by John Shirley
In a corridor on the other side of the lab division, Sarge was talking on the comm to Reaper, with Destroyer just behind him, watching his six.
“He dead?” Sarge asked.
“Yeah, very…” Reaper said, his voice almost lost in the comm’s hiss.
Destroyer was feeling extra nervous. This place made him nervous anyway: it wasn’t like the jungle or the desert or some urban-warfare scenario—he knew what to do in those locales. This place seemed to be operating according to rules he didn’t quite understand.
But now he felt like something was watching him. He didn’t know where it was. He didn’t know what it was. But he could feel it watching him.
And then he heard it. Creaking noises from that big ventilator duct that ran along flush with the wall, overhead…something deforming the metal with its weight.
“Sarge?” Destroyer pointed his gun at the duct.
Sarge looked, saw the duct was shaking, just slightly, as something moved through it. He nodded and swung his weapon toward the grating high in the wall.
Destroyer went to the grate, reached up, quietly removed the grate, pulled himself up…gun in one hand, pulling himself along by his elbows, into the duct. Turning up ahead. He got to the turning, peered around in time to see something rush at him, teeth bared, squealing with hatred as it came—big eyes, muzzle, fangs, fur—
He scrambled backward—firing the gun spasmodically, the muzzle flashes making a strobe light that chopped up his visuals so he didn’t know if he hit the thing. He fell backward, out of the duct into the hall, firing the gun as he fell, puncturing the metal of the vent, the chaingun doing a demolition job on the duct, the ceiling.
Found himself sitting on his ass with the chaingun smoking in his hand.
“What the hell was it?” Sarge asked.
“A…monkey. Some kind of monkey.” Realizing it was probably just an escaped lab animal. Gone a little nuts in here.
But then maybe the animals could’ve been affected by whatever had affected Carmack…presumably the experiments had started with them.
Blood was dripping from the bullet holes in the duct. Sarge went to it—put out his hand. Blood dripped on it. Not ordinary blood. Not the right color.
It was the same as the blood Dr. Willits was just then drawing from Carmack, in the infirmary.
Jet-black.
In the animal experimentation lab, Reaper and Goat were still puzzling over the dead scientist. And the rats on the floor he’d bitten in half.
Reaper shook his head. He wanted to move on. Get to the bottom of this—and get the hell out of the room. He called Sarge on the comm, wondering what they should do, if anything, with Olsen’s body. “Sarge—should we bag him and tag him?”
Goat was looking at something different on the floor now. A shadow, lengthening, twisting. Cast by something behind…
“Negative,” Sarge was saying. “Continue your search.”
But Reaper wasn’t listening anymore. The low, wet rasping sound from behind him had his full attention. He caught Goat’s eye, who nodded; their fingers tensed on the triggers of their weapons—
And they spun, firing at something just glimpsed in the dim farther reaches of the cluttered room. It roared in fury, wounded, and retreated, around a row of cages.
Reaper just made out something bigger than a man, rippling with muscles. Dark scaly skin—and a leg iron, its chain broken, locked around its ankle—and then it was gone from their line of sight.
They advanced on the row of cages it’d vanished behind.
“Shoot-pause-enter,” Reaper said. A standard tactic. Goat nodded.
They jumped around the corner, firing—nothing. It’d moved on, through the open door into the corridor. They shoved fresh clips into their guns, and Reaper led the way into the hallway—empty. Nothing. Except black blood on the floor.
“Reaper,” said Sarge on the comm, “what’ve you got?”
“We’re chasing something,” Reaper replied. It seemed as if every second light was out in this corridor. The long hall was paced by pools of shadow that were darker than they should naturally be.
“What do you mean, ‘something’?” Sarge asked, on the comm.
“Something big! Not human!”
“Godammit, give me a confirmation on what you see!” Sarge hollered over the comm. “Reaper!…Pinky, you get a look at it?”
“Roger that. Enhancing now.”
