by Rick Jones
Faces were ruined, the flesh had peeled away to reveal polished bone and exposed jawlines. Eyes were either missing or filmed over, the milky sheen providing a cold and icy effect to them, and fingers appeared dangerously long and keen, the skin having dried up and shrunk until the hands appeared like formidable weapons close to the sharp tines of a pitchfork.
“I’m not seeing this,” uttered Meade. “This is not happening.” He turned to Schott. “Is this a download from an old movie? One of those slasher-flicks from two centuries ago?”
“Check the time stamp on the lower right. You’ll get your answer.”
Meade did. The time registered seventy-five minutes ago.
And then the image froze. It was the moment Schott performed the hard shut down.
“I couldn’t watch anymore,” Schott said lowly.
Skully sighed. And he thought. Then: “Can you get images of what’s happening on the upper levels from here?”
“Not from this computer. No.”
“Is there a computer above us that can?”
He nodded. “Several. All you have to do is get to the fourth level. There’s a mainframe station that can bring up every level on the ship.”
“We can contact Earth from there?”
“No. That you’d have to do from the comm center.”
“And where’s that?”
“On the seventeenth level. One floor below the Observatory.”
Skully stepped aside as if to give Schott a wide berth. “After you,” he told him.
“After me what?” Schott appeared shocked.
“We need someone to navigate us through this ship. And guess what? You’re it.”
Schott began to shake his head. “I’m not going up there. Are you kidding me? Especially with those things running around. Not only no, but Hell no.”
Skully raised the mouth of his weapon and jabbed it directly into Schott’s gut, causing the engineer to grunt. “Tell you what. I’m going to give you a choice. You come with us and take the chance that we’ll get you through this . . . or I’ll kill you right here.”
Schott looked around. “You’re going to shoot a gun when we’re surrounded by glass?”
Skully lowered his weapon. “All right, then.” He removed a Ka-Bar combat knife from its sheath and put the knife’s edge along Schott’s throat. “How’s this? Better?”
Schott swallowed. “Please,” he said. “I just want to get out of here.”
“So do we all, Mr. Schott—engineer extraordinaire for Mausoleum Twenty Sixty-Nine.” He let the words hang for a moment. Then: “Choose.”
“Do I really have a choice?”
“Absolutely. I just gave you two of them. Live or die. There’s no in between.”
“You’ll keep me alive?”
“You’re no good to me dead.”
Schott closed his eyes, then nodded. I’ll do it.
Skully sheathed his knife. “Very good, Mr. Schott. Wise choice. Now lead the way, and get my team to the right level.”
“Aren’t you going to give me a weapon?”
Skully offered a cocky grin. “We, Mr. Schott, we are your weapon . . . Now lead the way.”
He did.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Somehow it knew that it had to go up. It didn’t know why other than it was being driven to do so. It wasn’t about hunger or the need to feed. It was about seeking something unknown, to solve a mystery as to why its drive was far greater than its need to curb its painful hunger.
Its mind was a jumble of memories, unclear memories, memories of no true significance, just a scattering of loose fragments that made no sense. In its mind’s eye it saw an infant, a girl so pretty. Then the infant became a young child, a quantum leap in memory, and she called out to her: ‘mother’ she said.
Mother.
It moaned. Then it reached a hand ceilingward as if reaching for something unattainable. Then in a moment of lucidity it spoke a single word, something of meaning that would come and go the moment it issued the word from its lips.
It said: “Daughter.”
Then the moment was gone, a mental clip that quickly faded. Yet its olfactory senses told it that something of unknown origin was making its way to it.
So it waited.
#
In life the behemoth was a brutal savage, one who likened himself to be a man of violent means when he was an athlete who fought in the caged ring with his only weapons being his hands and feet. He was a king and a hero to the people of the Fields, besting his opponents with smashing blows and ruthless kicks that bordered on cruelty.
And men romanced fantasies and wanted to be him while women wanted to be with him, which meant that the world was his to take.
He had reigned for years, taking anabolic steroids to such a high amount that his features changed, such as his brow, which took on a simian slope to it that was derived more by chemical evolution rather than by ancestral inheritance. His muscles ballooned to supernatural sizes with his immensity becoming an intimidating factor in the ring. His eyes were dark and raven in color, making them appear without pupils or without any semblance of humanity—completely cold and fathomless.
But then the effects of chemical abuse eventually caught up with him as the whites of his eyes yellowed, and great pain subsisted in his side.
His liver was failing.
Doctors could do nothing for him, and within weeks of the diagnosis, he was dead.
So he was buried onboard Mausoleum 2069 per the demands of his estate, which nearly bled the funds completely dry and leaving loved ones with next to nothing.
No one attended his funeral.
When it came to inside the darkness of its tomb, it had no concept of who or what it was, only that it was instinctively driven to survive. Its massive arms reached out and felt the closed-in walls of its cradle, and with mighty thrusts of its feet, smashed the marble wallplate free.
