The Darwin Elevator (24 page)

Tania turned and ran back toward the front of the room.

Skyler shouted after her, “Where the hell—”

“Help us, you bitch!” Samantha shouted.

Tania removed something from the wall near the front of the room and ran back to them. A metal handle, oversized, with two large suction cups on either end.

She slammed the thing down onto the floor tile, and then lifted. The square panel came away with ease. Tania tossed it aside and faced the two of them.

“Ah,” Samantha said, “Sorry about the ‘bitch’ thing.”

“Can we go?” Skyler asked.

Beneath the floor they stood on was a crawl space, packed with bundles of cables and a variety of cooling and power conduits. Below that, more tiles.

Samantha sat down on the edge of the opening, and kicked. The weaker tile below cracked in half and fell away. Through the hole, darkness. Skyler turned his flashlight back on.

“Four-meter drop,” Samantha said.

Skyler laughed. “You’re almost that tall, you go first.”

“Flip a coin?” Sam said.

In the hallway outside the computer room, they heard a crashing sound, followed by hideous screams.

“No time to argue. Down you go.”

Samantha lowered herself down into the floor between a gap in the conduits. She grasped the metal girder that framed the space where the tile used to be, and hung from it. Finally she let go, dropping down into the dark room.

“I’m okay,” she called up.

Skyler looked at Tania, found her white as a sheet, eyes wide with terror. He followed her eyes to see a subhuman turning the corner at the far end of the computer room.

Naked, covered with dirt, blood, and old scars—more gruesome than most. It had an open wound on the side of its face, rancid with infection, revealing the bone beneath. The creature tried to scream at them, but all that came out was a sick gurgling sound.

Skyler aimed and squeezed off a burst. Bullets tore through the pitiful being’s face, snapping its head back in grotesque fashion. It flopped to the ground, heaved once, and went still.

The noise from the gun brought a cry from Tania. She wavered on the verge of panic.

“Get below!” he shouted at her, but she was incapable of movement. Skyler slung his weapon and grabbed her wrists. He forced her over the hole in the floor and lowered her down as far as he could.

Tania stared into his eyes, tears streaming from her own.

He dropped her into the darkness below.

Another subhuman entered the computer room, and Skyler sprayed the last of his clip toward the creature. He managed to wing it in the leg, enough to put the creature on the floor.

Sucking in his gut, Skyler stepped as far as he could inside the little power closet. Then he grabbed the door handle and jumped through the hole in the floor. The fall, combined with his grip on the handle, caused the door to slam closed above him.

He hit the floor below and felt jarring pain shoot up through his knees. He toppled to the ground, grabbing his legs in agony.

Samantha was over him in seconds. “Fuck. Anything broken?”

He shook his head, grunting.

“Can you walk?”

“I’ll damn well try,” he said through clenched teeth. “Reload my gun.”

Samantha took the offered weapon and removed a spare clip from Skyler’s belt. The last he had.

“Tania, are you with us?” he asked the scientist.

She clutched the briefcase to her chest again. Her lip quivered.

“Brilliant idea, using that … whatever the hell it was. You saved our asses,” Skyler said.

“Slab sucker,” Tania said.

“Huh?”

“The boys on Green Level call it a slab sucker.” Her voice came from a faraway place.

Samantha whispered in Skyler’s ear. “She’s in shock.”

“I know,” he said back. Then louder, “Let’s keep moving, eh?” He let Samantha help him to his feet, ignoring the pain in his legs.

She cocked her shotgun and then led them toward the exit.

A large segmented door, big enough for vehicles, marked the rear of the building. They emerged to unnerving quiet, on a pothole-infested access road that wound up and out of view. Weeds grew waist-high from every crack in the surface.

Samantha led as fast as Skyler’s knees would allow. She stayed a solid ten meters ahead, her body in constant motion as she checked every direction for approaching subs.

At the end of the access road, she halted behind a thicket to surveyed the ground between their position and the cluster of buildings. Skyler judged them to be a hundred and fifty meters from the building where Jake waited on the roof. He couldn’t see the rooftop, or any subhumans on the ground around it. A parking lot filled the space between them. Wildflowers choked every gap in the asphalt surface. Scattered about were the remnants of vehicles, left behind to rot as people fled the disease.

