by Trevor Hoyle
In this position it was almost impossible to exert any leverage, and in a panic he wondered whether the door was hinged or sliding. He pummeled the door in a frenzy now, but the clogging sand frustrated his efforts and dulled the blows. He could feel his strength failing and he was breathing in as much sand as air as it cascaded down on top of him. Finally there was movement and the creaking protest of hinges, and then he was down in a long cool slide on a pillow of sand, gasping and choking as he fought to keep his head clear.
A moment later he struggled to his feet and waded knee-deep through the half-open door and crawled up the steps, cautiously poking his head above the concrete emplacement.
At the absence of all sound Dan’s heart contracted. Jo had run out of ammunition. The white shapes had closed in on her. He called out her name in a rusty whisper, spitting out a mouthful of grit.
“Jo, it’s here, I’ve found it!”
Silence.
“Jo, where are you? Jo!”
A white shape rose up inches in front of his face and he gagged in fear. A clammy hand closed on his wrist and Jo’s voice, thick with pain, said, “One of the little bastards got to me before I got him ... bit me ... can’t walk.”
He dragged her over the parapet and got a firm grip around her waist just as a dozen white shapes materialized from the darkness, uttering little mewing cries like babies demanding to be fed.
Chase looked up sharply as a siren welled through the peaceful laboratory. For several seconds everyone stood frozen, heads raised, eyes locked in their sockets. Threats from outside were something that everyone had learned to live with, a fact of existence, yet it still caused a tremor of shock whenever the alarm sounded.
Everyone knew the drill: Return to living quarters for essential personal belongings, account for members of the family, and assemble in the mess hall on Level 2. On average there were three or four alerts a year, usually false alarms caused by an animal triggering the electronic warning system.
Chase hurried to the operations room, worried because Dan’s party was still outside and might have run into trouble. It wasn’t the first time they had failed to meet the deadline, though this time the alarm made him doubly anxious. The duty officer told him that they had an unauthorized entry in one of the sealed tunnels. Somebody had located an access point and was approaching the Tomb underground from the west.
“How near are they?”
“The last sensor to be activated was here”—the duty officer put his finger on the map—“about a mile from the enclosure.” He traced the grid to an area shaded in orange. “If they keep to the same tunnel they’ll come up against a sealed entrance down on Level Four.”
That was one of the lower levels no longer used, a warren of empty corridors and rooms, once the living quarters and dormitories. “Is that entrance permanently sealed or is there access?” Chase asked. Some of the tunnels spreading out into the wider complex had been filled with concrete blocks, while others had steel doors.
“There’s access.”
“Have you posted men there?”
“Yes. We’ll be ready for them.”
“Tell them to identify the intruder before taking any action. It could be one of our parties.” Chase paced up and down, kneading his hands. The duty officer watched him circumspectly and raised an eyebrow at one of his colleagues; under normal circumstances the director would have left security to the men whose responsibility it was, but now he was clearly agitated.
Chase stopped pacing and said abruptly, “I think we ought to send somebody out to investigate. If it is the reconnaissance party they might need help.”
The duty officer shifted uneasily to another foot. “That’ll mean opening the doors. They’re our last line of defense.”
“Listen, there are five people still outside somewhere. It could be them in the tunnel. Send three men to take a look—if they run into trouble they can get back and seal the doors. It’s a risk we have to take.”
Still reluctant, the duty officer relayed the order while Chase brooded in a corner. It wasn’t a risk they had to take at all, he knew damn well. Not when set against the lives of the 130 people in the Tomb. For all anyone knew the tunnels could be swarming with mutes or prims—there could be an army of them. Anyway, they’d soon know.
By the early hours of the morning the Tomb was buzzing with rumors. They had been attacked via the underground complex and six men had been killed. There was a huge encampment of prims on the surface, waiting for someone to emerge. The UFOs had landed and they were surrounded by aliens....