At the comm center, Pinky was rewinding Reaper’s guncam, from the digital record. Mac was watching over his shoulder, a hulking presence that made Pinky nervous. But he didn’t know how volatile the Japanese Privine might be, so he didn’t tell him to back off.
There—something in that dim image. Pinky froze the frame, rewound a little, put the cursor on a silhouette seen down the corridor. He pressed the keyboard combination for enhance and render. The computer hummed and something began to appear, almost seeming to materialize out of the digital murk. Whatever it was had its back to the camera.
It was bigger than a man, mostly nude—shreds of clothing left around its groin suggesting it had been smaller and had grown, ripping the clothing. Human clothing—had it originally been human-sized?
Its huge head, growing neckless from its hunched, muscle-rippling shoulders, turned just enough so that Pinky could make out small tusks in a wide, snarling, bestial mouth. It seemed eyeless, apparently perceiving from membranes at the front of its head. The whole creature was the color and texture of skin with a second-degree burn. Difficult to see its feet clearly in this cloudy image—but that foot, lifted to take a step. Was that…a hoof?
The enhanced figure in the image was most definitely inhuman—and looked like it was designed by nature to be a living kill-machine.
Staring over Pinky’s shoulder at the screen, Mac whistled softly to himself.
“Hey, guys,” Pinky said, staring at the image. “It ain’t a disgruntled employee.” Pinky hit a few more keys, distantly aware that his fingers were trembling. “Uploading the image to you now, Sarge…”
In his own end of the facility, Sarge projected the uploaded image onto the floor. He stared. “What in the…”
Reaper and Goat heard the thing thumping around a corner. They sprinted, fingers wrapping triggers, around the turn…and found themselves in yet another dead end. Who’d designed this warren of corridors, Reaper wondered, the people who designed mazes for rats?
The thing they’d been chasing was gone. Where the hell did it go to? The only door here had a big chained padlock on it. The thing was too big to just vanish…
“…Reaper,” Goat said.
Reaper looked at him—Goat was looking down at a big manhole grate in the floor, half-open. “Sarge,” Reapter reported, into the comm. “It’s in the sewer…” They knelt, Reaper pointed his gunlight into the gap. The facility’s sewage system and wastewater outflow looked alike. He saw a dead rhesus monkey floating by on a stygian stream.
He heard Sarge requesting data from Pinky. “Talk to me, Pinky.”
“An outflow tunnel,” Pinky said. “It connects that section of the sewer to the main facility’s system.”
An inhuman growl resounded from somewhere down in the sewer.
Goat then looked at Reaper, slightly wide-eyed, pointing his weapon at the manhole grate. “So…you wanna go first?” he said, shrugging nervously, cracking a hint of a smile.
Reaper couldn’t really tell whether or not Goat was kidding.
“All units, all units” Reaper said into the comm, “request assistance at the southeast corridor, med lab!”
Sarge’s voice boomed over the comm in response. “Copy that, Reaper. Stay put until we get there! All units—converge on Reaper’s position. Southeast corridor, med lab. Move!”
Seven
THE RRTS SQUADRON was dropping into the sewer.
“And I thought ‘in the shit’ was a figure of speech,” Portman groused.
“Get in the goddamn hole, Portman,” Sarge growled.
Weapon slung over his shoulder, Portman descended the metal ladder to step into the thigh-high sewage runoff. Most of it was just water, but spotlit in the shaft of light from above, Portman could see human wastes swirling by, including bits of toilet paper, and small dead animals from the labs. Animals—or parts of them. A string of entrails twined around Portman’s leg as he bent over to fit into the tunnel, but he made himself slosh forward to join the others, choking with the smell as he went. His gagging echoed in the tunnel along with drippings, footfalls, and creaking sounds from unknown sources.
Probably annoyed by Portman’s griping, Sarge gestured for him to take point. Still gagging, pointing his gunlight down the low, echoing tunnel, Portman splashed onward.
“Hey, Portman,” the Kid said, his voice quavering, “when you were young y’ever picture yourself doing this?”
“No,” Portman said immediately, “I pictured myself getting laid.”
