Hellhole: An Anthology of Subterranean Terror

1 ‒ FORM-UP POINT

THE COMMISSION TOWER rises like an ancient monolith against the darkening Melbourne skyline. Rooftop floodlights flare against the low smog and for a moment the entire top seems on fire, yellow flames of light steaming upwards. Herald journalist Liz Henderson tries to focus on the strangely beautiful image from her relegated observer position, but her mind reels so much with everything she’s seen in the last few days she can’t concentrate.

If only their goal was the roof. At least that’d be visible to the police snipers’ cover fire.

The drug raid’s target is instead somewhere within the barricaded nightmare building, close-quartered and claustrophobic. As with the other towers in the almost-lawless western suburbs, Force Command knew the building was controlled by the Death To Society (D2S) gang, an anarchic virus of criminals that’d managed to rise above most of the other gangs in the suburbs — mainly because they’d taken over much of the drug trade with such insane violence it’d scared those they didn’t kill into early retirement. Liz had written a story during their early days, so she knew how heinous their methods were: Australia had never seen necklacing before their arrival. The images of rivals burning to death with tires around their necks on the shopping strips of Dandenong and Thomastown still haunted many. The thought of entering the building, even if only after the police tactical teams had cleared the way, sent prickles of sweat across her brow. She hoped the drug squad detectives she’d been embedded with over the past month didn’t notice. They gave her some concessions as an outsider, but like all cops they lapped up weakness.

Police Intelligence knew that walls inside had been torn down at will, escape holes hidden behind plaster everywhere throughout. But further intel on the internals was sketchy. The hydroponics labs might be scattered throughout the labyrinth of apartments, having shunted the remaining families into the few empty rooms left, or the gangs could have taken over whole floors to network the banks of plants. Then again, the labs might be so well-hidden the search comes up empty-handed. Command just didn’t know. And there’s only so long the police head honchos could keep covering up the true impact of whatever it was D2S were now peddling.

The raver glimpses through the tangle of bodies, back hunched and convulsing, dreadlocks snapping like snakes, and he turns with eyes black from embolism, and the bile he’s spewing in a great torrent doesn’t stop, it doesn’t fucking stop, it’s impossible for that much to be inside a—

She tears herself from the ominous view, glances over the forces assembled in the hotel rear parking lot with its shielded line of sight to the tower across the block. All with their jobs to do. The chosen protectors of society. The black-clad Special Operations Group members with their muzzled mouths and steel eyes, checking each other’s kits: “You good Jacko?” “You good Mad Dog?” The uniformed officers waiting to clean up and secure in their wake like puppies eager to prove themselves. The forensics team in their plastic ponchos and booties, scoffing down a last biscuit or two at the coffee trolley. Detective Austin and the other drug squad members, who she and her usual Herald photographer lapdog Fozz — shifting from foot to foot now beside her — had sat alongside the last weeks. Or the Deputy Police Commissioner and the other faceless suits lined against the back of the co-opted parking lot, all stabbing away on their smartphones or quietly reviewing political strategy with a shrewd eye over the whole congregation.

She wishes she has their righteous self-belief, their unshaking confidence in their place in the world. She’d lost hope long ago, before all this. The only thing that keeps her going anymore is the puzzle, the story. She has nothing else in her life.

“Who’re the work experience kids, Austin?”

The detective beside Liz jumps as the hardass SOG commander, a lethal bullet of a man Liz had heard tagged Shepherd, passes with a snarled grin. “Press tagalongs,” Austin says. “PR for the Minister.”

“Think he’d learn. Like letting the wolves in the door.” He keeps walking. Liz can’t help herself.

“Can’t criticize the Brotherhood, hey?”

Shepherd turns back, smile turning hard. “That didn’t take much. Dalton know this is going to be a hatchet job?”

“Not this piece. But someone has to watch the watchmen.”

Shepherd’s pale eyes look through her. She can almost feel the impact out the back of her skull.

“Just stay the fuck where you’re told. Media blood’ll take us years to live down.” Shepherd points a finger at Fozz. “And any footage of our faces, I’ll disappear that camera up your arsehole.”

The Victoria Police Special Operations Group were perhaps the most well-trained, well-skilled tactical response team in the country. They attended hundreds of incidents a year, everything from terrorism threats, to sieges, to mass shootings. Within the group they called themselves the Sons of God, a backronym referencing Matthew 5:9: “Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called the Sons of God.” Hell, they’d flown down to Port Arthur to stop the killing spree of Martin Bryant because Tasmania didn’t have a force capable of dealing with such an event.

They’d also been involved in a number of well-publicized shootings during the Gangland Wars that brought into question whether they’d become a trigger-happy death squad. Liz had thought most of the shootings were justified, considering the heavily-armed opposition they’d been up against. But they’d nearly been disbanded and it necessitated a full cultural review and more emphasis on non-lethal means of apprehending suspects.

She knows she’s being harsh, but if you didn’t put a rocket up the narky ones early, they’d find a way to get rid of you.

Detective Austin stands a moment, embarrassed. “Jeez, Hendo. Go easy.” He subtly turns his back, so they’re no longer part of their unit.

“I think we officially have cooties,” Fozz says low and she hides a laugh. He steals a photo of Shepherd’s back.

She glances up to see the Deputy Commissioner staring at her across the gap. He nods and Liz feels the fingernail up the spine of being someone’s puppet. Her smile sours.

“Quiet.” Shepherd’s voice slaps the assembled horde into silence. “This is an SOG op. You’re all tourists for now. Even the Dicks.”

The surrounding officers grin at the stony-faced drug squad detectives. Austin’s mouth puckers like a cat’s bum.

“Our targets are smart. They’ve barricaded the other entrances. That way they control in and out. Team A will hit the door, Team B in reserve as cover. Once in and we signal clear—we signal clear, none of you — uniforms will move in to hold the stairwells, in case any of the fine residents decide they want to join in.”

A chuckle among the group eases some tension. Liz listens with half an ear as she takes notes, but she’s more concerned with watching the various teams. Imagining their motivations, which of them would make a good character sketch — maybe the young female forensics officer fiddling with the escaping hair beneath her hood, probably on one of her first jobs; one of the older uniformed guys, a Sergeant by his wings, who stares balefully out at the target building, like this is personal. Fozz takes her lead, snapping the tense resolve on the man’s face, backlit against the tower in the distance. It’s a good shot, as usual. She also thinks of how to describe the scene: the chill in the air, the sound of dishes from the hotel kitchen, impatient feet softly stamping, the sour ulcer-breath of one of the detectives behind her. The devil is in the details, her first editor said with every story, and Jim back at the desk still expects nothing less. She appreciates the mantra now. Anything to calm her nerves.

“…sometimes wired with IEDs, so we spot anything, we’ll send in the robots before Forensics enters and starts bagging and tagging. Wouldn’t want to get in the way of your afternoon tea.” Another chuckle. The ponchoed-ones grin around biscuit crumbs.

Shepherd turns his attention to Liz and the administrators along the back wall. “And then the rest of you can swan in and take the credit.”

A thin smile from Daniel, the Deputy Commissioner. As long as the pawns do their job.

Shepherd’s already turning to his men, dismissing everything but the mission ahead, when Liz pipes up.

“Any truth to the rumors of what we’ll find?”

