Singularity (29 page)

Sullivan drew in a shaking breath and sat beside his friend, the muscles in his legs finally giving out. Tears sprang to his eyes and he wiped at them absently, trying to deny the reality before him. What had happened to him? What could do this to a man in less than twenty-four hours? A vision of a massive spider sucking the insides out of its prey came to Sullivan’s mind and he flung it away, nearly gagging.

“What the fuck?
My God.
What happened to you?” Sullivan asked, reaching out to touch Barry’s shoulder. The flesh was spongy and as cold as stone. Sullivan drew his hand back and shook his head, already imagining what he would have to tell Barry’s wife, what she would have to tell their children. And it was his fault, again.

Sullivan felt the hope he’d held out for finding Barry alive crumble, and he began to cry. Between tears he tried to speak. “I’m so sorry, man.
So sorry.
… I wanted to help so
bad
, to find you, but I couldn’t. … Jesus, I’m so sorry. I’m always too late.” Sullivan dragged an arm across his eyes, his voice choked. A thought floated up from the darkest part of his mind, the part he normally kept locked tight, and he spoke without contemplating why it came to him now. “I think you knew Rachel killed herself. I never told you, but I think you knew. She was so troubled and we fought for so long, but it finally won. The problems in her head were too much for her, and I understood, I did. I couldn’t imagine what she went through every day, and drinking sometimes helped, but most times it didn’t.”

Sullivan felt his tears begin to lessen, something rising from within him inexplicably after all this time, dredged from the depths of his soul by the raking hand of death. “The day she died, I walked in the door and she was standing at the balcony. She had a dress on that I liked. I set the groceries down on the table and just stood there. She stared at me over her shoulder, the look in her eyes when she’d seen something terrible, and I just looked back. I didn’t rush to help her like every other time. I waited. I told myself later that it was my way of lashing out at her after she’d hurt me so many times, that I paused to show her I was strong, and she couldn’t scare me anymore. But a voice that’s still inside my head says I did it because I knew. I knew she’d do it.”

Sullivan let out a long breath that seemed to drain him of everything. He felt like a dried husk without anything left inside to hurt. “She jumped. I stood there for a split second, and then I ran, trying to catch her, but she was already gone.”

Sullivan reached over and touched Barry on the shoulder again. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you either.”

Barry’s eyes flew open and he gasped, grabbing at Sullivan’s arm.

“Fuck!” Sullivan cried and fell back, but immediately recovered from his shock and slid forward on his knees to Barry’s side. His friend’s eyes were so shot with blood that they looked black in the dim light. They rolled back and forth, searching with fear for something, and Sullivan glanced over his shoulder to assure himself that they were still alone.

“She’s here,” Barry whispered, his words strangled as something gurgled in his throat. “It’s time.”

Sullivan put a hand beneath Barry’s head and lifted it so he could look into the other man’s face. “I’m going to get you out of here, buddy. You’re going to be just fine.”

Barry’s eyes found Sullivan’s and held them, his cracked lips parted as small bursts of air escaped them. “No, you have to stop
her,
you have to stop the doorway! There’s no time for me!” Barry’s voice rose in pitch, although he lacked the strength to muster any real volume for his words.

“I won’t leave you,” Sullivan said, shaking his head.

“You have to, now. You don’t know what will happen if her kind comes through. They’re locusts. That’s why their world is
dying,
they’ve stripped it of everything. They’ll do the same here. They’ll eat and eat and eat until there’s nothing left. They multiply so fast. They destroy worlds.” Barry’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he coughed up milky white phlegm, which coated his chin. Sullivan wiped it away and put his other hand on Barry’s cold cheek.

“How do you know all this?” Sullivan asked.

Barry’s eyelids fluttered open and he moved his arm to his side and jabbed at his back. “She showed me while I worked with the other man to get the machine running. She connected to me.”

Barry pointed again to his back, and with growing horror Sullivan rolled him onto his side. He searched the pale skin there, and was about to turn Barry back over when he noticed a blackened bruise near his tailbone. When he leaned closer to inspect it, he had to clench his jaw to keep from crying out in shock.