Skyler couldn’t help but catalog useful parts as he surveyed the vast lot. A hard habit to set aside, no matter the imminent danger. Fabric from the car seats, LED bulbs in the headlamps, dashboard components—the list went on and on.

A deep hum filled the air. The
Melville,
Skyler realized, high overhead. The only thing that sounded better than those engines was Tania’s calm, measured breaths. Her gaze might still be vague and distant, but his confidence grew that she would recover soon.

Samantha rose from her crouch. “No time to waste.”

She ran. Skyler wanted to scream from the searing pain in his knees, but with each step the sensation abated. Despite his aching legs, he moved faster than Tania. She didn’t complain when he grabbed her elbow and pulled her along. Despite the weight of her environment suit, the woman showed no signs of exhaustion. Skyler realized she had not complained about the bulky outfit once.

The hum of the
Melville
’s engines grew like approaching thunder.

At the back entrance, Samantha flashed five-and-five to Skyler before rushing through the back door. She wanted ten seconds to clear their path.

Skyler guided Tania to the outer wall and hunkered down in front of her. He couldn’t see the aircraft, and had to gauge her distance by the engine tone. Close now, but still not in vertical landing mode.

“Mother of God,” Skyler whispered.

The cacophony generated by the ship’s engines drew subhumans like moths to a flame. He stared in horror at the tree line beyond the parking lot.

The creatures streamed from the forest. Some galloped on all fours, like apes. He’d never seen so many in one place, focused on the same goal, as if they’d formed a clan.

Tania gasped. She clutched at Skyler’s sleeve.

“Run,” he said. “Don’t look back. Go!”

She ducked inside to the sound of shotgun blasts from deep within.

We’re surrounded,
Skyler thought.

All the while the thunder from the approaching aircraft grew, until the noise drowned everything, even the cries of the subhumans.

Skyler saw no point in wasting bullets. There were far too many. The roof was all that mattered. He followed Tania, pausing only to shut the door.

She waited at the stairwell entrance. Samantha stood at her side, her breaths loud and labored. A few pitiful bodies were sprawled in the corridor beyond.

“To the roof, now,” Skyler said. He went first, and heard their footsteps on the stairs behind him.

Two flights above he stepped around the body of a subhuman, shot in the throat.
Jake may have come down,
he realized.

At the top he found the door to the roof open. Bodies littered the gravel surface. Beyond them, the
Melville
rested on the building’s landing pad, her engines at idle now. Skyler could see Angus’s face in the cockpit window, white with fear.

He paused. “Is Jake aboard?!” he called.

Angus read his lips, then shook his head.

Skyler looked across the rooftop. “Jake?” he shouted out.

No response came.

“Jake?!”

“He must be inside,” Samantha said. “You saw that body on the steps. Give me your weapon.”

He handed her the gun. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Bracing her shotgun on armpit, and holding the submachine gun in her other hand, Samantha disappeared into the darkness without another word.

Not five seconds elapsed before Skyler heard gunfire below.

He removed his pistol from the holster on his leg. “Let’s get you aboard,” he said to Tania.

She set the pace, somewhere between a walk and jog, crouching under the swirling winds of the
Melville
’s thrusters. Skyler threw an arm over his face to fight off the maelstrom of dust and rock kicked up by the engines.

“Where are the others?” Angus shouted from the open cargo ramp.

Skyler waved him back. “Be ready to take off!”

Angus hesitated, then returned to the cockpit.

Skyler ushered Tania through the door and tossed the duffel bag in after her. “Close the door, but be ready to let us in.”

“Skyler—”

“Do it!”

Tania flinched at the barked order, and pressed the button to close the ramp. The captain disappeared out of her view as the cabin sealed.

She found herself alone, the aircraft dead quiet save for the faint hiss from the engines. There were no windows in the cargo bay. She threw her briefcase into a seat and went to the cockpit door.

Angus glanced back at her and offered a sympathetic nod. She leaned in to see through the cockpit window. An odd angle with her bulky suit helmet.

