Artifact Read online

  Sarah buried her face into my hip as a lizardman reared up on its hind legs and howled at us.

  Each time my hope began to fail, it was because the end seemed distant and obscure, and thwarted by the fog of epistemological uncertainty.

  I shut my eyes, willing myself to wake up.

  Wake up.

  Wake.

  Up.

  Why couldn’t I wake up?

  4.

  They cleared the front desk of clutter. They pushed the stapler, the cup of pens, the document tray and the tiny American flag onto the floor. A large monster – one of the largest I had seen so far – bayed as they shooed it off of the desk, and left a trail of clear slime as it slid to the floor. One of the agents removed my handcuffs and I had time to rub my wrist only once before a group of five of them forced me onto the desk.

  “What’s happening, Patrick?” I asked a bit shakily.

  “We’re going to put you inside the vault,” he said reassuringly. “You’re going to be okay, just relax.”

  Sarah stood near Patrick as the men in suits ratcheted me onto the table with three strap–wrenches. I tried struggling but it was useless. One of them left the building for a few moments and then returned with a silver tray arranged with what looked like autopsy or embalming tools. A steely chill settled in my throat.

  “Patrick.” I said tightly.

  Sarah started to cry and frantically twist the bottom of her shirt.

  One of the men grabbed an immaculate, thin looking bone saw and laid it on the desk next to my head. Patrick anxiously shifted his weight from foot to foot.

  “Uh, fellas?” He ventured, “We’re taking him to the vault, right?”

  Sarah pulled at Patrick’s shirt, begging for them to stop. My voice caught in my throat.

  I couldn’t speak.

  “Uh, guys?” Patrick said.

  “Quiet.” The agent at the head of the desk ordered.

  “What are they going to do?” Sarah pulled again on Patrick’s shirt. He knelt down and smiled warmly. “He’s going to be fine, angel.” He said, “They won’t hurt him.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something on the back of Patrick’s neck. The agent at the head of the desk grabbed a black marker from the tray and started dotting a line across my forehead.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him.

  “Securing the code,” he said. “Hold still.”

  I rolled my head toward Patrick, and there it was again – a tiny lump on the back of his neck. The agent grabbed my chin and forced me to look straight ahead. “Please,” he said. “Hold still.”

  I started frantically twisting my head back and forth, straining against the straps across my chest, arms and legs.

  Patrick stood and scratched his head. “What do you guys need the code for?” He put a protective arm over Sarah’s shoulder. “I thought we were going to put him in the vault until we had a chance to clean this place up…”

  “Just stay back, Patrick.” The head agent said. “We’ll take it from here.”

  “Yeah, fine – no problem. But what do you need those tools for?”

  I kept twisting my head from side to side, making it difficult for them to make a straight line with the marker.

  “Stop them, Patrick,” I screamed. “Stop them!”

  “This isn’t going to work,” Head Agent hissed through his teeth. “We need another strap.”

  One of the agents walked out of the building again and Patrick turned his head to watch him go. I could see it now, clear as day. One of those things that separated from the zombies in the lunchroom was attached to the back of his neck, like an enormous, flesh colored leech. It was similar in shape and dimension to those half human half lizard things – only much smaller. Tiny, human looking arms spread eagle across the back of his neck, and its fingers dug into his skin. Its head was thrust into Patrick’s neck to its shoulders.

  “Sarah,” I gasped, “The back of his neck–”

  Sarah wiped the tears out of her eyes long enough to look. She saw it too.

  An agent returned with another strap–wrench. Two suits held my head still as Head Agent ratcheted it into place. I couldn’t move. He grabbed a bone saw and set the serrated blade against my forehead.

  “I asked you a question,” Patrick said. “What’s with the tools?”

  Head Agent grabbed the other end of the saw and leaned on it – I felt jagged teeth bite into my flesh, followed by the warm trickle of blood.

