Artifact (16 page)

I screamed and fell back, instinctively covering my face, thinking that the thing was going to latch onto me, but it veered away and shot through the kitchen area, moving quickly toward the doors at the other end. Its body and tail swung like an enormous lizard moving quickly across land, unaccustomed to the gravity of its own weight without the buoyancy of water.

The grotesque perversion of nature slammed into the doorframe, and its tail whipped, making dull thuds as it fled down the hallway. The last thing I saw before the monster
disappeared into shadow was how it easily and effortlessly seemed to skitter up the wall. For something so large, that appeared slow and ponderous at first glance, it was lightning fast. A chilled blade ran the length of my spine when I pictured that thing pulling itself up walls and skittering across the ceiling. Its high-pitched animal screech faded away, and I stayed on the floor for a long time simply staring at the door. I didn’t allow myself to move until I was confident that the thing had gone.

I spent so much time watching the hallway that I almost didn’t notice the chewed up zombie dragging the upper part of its torso across the floor. It left the lower half of itself behind in the closet. I shakily got to my feet and made short work of it; the horror of beheading another human paled in comparison to the terror of this new development.

I realized that I couldn’t kill these reanimated corpses, but if I removed its head, then it was rendered harmless so long as I didn’t go anywhere near its snapping, still functioning jaws. It was surprisingly easy work, considering the fact that I was undertaking the process with the lip of a skillet. The head continued biting at me, but the torso remained lifeless and still. I backed away from it and moved toward the closet, suspiciously eyeing the door, praying that the weird human–alligator wouldn’t come back. I wasn’t sure that a skillet would work if it did, and I didn’t want find out.

The floodlight behind the serving counter flickered to life for a moment then died just as suddenly, leaving me temporarily blinded. I had to keep calm as the green cloud of remnant light faded out of my eyes.

I figured that the backup generator was barely alive and fading fast.

I hadn’t noticed in all of the excitement that most of the floodlights were out.

I had to hurry.

In the span of time it took me to deal with these new developments, I hadn’t really been paying attention to the sound of wood splintering behind me. I whirled around and brandished the skillet as if it were an axe. There had been a sliding sound on the wood.

I noticed something odd about the zombies, but I couldn’t quiet place it.

I stepped a bit closer to the window and saw that the limbs reaching through the wood seemed a bit too scaly. On one of the arms, near the elbow, I noticed a budding spike that I initially mistook for a broken bone puncturing the skin. It was a spike very similar to the ones I saw on that monster’s back.

I quickly turned back toward the maintenance closet, deciding that I had seen enough – that I could get out of there. I picked my way over the bottom trunk of the zombie beheaded, and blindly tore boxes off of shelves, looking for anything that resembled an extension cord. I registered the sound of wood splintering again, and factored that I didn’t have much time before zombies poured through the windows.

I dumped everything that looked like it could have contained something onto the floor. Within seconds, there was a large pile of junk in the center of the closet. I dropped to my knees and started shoveling through the stuff with my hands. There were several cords. Three orange extension cords, a green cord and a large black one. I found a couple of D–cell batteries and stuffed them into my pockets. There was also a box of matches and another palm sized flashlight – I grabbed those as well. I couldn’t remember the size of the plug and socket on the terminal block, so I scooped up all five cords, threw them over my shoulder and turned to leave – but something caught my eye. For a moment, I thought I saw a flash of red and the flat piece of a pry.

I reached into the pile of junk and my hand closed around something solid. I pulled out the giant hook and hefted it in my hand, testing the weight.

It was a crowbar.

That was it. Time to head back to the lobby, and then–

– Something else caught my eye. Half tucked behind a toolbox, I recognized the splash of hair over a black backdrop tinged with red. I stepped back inside and saw several more splashes of black hair. I scooped the tools off of the shelf with the curved end of my crowbar, and there it was in all its horrible glory.

A tiny replica of the painting I saw in the white room, from when I was dropped down the shaft into the mausoleum, where I met my faceless clone. It was Goya’s
Saturn Devouring His Son
, and just like before, this one was different. Instead of Cronos it was Alice, and instead of a baby godling, it was me. That wasn’t the strangest part.

There were hundreds of them stacked on every shelf around the closet. Hundreds of copies of the same painting. Alice’s painting. Goya’s painting.

