“Don’t do that, Top,” Chase said. He brought the needle even closer to the balloon.
“What does it matter?” Koeller said. “It’s over. He started it, I ended it. I killed America. I killed civilization.” He took a step toward Chase.
“Stop!” Sonya shouted. “This doesn’t have to happen. You don’t have to kill us. What does that gain?”
“Nothing,” Koeller said. “But not killing you doesn’t gain anything, either.” He took another step, the pistol still pointing at Chase. Chase took a step back. Sonya watched Chase’s eyes widen. She thought he would continue backing up, but the corridor was only so long and then what? Then she saw his resolve return.
“Make or break time, Top,” Chase said quietly.
The first sergeant shook his head. “There’s never just one make or break, Chase. There’s always so many, but we don’t see them until the last one’s gone. And then we recognize what we lost. You’re young, you might not know that.” He took another step forward. Sonya saw it coming and she tried to scream no, but Chase stabbed the balloon and black dust trickled to the floor, swirling slightly, the spores spreading in the damp air. Koeller lowered the pistol. “And so it ends. You’re a brave man, Chase. You just ended this. I don’t know if I could have done it. I care about those men upstairs, but they’re doomed. This was going to happen eventually, anyway. It might have been a slow painful death, years in the making, but it was coming. It would have meant years of tough choices for me, misery for them, and one outcome. Don’t ever forget that you killed us all, but the honest truth was you had to. You had to put us out of our misery, like a suffering animal. You’re right, Chase. We are what was. We don’t have a place in this world.”
“So what happens now?” Chase said. Sonya crept up beside him, grabbing his hand. She felt like crying.
“I go upstairs and tell the men there’s been a breach. Things could get a little dicey up there. If I were you, I’d stay down here for a while. In about forty-eight hours, I’ll be sick and dying. So will the men up there, probably. I don’t know.” He looked at the spores on the floor. “That crazy son-of-a-bitch was right about one thing, though. We don’t understand that stuff. I don’t think we’re supposed to. I’m not a scientist, but there’s just something evil about it.” He turned and disappeared into the door containing the stairwell. They heard his tired, heavy steps up the stairs, the sound of the door opening and then closing behind him, and then there was silence.
Chapter 31 – Chase
He looked down at the dusty pile at his feet, dark wispy edges of spores stirring in the ventilation currents. He looked at the door where Koeller had disappeared. He tried to understand what he was feeling, reaching tentatively into himself to where he kept his emotions, and he recoiled. He had just given the death sentence to seventy men. That thought and the accompanying feelings were starting to sink in when, as if from a distance, he heard Sonya’s voice.
“…away from the spores, Chase. We have to get away, Chase, they’ll do something to us.” He turned to look at her, pulling on his hand. He followed as she led him to the last door she had started to open, the one that caused the doctor to protest. He watched as she opened it and felt her hands on him as she pushed him inside. He stood looking around the room as she pulled the door closed behind her. There was a man lying strapped to a table, tubes and monitors attached to him, machines beeping and whining. His skin was very pale, but he appeared to be breathing. Sonya pushed Chase into the room, and when she saw the man on the table, she gasped.
“D-dad?” she said, crossing the room and coming to the man’s side. Chase snapped awake, the raw emotion in Sonya’s voice enough to pull him back to himself, to distract him from what he had done. He watched as Sonya reached out and touched the man’s shoulder. The man’s eyes opened and they were white. Sonya screamed and jumped back. Chase caught her and held her, both backing away from the table. The man on the table, Sonya’s father, didn’t struggle against his bonds. He merely looked at them impassively, and then recognition flickered across his features, then concern. The whiteness of his eyes made him inhuman, but the expression softened that.
“Sonya?” the man said. “Sonya, is that really you?” Sonya tried to go to him but Chase held her back. “Come to me, Sonya, come a little closer.” Sonya struggled in Chase’s arms, but he held her easily.
“Let me go!” she shouted. “That’s Dad, Chase. That’s him!”
