Subhuman

by Michael McBride

  “It’ll be fine,” Richards said.

  “Not if the temperature rises too much. You assured me—”

  “If activating the machine were going to damage the remains,” Connor said, “it would have done so the first time we turned it on.”

  “Who’s to say it didn’t?”

  “Then there’s nothing we can do about it now, is there?”

  Richards sympathized with her position, but they’d come too far to stop now. Not when they were so close.

  “Maybe we should give it a little time to cool off,” Roche said.

  “Talk to me, control,” Rubley said.

  “We have slight increases in both kilovoltage and milliamperes versus the previous frequency, both of which were channeled directly to the electromagnetic mechanism that held the second megalith.”

  “What’s the radiation level in here?”

  “Well shy of ionizing,” Rayburn said.

  “That’s not very comforting.”

  “Thirty millisieverts.”

  “Holy crap,” Roche said.

  “Let’s keep going,” Rubley said.

  “Doesn’t anyone else want to know how American soldiers ended up being killed down here?” Jade asked.

  “I really don’t like this,” Kelly said.

  “I want to take a step back,” Rubley said. “You said the symbol for five hundred twenty-eight Hertz was featured prominently inside the temple.”

  Richards glanced at Roche, who offered confirmation with a nod.

  “Affirmative,” he replied.

  “The next tone in the sequence is seven forty-one,” Scott said.

  “We already know what that will do. Don’t you want to take this baby out on the open road and see what she can do?” Rubley looked up into the camera as though addressing Scott through it. “You said it yourself. The readings have remained stable through two progressions. If we’re right, this will probably just activate another circuit in the series, but surely such a fantastic machine wasn’t simply designed to be a primitive garage door opener. Let’s find out what it was designed to do.”

  “That’s the problem, chief. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “Isn’t that the whole point?”

  “You’re standing on top of a live wire installed by cavemen, for Christ’s sake.”

  “In full protective gear. Give me five twenty-eight.”

  “I want my objection on record,” Scott said.

  “Duly noted,” Richards said into the microphone on his headset. “Does anyone else share Mr. Scott’s concerns?”

  “We should hold off on this frequency,” Kelly said. “At least until we’re able to determine what it does. Those hieroglyphics from the temple showed the standing wave at five hundred and twenty-eight hertz. You remember? The carving that looked like two men holding a donut over one of those coneheads. The whole thing was inside a big triangle. What if this pyramid was built specifically for this one tone? For all we know we could be triggering some kind of meltdown.”

  Richards stared at the young girl with the streaks in her hair for a long moment before speaking. He could see the fear in her eyes.

  “Please proceed, Mr. Scott,” he finally said.

  “You’re the boss,” Scott said.

  The sound erupted from the speakers. Static filled the screen. Bolts of lightning flashed from every direction behind it.

  The screams were instantaneous.

  “What’s happening down there?” Richards shouted.

  The center screen flickered with discharge.

  On the left, sparks shot from the control equipment before bursting into flames. The men were quick to action and turned the entire gallery into a swirling white cloud with their fire extinguishers.

  Dreger shouted incoherently from the monitor on the right, which was hazy with the sheer quantity of steam firing upward from the hole in the ground like a geyser.

  Richards felt paralyzed as he turned from one monitor to the next to the next until the tone suddenly ceased.

  All of the screens simultaneously went black.

  A shattering sound emerged from the static, followed by the tinkle of broken glass and an electrical buzz.

  “Mr. Rubley?” Richards said into the microphone on his headset. The only response was shouting from the other men. “Dale? Can anyone hear me?”

  “We have to help them!” Roche said.

  “The elevator’s already down there,” Connor said. “We can’t recall it prematurely or they’ll be stranded until it gets back down there.”

  “We can’t just do nothing,” Kelly said.

  “Somebody answer me!” Richards shouted.

  “This is Scott.” Richards almost sobbed at the sound of the engineer’s voice. “We’ve lost all instrumentation. Jesus. I’ve never seen anything like that. It was as if the entire pyramid turned into a conductor.”

