The Void Protocol

by F. Paul Wilson

  39

  “Hurry up, Laura!” Cy shouted from above.

  Laura was three-quarters of the way up the shaky ladder and moving as fast as she dared. The darkness of the shaft seemed to clutch at her. The hatch was off—Cy must have disappeared the latches earlier, before they’d descended. She could see his anxious face in the backwash of the flashlight he had trained on her.

  “I am! Why are you still here? You should be getting Tanisha to the EMTs.”

  “She won’t leave until she knows you’re safe. Annie and that other lady are tending to her, but that’s not why you should hurry.”

  “You mean the ladder? Yeah, I know it’s—”

  “No, it’s this beam of light that’s shooting out of the ground.”

  What?

  “Out of the ground? Where?”

  “About fifty feet away. I don’t know where it’s coming from. Some kinda laser, maybe? All I know is it’s white-hot and you can hardly look at it, it’s so bright. And it’s shooting way, way up—shit, it looks like it’s shooting up to the stars.”

  What on Earth? It had to be related to that Anomaly thing or whatever experiments they’d been conducting down there. Would she ever know? Maybe that woman Maureen—

  A horrible racket welled up from the bottom of the shaft. Laura stopped her climb and looked down to see Rick bathed in white light as he braced himself against the doorway leading to the storeroom.

  “Rick? You okay?”

  His shout echoed off the concrete walls. “The storeroom door just tore off and flew away.”

  Oh, God.

  “What’s happening down there?”

  “I don’t know. The Anomaly’s changed. Last I looked, it was sucking everything into it. But this light—I can barely see.”

  “Time for you to start up, Rick. And don’t even think about going out there to see what’s going on.”

  She knew him enough to know how curiosity and a need to know often overruled his common sense.

  “Hey, look,” he called, “I know I’ve pulled some dumb stunts in my time, but I can live on very happily without knowing what’s happening out there right now.” He waved up at her with one hand and banged on the ladder with the other. “Get moving! I don’t trust this thing to hold both of us.”

  Laura resumed her climb at full speed, but after only two steps, she heard a crack above her and felt the ladder tremble.

  And then she was falling backward through the darkness—her hands and feet were still on the rungs, but she was falling just the same—but slowly. She couldn’t help the scream of terror that escaped her.

  Cyrus’s beam lit the shaft enough to flash images to her brain: The ladder had broken a half dozen feet above her and was pulling free of the shaft wall one set of supports at a time …

  … until the broken end struck the opposite wall with a jolt that shook Laura’s feet free of their rung and left her dangling forty feet in the air.

  Alarmed shouts from above and below echoed around her as she hung there, kicking in the darkness. She hooked an elbow over a side rail of the ladder and managed to swing her leg up to the top side. With a lot of grunting and groaning and huffing and puffing, Laura hauled herself up and around and over until she was clinging to the top of the span of ladder instead of dangling below.

  “I’m all right!” she called into the darkness.

  She caught her breath and swore that if she made it through this she’d never neglect her gym workouts again.

  But now what? With Cy’s beam flicking around, she could see the upper part of the ladder still attached to the wall on the far side of the shaft—way too far for her ever to reach.

  She was stuck.

  “I’ll see if I can find some rope!” Cy shouted.

  Yes, rope would be a big help.

  Cy left and returned almost immediately. “Wait …”

  Wait … Did he think she had a choice?

  “Tanisha thinks she can help.”

  And just then she felt her body begin to lift. Her instinct was to grab the sides of the ladder and hold on, but she realized what was happening, so she let go.

  Then Cy’s words struck her: Tanisha thinks she can help?

  “Tanisha!” Laura called. “Can you do this?”

  “I am doing it!” came her reply, her voice weak but tinged with annoyance.

  “Oh, yeah, well, right. Of course. Just …”

  “Just what?”

  “Nothing.”

  Laura had been about to say, Just don’t drop me, but decided against it. Don’t derail the girl’s confidence.