It was unusual for an alert to last more than a couple of hours and the atmosphere in the crowded mess hall was tense and edgy. Nick, Jen, and Ruth sat together, surrounded by people who were dozing fitfully. Some were playing cards at the tables and others standing in line for coffee and sandwiches.
“What did Gav say?” Nick asked Ruth. He tried not to let his voice betray the fear that was like a cold lump in his stomach. “Is it an attack?”
“He doesn’t know. Somebody or something triggered a sensor in one of tunnels, which they’re investigating. He thinks it might be Dan, Jo, and the others.”
Jen looked at her husband, troubled. “Why come back that way? It’s easier and faster on the surface. Besides, they could get lost.”
Easier and faster, Nick thought, unless you’re hiding from someone, but he didn’t say anything.
In the operations room Chase was having to deal with a fraught Ron Maxwell, concerned about his daughter.
“It’s been over an hour since we sent three men to check it out, Ron.” Chase tried to sound reassuring. “We should know something soon.”
“Are they in radio contact?” Maxwell’s tall thin figure was hunched as if he carried a millstone on his back. He cracked his bony knuckles distractedly.
“It isn’t possible in the tunnels. They’ll have to investigate and then return to the Orange Sector entrance on Level Four and report on the internal phone.” Chase gripped his shoulder. “They’re capable men, Ron. If it is our party in the tunnels they’ll bring them back safe and sound.”
“And if it isn’t?” said Maxwell bleakly. “Will you send a surface party to look for them?”
It was a demand rather than a question. Chase nodded. “As soon as we know,” he said quietly.
“For Christ’s sake, take that light out of my eyes!”
Dan held up a shielding hand, his face behind it contorted with irritation and fatigue.
The beam swiveled away, striking blank concrete, and two pairs of hands took the burden of Jo’s weight from his shoulder. His knees buckled and he collapsed in a sweating, shaking heap. He’d supported her, sometimes carrying her, for almost four hours through the labyrinth. Sometimes he thought they were staggering into the bowels of the earth.
The man with the flashlight lifted him and asked him a question. It sounded urgent but the words had no meaning. The man had to repeat the question twice more before he understood.
“Dead,” Dan said wearily. “The others are dead.”
“Are they following?”
“No, I just told you.” Dan’s head lolled. “They’re dead....”
“Not your friends—the ones who killed them!” the man said tersely. “The mutes or whoever they were. Did they follow you into the complex?”
Dan nodded weakly. “I think so. I’m not sure.”
It took forty minutes to make their way back to the safety of the Tomb. Once inside the doors were sealed and barred. Then the man who had helped Dan grabbed the handset from its wall cradle and reported to the operations room.
As they listened over the speaker Chase saw Ron Maxwell’s face lose color. He was bowed, the millstone a crushing load, the green-shaded lights deepening the etched lines on his forehead and in the corners of his eyes. He put a trembling hand to his mouth and the Adam’s apple in the beanstalk neck jerked convulsively.
Chase leaned over the bed in the sick bay and shook his son into consci
ousness. “How many? Twenty? Thirty? Dan, how many of them were there?”
Dan struggled to open his eyes. He felt light-headed, a pleasant dreamy torpor pressing him down and down into the infinitely soft mattress. His lips formed words that sounded in his own ears as if they’d come from a great distance.
“We never saw them clearly ... too dark.”
“Did they come after you into the tunnels?”
Dan opened his eyes and tried to focus. “We heard them crying.”
“Crying?” Chase stared at him, two deep frown marks rising vertically from between his black eyebrows. “You heard them crying?”
“Like babies. They were white ... all white ...” Dan closed his eyes and seemed to fall asleep, but after a moment he said, “We killed some of them, ten or more, but it didn’t seem to matter. They fell down and others kept on coming. They didn’t care.”
Chase straightened up. He couldn’t decide whether Dan was delirious or was relating what had actually happened. They sounded like mutes, but he wasn’t sure. White things that cried? “Were they armed, did they have weapons of any kind?” he asked.