“I don’t think that’s completely him, Sonya. I think he’s like the reverend. I think something else has him, too.” As Chase spoke, the man’s attention shifted to him.
“Let go of my daughter, boy,” the man said. “A girl needs her father.” And then the thing on the table smiled and the blackness of its mouth showed. Sonya tensed in Chase’s arms and then turned, wrapping her arms around him.
“Oh my God, Chase,” she sobbed against his chest. “It’s not him.”
Chase studied the man who lay there looking at the two of them. As Chase watched, the expression changed again to one of concern, then the smile, and then back again. There seemed to be a war between the two on the man’s face. The smile made him look inhuman, crazed. The worry written large made him seem like the man they had been looking for. Then Chase turned his attention to the tubes and monitors. An IV bag hung next to the bed, the clear, yellowish fluid visible in a drip. A smaller bag hung next to it on the stand. Across the top of the bag was written in black marker the words DANGER! CONTAMINATION RISK. The black liquid inside was almost gone.
“Sonya, that’s your father, but it’s not. He’s got spores inside him, the fungus. Look,” he said pushing her tear streaked face with his hand, “he’s being given the spore to produce antibodies, like the doctor said.”
Sonya looked at Chase with fear and hope. “Can we disconnect him? Will he be okay if we do that?”
“I don’t know,” Chase said, watching the man on the bed. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to take off the restraints just yet. But we can unhook him from the IV. Then we’ll see what happens.”
“No!” Sonya’s father shouted. “Let me up! I just want to put my arms around my daughter and hold her.” Sonya sobbed again, but she didn’t take her eyes from the man.
“I think you’re right,” she said. “I think that’s the way to go.” She stepped forward, Chase following closely. Sonya rubbed at her eyes and then studied the IV and the machine the tubes fed through. “Do you think I just take it out of his arm?”
“No!” her father said. “You listen to me, Sonya. You do not take that out. You need to let me loose. I’m warning you, you’re about to be in trouble.”
Chase watched Sonya, but she didn’t seem to be bothered by the ranting. She already had adapted to the situation. “I think so,” he said. “I don’t know what turning the machine off would do. It might speed up the feed for all I know. I think it’s best just to take the needle out.”
Sonya reached for the tube, following it down to her father’s arm. Chase watched. The man finally started fighting his bonds, muscles flexing and joints popping. Sonya carefully pulled the tape around the needle away and slid it from his arm. Her father whipped his head back and forth, crying out in a choked voice. Sonya and Chase backed against the wall and watched. The spot where the needle had been bled a little, leaving a single dark track down the white skin of his arm.
“Is he going to hurt himself like that?” Sonya said as she watched her father.
“I don’t think there’s much we can do,” Chase said. “We can’t let him go.” They watched him until he exhausted himself, his struggles growing weaker and weaker until he lay there panting, not taking his white eyes from them. His breathing quieted, and finally he spoke.
“I can feel them upstairs, you know,” he said. “It has begun. Oh, it’s not strong in them yet. It is in them, but they don’t know. As it gets stronger and they get weaker, they will become easier to influence. The control is difficult while the bodies live, but th
ere is some influence. Once the bodies die and rise again, I will have control. I will bring them down here. They will release me.”
Chase stared at the man hard. He had seen some strange things the fungus had done while at the church on the peninsula, but was this some trick? Was it a suggestion planted by the fungus and given voice by Sonya’s father’s imagination? Sonya’s father had lain back and closed his eyes. He appeared to be asleep.
“Can he do that, Chase?” Sonya whispered, not taking her eyes from the body lying on the table. “Chase, is that even possible?”
“I don’t know, Sonya,” Chase said. “I don’t think so. How much is he acting like your Dad?”
Sonya nodded. “Some…but not much. It’s him. But I’ve never heard him like that. When he first said my name, I think it was all him. But that stuff has taken over. Will he go back to normal?”
