by Martin Kee
The door burst open again and two figures stumbled inside. The burns on their hands and faces made them nearly unrecognizable, except for the man.
Ostermann was deep red and blistered on one side of his face. His eye was swollen shut, the surrounding flesh melted and blistered. The woman was a walking nightmare. Her nose had been burned back to reveal two small holes. Her eyes were white marbles, peering out from a soft wax mask. She spoke with a lipless mouth and John cringed.
“Is this it?” she asked. “Is this the room?”
“It is,” said Ostermann. He led Stintwell into the room and slammed the door just as another flash lit the hallway. He walked her, stumbling into the bed, and laid her down.
Skyla ran to her side, clutching her hand. “Laura!” she cried. “Laura what—”
The woman turned her face, the texture of a melted candle. “The singularities,” she said. “Like black holes… they emit radiation. They’re… so hot—”
She rolled to the side and vomited. Fresh solid chunks of meat flew out of her mouth, spraying the bed. Lyle stood and backed away. Pall Ostermann wiped her mouth. She rolled back, dead useless eyes facing Skyla.
“When the space between the particles… when… without it. They collapse. We never thought it could consume… so fast.” She laughed and it sounded like an old woman. Skyla watched her through the goggles, her eyes hidden.
“What… Laura…” Skyla choked on sobs. “I don’t know how to fix you.”
“You can’t honey,” Laura said. “The shielding in this room won’t keep it out forever. I hope you know that.”
“I’ll say it again, Skyla,” Lyle said. “You best give us a ride.”
“But…” Skyla wailed. “I don’t know where to go!”
Laura gripped her hand. “You make the doorway, Skyla. I’ll show you where to go.”
“But, you’re blind.”
“That’s a matter of perspective,” she said, smiling beneath a lump of burned skin.
Skyla walked to the wall switch and hit it. The room went dark for everyone, except her. She scanned the walls, seeing through them, seeing a million possible routes, all of them overlapping and stacked on top of each other like countless sheets of thin paper. Light danced randomly across them, deadly light that killed the shadows. She thought of her finger and imagined that happening to a leg… or worse.
“Where?” she said, overwhelmed. “Where do I go?”
Laura’s shadow stood next to her. “Go to something you know, Skyla,” she said. She was beautiful. “And go before the machine finds us. I’d rather leave this world with something that resembles me.”
Several walls away she saw a glow, so small it might have been a distant star. It winked out and winked back, bouncing through a hallway. It was her coin. Around it she could just make out the outline of her rucksack, bouncing along the back of a man. Skyla turned to the people in the room. “Be right back.”
She stepped through the space in between and vanished.
“I sure as hell hope she knows where she is going,” said Ostermann.
Laura said nothing. Her breathing was labored, her eyes staring at nothing. Wherever Laura was, she was not in that room anymore.
Chapter 43
James and Sarah were running down the hallway when the lights went out. He had given her his own backpack while Skyla’s ragged rucksack bounced along on his shoulder. He tried to get Sarah to stay and wait, while he checked to see if it was safe, but there was just no talking any sense into the girl. He relented, telling her to at least stay close.
The hallway went from brilliant white to pitch black in an instant, leaving purple afterimages smeared across his vision. He felt her bump lightly into him with a soft “Oof!” He stumbled blind for a moment until he found a wall. A small hand gripped his as the two of them began feeling along the corridor, the tile cool and smooth to the touch. Dull red emergency lights came on. As the afterimages faded, the walls were no longer white but pink as the alarm screamed down the corridor from behind them. Shadows were everywhere.
“The shadows,” Sarah said from behind him. “They talked about the shadows in the holding pen.”
James swallowed. He understood now why they wanted the walls so bright.
“I think I know how to get everyone out,” he said. “But we should—”
“They can find their way out,” she said. “Childers told me that he saw the way in through a small hole in his hood. They’ll be fine.”
James let out an exasperated sigh. “Then why didn’t we follow Childers?”
“You said you knew where to go.”
Her small hand squeezed his. “Let’s go,” she said. “I know you can get us out.” James’s heart thumped.
Further down the hallway, in the pink light, the shadows began to move, twisting around them; they followed James’s feet like flowers tracking the sun. There was another gunshot further down the hall and Sarah jumped.
They burst through the double doors and into the garage, running past sleeping steam cars and flashing emergency lights. The chaos echoed behind them like the memories of a war.
“It would be easier if we just stole a car,” she said in the dark behind him. “They have lamps you know.”
“Can you drive one?” he asked her.
“Women aren’t allowed to drive. Are you mad?” she said. “Why don’t you drive?”
James only grumbled a reply and kept moving. It would take time… he would have to find keys… and what if the engine didn’t start? And why was he even considering this, wasting time? The girl was such a distraction. The priest was bad enough, but this was infuriating.
They nearly leapt from the tomb gate into the night air of the cemetery, resting on the soft earth, panting and leaning against one another. James looked back at the tunnel, worry on his face.
“You wait here,” he said. “I should go back.”
“Don’t worry about them.”
“Sarah…”
“I told you,” said Sarah. “They’ll find their way out.”
