Artifact (17 page)

“Here,” I dumped the supplies at their feet. “Take these.”

They both looked at me.

“You guys have to stay focused, alright?”

“Okay…”

“I’ve got to go now.”

“What?”

“I can’t really explain, but I’m leaving. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, so you have to promise me to stay calm.”

Kate and Sarah just stared.

“This is what you were talking about with Sid,” Kate said finally. “You think you’re dreaming.”

“Just ration your batteries, and if those things get inside,” I pointed at the generator. “Climb that and don’t make a sound
–
I don’t think they can see you if you stay quiet.”

“Stop it,” Kate hugged Sarah a bit closer. “You’re scaring us.”

Reality haloed out again and spectra of light began accelerating around my head.

“I promise I’ll be back,” I said. “I promise.”

Sarah started to weep.

“I’ll come back for you, I swear.”

“No, don’t go again.” Sarah pleaded, choking back a throatful of hopeless sobs.

I stood and took a step back just as the world started to wash away. But something strange happened – just before everything went dark, Sarah let go of Kate and hugged her tiny arms around my neck.

“Please,” she cried. “Don’t go.”

3.

The summer shower we drove through left the roadway frothy with pink swirls of blood, as it arced down the nearest storm drain, washing the gore off of the streets. They were still out there, milling around. Thousands of zombies. I looked around and saw scores more headless corpses scattered in various poses of horror. Now that the sun had risen, I was able to pick out a few of those weird half human, half crocodile things slithering in and out of the crowd. The car window was streaked with diagonal swipes of darker red, bordering belts almost clear where the rain washed away some of the collected blood. Somewhere in the distance, continent sized plates of sky broke free and majestically plummeted through the thunderheads.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“I told you,” Patrick replied. “It’s all coming down, pal.”

All around us, the droves of corpses parted as the convoy of limousines approached. None of the zombies bothered touching us, and I caught glimpses of those lizard things pulling zombies that hadn’t been moving fast enough out of the way, so that the limo could pass.

“What’s your name, angel?” Patrick asked. I shot him a dirty look, thinking that he was talking to me.

“Sarah…”

I glanced across the limo and there she was, sitting with her hands in her lap. Her face was caked with filth and sweat from the basement. She looked utterly confused as she scanned the riots outside of her window.

“What…?” I asked dumbly.

“How did you get in the car, Sarah?” Patrick asked warmly.

She glanced at the floor, frowning, and then looked at me. “I don’t know…”

“Is she a threat?” The suit sitting beside her asked.

“No,” Patrick replied, sitting back. “Just another wayward soul.”

I tried to lean forward and reach out to her from across the limo, but my wrists were still handcuffed. She was hugging me when I shifted.

The implications were dazzling. What bearing this turn of events had on my brain health was negligible. But it was the first time I carried someone with me between dreams, or whatever you want to call them. And it made sense, in a simple way – I was able to carry physical objects with me before, after all – why not a person?

“We were in the basement,” Sarah said quietly. “And then I was here.” A realization dawned on her face and she sat forward, tears building in her eyes. “Kate…”

“Who is Kate?”

“She’s alone,” Sarah said quickly. “We have to go back and help her – you could get her out of there.”

Patrick looked out of his window.

“Please,” she begged. “You have to go save her!”

“Who and where is she?” Patrick asked me, more distracted than concerned.

“I helped rescue Kate and Sarah from the street,” I said. “Kate is currently trapped in the basement generator room at the lab.”

Patrick shook his head. “How could you know that?”

“That’s where Sarah and I were before we ended up here.”

“Ended up where?”

“Here,” I said. “Now. In this limo.”

Patrick leaned back and looked out of the window some more, absentmindedly gazing at the zombies as they stood by watching us pass. “You’re not making any sense, Lance.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you,” I said. “I’ve been shifting in and out of different realities. I realize that it must seem like things are moving in one fluid chronological order from your perspective, but between the hospital and now, I have been–”

“Quiet,” he interrupted. “We’re here.”