  “We need to cut his skull open,” Head Agent said quietly, carefully keeping the saw still. “So that we can eat his brains and ascertain the code that opens the artifact.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Wait a minute – I’ll just tell you the goddamn algorithm!”

  “You can’t tell us something that you’re not consciously aware of,” Head Agent said. “Now be quiet, it will be over shortly.”

  “Oh, okay.” Patrick looked at the ground and shook his head. “It’s just, you have to run these things by me. I’m the Chief of Security around here – I should know these things.”

  “Sarah,” I yelled. “Rip it off!”

  Patrick frowned and said, “Rip what off?”

  Sarah leapt onto Patrick’s back and started tearing at the parasite on his neck. He bent forward and sent her cartwheeling over his shoulder into Head Agent. She tumbled across the floor and yelped, tossing the writhing thing in her hand across the lobby.

  Patrick dropped to his knees and touched the back of his neck, and his fingers came away wet with blood.

  “Will someone get a hold of this little girl, please?” Head Agent hissed, picking himself up off the ground.

  “I got it.” Patrick said, getting to his feet, “hand me that rifle…”

  One of the agents near the entrance unslung his automatic rifle and passed it to Patrick. He pulled the strap over his head and pointed the rifle at Sarah, who tried scrambling away across the floor. “Hold her–”

  Head Agent bent down and snatched her arm. He hauled Sarah to her feet and pinned her shoulders. She was screaming and kicking as hard as she could.

  I tried and tried to pull my arms out of the straps, but they were ratcheted too tight. I forced myself to look, and my eyes strained against the nystagmus. If she was going to die, I didn’t want to spare myself any of the anguish. If I was creating this reality moment to moment, I vowed to take responsibility for it. A sick, leathery feeling slid into the center of my stomach as I watched Sarah struggle in Head Agent’s arms. “Don’t you hurt her!”

  Patrick stepped in front of Sarah. She wilted, sobbing, pleading to me with her eyes.

  “Close your eyes,” I said, trying as hard as I could to stifle the sobs in my throat. “You’re going to be fine…”

  Sarah took a shuddery breath and stopped struggling.

  She closed her eyes.

  Patrick pressed the gun against her head and said, “Grab the saw and cut him loose, angel.”

  “Pardon me?” asked Head Agent.

  Patrick swung the gun at Head Agent and unloaded the magazine into his face. Shell casings tinkled onto the floor as the gun ripped bullet after bullet between his eyes, obliterating his head into a red spray of splanchnic. His headless carcass spun around and slumped onto the floor in an exanimate pile of nothing.

  “Hurry angel–” Patrick pulled the butt stock to his shoulder and opened fire on the stunned agents.

  Dazed, Sarah rolled to her feet and pried the bone saw out of Head Agent’s fist. Patrick casually walked toward the agents, who finally raised their guns, and ripped them to pieces with a seemingly endless supply of bullets.

  I couldn’t breathe. I kept trying to think about how many bullets were in each magazine, but then briefly wondered if such things even mattered in this place. If this was
a dream, then each bullet was itself a psychological construct – at least as much of a psychological construct as the bullet capacity of a single magazine.

  Patrick took a knee and started cutting down the waves of zombies that began to pour through the entrance. A chorus of screams answered the gunfire, which was spitting buckets of bullets into the undulating mass of death. Dozens of lizardmen scurried into the entrance and broke in different directions across the ceiling and walls.

  Sarah finished sawing the strap over my arms and I took over, snatching the saw out of her tiny hands, frantically cutting myself loose. I rolled off the desk just as something slick and rubbery swiped at where I was lying. I tumbled to the floor, and the larger mutant in the corner scurried toward me. Its jaw detached from its skull, like a python preparing to feed. Its maw opened impossibly large, exposing several rows of blunt, human teeth. I shoved Sarah toward Patrick and pulled myself along the floor, just as several mutants dropped from the ceiling behind the desk. My elbow found something soft and organic. I looked and saw one of the agents that were cut down when Patrick started blazing – he had a rifle clutched in his hand. I lunged for it, wrapping my hand around the grip that was firm and true – I ripped it out of the agent’s hand, whipped the loud end toward the lizard thing’s impossibly large mouth and pulled the trigger.