The commander’s icy stare would shrivel anyone else. “We believe D2S is cultivating its marijuana trade here. It’s all in the fact sheet—”

“I’ve read it. It’s riveting. Is this where they’re growing Black Lung?”

A blink. “Growing what?”

“I’m sure you’re aware the recent overdoses are linked. And they’re not from intravenous drug use.”

“You don’t OD from hash.” Shepherd glances at the Deputy Commissioner over her shoulder. “Why the fuck you have to over sensationalize—” He dismisses her, finishes final checks with his team.

But his pause is all she needs. She’s just casting out a feeler; now knows she’s hooked something.

The rest of the emergency personnel mill uncertainly, having never heard the term. Liz’d only heard it herself whispered by a panicked girl in an ER waiting room — before she’d started convulsing and was whisked away by the triage nurses.

The detectives roll their eyes. “Sorry guys. But I have to know.”

“Then ask us.”

“I have been.” She smiles. “And you haven’t told me shit.”

Austin takes her aside. “Look, whatever you think you saw, I was there—”

“I know what I saw.”

The detective sighs, waves her away.

But did she know? The more she thinks about that night, the more she begins to question her sanity.

Black Lung. An unseen new strain of dope said to offer an almost otherworldly high, the potent hashish potentially linked to an outbreak of lung cancer and psychotic behavior, perhaps due to being contaminated with LSD and other chemicals in production, if the attending doctors she’d paid off were right in their speculation.

Or maybe this was the usual apocalyptic mythologizing that heralded every new drug. Crack was supposed to enslave everyone’s children. Speed create a nation of zombies. And yet… there’s something that sticks in her gut about this one. An unease she can’t shake. The raver vomiting and vomiting, more liters than the body can hold—

An unease she thinks she’d seen in the face of Shepherd for an instant, too. Maybe that’s the true reason for this whole risky operation. Not just a statement to the community after the explosion of violent crime the last few years — a puff piece on the nightly news about how our lawmakers are getting tough on criminals. But shutting down something that has real legs before it sweeps aside everything in its path. And who else would be distributing such a nihilistic substance but a group called D2S?

She was sure she’d seen the drug’s effect in person, even taken shaky footage on her phone. But before she could file her impossible story, she’d been hauled in before the Police Minister. Dalton had threatened her paper at first, even claimed they’d contrived the name, but she’d been doing this shit long enough to laugh at that. She’d take contempt before rolling over to outside influence. So he offered her an incentive: if she held off inciting fear in the community — they’d dismiss the footage as fabricated anyway — she’d be granted exclusive access to upcoming raids looking to break the back of drug manufacture in the state.

What she hadn’t known for sure was whether the raids were linked to Black Lung. Dalton obviously thought if he could keep her from publishing until afterwards, the scourge would already be nipped in the bud. And she’d be just one of many good little tools talking about an already contained problem.

But she’s no one’s puppet.

And this must be Ground Zero.

She feels Deputy Commissioner Daniel’s eyes boring into the back of her head and turns and smiles at him. Did he think she wouldn’t do her job? A leopard doesn’t change its spots.

The only person with the power to keep her here looks away.

“How to make friends and influence people,” Fozz whispers.

“Just fishing with hand grenades. Always good to see what rises to the surface.”

“It’ll be us if you keep pissing off the soggies.”

“As long as the good Shepherd tells me what I need to know.”

“We onto something?”

“We’re onto something.”

2 — MOVE-OFF POINT

THE OP GOES wrong almost from the first moment.

The two six-man SOG teams slink like black wraiths to the edge of the residential block nearest the tower, evidently the last possible place of cover before they hit the open and the gang’s spotters could see them.

“Once they get the go-ahead, there can be no turning back,” Collins, one of her detectives, leans in and explains. “All forward movement until the target is neutralized.”

Austin grins next to them. “Suck up all you want, Bill. She’s still profiling me for the story.”

“Why? You don’t know jack.”

“I’m prettier on camera. Ain’t that right, Fozzie?”

Fozz glances at the warts on Austin’s bald skull, not knowing what to say. Liz just smiles. Let them vie for attention.

The Team A stack, Shepherd at its head, bunches at the corner, weapons extensions of their bodies. Some of them had the non-lethal beanbag shooters, she knew, but the last resort shotguns at the rear were fully-loaded killers. She watches each man tap the shoulder of the one in front, signifying readiness. No one looks back. They can’t afford to take their eyes off the danger ahead.

Shepherd nods at his tap and there’s a crackle from the radio behind Liz as he breathes into his throat mic: “Team Alpha in position at Move-Off Point. Good to go.” Silence all around among the waiting troops.

“Ready Ready,” the Head of Operations, a big grizzled veteran the SOG naturally called God barks back. Hunched over the comms equipment, he pauses a moment, then: “Go Go Go!”

The black shapes disappear into the night. Liz has to crane to watch them on the helmet-mounted camera screens arrayed on one of the command desks. The angle’s not great and it’s dark, but the infra-red view on the closest screen is even worse: just fuzzy glares of yellow bouncing in grainy darkness.

“This is the most dangerous moment out in the open,” Austin explains softly. “But inside they’ll have the tactical advantage with their infra-scopes.”

Liz nods, watching the Shepherd shape run low and hard, sweeping ahead with his rifle across the small courtyard in front of the tower, the team hoping for little resistance until they hit the door and enter.

“Readying explosives for door—”

The observation post can hear the screams even at this distance. Banshee howls of rage coming from deep within the building.

“Fuck is that?” one of the uniformed guys waiting at the mouth of the parking lot says.

The advance unit hit their gun barrel-lights, training them on the front door in a tense converged pattern. They barely have time to slow before the doors bang open and half a dozen figures burst out.

Gasps around her and Liz nearly jumps back herself.

“Contact! Police! Put your—”

But the crazed gangbangers run headlong into the line of fire, faces wild and frenzied in the flitting lights, like something from nightmare.

It’s insane and Liz can only stare, trying to comprehend, mind racing: most gang members do all they can to save their own skin under threat of arrest, knowing how to play the system so they’ll be back on the street after a small stretch of incarceration.

They don’t run toward the guns.

The screams still sound and there’s a snapped transmission—“Engaging”—then the distant sound of beanbag pellets. Dull thuds carry on the air. Liz tries to get a better angle on the screens and sees the figures jump and jerk with each painful hit then keep staggering forward. More thuds and finally all bar one drop.

The last attacker, a huge bloated form that fills the doorway, keeps coming on despite the non-lethal rounds, his arm seeming too long, unnaturally elongated—

“Weapon!”

The SOG split to one side and the rear-guard officer steps forward.

“Drop it!”

A dark barrel raises on one of the screens, but the man doesn’t stop and there’s a flash then a concussive BOOM through the mic as the officer fires the lethal Bennelli shotgun, and the crazed man’s arm blows off — literally blasts off still holding the machete; Liz can make out its spiral through the cordite smoke like a tossed snake.

The man doesn’t slow.

“Jesus.” Liz doesn’t know who says that one. Maybe it’s her. She notices Fozz zooming in to catch the encounter and Collins covering the lens.

“Stay back!” The barrel centers on the man’s head and there’s a collective silence around her as everyone watches held-breath. One of the SOG tazers the guy from the side, but the wired barbs don’t even register on his huge expanse and he keeps coming, he fills the screen—

A second BOOM. The man’s head disappears in a cloud of red and he pitches forward, spasms then stills.

“Shots fired. Suspect down.”