Its bonds had been broken.
And then it hunted.
When it came upon the guard in the corridor, it received snippets of memory—of times when it was inside the ring relishing moments of victory and the kill. So it took away the guard’s life with the cold compassion of a machine, the act telling it that killing was what it was meant to do.
But it did not feed on his body like the others. Its need to kill outweighed its need to eat, so it discarded the body by tossing it aside, allowing the underlings within the shadows to amass and devour the bounty of its kill.
And then it cried out in a primal scream that was so loud and long, that the surrounding walls trembled against the resonance of its call.
Here, it was king.
And Mausoleum 2069 was its kingdom.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Did you hear that?” asked Eldridge.
The primal scream sounded distant and muted.
“What was that?” asked Lisa Millette. She was on the verge of crying again.
“I don’t know,” whispered Eriq. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
So they listened until the scream died out, then they galvanized themselves into action.
Eriq led the team out the rear entryway and to the vertical conduit, taking a series of twists and turns.
“Allowing you to come along, Mr. Wyman,” said the president, who sound winded, “is turning out to be a wise decision. We never would have found our way about. Especially with those things out there.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he returned.
‘Out of the woods’ was an idiom meaning that they were not out of the critical phase of the moment. Though no one had actually seen forested lands or pines since woods no longer existed, they clearly understood the significance of its meaning: There would be no hope until they came to a clearing.
They ran down the last hall to a square door that could only be accessed by getting on your hands and knees, and then crawling through to a landing on the other side.
Eriq quickly typed in numbers
on a keypad above the panel. When the code was entered in its entirety, the panel pulled back with the sound of escaping air.
“This way,” said Eriq, crawling into the space. Then he aided Sheena by reaching for her through the hole, and navigated her inside.
Then came the sound of breaking glass, loud and precise.
And then came the slithering whispers that carried softly throughout the corridors.
. . . Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee . . .
“Let’s go, people!” Eriq urged. “Glass walls aren’t going to hold those things off!”
. . . Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee . . .
The sounds were getting louder, meaning that the living dead were getting closer.
. . . Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee . . .
Footsteps could be heard, but they sounded more like bounding gaits.
Lisa Millette went through the hole as quick as a rabbit, and was soon followed by the president and John Eldridge. Father Gardenzia was next, with Senator Newel right behind him.
The remaining two guards stood their posts with the points of the weapons raised.
. . . Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee . . .
The undead were almost at the corner of the bend that led to conduit’s hatch.
Senator Hines was able to climb through.
Then one of the guards.
And then they rounded the corner, their arms raised and slashing at the open air, hoping to dig into the purchase of something tangible and good to devour.
. . . Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee . . .
The remaining guard fired off a volley of shots, striking the undead with precision. But they didn’t go down as bullets passed through their bodies as if they were smoke, their muscles and organs offering little or no resistance in slowing down the bullets.
Then came the headshots, the bullets shearing off pieces of their skulls and sending them to the floor to stay.
A hand reached through the hatchway and beckoned to the Detail guard. “Let’s go! Let’s go!”
The guard turned, got to a bended knee, and prepared to launch himself through the hole, when a hand clinched down on his shoulder and yanked him back, the guard dropping the gun at the foot of the opening.
Arms moved in blurs as the points of sharpened fingertips stabbed and ripped apart flesh, paring back skin and then the rib cage, snapping bones apart as if they were sticks of chalk, nice and brittle.
The guard scream as blood spilled out at the corners of his mouth.
But his life snubbed out quickly as hands reached into the gore of his entrails and bathed in the delight of the kill.
Eriq reached his hand out and snatched away the gun. Then he closed the panel and locked it from the inside. They were sitting on a ledge to a circular conduit that led downward. It was wide with the opposite wall twenty feet away, large enough to drive a school bus through. At the bottom of the well fan blades turned in blinding revolutions to circulate air throughout the ship.
Eriq removed the firearm’s magazine and did a quick count. Seven bullets left.
“I’ll take that,” the Detail guard said, holding out his hand.
“I don’t think so,” Eriq returned. “I’m more than capable of handling this weapon. Just ask your boss over there.” He secured the gun between the small of his back and the waistband of his suit.
The guard turned to President Michelin, who responded by waving his hand dismissively. “Let him have it,” he said. “I know firsthand that he can manage such a weapon, since it used to be a tool of his trade.”
Eriq got to his feet and peered carefully over the terrace’s edge. He could see the blades of the fan spinning, which caused an updraft that blew his hair back like the whipping mane of a horse. Then he checked his watch. In less than four minutes the blades will reverse its course to circulate air to the lower levels, thereby alternating from an updraft to a powerful vacuum. Such reversal posed as a deep hazard since the pull would be strong.
