Singularity

by Joe Hart

  Her head turned and she looked at him, her face wreathed in the confines of her hair, and she smiled. Such a sad smile with so much possibility. He screamed for her to wait, the dust and toxic air saturating his lungs and making it hard to speak, let alone fuel the need of his burning muscles. He waited for the tipping of her body that seemed so familiar. He waited but she didn’t move. Instead, something else emerged from the drop a few feet from where she stood. He could see the winding shapes of rope and coils that moved like dozens of snakes. Two hard points punctured the dead ground and found enough purchase to heave the thing’s bulk into view. Its eyes were black holes that killed light and exuded despair. He felt lost as he ran on toward them, hopeless. Even if he reached her, there would be no escape from that which pulled itself free of the chasm beyond.

  He received an impression of an articulation of legs and a maw opening that defied anything he could relate to. Not teeth. No, but something far worse yawned to accept Rachel as she smiled and leaned into the thing’s open mouth.

  ==

  A stifled scream bled out of Sullivan as he rolled over the side of the bed and thought he might be sick on the floor. He put a hand to his teeth and bit down on the skin of a knuckle, as he felt the first tears squeeze loose and stream down his face. He tried to breathe, but there was a hand deep inside him, constricting his diaphragm in a steel grip. Instead, he leaned back onto the bed and forced his eyes shut as he listened to rain batter the roof above him. A dream. Just a dream. The same but different somehow. He felt winded, as if he’d been running for a long distance without rest, and now that his body was still, the sensation of movement twirled within him like an amusement-park ride.

  He reached up and rubbed the side of his face and ran both hands through his tangled hair. He’d seen her falling again, he was sure of it, but there was something else. Something new in the dream. He hadn’t been in their apartment in Minneapolis. They had been somewhere else. He could almost taste the foul air on his tongue … or maybe it was from not brushing his teeth the night before. The flavor made him grimace. Lightning lit up the room in a short flicker and he recalled where he was. The prison. Alvarez. Don and his fingers. The storm.

  Sullivan licked his lips and spun his body until his feet touched the cold tile of the floor. His head hung toward his chest and he felt the weakness of sleep leaving his muscles. He needed to pee and he was thirsty. God, he was thirsty. He’d never felt his throat so dry in his life. As he stood the back of his head connected solidly with the overhead bunk, and he immediately sat back down, cursing under his breath and rubbing the growing egg on his scalp. He blinked and thought his vision had flashed with the blow, but it was only lightning again. But what he saw in the brief illumination stopped him cold and made his guts shrivel.

  The door to their room was open several inches.

  And Barry’s bed was empty.

  Chapter 7

  Sullivan froze on the edge of the bed, telling himself he hadn’t seen what he’d seen. The door’s intricate steel plates must have caused an illusion and Barry’s tangled sheets and blanket thrown back were actually hiding his sleeping form. He waited for another pulse of light and tried to determine what time it was. It felt like early morning, but with the storm outside he couldn’t be entirely sure. He felt somewhat rested, as if he’d slept more than a few hours. While the seconds of darkness lingered with only the sound of rain and his own heartbeat to keep him company, he discarded the simple hope that Barry had gone to the bathroom. He would have turned on the light, Sullivan thought. But there was no illumination coming from where the bathroom was positioned, only the constant dancing darkness.

  Light bloomed outside the narrow window, but not as bright as before, indicating the storm was perhaps moving away, and his stomach dropped as he confirmed that Barry was gone and the door was indeed open at least five inches. Instincts began to take over as Sullivan scooped his handgun and holster off the bed behind him, where he’d placed them the night before. After attaching the holster firmly to his belt, he slid his feet in a tight circle until they encountered his shoes.

  He rose, and after a second of hesitation, drew his handgun and pointed it at the doorway. It felt good and solid in his grip, a promise of protection should he need it. He stepped closer to the door and flipped on the overhead light. The room flooded in a pale glow and, after merely glancing in the direction of the cramped bathroom, he saw that he was truly alone.

