Artifact Read online

  I gathered the extension cords and the crowbar clanged against the wall – I turned just as it finished sliding across the floor and came to a rest at my feet. The monster was quickly scuttling for me again, shooting blood onto the walls from the hole in its face. I snatched the crowbar, raised it over my head and–

  –More of them started pouring out of the doorways behind it, and they blazed across the walls and ceiling, boiling over each other – dozens of them in varying sizes, colors and shapes, like a chitinous flood of limbs. I turned toward the lobby and sprinted away from that horrible sound. The things howled and moaned in chorus like a perverse choir of death.

  2.

  I tossed the bundle of cords along with my crowbar down the dark corridor, having dropped my flashlight somewhere during my mad, horrified dash through the hallways. I ran in darkness for some time. The distant floodlights were my only source of direction until I reached the basement, forcing myself not to think about the quick swipes and brushes that I felt across the back of my legs and shoulders.

  I careened into the corridor and threw my weight against the inside of the door, just as something thick and rubbery slammed into the other side.

  Kate came around the corner and the sudden shine of her flashlight blinded me.

  “Did you find it–?” She saw my shirtless body covered with blood pressed against the door, which was nearly banging off of its hinges.

  “Hurry!” I yelled, pointing at the pile of extension cords on the floor.

  Kate dove into the pile, vividly watching me as she quickly separated the cords. Sarah joined me at the door and tried to help hold it closed. There were dirt-streaked tears running down her face.

  With the door shut, the only light in the corridor came from Kate’s generic flashlight, which was starting to dim.

  The things on the other side slammed into the door hard enough that I felt a pop in my shoulder. “Go grab the crowbar,” I hissed.

  Sarah pulled herself away from the door and reappeared at my side seconds later, thrusting the crowbar at my chest.

  The crowbar would serve perfectly.

  I felt for the crack in the door with the flat end and jammed it into the frame as hard as I could. It wouldn’t stop them, but it would slow them down and give us a little warning – we would at least hear them pry the door open.

  Sarah quickly turned the deadbolt, and pressed the lock on the door handle. The weight eased immediately, but the pounding didn’t. I let go of the door and grabbed Sarah’s shoulder. We took a few steps back, convinced that it would hold at least for the minute or so it took to get the generator going.

  I glanced up and saw a trickle of dust fall to the floor. The things on the other side were slamming into the door so hard that I noticed the upper hinge start to give way. I reached up and brushed it with my hand, feeling the space that was opening with each blow, watching the screws incrementally force themselves out of the frame.

  “We have to hurry,” I breathed deeply. I started shivering from being shirtless and covered with monster blood and sweat. Sarah and I joined Kate at the pile and started pulling apart the snarl of cords.

  “What is that thing?” Kate asked, fighting the tension in her voice.

  “I don’t know. But it isn’t just one – there are several – and that door won’t hold them for long.”

  Sarah wiped tears from her eyes and said, “But the other side is blocked too.”

  We didn’t speak. We worked with the sound of zombies trying to pound through the emergency exit on one end, and the half human half lizard monsters trying to get through the other. This was the end of the line for us. I could see Kate thinking the same thing.

  “Alice can do it,” I said. “If we can get that generator going, she can open the artifact – She’ll follow the algorithm. Giving her a chance is our only option.”

  “And if it doesn’t work…?”

  I didn’t say anything. We continued separating the pile, occasionally realizing that two of us would be pulling opposite ends of the same cord. “I think I found it,” Sarah said.

  Kate dropped her bundle and inspected the plug in Sarah’s hand, which was attached to a cord about as thick as a broom handle.

  “Yeah, that looks good.” She said, “I think this is it – now we just have to pray it’s long enough to reach.”

  We separated the right cord from the pile and stretched it out.

  The door groaned under pressure and the crowbar clanged onto the floor. We looked up in time to see the top hinge break free – several human looking arms squeezed through the crack and clawed at the doorframe. Hollow, inhuman screams filled the corridor.

  I ran to the door and threw my weight against it. Kate got to her feet and sprinted to the Clean Room generator, dragging the pile of cords on the floor behind her. The flashlight left me in darkness as Kate and Sarah disappeared into one of the rooms.

  I was blind again, enduring as best I could the steely fingers clawing at me through the crack.

  I heard Alice tell Sarah to run the cord across the hall and plug it into the backup generator. A squeal of hinge below – in the back of my mind I could hear the last two hinges give way, and I realized that I was out of time. The door exploded inward, and I sailed through the darkness. I came to a tumbling halt several meters away, hearing the crowbar clang against the wall to my right. I could also hear the mass of flesh pour through the door, ripping through the darkness to render us into twitching piles of meat–paste.

  The flashlight came back into view long enough for me to see the shadows sliding through the door, along the ceiling and across the walls.

  “Lance!” Kate screamed.

