one up for himself too, and I notice he’s being a gentleman about the whole thing. Tommy took the grimier chair for himself. “If it wasn’t for you, I don’t think I’d know head from tails around here.”
“I don’t think I know the difference either. If I did, we would’ve found Mike by now.”
“Don’t put yourself down like that, Scavenger.” I find it funny when he uses the title, but then again, he finds it weird when I call him commander. “It’s your brains that’ve gotten us this far. We’re this close because of your mapping.”
“Maybe. I’d be a little happier if we were there already.”
“That goes double for me, but I promise, I’d be completely lost without you.”
“That doesn’t mean we’re moving fast enough though.”
“I know it’s frustrating, and at some point, if you get us close enough that we can risk it, we’ll burn through the rest of the way. But, between now and then, stop kicking yourself over it. We can’t control the Creep, and getting ourselves killed isn’t going to help either Mike or Jackie.”
Hearing their names is a real sucker punch to the gut. “You really think they’re alive? I mean, we haven’t heard anything from either of them. We’ve got no idea where Jackie went, and if Mike was alive, wouldn’t he have tried to signal us by now?”
“Well, there’s a couple of things about that. First, we don’t know how far Jackie fell. She’s probably just outside of range. Mike, well, I’m assuming he’s out of it for now. Maybe he took a hit or lost too much blood. I’m not saying I think he’s dead, but he might be unconscious.”
“You really think that? You can sit there and be that optimistic?”
“Funny what you pick up from other people. Jackie was the biggest pessimist I ever met, but somewhere between the time we were kids and now, she changed. She’s still the same grumpy Jackie, just a little more people friendly. If it was me down that pit and her up here, she’d be saying the same thing I am. Jackie’d never give up on us. She’d probably be here right now, giving you a better pep talk than I am.”
“What are you talking about? You’re doing great.”
“Heh. You really think so?”
“Definitely four stars out of five.”
“Hey, I’ll take what I can get,” he says as he gives me that dopey smile of his. “One of the last big talks we ever had, Jackie told me she thought I could lead the team if anything happened to her. Not quite sure I believed her.”
“Really? Tommy, you’re great. You’ve been great for forever. I’ve seen you trying your best to give Jackie some support. Believe me, I know not all of our chats are just because of my incredible looks. I know you’ve been trying to keep everyone’s morale high.”
“Well, I’ve got to be on top of my Scavenger duties once in a while.”
“Don’t go thinking I don’t see you trying with Mike, either. I know it’s hard with him, but you’ve put in a heck of a lot more effort to push him than I have.”
“Again, I’m just going to blame it on having to live up to my duties.”
That just makes me smile. “You can say that all you want, ‘commander,’ but I know that’s not why you do it. You’ve . . . you’ve got a good heart, Tommy. That’s why Jackie likes talking to you. It may, just may, have something to do with why I like talking to you too.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. Not that we have to talk about ‘it’ or anything.”
“It. You mean us.”
“Look. I know there’s nothing really going on, Tommy. I’m not a little girl pining for your affection or anything.”
“Well, I never said nothing was going on. Unless you’re saying you don’t want anything going on?”
“What? Me?” It actually throws me a little, and try as hard as I don’t want to, I can feel my cheeks burning. “I didn’t say anything. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“I just think that, maybe, this isn’t the right time or place.”
“Completely agreed. Absolutely.”
“We’re in this Tower, we’ve got Jackie and Mike to find, then we need to get out of here. We’ve got a professional relationship we have to keep.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t ever say anything to threaten that. Like I said, I’m not wasting away here for you.”
He gives me this smile. I hate that smile. It’s the smile that makes my heart stop for half a second. Every. Single. Time. “I’m not saying I don’t think about it. And, it’s not like we can’t talk about it. It’s just, until we get out of here, we’ve got to keep our personal lives and our professional lives—”
“Separate, yeah. I completely agree. But, you do think about it.”
“Yeah. Obviously. So, say we’re wandering around, and you want to talk about what we could do after we got out of here? That’s doable. I doubt we’ll be able to find any place to go on a date when we get outside though, so I can’t offer anything romantic date options.”
“You don’t have to offer me anything, Tommy. You being you has always been good enough. I kind of like you just being yourself.”
“I’m just that lovable, huh?”
“Look, pal. I see the way you’re there for everyone. Not everybody’s like that. It’s why I’m into you, but it’s also why I’ll trust you when you say we need to do something. Your head and your heart are in the right place.”
Now it’s his turn to be embarrassed. Tommy doesn’t blush, but he has this habit of his where he tucks his head and rubs at the back of his neck. Always happens when he’s embarrassed. Never fails. “I think it might be time to hit the sack. Early morning tomorrow and all. It’s probably best if I go to bed.”