“Damn it,” someone at the table says softly.

“Roger that Alpha. EMT on standby.”

The screen holds on the dead man a second. Bit late for that. “Suggest the body snatchers.” Then the unit pushes up the stairs.

“Acknowledged.”

Liz can feel Austin and Collins watching her like she’s a live grenade. “You know they didn’t have a choice—” Collins starts to say.

“I know. I’m not a turncoat.” She curses herself. It’d taken her weeks to win the squad over. Shepherd had planted doubt there now.

“I don’t even know why I’m here,” Fozz grumbles.

The team moves in and down the hallway beneath sporadic fluorescent lights, kicking in doors and clearing room after room, then continuing on. The apartments are all empty, most trashed and filled with detritus. None contain hydroponics banks.

“Where are all the families?” Liz asks. Most new refugees were funneled into the government-owned towers upon entering the country. There should be hundreds of people within.

Austin glances at her. A moment of hesitation. Then he must take pity. “Ground floor’s buffer space. Leave it empty, they don’t lose anything if they’re breached. Everything must be on the upper floors, so the guys’ll have to clear each one—” He breaks off, stares at the screen.

A shape sprints ahead down the hallway.

“Contact! Police, halt!”

Then there’s just chaos as the officers pursue the figure, the world tilting and crashing on screen as the soggies sprint and Liz has to look away. When she glances back, they’ve captured a thrashing, raving gangbanger, the man’s eyes like white bulging circles onscreen.

“You see the truth! We have you now!” the guy’s ranting, a frothing explosion of spit and bared teeth, and the unimpressed police turn him over and pin him, then strap his wrists with plastic ties.

“Ground floor clear. One captured.”

“You’re trapped in here with ME!”

“Roger, Alpha. Proceed to First Level.”

“There is no First Level. We DOWN. We beneath in the pits. ALL laid out.”

“Wait, Alpha. What’s he saying?”

Shepherd crackles in. “Suspect’s reality-challenged, Chief. Proceeding to stairwell.”

“—walking over it right now. So close. You keep going, you keep going—”

“Shepherd. Eyes on a lower level?”

“Observed no stairs down.”

One of the other SOG steps toward the man: “Someone shut him up—”

“Alpha. Hold.”

Someone: “What’s God saying?”

“All, hold,” Shepherd commands. “Awaiting instruction, Command.”

“We’re coming in.” The Head of Operations rips off his mic, signals some of the uniforms to shadow paramedics to the downed residents at the front of the building, another group to accompany him to hold the stairwells. “You—” He points to her two favorite drug squad detectives. “With me.”

Austin takes off at a run. Liz and Fozz stand a moment, stunned.

“Shit!” Fozz yelps. “Go!”

Before she can follow him, the Deputy Commissioner grabs her arm.

“Why should I let you?”

“I can play the game, Daniel.”

He says nothing. Just keeps giving that hard look.

“I’ll make sure I forget to mention the Commissioner. This is your op after all, right? Should help your tilt.”

He lets her go.

3 — RE-ORGANIZATION PROTOCOL

IT’S WEIRD. THE incapacitated gangbangers in the courtyard are already rousing when they pass, and, before the paramedics can tend them, are fighting to get free. The uniformed police have to cuff them and end up dragging them away even as the frenzied residents bite at their metal bonds, breaking teeth and tearing their mouths to shreds. Liz tries not to look at the smeared concrete spreading out from the big man’s body.

The corridor smells dank and the carpet squelches beneath their feet, as if the whole building’s begun to liquefy. Black mold honeycombs the ceilings in some of the rooms. Liz covers her mouth and follows the thick backs of the detectives down the long hallway and around a bend, passing guards training their weapons up at silent stairwells. At the end of the next corridor, the black-clad soggies guard a hogtied and very agitated man. As they get closer, Liz can see his pinprick pupils and she fights a sudden burst of anger. How anyone can give their life away—

But she knows why people succumb to drugs. She’d seen firsthand those who choose the easy way out.

“—on the list?” the Head of Operations is asking the drug squad detectives ahead.

Collins nods. “The second in command. ‘Roach’. Real name: Pharcel Ibrahim.”

“Pharcel?” Shepherd says. “That’s sweet.”

Roach grins at them. Casts his rolling eyes at the Head of Operations. “And God saw all that he had made, and behold the world turned to black.”

The Chief stares at him, at the use of his name. “Hell you say?”

“Where are your soldiers?” Detective Austin steps in. “You going to let us just waltz in here?”

“No, no, they went to meet you. They’re out there now, still running.” The banger giggles and his eyes become whites as his head lurches back.

“This is a waste of—”

Collins cuts off the nearby SOG officer. “How many of your friends you want to lose? How many residents endangered as we work upwards? Map the building and we’ll cut a deal. Reduce our risk; we’ll make sure you get an easy ride.”

“Ride, ride. We ride the pony. And she smiles just before she falls, but we’re too far to catch her—”

Detective Collins gapes at him. Then launches in, grabs the guy by the throat before anyone can stop him. “The fuck, you talking about my daughter?”

“Falling. Always falling. We’re all falling.” Roach cackles laughter as Collins squeezes.

“Detective.” The Head of Ops — Liz really wishes someone would give her a name for him, because she’s not calling him God — grabs his man by the back of the neck and forcefully hauls him back. Collins’ face is about to blow.

“The fuck you know—”

“He doesn’t know anything. He’s scattergunning, pushing buttons.” The Chief steps in, grabs Roach’s hair. Forces him to focus. “Cut the act. Tell us what we want to know. Or you never see the sky again.”

“The sky is a lie.”

“Chief,” Shepherd says. “We’re losing time. First thing, they’ll burn the lot. If the gardens are on the floors above, we could have a disaster. The whole place’ll go up.”

“Not above. Not above.” Roach’s head rolls forward like it’s too big for his neck.

“He’s stalling. There’s nothing below us.”

“So sure what you can’t see.” Roach swings his heavy head up, takes them all in, rolls his vision until focusing past Shepherd’s shoulder on Detective Austin. “The man there now. Alone in his room, dying. Waiting to be forgiven. But only angels forgive.”

“Shut him up!” God barks and Shepherd snaps open a pocket for a gag.

Austin looks like he’s seen a ghost, backs up wiping his mouth. “He’s scoped us. They’ve got intel on us.” He looks at the others. “That’s not scattergunning. He knows.”

Roach manages to see past the shoulders. “All connected. Just have to tap in.” He grins at Liz, as if seeing the only woman there for the first time. “All have a dog in the fight. All trying to escape the ghosts—” Everyone’s looking at her and she can only raise her hands in confusion, not let them see the explosions his words cause in her, then Shepherd grabs the guy’s head, brings up the thick material to slam it in his mouth, and Roach focuses on him: “You’ll all die here. You’ll watch them fall. Just like the boat.”

Shepherd freezes and the welling anger stays his hand long enough for Roach to rock slightly to one side — and the whole time he’s been working behind his back at his bonds, skinning the ties down over his flesh, degloving his hands to get free, and he shoulder-slams upwards into the police officer, knocking Shepherd off-balance — and then he launches to one side, legs kick out, and there’s a BANG and everyone crouches.

The surrounding SOG train their weapons in an instant, but Roach is no longer there. “Anyone shot?” the Head of Ops demands, seeing the blood on the floor, but Shepherd isn’t listening. The vent low to the floor is now a gaping hole in the mildewed wall and he creeps toward it.

