Silas: A Supernatural Thriller (30 page)

That’s when it hit me. It wasn’t a beam, but a runner. The gate was actually a huge sliding door.

“No kidding,” I whispered, and then pointed the flare at the ceiling. Sure enough there was another runner up there, too, along with an ancient-looking, chain-powered motor. The cords from the motor channeled into a metal cylinder that ran across the ceiling until it reached the wall to the left. At that point the tube descended and leveled out, forming a straight line running parallel to the ground and disappearing into the darkness beyond.

Silas tugged on my shirt, seeming confused but eager. The sight of actual
technology
caused my fear of the unknown to abate a little. I pointed at the electrical tubes. “Looks like they have power here, Silas,” I said. “Maybe this isn’t where we’re supposed to be. What if it leads to another bomb shelter?”

Silas squinted and scrunched his face.

“Yeah, dumb question,” I said. “You
did
lead us here, after all. So you ready?”

At this, the boy who’d been a dog hopped up and down, wearing an awkward, strangely sarcastic grin. He grabbed my hand and together we walked into the gloom.

48

The tunnel seemed to go on forever. We marched onward, following the electrical conduit. The ceiling gradually lowered and the walls closed in until the tunnel was ten feet square.

My nerves, which had calmed a bit at first, began playing with my head. Every time I heard the tiniest click my heart jumped. Most times it was nothing but Silas scraping a heel on the ground or kicking a loose pebble. I picked the boy up and hummed to ease my tension. I wasn’t surprised when my brain chose that damned Art Lonnigan song. The words repeated over and over in my head while my throat provided the melody through closed lips. Silas lay his head on my shoulder as if I was singing him a lullaby.

Then, an amazing thing happened – a glow appeared down the way. I walked slowly. The tunnel took a sharp right turn, and once we completed that rotation there were lights above us, beam after beam of buzzing fluorescent bulbs. The makeup of the tunnel also changed, with the natural rock and sand giving way to dull, smooth, gray metal. The shift came on so quickly that it seemed like we all of a sudden entered a completely different world. The odor of burnt wiring intensified.

“Maybe it
is
a bunker,” I muttered as I lowered Silas to the ground.

We started walking again after I snuffed out the third flare. Silas’s bare feet slapped against the steel floor, kicking up dust. That’s when I realized that dust covered
everything
, from ground to ceiling. There were footprints pressed into the grime, but they seemed old, perhaps years so. I frowned at Silas. If he’d been wrong in leading me here, we’d have wasted one more full moon.

A click sounded up ahead, making me jump. I drew the knife, the blade gleaming in the fluorescent light. I could see my reflection in it, something I hadn’t seen in three days. I looked like some scared-as-shit mountain man.

Silas urged me to keep walking, so I took a deep breath and followed his lead. The buzzing of the lights above grew louder and louder, the stink became greater, until the combined sensations threatened to overthrow my thoughts. It was bothering Silas, too, as he kept swatting at his ears as if he was being attack by mosquitoes.
If this doesn’t stop soon
, I told myself,
we’re turning around and going back.

The corridor rotated again, and this time we came upon something I hadn’t expected – a large
door with no handle and a pulley mechanism at the top. It looked like one of those heavy-duty types installed in industrial buildings, the ones that would drop down in the event of a fire or some other disaster. Or a blast door perhaps, like those seen on space stations in science fiction movies.

There was an instrument panel on the right wall. I approached it, wiped the dust from the monitor, and stared at the screen.
Enter Password
, it said, a green cursor blinking below the words. I stepped back and glanced over the panel. A placard hung there, coated with decades of floating waste. I swabbed the gunk away with my shirtsleeve. Dread washed over me when I saw what the sign had to say.

WARNING

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

PROJECT D.R.E.D.N.O.T.

Domestic Recon and Elimination Droid:

Nocturnal Operation Tactics

“No shit,” I murmured.

Silas uttered his low, guttural approval.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

He gazed up at me with those beautiful eyes, smiled, and slapped the wall below the console. I nodded, thinking that I didn’t give the little guy enough credit. He understood way
more than I could’ve guessed.

I stared at the screen. The blinking cursor taunted me. “I don’t know the password,” I said. “You have any ideas?”

He shrugged and slapped the wall again.

I grunted, said, “Fine,” and placed my fingers over the keypad. It was a smallish construction, about two-thirds the size of my laptop at home, and I felt the sting of old familiar when I touched the keys. There it was – the same old blockage, the emptiness that had stifled my creativity for years. My mind went blank and I groaned.

I flicked my eyes in all directions, trying to find a clue,
any
clue, which might give me some idea what the password might be. The placard was the only thing I’d seen actual words written on, so I used it as a guide.

DREDNOT
, I typed.

