by Ike Hamill
They lifted.
“You ever see one of these stickers peeled away?” Leonard asked as they shuffled.
“That would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it? If they could be peeled and replaced, they wouldn’t…”
Leonard looked to Bob when the man trailed off. His eyes were blank—glazed over.
“Bob?”
They were still moving. In fact, he could feel Bob pulling on the crate a little so they could swing around and head for the far side of the loading area. Bob was still moving like he was aware of the world, but his eyes told a different story. His eyes registered nothing at all.
“Hey, Bob?”
Leonard wanted to drop the crate and run. He didn’t like the idea that Bob was unconscious, or hypnotized, or whatever. And, for some reason, he kept thinking about his own sneeze. There was something about the way that the sneeze had started as a joke and then had seemed uncontrollable.
“Bob?”
They were rounding the corner of the loading area. One of the black-uniformed men was standing just twenty feet away. Leonard wondered what the man would do if Leonard called to him. He wondered if he could yell and get the uniformed men to descend on them. Something was wrong with Bob, and he might need to be contained.
Leonard thought all these things, but he continued on with his job. With a glance over his shoulder, he realized that he was in position. He backed into the spot where the crate should go and waited for Bob to count.
With his eyes still glazed over, it didn’t appear that Bob was going to count.
Then, at the moment that Leonard was about to make the count, he saw Bob’s lips move.
“One. Two. Three.”
They lowered the crate. All the labels were still white.
Leonard stepped carefully around the crate. This minute had been faced and conquered. Leonard was one step closer to finishing this hour and then this day. Maybe tomorrow would be a little easier. He doubted that it could be much worse.
“Come on, man, let’s get you back to the locker room. You need to take a break,” Leonard said to Bob.
When he touched the man’s arm, Bob didn’t even flinch. Leonard snapped his finger in front of Bob’s eyes and got no reaction.
“Let’s go,” Leonard whispered. He glanced over at the man in the black uniform. He was standing there, looking straight forward with no expression on his face. The men in the black uniforms might as well have been mannequins. That, at least, was perfectly normal. That’s how they always looked.
Leonard put his shoulder against Bob and pushed. Once he got the man moving, it was okay. Leonard gently guided him towards the exit and pretended that they were having a conversation.
“So this party—is your brother-in-law going to be there? He’s still together with your sister, right? Wouldn’t that be weird if they split up. You guys are in the same volleyball league and you take the same welding class.”
Leonard opened the door. Bob didn’t move until Leonard pushed him forward.
Then, before Leonard could get him through the door, Bob’s hand shot out. The button on the wall had to be pressed and held for two seconds. The sign mounted above it relayed that information in at least a dozen languages and with a picture of a clock. As far as Leonard knew, nobody had ever pressed the thing. There was a rumor that some clumsy dipshit had stumbled into the old button one time, causing it to be replaced with the new, two-second button. Leonard never believed that story. Anyone that clumsy wouldn’t have been working a priority inspection.
Leonard’s heart nearly stopped when Bob’s hand hovered over the button.
“Hide,” Bob said.
His hand thrust into the button.
Chapter Twenty-Four - Leaving
(Evacuation)
IT WAS ALL BULLSHIT. It didn’t take two seconds for the alarm to go off. It didn’t even take two milliseconds for the door to jerk out of Leonard’s hand and slam itself shut. He heard the bolts to slam into the door, completely sealing it. Bob’s hand was still on the button as the red lights came on, the klaxon sounded, the door locked, and the men in the black uniforms began to collapse on their position.
Leonard swept his head around, taking all this in.
“Hide!” Bob turned and said to him again. His voice was lost to the sound of the klaxon, but Leonard could tell what word he was trying to say.
Bob’s eyes had cleared of that blank vacancy. This was the real Bob. Leonard took a step backwards as the men grabbed Bob’s arms. The other men were forming a perimeter around Bob, in case he should escape the grip of the two men holding him. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to Leonard. None of it made sense—why would they descend on the man who had sounded the alarm? Why wouldn’t they also be trying to grab Leonard?
These questions went unanswered as Bob’s guards starting dragging him towards a new door that had opened between the exit and the hangar doors. Leonard knew the floor plan of most of the facility, but this corner was a mystery. They were taking him towards the area where the men in black uniforms came from. As far as Leonard could guess, those men were grown in a special laboratory back there. Leonard took another step back when one of the men looked over towards him. The man’s eyes didn’t settle on Leonard though, they swept right by.
Leonard was left to wonder as they began to shuffle Bob through the mysterious new door.
He backed right into the loading area. His foot banged against one of the crates. Leonard turned and his eyes searched out the sticker. It was still white. His kick hadn’t jostled the crate too much.
The lights continued to flash in time with the sound of the klaxon.
Leonard saw that he was standing right next to the crate with the peeled up sticker. It shouldn’t be possible that the sticker was still white even though it had been disturbed. It was either defective or it was…
“Fake,” he whispered.
