Voices of the Void

by David V. Stewart

  Andrew was looking out from a window upon a scene of fire and carnage. A city was in ruins. Soon another lord would be freed. He laughed with pleasure. Gladness and satisfaction spread through his mind, tingling his body.

  Andy laughed as the vision subsided.

  He heard the voice of Dalrathag, omnipresent, soothing, “My servant, you shall be whole.”

  “As you will it,” Andy said.

  Pain, and then a fleeting wondering – do you remember pain in the space of nonexistence? Andrew realized the fractured psyche he had carefully formed was being folded in on itself.

  Black nothingness enveloped his mind. Cold fingers twisted into fragile memories.

  Then a little light appeared at the center and began to grow. It coalesced into form He was staring at a hand. His own ungloved hand.

  He saw another hand move past his, and slam into a big red button. He turned his head to look upon the hard face of Mariela. She looked at him, alarmed. The machine to his right began to quiet, the digging apparatus at the front grinding slowly to a stop.

  He clenched his hand into a fist and turned around. Mariela had her back to him now, her shotgun held at the ready.

  Shadows were coming in from beyond the halo of light. Sound was returning – footsteps echoed around them as the machine wound down.

  “It was a vision,” he said. He tried to focus, but inside he was screaming wordlessly against his past self, and he felt sick with the echoes of Andy’s bloody lust. He reached in his pocket for the grenade he held there, to end things. He was too close to madness now. But then, Mariela was still alive.

  A vision returned to him – he was alone in his ship. His fingers hesitated on the grenade. He cursed himself for not knowing which mind was sending it, past or future, or what he were trying to say.

  A shadow turned into a person, running straight for Andrew, and Mariela fired. The attacker flopped forward, twitching. Another came in, and she fired again. She hit it somewhere on the side, but the faceless figure came on.

  Andrew broke his paralysis. He took his hand out of his pocket and began firing. He put the closest one down quickly, then began firing into each moving shadow beyond the dusty lights. He didn’t know how many he hit.

  “We need to get moving,” Andrew said. “We have to get out of here.”

  He strode forward. His prescience was not presenting him any information, perhaps tired from the exhaustive, years-long vision he had just lived. Andrew was too on edge to feel real fear about his blindness. He just knew he had to move forward.

  As he got further away from the machine, his eyes adjusted, and he could see more people. They were milling about further up the tunnel, as if coordinating. He remembered the ones down here had minds that were more intact.

  “Wait,” he said, turning back. “They’ll be able to start it again. Dalrathag will be able to command them.”

  Mariela gave him an incredulous look as he removed the grenade from his pocket.

  “We have to disable it permanently.” He adjusted the electronic fuse on the grenade so it would no longer explode instantly. He flipped the switch and threw it under the tread of the machine. “Run!”

  He grabbed Mariela’s elbow and pushed her forward, toward the swirling darkness and the figures beyond.

  The grenade exploded, sooner than Andrew had intended. The blast threw both of them forward and covered them with a shower of small rocks and dust from above. Andrew helped Mariela up only to find a hand gripping the muzzle of his rifle, trying to twist it away.

  Mariela fired on the attacker, knocking him away and showering both of them with a sudden deluge of blood. Andrew’s visor was almost completely obscured by the gore. Desperately, he pressed the button at his neck to open it up.

  They were surrounded by grimaced, dusty faces. Empty eyes.

  Andrew panicked and shot wildly around himself. Mariela, he saw in his periphery, was retreating, her shotgun empty. He backed up toward her as he fired, desperately trying to aim with shaky hands and an overwhelming fear. He suddenly clicked empty.

  “Mariela!” he shouted, running back and dropping the empty magazine. He fumbled a fresh one, but managed to get it in and release the bolt of the rifle. He turned again and fired at nothing he could see.

  He was back at the machine. Mariela was nowhere to be seen. His heart fell as he looked upon the digging machine. His grenade had failed to do anything of significance. The heavy chassis was blackened, but the treads were intact.