  Sullivan took a deep breath and opened the door unto the deserted hallway, his mind already running through scenarios that would explain why his partner had left the locked room in the middle of the night. None satisfied him.

  He swung to the left and pointed his weapon at the head of the empty stairway, the feeble light seeping in from the high windows did almost nothing to alleviate the blackness. He listened above the throbbing in his eardrums and couldn’t hear any other sounds. He turned to the right and followed the hallway, which ended a few dozen steps from his room. Two doors branched off on the left wall and, only one sat opposite. He took the one on the right, the door being propped open, and after two steps found himself in the entry to the shower room that Andrews mentioned the day before. Only a few lights were on, casting long shadows of the shower stalls on the floor. A fan overhead hummed, pumping air out, while a vent near the door blew fresh oxygen in.

  “Barry?” The word came back to him immediately, like someone else had spoken it. He swallowed and listened for a sound other than his own breathing, but there was nothing. He turned and walked back into the hall and examined the door that he assumed led to the warden’s quarters. It was shut and no light seeped from the gap at its bottom.

  A scraping sound pulled Sullivan’s head around toward the stairway, and he flinched, bringing the .45 to bear in its general direction. He waited for it to repeat, and when it did, he began to walk toward it, arms straight out, one foot in front of the other, heel to toe.

  The noise came from the bottom of the stairwell on the first floor, which was well lit compared to the where Sullivan stood looking down over the rail. He saw no movement, and heard no voices, only the soft scrape of something sliding on the tiled floor. He wanted to call out for Barry again, but all his senses screamed for him to be quiet. He felt the urge to return to the room, lock the dead bolt behind him, and wait with the handgun on his lap until full light came. But he couldn’t do it. Not with his friend wandering the prison with a suspect capable of the carnage he’d witnessed yesterday on the loose.

  He moved sideways down the stairs, his eyes never leaving the lit hallway at the bottom. The gun’s barrel remained steady, and as he moved he wished he had something more appropriate on his feet. The dress shoes didn’t make much noise, but to Sullivan it sounded as if he wore diving flippers. He pivoted at the landing and kept moving at a steady pace; his pulse had revved up and he could feel the thrum of it in his temples and wrists.

  The hollow boom of a door closing made him stop three stairs from the main level. Someone had just left the hallway and stepped into the lobby. Sullivan crept down the last few stairs and leaned against the wall before peering around the corner, his arms tucked close to his chest, the rear sight of his gun pressed against his right shoulder.

  The hallway was empty.

  Sullivan stepped out into the open, ready to jog to the door at the far end when a sound came from behind him. Before he could turn, something hit him solidly in the back and drove him headfirst toward the opposite wall. He tried to maintain his hold on the gun, but the concrete swiftly coming to meet him made his hand slacken enough to try to catch himself. He heard the Heckler & Koch hit the floor somewhere to his right as he was crushed against the unforgiving wall. He managed to deaden some of the blow with his hands and arms, but the side of his head still bounced painfully off the cinderblock, spraying stars across his vision. His assailant yanked him away from the wall and slung him in the opposite direction, trying to trip him with a foot in the process, but Sullivan ste
pped high and widened his stance as he braced for the collision he knew was coming. This time the wall didn’t hit so hard, and he managed to twist in the attacker’s embrace. His elbow flew around in a short arc, and he felt it connect with what he hoped was a temple. There was a grunt of pain and the arms around his midsection loosened. Sullivan spun and slipped his right arm through the hold the man had on him while he reached over the assailant’s shoulder with the other. He locked his grip behind the man’s back and threw all his weight to his left as he yanked his right arm up.

  The attacker’s grip broke as Sullivan felt the man’s feet leave the ground. He twisted and slammed him to the hard floor, the vibration of the impact shuddering through his own body. Until then he hadn’t gotten a look at the man’s face, but now as Sullivan postured up and pinned him to the ground with one leg and a hand at his throat, he blinked with surprise.

  Henry Fairbend lay beneath him.