Goat came just behind him, murmuring verses from the Bible : “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil…walketh about seeking whom he may devour.”
“That’s real comforting, Goat,” Portman grumbled. “I mean that’s not freaking me out at all!” Goat glared at Portman—and as if the look was a biblical curse, as Portman said, “Why don’t you shut the—” he vanished midstep, plummeting out of sight into the water.
“Portman!” Goat burst out.
Their gunlights shone in a convergence of beams on the water where he’d been. Bubbles and offal floated by. Nothing else visible.
“Portman!” Reaper yelled, easing up to the spot.
No response.
Reaper bent, almost kneeling in the tunnel, wrinkling his nose as his face got all too close to the malodorous stream. “I got his hand. Damn he’s heavy. He’s too deep.” He reached into the sewage, found a hand flailing up under the water.
Reaper grabbed Portman’s hand and pulled, grunting. But Portman was stuck. Desperation communicated through his tightening grip. Reaper leaned back, using his weight—something popped loose down below, and he dragged Portman thrashing up into sight.
“Dammit!” Portman gasped. “Shit!”
“Congratulations, Portman, that’s your first bath in months,” Reaper said.
As Portman swore and muttered, trying to wipe himself off, Reaper felt around for the hole with his toe. Found it, around a big wheel-shaped valve of some kind. Not a passage. The thing they were chasing couldn’t have gone down that way—but the valve recess was deep enough for Portman to stumble into.
“Up ahead,” Sarge said, pointing with his gunlight.
The beam laid an oval of light over a pale object, reminiscent of a human torso, floating along the tunnel toward them. Sarge fished it out—it was a lacerated and bloody lab coat with a name on it.
DR. STEVE WILLITS was stitched in cursive over the breast pocket.
“We got Willits’s lab coat,” Sarge said, into his headset. “John, Kid—on point.” He looked at Portman’s disgusted face, and added, “Watch your step.”
They moved on around a curve in the tunnel—everyone stepping carefully around the hole Portman had fallen into—and found it split off into several directions. Sarge gave his orders, punctuating each by pointing at the tunnel he was sending them into. “Goat, straight. We’ll go left.” Meaning him, Destroyer, and Portman. “John, Kid, on the right. Destroyer, you’re on point.”
As Reaper passed the Kid, to move into point just ahead of him in the right-hand tunnel, he noticed the Kid was wearing his night-vision goggles in the dark tunnel. And the Kid noticed Reaper wasn’t.
“How come you don’t wear night-vision?” the Kid asked.
“Don’t like NVGs,” Reaper replied, sweeping the tunnel ahead with his gunlight. “They limit your peripheral vision.”
“Yeah, plus you can’t see shit to either side,” the Kid said.
Reaper was trying to decide if the Kid was joking when a loud splash came from behind. The Kid spun around, splashing Reaper with the sudden motion, autopistols taut in his hands—but it was a noise of the others moving in the adjacent tunnels.
The Kid was panting with fear. He turned back to face the darkness of the tunnel ahead, bubbling over with nerves. Jabbering.
“Portman told me some stuff about you,” the Kid chattered. “Said you lost your parents when you were a kid, right? Small. I lost my parents, too.”
“Every time you open your mouth you’re giving away our position,” Reaper told him.
“Yeah. See, I woke up one morning, everything was gone. Only thing left was me. They wanted the TV more than they wanted me.”
The tunnel must be getting to the Kid—connecting him to the primal fear he’d felt, waking up to find his parents had abandoned him. Back in that other dark childhood tunnel, in a way.
Anyhow, it was better that the Kid cowboyed up, and stopped being so personal. This was the time to be professional and nothing but.
And Reaper didn’t want to hear about the Kid’s parents vanishing on him. His own parents hadn’t exactly abandoned him. But one day they were just…gone. Dead.
The Kid stared owlishly back at him, mouth moving soundlessly, his eyes…
Reaper found a small flashlight in his belt pack, pointed the red-tinted light at the kid’s face. “Your pupils,” Reaper burst out, furious. “They’re dilated, Kid! Are you fuckin’ high?”