  He turned his head back at a cry from the hazy dark. He shouldered his rifle. His attackers were moving about, but his wild retaliation had stalled them. He heard the vocalization again, almost a scream.

  A woman’s scream.

  “Mariela!”

  He ran toward the scream, which was distinctly audible now that the machine had ceased its endless grinding. Through the settling dust, he could see figures moving; they were clearly as confused as he was in the bright, yet obscured, light, unable to hear his passing due to the deafness they endured.

  A withered man reared up before Andrew’s eyes. He barreled into the surprised thrall, checking him with the side of his rifle’s receiver and sending him flying to the floor. The impact nearly knocked the wind from Andrew, but he scrambled on, trying to find the source of the scream. Just as suddenly, he saw the kneeling form of Mariela looking out into the darkness, her flashlight off.

  Of course, they ignored her, they’re looking for me, he thought.

  He managed to stop and stoop beside her. Mariela, with a guttural note of fear, reached over and turned off Andrew’s light. She then stood and guided him back along the wall, back away from the lights. Andrew looked back and as his eyes adjusted he could see more clearly the slaves of the wrtla moving together, fanning out into a net. They vocalized softly, wordlessly, like some imitation, or mockery, of babies. It was unlikely they could hear each other, but in the silence, the growing line of coos and grunts sounded like the song of insanity – the wrtla singing through grim, grey lips while it moved its toys about.

  “You’re right,” Andrew said. “They can’t hear us, but they can see us. This way, along the wall.”

  Andrew turned with Mariela and they felt their way up the tunnel, pushing themselves against the rough stone each time they heard the footsteps of one of the damned running past them, heeding the call of the master below. This happened with decreasing regularity, but no matter how long between the sounds, he and Mariela went as quietly as possible, just so that they could hear them. Andrew wondered if there were people down in the dark who could still hear. He did his best to still his breathing and avoid speaking.

  Some amount of time later (it was hard to judge either distance or time while blind, and Andrew dared not check his computer for the hour, lest they be revealed by its light) they came upon the second cavern. Andrew discovered it when his feet ran into something heavy, yet soft, and he knew it was a body. They paused there, and Andrew considered crossing to the other side, blindly, or stepping through the bodies. He heard Mariela tap him and vocalize a wordless question behind him.

  “We’re at the cavern where the children… where we found the plant manager. We’re going to have to cross blind here. Hold my hand.” Andrew slung his rifle and took out his plasma gun. He reached back to feel Mariela’s hand, then began to cross, shuffling slowly. He reached another body and, not knowing how to go back, tried to step over it.

  He misjudged the distance and stepped on the far side of its ribcage. The body was significantly butchered and decomposed, and the ribs snapped under his weight, sending his boot down onto a bone, which rolled under him. He slipped and put a hand under himself. Ungloved, it ripped through some soft sinew and entered a cavity. The stench of rotting meat assailed him, and he didn’t bother trying to stop himself from vomiting his meager stomach contents.

  Even while he threw up, he pushed himself erect. He wiped his hand on his suit, then reached back for Mariela, who had let go of him.
>
  “Find my hand.” He snapped a few times, then felt relief as her hand closed on his, slightly resistant to the wetness. “I’m sorry.”

  Andrew helped Mariela over the body, and then they shuffled into a pile of bones. Not caring about the noise, they pushed through into empty, rough stone floor. After what felt like a long time scraping their feet along the floor, they reached the other wall.

  “I think it’s this way,” Andrew said, pulling Mariela to his left. “At least it feels like it’s going up.” He chewed his cheek, hoping that he had not lost his bearings in the fall and wasn’t taking Mariela back toward the digging machine and the waiting creatures.

  The blackness stretched on. They passed noises of varying kinds: footsteps, vocalizing, talking with words, speech in a language neither of them recognized, snorting and snoring, and finally, the worst of all, the wet and sickening sounds of dining. All of them they passed by, and Andrew began to feel optimistic despite the horror of it all.