“Didn’t see any,” Dan mumbled. “Babies ...” He was breathing in long moaning sighs, fully asleep.
Chase turned to the doctor. “There’s nothing seriously wrong with him, is there? Anoxia?”
“He’s exhausted, that’s all. Breathing in rarefied air saps all the strength. If we let him sleep undisturbed for ten hours he’ll be fine.”
“Let’s hope we can,” Chase said, and with a last look at his son went out.
In the corridor he found Ruth, Nick, and Jen waiting for him. From their expressions he knew that Jo too was going to be all right. Nick confirmed this by saying that her wound had been dressed and she was sleeping peacefully.
They went along the corridor and Chase discussed with them the wisdom, or otherwise, of taking the initiative and launching a counterattack.
“How dangerous are they?” Ruth asked him. “Have they got weapons? Explosives?”
“Not according to Dan.” Chase combed his fingers through his beard. “I’m wondering how many of them are in the tunnels. We’re safe enough inside the Tomb with the access points sealed, but if we don’t clear them out it’s an open invitation to every mute and primitive within a hundred miles to move into the complex and set up house.” He glanced around grimly at the others. “How do you feel about living next to a city of freaks?”
“Think we’d notice the difference?” Nick murmured.
Jen hugged herself and shuddered. “I don’t like the idea of sending somebody into the tunnels after them—I know I wouldn’t go.”
They turned a corner and pushed through double doors into the mess hall. Chase said, “That’s true, we can’t order anyone to go, but we have to get them out of there before they build up in strength.” Relief brightened the tired faces as he told everyone that the situation wasn’t immediately critical. The Tomb was secure and everyone could go back to bed. There was a slight stir of unease when he mentioned the possibility that intruders had broken into the complex, and Chase had to raise his hands for silence. “You can all rest easy; there’s no way they can get in. But if any of you want to volunteer, we’re sending a squad of armed people into the complex to flush them out and seal off the outer access points so they can’t get in again. It’s not going to be pleasant, but it has to be done. If you feel like volunteering report to the operations room at noon tomorrow.”
“You mean today?” somebody called out. “It’s five o’clock.”
“Right. Noon today.”
There was a general movement toward the door. Nick turned to Chase, smothering a yawn. “You’ve got your first volunteer. But if they happen to break in before eleven, don’t bother to wake me.” He put his arm around Jen and they joined the rest of the dispersing crowd.
Chase arched his head back, massaging his neck muscles. “Get to bed,” he said to Ruth. “I’m going up to the operations room to make sure everything’s secure. I won’t be long.”
Ruth eyed him critically. “Don’t be. You need to rest too.” She said with mock severity, “Doctor’s orders.”
“Yes, Doctor.” Chase squeezed her hand and went off. As he came into the corridor, worming his way through a knot of people, a distraught woman snatched at his sleeve. Her eyes were red and puffy and it took him a second or two to recognize her. It was Sonia Maxwell, Ron’s wife.
“Have you seen him? Is he here?” She looked up at him and then jerkily from left to right and back again, scanning the faces.
“You mean your husband? No, not since we came down from the ops room.”
“He told me.” Her lower lip quivered as she fought to keep control. “About Fran. That was nearly two hours ago and I haven’t seen him since.”
“I’m sorry about your daughter.” It sounded so feeble, this polite phrase of condolence, so meaningless. He tried instead to reassure her by saying that perhaps Ron wanted to be alone for a while—maybe he’d gone to the lab? Sonia Maxwell nodded and wandered off in a trance.
Chase escaped gratefully. Was it right that he should feel guilty? Because there was no doubt he did. His son was alive, her daughter was dead. By some obscure association he felt shamed by his own relief that Dan had returned safely. The emotion scraped at his nerves and distracted him as he mounted the stairway to the operations room and walked into a taut silence that at first he didn’t notice. All eyes were fixed on a winking red light on the wall plan of the Tomb, down on Level 4.