I thought about grabbing one, but the barricade started splintering again. I quickly left the closet and almost forgot about the head snapping away on the floor. I moved to leave, and there it was again – that odd, out of place thing I noticed before, protruding out of one of the zombie’s elbows. I shined my light on the arms sticking through the barricade, and I saw one in particular that was oddly lifeless. It hung limp over the lip of the windowsill. I moved a bit closer to get a better look, and I noticed that the tip of its finger was wiggling. I bent down, and there was no mistaking at that point – the tip of the zombie’s index finger was separating, as if pulling itself free from the hand, like a butterfly molting its caterpillar shell. It writhed a bit and then finally fell free from the finger. The tip curled on the ground, and I took a few steps back just as it sprouted legs. The finger rolled until its tiny, spidery legs found purchase, and then it scuttled away toward the maintenance closet.

Nothing should have surprised me at that point, but I’d be remiss if I said that I wasn’t absolutely terrified. The thing – the tiny piece of finger that dropped off of the zombie’s hand – looked exactly like a small scaled version of that weird lizard thing that bolted out of the lunchroom a few moments earlier. I took a few more steps away from the windows and strafed all of the arms in both directions. I felt that cold blade in my back again, noticing that each hand, each arm that reached into the lunchroom, had things dropping off their fingers. Each thing that fell on the floor immediately sprouted legs and then quickly scuttled off in different directions.

I shouldered the extension cords, finally satisfied that I had seen enough. I turned toward the hallway and ran, wondering just how worse the situation had become.

EIGHT

1.

I got lost in the network of hallways. I was half certain that I somehow cut to another dream, in another place, but I quickly learned that I hadn’t. I noted that my hallucinations were taking exponentially longer to change – why this was happening I didn’t know, but I took it as a good sign. Maybe it had something to do with how I focused my visions onto the labs, and since I was there, things seemed to have a bit more continuity. I put that aside and focused on finding my way. The dying floodlights flittering around corners were identical to the ones before them. I gouged marks into the walls with my crowbar whenever I would make a turn, hoping to use them like a trail of breadcrumbs. I must have doubled back at least three times, recognizing the scoring marks where I left them, but somehow I missed one of those and found myself jogging in new junctions, tunnels I’d never seen before. Rather than backtrack – the tunnel was probably below the ground floor, on the same level as the corridor in which Kate and Sarah waited for me – I chose a hallway that seemed to head toward the lobby and jogged on. I hoped they didn’t come looking for me and stayed put. Wherever I went, I heard scuttling in the walls.

Three times the hallways ended and I had to backtrack to a junction. The scale of this place didn’t seem to add up. The facility on the outside didn’t seem this large – there must have been a network of hallways that stretched for miles beneath the building. Some of the rooms were labeled –
conference room 1
,
Human Resources
,
Research and Development
, etcetera. Others had names belonging to people –
Principal Researcher
Moses Stanley,
Director of Internal Revenue
Nathan Holly, and
Vice President of Finance
Gail Aldermen – and so on. Which begs the question – why wasn’t the Clean Room down here? Wasn’t it supposed to be the most secured area in the entire facility? Then why was it on the second floor, entirely more accessible than this labyrinth of branching corridors and hallways? Nothing in this place made sense, which added even more to the surreal disconnection of these dreams within dreams.

I was suddenly reminded of how long I spent in this
dream. It didn’t seem to end – rather, it didn’t seem to want to end.

The hallway finally opened to some stairs that rose up half a level. It wasn’t an entire flight of stairs – just a few. It was better than the maze I was wandering through. It was with unending respite that I made it to familiar territory. There was a sharp turn, and then I recognized the hallway which led back to the lobby.

I stopped suddenly, trying to control my breathing.

There was a fork less than five meters ahead and another one twenty meters behind, and from one or the other or both came the sound of calloused skin pulling over drywall.

And then, another monster glided into the hallway.

Larger than the one from the lunchroom, thicker through the middle, this one slowly moved across the ceiling with sinewy human limbs that emerged from a trunk of pink flesh like obscene growth, with a dead, lifeless face at the end of a stout bullish neck, the pulsating abomination slid itself across the ceiling less than two meters in front of me and paused, dropping its tail – the hole in the center of its face visibly flapping open and shut. Its eyes were sealed with some clear gel, and it appeared to be blind.

It was searching for me.

I couldn’t breathe.

I remembered how it hadn’t noticed me in the lunchroom until I knocked over the recycling bin full of cans. It must have been using some sensory perception other than sight.

