by Joe Hart
Sullivan pulled his face back as the bullet sawed through the corner of the cinderblock he hid behind. Chips of paint, concrete, and mortar stung his cheek. He blinked the dust from his eyes and listened. After a moment of indecision, he let out a choked cough and dropped the shotgun. The weapon clattered to the floor, falling into view of the stairway. Sullivan reached behind his back and drew the handgun from his waistband without a sound. A few seconds later, he heard boots coming up the steel stairway, their echoes drawing closer with each step.
Sullivan swung around the corner and sighted down the handgun’s barrel at the guard who was just stepping onto the landing. He had a heartbeat to register the wide eyes of the guard, and then the gun recoiled twice in his hands. The other man issued a strangled yell as the bullets tore through his chest, and he plummeted backward down the stairway. The sickening crunch of bones breaking on steel met Sullivan’s ears as he watched the body’s descent. The guard came to rest face-down on the second landing, his arms groping for purchase on anything within reach, as blood spread out from beneath his chest. Gradually his flailing weakened, and then ceased altogether.
Sullivan tucked the now-heated handgun behind his back once more, picked up the shotgun, and made his way down the stairs. At the corner of the landing, he stepped into view of the lower level, the twelve-gauge held before him. Nothing moved below. The lower level was still and dimly lit. All of the doors to the solitary cells were closed, and only smooth concrete lined the opposite side of the corridor.
Sullivan paused only to nudge the dead guard with his foot before pelting down the stairs. With a glance through the glass porthole of each solitary cell, he proceeded down the line until Alvarez’s death scene came into view. Blood and gore still coated the walls, but the colors had dried to a monochrome of blacks and grays. Bright speckles of bone shards stood out like stars in a night sky. Sullivan walked to the end of the hallway and stopped at the back wall. He turned in a circle, listening to the low hum of the emergency lights, and studied the walls. He made his way back up the row of cells, until he stood at the foot of the stairs. Turning, he scanned the seamless enclosure again. Nothing.
Looking down, he noticed a discolored path on the floor. He knelt and realized what he was looking at. The darkened area down the center of the hall was marks, dirt, and prints from hundreds of shoes treading the same spot. A single-file line. Sullivan stood and followed the path all the way to the far wall, where the footprints terminated in its corner. He looked up and stared at the wall. Licking the palm of his hand, he began to pass it across the concrete, an inch from its surface. He moved to his left, to where the wall met the adjoining surface of Alvarez’s cell.
The moisture on his palm cooled.
He pushed his face closer to the corner and breathed deeply. An odor that reminded him of a bag of mushrooms that had sat too long in the fridge met his nose, a musty, half-rotten smell, and something else. Something tangy and pungent. He’d never smelled anything like it in his life, but couldn’t deny the sinking feeling it gave him in the base of his stomach. The odor inspired fear.
Sullivan stepped back from the corner as an idea struck him like a mallet. With a glance into the last cell, he moved back and gauged the distance between the back wall of the hall and the inside wall of the cell. They didn’t match up.
“You’re brilliant, Everett,” Sullivan whispered, as he put his hand against the corner of the wall and pushed. Nothing happened. He shoved again, expecting the concrete to shift or give in some fashion. Instead, it remained immobile and his feet slid in the dust on the floor. Breathing heavier, he took a step back and scanned the rest of the surroundings. The shoe and boot marks trailed into the wall below his feet. The walls intersecting before him were smooth. Over his head, plumbing and electrical conduits snaked off in multiple directions.
Sullivan squinted into the space above him, at a branch of water pipes. There were three brightly colored shutoffs mounted in the juncture of the pipe system; two were circular and yellow, while the other was a lever painted a vibrant red. He traced the pipes heading off in the direction of the stairway, and then looked more closely at where they originated. Behind the main branch, another, much smaller, pipe led into the wall above the corner he stood before. On its top, hidden by the pipe itself, was a black handle no bigger than one of his fingers. The area around it was devoid of the dust and spider webs, which adorned every other surface in the ceiling.
