by John Shirley
There was death waiting in those corridors.
“Right,” Sam was saying. “Like we don’t all work for UAC.”
He knew what she meant. The corporations had subsumed the government—except in the most cosmetic way. But he insisted, “I’m RRTS, Sam. I serve my country.”
“Really. Now who’s being naïve?”
Reaper shrugged. “So if they were so smart—how come they died out?”
Voices crackled in Reaper’s comm. “We got something,” Goat said.
A dark corridor, deep underground. A single shriek, quickly cut off. The sound of running feet, coming closer…
It was the same corridor. The one in which Dr. Carmack had achieved his feat of sexagenarian sprinting. Where Jorgenson and several others had been torn to pieces.
Goat and Portman were moving down it now, treading slowly, approaching that same door.
“We got movement in Dr. Carmack’s office,” Goat said, into the comm. His voice had the hush of a man on the hunt, not wanting to scare off his quarry.
The door had been ripped open—pried, then torn back like tinfoil.
The walls and floor here in the hall, near the door, could almost have been painted uniformly red-brown, with all the dried blood. Where, Portman wondered, was the rest of the body…or bodies?
They eased up to the ravaged entrance—they’d seen something go through that door.
And they could hear it moving around inside the lab…making a sound that was almost words.
Scraping in there; rattling. Breathing. Muttering.
Weapons ready, fingers on triggers, they edged cautiously, slowly, through the torn-open door—Goat, then Portman. Their probing gunlights showed the room had been trashed, ransacked. There was still some furniture standing.
And something leapt, thumped down onto a desk, to their right. A dark shape. They swung their weapons, and opened fire. The shape leapt over their gunlight beams, past the two soldiers—and out the door as Portman yelled in wordless reaction. Had he hit the thing?
“Contact!” Goat shouted, into the comm. “Contact. Moving east from the gene lab—fast!”
It was heading Sarge’s way…
In the corridor near the Weapons Lab, Sarge saw the dark shape whip past at an intersection of hallways, just thirty feet from him. He fired at it—nowhere near hitting it, it had gone by way too quickly—as Duke caught up with him.
“Certify contact,” Sarge said into his comm, “closing fast from the south corridor. Pinky, get a visual.”
“What is it?” Duke asked.
Sarge shook his head. No clue.
The Kid saw it next—glimpsed it, anyway, racing around a dark corner.
Younger and more agile, he sprinted ahead of Destroyer, hunting lust pumping in him, and opened fire, snapping off a half dozen rounds at the thing. Thing—or person. It was human-shaped, so far as he could tell from the glimpse he’d had—but its movements were inhuman.
“Hold your fire!” Reaper yelled, coming around a corner behind the Kid.
The Kid held back, gritting his teeth, waiting for orders. Reaper pushed past him, pushing the boy’s gun down as he went. Saw the thing—maybe a man—run around another corner…
Reaper ran around the same corner and stopped short, finding himself in a dead end. No lights here. Dark.
Something was breathing in the darkness.
He threw his light on it—a face he’d seen on a video. Sarge caught up with Reaper and stared.
“Dr. Carmack?”
Six
DR. TODD CARMACK was half-naked, shivering, babbling, anorexic—and cradling someone else’s rotting arm. He held a woman’s severed limb clutched against his chest. The dead hand’s manicured, painted fingernails were touching his face. Unconsciously, Carmack began to nibble one of the red-painted fingernails on the stiff blue-white hand. Not like a cannibal, but like someone nervously chewing their nails.
“If you have a weapon, drop it!” Reaper yelled, aware of the Kid and Destroyer coming up behind him. Reaper felt kind of foolish making the demand—probably the only “weapon” Carmack had was that detached limb.
Carmack only muttered gibberish in response, blinking in the gunlights, as Goat and Portman arrived, adding theirs. A fresh cut bled copiously from Carmack’s lower neck. He looked at the decaying, severed arm. A wedding ring on one of the fingers. And let it fall to the floor.
Sam came rushing up, beside Reaper. “Oh my God. Dr. Carmack…?”
“Sam,” Reaper said tersely, “get back!”