I looked out of the window at the acres of dead bodies, the sky falling to pieces, and the bloody rain that was trickling down my window. We turned onto Leroy Street and the Center for Energetic Materials suddenly loomed overhead. As we passed Sid’s abandoned vehicle, I could see Sarah’s semi–trailer a block away, and a ladder dangling from a cord of bungee from my office window.

“Why are you doing this, Patrick?”

“I have to keep you safe,” he said simply.

“From what?”

“The subversive agents that have infiltrated our system.”

I scanned the groups of zombies, wondering why they weren’t attacking us. It’s not as if they didn’t see us – their heads traced the limo’s movement like laser painting turrets. They were
letting
us pass. I scanned the two blocks in both directions, and not only could I see acres and acres of zombies and mutant lizard things, but I could also see healthy looking men in suits, casually walking between the multitudes with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders, completely ignored by the ravenous hordes around them. “You were talking about Joseph being compromised before…”

“He was–”

“Yeah, I know.” I cut him off, “You also said that you may have been compromised as well.”

He opened his mouth and hesitated. I nodded at my window. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing, Patrick?”

He stared at me for a long time as the car slowed down to a halt, confusion gathering into a horizontal crease under his brow, just below the cut on his forehead. He shook his head and stepped his massive frame out of the limo. One of those man-sized lizard things scuttled out of his way, and the zombies backed up, giving him two arm lengths of space. The stink of decay wafted into the cab.

Some men with guns pulled me out of the limo and started shoving me toward the CEM
.
Sarah scampered out of her seat and latched onto my arm – nobody seemed to pay her any attention.

I looked at the outside of the CEM
and marveled at the absolute madness of my imagination. I could see hundreds of those mutant alligatormen crawling up the side of the building. There was so much detail
.
However lucid I have ever been in a dream, I never realized how detailed things could be. On the building I could see masonry. Inside the masonry, I could see variations in patterns from one stone to the next, and between the stones I could see areas near the corners that needed reshaping. I could see rust beneath eaves and gutters, and rain flashing between alleyways. The windows were sleek and clean. In one window I could see that the glass was chipped near the sill, whereas in the next I could see that the glass was double paned.

I could see the changes in road surface beneath zombies who were still mindlessly trying to breach the CEM – beneath the porous abdomens of those mutant halflings – different shades of tar and gray. I could see individual stones in the sidewalk, strips where the walkway surface had been newly cemented. I could see the network of power lines framed by the intricate web of sky that was breaking apart and falling toward the earth. I could see empty cigarette packets and butts, soda cans and constellations of debris along the curbs. I could feel the natural oils on Sarah’s hand as she deathgripped my forearm.

Elaborate. Salient. Fractal and endless.

I suddenly thought about opposite sides of a coin. Heads and tails. You dream and then you wake. You’re born and then you die. Where did I get that idea from – the idea that what things happened in here influenced life or death out there? Why not just let myself die? It’s an end of and in itself, isn’t it? It’s better than the unending tumble down a hole of nightmares. I couldn’t make this end. I didn’t know how to. I imagined letting myself go limp, letting them take me without a fight to whatever fate they had in store.

A group of agents were beginning to breach the entrance to the CEM
with a chainsaw. Sarah jumped at the sudden, ear splitting sound of the engine ripping links through the steel banister that was wedged between the handles. They ripped the door down and started pushing through the barricade that Sid, Alice and I put up that morning. The agents stepped into the dark building and scores of zombies and lizard things poured in behind them.

Sarah tightened her arms around mine, and I could hear tears trembling in her voice. “Are we going to save Kate now?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. When faced with the possibility that this was going to continue forever ad infinitum, hope abandoned and left me by senesce, stubbornly holding me tightly by the arm. Hope always seems at odds with the tiny voices you find in dire situations. When hope was with me, I always had a plan moving me to a specific goal, propelling me toward an end that probably could never be.

Sarah buried her face into my hip as a lizardman reared up on its hind legs and howled at us.