Sullivan reached up and turned the handle to the right. It moved with the ease of worn use, and there was a clack from directly in front of him. The thin stream of air he’d felt earlier on his palm now brushed his face, the smell from within stronger, urging his heart into a gallop. He gripped the shotgun again in both hands. With a push from the barrel, the false wall swung open, revealing a yawning black rectangle barely two feet across.
A sound like cloth tearing came from his left, and he spun, expecting a horde of infected guards and prisoners to be rushing him. Instead, he saw nothing, and after a moment of listening and watching, he realized what the sound was.
Water poured down the stairway and washed toward him, its edge like that of a sharpened knife. There would be no stopping the flood from moving where it wanted to go; and where it wanted to go, needed to go, was down. Down.
Consciously breathing in one last lungful of semi-pure air, Sullivan ducked his head and stepped into the darkness.
Chapter 12
A metal staircase fell away into the mouth of the earth, and Sullivan descended. The wan light from behind him outlined his shadow and threw a monstrous version of his shape ahead of him. He stopped every few steps to listen, his hearing his most valuable sense in the darkness. The faint rush of water running ever closer from behind him hid all other sounds. Sullivan peered ahead, faint shapes dancing in and out of the penumbra of darkness. He gripped the shotgun so tight, he felt one of his knuckles crack and the sound was loud in the quiet.
He took another step, expecting the stairway to continue, and stumbled, his foot scuffing against solid ground. An extremely damp earthen wall met his searching hand after another stride and he stopped, letting his eyes adjust further. After a moment, he was able to make out rough impressions of the space in which he stood, and he turned, absorbing it.
He was in a tunnel, perhaps twelve feet across. The walls were uneven and lined with chunks of rock, an irregular mosaic composed of quartz and granite. There were places a few yards to either side that had caved in, the ground spilling its organs onto the tunnel’s floor in heaps of sand, stone, and clay. A vertical shape a few feet away made Sullivan’s finger tighten on the trigger, but he quickly realized it was only a steel support pillar, its wide plated ends pressing against the unbearable weight overhead.
He stepped to the side, realizing that the light from the top of the stairs wasn’t sufficient to illuminate the area his eyes were taking in. A faint glow emanated from farther down the tunnel. It lit up a small halo at what he guessed was the end of the passage but he couldn’t be sure from this distance. He also saw that the tunnel dropped off sharply, almost at a forty-five-degree angle. He stepped around the support beam and began to move downward.
The floor was soft beneath his feet as he walked, and every so often he could feel one shoe sink into a footprint of someone who’d trodden in the same spot. He could see more alcoves on both sides, some where the tunnel was partially collapsed and a few that looked like natural pockets in the soil. The sight of the piled earth made Sullivan’s heart quicken. He could imagine the sickening feeling of dirt falling onto his head moments before the entire ceiling crashed down, burying him under its crushing weight, smashing his breath from him, his own personal grave where no one would ever find him.
The light became brighter now. He felt he was nearly halfway down to wherever down was. His heartbeat was still the loudest thing in his ears as he moved around an especially large cave-in on his right side.
A shape came out of the alcove and hit h
im so hard that he heard his teeth crack together. The shotgun flew from his hands and spun away, as he fell onto his side, his head rebounding off the opposite wall. Sullivan twisted underneath the weight above him and felt cold hands trying to grip the tender skin of his throat. He bucked his hips and shifted, grabbing the assailant’s leg. With a shove, Sullivan levered himself into a sitting position and tossed the flailing body off him. He groped at the small of his back, his heart dropping when his hand found only air where Barry’s handgun was moments before. He climbed to his feet, bracing his hand against the wall of the tunnel, as the shape across from him rose at the same time. Sullivan’s hands balled into fists as the shadow moved closer and a face gradually became visible.
Officer Bundy’s grinning visage leered at him through the dead air.