“He knows me!” she pointed out. “Dr. Carmack—it’s me, Samantha…I’m not going to hurt you…”
She started toward him—startled, he shrieked and shied backward, into the corner, one hand reaching up to rip his own ear from his head. He flung it at them, reminding Reaper of a monkey flinging offal. Sam stared at the torn-off ear, oozing blood on the floor at her feet. She seemed on the verge of throwing up—but Reaper could see her swallow, get a grip on herself.
Tough kid, he thought admiringly. My sister.
“Jesus Christ,” Portman muttered.
“Anyone got a field medical pouch?” Sam demanded. “Gimme quickclot!” Reaper tossed her his medikit.
Carmack whimpered, cringing, but let her get closer. She dug in the pouch, found the quickclot packet, tore it open with her teeth and poured it on his wounds. “Where are the others, Doctor?” she asked, her voice soothing.
Carmack twitched but said nothing.
“Steve—Hillary…?” She prompted. “Dr. Olsen? Dr. Thurman, Dr. Norris—Dr. Clay?”
Carmack only rolled his eyes, again and again, shaking fingers exploring the wound where his ear had been, mouth crumpling, as if he was confused as to who’d done it to him…
Sarge pushed Portman and the Kid out of the way. “Duke, get him out to the infirmary with Dr.Grimm. Reaper and Goat, clear the genetics labs, work back this way, LOE junction with the west corridor…” As he spoke to the squadron, Sarge never took his eyes, or his gun, off Carmack. “Destroyer and I’ll swing around from here to meet you. Portman, Kid, you two dig in at the air lock, anybody trying to run away from us will get driven to you.”
Sarge shouldered his weapon. Nudged the severed arm on the floor with the tip of his boot. “Let’s see if we can find the body that goes with this.”
Sam emerged from the lab air lock, into the atrium area. Duke was close behind her, carrying Carmack in his arms. The scientist was still babbling, almost seeming to take comfort at being carried; he veered between an infantile state and an atavistic madness.
Base personnel gaped at them as they came, murmuring Carmack’s name, exchanging looks of horror, fear.
“Dr. Willits!” Sam called.
Jenny Willits, brisk and crisp and bespectacled, hurried up to examine Carmack, still in Duke’s arms. “Oh my God. What’s happening in there?”
Duke wondered, too. What had happened to Carmack—and what were his own buddies facing while he was babysitting this lunatic?
Hunegs saw the panicked look on the faces of the base personnel. “There is no cause for alarm—UAC has assured me that the situation is entirely under control…”
They absorbed this remark, then looked at Carmack. Their faces registered a familiar cynicism. They were used to the disconnect between UAC’s public reality…and reality.
It was quiet. The only sound was water dripping somewhere.
Moving with Goat down the corridor between the animal experimentation room and the genetics lab, slipping carefully from pool of shadow to pool of light and back into shadow, Reaper felt a strange disquiet flutter its leathery wings at the back of his mind.
Nothing surprising in Reaper feeling worried, right now. He was on an alien planet where his parents had died; there were unknown antagonists making cool, rational scientists crazed enough to rip off their own ears and throw them, and that severed arm hadn’t been terribly reassuring.
But he was used to risk, uncerta
inty. Unseen killers hunting him.
It took him a while to figure out what that particular odd nagging at the back of his head was…then it hit him:
He was worried about Sam. Carmack was dangerous—hell, this whole place was dangerous. He wasn’t there to protect her. For years, he’d blocked all thought of her well-being from his mind…
But now that he’d seen her again, it was hard to go off on a mission and just assume that his sister was going to be safe here.
Stay professional, he warned himself. She’ll be okay. Duke’s with her. He’s a good man. Better behave himself though, or I’ll…
Goat was moving along the opposite wall, both of them probing ahead with the lights on their guns. Couldn’t see what was around that dark corner up ahead. Looked like a flight of stairs going downward.
They inched up to the corner, hesitated—Goat took a step…
Bang, clatter, his foot knocked something down the stairs, the sudden noise making them both jump.
“Goddammit,” Goat swore.