  I rolled to my feet and stumbled toward the light. I grabbed Sarah and Kate as I ran past, and spun them into the generator room. We tumbled inside – I quickly got to me knees and slammed the door shut, hammering the lock into place just as a wet flood of open, howling mouths filled the corridor.

  Dust fell as the things on the other side began to ram the door. I collapsed and breathed for a long time. There didn’t seem to be enough air, and I couldn’t stop taking giant gulping breaths.

  We were still alive.

  I rolled to my side and a warm wave of triumph washed over me. I traced the cord from the backup generator’s terminal block across the floor and under the door – it was a bit flattened, but intact.

  “Did you plug it in?” I breathed.

  Kate nodded and slumped to the floor. Sarah collapsed, wrapping her arms around Kate’s waist. All of us were taking sweet, enormous breaths.

  I pulled myself against the wall and stared at the door, which continued to vibrate with each passing blow. But it was holding fast.

  “Oh god,” Kate said. I glanced at her and Sarah, who were both staring at my chest. I followed their eyes to a massive cauterized hole that spread from my collarbone all the way to my abdomen. Bits of muscle glistened in the light – my burn.

  I couldn’t feel anything.

  “It’s okay,” I said shakily. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  I looked around the room. There was the generator, the door to the corridor and that was it.

  One way in, one way out.

  We were trapped.

  I got to my feet and inspected the doorframe – which appeared to be much stronger than the other one – the deadbolt was thick, and the hinges looked like they would hold. I felt a deep ache in my thigh, and when I tried rubbing it out, I found the four D–cell batteries, the box of matches and the palm sized flashlight that I salvaged from the maintenance closet in the lunchroom. As I emptied everything onto the floor, my hand leaked into the world around me. Everything was starting to bleed together in that strange way again, and I knew that it was time to change dreams. I knelt in front of Kate and Sarah, who were staring at the floor.

  “Here,” I dumped the
supplies at their feet. “Take these.”

  They both looked at me.

  “You guys have to stay focused, alright?”

  “Okay…”

  “I’ve got to go now.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t really explain, but I’m leaving. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, so you have to promise me to stay calm.”

  Kate and Sarah just stared.

  “This is what you were talking about with Sid,” Kate said finally. “You think you’re dreaming.”

  “Just ration your batteries, and if those things get inside,” I pointed at the generator. “Climb that and don’t make a sound – I don’t think they can see you if you stay quiet.”

  “Stop it,” Kate hugged Sarah a bit closer. “You’re scaring us.”

  Reality haloed out again and spectra of light began accelerating around my head.

  “I promise I’ll be back,” I said. “I promise.”

  Sarah started to weep.

  “I’ll come back for you, I swear.”

  “No, don’t go again.” Sarah pleaded, choking back a throatful of hopeless sobs.

  I stood and took a step back just as the world started to wash away. But something strange happened – just before everything went dark, Sarah let go of Kate and hugged her tiny arms around my neck.

  “Please,” she cried. “Don’t go.”

  3.

  The summer shower we drove through left the roadway frothy with pink swirls of blood, as it arced down the nearest storm drain, washing the gore off of the streets. They were still out there, milling around. Thousands of zombies. I looked around and saw scores more headless corpses scattered in various poses of horror. Now that the sun had risen, I was able to pick out a few of those weird half human, half crocodile things slithering in and out of the crowd. The car window was streaked with diagonal swipes of darker red, bordering belts almost clear where the rain washed away some of the collected blood. Somewhere in the distance, continent sized plates of sky broke free and majestically plummeted through the thunderheads.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “I told you,” Patrick replied. “It’s all coming down, pal.”

  All around us, the droves of corpses parted as the convoy of limousines approached. None of the zombies bothered touching us, and I caught glimpses of those lizard things pulling zombies that hadn’t been moving fast enough out of the way, so that the limo could pass.

  “What’s your name, angel?” Patrick asked. I shot him a dirty look, thinking that he was talking to me.

  “Sarah…”

  I glanced across the limo and there she was, sitting with her hands in her lap. Her face was caked with filth and sweat from the basement. She looked utterly confused as she scanned the riots outside of her window.

  “What…?” I asked dumbly.

  “How did you get in the car, Sarah?” Patrick asked warmly.

  She glanced at the floor, frowning, and then looked at me. “I don’t know…”

  “Is she a threat?” The suit sitting beside her asked.

  “No,” Patrick replied, sitting back. “Just another wayward soul.”

  I tried to lean forward and reach out to her from across the limo, but my wrists were still handcuffed. She was hugging me when I shifted.

  The implications were dazzling. What bearing this turn of events had on my brain health was negligible. But it was the first time I carried someone with me between dreams, or whatever you want to call them. And it made sense, in a simple way – I was able to carry physical objects with me before, after all – why not a person?

  “We were in the basement,” Sarah said quietly. “And then I was here.” A realization dawned on her face and she sat forward, tears building in her eyes. “Kate…”

  “Who is Kate?”