  The inmate’s thin form felt like a live wire as he strained and tried to flip Sullivan off him. The man’s eyes were closed and his mouth hung open like a forgotten door.

  “Henry, stop it!” Sullivan yelled, but the prisoner continued to struggle. Sullivan increased his grip on Henry’s throat, but yanked his hand back when he felt the flesh move beneath his palm. “What the fuck?” Sullivan said.

  Henry’s throat convulsed and bulged. It looked like the man had tried to swallow an entire sandwich whole and it had gotten stuck. A soft hissing issued from Henry’s mouth and Sullivan sat back farther, a thought blossoming like a poisonous flower in his mind.

  Whatever was in the man’s throat wasn’t being swallowed—it was trying to get out.

  Henry opened a pair of eyes that were the color of old lead. There were no pupils to break the static flatness of the inmate’s stare, although as Sullivan stood and backed away he knew the other man saw him. He could feel the gaze prodding at him, pushing him back as his feet obeyed.

  Henry sat up and something flickered in the confines of his mouth. It reminded Sullivan of an air hose he had seen spring a leak. The tube had swung and gyrated like it was alive, which was exactly what the thing in the prisoner’s mouth was doing. Soon there were more of them there, all twisting and turning as if they were lost and in search of a way out. It wasn’t long until they found it.

  Sullivan felt a scream well up in him as the first tendril snaked free of the inmate’s lips. It was the same gray as the eyes above it, and less than an inch wide. Its tip looked fairly sharp from where Sullivan stood, and he took another step back as the second tendril joined the first. The ends were slightly different shades, and as more of them emerged, Sullivan saw that they were curved and pointed like gray daggers and fishhooks. Soon, Henry’s face was engulfed by a writhing mass of the things. They whipped and danced around each other like cobras looking for a charmer to strike.

  “Jesus,” Sullivan whispered. He was incapable of screaming or moving, or of anything besides staring at the snake-like things that pointed and stabbed at the open air.

  Henry pushed himself into a standing position, and Sullivan noticed his head was tilted back at an odd angle, his mouth open wide to accommodate its occupants. Henry started toward Sullivan, the gray eyes searching between the swinging tendrils. Sullivan looked past the prisoner and spotted his gun lying a few yards down the hall. His eyes shifted back to the walking nightmare, and then he made his move.

  With one motion he lunged forward and kicked out. Henry tried to spin to the left, the tentacles snapping angrily in the air, but wasn’t fast enough. Sullivan’s shoe caught the prisoner solidly in the solar plexus. He heard the air whoosh past the tendrils as his attacker flew backward and connected with the wall. Henry’s skull cracked audibly against the concrete, but Sullivan didn’t hesitate to see if the injury would drop him to the ground. He took two steps and dove for his handgun, catching it and rolling back lightly to his haunches in a crouch.

  Henry was coming at him full bore, arms outstretched, multiple tongues finally stilled, their points all directed at Sullivan. He fired twice. The gunshots in the enclosed hallway were louder than anything he’d ever heard before. He saw two holes open in the man’s chest and matter fly out the back of Henry’s jumpsuit. The impact of the hollow-point slugs didn’t throw the prisoner backward but only stopped his forward movement. Henry stood up straight, his feet sliding together as his featureless eyes gazed at Sullivan.

  Through the smoke that still curled from the barrel of the gun, Sullivan watched the prisoner topple to the side, like an ancient tree finally succumbing to gravity. Henry’s body hit the floor with a sound like a wet sack being dropped. Without taking his eyes off of the man or the things that were beginning to recede into his mouth, Sullivan stepped closer. He trained the muzzle on Henry’s head and resisted the impulse to pull the trigger again. The last few inches of the mouth-snakes retreated out of sight and Henry’s jaw closed as his eyelids slid shut over the silver eyes. One last hiss of breath, or whatever resided within the man’s body, and Henry was gone.

  Sullivan felt his muscles pull excruciatingly tight and then loosen. He let out the stale breath he’d been holding since firing the shots, and saw edges of black eat at his vision before swimming away.