“Fancy meeting you here, Agent,” Bundy sneered, his lips a twisted line above the V of his goatee. Sullivan said nothing, merely circling to his left, his fists at waist height. “I was hoping I’d catch you. The warden said you might be comin’. I thought you wouldn’t be smart enough to figure out the door up there. Proved me wrong though.”
“Where’s Barry?” Sullivan asked, his jaws latched together by anger and adrenaline. Every inch of his body ached from the abuse of the last two days, but he moved steadily in a slow circle around the other man.
“Oh, him? He’s about cashed in. Did us proud, though, served her well. He won’t be remembered for his little part in all this, but I can relay a message.” Bundy leaned forward as dark shapes began to dance out of his open mouth. “She says ‘thank you.’”
Bundy lunged across the space between them, but Sullivan was ready. He lowered his good shoulder and caught the guard low in the stomach, just above the hips. He heard Bundy’s air whoosh out past the tendrils spinning and snapping from his mouth, and the sound gave Sullivan power as he kept pushing, his legs pistoning as he drove the guard into the opposite wall.
Sullivan felt hands scrabbling at his sides for purchase and stinging bites on his upper back, as Bundy’s sharpened appendages lashed out and cut furrows in his flesh. Sullivan turned from the wall and slammed the guard to the ground in a vicious forward toss, relishing the sound of the other man’s head connecting with the earth. A rage Sullivan was unacquainted with before that instant welled up and over him, washing everything away except the will to crush, destroy, and kill. One moment he was holding Bundy down, and then next the heel of his shoe was striking the guard in the face over and over. The tendrils attempted to latch on to Sullivan’s leg, but he pulled back, feeling a few separate from their moorings, and continued to stomp the man’s face. The hard cracks of bone became softer, wetter. Sullivan’s breathing came in ragged gasps, the oxygen fueling the burning anger.
When he felt too tired to raise his foot again, he stepped back and fell to the floor. In the soft glow of the light from below, he could see Bundy’s body and a dark stain on the floor of the tunnel where his head should have been. A few languid tendrils rolled over like dying snakes, and then were still also. A hard object was under Sullivan’s hand, and when he pulled it from the dirt and moved it closer to his face, relief swam warmly through him. There was no mistaking the distinct shape of Barry’s pistol. Sullivan shook the layer of dirt off the gun and wiped it as clean as possible.
A brief search yielded the twelve-gauge near the left wall. He glanced around, expecting another shape to step out from one of the nearby recesses; but when none did, he began to move again, slowly at first, and then with more speed, more urgency. Barry was close, he was sure of it.
Dirt flew up from his heels as he pelted down the tunnel, heedless of the sound his approach might make. The light ahead grew in intensity and he recognized it as halogen, its cold luminosity brightening with each step he took. Soon, the end of the passage was in sight and he slowed his pace, rocks and sand cascading past him. He blinked and swallowed bile that rose with the renewed smell he’d first detected at the top of the stairs. It was ten times stronger here, rancid and thick. It smelled like unwashed flesh and ammonia. Fear invaded him and urged him to run, the animalistic aggression he’d battered Bundy to death with now telling him to flee. Sullivan bit the inside of his cheek and tasted blood. The pain brought him back and pushed the desire to escape to the wings of his mind. He was close now.
Tentatively, he moved into the mouth of the passage and stopped, stunned beyond movement or thought.
A natural domed chamber opened up beyond the end of the tunnel, soaring seventy feet overhead and spanning two football fields in either direction. Massive stalactites hung like black icicles from the ceiling, in some places brushing the floor with their tips. The floor of the cave was relatively smooth, with a few rough platforms composed of a grayish rock. Two unevenly hewn steps dropped away several yards inside the room, and boulders of all sizes lay strewn about like a giant’s toys amidst the shadows cast by three enormous work lights. Inside the ring of lights, some fifty yards away, sat a long and low contraption, the likes of which Sullivan had never seen before. It was rectangular and made from what looked to be yellowing sheet metal. A fluted cylinder helixed by stainless-steel support struts extended from the far end, which pointed into the center of the cave. A thick shield made from some transparent material rested at its rear and a complex array of controls sat below it. Sullivan could make out a crosshatch design on the shield, which lined up with the barrel in front of it.