The white lights went out and the red lights intensified. The siren began to whoop.
Above him, Leonard heard a creaking sound. It was the same sound his baseboard heaters made in the morning when the heat came on for the first time. Pipes up there were expanding because of a temperature change.
He heard a hiss and saw white fog begin to disperse from high above, near the ceiling. The fixtures looked like sprinklers, but it wasn’t water coming out of the jets.
Leonard did a quick spin. The exits were all locked—he was sure of it. His voice would never be heard over the alarms. Next to him, he heard the hydraulics engaging. He had never seen the process, but he had heard rumors of it. The whole floor beneath the loading area dropped down, somehow transferring the crates onto a metal platform that would be loaded into a giant helicopter. Leonard didn’t allow himself to think twice.
He lifted the lid of the crate next to him. When he did, the label popped off the rest of the way. The box was lined with rigid plastic.
Leonard climbed inside and let the lid lower most of the way. He intended to keep peeking out through the gap until he saw the white cloud descending on him. The choice wasn’t up to him. As the crates descended and then stopped, the lid above him dropped. Leonard pressed against it, but the lid seemed to have made a seal.
For a minute, he held his breath. He was terrified that he would run out of oxygen in a few seconds if he didn’t.
The crate was moving.
Leonard heard the heavy thump of helicopter blades, cutting the air.
He started to bang on the lid and the sides, praying that someone would hear.
* * * * * * *
(Destination)
Making himself as small as possible, Leonard managed to duck his head and roll over onto his back. He felt like a contortionist, moving each limb carefully to get himself into position. When he was done, he was flat on his back inside the dark crate and he bent his legs so he could press his feet up against the lid. Gritting his teeth, he managed to apply enough pressure to break the seal. The corner of the lid popped free and he heard the whistle of fresh air sw
irling through the gap. It was nearly drowned out by the beat of the helicopter blades. There was light up there, too.
Leonard doubled his effort, trying to raise the lid enough to escape. He lifted it a few inches, but as soon as his force flagged, the lid wanted to slam shut again. Finally, he found an equilibrium where he got some fresh air and the lid didn’t want to close itself.
“As soon as we stop, the pressure will go down,” he whispered to himself. He didn’t know if it was true, but he felt better. It was going to be hard to explain when they got wherever they were going.
Alone in the crate, Leonard lost track of time. What felt like hours could have only been minutes. He really had no idea. It was obvious when they started to slow down. Everything shifted. The world tilted on its axis and Leonard felt a change in the air pressure. Soon, the blades intensified and then started to cycle down. They took forever to slow.
Leonard pushed up, trying to get himself free before the platform was unloaded.
It made a ton of noise, but he had to kick at the lid to get it up the rest of the way. When he finally pulled himself up and out, the first thing he saw was the torn sticker. It had gone jet black during the flight. Leonard swung his legs free from the crate and dropped to the platform just as the hydraulics began to whine again. With a jolt, everything began to lower. He could see the interior walls of the helicopter rising up and away. There was nothing to grab onto, or he might have been tempted to stay behind.
Instead, he was pulled along with the loading platform as it dropped into a shaft, just the right size of the load. Leonard had to duck between crates as the ceiling passed by just above.
Everything went dark again and then the light returned.
Poking his head up, he saw that the platform was being maneuvered into big room with white walls.
A group of men in blue uniforms waited while the platform moved between them.
Leonard had no plan. They were going to spot him any second.
He stood up, raising his hands.
“Sorry. I’m sorry. I was accidentally… You can see that I work for…”
He didn’t know how to finish any of the sentences.
The men started grabbing the crates from the platform. They weren’t careful at all. The men were strong and they each snatched a box by themselves. They put each crate on a long conveyor that ran along one of the walls. When they got to Leonard, they barely seemed to notice him. One of the men grabbed his shoulder and guided him down from the platform and started walking him to the other side of the room.
“You can call my supervisor if you need verification,” Leonard said. He went with the man willingly, not knowing what else he could do. “I just got mixed up with the loading platform and I accidentally ended up here. I’m very sorry.”
The man didn’t say a word.
At the far end of the room, they marched towards a big metal box. It looked like the size of a moving truck, but it wasn’t on wheels. Instead of wheels, the thing sat on four spring-loaded legs. The door looked like a submarine hatch. It had a big, round wheel for a handle. The man held Leonard with one hand as he swung the door open with the other. Leonard was relieved to see that there was light inside the box. It was a horrible to think that he was going to be forced into the box, but at least with light it wouldn’t be as bad as the crate that he had been stuck in.
Leonard didn’t really try to fight until he saw the chair. It was an overgrown dentist’s chair, but with straps that looked designed to hold him in place. The man gave Leonard a heavy shove and he fell into the seat. Leonard prepared to fight to the death before he was strapped into the thing. If they strapped him down, there was no telling what they would do to him.
Fortunately, the man didn’t move to strap Leonard in. He only retreated to the door and then disappeared.