  Then he heard, far below, the sound of the digging machine. Somebody among the hell thrall of the wrtla had enough capacity to start it back up. Dalrathag had purpose; he did not impose madness for its own sake, it seemed.

  They tried to continue on, but without the sound to warn them, they grew tense. Mariela gripped Andrew’s hand with increasing strength, to the point where he thought, had he a light, he would see marks in his flesh from her fingers and nails.

  “They’ll be heading backward to find us,” he said. “We have to run for it.” His heart leapt as he said this, his body finally responding to the brooding, sickening fear he had felt for so long in the dark.

  Mariela paused, then squeezed Andrew’s hand. She released him and flipped on her flashlight. Andrew did the same for the built-in light on his plasma gun. They looked around. They were somewhere in the tunnel, but they had no idea how far. They were indeed heading up, and that made Andrew feel relieved. He checked his computer on his wrist.

  “I can pick up the wireless network signal from here. We’ll definitely get back soon.”

  Mariela nodded.

  They broke into a run. The incline was steeper than it seemed, and soon both of them were panting for breath. Andrew’s suit felt stifling. He could feel a stream of sweat running down the back of his neck and pooling against his undershirt. They encountered nothing until they reached the point where the tunnels converged.

  There, as their tunnel met the others, where the sodium lights remained in their eternal orange vigil, was a mass of people spread out into a long, tight line blocking the way forward.

  They were men and women, all hunched and drawn thin. They weren’t emaciated, but rather wretched – beings of deformed skin and musculature, made to function brutally rather than with beauty. The women seemed to lose their femininity, their sex determined as much by their old dress as any other feature. Their mouths were overlarge and darkened from their vile meals of flesh, and gaped as Andrew and Mariela approached.

  Andrew did not wait for a battle plan; He strode toward the line and fired a bright white shot of plasma into the closest creature. It twisted away, its flesh burned and ripped apart by the energy of the blast. Andrew fired again, and again, but the creatures maintained some semblance of discipline. The wrtla was being liberal with his pawns, but he was still executing a strategy.

  Andrew regretted throwing away the grenade when he did as the line of wicked moaning creatures became a semi-circle hemming them in.

  Mariela joined him, firing in the same direction. The line was close enough for the buckshot to do its magic, ripping soft flesh and maiming, even killing. She stayed to Andrew’s side as they counter-advanced. When a man fell, the space was immediately filled, leaving a pile of dead bodies between Andrew and Mariela and the freedom beyond.

  Andrew’s plasma gun clicked empty, and he dropped the battery out and replaced it, then continued the carnage. An idea struck him.

  “Cover your eyes!” he shouted as he put his arm across his own face. He used an old flaw of his plasma gun – he flipped the safety halfway on, which only slightly impeded the venting of the raw, hot matter from the gun. He pointed the gun up and forced the trigger down. It fired a shot of burning hot nitrogen in a cone above him, a burst far brighter than a single projectile burning through air.

  Andrew uncovered his eyes and saw the thrall were recoiling in blindness. He pointed his gun to fire, but found that the shot had destroyed the breech. He threw the weapon hard to his right, where it hit a stooped woman. The thrall began to move toward her.

  “Now!” Andrew said, bringing his rifle back around. He charged the line, waiting to fire until he was close enough to see the blind hollow eyes of his enemy. Rapidly, he killed three people. Mariela joined him, gunning down two that stood behind. Before they could fall, Andrew charged into them, knocking them down and bursting through the line.

  Mariela screamed and Andrew turned back. One of the dying slaves had caught her ankle, as if suddenly realizing her existence. In their blindness, she was suddenly a thing to be noticed through touch. She had dropped her shotgun and was trying to draw the pistol tucked in her waistband. He stepped over a body and fired three times, killing the monster, but it had served its master well. Two more men gripped her legs. Andrew went to fire again, and found the rifle empty. He quickly checked his bag. He was out of ammo.

