Artifact Read online

  It’s strange how selective my memory was. I could remember the most distant things like vacations in Arizona, my childhood home and my parents; the most complex formulas, equations and friends from college – but I couldn’t remember simple things like my middle name, or the faces of those I worked with for however many years – I couldn’t even remember who I was or what I looked like up until a few hours ago. I successfully suspended those thoughts so far, focusing instead on surviving the moment. But when I had time to think, the sheer horror of what was happening hit me with waves of despair.

  And then I would fall into that deep abyss of epistemology, suddenly finding myself in a dark and unproductive place, unable to know anything for certain, questioning everything that I observed and experienced until I was tempted to simply give up, lay on the floor and let myself die. It didn’t help thinking that I couldn’t count on knowing anything at this point. It didn’t help knowing that this was some sort of fantasy that couldn’t be relied upon. It sort of threw a wrench into strategizing my survival – because what was I surviving? What was the point of making it through this hallucination? Why not just simply sit on the floor and wait for the next dream to take me? I could be anything, anywhere, at any time and nothing I did here could have any real bearing on anything that happened elsewhere. Life was meaningless, and I was pointless, and the world was a collapsing flux of experiences with which there was no end, no beginning and absolutely no meaning in and of itself.

  I pulled myself away from that dangerous, self–defeated place and focused on the task at hand. That was my purpose for the moment. That was the meaning I must know and understand.

  I finally found the lunchroom Alice and I made a pass through earlier. It looked as though someone circled the freezers and messily rifled through the cupboards, scavenging for food or – whatever.

  There was enough space between the doors that Alice and Sid nailed up, that I could see corpses reaching through the windows. The widest parts between the barricades were about the width of a phone book, and several smaller zombies thrust their arms inside to their shoulders. Others were simply trying to press their heads through the cracks. The windows were filled with human heads – tens of thousands of zombies, mostly compacted together beneath the mass that almost filled the entire wall, floor to ceiling. The fact that these barricades were holding their weight made absolutely no sense on physical terms. Behind the kitchen, I found a maintenance closet near the restrooms. The door was open a crack, and I could see something about the size and shape of a human hunched over another body with its back to me, chewing viscera.

  I eased into the kitchen and grabbed the nearest thing with a handle, which happened to be a fairly heavy skillet. It still hadn’t noticed me at that point, and continued ripping into the person on the floor. The zombies at the windows clawed at me through the air. I eased around the corner and froze, horrified, as my mind registered a strange configuration of shapes – there was something inside the maintenance closet, half obscured in shadow–

  –and I could see that it had a tail.

  My light illuminated the thing by segments, and it took me a few seconds to put everything together into one clear mental image – I wasn’t sure if I was looking at one thing or several. Its flesh was made of something like gray brain tissue, with squamous folds and parallel wrinkles along its sides. I could see reptilian looking spikes running at various lengths along its dorsal, with what also looked like rugose sores along its abdomen where the pubis should have been, and two lifeless eyes that didn’t seem to focus on anything. I saw blunt human teeth inside a mouth that opened and closed in slow rhythm. The zombie it was chewing on uselessly tried to bite back. The thing – this new thing – had completely disemboweled the corpse, and was now absentmindedly chewing on its abdomen.

  I couldn’t move.

  I was expecting another zombie, which was bad enough, but this…

  I stepped back, loaded my knees to run and knocked over a recycling bin near the cash register, spilling aluminum cans and plastic bottles across the lunchroom. The thing swung its upper half around like an alligator, everything above its shoulders remained on its own axis – the head couldn’t seem to move where the shoulders didn’t point it – but the movement was made obscene by the fact that this thing, whatever it was, still looked very much like a human – between the sudden epinephrine and adrenaline dumps of my fight–or–flight response, some distant part of my brain thought that it closely resembled a flesh colored alligator with a human head. It ponderously wrenched its crocodile neck toward the sound of the aluminum cans. Something clear and thick oozed out of the thing, and I noticed a glistening trail on the floor, which led to the windows. Its lifeless, doll eyes locked onto me, and then it shockingly skittered out of the closet, screeching like a wounded rabbit. I couldn’t imagine a more horrible sound.

  I screamed and fell back, instinctively covering my face, thinking that the thing was going to latch onto me, but it veered away and shot through the kitchen area, moving quickly toward the doors at the other end. Its body and tail swung like an enormous lizard moving quickly across land, unaccustomed to the gravity of its own weight without the buoyancy of water.

  The grotesque perversion of nature slammed into the doorframe, and its tail whipped, making dull thuds as it fled down the hallway. The last thing I saw before the monster disappeared into shadow was how it easily and effortlessly seemed to skitter up the wall. For something so large, that appeared slow and ponderous at first glance, it was lightning fast. A chilled blade ran the length of my spine when I pictured that thing pulling itself up walls and skittering across the ceiling. Its high-pitched animal screech faded away, and I stayed on the floor for a long time simply staring at the door. I didn’t allow myself to move until I was confident that the thing had gone.

  I spent so much time watching the hallway that I almost didn’t notice the chewed up zombie dragging the upper part of its torso across the floor. It left the lower half of itself behind in the closet. I shakily got to my feet and made short work of it; the horror of beheading another human paled in comparison to the terror of this new development.