Beyond the machine lay a sea of humanity.
Hundreds of people, nearly all men, milled around in huge groups. Sullivan could hear murmurs of conversation and laughter at times. It looked to him like a congregation before a sermon. He saw a few men shaking hands and smiling as they nodded and hugged one another. Until then, there had been a part of Sullivan that hadn’t wanted to believe, couldn’t believe it was true. As irrational as it seemed after all that he’d witnessed, he’d hoped that he’d find nothing for his troubles. But the sight below him confirmed everything Andrews told him. Guards mingled with inmates, nodding at them and congratulating them. Sullivan’s mind rebelled against the last, most horrifying thought: if everything else was truly real, then where was she?
He scanned the room from top to bottom, but could see nothing that resembled the indistinct form he’d glimpsed the day before. His eyes crawled across an area several yards away from the mouth of the passage and he stopped dead, the saliva in his mouth evaporating.
Barry lay naked on the ground, his face upturned toward Sullivan, his eyes closed. Sullivan tried to swallow, and then glanced around the chamber. None of the people below seemed to be looking in the direction of the tunnel. Sullivan laid the shotgun on the floor and crouched, his eyes scanning the crowd just to be sure. Blocking out all other thoughts, he scurried out of the passage and into the light of the cave. His legs burned from exhaustion, along with his wounds, but he kept moving until he was at Barry’s side. In the moment it took him to grasp his friend beneath the armpits and drag him the few yards back into darkness, Sullivan tried not to think about how light Barry was. When they’d arrived at Singleton, Barry weighed at least 250 pounds. The man he carried now felt a hundred pounds lighter.
The opening to the tunnel closed over them, shrouding them in comforting darkness, but Sullivan kept pulling, glancing over his shoulder and locating a deep recess in the wall. He pulled Barry inside and gently rested his shrunken body on the ground. Sullivan gazed at his friend, too stunned to even move for a time.
Barry’s skin was alabaster, and Sullivan couldn’t help but think of the corpses in the vampire flicks he’d seen as a kid, all of them whiter than snow, drained completely of blood. There was no trace of the sunburn the other man had suffered. His face was a skull, and the skin, once plump and healthy, was now drawn tight across angular bones, the eyes sunken in their sockets beneath limp eyelids. Barry’s belly was a loose bag and his legs were stick thin, the kneecaps popping out obscenely like two stones beneath a sheet. He’d lost all of his hair, and the only color
in his entire body was where blood welled from beneath his fingernails. His chest did not move.
Sullivan drew in a shaking breath and sat beside his friend, the muscles in his legs finally giving out. Tears sprang to his eyes and he wiped at them absently, trying to deny the reality before him. What had happened to him? What could do this to a man in less than twenty-four hours? A vision of a massive spider sucking the insides out of its prey came to Sullivan’s mind and he flung it away, nearly gagging.
“What the fuck? My God. What happened to you?” Sullivan asked, reaching out to touch Barry’s shoulder. The flesh was spongy and as cold as stone. Sullivan drew his hand back and shook his head, already imagining what he would have to tell Barry’s wife, what she would have to tell their children. And it was his fault, again.
Sullivan felt the hope he’d held out for finding Barry alive crumble, and he began to cry. Between tears he tried to speak. “I’m so sorry, man. So sorry. … I wanted to help so bad, to find you, but I couldn’t. … Jesus, I’m so sorry. I’m always too late.” Sullivan dragged an arm across his eyes, his voice choked. A thought floated up from the darkest part of his mind, the part he normally kept locked tight, and he spoke without contemplating why it came to him now. “I think you knew Rachel killed herself. I never told you, but I think you knew. She was so troubled and we fought for so long, but it finally won. The problems in her head were too much for her, and I understood, I did. I couldn’t imagine what she went through every day, and drinking sometimes helped, but most times it didn’t.”