The skin around the base of Barry’s spine was flayed away. Vertebrae even whiter than the rest of the agent’s skin poked free, like an island jutting from a bloodied sea. The wound was circular, and Sullivan could see strands of dark veins radiating outward into Barry’s lower back.

Sullivan laid Barry gently onto his back once again, and noticed his friend’s breathing was faster. A dry whistle emanated from him, as if there was a bone protruding somewhere inside where it shouldn’t be.

“Tell them I’m okay, tell them I love them and not to worry. You stop it, Sully. Stop it for me and for my family, for everyone.” Barry’s red eyes slowly rolled up until his eyelids mercifully closed over them. His emaciated body hitched once, and then sagged like a sail in a dying wind.

Sullivan’s breath withered out of his lungs as he pressed two fingers to the side of Barry’s neck. He waited there, hoping that he would feel a dull beat through the artery, but there was nothing. Sullivan’s face crumpled and he stifled a sob as he sat back. The weight of
Everett
’s and, now, Barry’s deaths was almost unbearable. He felt like a bridge having its support struts pulled away one by one. He imagined his mind would finally snap at any instant, and he would welcome the oblivion madness would bring. It would be a blessing to swim in its embrace and forget everything he’d seen.

A yell from the cavern snapped him out of his trance. He looked toward the glow of the light, and then back at the body before him. Flashes of the man Barry had been ran through Sullivan’s mind as he squeezed his friend’s shoulder one last time. The urge to take his body with him was overridden by what he knew Barry would say if he were still alive. Sullivan stood and stepped back into the tunnel, and felt liquid begin to run over his shoes.

Water poured down the grade above him, soaking the dirt floor as it flowed past, searching for the lowest point it could reach. He sloshed across the tunnel to the spot where he’d placed the shotgun and retrieved it before the ever-growing river behind him clutched the gun in its cold grasp. He once again made his way to the mouth of the passage and looked down.

The people were amassing in front of the oblong machine, their faces turned away from him, toward the far end of the giant cavern. Andrews stood there on a semi-flat rock that raised him above the rest of the waiting eyes. To Sullivan, he looked taller and stronger than he had in his office; his shoulders were no longer slumped and his back was straight. His hands were outstretched toward the crowd before him, and even from this distance, Sullivan could see the maniacal shine that glossed the warden’s eyes.

“Friends!”
Andrews’s voice boomed and echoed in the rocky cave, giving a powerful resonance to his words. “This is the beginning! A revolution of the sort the world has never seen before! You are the beginning, and you’ll be hailed as visionaries in the new world!” Andrews lowered his hands and smiled at the faces upturned toward him, like a preacher doling out eternal salvation. “Death will be thwarted for your loyalty and disease will be wiped from our history, starting today! We will go forth bearing her gifts and renew the life of our new brothers and sisters!”

The congregation shouted in one voice, making a dissonance of repercussion that caused Sullivan to wince with its noise. Soon, the voices changed from exuberant shouts to a low buzzing that was laced with an underlying hiss. As Sullivan watched, he saw every person below him tip his or her head back and yawn widely. Tendrils erupted en masse from hundreds of mouths. They sawed the air as they whipped and caressed the faces of their hosts. Sullivan’s stomach turned at the sight and he felt his legs wanting to propel him up the way he’d come. He waited, as their humming chant rose in volume and the snapping appendages tore the air more violently.

A noise suddenly rose above the crowd’s song. It was a deep thrumming that Sullivan felt in his chest, the sound of a wounded whale crying out across miles of an empty ocean. Its bass vibration stuttered and ascended in pitch, until he thought his eardrums would rupture, and then it was gone. He waited a beat as the cavern fell silent but for the thousands of tendrils whipping in ecstasy, and then he saw it: movement in the ceiling high above them all.