“Fuck. Trapdoor.”

“Are you shitting me?” Collins says.

One of the other SOG moves toward the hole, shines his gunlight down. The rusted rungs of a crude ladder jammed into the narrow shaft are just visible. Cold air escapes, chills Liz to the bone. How did he know—

“You smell that?” the SOG officer asks Shepherd.

The Commander nods. “Ammonia. Hydroponics run-off.” He hand-signals his men and they don gas masks. “Let’s go—”

And then they disappear one by one into the hole, leaving the rest of them in the vacuum of the corridor.

4 ‒ PAYDAY

WITHOUT THE MONITORS, they can only listen as the radio barks. “Pursuing — Stay tight — Jacko, Hutch, cover the flank — Got obs ahead… Jesus, look at that.” The distant sound of their footsteps, then startled shouts below from whoever they’ve encountered. “Police! Freeze!” The staccato tapping of non-lethal pellets. Then: “We got Roach.”

The Head of Ops doesn’t interject through all this, just calmly talks off to one side with the Command Post, getting updates on their vision. “You can see what? How long are they?”

Shepherd radios in. “Multiple suspects arrested. Workers. Site secured. Chief, you need to see this.”

“Roger, Alpha.” God grins at his troops. “Ready for presents?”

They wait until admin staff ferry in gas masks, then one by one begin to climb into the hole and the swallowing darkness within.

“The whole tour?” Austin asks her and Fozz. Her face says it all. “Then stay close. And we give you any instructions — run, stand still, don’t breathe — you do it.” Liz starts to open her mouth— “This time just say yes.”

She nods.

She’d never worn a mask and it fogs immediately and she wants to rip it off to clear it, knows that’s the last thing she can do. The sound of her breathing echoes in her ears. The world narrows and she focuses on the moving shapes in front of her as they descend the makeshift ladder about twenty feet and then hit the damp floor of the tunnel.

There’d been talk of a myriad of tunnels beneath the CBD for years. Hidden underground passages linking the hospitals, allowing escape from Parliament if needed to the nearby train stations, even networking the police and fire stations in case of attack during the wars. She knew some of these mythical routes were indeed real — had even used the access tunnels beneath the old Age building to the local watering holes, a necessity once for journos looking to steal more drinking time.

But this is something else. There’d long been rumors of US WWII troops digging vast tunnels linking strategic parts of Melbourne to their campgrounds at Royal Park in the inner suburb of Parkville, the spidered network said to crisscross the city boasting vast bunkers at various points housing ammunition dumps. D2S must have discovered part of it. And restored a massive section beneath everyone’s noses.

Glancing around as they walk, Liz takes in the machine-dug precision of the rectangular subterranean highway, the polished concrete dimly lit with a low-bulb, blastproof fluorescent lighting system. The tunnel is meters wide, accommodating enough for two-lane vehicles if necessary. The figures ahead look dwarfed and insignificant somehow, as if blithely walking into the gullet of some giant primeval creature.

The further the observational party walks, the hotter the air gets and her breath begins to steam. She demonstrates it in wonder for Fozz, but he’s not looking at her, instead staring up at the dripping green roof. Ever the germophobe. He sees Liz looking over and taps his mask, gives a thumbs-up: thank god for this little lifesaver. She can barely see him through fog.

There’s a gasp from one of the drug squad guys and Liz looks back to see the world opening up before them. The roof disappears high above as they enter the mouth of a great room and it’s then they discover the true scope of D2S’s drug empire. Vast banks of mature marijuana plants line the disused ammo bunkers underground, bathing beneath an immense succession of artificial lights. Fozz goes crazy taking pics and Collins and Austin try to get in shot.

A group of workers in plastic suits and masks have been apprehended by the SOG and now writhe at their feet. Roach and two other bangers lie beside them. Roach cackles through a freshly-applied gag, eyes rolling.

“Not gonna listen to his shit again,” Shepherd explains. “You got your payload, Chief.”

“My God.” The Head of Ops walks a long tray of plants, stares at the unending line hugging the wall down and around the slight bend in the distance. “How can this be possible?”

One of the SOG guys is checking a hand-held air tester. “Clear.”

Collins removes his mask and Liz stares at him. “Biggest problems are Red P in meth labs getting in your lungs. Worst risk here is starting a fire and dying really fucking high.”

Another of the SOG guys, “Mad Dog” she thinks it is, hangs back watching the way they’ve come, shotgun down but ready. Liz is close enough to hear Shepherd double back. “Why you antsy?”

“They kept running at us, man. That shit wasn’t right. You see their eyes—”

“Stay liquid. All right?” Shepherd raps the man’s helmet. Focuses him. “We’ve seen worse.”

Liz shudders to think what that might mean. “But where the fuck are they all?” Mad Dog says low. “There should have been dozens of bangers—”

“Maybe they’re all whacked out upstairs. They look in control? We got the drop, all that matters. The boys’ll hold the fort.”

“Yes, boss.”

“I want to see how far this goes. You and Halo hold here.”

Mad Dog twitches a nod.

Shepherd passes, sees her watching. “We have a problem?”

It takes her a moment to realize he’s talking about the shooting. She shakes her head. She has bigger fish to fry. And she’s just found a smoking gun. Let the government try to explain away the effects of criminalizing low-level drugs now. She’d have her justice—

“Good. I won’t shoot you both, too.”

Austin laughs. But Liz can see a tightness around Shepherd’s eyes. He’s unsettled by all of this as well — the weird behavior of those possibly affected by the drug, the scale of the operation down here, the difficulty they’d have securing the whole place.

If he’s unsettled, where does that leave the rest of them?

The plants are bizarre, but Liz can’t quite make out why until she moves closer and realizes that their somehow muted color isn’t due to the mask she was wearing. The leaves of the mutated trees are darker than normal, beyond a dark green to almost a black, like they’ve been burnt, somehow leached of pigment growing down here despite the warm lights arranged every two feet ad infinitum.

They’re fascinating, and she wants to reach out and touch the darkened fronds, something about the feathered patterns calling to her. And yet something fundamentally wrong about their entire existence screaming anathema at the same time.

“Like a negative image,” Fozz says softly, chimping at his viewscreen, doing that “oo” mouth snappers do at a good shot. Maybe that’s it. Because the plants are so familiar and yet unlike anything she’s ever seen. That anyone’s ever seen.

“Black Lung’s real, hey?” Austin breathes. “This is some hinky shit. Doing the world a favor when we burn this to hell.”

Collins claps his shoulder. “Amen to that. Biggest crop I’ve ever seen though.”

“And it’s still going,” Shepherd says. He checks the bonds on the cackling Roach and his men. The gangbanger tries to get in one last taunt at them, but everyone ignores him. The suited workers lie beside them, resigned and seething. “You good?” Mad Dog nods. “Stay on the radio.”

The SOG unit stalk ahead out the vast ammo room and down the concrete tunnel. Liz follows in their wake with God and the drug squad guys. Fozz spray-and-prays the long line of plants, frowning. “Light’s shit. They’re gonna bleed out, even with the fast lens.”

“You can always use my phone,” Collins offers.

Fozz glowers, hit right where a snapper-boy hurts.

