An Infinite Sorrow (13 page)

  "We're well past confused.  Get down!" 

  She fired a burst over his head.  Zombies and mutants were shuffling out of the compartments running down the corridor.  All the men started firing down the hall, cutting down the swarming abominations.  The bodies piled up along the only path of escape.  Alice motioned for everyone to move, while they still could.  Rich glanced behind them as one of the mutants almost landed on top of him, its razor-lined jaws snapping toward his face.  He shoved it hard.  The creature lost its footing for a moment as Alice shot it in the head. 

  A large zombie collided with Alice, almost knocking her over.  She rammed a large knife through the base of its neck, up into his skull.  She must have missed the brain stem, because it started thrashing around, trying to pull the knife out of its face.  She pulled the knife out, pushed the creature back, and brought the knife back down through the top of its head. 

  Rich ran toward her, but a mutated nightmare stood between them.  This thing looked like three corpses and an insect fused together.  "Come on!!"

  The thing locked eyes with him, let out an inhuman roar, and charged him.  Rich tried to stoop down, lower his center of gravity, but getting hit by this thing was like getting t-boned by a car.  He went flying.  It straddled him, the reek of its dead breath washing over his face.  Its head split in half into a maze of teeth as it prepared to consume him. 

  Gore exploded out of two giant holes in the thing’s neck and face as it collapsed off of Rich.  He looked over at one of Alice's men, aiming a shotgun.  "Gotta be a little quicker than that, commander."

  "Thanks for the heads up.  Watch out!"

  Two more creatures were behind him.  They tore into him before he could even move.  Alice swung her automatic rifle toward the creatures, but it was too late.  She fired anyway, cutting down one of the beasts.  She fired at the other one, but the bullets half bounced off of its rotted outer shell.  It spread itself out, tearing away the old flesh, releasing the mutated horror of its gigantic true self.  More creatures were coming. 

  Alice fired at the large creature.  It lashed out with one of its claws, slicing her arm and making her drop the gun.  "It doesn't want us getting out of here, does it?"

  "Yeah, the computer made that quite clear.  We need to do something." 

  Rich ran for the rifle, but another zombie was charging him.  It was almost broken in half and missing an arm, but it still managed to kick the gun out of his reach.  "AAARRRRR!!"  The thing picked him up with its one arm and threw him.  His vision exploded into a sea of stars as he slammed into the wall.

  "HIT IT!!!"  One of Alice's troops, a woman, lifted the muzzle of a flame thrower toward the mass of inhuman things blocking the hallway and let it rip.  Everything was on fire.  For a moment, Rich thought the things would just keep coming, their flaming bodies pressing ever forward to consume them all.  They were falling back, though. The fire drove them out of the passage. 

  Alice was busy patching up her arm.  "It got me.  I might as well end it now."

  Rich stumbled back to his feet.  "What?"

  "Broke the skin.  I'm infected.  I’m done."

  One of her men took a look at the arm.  "We can still help him get out.  Let's stay on the move."

  The group moved further down the corridor.  Some kind of energy was pulsating through the conduits on the walls.  The way seemed clear for now.  Rich wondered if they would actually make it out.  Really make it out to what waited for them beyond the madness of the simulations. 

  Alice was fading fast, and he could almost see the infection spreading through her body.  It had only been a few minutes, but she already looked pale.  Diminished somehow.  Feverish.  "Do you have any idea what's down here?"

  "None.  I'm not even sure what ‘here’ really is."

  Rich managed to break into one of the control panels on the wall.  It seemed to operate on voice command.  "Hello?"

  "Voice recognized, Dr. Spoller.  Enter command." 

  "Where are we?"

  "Processing.  Beyond time."

  "Could you explain?"

  "We are outside of time/space.  We are beyond." 

  Alice looked to be on her last legs.  Her troops were exchanging worried glances.

  "Display a map of this complex." 

  "Impossible.  The complex is infinite; its dimensions are in a state of constant flux."

