Forsaken

by Michael McBride

  “You did your best,” Tess said from behind her, and placed what she’d surely meant to be a comforting hand on Moira’s shoulder, but she shrugged it off.

  “The wound was too deep. It went nearly all the way through.”

  All around her: the sounds of panicked whispering, crying, and desperation.

  “What are we going to do with him now?” someone asked.

  “He just died, for Christ’s sake,” Avila said. “So did Agent Young, who gave his life so that all of us might have a chance to live. Show some respect.”

  Moira hung her head and released the tears she’d been fighting to contain.

  “He can’t stay in here with us,” Love said. She reached out for Avila and momentarily hesitated before resting her hand on the smaller woman’s arm. “We should move him outside before . . . you know . . .”

  “We open that hatch and those things will be down here in a heartbeat.”

  “Blankets,” Moira said. She continued to stare at her hands as though they belonged to someone else. “Grab some of those silver space blankets.”

  The first-aid blankets were made from polyethylene terephthalate foil and designed to prevent hypothermia and stave off the early effects of shock. The airtight foil served to reduce heat loss caused by the evaporation of perspiration or massive bleeding, but in this case, would hopefully at least slow the process of decomposition until they could find a better solution.

  Russo dropped several blankets beside her. She looked down at them for several seconds before somehow making her hands reach for them.

  “Let me help you,” Roche said.

  He unfolded one of the blankets and draped it over Harrison’s body.

  It had been at Moira’s insistence that Barnett stocked the space blankets down here. She figured that if they ever had to use the vault, a large number of them would be suffering from shock. Now she had to wonder if it wasn’t just a matter of time before they were all laid to rest beneath them.

  36

  KELLY

  The vault was roughly the same size as the building above it. The back third was walled off to house the standby generators, which produced a constant vibration Kelly could feel through the floor. The scent of the liquid propane that powered them permeated the entire subterranean complex, despite the vents that shunted the exhaust to the surface. The bulk of the space served as communal living quarters and was filled with folding cots, where the injured rested alongside those working through the various stages of shock. Shelves filled with emergency rations, blankets, and myriad supplies lined the walls beside drums of potable water. There was a constant grating din of whimpering and crying, beneath which lurked the droning buzz of the emergency lights. The majority of what she had come to think of as the military personnel were gathered in the adjacent room, hopefully figuring out how to get them out of there before she started to lose her mind.

  There were thirty-three of them in the vault, thirty-four if you counted the agent who had bled out on the stairs, although they’d moved his body into the generator room. Moira had tried valiantly to save him and yet nothing she did stemmed the flow of blood. Roche sat on a cot near the door of the command center in hopes of overhearing something. Kelly and Moira sat across from him. From time to time, they heard shouting through the wall, but not clearly enough to make out the words.

  “What happens from here?” Roche asked.

  “We await emergency retrieval.” Tess clenched and unclenched her hands as though she were losing feeling in them. She breathed slowly, in through her nose and out through her mouth. “That’s all I know.”

  “No one’s coming for us.” Moira didn’t look at any of them when she spoke. She just continued to rub water onto her hands and scrape at her cuticles, seemingly unable to scour away the last of the dead agent’s blood. “Not with those things out there. It would be a suicide mission.”

  “Then we need to get to the elevator,” Roche said. “We can barricade ourselves in the power station on the surface and they can airlift us from the roof.”

  “You think they can’t get up there? They were hanging upside down from the ice dome, for Christ’s sake.”

  “We can’t just stay down here,” Kelly said. “Eventually we’re going to have to do something.”

  “Someone will come,” Tess said.

  “Are you willing to stake your life on it?” Roche asked.

  “At least whatever those things are can’t get to us down here.”

  Kelly hoped Tess was right. They thought they’d been safe in the research station six months ago, too, but the creatures had used the air ducts as a conduit to reach them wherever they went. At least it looked as though Barnett had learned his lesson in that regard, though. The vents were mounted high on the concrete walls, near the ceiling, and couldn’t have been much larger than the ones in her house back home. There was no way anything large enough to hurt them was getting through there.

  The hatch appeared solid, too. It latched with a wheel like the airlock of a submarine and utilized an electromagnetic locking mechanism that couldn’t be opened from the outside as long as the power still flowed. If what they said was true and the generators would last several months, they would likely run out of food and water long before that happened.

  “I’m going to find out what’s going on,” Roche said.

  He stood and headed for the door to the command center. Kelly was at his side when he opened it.

  She took in the room at a glance. A table ran the length of the rear wall. Rows of monitors displaying rolling views of the base, both inside and out, were mounted above it. A row of automatic rifles like the ones the men aboard the Aurora Borealis had carried lined a rack to her left. A half-dozen individual computer stations led to a radio transceiver. There were only nine men in the room, all of them too distracted to even notice that the door had opened.

  Barnett sat at the desk with his back to Kelly, his fingertips pressed to his temples.

  “So how many are we talking about, Agent Avila?” he asked.

  “Our best estimates are anywhere between eight and twelve,” she said.