  “Can you reach Mr. Rubley?”

  “We’re almost there now, but we have to be really careful. There’s water everywhere. I don’t think it’s carrying a charge, though. Where did it come from?”

  Friden and Mariah burst into the cafeteria.

  “We’re too late,” the microbiologist said.

  “Can anyone up there hear me?” Dreger said from the third monitor.

  “Ron?” Mariah cried. “Oh, God. Ron!”

  “Are you all right, Mr. Dreger?” Richards asked.

  “Yeah. Just . . . shook up. What the hell happened?”

  “We had an arc up here,” Scott said. “It raced down that corridor like a freaking freight train. You should have seen—Oh, God. Dale. Somebody help me! Christ, he’s not—Wait. I’ve got a pulse. Help me roll him over. That’s it. You take his legs. I’ve got his torso. We need to get him out of here.”

  “We have to help them!” Jade shouted. She grabbed Richards by the arm and turned him around. “He’s going to die if we don’t—!”

  In one swift move, Connor removed her hand from Richards’s shoulder and pinned it behind her back, between her shoulder blades.

  “Enough, enough,” Richards said. “She’s right. We have to do something.”

  Connor released Jade’s wrist. She looked like she wanted to claw his eyes out, but Richards couldn’t deal with that now.

  “Mr. Scott,” he said into the microphone. “Do you think you can get Mr. Rubley to the elevator?”

  “Are you telling me we’re on our own? You can’t just abandon—”

  “Listen carefully, Mr. Scott.” Richards spoke slowly and deliberately in the calmest voice he could manage. “The elevator is already down there. If we recall it, we’ll be wasting valuable time that Mr. Rubley might not have. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I ask you again, can you get Mr. Rubley to the elevator on your own?”

  “We’re going to have to, aren’t we?”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Dreger said. “You guys up there? Get that medical kit ready because we’re going to be coming in hot.”

  35

  DREGER

  Dreger dragged Rubley into the shallows. Collapsed. Struggled to his feet and pulled the unconscious man by the collar of his protective suit. Slipped on the rocks and fell again. Rolled over and brayed in frustration.

  Scott burst from the water twenty feet out, the beam of light from his mask carving through the darkness.

  Dreger unhooked his regulator and cast the heavy tank aside. He splashed back toward where Rubley lay and hauled him onto the rocky shore.

  Rayburn emerged behind Scott and the two men sloshed up onto dry land.

  Dreger caught his heels and went down hard on his rear end, tugging Rubley up onto his legs. His light reflected from the chief engineer’s mask, which obscured his face. It was a blessing, Dreger knew, as he’d already gotten a good look at the man’s burned cheeks and scorched scalp, an image he wouldn’t soon forget. Even if by some miracle they managed to get him to the surface wh
ile he was still breathing, they wouldn’t be able to keep him that way for very long, not without medical intervention beyond their limited means at the station. The man’s skin had been burned to such a degree that it looked almost fibrous, like countless pallid strands of taffy stretched taut from his jaw to his prominent cheekbones and skeletal nose.

  “Is he still alive?” Rayburn asked.

  “I think . . . I think so.”

  Dreger slid out from underneath Rubley and doubled over to catch his breath.

  “He’s breathing,” Scott said from where he crouched over Rubley, watching the faintest hint of breath cloud the inside of the mask before dissipating.

  “Get him into the elevator,” Dreger said, and took off up the shoreline as fast as he could.

  The smooth stones rolled and clattered beneath him, throwing off his balance and nearly sending him sprawling. His light swung wildly in front of him and made the entire world appear to jerk from side to side. He caught a glimpse of the ice-rimed cliffs and the concrete platform at the farthest reaches of his beam and tapped into reserves he didn’t know he possessed.