The duty officer held the handset in midair, arrested by Chase’s appearance. He replaced it in its cradle and jumped up. “I was just about to call you.” He jerked his head toward the light. “Somebody’s opened a sealed door on Level Four. I’ve already sent a couple of men to investigate.”
“From inside?”
“Must have been. The alarm sensor wasn’t triggered.”
“Who’d be crazy enough to do that?”
The answer came to him even before the question was out of his mouth.
Somebody whose grief and desire for revenge would obscure every other impulse. Somebody who had no other reason for living except for his only child—a reason now annulled and made worthless. In a dying world the death of a loved one might prove to be the final blasphemy.
Somebody like Ron Maxwell.
“How long has it been open?”
“Only a few minutes. I got onto it right away. We should have it sealed tight again pretty soon.” The armpits of the duty officer’s tan shirt were ringed with sweat. He wiped his mouth with a hand that was visibly trembling. “Want me to raise a general alarm?”
“Not yet. Everyone’s on his way back to bed. Let’s wait for your men to report. We’ll give them five minutes.”
For Chase and the others in the operations room it was the longest five minutes of their life. After two had ticked away the duty officer had to sit down. After four the tension was like a high-voltage charge, at such an unbearable pitch that one of the technical operators began to whimper through hands pressed to his face.
As the sweeping red hand ascended to the vertical, marking off five, a dozen thoughts were hammering in Chase’s brain. The men had been given sufficient time to report and yet failed to do so. How many intruders could have entered the Tomb during those five minutes? Could they have infiltrated up to Level 3? Immediately above Level 3 were the living quarters, the dormitories, and the sick bay. Dan and Ruth and most of the community were down there sleeping.
The duty officer was staring at him, his white face beaded with sweat.
“Hit it!” Chase cried hoarsely and was on his way through the door even as the siren started to wail.
Dan had been wrong. They were not, as he had described them, babies, but homunculi. Tiny stunted dwarflike beings with pulpy alabaster flesh and black pinprick eyes like raisins stuck in dough.
Obeying an instinct similar to the ant’s they blindly followed a trail laid by the one in fro
nt, and the one in front of that, and the one in front of that, and the one in front of that. First a few, perhaps five or six, had picked up the scent of Dan and Jo as they struggled back across the hot barren landscape. More of the creatures had joined the march, which soon became a straggling procession, dozens, scores, then hundreds plodding onward across the desert scrub and disappearing into the tunnels like a long jointed white slug burrowing underground.
Guns could kill them, though it didn’t seem to matter. Instinct and hunger drove them on; death was immaterial. They were seeking food, of any kind, animal or vegetable. They ate voraciously, like a plague of caterpillars stripping a forest bare. Kill one and another climbed over the body to take its place. Kill twenty and fifty more came on with pudgy blank faces and small red gaping mouths. They were mouths on stunted legs, quite mindless, living only to eat and reproduce.
The raw sunlight with its fierce dose of ultraviolet radiation was beneficial to the species, indeed essential. It had warped their genetic structure until each successive generation adapted more comfortably to the new conditions. Even the thinning atmosphere with its low oxygen content had been assimilated and was vital to the development of their metabolic structure.
There was no way they could be stopped—as Chase soon discovered.
They packed Level 4 with their soft squirming bodies and were stumping up the stairway to Level 3, jammed shoulder to naked shoulder, as Chase hopelessly pumped shot after shot into their midst. It was like shooting at the tide. The upper levels above him were in turmoil. People grabbed the few personal effects they could carry and scurried upward, some hastily dressed, others still in night attire. The siren blare filled the corridors as Chase and the guards tried to halt or at least delay the inexorable progress of the eighteen-inch-high white tide.
Retreating before it, Chase followed the others up to Level 1. In the operations room he came upon the duty officer, holding his post when the rest had fled.