  “There’s a big difference between eight and twelve. See if you can narrow that down. Do we at least know what we’re dealing with yet?”

  “I managed to get a screen-grab of one of them inside Building Four,” a woman with shoulder-length blond hair said. “The resolution’s distorted by the zoom and it’s too dark to get a clear look, but it gives us a good idea of scale.”

  She pressed a button on her remote control and the center image changed. The legs of the animal on the screen were blurred by motion, but enough of it remained in focus that they could see its outline. It was roughly the same length as the toppled chair behind it. Its back was a horizontal line from its snout to the tip of its tail. Quill-like protuberances jutted from its head and neck and bristled from its tail.

  “It looks like a freaking dragon,” Barnett said.

  “Only a fraction of the size,” the woman said.

  “Don’t let its size deceive you, Agent Love. Those things took out some of our best men.”

  “Speaking of whom . . .”

  She switched to a different camera. Kelly recognized the main building—the one they called Midnight—by the isolation suits hanging on the wall and the long table in the center of the room, which had been tipped onto its side. The computer monitors lay shattered on the ground amid a riot of toppled chairs and electronic components. The front door stood wide open. Several enormous teardrop-shaped sacs hung from the ceiling, obstructing the view of the remainder of the room. Kelly didn’t have the slightest idea what they were until she watched the silhouette of a creature emerge from the top of one and caught a glimpse of a man’s face inside.

  She gasped and everyone in the room turned to look at her.

  “You can’t be in here,” Avila said, and strode directly toward them.

  “We know how to track them,” Kelly said. Avila looked at Barnett,
who gestured for Kelly to proceed. “At least one of them, anyway.”

  “Close the door,” Barnett said.

  Avila stepped behind Kelly and did as he asked.

  “One of them swallowed someone named Bly’s RFID beacon. We saw it on the computer.”

  Barnett nodded to Love, who crossed the room to one of the computer stations and brought up the map. The beacon still glowed from somewhere right above their heads.

  “You’re certain that’s not Bly?” Love said.

  “If it is, he’s undoubtedly inside one of those cocoons,” Roche said. “They’re just like the nest you found with your missing man, aren’t they?”

  “You’ve been talking to Dr. Murphy,” Barnett said.

  “She seemed to think there was only one of those creatures. There’s definitely a whole lot more than that now.”

  “You have a talent for stating the obvious.”

  “As you do for overlooking it. She described those sacs as nests, and what are nests if not vessels for rearing offspring? You want to know how there got to be so many of them? The answer’s staring you right in the face.”

  Barnett turned and faced the monitors. There were several other nests hanging in any number of the other rooms.

  “If we wait down here much longer,” Roche said, “this entire place is going to be crawling with them.”

  “How fast can they possibly breed?”

  “You tell me. You went from one to at least eight in a matter of days.”

  “Call for evacuation,” Barnett said without turning around.

  “You mean you haven’t already done so?” Kelly nearly screamed. “Are you trying to get us all killed?”

  “We’re safe in here. These walls are more than two feet thick and you couldn’t open that hatch from the outside without bringing down the entire ice dome.” He finally turned to face them. “Trust me. Nothing’s getting in here.”

  37

  ANYA

  Teotihuacan

  Anya heard a wet gasp and felt something grab at her leg. She caught Jade by the sleeve and went under with her. Pulled and kicked toward the surface again. There’d been no time to take a breath, and what little air she had in her chest was already growing stale. She didn’t have enough strength left for both of them, but there was no way she was letting go.

  Evans’s hand brushed against her arm. Wrapped around Jade’s back and against Anya’s thigh. With his help, they struggled back to the surface, both of them coughing until Jade vomited the aspirated fluid.

  If the men hunting them hadn’t known where they were, they sure as hell did now.

  “We have to risk it,” Evans said, and clicked on his light.

  Jade was a shade of pale just this side of the grave. Her hair hung in clumps and even her brilliant green eyes had taken on a grayish cast.

  “They just want what is at the end of the maze,” Villarreal said. “If we give them what they want, they will let us go.”

  “You didn’t see what they did to the people outside the trailer,” Anya said.

  “We have to move fast before they see our light,” Evans whispered.

  He wrapped Jade’s arms around his neck and transferred her weight to his back. His face went under and the light on his helmet diffused into the greenish-brown water. If he said anything more, Anya couldn’t hear it.

  He kicked and propelled himself forward, leaving Jade to keep her mouth above the surface. They turned right, then right again. Anya had to stroke to keep up. A quick left revealed a dead end in the distance. They turned around and swam toward another wall. Veered left and rounded the bend into a straightaway that terminated in a T-intersection. There was no difference in the intonation of the sloshing waves, at least not that she could hear over their splashing and heavy breathing.

  Evans ducked right and accelerated toward a dead end in the distance. There was a single opening to the right, which, if she hadn’t completely lost her bearings, should take them toward the center of the maze. He turned and pulled up suddenly.