  Everything that had happened since they activated the machine was a blur. Stumbling blindly through the darkness, falling so often he’d resorted to crawling from the sauna-like lower level up the descending corridor until he saw the wavering light from the equipment burning at the top of the ascending corridor. Waving away the smoke as he searched for the others, who he found in the gallery, carrying Rubley between them. Putting on their masks and gear and battling with the makeshift airlock he’d cobbled together using the pass-through box from the modular clean room and several feet of ductwork. Trying to swim with one arm while holding Rubley to his chest with the other. He was only now beginning to feel the blisters on his cheek where the mask had cracked and admitted the steam. The agony would be excruciating when his adrenaline waned.

  He leaped up onto the platform. The lightbulbs had shattered, covering the concrete with glimmering shards of glass. The sockets spat sparks, which at least meant there was some amount of electricity flowing to them. He prayed the power surge hadn’t reached the elevator’s motor in the equipment room and the cranes outside the building on the surface or they wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Ran into the elevator. The breaker box was built into a hinged panel in the ceiling. He grabbed the handle, pulled it down, and scanned the schematics until he found what he was looking for. Unplugged the breakers and tossed them aside.

  The hydraulic brakes were mounted directly to the rails to either side of the top of the car. Cutting off the power to them was the easy part of the process. The teeth of the gears were fitted into the notches in the rails that prevented the elevator from falling, even if the flow of electricity to them ceased. He yanked open the access hatch and was halfway up onto the roof when the others clattered into the cage and slammed the grate closed behind them.

  “Go!” Dreger shouted as he climbed out onto the roof.

  “Are the brakes still functional?” Scott asked.

  “Not for long. Just get this thing moving!”

  The motor whirred and the car lurched.

  Dreger grabbed onto the railing for balance as the elevator started upward into the shaft. Only one of the spotlights still worked, but it was a far cry better than nothing. He inched away from the railing until he was within reach of the safety panel. Both sides had three sets of brakes, each of which looked like a garbage disposal with a bullhorn connected to a chainsaw engine. Not only did he have to disengage them one at a time, he had to jump back and forth between the two sides in an effort to keep them even so the car didn’t get wrenched from the tracks.

  An alarm blared when he disengaged the first.

  “I forgot to pull the breaker for the alarm!” he shouted.

  “I got it!” Scott yelled from below him.

  Within seconds the racket ceased and was again replaced by the roar of the wind rushing past Dreger’s ears. He disengaged the first brake on the opposite side and the car noticeably accelerated. The buzzing sound of the gears grew exponentially louder.

  Someone shouted something from inside the elevator, but he couldn’t make out his words.

  Dreger released the second brake with a thud and lunged back to the other side. The car bucked underneath him and knocked him from his feet. He fought to his hands and knees and released the matching brake on the opposite side.

  The elevator accelerated and started to shake. The buzzing became deafening as the lone remaining gears tore through the slots in the rails.

  More shouting from below.

  “I can’t hear you!” he yelled, but he could hardly hear his own voice over the tumult.

  The frozen walls blew past in a blur behind the rigging, which made his light flicker like an old reel-to-reel projector. He reached for the final brake, but lost his balance when the whole car abruptly jerked sideways.

  “What the hell are you doing down there? You’re going to get us all killed!”

  Dreger struggled to all fours, released the last brake, and felt the side of the car completely disengage from the rail. The lone remaining brake screamed and produced a cloud of sparks and smoke.

  It was all he could do to hold on to the roof as he crawled toward the final brake, which radiated so much heat he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get close to it, let alone touch it. He rolled onto his back. Kicked at the safety rail over and over until it snapped out of its fitting. Pried it from the opposite side. Jammed it into the hydraulic valve. Leveraged it upward with everything he had.

  Steam and scalding fluid fired from the rupture and spattered the roof.

  Dreger scurried away from it as the elevator completely disengaged from the rails, transferring the entirety of its weight to the cables. The car banged back and forth from the walls and the rigging as it rocketed upward.

  He slithered on his belly toward the hatch as the car threatened to throw him over the side. Grabbed the edge of the opening. Pulled himself over. Fell into the elevator. A moment of weightlessness. Then impact.