  “She’s alone,” Sarah said quickly. “We have to go back and help her – you could get her out of there.”

  Patrick looked out of his window.

  “Please,” she begged. “You have to go save her!”

  “Who and where is she?” Patrick asked me, more distracted than concerned.

  “I helped rescue Kate and Sarah from the street,” I said. “Kate is currently trapped in the basement generator room at the lab.”

  Patrick shook his head. “How could you know that?”

  “That’s where Sarah and I were before we ended up here.”

  “Ended up where?”

  “Here,” I said. “Now. In this limo.”

  Patrick leaned back and looked out of the window some more, absentmindedly gazing at the zombies as they stood by watching us pass. “You’re not making any sense, Lance.”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you,” I said. “I’ve been shifting in and out of different realities. I realize that it must seem like things are moving in one fluid chronological order from your perspective, but between the hospital and now, I have been–”

  “Quiet,” he interrupted. “We’re here.”

  I looked out of the window at the acres of dead bodies, the sky falling to pieces, and the bloody rain that was trickling down my window. We turned onto Leroy Street and the Center for Energetic Materials suddenly loomed overhead. As we passed Sid’s abandoned vehicle, I could see Sarah’s semi–trailer a block away, and a ladder dangling from a cord of bungee from my office window.

  “Why are you doing this, Patrick?”

  “I have to keep you safe,” he said simply.

  “From what?”

  “The subversive agents that have infiltrated our system.”

  I scanned the groups of zombies, wondering why they weren’t attacking us. It’s not as if they didn’t see us – their heads traced the limo’s movement like laser painting turrets. They were letting us pass. I scanned the two blocks in both directions, and not only could I see acres and acres of zombies and mutant lizard things, but I could also see healthy looking men in suits, casually walking between the multitudes with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders, completely ignored by the ravenous hordes around them. “You were talking about Joseph being compromised before…”

  “He was–”

  “Yeah, I know.” I cut him off, “You also said that you may have been compromised as well.”

  He opened his mouth and hesitated. I nodded at my window. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing, Patrick?”

  He stared at me for a long time as the car slowed down to a halt, confusion gathering into a horizontal crease under his brow, just below the cut on his forehead. He shook his head and stepped his massive frame out of the limo. One of those man-sized lizard things scuttled out of his way, and the zombies backed up, giving him two arm lengths of space. The stink of decay wafted into the cab.

  Some men with guns pulled me out of the limo and started shoving me toward the CEM. Sarah scampered out of her seat and latched onto my arm – nobody seemed to pay her any attention.

  I looked at the outside of the CEM and marveled at the absolute madness of my imagination. I could see hundreds of those mutant alligatormen crawling up the side of the building. There was so much detail. However lucid I have ever been in a dream, I never realized how detailed things could be. On the building I could see masonry. Inside the masonry, I could see variations in patterns from one stone to the next, and between the stones I could see areas near the corners that needed reshaping. I could see rust beneath eaves and gutters, and rain flashing between alleyways. The windows were sleek and clean. In one window I could see that the glass was chipped near the sill, whereas in the next I could see that the glass was double paned.

  I could see the changes in road surface beneath zombies who were still mindlessly trying to breach the CEM – beneath the porous abdomens of those mutant halflings – different shades of tar and gray. I could see individual stones in the sidewalk, strips whe
re the walkway surface had been newly cemented. I could see the network of power lines framed by the intricate web of sky that was breaking apart and falling toward the earth. I could see empty cigarette packets and butts, soda cans and constellations of debris along the curbs. I could feel the natural oils on Sarah’s hand as she deathgripped my forearm.

  Elaborate. Salient. Fractal and endless.

  I suddenly thought about opposite sides of a coin. Heads and tails. You dream and then you wake. You’re born and then you die. Where did I get that idea from – the idea that what things happened in here influenced life or death out there? Why not just let myself die? It’s an end of and in itself, isn’t it? It’s better than the unending tumble down a hole of nightmares. I couldn’t make this end. I didn’t know how to. I imagined letting myself go limp, letting them take me without a fight to whatever fate they had in store.

  A group of agents were beginning to breach the entrance to the CEM with a chainsaw. Sarah jumped at the sudden, ear splitting sound of the engine ripping links through the steel banister that was wedged between the handles. They ripped the door down and started pushing through the barricade that Sid, Alice and I put up that morning. The agents stepped into the dark building and scores of zombies and lizard things poured in behind them.

  Sarah tightened her arms around mine, and I could hear tears trembling in her voice. “Are we going to save Kate now?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. When faced with the possibility that this was going to continue forever ad infinitum, hope abandoned and left me by senesce, stubbornly holding me tightly by the arm. Hope always seems at odds with the tiny voices you find in dire situations. When hope was with me, I always had a plan moving me to a specific goal, propelling me toward an end that probably could never be.