by North, Geoff
“Trot isn’t an animal,” Cobe said.
“Nope, but he thinks like one sometimes.” They were back at the stairwell door. The blood on the floor had already started to dry. “Good to check things out here first…Make sure whatever it was makin’ all that noise hadn’t snuck through. We’re alone.”
Willem didn’t look convinced. “Maybe that whatever-thing already done Trot in. Maybe it ripped his head off before he had the chance to call for help. Maybe it’s looking at us right now, ready to jump.”
“You smell piss or shit?”
Both boys shook their heads.
“Then we’re alone.” He indicated the door handle with the end of his gun and whispered to Cobe. “Open the door. You won’t have to hold the button down while we’re on the inside. Do it fast and jump back. Things might get messy if there’s somethin’ on the other side.”
Cobe saw blood on the handle. He gripped it and prepared.
Lawson raised his eyebrows a few seconds later. “It’s now or never, son. Ain’t none of us growin’ younger while you look fer courage.”
Cobe wanted to spit in his face. Lawson had allowed his parents to be murdered. He had looked disgusted when Cobe refused to carry a gun. It was the same look hanging off his face now. Disgusted, disappointed. Cobe turned the handle and kicked the door open. If the air hinge on top hadn’t worked, the whole thing would’ve crashed into the wall on the other side of the stairwell. He jumped back, plugged his ears with his fingers, and waited for the explosive crack of the lawman’s gun.
Lawson pulled his arm down so he could hear. “All clear.”
They climbed the stairs slowly, following the trail of red droplets. Lawson got a few steps ahead. Willem poked Cobe in the back and whispered, “What’s wrong with you? Why you actin’ all afraid?”
It wasn’t an act, and it was more than fear. “Sick of the way that old fuck looks at me, all accusing-like.” He whispered the words so quietly he wasn’t sure Willem had heard. When they reached the landing of the next level, Willem whispered back, “You already kicked him in the nuts. You ain’t no coward in his eyes, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Cobe’s little brother was a whole lot wiser than his years let on.
Lawson put a finger to his lips for silence—he’d more than likely heard everything that was said—and leaned against the bent door frame of Level XYZ.
“Gawdamn,” Willem uttered when he saw the dented door lying on the floor inside. “Somethin’ busted through hard, and it wasn’t Trot.”
Cobe spotted a streak of blood on the floor that ran into the open elevator shaft. “Looks like he went in here.” He peered down, expecting to see the man’s busted body over thirty feet below. There was cracked concrete and bundles of metal rope hiding in the shadows. No Trot.
“Careful.” The lawman placed a hand on Cobe’s shoulder and pulled him back gently. How could the man make him feel so rotten one minute, then actually appear to care the next? Lawson leaned into the shaft, saw something Cobe hadn’t, and looked up. “He grabbed onto the cables, dropped some, and climbed back.”
“How far?” Cobe asked.
“Hard to tell. Some ways, I reckon. His blood keeps on goin’, up into the dark.” Lawson shook his head. “Must be hurtin’ like hell.”
Willem whimpered. “Whatta we do? We’re not leaving without him, are we?”
Lawson wanted to, Cobe could tell. He looked down at Willem and rolled his dead, gray eyes. “We’ll check the next two levels on the way back up. After that, we’re outta here…Trot or no Trot.”
Willem was about to protest some more but his words were cut off by a piercing scream. All three turned and saw the howler rounding a corner less than twenty feet away. The gun fired before it closed half the distance between them. Cobe saw the creature’s leg blast in two pieces at the knee. It dropped to its hands and moved even faster. The last few seconds dragged—before Cobe’s eyes—in slow motion as it collided into the lawman.
The howler’s nails tore into Lawson’s shoulders. The gun fell from his fingers and clattered against the floor. They collapsed to the tiles in a twisted mess of snarling teeth, pounding fists, and slashing gray nails.
So much blood in such a short amount of time, Cobe thought dumbly. The floor was already pooled in it, the elevator doors and walls spattered and dripping with dark red. A limb kicked out violently—Cobe wasn’t sure if it belonged to howler or human—and caught Willem in the thigh. He watched his brother fall back into the shaft and disappear. Cobe’s mind struggled through the fog it was lost in—the howler’s screams brought him back to full awareness.
It was too late for the lawman; Cobe couldn’t have helped him if he tried. The howler had surely torn Trot to shreds as well. That left only Cobe and Willem—as it had been when they first set away from Burn, while their Pa was still swinging from the tree.
Cobe leapt into the shaft after his brother, and darkness claimed him.
Chapter 15
Trot didn’t give any thought to exploring the corridors of locked doors on Level W. He needed to get out of this place. Badly. And the only way out was up. He climbed level after level, up past the T, S, and R floors. Trot couldn’t read—he didn’t even know what letters were—but so long as he kept climbing, he knew he had a chance. His hands didn’t hurt so much anymore; the fingers had curled in and gone numb. Only a throbbing pulse in the tips let him know they were there at all. He could no longer use them to drag himself along the rail; his stupid licking legs were all he had left to rely on, but they were getting the job done. Slowly but surely, Trot was working his way out of Big Hole.
