Stranger

Forty-one

“LISTEN… GREG? MICHAELA? LISTEN TO ME. WE CAN HAVE SOME FUN HERE. YOU TRY TO GUESS WHAT I’LL DO NEXT. I’VE GOT ALL THESE OPTIONS UP ON THE SCREEN IN FRONT OF ME. COME ON, GUYS, TAKE PART… GUESS WHICH BUTTON I’M GOING TO PRESS. HEY, TALK TO ME.”

As the voice pounded my ears I looked ’round the locker room. No way was I going to surrender to Phoenix. Something told me he’d mess with our minds before he fed us to the hive. That guy craved some nice juicy kicks. If he had his way, we were going to be his toys. No way, crazy man. No way.

But what the hell could I do? I couldn’t open the door to the decontam chamber. It was fucking steel. And if I got through that there was another steel door as thick as your mattress to the outside world. Michaela and I were about as safe as two bugs caught in some loopy kid’s glass jar. How long before he decided to pull off our wings? Michaela looked ’round, too. But what the hell was there? It was a locker room. So there were tiled walls-no windows. There were wooden benches. There were lockers. There were shelves piled with vacuum-packed clothes and rubber sandals. The ceiling was nothing more than a huge concrete slab fitted with strip lighting.

“AW… PLAY WITH ME, GUYS.”

Michaela shouted, “Go play with yourself!”

Phoenix’s voice came back. He was panting. The guy was getting all hot and excited. I could picture him there, sitting at the computer terminal, rocking backward and forward, his face red, his hands getting all sticky. And there on the booster screen would be us in the locker room. Searching for some way out. Hell, we really were just like bugs caught in that glass jar. Scurrying to one end of the room. Feeling the walls for a hidden exit, looking under the bench, looking into the air-conditioning duct for a passageway to freedom. But we were stuck. We were caught in this madman’s odious paws.

“YOU KNOW I COULD DO SOMETHING TO YOU THAT’S REALLY COOL!” He snickered. I could hear the saliva squelching in his mouth. “YEAH, SOMETHING REALLY COOL. DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS?”

Michaela yelled back. “Go take a flying fuck, OK?”

“I MIGHT TAKE A FLYING FUCK AT YOU, YOU HORNY LITTLE BITCH. DO YOU KNOW SOMETHING? I’VE SEEN YOU NAKED IN THE SHOWER. WE’VE GOT CAMERAS EVERYWHERE. YOU’VE GOT A NICE CHERRY BUTT. I COULD PUT SOME WORK INTO THAT. GET YOU ALL HOT AND SQUIRMY… MAYBE MAKE YOU SCREAM A LITTLE … YOU’D LIKE THAT, WOULDN’T YOU, GIRL?”

“OK,” I said. “Phoenix? What’s this cool idea of yours? What y’ going to do?”

“OH? SO YOU WANT TO PLAY THE GAME AT LAST?”

I stood in the middle of the locker room and nodded. “Surprise us.”

“WELL, I WAS JUST SITTING AND LOOKING AT THE TEMPERATURE CONTROLS. YOU KNOW THIS THERMOSTAT CONTROL GOES ALL THE WAY DOWN TO BELOW FREEZING? I COULD TURN YOUR ROOMS ACROSS THERE INTO AN ICEBOX. THE JOHN WOULD FREEZE OVER. ICE WOULD FORM ON THE WALLS. I COULD SIT HERE AND WATCH YOUR FACES TURN BLUE. COOL, HUH?” He laughed at his own joke.

“You wouldn’t do that, Phoenix, would you?” Michaela looked up at the walls as she spoke. “We’ve done nothing to hurt you.”

“YEAH, RIGHT!” He paused, the sound of his respiration rasping around the room. “MICHAELA. YOU KNOW, I MIGHT WARM TO YOU IF YOU DO SOMETHING FOR ME.”

“Yeah?”

“ONE BY ONE AND NICE AND SLOW… TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES. START WITH THE SWEATSHIRT. YOU KNOW, MAKE IT FUN. TEASE ME A LITTLE. IF YOU’RE GOOD I’LL LEAVE THAT OLD THERMOSTAT ALONE. MMM? WHAT DO YOU SAY?”