  “Oh God,” he gasped and leaned against the wall. He turned and looked down the empty hallway. Where was everyone? Certainly they’d heard the shots. Why wasn’t an army of guards descending upon him from up above? Slowly he calmed his breathing, and made his way to the far end of the hall. After jamming on the locked handle of the door, he jerked the keycard from his pants pocket with a shaking hand, and saw the light below the reader flip from red to green. He exploded out of the hallway and ran toward the main desk.

  A young officer with his hat pulled down over his eyes dozed in a chair, his feet propped on something beneath the counter.

  “Hey!” Sullivan yelled, and had the presence of mind to holster his weapon as he approached. The guard started and batted his hat up his forehead. “I need help, I just shot a prisoner in the hallway!” Sullivan skidded to a stop, his hands grasping the corners of the large kiosk.

  “What?” The guard looked at him dumbly, as if he’d never seen another person before, much less heard one speak.

  “I was attacked by a prisoner in the hallway and I shot him!” Sullivan waited for something to register behind the younger man’s eyes, and when he made no move for the phone near his right hand, Sullivan reached across the desk and gripped him by the collar of his uniform. “I just killed a man in the hallway!” he yelled into the guard’s face. This got the young officer moving, and he dropped the phone twice before bringing up to his head while dialing furiously with the other hand.

  Sullivan turned away from the desk as he heard the guard begin stammering into the phone for help. The clatter of feet running on the other side of the main holding door could be heard, and soon it opened, spewing out a crowd of prison officers into the lobby. Sullivan waved them toward the door on the far side of the room and walked in the same direction. His heart sank when he saw Mooring among them. Sullivan stopped just outside the door and watched as several guards filed through, their guns drawn and their eyes darting left and right. Mooring stopped a few feet from the entrance and made no move to follow the rest of the officers.

  “What’s going on?” Mooring asked.

  “I was attacked by Henry Fairbend and was forced to shoot him in the hallway. There was something—” Inside of him, Sullivan almost finished. Mooring raised his eyebrows under the bill of his ever-present hat. “There was something wrong with him,” Sullivan said instead. “I woke up a few minutes ago and agent Stevens was missing from our room. When I went to look for him, Fairbend attacked me.”

  “So you shot him? You couldn’t just restrain him? Yell and wait for help?” Mooring’s eyes darkened. Sullivan detected no compassion on his face. In fact, he saw suspicion rising.

  “Yell for help? No one heard the two fucking shots I fired, and I should have y
elled for help?” Sullivan imagined his face becoming a warming burner on a stove, his anger twisting a knob inside him to high.

  “I’m gonna need your weapon,” Mooring said, holding out a palm.

  “Fuck off,” Sullivan replied. The words were automatic, as a snapshot of Fairbend’s mouth straining open to accommodate whatever had been inside him flashed through Sullivan’s mind. Still inside him. Sullivan’s eyes widened. He had to warn the guards. He made a sudden move toward the door, groping for his keycard, and saw Mooring pull his own sidearm free. Sullivan stopped short and was about to tell the guard that the rest of his team was in trouble when the door burst open from the other side.

  The guards walked back out into the lobby, their narrowed eyes taking in the scene before them. Sullivan stood grasping the plastic card, while Mooring’s handgun pointed directly at his head a few feet away. The last person to step through the door was a bleary-eyed David Andrews. The warden wore a plain blue pair of pajama pants, with a threadbare robe tied loosely around his narrow chest and shoulders. To Sullivan, the man looked ten years older than the night before.

  “What’s the meaning of this? Jesus, Agent Shale. What happened to your head?” Andrews asked.

  Only then did Sullivan feel the warm wetness coursing down from the left side of his head and onto his shoulder. As if in a dream, he reached up and touched the spot where he’d been driven into the wall. When he looked at his fingers, they were slick with blood.

  “When Fairbend tackled me, I hit my head,” Sullivan said, rubbing his fingers on his slacks.