The screen blinked,
INCORRECT
, then said,
ENTER PASSWORD
again.

I tapped my fingers on the keys, punched in
OPEN SESAME
, and then offered a half-hearted chuckle.

INCORRECT

NICELY

INCORRECT

SHITHEAD

INCORRECT

“Bastard,” I muttered. In anger I typed,
 
YOU SUCK BALLS
.

Once more the screen repeated, with annoying abruptness,
INCORRECT
.

I stepped back. Frustration caused my heart to race, my shoulders to heave. I fought the urge to smash the damn machine, to rip a section of the electrical conduit off the wall and pummel it again and again. To be honest, I might have done just that…if not for Silas.

He crouched, facing the door, rocking to the beat of an invisible drummer. I heard something strange yet recognizable come from his lips. It was barely audible beneath the buzz of the fluorescents. I knelt down behind him. What I heard made me cringe, both from surprise and displeasure.

Silas, who’d been a human boy for all of a half-day in his life, was humming as I had – and it was the bridge to that damned Art Lonnigan song.

An idea popped into my head after I came to grips with what my boy was doing.
No way
, I thought.
That can’t be it. It’s just too…unbelievable.

With logic objecting to my every move I went back to the keypad. I ran through the lyrics in my head. It wasn’t so hard, seeing as it seemed like I heard that tune every time I turned on the radio for more than a year by that point. My fingers brushed the keys.

9-6-8-2-4

INCORRECT

I grunted and thought of the chorus.
5-7-2-1

INCORRECT

That left one remaining verse. I usually changed the channel before that part came up, which made it a bit difficult to remember. I sang it aloud, hoping my memory served me correctly.

“The numbers at the demon’s door

Three and nine once we pass the gate

Then one and one and one sublime

One last two to seal my fate.”

I worked my fingers over the keys once more.
3-9-1-1-1-2

INCORRECT

Silas turned around and fixed me with an eager glance. He started hopping up and down, gnashing his teeth together. I stared back at the screen. I had to be missing something.

Three and nine once we pass the gate

That might be it. I entered
3-9
, held my breath, and hit enter.

SECONDARY PASSWORD

I exhaled and eagerly typed,
1-1-1-2
, half expecting the screen to say
INCORRECT
again.

Instead a different word – a combination of words, actually – appeared.

ACCEPTED: WELCOME TO THE DREDNOT PROJECT

“One last two to seal my fate,” I whispered.

Motors hummed and gears grinded. Silas crept back a step. The diagonal crease in the center of the door became a gap that grew wider with each passing second. It didn’t take long until both halves of the barrier disappeared inside their respective nooks.

A rush of rancid air blew past me, that strange electrical-fire smell. I took Silas by the hand, ushered him behind me for protection, and stepped into the unknown.

49

We entered a huge, circular room, at least fifty feet wide and thirty feet high. The curved walls were lined with banks of computers whose keyboards flashed red, green, blue, and yellow. Arched black panels the size of movie screens hovered above the workstations. The place looked futuristic, yet there was a sneaky undercurrent of ancientness, as well, for no matter how advanced the technology appeared, it also had a certain grunginess that made it look
old.

The whine of a generator beneath my feet, combined with the computer console’s constant hum, caused my ears to ring. I covered them and looked around. Two items of interest captured my attention. One was a body, dressed in a gray prison jumpsuit, sprawled beneath one of the consoles so I could only see him from the chest down. But it was the second sight that
really
grabbed me and made me unconsciously hold my breath.

It was a raised circular platform in the middle of the room that caused this – or rather, what stood
atop
said platform. I reached behind me and shuffled around the dais while Silas’s little boy fingers clutched at the back of my Paul Nicely jeans. When I looked at his face, I saw that he was as horrified by what stood before us as I was.

The thing standing there was at least eight feet tall and had the torso of a man, sheathed with what appeared to be synthetic skin. The flesh stopped at the shoulders, and between those broad shoulders a head rose up. It was shaped like a lizard’s skull, molded from shiny metal plates, supported by a neck of stainless steel tubes beneath which I could see wires looping in and out. The mouth hung agape on bulky hinges and contained a row of razor-blade teeth. The mechanical skull shimmered beneath the flickering lights. Its eyes, a pair of telescoping lenses, were black. They stared ahead with blank despair, like a statue guarding the remnants of an era that hadn’t passed quickly enough.

Silas jumped in front of me, tearing my attention away from the thing on the platform. He crawled over to the monstrosity, glanced up at it, and then back at me.

“Yup, this is it,” I whispered. “The Dreadnaught. The monster in the dark. The creature Kaiser and Will are so afraid of. The bastard that killed Paul. And it’s a goddamn
robot.
” I grimaced and paused, then said, “I
really
hope it stays asleep.”