  I realized that I couldn’t kill these reanimated corpses, but if I removed its head, then it was rendered harmless so long as I didn’t go anywhere near its snapping, still functioning jaws. It was surprisingly easy work, considering the fact that I was undertaking the process with the lip of a skillet. The head continued biting at me, but the torso remained lifeless and still. I backed away from it and moved toward the closet, suspiciously eyeing the door, praying that the weird human–alligator wouldn’t come back. I wasn’t sure that a skillet would work if it did, and I didn’t want find out.

  The floodlight behind the serving counter flickered to life for a moment then died just as suddenly, leaving me temporarily blinded. I had to keep calm as the green cloud of remnant light faded out of my eyes.

  I figured that the backup generator was barely alive and fading fast.

  I hadn’t noticed in all of the excitement that most of the floodlights were out.

  I had to hurry.

  In the span of time it took me to deal with these new developments, I hadn’t really been paying attention to the sound of wood splintering behind me. I whirled around and brandished the skillet as if it were an axe. There had been a sliding sound on the wood.

  I noticed something odd about the zombies, but I couldn’t quiet place it.

  I stepped a bit closer to the window and saw that the limbs reaching through the wood seemed a bit too scaly. On one of the arms, near the elbow, I noticed a budding spike that I initially mistook for a broken bone puncturing the skin. It was a spike very similar to the ones I saw on that monster’s back.

  I quickly turned back toward the maintenance closet, deciding that I had seen enough – that I could get out of there. I picked my way over the bottom trunk of the zombie beheaded, and blindly tore
boxes off of shelves, looking for anything that resembled an extension cord. I registered the sound of wood splintering again, and factored that I didn’t have much time before zombies poured through the windows.

  I dumped everything that looked like it could have contained something onto the floor. Within seconds, there was a large pile of junk in the center of the closet. I dropped to my knees and started shoveling through the stuff with my hands. There were several cords. Three orange extension cords, a green cord and a large black one. I found a couple of D–cell batteries and stuffed them into my pockets. There was also a box of matches and another palm sized flashlight – I grabbed those as well. I couldn’t remember the size of the plug and socket on the terminal block, so I scooped up all five cords, threw them over my shoulder and turned to leave – but something caught my eye. For a moment, I thought I saw a flash of red and the flat piece of a pry.

  I reached into the pile of junk and my hand closed around something solid. I pulled out the giant hook and hefted it in my hand, testing the weight.

  It was a crowbar.

  That was it. Time to head back to the lobby, and then–

  – Something else caught my eye. Half tucked behind a toolbox, I recognized the splash of hair over a black backdrop tinged with red. I stepped back inside and saw several more splashes of black hair. I scooped the tools off of the shelf with the curved end of my crowbar, and there it was in all its horrible glory.

  A tiny replica of the painting I saw in the white room, from when I was dropped down the shaft into the mausoleum, where I met my faceless clone. It was Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son, and just like before, this one was different. Instead of Cronos it was Alice, and instead of a baby godling, it was me. That wasn’t the strangest part.

  There were hundreds of them stacked on every shelf around the closet. Hundreds of copies of the same painting. Alice’s painting. Goya’s painting.

  I thought about grabbing one, but the barricade started splintering again. I quickly left the closet and almost forgot about the head snapping away on the floor. I moved to leave, and there it was again – that odd, out of place thing I noticed before, protruding out of one of the zombie’s elbows. I shined my light on the arms sticking through the barricade, and I saw one in particular that was oddly lifeless. It hung limp over the lip of the windowsill. I moved a bit closer to get a better look, and I noticed that the tip of its finger was wiggling. I bent down, and there was no mistaking at that point – the tip of the zombie’s index finger was separating, as if pulling itself free from the hand, like a butterfly molting its caterpillar shell. It writhed a bit and then finally fell free from the finger. The tip curled on the ground, and I took a few steps back just as it sprouted legs. The finger rolled until its tiny, spidery legs found purchase, and then it scuttled away toward the maintenance closet.

  Nothing should have surprised me at that point, but I’d be remiss if I said that I wasn’t absolutely terrified. The thing – the tiny piece of finger that dropped off of the zombie’s hand – looked exactly like a small scaled version of that weird lizard thing that bolted out of the lunchroom a few moments earlier. I took a few more steps away from the windows and strafed all of the arms in both directions. I felt that cold blade in my back again, noticing that each hand, each arm that reached into the lunchroom, had things dropping off their fingers. Each thing that fell on the floor immediately sprouted legs and then quickly scuttled off in different directions.

  I shouldered the extension cords, finally satisfied that I had seen enough. I turned toward the hallway and ran, wondering just how worse the situation had become.

  EIGHT

  1.

