Holes in the Ground (48 page)

It fell to the ground, dead.

Jerry’s jaw dropped open.

Rimmer nodded at him. “You’re not the only one who plays
Call of Duty
.”

There was a cacophony of inhuman screeches and growls from the corridor behind them. Jerry turned around to see shadows approaching. There were more monsters coming.

Rimmer picked up his fallen comrade’s extra ammo clips and then motioned to Jerry with his free hand. “Come on, kid. Time to go.”

Jerry went to start running but stopped. He pointed up ahead. Rimmer turned around.

In the final cell before the elevator was a small creature. It glanced out of the gap nervously, looking left and right.

“It’s one of those imp things,” said Jerry.

Rimmer sighed. “It’s fine. They’re not dangerous.” He stomped towards the imp in the cell’s doorway and it immediately scarpered back inside, squeaking fearfully. “See? Now move it.”

Jerry and Rimmer sprinted down the final part of the corridor until they came upon the elevator. The doors were closed so Rimmer shoved his combat knife into the slim gap between them and twisted.

The doors slid aside, exposing an empty shaft.

Rimmer peered upwards inside. “We can climb the cables to the top. Just wrap it around your leg and shimmy upwards.”

“Upwards? Hell, no. I’m going downwards. We’ve got to go and help the others.”

Rimmer stared at Jerry like he was an idiot. “What is with your goddamn heroic complex? Just worry about your own ass. This facility is probably rigged to bury us any minute. We need to get to the surface, not delve down deeper into the belly of the beast.”

Jerry shrugged his shoulders. “You can do what you want, dude. I appreciate you helping me up until now, but I’m going to help the others. I couldn’t live with myself if I just left them to die. I’ve got enough regret to last me a lifetime; I’m not about to add to it.”

“Your lifetime can be measured in minutes if you go down there.”

“I’d rather go out a hero than a whimpering fart.”

Rimmer shook his head, listened to the monstrous noises approaching them from the rear, and then swallowed a lump in his throat. “You’re gonna get me fucking killed, kid. Come on. If we’re going to do this let’s be quick about it.”

Jerry grinned. “I knew you had it in you. Anyway, what’s the worst that can happen?”

Rimmer stared down the elevator shaft into the shadows hundreds of feet below. He grabbed the cable and entangled it around his outstretched leg. “We could be forced to watch while something unspeakably evil devours our intestines. Now come on.”

Jerry leapt down the elevator shaft along with Rimmer. The shadows were quick to envelop them.

“We got a problem,” said West, stepping back through into the labs.

“What is it?” said Andy. “What is that banging?”

“That banging is the entire prison roster of subbasement 10 trying to get through the door into the conference room. The worst part is—they seem like they’re succeeding.”

“Impossible,” said Dr Gorman. “That door is several inches of thick steel.”

West nodded. “They don’t seem to care. We need to deal with this.”

“Right-o,” said Lucas. “Your will, my hands, and all that. Just tell me what you need.”

“I need numbers.”

Andy looked down at Sun and sighed. “I’ll be right back honey.”

Gorman told her assistants to go and help out too, but she herself remained. Andy didn’t like leaving Sun with the doctor—didn’t quite trust her—but he had little choice.

He headed out into the conference room and saw right away that the heavy steel door on the other side was starting to bulge in the middle.

West spoke with the two other surviving security guards and the three of them checked their weapons.

The steel door shook on its hinges as something ungodly smashed against the other side. With each blow the steel bulged an inch more in the middle.

“What’s behind there?” Andy asked. “What the hell could be so strong?”

“It’s the sucker from cell 6.”

Andy frowned. “The
what
now?”

“Remember the massacre at Blessed Crucifixion?”

“That hospital in Illinois? Two maniacs went in and axed a bunch of people?”

The door continued to buckle inwards.

West nodded. “That was what Deus Manus spun to the press. The real reason that a few dozen people were torn apart at that hospital was because of the thing behind that door. I call ’em suckers, but I guess you could call them vampires.”

“Great, you mean like Dracula?”

“Or that fella from Sesame Street?” said Lucas. “I love that guy. Von, two, three…”

“No, I mean like a savage, remorseless beast of Hell that won’t stop until it tears apart everything in sight.”