Chase hated to say it again, but he wanted to be sure she understood. “I don’t know. I don’t know. There’s so much I don’t know. I think he will. I’ve felt the spores moving in my system. When I gathered them for the balloon, I could feel them in me, giving me weird thoughts. But after a while, they stop.”
“Should we give him water? Flush his system?” Sonya asked. “Yeah. We should. Get them out of him sooner,” she answered herself. Chase looked around. There was no water. Sonya realized the same thing at the same time. “Chase, we’ve got to get him out of here. Get him into sunlight, get him water. That will help, right?”
“It might. But Sonya, we can’t leave here. The soldiers upstairs might have just been told that they’ve been handed a death sentence at my hands. That, and they’ve been exposed and will soon be sick. Feverish. We have to wait. And if we try to move your father right now, he’ll cause problems. I don’t know how many problems he’ll cause, but just fighting us could hurt us and him. We can give him some time to get the stuff out of his system and that might change. We wait for the soldiers to get sick enough that they can’t do anything. Or maybe they die. It takes a while after they die before they start walking. We sit and wait. At least twenty-four hours. And we’ll see what happens with your dad, okay?”
“Okay.” She looked doubtful. “But can you at least try to find some water?”
Chase nodded. He was a little uncomfortable leaving Sonya alone with her father, but she assured him she would be okay. Her dad lay on the table, not moving, his eyes closed, breathing barely perceptible. If there had been even the slightest movement from him, Chase would not have gone, but there was nothing. Chase opened the door and stepped into the corridor, closing the door behind him. He wasn’t sure if that would keep down exposure from the spores he had just released, but it was worth trying. To the left he could see a dark spot on the floor. Just beyond lay Dr. Green’s body, so Chase turned to the right. There were more doors down that way, anyway.
He walked to the end to where the corridor dead-ended into a blank wall. There were six doors about ten feet apart on each side as he looked back towards the other end. They were staggered so that no doors opened opposite each other. The third door on the right was where Sonya and her father waited. The fifth door on his left was the staircase door, still standing ajar and obstructing his view of the last door on that side. When Sonya had been opening doors, he could tell that whatever she was finding inside wasn’t pleasant, but she hadn’t given any details and he hadn’t seen. He had smelled decay when she opened one of the doors, though.
He started with the door on his right, the closest door. He pulled at the handle, a long lever of a handle, heavy duty stuff, just like all the other doors. It gave way grudgingly, like it hadn’t been used in years, and when he finally got it, he guessed that to be the case. The room was empty, completely undisturbed. He took a moment to study the door. It was rubber sealed and closed into the frame. The long, lever-like handle rotated, pushing a flat metal bar upward and downward at the same time. Everything was painted olive drab green, old army stuff. He guessed this was the oldest part, the part to be secure in the event of a nuclear weapon.
He closed the door behind him and stepped to the first door on the left. This door opened more easily, had obviously seen use recently. Inside was a variety of medical equipment, stacked haphazardly. Chase looked a little closer, and some of it had obviously been used. Tubes with needles still dangled from IV stand holding bags. That didn’t seem right to him. Weren’t scientists careful, clean, precise? Maybe most of them were, but not the ones who had been working down here. Immediately inside the door to the right was a tray of medical instruments covered in blood. Chase backed out and closed the door.
The next door on the right had other supplies. He found water, a normal case of convenience store water in plastic bottles that looked completely out of place. The case was half used, and several of the empties were scattered on the floor. He grabbed several of the still full bottles, took a quick visual inventory of the room to see what else might be of use, and stepped out and closed the door. Before returning to Sonya, he walked down the corridor to the open stairway door. He listened up the stairway. The door at the top of the stairs was closed, but he thought he heard sounds coming from above. There was the sound of a gunshot that came through clearly, but when he listened as hard as he could, the silence played tricks on his ears. He closed the lower stairwell door. He thought he should find something to prop against the handle, prevent anyone from coming down until they were ready to come up. As he let his imagination paint a picture of the scene that could be going on upstairs, he decided that was a very good idea.