  And she was doing it—floating Laura through the air. The oddest feeling ever. She’d maintained her sitting position from when she’d been on the ladder, but now something else was pressing up against her butt, lifting and moving her.

  “I’m going to move you over to the ladder so you can climb the rest of the way up.”

  “Great!” I hope.

  Not all that far to go. Six feet to the other side of the shaft and then another half dozen up to the rest of the ladder … what was the hypotenuse of that right angle? Somewhere between eight and nine feet, she figured. That was it? The total distance of her trip was less than nine measly feet, but from midair it looked like miles.

  “Laura!” Rick called from below. “What’s happening up there? You look like you’re—”

  “Yes! I’m flying! Tanisha’s doing it!”

  And she prayed that Tanisha kept on doing it. To help her along, she thought of Christmas, thought of snow, thought of sleigh bells …

  Finally the rungs were in reach. She grabbed hold and started climbing.

  “Thank you, Tanisha! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  She scrambled the rest of the way up to the platform, then found her own flash and turned it on.

  “Rick!” she called. “Start up! Climb as far as you can and Tanisha will take you the rest of the way.”

  She watched him climb from the bright light of the floor and disappear into the darkness above it.

  “Not a moment too soon!” he shouted. “The whole place is coming apart.”

  Laura felt the shaft vibrate for a few seconds, then stop, then vibrate again. She hoped the platform held.

  Her flash beam found Rick and followed him to the highest point at which the ladder still remained attached to the wall. With the broken tip wedged against the opposite side, it looked fairly stable.

  Now it was Tanisha’s turn.

  “Okay, Tanisha—do your thing!”

  From the top of the hatch Cy said, “Tanisha passed out. I can’t wake her.”

  40

  With the door gone, the searing light from the Anomaly’s particle beams lit the research area. Greve pressed his back harder against the wall as debris started sliding/flying through the opening. The lab coat that had covered Iggy was pulled off her and fluttered away.

  What now? Had the Anomaly grown? Would it ever stop?

  He had to see.

  Lowering himself to a prone position, he belly-crawled to the doorway—not easy using only one arm—and peeked around the edge to squint against the searing light. The Anomaly itself hadn’t enlarged but he couldn’t say the same for its accretion disk. Furniture, debris, anything that wasn’t attached—and even some things that were, like doors—had fallen victim to the Anomaly’s relentlessly strengthening gravitational field and were tumbling toward it. He could see bits of the concrete walls, floor, and ceiling chipping off and forming a fine gray mist flowing into the disk.

  No doubt about it … he was doomed. The only recourse he could imagine was to find a remote corner here in the research area—maybe in the containment chamber itself—and wait out the storm. That assumed that the Anomaly’s black-hole stage would run its course or peter out before it sucked him into the void.

  Then again, what if it didn’t change? What if it remained a black hole and kept devouring everything—literally everything? That could mean the end of everythin
g. And would that be so bad? If he had to die, why shouldn’t everyone and everything else come along with him? Seemed only fair.

  Pushing back from the door to look for his corner, he glanced behind and saw Iggy sliding his way. The gravity pull had flipped her prone and caught her manacles and their connecting links in its grip, seeming to drag her along by the chain. With her arms out straight before her she had stretched into a flying Supergirl configuration.

  She gathered speed so quickly that Greve was not able to move out of her way in time. She slammed into him from behind and slithered atop his back with her outstretched arms framing his head. The chain between her manacles was suspended just beyond his nose.

  They both began to slide through the doorway.

  “No!”

  He grabbed the nearer jamb with his good hand but the tug of the Anomaly’s gravity, along with Iggy’s extra weight, proved too much. His fingers slipped free, so he pressed his palm and dug the toes of his shoes hard against the concrete to slow him down, but he kept sliding.

  Iggy … the girl’s weight was doing him in. He tried to shake her off, twisting this way and that, but she hung on as if she were alive, as if she were haunting him.