Yeah, but when you get bored with that, what next? I didn’t trust Phoenix one little bit. I looked ’round the room again. And this time look, I told myself. Really look! There’s got to be something here.

“THAT’S IT, MICHAELA… LIFT IT UP OVER YOUR WAIST NICE AND SLOW… SLOWER… THAT’S IT, YEAH…”

The breathing rasped louder. Michaela had got hold of the bottom of the sweatshirt and lifted it in one slow movement, exposing her flat stomach. I knew she was playing for time, but this wouldn’t give us long.

I looked at the lockers again. They stood against the wall from floor to ceiling. They were in three sections, each containing a dozen individual lockers with combination locks, standing side by side along the wall. Then I glanced down at the floor. A line marked the floor, leaving chipped and scratched tiles. Someone had dragged an object-a heavy and hard one at that- across the floor. My eyes returned to the lockers. The curving line scored into the floor ended at the bottom of the farthest cabinet. It was just the kind of mark you’d make dragging a heavy piece of furniture by yourself across the floor. Now I barely heard Phoenix’s breathy noises of approval as Michaela lifted the sweat-shirt up over her breasts. My eyes traced the scratches in the floor to the locker cabinets. The one at the end stood maybe an inch forward of the other two. Someone had been single-handedly shifting that heavy piece of steelwork around. Someone maybe like Phoenix… now why should he go to all that trouble?

“TAKE IT OFF… TAKE IT OFF NOW!”

As Michaela slipped the sweatshirt up over her shoulders I told her, “Move back to the wall.”

Surprised, she stepped back, pulling the sweatshirt back down over her chest.

“HEY, MICHAELA, DON’T GET SHY ON ME NOW. TAKE IT OFF!”

“Stay right back,” I shouted to her, then I reached up, grabbed the locker cabinet and toppled it forward. It fell with a tremendous crash. Tiles cracked, splintered. Michaela looked at me, stunned, as if I’d lost my mind.

“HEY! STOP IT! GET OUT OF THERE!”

“Too late, Phoenix. I’ve found what you’ve been hiding.” I nodded toward a heavy-duty door that had been concealed by the lockers. I whispered to Michaela, “Pray that this is an exit.”

“Hell, it might lead to Phoenix.”

“If it does, I’m going to rip his big ugly head off.” The door didn’t have a handle but rather a steel wheel in its center. I spun it. Behind the door I heard some mechanism turning with a clicking sound.

“LEAVE IT ALONE. YOU CAN’T GET OUT OF HERE!”

I shut out the voice. Instead I threw everything into turning that wheel. Just when I thought I’d have to turn the thing forever a click sounded, followed by a hiss of air. “Stay close, Michaela.” I pushed. The door swung open, revealing something no bigger than a closet.

Hell. It couldn’t be a dead end. There had to be something that-

Yes. The closet-sized room had no ceiling. I hit a switch and the void filled with light. There, running above my head, was something like a large chimney flue. In one wall metal ladder rungs ran up fifteen feet to a hatch.

I felt Michaela’s hand on my arm. I pointed upward and mouthed: Follow me.

By this time Phoenix thundered like some old god of the barbarians. His rage-filled voice blasted the room.

“YOU BASTARDS! I TOLD YOU I’D GET YOU… I PROMISED YOU REVENGE. I PROMISED I’D HURT YOU… NOW… YOU DIDN’T EXPECT THIS, DID YOU?”

I braced myself for an explosion or flood of poison gas.

Instead the lights went out. As simple as that. And without windows the darkness was total. I mean it was just like being sealed into a coffin ten feet underground.

Behind me, Michaela whispered, “Oh, Christ… I can’t see a thing. Greg?”

“Hold out your hand. There… got it.”

“He’s switched off the power.”

“Never mind that now. Just follow me. Walk forward. That’s it. Feel those?”

“Yes.”

“Those are the rungs of a ladder.”

“Jesus Christ… what’s he going to do next?”