I didn’t move, not even to raise the crowbar. I reckoned that everything depended on either movement or sound. If the thing was looking for me, then it would have been on me in seconds. My flashlight trembled. With a sudden burst of movement, the monster wildly scrabbled over my head and darted down one of the forks behind me. There was a smaller one curled in a corner above the doorway that I just exited, but it remained still and unmoving. I must have walked underneath that one without noticing. The larger one whipped back and forth down the hallway in the other direction, probably circling around through the tunnels, searching for something to eviscerate.

I thought about Alice and Sid upstairs, and wondered how they were taking the arrival of these things.

Two more of those creatures slid down the hallway after the first, leaving the smaller one huddled on the ceiling, making suck noises with its teeth. I reasoned that these things must have been larger versions of what I saw dropping off of those zombies in the lunchroom.

The scientist part of my brain also noted that panic was often useful in situations like these, strictly from an individual selection standpoint. The basic fundamental instinct when one is surrounded by things that want to eat you alive is to run. But it seemed that running would draw them to me more quickly. They were essentially blind and hunting by sound – which explained the strange sucking noise coming from the smaller one above the door – it’s probably how they identified each other. I had to strategize a way to get back to the lobby while making as little noise as possible.

I started moving again, allowing myself to breathe. I walked slowly, strafing the hallway floor to ceiling with my flashlight, crowbar raised and ready to dish out what damage it could before those things ripped me apart.

A wet shape slapped the back of my shoulders and pulled me to the ceiling. I dropped the extension cords and watched in horror as disfigured limbs wrapped around me. The thing pressed its head against the back of my neck and it sounded like insect wings rubbing together – its hot breath spilled over the side of my face.

The thing – the man–shaped lizard
thing –
screamed like a wounded animal, and I instinctively clenched my eyes and tried reaching for my ears, but it kept my arms firmly trapped at my sides. Dozens of shrieks answered from the other hallways. I writhed in its arms, rolling my shoulders until I could slide out of its greasy hands – it snatched my shirt as I fell, and I twisted away, letting the cloth rip free. I leapt for the crowbar as the monster fell to floor behind me. With the heavy piece of iron firmly clenched in my fist, I whipped around and took the thing in the side of its face with the hooked end just as it leaped into the air. I fell back as it wrenched its head away, taking the crowbar with it. The thing writhed on the ground and clawed at the metal stuck in its face. Gouts of dark red blood poured out of its wound, and I realized that this was the smaller one, which was huddled in the corner – it must have heard me moving away from it.

I gathered the extension cords and the crowbar clanged against the wall – I turned just as it finished sliding across the floor and came to a rest at my feet. The monster was quickly scuttling for me again, shooting blood onto the walls from the hole in its face. I snatched the crowbar, raised it over my head and–

–More of them started pouring out of the doorways behind it, and they blazed across the walls and ceiling, boiling over each other – dozens of them in varying sizes, colors and shapes, like a chitinous flood of limbs. I turned toward the lobby and sprinted away from that horrible sound. The things howled and moaned in chorus like a perverse choir of death.

2.

I tossed the bundle of cords along with my crowbar down the dark corridor, having dropped my flashlight somewhere during my mad, horrified dash through the hallways. I ran in darkness for some time. The distant floodlights were my only source of direction until I reached the basement, forcing myself not to think about the quick swipes and brushes that I felt across the back of my legs and shoulders.

I careened into the corridor and threw my weight against the inside of the door, just as something thick and rubbery slammed into the other side.

Kate came around the corner and the sudden shine of her flashlight blinded me.

“Did you find it–?” She saw my shirtless body covered with blood pressed against the door, which was nearly banging off of its hinges.

“Hurry!” I yelled, pointing at the pile of extension cords on the floor.

Kate dove into the pile, vividly watching me as she quickly separated the cords. Sarah joined me at the door and tried to help hold it closed. There were dirt-streaked tears running down her face.

With the door shut, the only light in the corridor came from Kate’s generic flashlight, which was starting to dim.

The things on the other side slammed into the door hard enough that I felt a pop in my shoulder. “Go grab the crowbar,” I hissed.

Sarah pulled herself away from the door and reappeared at my side seconds later, thrusting the crowbar at my chest.

The crowbar would serve perfectly.

I felt for the crack in the door with the flat end and jammed it into the frame as hard as I could. It wouldn’t stop them, but it would slow them down and give us a little warning – we would at least hear them pry the door open.

Sarah quickly turned the deadbolt, and pressed the lock on the door handle. The weight eased immediately, but the pounding didn’t. I let go of the door and grabbed Sarah’s shoulder. We took a few steps back, convinced that it would hold at least for the minute or so it took to get the generator going.