At first he thought it was an illusion, a dancing of shadows amassing and then recoiling in the light, but then it moved downward along one of the huge stalactites. The shadow crawled languidly, not without purpose but with easy assurance of power. It crept into the glow of the work lights, and as its full form was revealed, Sullivan stopped breathing. It was like having a fractured picture become whole again and finally seeing it for what it truly was. In this case, it was his memories that were broken and rearranged within the dream of the other, dying world and the glimpse he’d caught of the thing near the fence.

It was long, at least twenty-five feet from tail to nose. Its general anatomy resembled a centipede, but instead of its torso being a continuous line, it was segmented into two parts. Its back half bulged with angular protrusions that were covered with black plates, much like a crab’s shell. Its tail then narrowed to a wicked-looking point that drew back on itself into a hook. The front half of its body was flared and shaped like an arrowhead. Multiple black spines shot out of its back, pointing forward, and Sullivan shuddered, remembering how they had looked poking from the water he’d almost treaded into the day before. Multi-jointed legs extended from its body every few feet; the two foremost limbs were thick and by far the longest. Both appendages ended in sharp tips that chipped and bit into the solid rock the creature climbed upon. Several smaller sets of legs curled tightly beneath its undulating body, seemingly protecting its plated belly. But it was its head that kept drawing Sullivan’s attention. Two soulless eyes the size of softballs perched at the far ends of a triangular skull. They were black mirrors without defined pupils, but he could see them shifting every so often to take in its surroundings. The skin of its head shone as if it were polished marble, and an open maw gaped below two hooked antenna. Its mouth was toothless and appeared soft. A shockingly human-looking tongue licked at its edges and flicked out into the air, as if tasting it.

Another blast of its stench rocked Sullivan back from the edge of the cavern and left him in the dark, gagging and near hysteria, as he watched the creature finally articulate onto the cave floor. Its head turned in an
insectile
manner toward Andrews, who smiled and bowed to the abomination. Again the deep vibration hammered the air in the cavern, and Sullivan wondered if the warden could understand it, for the man nodded and gestured toward the mouth of the tunnel.

Panic lanced through Sullivan as the thing turned in his direction and scuttled toward him at an alarming speed. It spider-like legs tore into the floor and propelled it forward like a black wave.

It was coming for him.

Andrews had somehow known he was here and communicated it to the horror. She would pull him from the tunnel like a man stabbing a pickle from a jar, and then devour him, to the tumultuous cries of her horde.

Sullivan stumbled back farther and slipped in the water that now rushed around him. He fell and aimed the shotgun toward the mouth of the passage, waiting for the monstrous head to fill the space. Seconds ticked by. Nothing appeared. He pulled himself to his feet, all the while keeping his sights trained on the opening before him.

The floor of the cavern came into view and he stopped, crouching as he realized how close she was. The creature had her back to him, and at this distance he could now make out intricate designs in the black plates of her armored hide. What he’d thought were large interlocking shells he now saw were made up of many smaller diamond-shaped scales that moved and flexed with every shift of her weight. The spines that appeared hard and immobile were, in fact, twitching forward and back with jerking movements. He watched in awe as she sat back, balancing on her tail to unfold the short legs beneath her stomach. What at first he’d thought was a protective measure he now saw for what it was: she was holding something.

Her legs uncurled and released the naked man she clutched to her belly. He stood on wobbly legs, which threatened to release him to the floor. In many ways he resembled how Barry looked: he had no hair and his skin was whiter than new snow. Skin sagged at his buttocks and stomach, which suggested extreme weight loss. Although his head fell to his chest as soon as he was free of the thing’s embrace, Sullivan was still able to recognize him.

It was Dr. Arnold Bolt, the missing nuclear physicist.

Bolt wavered again and began to tip, but then something shot free of the thing’s mouth and slid behind him. It was like the man had been electrified. Every muscle in his body tensed and flexed through his thin layer of skin. His head snapped back and his mouth flew open in pain. And just as suddenly, he relaxed. The scientist turned in a short circle and walked to the control panel mounted to the rear of the machine.