The door was still open.
“You can’t treat me like this,” Leonard called. “I’m an employee, not a prisoner.”
“You’re neither,” a voice said.
Leonard recognized the voice from his dreams.
The other chair was turned away from him, so he couldn’t see her. Activating a lever on the side of the chair, she made it spin towards him.
Leonard was frozen in fear. One of his worst nightmares had come to life and it was sitting just a few feet away. He didn’t know if he should run or attack. He found that he couldn’t do either of those things. His body was paralyzed.
“You’re neither an employee or a prisoner,” Marie said. “You’re cargo. So am I.”
“Bullshit. You’re not real.”
He put all of his effort into rising up and walking out of the metal box. It didn’t happen. His rebellious body stayed put.
“I had just enough free will to fight,” she said. “It was controlling most of me, but I really did try to fight it. It’s too smart. It knows too much about how people work. We are all under its spell to some extent.”
“Shut up,” Leonard said. He closed his eyes and tried to do his breathing exercises. They could bring him back to reality—he was sure of it.
“Even that,” Marie said. “They taught me the same technique. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Those deep breaths are designed to release spores into the air from the depths of your lungs. If you managed to convince a doctor that you had an infection, by the time they fed an endoscope down your throat, you would have passed the spores onto the doctor. Then, after being infected, he or she would tell you that there was absolutely nothing wrong with you.”
Leonard had already experienced and rejected all of these thoughts before. They were relics of his fever dream. It was his own brain regurgitating its own logic back at itself.
“Bullshit,” he said. “If a fungus spread that easily and took over people’s brains that readily, it wouldn’t have the need for these crazy plots and conspiracies. It wouldn’t need to use me as a meat vehicle to cruise around in.”
“There are people who are isolated,” Marie said. “In the Sixties, a group of scientists persuaded the U.N. that the threat of a mind-controlling infection was real. Based on that, they created an isolation protocol that kept an oversight group separated from the general populace. If the fungus had infected everyone indiscriminately, then the oversight group would have activated and annihilated the threat.”
He couldn’t sit there and listen to her. Leonard knew that he had to get up and break the spell. This was the old hallucination that he was falling into again. It had taken so much work to free himself of this weird delusion. The last thing he wanted to do was to fall back under its spell. He closed his eyes and did his breathing exercise again. Then he remembered what she had said about releasing the spores. If that was correct, even his coping mechanism was a part of the fantasy.
Leonard focused on his memory of the face of his therapist. She could lead him out of this. He couldn’t picture her. The face kept morphing into a weird combination of his mother and Marie.
“So the other consciousness came up with this stealth approach and waited. It waited until Oliver had the idea of studying all the different mega organisms. Once it had a grip on him, it used him to set these wheels in motion.”
“Shut up,” Leonard said. He managed to slam his head back on the seat behind him. In his dreams, violent actions were always dampened. His therapist said that it was the brain’s way of protecting the body from hurting itself while asleep. In this weird hallucination, he was able to slam himself back against the chair, making his ears ring for a moment.
“It’s just a small group of us involved. The men outside, finishing the preparation, and the ones in the control booth are under its influence. You must have infected some of the people back at your installation as well. I assume that’s how you got here.”
“This isn’t real,” Leonard said.
“You don’t have to believe it, but it’s true.”
He realized that if he could control his head, he might be able to concentrate enough to control the
rest of his body. Maybe he didn’t have to be paralyzed by his fear.
Leonard opened his eyes and focused on his foot. He imagined it moving forward and stared at it until it twitched. That one little achievement made his confidence soar. A moment later, he stood up, triumphant.
“This is over for me,” Leonard said, turning for the door.
“You’re the perfect combination,” she said.
Leonard staggered towards the door.
“They infected Tyler, developed as much as they could, and then jumped to Jake. You’re the strain developed in Jake and then supplemented by a fresh infusion directly from the source.”
His hands and feet were the hardest to keep in line. With each shuffling step, his feet wanted to roll over to make him fall and keep him prisoner. Leonard tipped his torso forward, overbalancing towards the door and practically falling. It was only a pace away.
Somewhere, in the room outside the metal box, a siren rang.
The door began to swing shut.
Leonard leaned forward. If his feet wouldn’t obey, then he would block the door with his body.
It was a race between gravity and whatever was shutting the door. Leonard’s shoulder hit the metal and it barely slowed the swing. It shoved him to the side and he flung his arm forward. His hand felt numb—it was beyond the reach of his control—but he still had the ability to extend his arm. The door pushed him in while he got his hand through the gap.
The metal door didn’t slow when it reached his wrist.
In one clean motion, the bones snapped and crunched, the skin pinched, and the door severed his hand.
Leonard screamed and awaited the pain.
It never came.
* * * * * * *
(Launch)
He heard a thunk and looked up to see the mechanism spin, driving steel rods from the center of the door into the frame.
“You’ll want to get into your chair,” she said.