“He can’t do a thing. He’s over there in his hidey-hole.”

“But-”

“But what we’re going to do, Michaela, is climb. I’ll go first, you follow.”

“But what if the hatch is locked?”

“There’s a steel wheel like the door we came through. It must be a manual lock. Phoenix can’t do anything to that.” I began to climb. “That’s why he hid the doorway in the first place, to stop others he trapped here from escaping. Are you behind me?”

“Yes.”

“Go slowly. Don’t rush.”

Hell, the mental image of falling and breaking a leg came only too sharply. If we did that we might as well be dead and buried. So… nice and slow… one rung at a time. I climbed the ladder up the shaft in total darkness. God, what a darkness. It coiled ’round you like black smoke. You opened your eyes so wide they hurt, just to see a glimmer of light. But there was no light. And your eyes played tricks on you until purple death’s heads blossomed out of thin air right in front of you.

Now Phoenix had stopped ranting like a mad old god of yore. He was pissed, I knew that much. But he kept quiet. Maybe there weren’t any of those night vision cameras in this shaft. Maybe he was listening hard through those concealed microphones, trying to hear our hands and feet whispering on the rungs. Or maybe for a sudden yell if one of us slipped back down into the black void to smash our bones on the concrete floor below.

“Nearly there,” I whispered. Yeah, nearly there. How the hell could I know that, but I wanted to encourage Michaela. She was somewhere below me. Sometimes I felt her hands brush my ankles in the dark as she felt for the next rung. Once I put my foot down on her fingers, but she didn’t cry out.

I guessed also that every second that went by she expected a hand to close ’round her own ankle to yank her downward. My heart beat louder and louder. The silence made me edgy now. Phoenix had something else planned. Maybe he could lock that hatchway above my head. Then we would be stuck here, waiting to suffocate or freeze at his leisure. But that didn’t add up. No, he wanted us full of blood and healthy for his big pink vampire across the way. Maybe he could flood the place with some kind of narcotic gas that would knock us out. The next time we woke we could be kissing that pink gel, feeling tubes burrowing into our skin as a prelude to it sucking us goddam dry. Jesus, would this ladder ever end?

I kept climbing. One rung at a time. Nice and easy does it. One rung at a time. Don’t hurry. Don’t rush. One slip and you’ll break your bones at the bottom. You’ll bring Michaela down, too.

Then the voice came roaring back up the shaft like an erupting volcano. “HEY, GET THIS: THERE’S A TV SCREEN NEAR THE BATHROOM DOOR. LATELY I’VE BEEN SHOWING WHAT YOU CALL THE HIVE FOOTAGE OF YOU, AND

GUESS WHAT?” Phoenix’s voice rose with excitement.

I didn’t reply. Just concentrated on climbing that ladder through the darkness.

“THE MOMENT SHE SAW YOU, VALDIVA, YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN HER REACTION.”

My head bumped against the hatch. “Don’t move, Michaela. We’re at the top.”

“DON’T YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW SHE REACTED, THAT BEAUTIFUL BABY OF MINE?”

“OK, Phoenix.” I braced myself, feet against the rung, shoulder pressed up hard against the hatch so I could turn the steel wheel with both hands. “Tell me what you saw.”

“I’VE NEVER SEEN HER DO THAT BEFORE. YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THE EXPRESSION ON HER FACE. SHE WAS PLEASED-REALLY PLEASED, YOU KNOW?”

Turn, baby, turn. The steel wheel screeched. “Why was she pleased, Phoenix?”

“BECAUSE YOU’VE BEEN KEEPING A LITTLE SECRET ALL YOUR OWN, HAVEN’T YOU, VALDIVA?”

“What little secret’s that?”

“SHE RECOGNIZED HER OWN KIND. YOU’RE THE PRODUCT OF THIS THING YOU CALL A HIVE, VALDIVA.”

“Well, I’ll be, Phoenix.”

“YOU’RE NOT EVEN HUMAN, ARE YOU?”

“You don’t say?” I humored the madman as I gave the wheel an extra quarter turn. There was a click. “So what do you expect me to do about it?”