“Oh, did, did you want some company?”
I’m joking, but I can tell he’s completely embarrassed as he walks into the other room. “Goodnight, Scavenger.”
“Night, Commander!” I’m still laughing when he goes. It takes a special kind of guy who’ll embarrass himself to make you feel better. I gotta say, Jackie knew what she was doing when she decided to trust him. At least, it does make me feel a lot
better knowing he’s around.
Mike’s Recording 06
Not sure how long I’m out for. Impossible to tell time when you’re trapped in the dark, but I do snap awake when light starts pushing through my eyelids. I wake up as thirsty as before, and I’m halfway to grabbing my bottle when I notice this . . . Well, it’s something. There’s this light just shining a few feet in front of me. Where it’s coming from, how it got there, I don’t know. What I can say is it’s almost like those hovering screens from back in the mall, except there aren’t any screens. Feels more like my eyes are playing tricks on me, but I’m definitely seeing something. It’s almost like looking through somebody else’s eyes into a room that’s not even there, and I swear it has to be a hallucination because . . . because Jackie’s there. The longer I look, the more I realize it’s not a room she’s in, but a hall. There doesn’t look like there’s much light, but I can see her like I have perfect night vision or something. What really gets me though is, I’m not just seeing her . . . I’m hearing her.
“Wish you were here, guys,” she says as she moves up the hall. The way my vision’s working, it’s almost like I’m hovering over her, like I’m looking through a camera that’s mounted on the wall. Difference is, I keep tracking with her, following her as she moves. Almost everything’s black, and there’s a sound of something slick, like tongues licking at their lips. It’s a loud, moist slurping that gets broken up every few seconds by something snapping or breaking. Jackie listens to it as she takes a few steps, moving around the corner and tracking the noise. She keeps pressing against the wall, and I can tell she hopes nothing sees her.
She stops when she reaches the corner and peeks down the hallway. For a second, she freezes up, but then I watch her gun slide into her hand. She’s holding it high, like she’s ready to shoot. I don’t know if she’s nervous, but I can see her arm twitching, and she’s still shaking a little when she turns the corner. When she does, there’s nothing but a long hall with a door at the end. There’s enough light to lead her, but there’s one big, bright spotlight halfway to the exit. It’s hard to tell what she’s looking at, but there’s a group there, all huddling around one spot. They’ve got these big, muscle bound shoulders and growths pushing out of their arms and legs. It makes me sick getting such a clean look at them. Their skin’s a pale shade of grey, and then there’s that slick, moist sound that’s coming from right in the middle of their huddle.
Jackie starts pushing down the hall, inching along one step at a time until she’s close enough to get a good look. The Creepers don’t look up at. They’re too busy doing . . . whatever it is they’re doing. I can see her squeezing past them, her back pushing into the wall as she slides just inches away from their frenzy, when one of them starts to flip out. Its head jerks up at the roof, snapping back and forth like it can hear something, and she completely stops breathing as she presses herself into the Creep behind her. The gunk and saliva sliding down the walls start dribbling down her face as she’s waiting there, looking into the eyes of this thing. The Creeper’s mouth is painted red, and its tongue flicks around like it’s trying to taste the air. For a second, I could swear it’s staring right at her, but then its face darts back down. Next thing you know, there’s a crunching sound that breaks the air before the thing rips upward, and you see its mouth choked with raw meat. Jackie covers her mouth as she watches the Creeper’s teeth slicing into what looks like a deformed arm. You’d swear it’s eating one of its own. When it finally dives back into its meal, Jackie’s feet start pushing her along again. Her back’s swimming through the Creep the entire way and soaking her uniform, but she doesn’t pull away until she’s near the far door. Then she’s running through it before she can scream, but what’s through that door . . .
Stairs. When she slams the door behind her, there’s just a long line of stairs that drop into blackness. Way too dark to see much, so she clicks her flashlight on. The Creep’s thinner, but the stairs do a lot of complaining as she steps down, like they want to break loose. There’s a loud squeaking the wood makes that echoes in the dark, and her light doesn’t seem to be finding the ground floor. She keeps taking one step, then another and another, walking for what feels like forever down a flight of stairs that don’t want to end. Every once in a while, her light dances on the walls, and it’s during one pass that something grabs her eyes. I didn’t notice it before, but there are huge letters painted on the wall. Jackie’s light follows the letters down the stairs while she reads the words out.