“Is it me,” said Lucas, “or does it feel like the jailers have suddenly become the ones who are caged. Poetic in a way, no?”

Andy glared at Lucas. “Why are you even here? Are you a part of all this? Seems like you have a funny way of showing up right before a whole bunch of people get killed.”

“What are you talking about?” said West. The man had tilted his rifle ever so slightly in Lucas’s direction.

“I mean that before Dr Chandelling was possessed he showed me a whole bunch of historical photographs featuring Lucas. Photographs taken of Hitler, among other delightful people.”

Lucas put his hands up. “Hey, I’m not the bad guy here. I’m not looking to rip anybody apart. Seems like you have enough of that already.”

“Then why are you here?”

West chose to full-on point his rifle at Lucas now. “Answer the man, Lucky Charms.”

Lucas smirked. “Sunshine, you fire that weapon at me and all it’s going to do is spoil my flawless complexion and make me mad. And believe me, you wouldn’t like me without a flawless complexion.”

“Enough games,” said Andy. “Talk. What the hell were you doing alongside Hitler and African warlords?”

“Trying to talk some sense into them.”

Andy hadn’t expected that answer. “What?”

Lucas shrugged. “I knew what that knicker-wearing mommy’s boy, Adolf, was planning—saw it in his heart. I tried to change his mind, but it was no use. Same with those mad bastards in Africa.”

“I don’t buy it. If you were there to stop those men from committing atrocities, you did a really bad job.”

Lucas nodded. “Aye, can’t argue there, but you want to see some of the men I did talk around. For every Hitler that failed to heed my words, there were a dozen more like him that did.”

“Bullshit,” said West. “Are we supposed to believe that you’re some sort of guardian angel, fluttering around the earth trying to prevent evil?”

Lucas laughed. “You couldn’t be more wrong, or more closer to the truth.”

“Riddles,” said Andy. “Just tell us what you are doing he-”

The steel door burst open. An abomination stood staring at them, hunger in its eyes.

West shouted. “Fire!”

The three security guards let loose with their assault rifles, filling the air with smoke and an ear-piercing racket.

The sucker leapt into the air, grabbing onto hanging light fixtures twenty feet above and swinging over their heads.

Andy took cover. Lucas squatted down beside him. “Think you can talk this thing round? Andy said.

“Don’t think he’s really the reasoning type.”

The sucker screeched at them from the rafters, drool dripping down from between its dagger-like teeth.

“That thing has a mouth like Jaws,” Andy cried.

“Don’t let it bite you,” West warned, trying to draw a bead on the target.

“Why not?”

“You don’t want to know.”

The sucker moved with the speed of a scurrying insect. It swung above their heads and came down at the back of the room. It grabbed one of Gorman’s lab assistants and tore into her throat, spilling blood and tearing away a hunk of meat. West’s men fired, but resulted only in hitting the shuddering torso of the dying woman.

“Stop firing,” West shouted.

The sucker raised the woman above its head and tossed her lifeless body across the room, bowling over West and his men like skittles.

The sucker leapt back up to the ceiling. West scrambled to his feet and let off another round of gunfire.

“I can’t hit the goddamn thing,” he shouted. “It’s too fast.”

The sucker dropped back down and took the life of another lab assistant, then slashed open the throat of one of the remaining security guards.

“It’s picking us off one by one,” said West. “We have to get out of here.”

Andy leapt up from his hiding place. “Come on, back into the lab.”

The remaining survivors made a dash for the entrance but one of the dead lab assistants leapt in front of them and blocked their path. It was the woman that the sucker had just killed. Now she was standing before them snarling.

Her lips split open, her jaw dislocated as dozens of razor-sharp teeth erupted from her gums in a painful transformation.

Andy back away. “What the hell?”

“I told you not to get bitten,” said West. “That’s why.”

Behind them, the other dead lab assistant leapt up and went through the same grizzly changes. While teeth pierced through the dead man’s lips, he lunged forward and seized West’s remaining team member and snapped the man’s neck like a twig.

“Run,” said West. “Right fucking now.”