The black-clad troops move silently ahead, stepping through the gathering puddles like lithe cats. It’s only then Liz looks down and notices the increasing lengths of water beneath their feet. The further they go, the more the walls seem to bead with sweat too, and as she looks at the passing plants she can see droplets of moisture on the leaves now. Then she sees a drop pull a leaf off the nearest black lung plant and fly upwards to the roof—

She staggers, hits her back to the wall. The next drop falls and splashes on the metal of the tray beneath. A trick of the light. She’s seeing things.

But as her hand slides on the slime of the wall, it suddenly sticks like a flytrap and for a moment she feels she’s being pulled backwards into the concrete and everything shimmers around her as she sinks into the choking bosom of the wall.

She flails, trying to pull free, and then freezes when she sees the girl in the distance. A small figure in white moving ahead of them, flickering in and out of sight at the end of the gunlights’ range. An ice chill dances up the back of Liz’s neck into her hair. It’s like death’s fingers gripping her skull.

They’re not alone.

What would a little girl be doing down here? She has to be seeing things, has to be imagining it—

The girl stops. Starts to turn. And the burning horror flares up Liz’s throat and she knows she can’t see her face, can’t look into the blackness of her eyes–

She jerks her hand clear of the wall, falls forward to her knees, and the girl in white winks out of sight.

Liz kneels panting, staring ahead. There’s nothing there. She drops her head and it’s like the bottom of the puddle beneath her is stretching away, becoming depthless. Then her stomach contracts and she convulses and almost vomits.

The raver on hands and knees vomiting a great stream—

No, no, that can’t be what’s happening—

Fozz notices her fall, comes back to help, ever vigilant. Then the radio crackles, echoing in the narrow confines.

“…all of them— We can’t hold—”

Shepherd and the SOG team freeze. “Repeat. Interference.”

It’s one of the uniformed officers at the stairwells. “Killing everyone. They’re fucking ripping them apart… insane—” There’s a scream, a sound like growing thunder, then he cuts out.

“Halo: report.”

“Contact! We got movement upstairs. Shots fired. Oh shit, Commander. They’re coming down the shaft.”

Shepherd doubles back, face stretched like thin paper across his bones. “Numbers. What’re we facing?”

“Oh Jesus. All of them. It’s all of them Shep—”

The whole team’s radios short out inexplicably as if short-circuited, small bangs and puffs of smoke whispering from the gaps in the plastic, then the sound of semi-automatic gunfire reverberates through the enclosed space.

“Are they shooting at civilians?” one of the soggies — Jacko, Liz thinks he’s called — asks. “What the hell are they doing?”

Shepherd starts to sprint then, and the other SOG flash past. Liz and Fozz can only stare, and even Collins and Austin hesitate, unsure what to do. Instinctively, they start to follow, then the entire SOG unit skids to a halt. A distant rumbling in the distance grows to a deafening roar.

Liz’s breath hitches as the police switch as one from their non-lethal guns to the AR15s hugging their backs. Take aim as they start to retreat.

“What is it?” she asks.

“Holy fuck,” is all one of them says and she follows his wide-eyed look up the tunnel back towards their entry point. The sight paralyzes her.

A wave of shadows surges toward them, pouring in through the gap above. The tower’s residents, in an unending stream of bodies, descending after them. They hit the ground and those who aren’t trampled are instantly up and racing on, filling the tunnel.

“What do we do?” someone yells as they retreat.

Shepherd is staring stunned at something in the midst of the crowd. Something dark-clad and doll-like in their midst.

Halo. Now just a broken rag puppet as the crowd tear him apart. A glimpse of crazed faces.

“Just fucking shoot!” the commander yells.

They open up. The noise is deafening, disorienting — and their efforts utterly useless. Suppressing fire is supposed to overwhelm with its blanket of bullets. Any rational being will seek cover.

But there’s nothing rational about this.

The swarm of screaming, drug-affected men, women and even children — oh God, there’s children among them, falling beneath the stampeding feet even as they try to keep pace with the mob like tiny zealots — keep surging forward despite the SOG mowing down their front lines.

The elite police unit fights as they’re trained to do. But they’re not soldiers, and they’ve never faced numbers like this. They’re seconds from being overrun.

Liz’s heart is in her throat as she turns and sprints back into the undiscovered tunnel. The two detectives and Fozz pound behind her with most of the SOG guys she thinks, but the adrenaline floods her system so quickly she can barely focus on anything except the narrowed sliver of sight before her, the tunnel arcing around and around, then angling down even further into the earth. Then the banks of plants beside her suddenly cut out and twenty feet ahead the tunnel splits in two.

She hesitates and Austin barrels into her. “Left, left, go left!”

He pulls her along by the collar and she stumbles, then finds her footing and she’s running again, glancing back for a stolen glimpse. Sees the black-clad Shepherd reloading as he runs, waving her on. Behind him roiling shadows.

Two of the SOG members cut right, not seeing them detour as they fire behind. Shepherd roars but they keep running, disappear. The mass of residents pursue them, but that leaves only two remaining SOG, the two detectives, and her and Fozz. To battle an entire building.

It’s insane. Too insane to rationalize and her brain is overwhelmed as she pounds on, unthinking. She almost doesn’t register the huge room looming ahead until the roof opens out again and she stumbles into another massive ammo dump vault. There’s even old marked boxes lining the walls. But the rest of the floor space is taken by banks of Black Lung plants. Row after row. There must be a hundred mature plants in here, bathing under heatlamps. Condensation drips from the ceiling and drainpipes and she’s dizzy just looking at the dark bounty. Her vision swims. Then she remembers her mask, realizes she’s dropped it far behind somewhere.

“Blast door,” Shepherd is yelling, and Liz rouses and turns, sees him and the detectives and the last SOG officer all grab the heavy steel doors on either side of the entrance. A screech and the old machinery starts to crawl shut.

Liz slams next to Shepherd, wrenches with all her strength. Her arms feel like they’re pulling from their sockets.

Then the sound of distant gunfire and strangled screams. The two soggies buying them precious seconds.

“Hurry!” Collins is shouting and Liz almost stumbles at the look of uncharacteristic fear on his face. He has kids, she knows — Jasmine and Jasper — had even met them and his wife one night for dinner. Had glanced in at him, sprawled on their bed, reading stories as they jumped and swung from his bulk like he was their pet tree.

Detective Austin has a cat that shadowed his ankles like a dog. Fozz and Liz had been invited to his apartment once, too. Small but neat and clean, and his current girlfriend looked like a stayer. He’d had trouble finding anyone who could cope with the hours, but she was a paramedic, so her shifts were even worse.

Fozz she’s known for years. Is probably her best friend in the world. Her only one left. She’d pushed everyone else away. The look of helplessness on his face now is heart-breaking. It’s her fault he’s here. He’d been putting off leave for months while she chased this drug thing. He was already burnt out and now he’d die in here.

They all will. No one would see their families, their loved ones, their pets again.

Shepherd must see her mind slipping because he’s in her face, that tight skin around his eyes like he’s a shouting mannequin: “Close it!”

The rusted doors creak closed, the rusted grating echoing the screams again coming toward them, then the steel slabs give a final groan before abruptly stopping, still leaving a gap of inches. There’s no way they can budge either one.

“Son of a—” Jacko, the last of the SOG unit says, still straining to shut out the nightmare tunnel behind them. The cords of muscles on his neck like they’re about to pop. But panic and wishful thinking mean nothing now.