“We have a few minutes to get below,” Eriq stated. He pointed to the ladder rungs. “And we need to do it quickly.”
Suddenly there was a pounding against the panel, causing it to bow slightly against the impact.
“You go first, Mr. Wyman,” said the president, getting to his feet. “It’s obvious that we need you to lead us through this jigsaw puzzle of a ship.”
There was another pound against the door, the panel now threatening to buckle.
“I would suggest that we hurry,” stated Eldridge with nervous concern. “It appears that they’re through with the guard.”
“Whatever you do,” said Eriq, “don’t look down. Just keep moving. The updraft will act by pushing against you.” He grabbed the handrails on the terrace and placed his foot on the first rung, then he took a furtive glance at his watch. There were just over three minutes left until the rotor blades reversed themselves. “Move!”
The force of the air pushing upward acted like a gale wind, stunting their progress as they took the rungs.
. . . Bang . . .
Though the panels were constructed to hold against the alternating forces of the tunnel’s push and pull, Eriq doubted they could withstand such brutal forces from the outside in.
. . . Bang . . .
“Move, people!”
The downward journey was a sixty-foot climb, but since fighting the upward thrust impeded their ability to hasten their descent, they only made it half way before the rotors started to slow and began to still.
“It’s stopping,” said Father Gardenzia.
Eriq looked up, with Sheena right above him looking down. Their stares said it all. They knew that things were about to get so much worse.
. . . Bang . . .
The rotor blades slowed to a complete stop. The edges were wickedly sharp and keen. Then slowly, they began to move in a counter-clockwise rotation, the blades picking up speed and working their way back to blinding revolutions.
“What’s happening?” cried Senator Newel, who had at least twenty feet to go.
“Never mind!” yelled Eriq. “Just haul your asses as fast as you can!”
The sound of the rotors picking up speed whirred into high gear.
Suddenly the forces changed. Everybody was being pulled down, not pushed up.
Eriq made it to the lower tier, then aided Sheena to the platform. The president was next. Followed by Eldridge and Lisa Millette, which left the two state senators, Father Gardenzia, and the Detail guard to fight against the full draw of the vacuum.
. . . Bang . . .
The panel took flight from its locking moors and was caught within the tunnel’s suction, the pull drawing it down so quickly that the panel whizzed by those still clinging to the rungs as a blur a moment before hitting the blades.
The fan minced the panel into minute pieces without missing a beat or slowing, its power unstoppable.
. . . Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee . . .
Even over the sound of sheering wind that sounded very much like a freight train going by, the voices of the undead could still be heard as a collective.
. . . Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee . . .
The senators were crying out for someone to help them, and the Detail guard, who was above them, couldn’t move until they did.
“Get your asses going!” he called down.
But they didn’t. Senators Hines and Newel clung tightly to the rungs as the vacuum took away the shoes from Hines’ feet.
. . . Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee . . .
Above them, the walking dead who entered through the opening were summarily drawn by the suction and pulled over the edge. Bodies cascaded over the lip like a waterfall. Fingers clawed at open space for the purchase of anything to stop their freefall, but their intentions failed as they wound up in the grinder of chopping fan blades. Dime-sized meat and black gore blew up the shaft and painted the walls in Jackson Pollock designs.
Splashes of rotting remnants and stinking black juices clung to those still hanging tight to the rungs,
becoming the victims of a perverse shower.
Eriq, having Father Gardenzia and Sheena Tolbert grab and anchor him firmly to the tier by having them brace their feet against the floor, reached a hand out to Senator Hines, who was the closest to the landing. “Come on!” he yelled. “Just a couple of more steps!”
“I . . . can’t!”
“Senator, now!”
She shook her head, then pressed her face against the wall, and sobbed.
Senator Newel was above her. “Move it, Hines!”
But she was incapable of moving because she had been taken over by paralytic terror.
“Senator Newel!” It was the Detail guard.
Newell looked and saw the guard reaching for his firearm.
When the guard drew the weapon, Senator Newell understood. This was about survival, so morals be damned. He then maneuvered to one side as carefully as he could to give the guard the shortest distance between two points—from the mouth of his Glock to the top of the senator’s head—and pulled the trigger.
Even though the report was muted by the sound of the tunnel’s vacuum, it still punctuated the area loud enough for Eriq to realize what happened.
Senator Hines appeared dazed and confused as runnels of blood flowed down her face; then her eyes rolled back until they showed nothing but slivers of white, then let go of the rungs, her body falling limply through space to the sharp blades below.
Senator Newel started to make his way downward, the man struggling against the pulling current, until he grabbed Eriq’s hand and was pulled to safety.
The Detail guard followed. When he reached the edge of the tier, Eriq pulled him to the landing where he pinned him with a hard glare.,
“I could have saved her,” Eriq said through clenched teeth. The veins in his neck were sticking out like cords, his anger evident, and his dark eye seemed to throb.