When he came to Level E, he discovered the door opened wide. A green light was pulsing down the long corridor. Why is this door open? Where is the pretty light coming from? It comforted him, that steady, green strobe. It beckoned him. Maybe he would find someone here, someone without long, curled toenails and gouged-out eyes. Maybe they would bandage his ravaged hands and give him water to drink.
Perhaps the light was a signal from the lawman. He might be farther down that long, green-pulsing corridor with Willem and Cobe, waiting for Trot to find them. Trot didn’t want to disappoint the lawman. He was probably in big enough trouble as it was, for leaving the lower levels. Trot wanted to show the three he could be smart, too. He took three lurching steps, and the woman from the other corridors and locked doors spoke:
“Installation compromised…Eichberg, Lothair cylinder reactivated…awaiting further thaw and evac procedure orders.”
“Hello?” Trot called out feebly. Where was she? How did she manage to be in so many places and still sound so calm and rested? Her voice was soft-spoken and comforting. If she wasn’t afraid, maybe she could help him. “Hello? My name’s Trot…I hurt my hands and my nose won’t stop bleeding.” He waited for her to answer. Thirty seconds later her voice sounded again.
“Installation compromised…Eichberg, Lothair cylinder reactivated…awaiting further thaw and evac procedure orders.”
He looked up and down the flashing corridor. “My hands…” Trot stopped. He hadn’t understood a single word the woman said....why would she comprehend anything he was trying to say?
He walked on and found the light’s source under a metal grill set into the ceiling between inactive fluorescent bulbs. Trot reached up and tried to touch the moving green with his knuckle but couldn’t.
So pretty.
There was another flashing light further along. Trot went to it and came to an intersection. More green lights pulsed down either way of the next corridor. Trot scratched the side of his nose, dimly aware he couldn’t afford to dig inside again. Which way? If the lawman was leaving him a trail, why was he making it so difficult to follow? Why was he making Trot think so hard? The corridor to the left seemed to go on forever; the one to the right was short—ending sixty feet away with another door. Trot’s legs were weak and sore. He chose the shorter path.
Trot’s sense of safety and wonderme
nt vanished as he made his way. The light pulsed like a beating heart, casting the lone metal door farther down in shadows of moving black and glistening green. The whole place left him feeling uneasy and scared—the door at the end of the hallway felt wrong.
The woman repeated the words. Trot reached the corridor’s end and saw a gold square set into the door with a series of black letters printed on it. Trot studied them without having a clue what they read:
EICHBERG, LOTHAIR E
FOUNDER OF ABZE CORPORATION
ORIGINALLY LAID TO REST IN 1976
Under the plaque was one of those familiar keypads lined with buttons Trot had watched the others fiddling with. Cobe had tried pressing them to make the door open, and failed. Trot wouldn’t have bothered at all if it wasn’t for the one button that read ENTER glowing in red. This was the signal the lawman had left him. Trot had chosen the correct path. He pressed it with his knuckle and heard the familiar click and hiss. The door popped out towards him an inch.
Trot giggled. He had figured it out. The people back in Burn wouldn’t think he was so brain dumb now if they could see him. He waited excitedly for the door to open farther, overjoyed to be reunited with his friends on the other side.
***
It felt like an explosion at the front of his brain.
Light.
It had been so long, Lothair forgot what it was at first. He had forgotten how to see, forgotten he even had eyes. It flashed before him again. So bright. Too intense.
How? Where?
The third flash wasn’t as blinding. Lothair remembered color, tried to place it. A fourth pulse.
Green.
It was steady, filling the small window of his cylinder every two seconds. He moved a finger to the glass, lifting the hand that had been resting on his throat and keeping his chin company for the last hundred and twenty years. He tapped at it.
They’re still out there…Humanity survived.
The light continued to flash, seeming to bathe Lothair’s fingers and face in warmth, even though he knew that wasn’t possible. He hungered for the light. When it winked out his nails would scratch at the glass, demanding its return. He counted the seconds between flashes. A shadow of gray disrupted the rhythm and Lothair moaned, afraid the beautiful green was gone forever. And then he saw the gray form take shape—less than a foot away—a face, round and glistening. The eyes were open wide and unblinking, the nostrils flaring and speckled with something dark.
Blood.
There was blood on the face’s nose. It was smeared on the lips and fat chins. Lothair tapped at the glass harder. The clock running in his head came to a stop. Lothair forgot the years and the months and the seconds.
His mouth watered.
***
Trot saw the fingers tapping on the other side of the glass. He leaned over the cylinder, his knuckles resting against its curved, silver surface. It was unusually warm. For some reason, he thought it would feel cold. The clicking continued—dull and far away-sounding, through the thickness of a small window. Insistently, but without panic. The light from the corridor behind Trot continued to pulse, throwing strips of green over the cylinder in steady, silent waves. The withered fingers fell away, and when the light returned he saw pink eyes staring up at him. Trot stepped back; the tapping returned—faster, harder.
It can’t hurt me trapped in there.