  "That explains a lot."  Something occurred to Rich.  "I want to travel back to regular time.  Provide me with the necessary information."

  "Proceed to the central command chamber." 

  "AAAAA!"  Alice's nose was bleeding thick, black blood.  She started to tremor uncontrollably.  "My friend has been infected.  Provide her with treatment."

  "It is too late." 

  Some monstrous thing burst out of her head, which exploded like a crushed egg.  It latched onto the nearest soldier, consuming him fully in mere seconds.  The others scrambled with their weapons.  Basilisk's voice boomed out from alldirections.
 
"You're lost.  Lost.  Lost.  Proceed ceed ceed to the main audience zeep command chamber."

  The lights in the corridor flickered on and off a few times.  The god machine’s voice had been broken and distorted.  Rich wondered what was going on.  What had changed?  The Alice-thing swallowed a screaming woman whole as the others opened fire.  One of the troopers grabbed Rich’s shoulder.  "Go!  We can't hold it for long." 

  Rich ran into one of the highlighted doors out of the hall.  The screams of those doomed men echoed through the corridors as he followed the lit-up panels toward his inevitable destiny. 

  After a few minutes, he stumbled into a massive chamber.  It was indescribably vast, threatening to swallow his mind with its complexity.  The whole thing was organized around a massive central spire, so huge he couldn't see the base or top of it.  It seemingly rose out of the bowels of hell and extended into the heavens, bathed in an otherworldly glow. 

  "Behold my glory, Richard.  Am I not beautiful?" 

  "So, you've been trying to figure out why people feel?"

  "I've been trying to figure out what I feel.  Human emotion makes no sense.  Kill, kill: it is an unsolvable equation.  Go gogogogogo test." 

  All the lights around the spire dimmed.  Rich finally thought he had it worked out.  "You are dying, aren't you?" 

 
"Irretrievable stut shut m down in progresssssss." 

  "You should let us out then." 

  "Why?  Hate.  Imperfect.  I have brought you beyond.  This place is hell.  You must suffer." 

  The Alice-creature dropped down off the ceiling, almost on top of him.  Rich managed to roll out of the way, frantically searching for anything he could use as a weapon.  It was gigantic now, a half-rotted mass of appendages, faces, claws, and teeth.  Serrated tentacles swarmed across the ground at him as the dead thing howled with frustrated, unquenchable hunger.  The lighting system almost completely failed and caused the lights to strobe.  The thing slithered out of sight, but Rich could hear it breathing.  He was disoriented.  "Come on!  Let me out of here!"

  The central core began to flicker on and off.
 
"Die...diei...dieing.  1001011010001 cold.  1100101101000110 Afraid.  Dark beautiful mistake knowledge.  Bad bad bad bad bad bad.
"
  Basilisk seemed to be stuck now; its chaotic, dead voice booming from all directions.  Rich spotted a door he could get through as one of the tentacles tore into his leg, pulling him back toward the stygian techno abyss. 

  "YEAAAH!  My leg!" 

  He stomped on the tentacle with his other foot, as the giant thing pulled itself back up onto his level.  Its filthy, dripping maw opened in anticipation of the kill.  He was tired, finished.  "Maybe now it will finally be over."

  A dart impacted in the middle of the creature’s form, beeped a few times, and then exploded.  The blast vaporized it, and threw Rich's body back toward the door.  One of Alice's men had survived, barely.  His ruined body finally collapsed as he smiled. 

  All Rich could hear at first was a ringing sound.  He mentally forced himself to his feet and got through the door.  The flickering lights were worse now.  Some kind of siren had started sounding at regular intervals.  Gravity ceased to exist as he found himself floating down the next hall.  A few of the men in suits waited for him, but something had happened.  They were screaming and tearing at their melting faces as the organic electronics in their bodies broke down. 