“Judge is coming,” she whispers. It’s so low, I can barely hear, but I can tell the words bother her. She stands there on the stairs for a minute, just breathing so hard I can see her chest lifting a mile high. Finally, she takes a look down the stairwell, flashes her light, and keeps pushing on. A few seconds ago, there didn’t look like there was any end to it, but Jackie finally walks off the last step and into a room that’s all concrete. There’s a loud humming coming from somewhere, and her flashlight catches a bunch of machines roaring in the dark. They’re all old and rusted over, like they don’t even belong in the Tower, with pipes running out of them and vanishing into the walls.
“What the hell is this?” she asks as she slips around the room. Place is empty, like nobody ever lived there. No supplies or anything, just a single bulb on the far wall that’s giving off a halo of light. From what I can see, the place must have been some sort of power room once. At least, that’s my best guess. There’s nothing there to pick up or scavenge. What’s there is just one door leading out of the room, but Jackie doesn’t look too sure about it. The wood’s rotted, like it’s being eaten into by the Creep, and the handle looks like it’s going to yank right out of the surface. Still, Jackie gets it open and steps outside.
When she does, she ends up in a wide hall. Couple of scattered bulbs are still burning, so there’s a pathetic trail of light paving the road ahead. She hesitates though. Not that she’s scared of the dark. Just that, in front of her, standing up against the walls, there’s a Creeper every few feet on both sides. You can see them in whatever light’s burning, but they’re twitching, like they’re possessed or something. I see their heads jerking back and forth and their shoulders yanking around every few seconds, like they’re going in and out of seizures. When they stop, they just stand there. Then, after a minute, they start jittering again like they’ve got electricity running through them. And, don’t ask me what she’s thinking, but Jackie starts walking. It’s slow, and she turns her flashlight off, but she starts taking steps down that hall. A foot at a time, she starts to push ahead. One second, she’s walking past a motionless Creeper, then she’ll stop and grab at her bat when one of them starts bugging out. The thing is, they never come for her, even with her standing just a foot away.
Matter of fact, she’s about a quarter of the way through the hall, and she already looks like she’s used to it. That’s always been Jackie though. She just . . . Even when I first met her, she always had this, I dunno what you’d call it. . . this detachment. Like, she doesn’t feel things the way the rest of us do, at least when she doesn’t want to. Things get to her eventually, but she’s got this crazy way of kinda divorcing herself from her emotions. Maybe it was her way of coping with her parent situation and how they basically disowned her for a decade. I dunno, but she’s not the only person I know who’s like that. Commander Vick was the same way. It was always weird that he could joke even when we were losing people. I know he hated losing anyone, it’s just he could separate the bad emotions until later. It’s why he was a great Scavenger. It’s why Jackie is. I’m not saying it’s healthy for her to be able to cut off herself off that way, but she can, and it’s kept her alive.
So, not gonna say I’m surprised that she adjusts so quickly. That’s Jackie. She can adjust to anything. When she starts speeding up, it’s not ‘cause she’s scared. It’s ‘cause she’s not. She’s practically halfway down the hall, like it’s all peaches and smooth sailing. Then, just as she’s coming t
o the end, her arm suddenly jerks back, and her body gets yanked to a stop. Her eyes shoot up, and she looks into the face of this Creeper, and I swear to the Builders, it looks like it’s smiling. Its tongue flicks out for a second as its rows of teeth cut through the air, and then it just looks at her while this rumbling builds up in its throat. That’s not what’s scary.
What’s scary is that it talks.
“Judge is coming.”
Jackie’s eyes go wide. “What?”
That’s when another voice starts talking from behind it. “Judge is coming.” She pulls her arm free and looks into the dark, and that’s when she sees all the Creepers stepping away from the wall. They all start lining up in rows and just staring at her, and all they keep saying is the same thing, one by one.
“Judge is coming.”
“Judge is coming.”
“Judge is coming.”
Now that . . . that gets her freaked, and as more and more of them start pulling away and staring her down, she starts picking up the pace. I’m not sure if it’s smart, but she starts hauling, and it’s like every one of those Creepers starts pulling away and lining up, like they’re closing off the hall behind her. She literally explodes through the door at the end and into a room that’s almost dead empty. Her breath is pounding out of her as she looks around what I think’s a lobby. Only thing lighting it is a light bulb dangling from the center of the roof, and that light’s cold and almost gone. Still, you can make out someone standing there. I’ve never seen her, but she looks like a Creeper herself, just . . . different. Girl’s got her bangs falling over her eyes and hair down her back. Sunflower dress she’s wearing’s practically on the edge of falling apart, and her hands look like they’ve got claws busting out of her fingertips. Now, I may not recognize who it is, but Jackie doesn’t look afraid. It takes her a second to catch her breath, but she actually takes a step up. Then the two of them look at each other for a long minute, until Jackie finally says, “Sally.”