Chapter 32 – Marilyn
The first scene Marilyn saw upon entering caused her heart to sink and made her wish she had insisted on getting a weapon, even if it meant trying to get in without Mulvaney’s help. The sterile hallway with the tile floor was expected, but the cracked and splintered tiles in the floor and bullet hole pocked walls and doors were not. Honey whined and cowered next to her leg. All of the glass had been broken, although the glass hung in place, supported by the reinforcing wire. She tried several doors, but most were locked. The one door that was unlocked led into a room with shower heads in the ceiling. This room had not been touched, and Marilyn was able to open another door into a waiting room. The door out of this room was locked and the handle on the inside wouldn’t move. Marilyn suspected it was just for show. When she grabbed it, there was no sense of mechanism inside.
There was, however, a window into another room, and this window had been completely broken. Chunks of safety glass littered the floor, making Marilyn believe it had been broken from the other side. After brushing the remains of the window from the frame, she hoisted herself up and into the chest-high opening, supporting herself with her arms while she surveyed the room on the other side. The small room contained only a chair, a console covered with buttons, and a door. She dropped back, lifted Honey up and through, and then climbed through herself. In the tight quarters Honey’s nervous panting was loud. Marilyn tried the door. She pushed and it started open, stopping against something which yielded slightly. She looked through the opening into a dimly lit hallway, but her field of vision was restricted. She pushed harder and was able to squeeze through the narrow opening. As she stepped through, she looked down to see what had stopped the door. A soldier lay on the floor.
She knelt, thinking he might be sick, but the pool of blood spreading beneath him said otherwise. She grabbed his arm and pulled him out far enough to open the door a little more until Honey could come through. Then Marilyn looked up and down the hall. Over half of the lights overhead had been broken, the plastic shards of the fixtures intermingling with the thin broken glass of the tubes on the floor of the hall. She worried about Honey’s feet. Ten feet down the hall a rifle, the soldier’s she guessed, lay almost hidden in the dim light against the wall. She walked over, picked it up. She wasn’t familiar with it, but found the button to drop the magazine. Empty. She walked back over to the soldier and patted his pockets. In a cargo pocket on his pants she found a
loaded magazine. Okay, she thought, that helps. Now, which way? She listened. The air was still moving. She could hear the sigh of air through the vents overhead. She watched Honey, who seemed to be hearing something she couldn’t. And then Marilyn heard it herself.
Distantly she heard a single sharp sound, metal on metal. She turned her head, listening carefully. She took a few steps down the corridor and stopped, and after a few seconds, the sound came again. It seemed to come from both directions, but perhaps a little stronger to her right. “Go to it, Honey,” she said. The dog took off to the right. Marilyn followed, holding the rifle across her body, finger hovering near the trigger. The corridor took a sharp turn to the left. She hissed at Honey to stop, then stopped herself, back to the wall, and peered around the corner into a darkened hallway. Nothing moved, so she stepped around, freezing when the sound came again. Honey stayed close to her side. Midway down the hallway a large metal door stood ajar. Marilyn approached cautiously. As she drew near, she could see through it into a small room, and then nearer still she saw another door in the room that opened into a large space.
The bodies of two more soldiers lay in the vestibule between the corridor and the large room beyond. Marilyn looked for weapons, for more ammunition, but it didn’t appear the soldiers had been carrying anything. And they both lay face down, heads toward the Marilyn, as if they had been running away and shot from behind. Marilyn tensely stepped over the bodies into the vestibule, peered out into the larger room beyond. Honey sniffed once at the bodies and followed. Bunk-beds lined the walls. Some were overturned. She looked carefully, but there didn’t seem to be any bodies in the larger room. She turned her head to the left, seeing stairs leading upward. She was so tense, the tendons in her neck popped. Just then, the metallic sound repeated, causing her to jump. The sound was definitely coming from the top of the stairs, only now, immediately after the sound she heard a low muttering. Voices.
After Everything Else (Book 3): Creeper Revelation Page 22