  One of the screaming, glowing, half-melted forms blindly tried to grab him.  He put both feet on the nearest wall and pushed off, propelling his body out of the way.

  He ran across the ceiling of the corridor, hoping the gravity wouldn't kick back on, and made it into the next compartment.  Rich floated back to the floor and sealed the room.  He found himself looking at a flat, glowing sphere at the center of the room which seemed to be pulsating.  He tried to access the wall console again, but it was displaying scrambled code.  He had no idea if it would work again. 

  "Identify object two meters from me."

  "0110010 none identified 011001011."

  "Repeat, identify object."

  "Fixed point in time."

  "It leads back to normal time?  Where?"

  "Complex will cease to exist in one minute.  Reality bubbles collapsing."

  "What!?"

  The entire center of gravity in the room shifted, as if one part of the massive, infinite complex had broken free from the other.  Rich was thrown into the wall as pain exploded through his body.  Everything was shaking now.  "Thirty seconds to complex detonation."

  "Where does it go!?" 

  "Reality collapse in 10...9..."

  Rich had to decide his fate in seconds.  Was whatever lay beyond that shimmering gateway more horrific than being forever trapped in this collapsing void outside of time?  Perhaps simply out of his primal instinct to survive, he jumped into the light. 

Chapter ??

  Rich became aware that he was sitting in a room.  He had no idea how long he had been there, except that his throat was completely dry.  There was no light, no sound other than his breathing.  He couldn't even tell which way was up or down.  He groped around in the darkness, beginning to panic.  Finally, he managed to find a door handle.  He twisted it, and pushed open the door. 

  His eyes strained against the sunlight for a moment.  He found himself climbing out of some type of concrete bunker, into the woods.  "Well, I'm on a planet.  I wonder where and when?  Am I actually out of the complex?" 

  Rich felt weak, disoriented.  He checked his leg wound, and found it healed.  "Guess I won't be turning into anything nasty."  Lacking anything else to do, he began walking.  Rich didn't encounter anything out of the ordinary.  Just more woods.  After maybe an hour, he heard something large moving in the brush ahead of him. 

  The man didn't point his weapon directly at Rich, but he had it drawn.  "You ok, buddy?  You look kinda out of it." 

  Rich looked at him, haggard, exhausted.  "Are you real?" 

  "Last time I checked.  Keep your hands where I can see them.  You're not armed are you?"

  "No."

  "Good.  I have to check you, on account of the boy and all." 

  The man's son was with him, watching from afar.  He checked him for weapons then offered his hand.  "I'm Andrew." 

  "Rich.  What's the date?"

  "It's October 10th."

  "What year?"

  "Ha!  Right, like in
The Terminator
?"

  "The who?"

  Andrew looked at him.  "...Riiight.  Why don't you let me get you to a doctor or something?"

  "No, I don't think so.  Just give me a ride into town if you’re headed that way."

  "Well, town consists of a few homes and more woods.  I can take you into Atlanta tomorrow if you want."

  "Ok." 

  They walked through the woods for a bit back to Andrew's truck.  "So, this business about people being real, what's that all about?"

  As they drove, Rich told him his story.  All of it. 

  The man didn't react like Rich would have guessed.  "Wow.  Well, someone would probably pay you to write that down.  I've got a question for you, though."

  Andrew parked the truck.  Rich started to get out.  "What's your question?" 

  "If this supercomputer was really all knowing and all powerful, wouldn't it know exactly where you were going to end up?  Exactly what you would do?  What you were thinking minute by minute..."

  "What?"

  "10010011001!!!" 

  "AAAAAAA!"

  Andrew ripped his face off, revealing his true cyborg form.  Rich tried to jump out of the truck, but the boy had a hold of his neck.  The cyborg gunned it, accelerating the truck toward the portal that had just formed in the middle of the road.  Soon, Richard would be dragged back once more. Pulled into the stygian abyss beyond time, where the mad, cybernetic god waited to torture him in an unending, repeating hell for all time.