One of the aircraft’s engines blocked much of her view. She could only see Skyler from the torso down.

He ran from the ship to the stairway entrance, his pistol held in both hands, aimed dead on the open door. The wind generated from the
Melville
’s engines whipped his clothing about and filled the air with dust. Bodies of subhumans lay everywhere.

Tania held her breath. The contrast of death and paradise brought tears to her eyes.

Skyler entered the stairwell, and darkness, gone from her view.

The stairs had become a slaughterhouse. He stepped over two more dead subhumans before reaching the bottom, and guessed the carnage wasn’t over yet.

A shot rang out from the direction of the barricaded alcove, and Skyler ran.

He found Samantha kneeling over Jake’s limp body. She cradled his head in her lap, tears streaming down her cheeks. Skyler stopped and fell to a seated position a few meters from them.

A pistol dangled from Jake’s fingers. A stream of blood ran from the corner of his mouth and down his neck, smearing on Samantha’s pants. The woman’s hands, which held the dead sniper’s head, were coated in blood.

“He ate a goddamn bullet,” Sam muttered. “Rather than letting them—”

Skyler clenched his teeth and looked away, fighting his own tears. He wanted to punch something, to exact some kind of revenge. “It’s my fault. We should’ve landed together. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Samantha came to him. She gripped his shoulder with one hand and squeezed. Her other hand, coated with Jake’s blood, slipped around his neck and she pulled him toward her until their foreheads touched. “We don’t always see eye to eye, Skyler, but I don’t lay this at your feet. I’d never do that.”

He blinked tears away and looked at her. “You have to crouch for us to see eye to eye,” he muttered.

A laugh escaped both their lips. Sam head-butted him, a gentle rebuke to his gallows humor. “That’s the Skyler I know. Enough of the waterworks, all right?”

“What do we do about Jake?” he asked, staring at his friend’s limp form.

“We’re scavengers,” Sam replied, dragging the back of her hand across her nose. “We take his shit and get the hell out of this godforsaken place. Just like he would have done if it were one of us lying there.”

Five long minutes passed with no sign of them. Tania stared at the maw of the open stairwell, ignoring the pilot Angus as he fretted nervously. For now, at least, the subhumans were gone. Elsewhere, she thought, or all slain.

A figure emerged from the door—Samantha, alone, her head down and shoulders slumped.

Tania’s breath caught in her throat. Then she saw Skyler, just behind the stocky woman. A few steps into the sunlight, the captain faltered, his knees buckled. Samantha turned and caught him in stride. She carried him toward the plane, out of view.

Tania felt an enormous pit open in her stomach.

She raced back to the rear door of the craft and opened it just in time for Samantha to climb the ramp and dump Skyler on the floor.

Unchecked rage showed on the tall woman’s face. She slammed the “close” button and the red intercom button in unison, so hard Tania thought they would break.

“Get us the fuck out of here,” Samantha said.

The pilot made no reply. The engines answered for him. They roared back to full strength and the craft tilted as it left the ground.

“Belt in,” Samantha said to Tania, without looking at her.

Tania moved to help Skyler up, but he stubbornly waved her off and pulled himself into a seat. Feeling lost, she took the seat next to him and buckled herself in.

Samantha pounded the butt of her shotgun against the wall, over and over. Each impact was weaker than the last as her strength, if not her rage, drained. In the end she stumbled through the cockpit door and closed it behind her.

Tania watched Skyler for a time, as the
Melville
sped away. He slept, or pretended to.

She felt numb, completely exhausted. Eventually she reached out a gloved hand and took his, held it firm. When his fingers tightened around hers, she fought to hold back tears. They’d lost one of their crew for her mission. A man had died, somewhere in the depths of that horrible building. Alone in the dark, those creatures cackling as they tore at his face …

Guilt would hang over her for the rest of her life. She knew that with total certainty. Tania retreated, found a place in her mind that she could make sense of. The lab on Black Level, her work, her research. She wanted nothing more in the world than to be back there now, and so she closed her eyes and took herself there.

Chapter Seventeen

Darwin, Australia