The object kept bouncing down the steps, clattered onto the hard floor below, rolled into a pool of light. It was just a small cylindrical container, a can of some kind. Trash.
Reaper waited to see if the noise prompted anyone—or anything—to investigate.
Nothing, just a deeper quiet now.
He turned to Goat—and winced to see him pulling a hunting knife. Knowing what that was about. Goat cut into the skin of his arm, cut a deep cross adding to the numerous scars, like crosses in a military cemetery.
Goat noticed Reaper watching. “I took His name in vain.”
Beads of sweat stood out on Goat’s forehead as he made his penance, pushing the knife in deeper. “In the name of the Father…and of the Son…and of the Holy Spirit….”
Waiting a short distance beyond the air lock, the Kid heard a footfall behind him. Flicked his pistols off safety, spun on his heel—and nearly pulled the trigger. Second time that day he’d almost shot a friendly.
If you could call Portman a friendly. But he seemed not to have noticed that the Kid had almost shot him. “It’s messed up, right?” Portman said, swinging the medical pouch almost jauntily. “A guy like Carmack, trained to put logic before emotion, so freaked he rips off his own ear?” He shook his head. “I tell ya, shit like that…gets under your skin.”
The Kid nodded—felt his hands twitch on his gun. They were starting to shake. He needed a booster. Shouldn’t have gotten started. The first dose, this morning, had been small. But once you started, you kept going so you didn’t have to face the crash…
“Do you…” He licked his lips, lowered his voice. “Do you have any?”
Portman flashed a grin that would make a serial killer shudder. “Do I have any what?”
The Kid grimaced. He hated it when Portman made him beg like this. “You…you know. I’m just a little shook up. I need something to get my focus, y’know. My game face.”
Portman smirked as he fished in a cargo pocket. Brought out a bottle of pills, waved them teasingly. “Whattya say?”
“Please…”
“Please and what?” He waited. The Kid blinked at him in confusion. “Please and what, skirt?”
“Thank you?”
Portman handed over the pills. The Kid had the top off and a pill popped in under two seconds. He chewed it up, handed the bottle back—and lifted his head, sniffing.
The Kid was noticing something else. “What’s that smell?”
Portman sniffed. Frowned. Sniffed again. “Uh…Smells like…smells like barbecue.”
They followed their noses and the faintly visible curtain of smoke hanging in the air. It led to a lab they hadn’t checked yet. The Kid kicked the door in.
Guns ready, they burst through the entrance, tracking the room with the muzzles, looking for a target. Portman found a working light switch and flicked it on. The place was wreathed in smoke.
“Whoa,” Portman began, “someone burned the—”
But then he saw the woman’s charred body—and he had to break off, retching, just to keep his breakfast down.
“Holy fuck,” the Kid said softly. “She fried herself.”
They were staring at the body, dead but kneeling, at the back of the room: the blackened corpse of a woman, missing an arm. Still twitching—maybe she’d been twitching like that for a long time—the hand of her remaining outstretched arm was gripping a lab tool, shoved in a humming, sparking power outlet.
Her hair had burned away. Her charred clothes clung to her, a garment of ash, flaking away bit by bit with her twitching. The fluid from her eyeballs, mostly cooked away, was still bubbling in their sockets.
Portman closed his eyes. Forced himself to report. “Sarge…we found the body that goes with that arm.”
In the corridor to the control-area infirmary, Sam and Dr. Willits and Duke—still carrying Carmack—had just reached a plain gray wall of dull metal. Plain except for the control panel, into which Sam punched a code.
The wall sighed and softened, suddenly looking like it was made of gray clay.
“Oh no no no,” Duke said, shuddering. “I don’t do nanowalls.” Walking through a wall always gave him the creeps. It was like something from a dream—and most of his dreams were bad.
“Quickly,” Sam said impatiently. “He may be dying.” Sam pushed through the wall, Dr. Willits right after her.
Okay, Duke thought. I can’t be too pussy to do it, now she’s done it.
He took a deep breath, muttering “Fuck this shit,” closed his eyes—and stepped through the wall. You had to push, a little, it resisted, flowing around you with a sensation like static electricity and warm mud.