  The shock of recoil nearly bucked the gun out of my hands, but I reeled it into my shoulder, mimicking how Patrick was holding his, and opened fire at everything that moved.

  Patrick grabbed my shoulder and shoved me hard toward the darkest part of the lobby.

  I grabbed Sarah and moved.

  The adjacent hallway we ended up in boiled with monsters – hundreds of them crawled over each other across the walls and ceiling, and I kept shooting. The bullets didn’t seem to do much damage, but they scurried back a few feet before charging again. I couldn’t see the floor or the ceiling. They were wall to wall, hurling themselves at us tooth first – I kept firing and they kept moving. I could hear Patrick dumping buckets of rounds into whatever was closing in behind us.

  The lizard things suddenly broke in every direction, into every hallway and ventilation duct. The vile things unbelievably started fleeing exactly how roaches do when you uncover their shadow, like an emergent flock of birds suddenly changing direction. Within seconds, the hallway had gone from a roiling beehive of human limbs and teeth, to empty. I stopped firing, dazed at how fast they disappeared – I listened to their scuttling retreat until I could breathe again.

  I heard a low hiss, like heat escaping a thermal vent under low pressure. I turned to see Patrick staring up at the ceiling, his gun hanging limp at his side. I saw movement in my peripheral vision – a darker spot separating from a lighter one. I followed Patrick’s gaze and my heart dropped.

  Something the size of a rhino fell from the ceiling. The floor vibrated under my feet on impact and particles of dust gently rained on us from above. It must have been there the whole time.

  It was one of those lizard things, but much bigger.

  It still resembled a human crocodile hybrid, but four times larger than the others. It had a human looking head the size of a tractor tire – its arms were thick with muscles like spool racks of knotted rope – pulling itself on fingernails jutting from its putrid humanlike fingers, like two feet of sharpened scythes, with black, bristly, roughage hair at the ends of fingers piercing the floor – the behemoth flattened and laid its ear to the ground, as if pretending to hide.

  It pulsated, flicking its seven-meter tail back and forth in the lobby. Its wingspan must have been at least eight meters, and its muscled arms were as thick as redwoods. It lay there, silent, listening to the floor as if it were a spread of railroad tracks.

  Patrick slowly and softly started to back into the hallway, waving us to go.

  It was listening for us.

  I could feel the sweat on my skin freeze.

  Patrick reached the hallway and started to turn. The behemoth immediately lunged forward and dug its hook–like hairs into the tile, and propelled itself toward us – its legs kicked as it crashed into the hallway, squeezing itself in like a sausage. Patrick turned and ran.

  The giant slid into the doorway and completely filled the corridor. Buckets of lubricant poured off the beast as it pulled itself, as if it were being forced through by osmotic pressure.

  I dropped the rifle, picked up Sarah and ran.

  The thing pursued us into the darkest corner of the facility, where the mire of a hundred monsters accumulated on the floor. All of the walls were obscure, covered in vile purplish cellulose that ran through my fingers by the light of Patrick’s muzzle flash. I only saw snapshots of the giant thing squeezing itself through the hallway after us. Its massive head yawned, letting its sixty pound tongue flop onto the ground – its lower jaw dislocated like the one in the lobby, revealing endless rows of teeth which disappeared into a throat that was also lined with its own set of sharp teeth. Its gaping mouth nearly filled half of the corridor as it snapped at us with teeth the size of graveyard spades. It pulled itself forward, and reached with its open maw to consume all three of us whole.