“No,” he said. “I know that. It’s the girl I came to here to find. She’s still in there.”
He stood, flexing his hands, and facing the distant alien echoes that floated down from the hill and out from the open tomb, the secret entrance to Hell. James let out a sigh and took a step back toward the darkened tunnel.
“Wait,” said Sarah, standing up, her eyes terrified. “You aren’t leaving me here. You can’t!”
He turned and faced her with a hardened expression, dark eyes bearing into her. Sarah recoiled slightly.
“No,” he said. “You should stay. This is my fault to begin with. I never should have sent her away. I should have tried to understand—what is it?” He paused; even in the dark he could see her expression change.
Sarah was staring at something over his shoulder, a quizzical look on her face. She then gasped, putting a hand over her mouth and stumbling backwards as something darker than the tunnel appeared in the corner of his eye. James spun around, but Sarah had his gun.
A long, oily shape was spreading from Skyla’s rucksack like ink in the air. It spread against the darkest patches of the wall until it was the size and shape of a girl. Skyla stepped out, wearing the goggles he remembered. She saw James and smiled.
“Hi James. I didn’t expect to run into you, but I’m glad I did.”
The man lost all feeling in his legs and sat on the wet grass, his eyes wide under his bushy brow.
Skyla noticed Sarah, still standing with a hand on her mouth, but even with the goggles the girl seemed to be looking past her, at something just over her shoulder. “Hi Sarah,” she said at last. “A long way from the pub…”
Sarah raised a hand slowly, still too frightened to smile. The girl continued to stare at her though, and Sarah swore she felt a tickling in the back of her skull. This is why they are all scared of her, she thought.
When Skyla finally did speak, it was directed at her. It hel
d a grave honesty that shook her to her core.
“You really did love him didn’t you?” Skyla said. “Dale…”
Sarah managed to force a nod of her head as Skyla then turned abruptly to James. “What time is it?” Skyla asked him.
“Early morning,” James said. “Why?”
“I just want to make sure it’s still dark.” She walked over to him and rummaged in her rucksack. “There you are.”
She pulled out the coin, flipped it once in her hand, and then tossed it into the tunnel. She looked back at them and said, “Don’t touch it, okay?” They gave her confused nods. She then took off at a running pace, straight toward the tomb’s back stone wall. She vanished inside.
“Was that…” Sarah asked.
“That was Skyla,” he said. “That was the girl.”
He continued to sit dumbstruck on the damp ground, staring at the nothingness beyond the tomb gates. Clearly Skyla was alive and well, and clearly she could take care of herself.
Sarah took a step toward James as his shoulders heaved and shuddered, her heart crying out to him. The poor man, she must have really meant a lot to him. She reached a hand out to touch his shoulder, offer support. He turned and looked up at her and she saw he was laughing. He saw her face and laughed even harder, grabbing his stomach and rolling onto his back. Tears trickled down his cheeks and danced over his beard as the huge lumberjack of a man wailed in uncontrollable glee. Sarah frowned.
“What’s so funny?” she demanded.
James sat up and wiped a tear away, struggling to get control of himself. “I just realized,” he said, “that I was right.”
“Right about what?”
“I was right that it was me the whole time.” He sniffed and wiped away another tear. “The shadows… they were me all along.”
A few moments later Skyla arrived from the tomb with a beleaguered Father Thomas. James ran to him and scooped him up, helping the priest out into the graveyard and onto the damp ground. In the dim light, James thought John’s skin looked pinker somehow, irritated.
“I don’t ever want to travel like that again,” the priest said. “That is positively the worst way to travel. Being dragged behind an aerolore over gravel is better than that… or dragged by wild boars.” He kissed the ground.
Skyla turned to James and he could see her face was deadly serious. “James,” she said, catching her breath. “How fast can you run?”
*
Skyla popped back into her mother’s former room. She could tell where Lyle was by the glow of his cigarette in the darkness. That and his long shadow stretching out against the walls. He grinned at her coldly.
“I guess I’m up,” he said, standing.
“No,” she said and turned to the two Tinkerers on the bed.
Ostermann was holding Laura’s hand now, looking at her with something like confused affection. He looked back up at the girl. “We never agreed on anything,” he said. “She was always the voice of caution, you know? She was always the one to talk me down, make me pause a moment and reflect.”
“Come with me,” Skyla said. “We can find a Physician outside.”
Ostermann shook his head. “No, you take The Reverend Summers. I… we’ve received too much radiation. We were only feet from the guard when he…” He swallowed with some effort. “We’ll never last. You take him.”
Skyla opened her mouth to say something, but Laura interrupted.
“Pall is right and you know it.” Her shadow still clung to the fading body of the Tinkeress. It gave Skyla a kind smile. “You take The Reverend.”
“But he’s awful!” she said in her mind.
“Maybe,” Laura said. “You know better than I, but it’s a waste to try and save us. Besides, I think Pall has a plan.”
Skyla turned to Lyle as he stood before the girl-shaped door. He grinned and held out his hands. “Fly me to salvation, you little witch.”
She shuddered as his shadow, thick as oil, reached out to her with things that were not arms.
“Tell me one thing,” she said to him.