  He saw stars and tasted blood in the back of his throat. Tried to push himself up, but his hands slipped out from under him.

  The car wobbled and clanged. Hammered the rails.

  The metal floor was warm and wet with what he initially thought was oil from one of the ruptured valves, until he looked up and saw the smeared handprints all over the console and the spatters covering nearly every surface.

  Dreger pushed himself up and turned to see one of the others crumpled in the corner, his cracked diving mask covered with so much blood he couldn’t even tell who it was.

  The bottom corner of the door beside him was bent outward and the metal links snapped as though someone had repeatedly kicked it.

  He scrambled over to the man and ripped off his mask. Rayburn’s eyes were wide open and his features speckled with the blood he’d coughed into his mask.

  “Jesus!”

  Dreger scooted away from the dead man and bumped into something solid.

  Turned and found himself looking into Scott’s lifeless eyes.

  The elevator shuddered. Droplets of blood rained from the ceiling.

  Dreger followed them upward toward the breaker box and screamed. There was something up there, clinging to the ceiling. A shadowed, inhuman form.

  He dove into the corner. Slipped on the blood. By the time he knew what he was doing, he was already through the gap in the bent door and pulling himself into the slipstream.

  Searing pain in his calf. He bellowed in pain and jerked his leg free. Lost his balance. Grabbed for one of the support bars on the underside. Felt the cold metal slip from his wet hands.

  The earth opened beneath him as he plummeted, screaming, into the abyss.

  36

  KELLY

  Kelly’s hand was fretting like crazy and there was nothing she could do about it. Every last ounce of her concentration was devoted to slowing her breathing to keep from hyperventilating. She
’d never been so terrified in her life. The thought that anyone’s life could depend upon her meager training in first aid was almost more than she could bear. She’d been a lifeguard in high school, for crying out loud.

  “You know what you’re supposed to do,” Jade said.

  “I know, I know. Stop saying that. You’re making me even more nervous than I already am.”

  “I was talking to myself,” Jade said. “I haven’t worked on a living patient since med school.”

  “Pray you get the chance,” Evans said.

  The banging and clanging of the machinery was so loud it was like someone taking a sledgehammer to the inside of Kelly’s skull. They could barely hear each other over the racket, let alone the hum of the elevator rocketing up the shaft. Dreger had overridden the safety fail-safes that prevented the elevator car from going faster than four miles an hour and at that very moment it was speeding straight up toward them at nearly twice that speed.

  The pressure-sealed door alarmed when it opened and Connor hurried into the room, trailing a breeze of mercifully cool air that felt divine against the back of Kelly’s neck and the rivulets of sweat rolling down her back. It had to be a hundred degrees in there.

  “We backed all of the vehicles out into the snow to clear the way like you asked,” he said.

  “And you raided the medical suite to set up an emergency kit in case we can’t make it all the way to the library?”

  Jade nervously squeezed the Ambu bag in her gloved hands, waited for it to inflate, and then squeezed it again.

  “I keep telling you our ‘medical suite’ is a closet full of Band-Aids and gauze. I did the best I could.”

  Connor assumed his position opposite Evans, at the trailing end of the makeshift gurney, which was little more than a board on two serving carts from the kitchen, but they were just going to have to make it work. The plan was as simple as it was rushed. Jade would tend to Rubley while Evans and Connor pushed him as fast as they could through the garage and the Skyway and into the station, where Anya would be waiting in the library with as much water as she could microwave in so little time and every surgical implement, painkiller, and towel she could find. Dr. Bell was harvesting as much aloe as he could from his limited number of plants to treat the anticipated electrical burns. Kelly’s job was to tend to the others, whose injuries were presumably minor by comparison, although Jade had prepared her for the fact that by the time these men reached the surface, they would have burned through their reserves of adrenaline and would likely already be going into shock. She had a stack of crates she could use to raise their feet above their heads and a mess of blankets to cover them, although with as hot and humid as it was in the boiler room, she figured she wouldn’t need them.