He leaned in again, slowly. The pink eyes blinked and Trot saw the tiniest hint of black at their centers. The light flashed again and he saw brown teeth. The thin lips were moving, mouthing a single word over and over. It was talking to him.
“I can’t hear you,” Trot croaked.
The face below kept repeating the word. The finger reappeared. It was pointing down.
“What…what are you saying?” Trot started to panic again, thought the thing—an old man?—was going to die right before his eyes. If only he could understand.
Odin…Old friend…Oh Ben…
Trot wanted to bury his fingers into both nostrils.
Open.
“Open!” Trot wailed. He saw the three buttons beneath the window. White, red, green. The lawman had said something about them—what they did. Trot was too stupid to remember the story, so he pressed them one after the other.
The cylinder popped open and bumped into his knees. There was a long, loud hiss that faded to a whisper, then stopped altogether. A stench hit Trot unlike any foul odor he’d ever smelled before, and Trot had smelled plenty. He covered his nose and mouth with a curled hand and held his breath.
Whatever it was inside the cylinder pushed up. Trot stepped back and watched it open in two pieces.
The old man with pink eyes, and skin as white as clouds, sat up and inhaled deeply. He stretched his wiry arms out and grasped the air with fingers, long and wrinkled. He had less hair than Trot—only a ring of light-gray, trimly cut above and behind his ears. The pink eyes found Trot’s once again and settled there. He could feel the points of black drilling into his brain. Trot tried working his mouth—tried to say something half intelligible.
“Go slow,” the old man said. His voice was like rocks scraping. “I have all the time in the world.”
Trot took a couple of breaths and tried again.
“I’m…I’m Trot. My hands hurt…and I’m lost.”
“Hello, Trot. I’m Lothair…and I’m starving.”
Part Two
Dream
Chapter 16
2070
2,635 meters underground
253 kilometers northwest of Winnipeg, Manitoba
Six minutes—maybe a little less. Edna looked away from the clock on the wall for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last sixty seconds and continued writing. The world would be a very different place in six minutes. She didn’t have any more time to waste. Edna typed feverishly a few moments longer. She finished with her name, leaned back and read over the most important—and last—letter she would ever write.
Dear Great-grandfather,
The solar storms that started in 2067 have intensified. Over half of the world’s power grids have fried and left billions without the means to sustain themselves. We have walked on the surface of Mars and established manned stations on moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn. But for all the wonderful advances in technology you’ve slept peacefully through during the last century, mankind’s ignorance and inability to preserve itself has left us wide open to the most natural of threats.
They knew the ‘big’ coronal ejection was coming weeks ago. Science has at least timed the beginning of civilization’s decline down to the minute.
My father—your grandson—saw it coming decades ago. You would have been proud of him. He carried on your work, created a formula to bring the sleeping back. It was our family’s greatest achievement. But he didn’t stop there. Other enhancements were discovered. Your body was thawed in 2055 and the enhancements were introduced into your DNA.
I don’t have the time to explain it all. You can learn more through the same computer you’re reading this letter on now. It has been programmed to respond to the sound of your voice. Ask questions and it will answer. There will be instructions on how to revive your descendants and the thousands of other ABZE clients you offered a second chance.
You will be the first. It’s what Father wanted—what we all wanted. The man that started it all will bring us all back. Hopefully your rest will be a relatively short one.
The Dauphin facility will continue to run on a bare minimum of power until the world energy shortage is resolved. It will remain powered, if need be, for the next two thousand years. Had the world opted for nuclear battery technology earlier, civilization might not now be on the brink of collapse. Fortunately ABZE has always thought ahead. We still look to tomorrow and build for that future with our clients’ investments. It was my decision to power all twenty-one installations with nukebatts. It was costly, and the board of directors fought me. But I won out in the end. Not all Eichbergs are scientific
geniuses. Some of us are better suited to the business end of things.
Thank you, Great-grandfather, for your vision and your brilliance—thank you for this life that never has to end.
All my love and hopes,
Edna Eichberg
Edna saved the letter and left the office. She glanced back at the clock one last time halfway through the door. Four minutes. Four minutes to travel two floors down to E level and have herself frozen with all the other surviving Eichbergs.
The internal clock inside her brain took over, a habit Edna had picked up since before she could remember even learning to count. The seconds clicked down as she hurried away.
235…
234…
233…
Chapter 17
Cobe could no longer make his fingers touch with both hands wrapped around his left knee. “It’s swelled up real bad… Hurts like a somma bitch.”
Willem remained propped up against the open elevator door, sitting and watching his older brother struggle with the pain in the shadows. “You shoulda landed on your feet—not your gawdamn knees.”
“I was trying not to land on you.”
Willem chewed his thumbnail and watched a little longer. “We sitting in here all day, or are you gonna try and stand on it?”
Cobe tried bending his leg at the knee again. The finger massage hadn’t helped. The pain brought tears to his eyes and he had to bite down on his lip to stop from crying out. They couldn’t afford to make noise. The lawman—the only one who knew anything about the place, and the only one capable of protecting them—had been torn to shreds by a howler, and howlers had awfully good hearing.
“Don’t bend it,” Willem offered. “Stand up straight and use it like a crutch or something.”