The Kid looked away. Tried out a lie. “I got this condition, Reaper…”
“Who’s supplying you?” Reaper demanded. “Portman?”
The Kid didn’t answer. Which was answer enough.
Great. The Kid and Portman were high on some trashy neurostimmer. In Reaper’s experience, guns times drugs equaled fuckups. Stoned people always fucked up big-time, in a tense situation. Meaning somebody would die, as a result…and not necessarily the enemy.
“You take any more of that shit, Kid,” Reaper said, deliberately making his voice loud enough for Portman and Sarge to hear, too, “and I’ll blow holes in you and Portman.”
“Oh sure, Reaper,” the Kid snorted. “Like you’re gonna shoot me.”
Reaper pointed his gun at the Kid’s head. Settled in like he was about to follow through on his threat.
The Kid swallowed. “Hey—look—I was just kidding.”
There was something moving, something big and bulky, in the side tunnel just beyond the Kid.
“I won’t do it again, okay?” the Kid was saying. “I’m sorry.”
“Get down,” Reaper said.
Something was coming closer…
“What?”
“Get down!”
The Kid crouched low into the water. “What is it?”
It slipped past them—swimming now, but unmistakably a bipedal shape, a large, living creature…then he lost sight of it.
But as he pressed back against the curved wall, the Kid now against the wall opposite him, Reaper saw a V-shaped ripple moving along the surface of the water, its motion purposeful, sliding between them. Heading back down the tunnel…
Heading for the squadron like a submerged alligator.
Reaper followed, came to the place the tunnel divided, saw it turn into Goat’s tunnel.
“Goat,” Reaper said into the comm, “something’s behind you! It’s under the surface! It’s coming toward you!”
“Oh fuck!” Portman hissed, hearing the report on the comm, pointing his gun at the water. Not sure where to shoot. He might blow someone’s kneecap apart before he hit the thing swimming under the water.
“It’s under the water!” Reaper repeated, on the comm.
Portman fired a nervous burst into the water—the rounds sent up little geysers of sewage, ricocheted down the tunnel.
“Hold your fire!” Sarge ordered. “It’s not in this tunnel!”
In the center tunnel, Goat had turned, was swinging his light from side to side, trying to spot the thing Reaper said was coming for him. Seeing nothing at all but floating crap.
“I don’t see it!” Goat reported.
“It’s there!” came Reaper’s voice, crackling in the headset.
But he still saw nothing but water and spiraling waste. Worse, his light was going out. Getting weaker and weaker…
Wait—was there something under the water, over there? It was hard to tell in the weak gunlight. Should have brought an extra flash or a flare or something, but he liked to carry as little as possible. Stay sleek. So he had no other light on him. No night goggles. Not even a match.
And as Goat peered, eyes aching, into the dimness—his light went out completely.
Total darkness snapped down around him. Perhaps this was a message from God. He remembered a line from the Bible, Matthew 6:23, If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
God was showing him the darkness of his own soul…
But the soldier in him struggled to stay in control . Don’t give in—fight! Let the others know.
“This is not happening,” he muttered into the comm. “My light is down. Think my battery’s out. Pinky…you see it?”
But the cameras he bore were in darkness, too. “No, nothing,” came Pinky’s voice on the headset.
Then he heard a splashing sound, and a kind of reptilian chuckle. He remembered the coat they’d found floating down the tunnel.
“Dr. Willits?” he whispered.
Something rose up from the water, quite near him; he could hear liquid dropping from its body, could hear it breathing—close beside him, on his right…
Less than a foot away.
He swallowed…and turned, could just make out a shape that was a deeper darkness than the background gloom—a misshapen head.
The dark shape opened its eyes. Two luminous eyes…
Then the rest of its eyes opened.
A whole cluster of them—glowing against the backdrop of darkness. Goat stumbled backward—
A light flashed on them from down the tunnel: Reaper’s gunlight. But he was too far away to shoot the thing without hitting Goat.