“The boxes!” Shepherd points at the stacked crates and starts shoving metal tables aside. The others take his lead. Liz grabs one of the hydroponic trolleys to help and looks right into the leaves of its plant, can see every vein spiraling out from its shaft, every feather of its leaves. She’s close enough to inhale its ash scent and even that much contact triggers flashes of light behind her eyes. She sags, hands gripping the table as if stuck.

“The girl… She wants us to—”

“Hey!” Collins is shaking her. “Stay back from that shit.” He pulls her away until she’s on empty floorspace.

“She was there.” Liz looks past his shoulder.

He looks to the back of the room. The carved-out room narrows until converging at the far end in a rock formation. A hole to a cave system perhaps. There’s no one there. But for a moment she thought she’d seen—

A flash of shadow across the gap: figures hitting the junction again, pouring back down after them. Screaming fills the tunnel.

Fozz drags a box and, in his panic, trips and upends it. He stares down at the contents peeking through the broken lid. “Ah, you think this is the best thing to use?”

Long thick gleaming brass bullets rest on straw: old M1 carbine. Artillery shells nestle within another. All utterly useless to them, but also entirely unstable and volatile. They have no choice.

The screams get closer like a tidal wave of water. Flashes of darkness as shadows surge in the narrow gap. Fill it. Crazed cries of rage, the gangbangers and co-opted residents fueled by whatever psychotropic effects Black Lung causes in its victims.

The ragtag group shoulder the door. Dig in their toes.

Then too many feet stampede toward them, the noise eclipsing everything. There’s a huge crash as the first bodies slam against the blast doors. Everyone skids back across the slick floor.

Liz can’t help it. She screams. But so do the others.

5 ‒ CONTINGENCY ADJUSTMENT

ONCE, WHEN SHE’D been a young cadet, she’d been sent to interview a home invasion victim. Nowadays you did most interviews by phone or Skype, most research on the internet, but twenty years ago it was all footslog work. There was no substitute for seeing a person’s reactions in the flesh. The man had invited her in, hunched and injured, but as she’d spoken to him, she began to see something animal behind his eyes, a too-intense hanging on her words, an unconscious tongue licking his teeth. She realized she’d been invited alone into the house of someone wrong, that despite his victimhood, he saw a moment of advantage. And when she saw him break up a tablet into her coffee, she fled. Despite reporting to police he was an innocent random homeowner, the guy was in fact a drug dealer targeted by greedy clients. She’d rubbed up against something evil and tainted, glimpsed beneath the veil of society to the easy corruption lurking ever-present. A glimpse that became a deluge the more she worked, until her own family was torn apart by it.

A voice calls to her. Distant, incoherent. She stares with unfocused eyes, and then makes out a face near hers: Fozz. Saying something, imploring.

She smiles at him. Wishes they could close the gaping rent in the veil. But perhaps she’d known it would always end like this, undone by her own curiosity. Her own pigheadedness.

Behind him, she can see a figure across the room at the rock pile. See, she points. I was right. It calls to us now.

The figure turns from peering into the cave tunnel and it’s Shepherd, sprinting back toward them as he dodges around the hydroponic trolleys.

“Liz! Damn it, listen to them.”

Liz blinks as the commander hits the door beside her, lending his weight. The world swims back into focus. Her anxiety returns like a sledgehammer.

“We… we hit it as a group,” Shepherd’s saying, pointing to the dark tunnel across the room. “Close off the rocks behind. We’ll have a better chance of holding them off.”

“Do we even know it goes anywhere?” Collins demands.

“You want me to scout more?” They’re all close to hysteria, but Shepherd’s able to fight it, slow his breathing. He calms himself, looks at the rest of them. “It goes further. They’ve been using it. That’s enough. These doors aren’t going to hold.” He glances at Liz. “You still spacing?”

“I’m okay.”

He looks at her, fighting words. She braces for his sarcasm, knows it might push her over the edge this time. Her defenses are shot. When he speaks his voice is softer: “Just hang in there. I’ll get you all out.”

She stares at him. Realizes how responsible he feels for them. He’s already lost most of his men. And it’ll be all of them if he can’t get this plan to work.

“It was a trap. They waited for us to enter.” Jacko is quiet, the hardened SOG man close to losing it. “They were foxing.”

“We haven’t got time to worry about—”

“But why?” Austin cuts Shepherd off. They need this, need a moment to understand what the hell’s happening. “Why would anyone cultivate anything this psychotropic and destructive? If that’s what’s really affecting them. And where did they get the strain in the first place?”

Fozz points at the ocean of plants in the room. “If that’s what’s affecting them? You think it’s not this shit? An entire building’s trying to rip us apart is a coincidence? They’re fucking evil. You can smell it.” He shudders, tries to huddle into himself.

They all know it. Can feel the Black Lung cuttings in the room like a presence. Something malevolent lying in wait.

“Maybe it wasn’t intentional,” Shepherd finally says, looking around the room. “This has taken too long to engineer. And D2S’s empire is founded on a smooth-running organization, violence included. They still had workers sensible enough to be wearing protective equipment, even while others had gone batshit crazy. So maybe there’s something down here that affected everything. Maybe the plants became Black Lung somehow down here.”

“Could it be a fungal infection or something?” Liz says as she stares up at the waterpipes along the line of the roof. They’re strangely darkened. Not rusted but more like… the black mold she’d seen in the rooms upstairs.

“Infected how?” Shepherd asks.

“I don’t know. But ergot mold used to infect bread and cause hallucinations and sometimes insanity. They think it’s where a lot of our fears of monsters and other realities came from, because those affected would see horrifying visions they couldn’t explain.” She looks at the two detectives. “You guys hear about anything like that—” Something shifts on the edge of her vision. When she looks back at the pipe, there’s nothing, just the honeycombed cobweb. But when she turns away again, she has a sense it’s moving. She shuts her eyes.

“They built these buildings in the ‘60s,” Fozz says, staring up at the pipes. “Piled people in and let the whole thing rot. Like they do with everything. It’d be fitting if they caused this.”

“I don’t give a shit who caused what,” Collins says, turning to Shepherd. “They’ll know this has gone to hell. How long before Command sends someone?”

“Who are they going to send? Next call’s the army. Maybe they’ll just bomb the whole fucking thing.”

“Maybe they should,” Fozz says.

They stare at him. “All the more reason to get as far away as we can—” Shepherd starts to say.

Then Liz nearly screams as a white eye appears at the gap in the door: one of the residents looking in right at her. The man starts biting the metal, scrabbling at the sharp edge. Bright blood splatters in at them and she shies away. She can’t take much more of this.

Jacko braces against the door. “I’ll buy you some time. Better be room at the end for me, though.”

Shepherd grabs his arm. “I’m not leaving anyone Greg—”

“They’ll be through before you get across the room. I’ll be behind you, Shep.”

An unspoken moment between them, a lifetime of service together. Shepherd nods.

He looks at the rest of them. “We good?” They nod, but Liz can see the fear in their faces, the clenched hands, can feel the apprehension descend like a caul over her and almost take the will from her legs. But there’s something that continues to drive her, even now, even as the numbing release of death finally beckons her, a promise to her past perhaps. “Then we move out,” Shepherd says, and Liz sets her feet, grits her jaw and prepares to push off the door. “Ready… Now!”

They burst away from the blast doors and thread through the maze of tables. Behind them there’s a shriek as someone spots the movement and the door’s slammed with a huge weight. Liz hears Jacko grunt.