  Had to get free, goddammit!

  He gave a particularly violent twist and felt her slide to the side and slip off.

  “Yes!”

  Her sliding body tumbled onto its back, flipping her wrists and wrapping the manacle chain around Greve’s neck. He made a strangled noise as he tugged at it, but he couldn’t do much with one hand.

  He dug his toes in harder to slow his progress, but Iggy’s slide was now unencumbered, so she began to move ahead of him and, in the process, rolled prone again. Which further twisted the chain around his throat.

  “Help! Please!”

  He didn’t know why he said it. No one could hear him. It simply came out.

  Iggy was now sliding feet first toward the Anomaly, her tangled chain trapping her hands against each side of Greve’s face as she stared at him with her remaining eye. He closed his own eyes, not just to shut out the sight of her, but because the glare from the particle beams literally hurt them. Not that it helped much—the light pierced his lids.

  He dug in his toes even harder, but the more he resisted his slide, the tighter the chain became. Had to get it off—off!

  Then Iggy’s feet began to lift toward the accretion disk, followed by her legs and torso, accelerating their combined slide.

  “No-no! Please no!”

  And then her whole body was airborne, with her manacle chain lifting him as well. He watched her legs begin to attenuate and stretch to impossible lengths as she was pulled into the accretion disk. Greve followed helplessly. The agony was brief as his body dissolved to its cellular components and his cells released their molecules and those molecules released their atoms …

  … but somehow his consciousness persisted into the Void … the waiting Void … the Void that was not a Void at all, but full, and waiting, and hungry …

  Had he possessed a mouth he would have screamed.

  41

  “Tanisha passed out. I can’t wake her.”

  “I heard that,” Rick shouted.

  He clung to the ladder just below its last intact wall anchor. Above him the unanchored portion bent away from the wall to rest its broken end against the other side of the shaft.

  “Oh, Rick,” Laura said, “I’m so sorry!”

  “Not your fault. We’ll figure something out.”

  I hope.

  What else could go wrong?

  The shaft trembled like a malaria patient with the chills. He couldn’t see worth a damn so he examined the ladder’s nearest wall fittings by touch. Loose powder around where they entered the concrete. That couldn’t be good.

  Another shudder, worse than the last.

  By the time he’d stepped on the first rung down there, the storeroom had been emptied and it looked like the doorframe to the hall was beginning to pull loose. The whole damn place was coming apart, and right now his biggest fear was the pull from the Anomaly latching onto the lower end of the ladder, ripping the rest of it off the wall, and sucking it and Rick out through the storeroom and into the hall to who knew where.

  He called up again. “Somebody mentioned a rope before.”

  Cy’s voice echoed down. “Yeah, that was me.”

  “Let’s try that.”

  “Well, I, um, I didn’t go get it because, you know, Tanisha …”

  Should’ve known.

  “Okay, I get it. But how about checking to see if you can find some now?”

  “I’m on it!”

  And yet another tremor.

  Rick didn’t know if he had time to wait for a rope that might not come at all, so he crawled atop the diagonal section and began climbing across the shaft.

  “Rick?” Laura called from above, training her flash on him. “What are you doing?”

  “Keeping busy while we wait for Cyrus.”

  “Do you think that’s such a good idea?” Her tone said she wasn’t a member of the good-idea group, and perhaps she was right, but …

  “At the moment I think it’s the only idea.”

  Yet another tremor. Below, near the brightly lit floor of the shaft, Rick thought he saw the bottom of the ladder move.

  Not good. Not good at all.

  He reached the opposite side where the broken end was wedged against the concrete—the exact spot Laura had occupied before Tanisha levitated her to the higher remnant.

  He stared up at that remnant. If only he had some way to bend the lower part back toward the upper. The shaft was only six feet across … its concrete surface had been left unfinished, Berlin Wall style … and his shoes had rubber soles …

  Worth a try.