But then he was through, opening his eyes, carrying Carmack to the gurney. Apart from the gurney, the room was all stainless steel and clucking, humming monitors, instruments Duke couldn’t identify.
And that nanowall—a high-security device. What went on in here? Duke wondered.
Carmack stared at the ceiling with dilated eyes as the doctor began her examination. Sam and Dr. Willits put on some gloves.
“Did they find the others?” Dr. Willits asked, looking into Carmack’s pupils with an instrument that looked to Duke more like it was for poking eyes out than examining them.
Sam tried to keep her voice even and confident. “Not yet. I’m sure Steve’s fine.”
“I told him they needed to get some rest,” Dr. Willits murmured worriedly, as she looked at Carmack. “But he said they were close to a breakthrough. And Dr. Carmack wanted to keep going…”
Sam tied a rubber tube around Carmack’s biceps, jacking the scientist’s arm like a pump handle to get a blood pressure reading. Carmack lay there passively as she took the reading…
Until he suddenly sat bolt upright, dug his fingers into Sam’s hair, pulling her close.
“Oh God,” Carmack moaned. “I can feel it!”
“Whoa!” Duke burst out, coming at Carmack—but she’d pulled back somewhat on her own and waved Duke away. She judged this was her chance to get the story out of Carmack.
“It’s okay—I’m okay. Dr. Carmack? What happened in there? It’s me, Dr. Grimm…Samantha Grimm…”
“Shut it down!” Jerking her face up to his, spraying spittle as he shouted, nose to nose.
He let her go, sinking back into the cot. His lips were moving, but they couldn’t make out what he was saying. Sam leaned closer…making Duke nervous. The guy might go psychotic on them again any second.
“It’s inside…” Carmack whispered. Barely audible.
And then his eyes glazed over.
“Looks like we missed the party,” Reaper remarked.
“What happened to all the animals?” Goat asked.
He and Reaper were in the animal experimentation lab, staring at the broken cages. The cages were all opened—the test subjects gone. Some of the cage doors had been bent back, ripped away.
Gurgling and giggling came from near one bank of cages.
>
Goat and Reaper nodded to each other. Weapons ready, they eased around the pens, poised to shoot—and found a scientist in a white coat, hunkered down, half-turned away over a fallen, open cage.
“Sir?” Reaper asked. “RRTS, we’re here to help. You all right?” No telling if this was an enemy or someone he should save, yet. They didn’t know who or what the enemy was. He went with friendly until he knew differently. “We’re here to help you.”
The scientist turned toward them—his eyes were wide, his skin the color and consistency of dough. Blood rimmed his mouth and ran from a wound on his neck. “Sir, are you injured?” Reaper persisted.
Still gaping at them, registering nothing, the scientist thrust both his hands into the cage, pulled something white and squirming out. And shoved two white rats into his mouth at once. Bit down…they squealed and writhed, tails lashing.
Goat and Reaper took a step back, shocked. Goat touching the cross at his neck, murmuring a prayer.
“Sir,” Reaper said, thinking he should just blow the guy’s head off instead, “whatever’s happened to you we can get you hel—”
Spitting bits of dead rodents, the man seized a cruel-looking knife from the table and charged them, howling as he came—a rat’s head spinning out of his mouth with the last long ululation. He was nearly against the muzzles of their guns before they opened fire, the bullets slamming him backward to crash into the cages, knocking them into a clattering wreckage.
The scientist twitched, moaned, and went limp. His lab coat was on fire from the close proximity of the gun muzzles; smoke wisped from him like his escaping soul.
“Contact report!” came Sarge’s voice, on comm.
Reaper cleared his throat. Went to look at the name tag he’d glimpsed on the scientist’s coat. “Found one of our missing scientists. Olsen, I guess. He rushed us. Crazy. Just like Carmack.”
Reaper wondered if it was just like Carmack—who was with his sister now. Suppose he should go off the deep end, like Olsen had? He had shown incredible bursts of speed. Unnatural agility, preternatural energy. He might get at Sam before Duke could stop him…