  Jade went under, but quickly raised her head. Evans appeared to be struggling with her added weight. Anya could barely see the silhouette of his body through the murky water. It looked like he was only kicking with one leg. She felt warmth on her bare arm and realized exactly what had happened.

  “Oh, my God,” she gasped and swam to Evans’s side.

  She grabbed him by the upper arm and pulled him higher. The aura of his headlamp took on a faint pinkish hue.

  “Help me!” she whispered to Villarreal, who took Evans by the other arm. Jade rolled from his back and did her best to tread on her own.

  “Where are you injured?” Anya asked.

  Evans spoke through bared teeth.

  “Right leg.”

  Anya dove and swam toward where his right leg appeared to be stuck—

  And nearly impaled herself on a foot-long spike. Dozens of them protruded from a planed tree trunk, which leaned diagonally across the passage. A trail of blood drifted from his calf, where a spike had entered through his shin and exited through the meat of his muscle.

  She swam back to the surface. Looked Villarreal dead in the eyes.

  “Get a good grip on him.”

  “What happened?” Villarreal asked.

  Anya ignored him and took Evans by either side of his diving mask.

  “This is going to hurt.” His lips tightened over his teeth. He mustered a nod. “I mean a lot.”

  “Get it over with.”

  She took a breath and dove again. Grabbed his leg. One hand on his knee, the other on his ankle. Pulled straight back.

  His left foot kicked wildly next to her.

  At first, she didn’t think his leg was going to come off the spike, like maybe there was a barb hooked in his flesh, but then it slid backward and released a cloud of blood into the water. She pulled off her shirt from over her bikini top and tied it around the wound. Pulled it tight. Barely caught his other leg before he impaled it, too. Swam for the surface and gasped for air.

  “We need to get him out of here,” she said.

  “Could you tell if it nicked an artery?” Jade asked.

  “No. I mean, I don’t think so.”

  “They’re still coming,” Evans said. “We have to keep moving.”

  “We cannot go on like this,” Villarreal said.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Anya said. She carefully swam around the spiked log, grabbed Evans by his harness, pulled him away from the booby trap, and swam deeper into the maze.

  There was no way they could outrun their pursuit. Not now. Their only option was to find a place to hide and pray they weren’t found.

  Evans grew heavier by the second, although to his credit, he gave it everything he had. Another left, then a right. Right again. She didn’t like having her course dictated to her. She needed to make a decision or they were merely prolonging the inevitable. And they needed to get out of the water. Jade was trying her best, but she wouldn’t make it much farther and there was no way Anya was going to be able to drag Evans indefinitely, not with as quickly as his strength was fading. If they didn’t get out of there soon, someone was going to—

  Anya’s heart stopped. She’d led them into a dead end.

  She closed her eyes and felt her own strength wane. If they turned around now, they’d be swimming right into the teeth of their pursuit, but they couldn’t stay here and tread water for any length of time, either. She opened her eyes and looked for anything they could hold onto. A crack in the wall. The edges of a brick. Anything at all.

  The wall against which the corridor terminated was unlike the others. It was made of a single block of chiseled granite, which didn’t fit perfectly against the walls. It was smaller and, now that she really looked at it, seemed completely out of place. She followed its smooth face up toward the roof—

  “Up there.” There was a slim gap above the stone block. And a dark recess in the ceiling into which it had once fit. It was a booby trap
meant to fall on someone’s head, or maybe just block the passage. Perhaps even the same one Evans had tripped earlier. “Hurry!”

  She boosted Evans as high as she could, driving herself underwater in the process.

  He grabbed the upper lip and pulled. She pushed against his rear end until he was able to slide through the opening and drag his injured leg up onto the stone block.

  Villarreal pushed past Jade and climbed up beside Evans, who reached down to help Jade up. With the last of her energy, Anya reached as high as she could, secured a grip on the ledge, and pulled. The others grabbed her by the arms and helped her squeeze through the narrow gap and into the tight recess.

  Evans killed his light and the darkness swallowed them.

  “We cannot stay here,” Villarreal whispered.

  “Shh!” Jade whispered.

  “Cade is injured and the rest of us are exhausted.”

  Anya found Villarreal’s hand and squeezed it. She hoped he got the message.

  A faint glow spread across the water below them. Anya could see the outlines of their feet and ankles. If their pursuers shined their light directly at them and looked up, they would be impossible to miss.

  Water shushed against the block. The light brightened by degree.

  Anya held her breath.

  The light grew brighter and brighter until she could see the makeshift bandage on Evans’s calf. Blood overflowed from the saturated cloth and dribbled to the stone, where it pooled before trickling over the edge and down the front of the massive block. It was going to give them away, but there was nothing they could do about it now.

  The sloshing sounds became louder. The light brightened to such an extent that she could see the fear on the faces of the others, mere inches from her own.

  “Dead end,” a voice said from maybe ten feet away.

  Anya bit her lip to keep from crying out. If the men looked up, it was all over.

  The light dimmed.

  The men were turning around.

  “I cannot do this anymore,” Villarreal said.