She can’t risk looking. Can’t do anything but dodge through the field of plants. Each passing flash of black leaf seems to dig into her consciousness, tug at her vision and stretch at awareness like elastic. If smoking this substance has taken over the minds of so many, imagine what it could do for her. Imagine what it could blot out in her life. Her memories, her past. Her whole existence. Wipe it clean. Absolve her.

She stumbles with the weight of temptation and Fozz sees and comes back as he always does. Always doing so much for her. Now risking his life. She can’t let him.

She pushes him on. He has to save himself first. She’ll be okay. She’s right behind.

And as she looks past him to the tunnel, she sees Detective Collins just in front of her colleague, sees the big man slow, fixated upon the passing plants so close to his touch. The policeman stops, reaches out a hand.

“No!” she screams, but it’s like she’s in slow motion, and he runs a hand down a darkened frond then rips it free and jams it in his mouth.

Fozz slams into him, bounces off the big back like he’s hit a wall. The broad shoulders turn, and Collins looks down at him, still chewing, as dark veins spread from his mouth across his cheeks. His eyes have turned black and fathomless.

Collins’ skin ripples and shifts as if something within is trying to break free, like he’s becoming possessed by something. The image is impossible for her to reconcile, and for a moment she can see another face beneath his. A man also but not the same detective she’s known over so many weeks. A face twisted with hatred.

Collins grabs Fozz’s head with one huge hand, lifts him clear off the ground. Her friend flails, scratching at the immovable flesh, then he swings his precious camera like a weapon. It explodes against Collins’ temple, shatters in a rain of jagged plastic and blood. It’s like hitting concrete.

Liz smacks into them, tries to hook under the detective’s fingers, beating futilely at the thick arm. His black eyes turn to her and it’s as if she’s looking into nothingness, like she’s being sucked into the void within him. Then he dismisses her, turns back to Fozz, and squeezes.

Liz screams at the sound of crunching bone. “Get back!” Shepherd’s saying, sighting his gun.

Liz is too enraged to listen, to get out of the way. She gives up trying to pull Fozz clear and spots a metal bar against the wall beside them, part of a broken trolley, and she grabs it, turns back. Collins senses her at the last moment, but she avoids becoming trapped in his eyes and just swings—

The bar clips his jaw and he finally staggers, but his grip on Fozz’s face is unending and his fingers compress and collapse the skull in on itself. Liz swings again. Harder, all her rage in the strike. The bar slams home, the jar numbing up both arms and she has to let go. The length of metal remains stuck in mid-air.

Stuck into Collins’ temple. The detective lurches to one side, steadies himself on a trolley that crashes beneath his weight. Fozz is thrown clear and hits the ground in a broken heap.

“No, please,” Liz says, sinking to her knees beside her friend, hauling him up onto her legs. His head swings to her and his face isn’t a face anymore. Beside her, Collins kicks a last spasm then stills. The metal bar clatters free. She can barely comprehend the sight of either of them.

Then Shepherd’s grabbing her by the back of the collar and dragging her with him. She shrugs free, freaking out, and he screams at her. “Look!” Across the room Austin has stalled, and he’s ripping at the Black Lung plants too, shoveling the poisoned leaves into his mouth.

Liz snatches up the length of bloodied metal, sprints after the SOG commander. At the blast doors, Jacko waits until the last possible moment, and then he leaps after them. Almost instantly, the door bangs in a foot behind him, the numbers moments from bursting through. And Austin is already turning to him, sensing the man coming, ready to embrace him.

They can’t save him. Can only run for their lives toward the cave opening. Gunfire behind them, Jacko’s scream as he’s eclipsed.

And then it’s only the two of them, their numbers cut in an instant.

Shepherd pushes her forward, covering her at the entrance, and she jumps for the hole. The darkness takes her.

6 ‒ ENDGAME

LIZ SCRAMBLES ACROSS razored rocks into the swallowing dark. Her knees scream. The only light comes from Shepherd’s gun barrel as he skitters in behind her, crawling backwards and sighting on the circle of light behind them.

She looks back past him and sees a face at the entrance. It’s Austin, black-eyed, mouth covered in blood. A huge boom that shakes the fragile roof above, that nearly blows her eardrums, and Shepherd puts a hole in his forehead. The detective keels away.

Shepherd keeps retreating, slithering back on his stomach, as the noise comes and the room beyond begins to boil with shadows. Hands claw at the lip of the tunnel, and then suddenly the gap fills with faces. He opens up and Liz can only crouch and clasp her hands to her ears, silently screaming.

“Keep going!” Shepherd cries at her and Liz moves further crouched into the black, slapping a hand against the wall to feel her way forward. She thinks she can feel footprints in the stretches of mud beneath her own, so she knows the gang have been using the passage, but then her head gashes the roof and she has to crawl as the cave tunnel shrinks. Soon she’s on her knees again, yelping as the rock cuts into her kneecaps. The ground becomes slicked with her blood.

Behind, the SOG commander rests on his stomach, methodically picking off targets. The light from the room begins to shut off as the bodies mount in the gap. Still they come. And come.

“Reloading!” he yells through force of habit. But what’s she going to do, cover him with the iron bar? He slots the mag home, resumes sniping.

The roof continues to creep down, the walls narrow. She’s forced on her own stomach now and the air is so stale, she’s having trouble drawing breath.

Panic begins to overwhelm her. She’s going to get stuck. No one’s used this passage before. It’s just going to end and they’re not going to be able to back up. She’s going to be trapped headfirst in the tight rock. Even if the crazed residents don’t squeeze in after them and tear them apart they’ll be trapped for hours, for days. Slowly dying from lack of food and water. If they’re lucky, more quickly from no air.

She starts to thrash, hitting the sides of the tunnel around her. She can’t escape it. There’s resistance everywhere. No room. The uncontrollable terror builds deep within and she knows if she opens her mouth the sound will never stop, that she’ll use the last of the foul air in here screaming at existence.

“Have to… have to back up,” she forces herself to say, but she can barely hear her own rasping voice.

“I’m running out of ammo!” Shepherd cries back. “I’m blowing it.”

Liz’s mouth snaps shut. “No. Wait!”

She’s able to just glance back beneath her arm. Sees Shepherd aim at the roof of the entrance. And fire.

Bullets glance off the rock at first, casting sparks. Shepherd steadies himself. “Please,” he breathes out. He squeezes the trigger.

A huge whump and the tunnel collapses in a great gout of dust that sweeps all the way towards her, snuffs out her air as it snuffs out the light.

She couldn’t scream even if she tried.

She’s going to die like this. After everything she’s fought through, all the pain, the loss. It ends like this.

Something breaks in her. And the fear goes. Just washes out of her, sinks down through the earth beneath her.

I’ll be with you soon, baby…

The rocks settle, and there’s silence. Then: something coming toward her. She opens her eyes. Light flicks past her, shines on down the tunnel ahead.

“Can’t… breathe—”

“We’re okay,” Shepherd is saying. “There’s air ahead.”

She looks up, focuses. Can’t see anything, but there’s a hint of cold seeping toward her. Shepherd had risked everything, but this isn’t a dead-end tunnel. It leads somewhere.

“Don’t go to pieces on me now, Liz.” Shepherd’s just behind, his voice somehow comforting, part of her.