  We burst into the emergency stairway and crawled hand over hand in complete darkness. I could hear the soft, sliding sound of mutants moving away. I felt Patrick gather a handful of my collar and force me down the stairs, breathing heavily. The door squealed as the giant monster ripped its hinges away. Patrick turned and started firing, and I briefly caught a frenetic strobe of the thing reaching into the doorway after us, swaying its head from side to side. We moved farther down the stairs, hoping that it couldn’t fit. We waited in silence until our eyes adjusted to the soft red glow of an exit sign that ornamented the gaping frame. The thing stopped, unable to push itself into the stairway, taking slow, deep, prehistoric breaths. Its arm extended into the frame and stopped a meter short from where we collapsed onto the floor – the strange barbs on the tips of its fingers extended another half meter, hooking the front of Patrick’s shirt. He knocked it away with the butt of his rifle and stumbled back, sucking air.

  It just lay there, pressing as much of itself as it could into the doorway, reaching its giant arm as if begging us to put ourselves once again within its grasp.

  “What is it?” I asked, realizing that I was fighting not to sob. It immediately reacted to my voice and attempted to force itself into the stairway again. Failing, it settled into a comfortable prone position, coiled and ready to strike, ever reaching.

  “Fuck…” was all Patrick could say. He kept his rifle trained onto the thing’s face.

  He said, “Start moving down.”

  At the sound of Patrick’s voice, the thing pulled back again and grabbed each side of the doorframe within its massive fists. It started to pull.

  “It’s trying to rip the wall down,” I said. Sarah’s grip was starting to hurt my hand.

  “Hurry.” Patrick hissed.

  We moved down the stairs as fast as we could, letting that sound of contents under torque push us on as the beast roared at our backs.

  5.

  Patrick pushed us beyond physical exertion. We stumbled through a labyrinth of corridors below the facility, fighting the exhaustion that would close the distance between us and the giant abomination with each passing second.

  “We have to evaluate how damaged you are,” Patrick said, shoving Sarah and I through the dark hallways with purpose.

  “I – I don’t know,” I started checking my body for wounds.

  “No, I mean cognitively. We have to figure out how screwed up your mental processes are–”

  I ripped my arm away from him and stopped. “Maybe I should be evaluating your mental processes.”

  He stopped as well and impatiently scanned the ceiling. “I – I don’t know.” He said gravely, “I think Sarah may have removed most of it.” He rubbed the back of his neck, which was sti
ll bleeding, “but I don’t know for sure.”

  “What the hell is going on, Patrick – no bullshit this time.”

  “I have to make certain that you’re not compromised.” He leaned against the wall. There was enough light coming from an adjacent hallway that we could at least see enough of each other to do a cursory check. After searching as thoroughly as we could, we determined that we were clean of any parasites.

  I slumped to the ground and took a few deep breaths. “I woke up after the accident and my memory was completely wiped. I’ve been continuously re–waking in different places, cutting between at least four different scenarios.”

  “That’s it?”

  I shook my head. “There’s something else. When I woke up, I had a massive burn covering my chest. Sometimes I have it, sometimes I don’t – it all depends on where I am in the timeline. Right now,” I lifted my shirt, showing him that I had no such burn on my chest. “I’m healed. There isn’t even a scar.” I lowered my shirt and waited for him to say something. He didn’t – he just stared at me, thinking.

  “I initially thought that once I started consolidating all of these different visions at the labs,” I continued. “It meant that I was moving in the right direction, because my burns started to heal.” I leaned forward. “Tell me I’m dreaming, Patrick. Please, tell me that this is a dream.”

  He knelt and looked at the carpet for a moment. “How much of your memory has been wiped?”

  “I remember bits and pieces of the accident, but nothing before. I seem to be able to retain memories for the things after waking up in the hospital. But I can recall only fragments of my life before the accident. All I’ve been trying to do is piece together exactly what happened. I know that we were experimenting on some sort of algorithmic device when things went bad, I was injured, but everything thereafter has been like a horrible acid trip.”