  He hurled the useless weapon forward, striking one of the blind men, then he picked up the shotgun and fired the last three shots. Mariela at the same time fired into the closest man, emptying her magazine. Blood blackened by the artificial light poured in torrents, baptizing Mariela in sanguine horror. One thrall, unwilling to die, clung to her leg still, despite having most of its face ripped away by the pistol. A single blind eye stared up into the abyss from the part that remained. Andrew stepped forward and kicked the eye, breaking what remained of the skull. The thing twitched, but clung on in a kind of rigor mortis.

  Andrew bent down and wrenched Mariela free, dragging her to her feet. She limped along beside him, running full out now from the hellthrall that followed behind, blind and dumb, but guided by a will that at the least could sense part of Andrew’s mind.

  As they ran, they could hear others joining the chase from some other corridor. They looked back to see eyes that had vision, and steps that had purpose. Even the blind were running wild now, guided by the intelligence below, which saw through the failing eyes of his puppets.

  Finally, they reached the landing where the lifts were. By some grace beyond Andrew’s understanding, the area was vacant. The wrtla had neglected to guard the final retreat, or else had deemed it unnecessary for his purposes. The lift car stood open, a white light in the eternal darkness, a fragment of color in unending umber-tinted horror.

  “You get it moving,” Andrew panted as they flew into the car. He quickly picked up his regular rifle and began firing at the approaching mob. It almost didn’t matter now, nothing would stop them, but Andrew fired on. He emptied the magazine and threw a fresh one in. He toggled over to full auto and sprayed the ugly faces as they grew close, close enough Andrew could almost smell their rotting breath. He went empty again and reloaded.

  Then the lift door closed. Andrew fired a single shot into the door. The tempered sapphire glass cracked as it caught the bullet, but did not shatter. A group of thrall slammed into the doors, rocking the car, but it was already moving. They slid off as the lift car moved into the dark tunnel. The monsters were leaping off the landing, scrambling through the tunnel in a mad attempt to catch them. Then the car slid over the abyss, rocking slightly as it ground along the track.

  In the dim light, they watched bodies spill over into nothingness. Then the car went around a bend in the stone, and over a chasm.

  They were alone in the dark once more.

  “Take us straight to the main complex,” Andrew said, leaning against the side of the car. “Don’t stop anywhere on the way.”

  Mariela pointed to Andrew’s gun, then held up
four fingers.

  “Not worth it. I have a few rounds left. There’s bound to be a security station in the main compound anyway.” He took a breath and looked at his hands. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the outside of his suit, which did little. Suddenly, the sweat felt cold. “I think the further away they get, the less they can understand. It’s why your… the ones… in sector five, were so far gone. Who knows how many people are left, but I know nobody in the main area bothered to attack me, if anyone remained.”

  Mariela shook her head. She retrieved her notebook. There’s nobody left there. I checked.

  “Good. We’ll be safe. Hopefully, I’ll be able to disable the atmospheric generators.” He caught Mariela’s eye. “No, it’s unlikely they’ll use up all the oxygen, but we have to do something. We can’t let them free the wrtla.”

  She nodded and wrote, Better than nothing.

  They approached the sector four landing. A cluster of people stood on the landing, in the space where the cars passed, and on the rail above. The car didn’t slow as it slammed into the crowd. Andrew brought his sights up and watched as bodies rolled over the windows, knocked down by the lift’s running mechanism above. One of the thrall landed on top of the car. It swayed as it left the landing and moved back out into the dark. Andrew could just see the person above, struggling to move around and gain entry to the car.

  Mariela was standing beside him; her pistol had apparently been abandoned and forgotten. Slowly, the person, withered and hollow-eyed, reached down toward the seam in the door. The glass was bulletproof; waiting for him to penetrate the doors to fire was agonizing. The monster lost some sense of footing and slipped down, falling away from the car into darkness.

  Andrew relaxed and lowered his rifle.

  They were out over the biggest abyss now, the running lights on the track the only way to tell they were going uphill. Suddenly, they saw the lights further up going black, one at a time.

  “What?” Andrew said, squinting. His question was answered a few moments later when the other lift car came rushing by.