She clutches the rocks beneath her shredded hands, surprises herself with movement. A strength even now. “Don’t you.” And then she pulls herself on, dragging her snaking legs deeper into the trench.

After torturous seconds, she begins to see something ahead: a rippling reflection on the roof somewhere above. A pinhole light appears in the distance. As she scrambles on, it grows, beckons her.

“There,” Shepherd says. “We’re almost there.”

She pushes to her limit, the tears coming now hot and endless. Her belief in release growing by the moment until the light opens out to a room ahead. She scrabbles the last few claustrophobic numbing feet and tumbles over the end of the tunnel onto the wet clay floor of the room.

She lies panting, sucking in air, staring up at strange rippling reflections on the roof of the cave. Someone has installed crude electric mine-style lighting in here, offering dim but the most beautiful illumination, and the walls are propped up with timeless timberwork. She doesn’t know how deep beneath the city they are, but someone once modified the ancient cave system to their own ends. And it’s saved their lives. Even at the moment she was finally prepared to let go of hers.

Shepherd tumbles out after her, nearly rolls over her with his kit of heavy equipment. She barely registers the impact.

They lie a moment in stunned silence, staring upwards, breathing through damaged lungs. Cold air wafts over them.

“I didn’t think that would work,” he says.

She cries then. Turns her face from him. She’d been so close to release. Why did she always keep fighting? Why can’t she just let go?

“Hey. Hey! Liz. Look at me. We’re okay. We made it out.”

Shepherd’s face is dark with mud, with his own blood and sweat. As must hers be. She nods. “I know.”

“I need you to keep fighting.”

“I know.” But her eyes are dead as she looks at him. She wants to scream. How, after every horrific thing he’s just seen, can he still think this world is still worth fighting for? But she can see the resolve in his face. He’ll fight to the last breath.

And if she’s going to survive, she’ll have to do the same.

“So… so what do we do now? We’re still trapped. They’re not going to be able to rescue us, are they?”

Shepherd is looking past her, past the huge concrete open-air tank in the center of the thirty-foot sized cave to a door built in the opposite wall. “There’s another way in,” he says in wonder. “They joined this with the other tunnels.”

“So what we just crawled through—”

“A natural opening. It must have been intended as an escape route in case the bigger exit here collapsed.”

“So we could have just walked in here? Jesus!” She only now registers the tank in front of her. “Where is here?”

Shepherd creaks to his feet, walks up to the concrete lip three feet off the ground and peers over. His face shines with rippling light. She joins him.

The concrete lid has been smashed on the top of the reservoir, revealing a great semi-circle of the water within. Liz stares into the inviting depths. The cold like soothing ice on her face. Her throat rattles. She wants nothing more than to dip her hands.

“Don’t,” Shepherd says. She looks up sharply. “We don’t know if this is tainted too. It could be the source.”

She senses now the moisture in the air, knows it could be entering them with every breath, corrupting them, taking them over. But maybe a part of her no longer cares.

Shepherd edges around the concrete embankment, not seeing the struggle in her face, hugging the wall until he reaches the heavy door set in the far wall. There’s no obvious door handle. “The fuck?” He tries pushing it, searching for a seam, growing increasingly frantic until he breaks fingernails. There’s nothing.

He sees her looking at him.

“Give me that bar.”

She stares down at her whitened fingers clutching the bloodied length. Her only weapon against the world. She hands it over.

He glances at her uncertainly, takes it. He gently takes her shoulders. “I’m scared too,” he says, misreading her. “But we’ll find a way.”

She nods. Looks away from him. To the water.

He heads back to the door. Starts probing the edges. “I’d heard of you before this, you know,” he says, still concerned, still trying to distract her from shutting down. “I mean, you were a fairly vocal critic of the police — when it was warranted,” he cuts her off. “But I also read the piece about your daughter, the effect on you. How old was she?”

Her voice distant: “Sixteen.” The waters dark, stretching away endlessly.

“I know how scared you must have been. How helpless. I’ve seen the effects of drugs so many times. It’s half our job. And nothing we do seems to matter. But decriminalization isn’t the answer.”

She doesn’t answer.

“That’s what you were going to do with this piece, right? Show how out of control everything’s become, the excessive, futile force needed to contain it. That the battle’s lost. But doesn’t this prove to you why we have to fight to stop it? Imagine if we were free to take anything we wanted. Look what it’s created. If something like Black Lung hit the streets and no one moved to stop it. It’d destroy everything. That’s why we have to get out. Because if they don’t bulldoze this place immediately, if they allow even one of these plants to get out, we’ll never stop it. And it’ll keep spreading like a virus, worse than any drug we’ve ever seen. And more… and more kids like yours will suffer.”

“No… I saw her. I saw Kelly.”

“What?” He’s trying to jimmy the bar into a gap, but there just isn’t one. “God damn it. I’m… there’s got to be a way. I only have nine-bangers—” He glances over. “Flash grenades. If I had a frag… I can’t let this place stand. We have to stop this.”

There’s something about the water. Its surface moves in swirling patterns, the soft ripples like some fundamental building block of existence, like a mathematical sequence, like genetic code, like the fronds of a plant.

“I have to go back. I… have to risk the cave. The boxes. If I can dig through the rocks, the nine-bangers could blow the lot, the whole building.” He’s ranting, eyes too bright. Knowing this is probably suicidal but needing something to do. Anything except waiting here in this crypt to die. “But I’ll grab some, bring it back. We can use it here to get out. There’ll be another way out— Wait. What are you doing?”

She stands by the edge of the low concrete reservoir. The water beckons. Her hands dip towards the black.

“She’s here.”

Her hands break the cold surface, descend into the depths. Ice races up her arms, deep into her bones and up through her body. She tries to scream, but the dark flood freezes her from inside.

And she sees everything. A clutch of the gang’s leaders dragging their rivals down the reclaimed tunnels to the pit far below of the reservoir built over its underground lake — not realizing it’s feeding their whole marijuana enterprise upstairs. Holding their screaming enemies over the water, forcing them to watch their reflections as they slit their throats into the water, then drown them in their own blood. Seeing children who’ve dared steal from the clan chopped up as fertilizer for the plants, their remaining bones scattered in the waters. Investigating police and judges and their families raped and chopped to pieces down here in the depths.

And the infected water being used in an endless cycle to feed the hydroponic banks. Water tainted with the spirits of the dead, somehow haunting the drug itself.

And the dead want their revenge.

It’s not the black mold at all. That’s just an effect of the true horror at its core.

Liz sees deep into the shadow world, her face frozen in that silent scream, even as she feels the vengeful spirits within surging up towards her, writhing and twisting over each other in hunger.

She sees something through the masses of limbs and faces. A hand reaching for her, small, clutching not in anger but aching loneliness. Then gone.

Despite the fear wiping her mind, Liz searches through the chaos. And there it is again, and she reaches for it through the spitting howl. Grips the sudden clasp and pulls against the darkness.

Her daughter, face sunken and hollow with all she’s seen in death, surges free of the clutching hands. And climbs up her mother’s body, stealing one last moment from the darkness.

And that’s enough. That was worth fighting for all this time after her daughter’s overdose, the death that robbed her of all hope in this life.

“Liz!” Shepherd runs at her, launches to knock her back from the water.

Liz turns to meet him. With arms like iron embraces him as if her daughter, Kelly, draws him into her. He screams into the black, never-ending voids of her eyes.

And with the strength of the dead, she pitches them both into the water.