Andy argued. “We have to get to the lab. My wife is there.”

“Screw the lab. It’s blocked off. Here, this way.”

Andy hesitated, glancing at the door to the labs but realising that it was blocked by certain death. The sucker had dropped down from the rafters and was waiting for their approach.

“There’s no choice,” said Lucas. “If you want to live, then we need to get someplace safe in the next two seconds.”

“I’ll be back for you, Sun. I promise.” Andy raced after West and the others.

The sucker saw their planned route and leapt in front of them, grabbing the last remaining lab assistant and impaling her with one of its twisted claws. A gout of blood erupted from the young man’s mouth and the glint of life quickly left his eyes.

Andy and Lucas carried on sprinting.

West held open a door up ahead. “Come on, through here.”

Andy leapt through the door and tumbled to the ground, his legs giving out. Lucas followed. West slammed the door closed behind them. Fortunately it was the same thick steel as the door to the cellblock. Unfortunately that door had not been strong enough to withstand a breach.

They had some time; but not much.

“Where are we?” Andy asked, lying on the ground and gasping for breath.

“You’re in the library,” said Nessie, who quickly appeared from a nearby alcove. “Does somebody want to tell me what the fuckballs is going on?”

Everybody left alive in the library got to work making a barricade. They slid aside the heavy bookcases and positioned them in front of the door, bracing it as much as possible. They then stuffed the bookcases with the heaviest books they could find.

They all stood back to survey their work.

“It’s not going to hold forever,” said West.

Andy sighed. “I know, but at least they aren’t trying to get through right now. We have some breathing room.”

West chewed his lip. “Why do you think they’re not trying to get in? That sucker knows we’re in here.”

“He’s drawing it out,” said Lucas. “We just lost half our number and we’re not going anywhere. You’re
his
prisoners now.”

Andy snorted. “Are you saying that it’s enjoying the situation? Getting some sort of justice?”

“That thing out there is evil and sadistic. You really think it wouldn’t take the opportunity to enjoy some bitter irony if given the chance? There’s no rush, it can come kill you all whenever it chooses.”

“Why is
he
with us?” Nessie said, motioning towards Lucas. “Isn’t he one of the escaped prisoners?”

“I like to think of myself as a guest, luv. I’m just here to enjoy the hospitality.”

“You said that you have tried to prevent evil happening in the past,” said Andy. “So what is your purpose here? Were you here to prevent the breakout?”

Lucas shook his head. “I can’t prevent the actions of the defiler. That flappy little blighter has its orders and there’s nothing I could say to change its mind.”

Andy raised an eyebrow. “You mean the batling? And you refer to the
defiler
? Are you talking about Bub?”

“Aye, that was what you people named him. The truth is he has no name. He has existed as a force of destruction since the days this planet took its first breaths.”

“Why is he here?”

“To make himself at home. For every thing of beauty that the Lord created, he made an abomination to destroy it. His sole intention is to wipe out God’s creations and recreate the planet anew as his own domain.”

“Are you saying that Bub created all of the monsters we have here?” Nessie had a look of wonder on her exuberant face.

“Not all of them, but I can assure you that the bloodsucking monster in the next room had nothing to do with God. He would not create such a vile thing.”

“Who are you?” Andy demanded, tired of asking the same question. “How do you know all this?”

“Let’s just say that me and the big man upstairs used to be drinking buddies. Back before we had a falling out. Tell you the truth, I’ve been seeking his forgiveness ever since, despite my earlier misguidedness.”

Nessie huffed. “You know God?”

“No, lass. No one
knows
God. But I was lucky enough to be in his presence for a millennia or two.”

“So what changed?” asked Andy, deciding to humour the man. “Why did you fall out with God?”

“Because I resented his most recent creation. I refused to bow down before a lesser creature. My vanity saw me cast down from Heaven.”

Andy’s eyes went wide. “Wait a minute. Are you saying… You’re talking about the creation of man? Are you saying… Are you saying that you are the devil?”

Lucas cast his glance downwards, a sadness creeping across his face. “Tis but a name that many a frightened man gave me, but for a long time it was a name I earned proudly and with gusto. I slaughtered your kin and corrupted your purest hearts.”