“Oh?” he said. “What’s that?”
“Who killed Melissa?”
“Oh, well that’s confidential, child,” Lyle said. “And since you can’t read minds exactly, I don’t feel the need to tell you until my feet are on a boat.”
“Suit yourself,” she said and tackled the man. They fell backwards through the wall, tumbling into the dim outline that Rhia had left so many years ago.
Pall watched them vanish, and then squeezed Laura’s hand. There was a flinch from her face and she turned to his voice. “You should go before it finds us.” She coughed and yellow liquid leaked out of a hole in her cheek.
“I know,” he said. “I just don’t want to leave you.”
“I’ll meet you there,” she said, her voice but a whisper. “You were always the bold one anyway.” She closed what passed for the remains of her eyes and appeared to sleep.
Pall swayed as he stood. His face had gone numb, but a probing hand told him that it was swollen as bad as Laura’s. He stumbled to the door and opened it.
The hallway was a black tunnel of Swiss cheese, entire sections gone, demolished with the imprints of hooves, claws, and horns. He had a pretty good idea what had made those marks. He had caught glimpses of tails and arms on his way to the bedroom.
We were so close to understanding, he thought.
Large, man-sized holes were carved out of the floor and walls, where people had imploded into themselves. Their particles had condensed as they fused into singularities, eating all they could before finally dying in a burst of radiation as hot as a sun, charring the surrounding tile.
Pall stumbled past the pits and craters, the shrieks and screams fading now. Occasionally he would hear a gunshot or the pop of another person, probably a prisoner or a guard. He heard the familiar hum of the machine seeking another target.
The gallery was just ahead. Pall began to run.
He leaned against the door. A table was in the way, creaking across the floor as it opened. Once inside, Pall looked around the gallery.
They used to call it the trophy room at one time, the pictures of success hanging everywhere. The people stared at him from within their tiny cells as he pulled a photo from the wall and held it.
It was of a couple, holding hands. He remembered this one, how he had stared at it for hours one lonely night in the lab. They seemed so remarkably peaceful, so happy. Pall looked at it now, this time seeing himself in the abstraction of human figures, seeing Laura. It was all just his imagination of course. The photo faded the longer it was removed from its place, but he clung to that memory, holding it in his mind. He wanted it to be the last memory he had.
Holding the framed photo at his side, Pall looked at the empty space where the picture had been hanging, where the head of a cylinder peered out at him from its tube like a large pupa. A handle protruded from the rounded end, rusted and rough to his charred hands. He grabbed and pulled, bracing his foot against the wall until it gave and slid loudly from its casing. Something deep within the walls roared an ancient, clockwork warning at him.
“Don’t like that, do you…” he muttered as he placed the cylinder on the ground. “Well, I’ve decided I don’t like you.”
So easy. So very easy, and you know it, he thought. You know how vulnerable you are.
He wondered how long before the machine found him as it felt around its hallways, blindly consuming anything it could sense. Pall reached around to the back of the cell and simply rotated the end, reversing the contacts.
So powerful and so fragile, he thought. You made us all think you were a god, but you are nothing but a toy, a simple mechanism.
A red light appeared in the depths of the casing and began flashing frantically. He returned the capsule to its hole, stood back, and closed his eyes.
Something massive shrieked deep inside the facility as the power cell creaked once and then burst inward violently, just as the
soldier had, only a thousand times more concentrated. Pall watched the surrounding pictures all lean in toward the growing singularity as it feasted on the stored fuel, its stasis removed. Every straight edge along the wall began to bend inward as the expanding gravity well began to feed voraciously on the surrounding canisters.
Pall was amazed at just how peaceful it was at the heart of a black hole.
Chapter 44
Conversation was difficult as James, the priest, and Sarah ran through the streets of Rhinewall. John looked at the shuttered windows, the people who stood aimlessly on the streets, in Confessional lines. He wanted to yell at them, warn them, but then he remembered the fainting man in his pen, the man in the chair. He understood now; Rhinewall was a city filled with empty bodies. Most of the older ones had probably been reprogrammed to fit back into a manufactured society, playacting some dark theater scripted by Clerics and Tinkerers.
“What… did she tell you?” James panted, his legs pumping as they turned a corner.
“She didn’t… tell me anything,” said John, “but I think… they are going to… try and destroy the facility.”
“How?”
John searched his limited knowledge and tried to explain to James as they twisted through the streets and alleyways, over and around empty people standing under awnings and trees. He wasn’t sure how well he explained it, but James was nodding as he spoke. They were still frighteningly close to the cemetery.
“There’s this gallery,” he said finally. “It looks like pictures but that’s actually where they store the fuel… the shadows or whatever… it’s in photographs, but they aren’t photographs… they’re power cells… I think they might even be alive somehow.”
James’s eyes grew wide.
“Yeah,” said John.
“We’ll never get far enough away,” said James.
“Yeah, maybe,” said John.
They had to stop. John was exhausted and Sarah was beginning to slip behind. The outer walls of Rhinewall were still miles away as they gulped air, hands on their knees.
Something hit John in the back of the neck and he slapped a hand over it. “Ow!”