  I got lost in the network of hallways. I was half certain that I somehow cut to another dream, in another place, but I quickly learned that I hadn’t. I noted that my hallucinations were taking exponentially longer to change – why this was happening I didn’t know, but I took it as a good sign. Maybe it had something to do with how I focused my visions onto the labs, and since I was there, things seemed to have a bit more continuity. I put that aside and focused on finding my way. The dying floodlights flittering around corners were identical to the ones before them. I gouged marks into the walls with my crowbar whenever I would make a turn, hoping to use them like a trail of breadcrumbs. I must have doubled back at least three times, recognizing the scoring marks where I left them, but somehow I missed one of those and found myself jogging in new junctions, tunnels I’d never seen before. Rather than backtrack – the tunnel was probably below the ground floor, on the same level as the corridor in which Kate and Sarah waited for me – I chose a hallway that seemed to head toward the lobby and jogged on. I hoped they didn’t come looking for me and stayed put. Wherever I went, I heard scuttling in the walls.

  Three times the hallways ended and I had to backtrack to a junction. The scale of this place didn’t seem to add up. The facility on the outside didn’t seem this large – there must have been a network of hallways that stretched for miles beneath the building. Some of the rooms were labeled – conference room 1, Human Resources, Research and Development, etcetera. Others had names belonging to people – Principal Researcher Moses Stanley, Director of Internal Revenue Nathan Holly, and Vice President of Finance Gail Aldermen – and so on. Which begs the question – why wasn’t the Clean Room down here? Wasn’t it supposed to be the most secured area in the entire facility? Then why was it on the second floor, entirely more accessible than this labyrinth of branching corridors and hallways? Nothing in this place made sense, which added even more to the surreal disconnection of these dreams within dreams.

  I was suddenly reminded of how long I spent in this dream. It didn’t seem to end – rather, it didn’t seem to want to end.

  The hallway finally opened to some stairs that rose up half a level. It wasn’t an entire flight of stairs – just a few. It was better than the maze I was wandering through. It was with unending respite that I made it to familiar territory. There was a sharp turn, and then I recognized the hallway which led back to the lobby.

  I stopped suddenly, trying to control my breathing.

  There was a fork less than five meters ahead and another one twenty meters behind, and from one or the other or both came the sound of calloused skin pulling over drywall.

  And then, another monster glided into the hallway.

  Larger than the one from the lunchroom, thicker through the middle, this one slowly moved across the ceiling with sinewy human limbs that emerged from a trunk of pink flesh like obscene growth, with a dead, lifeless face at the end of a stout bullish neck, the pulsating abomination slid itself across the ceiling less than two meters in front of me and paused, dropping its tail – the hole in the center of its face visibly flapping open and shut. Its eyes were sealed with some clear gel, and it appeared to be blind.

  It was searching for me.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  I remembered how it hadn’t noticed me in the lunchroom until I knocked over the recycling bin full of cans. It must have been using some sensory perception other than sight.

  I didn’t move, not even to raise the crowbar. I reckoned that everything depended on either movement or sound. If the thing was looking for me, then it would have been on me in seconds. My flashlight trembled. With a sudden burst of movement, the monster wildly scrabbled over my head and darted down one of the forks behind me. There was a smaller one curled in a corner above the doorway that I just exited, but it remained still and unmoving. I must have walked underneath that one without noticing. The larger one whipped back and forth down the hallway in the other direction, probably circling around through the tunnels, searching for something to eviscerate.

  I thought about Alice and Sid upstairs, and wondered how they were taking the arrival of these things.

  Two more of those creatures slid down the hallway after the first, leaving the smaller one huddled on the ceiling, making su
ck noises with its teeth. I reasoned that these things must have been larger versions of what I saw dropping off of those zombies in the lunchroom.

  The scientist part of my brain also noted that panic was often useful in situations like these, strictly from an individual selection standpoint. The basic fundamental instinct when one is surrounded by things that want to eat you alive is to run. But it seemed that running would draw them to me more quickly. They were essentially blind and hunting by sound – which explained the strange sucking noise coming from the smaller one above the door – it’s probably how they identified each other. I had to strategize a way to get back to the lobby while making as little noise as possible.

  I started moving again, allowing myself to breathe. I walked slowly, strafing the hallway floor to ceiling with my flashlight, crowbar raised and ready to dish out what damage it could before those things ripped me apart.

  A wet shape slapped the back of my shoulders and pulled me to the ceiling. I dropped the extension cords and watched in horror as disfigured limbs wrapped around me. The thing pressed its head against the back of my neck and it sounded like insect wings rubbing together – its hot breath spilled over the side of my face.

  The thing – the man–shaped lizard thing – screamed like a wounded animal, and I instinctively clenched my eyes and tried reaching for my ears, but it kept my arms firmly trapped at my sides. Dozens of shrieks answered from the other hallways. I writhed in its arms, rolling my shoulders until I could slide out of its greasy hands – it snatched my shirt as I fell, and I twisted away, letting the cloth rip free. I leapt for the crowbar as the monster fell to floor behind me. With the heavy piece of iron firmly clenched in my fist, I whipped around and took the thing in the side of its face with the hooked end just as it leaped into the air. I fell back as it wrenched its head away, taking the crowbar with it. The thing writhed on the ground and clawed at the metal stuck in its face. Gouts of dark red blood poured out of its wound, and I realized that this was the smaller one, which was huddled in the corner – it must have heard me moving away from it.