“COME OVER HERE AND SAY HELLO TO YOUR SISTER.”

“I’ve got other places to go, Phoenix.”

“VALDIVA, YOU MUST STAY. DON’T YOU REALIZE? SOMETHING WONDERFUL HAS HAPPENED TO YOU.”

“Yeah, right, Phoenix.” I pushed up against the hatch. Like you open a can of soda, it hissed. Air swirled up ’round us as the pressure between inside the bunker and the outside equalized. “As if we’d believe anything you say.”

“LISTEN TO ME, VALDIVA, YOU ARE THE FIRST OF A NEW BREED.”

“Good-bye, Phoenix.”

“DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. REMEMBER? IT’S YOU WHO CAN SENSE WHO IS UNDERGOING THE TRANSFORMATION.”

I pushed upward, opening the hatch until it swung back to crash back against the concrete roof. Moonlight flooded the shaft. Fresh, cool night air swirled ’round my face, chilling the perspiration on my forehead. In triumph I hissed down to Michaela, “We’re out!” I scrambled onto the roof.

“YOU ARE HIVE, VALDIVA. YOU ARE HIVE!” Phoenix’s voice rose to a roar. “AND THE HIVE SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH!”

“Give me your hand.” I reached out to Michaela. In the moonlight I could see her shrink back, clinging so tightly to the rungs that her knuckles turned white. “Michaela, hurry.”

“Greg. What if he’s right? What if you are one of those things?”

“Listen to him, he’s crazy.”

“WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR KINGDOM, VALDIVA? WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH MICHAELA? SHE’S ONE OF THE OLD SPECIES, YOU KNOW? THE ONE THAT’S DIVING DOWN TOWARD EXTINCTION.”

“He’s lying,” I panted. “He’s trying to trick us into staying. Come on, take my hand.”

“VALDIVA, YOU KNOW AS WELL AS I DO YOU’LL KILL MICHAELA ONE DAY.”

She looked at me for a moment, her eyes gleaming like black diamonds. Doubt twinned with fear flitted across her face. She couldn’t go back into the bunker. But did she want to leave with me?

At last she made up her mind. She reached up. I caught her hand in mine and helped her up.

“YOU’LL BE BACK, VALDIVA. YOU’VE GOT FAMILY HERE NOW. YOU’LL NEED TO SEE YOUR BLOOD RELATIVE HERE, WON’T YOU? YOU SHOULD SEE HER. SHE’S OPENING HER MOUTH. SHE’S CALLING YOU. CAN YOU HEAR HER?”

Distorted by the concrete shaft. Echoing. Muffled. I heard it. A long, wordless cry, like a child pleading not to be left alone. The eerie sound raised the hair on my scalp. As I stood there on the bunker roof listening, a shiver started in the root of my spine to creep up over my back like a million insects had burst out of my back from a- HIVE.

The word snuck into my head before I could stop it. Hive. I looked at my hands. Man hands? Or monster hands?

My body began to shake in a series of tremors as I heard that mournful, pleading cry come swirling in a rush from the shaft.

“Greg.” Michaela took my hand. In a suddenly gentle voice she said, “Come on. We’re getting out of here.”

I crossed the flat concrete roof to the edge. The drop to the ground was perhaps fifteen feet. In the moonlight the area ’round the bunker looked peaceful. Astroturf gleamed an unnatural green. The place looked deserted. There were no hornets. Even the remains of hornet dead had been cleared by bears and wild dogs.

After a moment’s search I saw a way down. The branches of a tree had grown close to the bunker. They seemed sturdy enough. I glanced at Michaela. She shot me a smile, her white teeth catching the moonlight.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I can do it.” With that she launched herself from the top of the bunker to land on the branch with the agility of a cat. In seconds she’d reached the trunk and climbed down to the ground. I followed. The branch creaked under my weight but held. Soon I dropped down to stand beside Michaela.

’Round us the forest stretched away into the moonlight. A vast and silent place. Not even a breath of wind disturbed the trees. We didn’t have to speak. Michaela inclined her head toward the forest. I nodded.

Side by side we ran.