I glanced up and saw a trickle of dust fall to the floor. The things on the other side were slamming into the door so hard that I noticed the upper hinge start to give way. I reached up and brushed it with my hand, feeling the space that was opening with each blow, watching the screws incrementally force themselves out of the frame.

“We have to hurry,” I breathed deeply. I started shivering from being shirtless and covered with monster blood and sweat. Sarah and I joined Kate at the pile and started pulling apart the snarl of cords.

“What
is
that thing?” Kate asked, fighting the tension in her voice.

“I don’t know. But it isn’t just one – there are several – and that door won’t hold them for long.”

Sarah wiped tears from her eyes and said, “But the other side is blocked too.”

We didn’t speak. We worked with the sound of zombies trying to pound through the emergency exit on one end, and the half human half lizard monsters trying to get through the other. This was the end of the line for us. I could see Kate thinking the same thing.

“Alice can do it,” I said. “If we can get that generator going, she can open the artifact – She’ll follow the algorithm. Giving her a chance is our only
option.”

“And if it doesn’t work…?”

I didn’t say anything. We continued separating the pile, occasionally realizing that two of us would be pulling opposite ends of the same cord. “I think I found it,” Sarah said.

Kate dropped her bundle and inspected the plug in Sarah’s hand, which was attached to a cord about as thick as a broom handle.

“Yeah, that looks good.” She said, “I think this is it – now we just have to pray it’s long enough to reach.”

We separated the right cord from the pile and stretched it out.

The door groaned under pressure and the crowbar clanged onto the floor. We looked up in time to see the top hinge break free – several human looking arms squeezed through the crack and clawed at the doorframe. Hollow, inhuman screams filled the corridor.

I ran to the door and threw my weight against it. Kate got to her feet and sprinted to the Clean Room generator, dragging the pile of cords on the floor behind her. The flashlight left me in darkness as Kate and Sarah disappeared into one of the rooms.

I was blind again, enduring as best I could the steely fingers clawing at me through the crack.

I heard Alice tell Sarah to run the cord across the hall and plug it into the backup generator. A squeal of hinge below – in the back of my mind I could hear the last two hinges give way, and I realized that I was out of time. The door exploded inward, and I sailed through the darkness. I came to a tumbling halt several meters away, hearing the crowbar clang against the wall to my right. I could also hear the mass of flesh pour through the door, ripping through the darkness to render us into twitching piles of meat–paste.

The flashlight came back into view long enough for me to see the shadows sliding through the door, along the ceiling and across the walls.

“Lance!” Kate screamed.

I rolled to my feet and stumbled toward the light. I grabbed Sarah and Kate as I ran past, and spun them into the generator room. We tumbled inside – I quickly got to me knees and slammed the door shut, hammering the lock into place just as a wet flood of open, howling mouths filled the corridor.

Dust fell as the things on the other side began to ram the door. I collapsed and breathed for a long time. There didn’t seem to be enough air, and I couldn’t stop taking giant gulping breaths.

We were still alive.

I rolled to my side and a warm wave of triumph washed over me. I traced the cord from the backup generator’s terminal block across the floor and under the door – it was a bit flattened, but intact.

“Did you plug it in?” I breathed.

Kate nodded and slumped to the floor. Sarah collapsed, wrapping her arms around Kate’s waist. All of us were taking sweet, enormous breaths.

I pulled myself against the wall and stared at the door, which continued to vibrate with each passing blow. But it was holding fast.

“Oh god,” Kate said. I glanced at her and Sarah, who were both staring at my chest. I followed their eyes to a massive cauterized hole that spread from my collarbone all the way to my abdomen. Bits of muscle glistened in the light – my burn.

I couldn’t feel anything.

“It’s okay,” I said shakily. “It doesn’t hurt.”

I looked around the room. There was the generator, the door to the corridor and that was it.

One way in, one way out.

We were trapped.

I got to my feet and inspected the doorframe – which appeared to be much stronger than the other one – the deadbolt was thick, and the hinges looked like they would hold. I felt a deep ache in my thigh, and when I tried rubbing it out, I found the four D–cell batteries, the box of matches and the palm sized flashlight that I salvaged from the maintenance closet in the lunchroom. As I emptied everything onto the floor, my hand leaked into the world around me. Everything was starting to bleed together in that strange way again, and I knew that it was time to change dreams. I knelt in front of Kate and Sarah, who were staring at the floor.