Each time my hope began to fail, it was because the end seemed distant and obscure, and thwarted by the fog of epistemological uncertainty.

I shut my eyes, willing myself to wake up.

Wake up.

Wake.

Up.

Why couldn’t I wake up?

4.

They cleared the front desk of clutter. They pushed the stapler, the cup of pens, the document tray and the tiny American flag onto the floor. A large monster – one of the largest I had seen so far – bayed as they shooed it off of the desk, and left a trail of clear slime as it slid to the floor. One of the agents removed my handcuffs and I had time to rub my wrist only once before a group of five of them forced me onto the desk.

“What’s happening, Patrick?” I asked a bit shakily.

“We’re going to put you inside the vault,” he said reassuringly. “You’re going to be okay, just relax.”

Sarah stood near Patrick as the men in suits ratcheted me onto the table with three strap–wrenches. I tried struggling but it was useless. One of them left the building for a few moments and then returned with a silver tray arranged with what looked like autopsy or embalming tools. A steely chill settled in my throat.

“Patrick.” I said tightly.

Sarah started to cry and frantically twist the bottom of her shirt.

One of the men grabbed an immaculate, thin looking bone saw and laid it on the desk next to my head. Patrick anxiously shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“Uh, fellas?” He ventured, “We’re taking him to the vault, right?”

Sarah pulled at Patrick’s shirt, begging for them to stop. My voice caught in my throat.

I couldn’t speak.

“Uh, guys?” Patrick said.

“Quiet.” The agent at the head of the desk ordered.

“What are they going to do?” Sarah pulled again on Patrick’s shirt. He knelt down and smiled warmly. “He’s going to be fine, angel.” He said, “They won’t hurt him.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something on the back of Patrick’s neck. The agent at the head of the desk grabbed a black marker from the tray and started dotting a line across my forehead.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Securing the code,” he said. “Hold still.”

I rolled my head toward Patrick, and there it was again – a tiny lump on the back of his neck. The agent grabbed my chin and forced me to look straight ahead. “Please,” he said. “Hold still.”

I started frantically twisting my head back and forth, straining against the straps across my chest, arms and legs.

Patrick stood and scratched his head. “What do you guys need the code for?” He put a protective arm over Sarah’s shoulder. “I thought we were going to put him in the vault until we had a chance to clean this place up…”

“Just stay back, Patrick.” The head agent said. “We’ll take it from here.”

“Yeah, fine – no problem. But what do you need those tools for?”

I kept twisting my head from side to side, making it difficult for them to make a straight line with the marker.

“Stop them, Patrick,” I screamed. “Stop them!”

“This isn’t going to work,” Head Agent hissed through his teeth. “We need another strap.”

One of the agents walked out of the building again and Patrick turned his head to watch him go. I could see it now, clear as day. One of those things that separated from the zombies in the lunchroom was attached to the back of his neck, like an enormous, flesh colored leech. It was similar in shape and dimension to those half human half lizard things – only much smaller. Tiny, human looking arms spread eagle across the back of his neck, and its fingers dug into his skin. Its head was thrust into Patrick’s neck to its shoulders.

“Sarah,” I gasped, “The back of his neck–”

Sarah wiped the tears out of her eyes long enough to look. She saw it too.

An agent returned with another strap–wrench. Two suits held my head still as Head Agent ratcheted it into place. I couldn’t move. He grabbed a bone saw and set the serrated blade against my forehead.

“I asked you a question,” Patrick said. “What’s with the tools?”

Head Agent grabbed the other end of the saw and leaned on it – I felt jagged teeth bite into my flesh, followed by the warm trickle of blood.

“We need to cut his skull open,” Head Agent said quietly, carefully keeping the saw still. “So that we can eat his brains and ascertain the code that opens the artifact.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Wait a minute – I’ll just tell you the goddamn algorithm!”

“You can’t tell us something that you’re not consciously aware of,” Head Agent said. “Now be quiet, it will be over shortly.”