  He put his feet against the wall and pushed the end of the ladder free. Then he angled his body around, squeezing himself between the wall and the end of the ladder.

  Laura’s voice from on high: “My God, Rick, what are you doing?”

  “Not sure yet, babe.”

  “Did you just call me ‘babe’?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’ve never called me ‘babe.’ Ever.”

  No, he hadn’t. And he didn’t know why he’d done it now. He never called anyone “babe.”

  “It just slipped out. Do you mind?”

  “I don’t know,” she said in a musing tone. “I guess what matters is the spirit in which—”

  “No, I mean do you mind not talking while I attempt whatever it is I’m gonna attempt.”

  “Oh, please, don’t do anything reckless. Cyrus will be here—”

  “Or he may not. A little quiet. Please?”

  She couldn’t feel the tremors rattling through the ladder from below, and he didn’t want to worry her. But if he didn’t get off this thing soon …

  He had two choices of how to do this. The first was to do a standing broad jump off the top of the ladder here; but if he fell short he’d slam against the wall and tumble all the way down unless he could grab the ladder again, and even if he could he’d probably damage himself. The second was to take the ladder with him. Much harder, but at least he could count on multiple tries. He hoped.

  Planting his soles against the wall, he gripped the top rung, flexed his knees to the max, took a few deep breaths, and shoved off with everything he had. He and the top end of the ladder sailed across the shaft.

  Only six feet across—six feet!

  He angled his body over the top and stretched an arm toward the bottom rung of that last length of ladder on the wall …

  … and didn’t make it.

  Above him, as he and the ladder fell back, he heard Laura muffle a scream. His feet hit the wall again and he had a very bad moment when his rubber soles slipped, but then they caught.

  Damn.

  “Rick, please-please-please, I beg you—”

  The whole shaft shook. Even Laura had to feel it.

  “What was
that?”

  “The whole bunker’s coming apart.”

  “Cyrus!” she cried. Rick looked up and saw that she’d climbed the short ladder to the hatch and was peering into the dark. She cupped her hands around her mouth and screamed, “Cyrus, where are you?”

  After a few heartbeats, Rick said, “Any sign of him?”

  “No,” she wailed as she scrambled down.

  “Okay then …”

  He gave himself another shove. He’d thought he’d put everything into the last jump but he found a little more with this one and this time his questing fingers found that bottom rung and wrapped around it. He twisted his body to let the ladder fall back, and then chinned himself up, grabbed a higher rung, got a knee up, and he was home free.

  When he reached the platform, he allowed himself a brief hug from Laura, then he was scooting her up through the hatch and following close behind.

  Up top he found a surreal scene. Tanisha lay on her back on a tangled pile of vines; her eyes were open but she looked dazed. Marie, Annie, and Moe knelt around her, hovering. Moe was keeping Tanisha’s wrist stump elevated.

  Jon and Woolley were nowhere in sight.

  And just like Cy had said, a beam of white-hot light—he’d called it a laser and maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t but it was goddamn impressive—was shooting up through the trees to the stars, casting wild shadows all around. Way, way back beyond that, faintly visible, the red and white and blue lights of cops and emergency vehicles flashed deliriously.

  Someone was rushing their way through the trees.

  “I couldn’t get the rope,” Cy was saying. “The whole area is crawling with—” He skidded to a halt. “Oh, hey, you made it.”

  “Yeah. But thanks for trying.”

  “Look, there’s a whole bunch of cops and soldiers and firemen and EMTs heading this way.”

  Rick felt a steady tremor through his soles. He lifted Tanisha and placed her in Cy’s arms.

  “Get her to those EMTs, then tell everyone to stay the hell away.” He turned to Annie, Moe, and Marie. “You three go with them—get away and stay away. There’s gonna be a cave-in or something worse.”

  “Gotcha,” Cy said. “But what do we tell them back there?”