Out of the Black (28 page)
Authors: Lee Doty
He got a series of impressions in about two seconds: motion, the ambulance's open doors, two bodies on the ground next to them, a crowd around the bodies, blood... eating? And then he wasn't looking anymore- he was running back toward the hallway where he'd entered the lobby. He'd seen the 2054 remake of
Night of the Living Dead
, and he got the point.
He had run maybe five steps back toward the inner door when he remembered Clint. He skidded to a halt and ran back to the security desk. It was surprisingly hard to lift a completely insensate human; it was like lifting a bag of bowling balls. Somehow he finally got Clint over his shoulder.
He ran as fast as his heavy load allowed. He hit the interior doors without slowing or putting out a hand. He just barreled through, using Clint's butt as a battering ram.
Chase heard the automatic doors leading to the ambulance run sliding open as the hallway doors swung closed behind him. He wasn't sure, but he thought he heard giggling coming from behind him.
***
The last forty minutes in the security ward had passed with only the usual tension. There had been no further power interruptions, the Harms had gone back to their usual sobbing, moaning, screaming routine. It was about two hours until Talia's shift ended and she could head home to get the kids ready for school.
Jeff sat across the desk, reading a book and smiling from time to time. Talia was doing a crossword on her tablet when silence settled again over the room.
"Here we go again." Talia said, looking up briefly.
Jeff looked up from his book, smiling. "Wow. Two in one hour."
His smile faded somewhat as his eyes focused on the scene over Talia's shoulder. After a few seconds, his brow furrowed. "Hey..."
She turned to follow his gaze, but before she saw, she heard. Unintelligible speech welled up behind her like a snowball rolling downhill, picking up mass. The mumble started with only one voice, but by the time she turned to face the source, all ten Harms had joined in the sound. It wasn't words, or at least none she knew, but all ten mouths were making the same sounds at the same time. All of them had raised their heads and were staring at the startled guards. The sound stopped and there was silence again.
"Ok, that's new." Talia said.
"And creepy." Jeff finished, staring back at the Harms.
Their expressions were blank, but as Talia and Jeff stared, the Harms began to smile. They spoke again, this time in perfect unison, but there was no meaning attached to the sounds, though it seemed to have a pattern to it. After another pause, they repeated the sounds, but they were clearer this time. The third time, the words were only slightly slurred.
"All around you." They said. "All around you now. Do you feel The Coming?"
What blood the sights and sounds didn't drain from them, the implication froze solid.
Darkness filled the room, descending like a plague over the grinning, chanting Harms. "All around you now." The chorus of restrained Harms repeated in the blackness.
The Lights flickered back on then off-on again. She realized that the double shot of darkness had only lasted about two seconds, but she felt like a half-drowned sailor treading water between tsunamis of darkness.
Both she and Jeff were on their feet now, looking wildly around. "Stay with us- play." The Harms all said in perfect unison, arms and legs straining at their restraints. Were the Harm's faces changing? Their teeth seemed to grow more malevolent, their skin stretched tighter across their distorting faces.
Jeff bolted for the door. "Wait!" Talia shouted, grabbing unsuccessfully for his arm as he rushed by. Neither she nor Jeff carried any weapons for fear that they could be used against them. Talia reached for the only weapon she had. "We've got a major incident underway!" She shouted into the transceiver on her wrist, but static was her only reply. "Security! You copy?" More static.
Maybe Jeff had the right idea after all. She turned toward the door, but gunfire erupted at the airlock. It was a short burst of automatic fire that brought with it the sound of shattering glass and the unmistakable crash of a body hitting the floor. When she reached the airlock, she darted her head around the corner. Jeff was on the floor. Blood pooled around him, spattered on the walls and broken glass. He wasn't moving. Two men and one woman in dark casual clothes were moving through the shattered glass of the airlock doors. All three sported military assault guns.
She dodged back around the corner, but not fast enough. A needle from a three round burst caught her in the shoulder, knocking her off her feet, spinning her partway over. She landed on her back in what seemed to be a featherbed of shock, clutching at her shattered shoulder.
Dark laughter surrounded her. "All around you now," the chorus said.
She moaned; part shock, part desperation. Who would take care of her children now? She didn't think her sister would make a good mom, and her parents were getting old. Orphans. The word filled her with equal parts sorrow and fury.
She looked around, looking for anything she could use as a weapon. There was no place to hide, no place or ability to run. If someone handed her an automatic weapon now, she wouldn't be able to use it.
The woman came through the inner airlock door, tracking across the room with her weapon. Her aim moved across whatever the Harms were becoming and settled on Talia.
"Please..."the moaned, but there was no mercy in the hard lines of the woman's face, and no one here to save her. She never heard the shots.
Then she was in a bright place of familiar, beautiful music with Jack's arms around her. He was telling her that he'd missed her terribly and not to worry about the kids. He didn't really need to say it though; she'd already heard it in the music and in her heart.
Saved after all, she thought, clinging tighter to the man she'd lost and found.
***
Anne looked over Hawthorne's shoulder into the operating theater below. She'd worked here for six years now, had forged the intravenous connections between thousands of patients and their operating beds, yet she had no idea how the operation below was progressing. The surgeons worked efficiently, the tech monitoring the patient seemed hypnotized by the instruments before him. The time ticked by.
"You ever feel like the bull's-eye?" Anne said.
"Hm?" Hawthorne said, still staring down into the OR, only partially emerging from other thoughts.
"In your FBI life, you know... ever feel like there's a bunch of strangers out there who want you dead? Like everyone you meet is looking at you out of the corner of their eye, sizing you up? Like you're the target of a really lethal joke that everyone else is in on?"
Hawthorne examined Anne over her shoulder. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't get this joke either."
"So, you've never been the target of a vast conspiracy? Never been on the run from seemingly everyone?"
"Not 'til now." She gave a wry grin that, given a few seconds, spread into an expression of genuine humor. "...but I can't dodge bullets and run up walls."
"Neither could I before today."
"You take the good with the bad." Hawthorne shrugged and turned back to the window.
"You think I should invest in a cape?" Anne said after a moment's silence.
"Not without tights."
"I meant more Dracula than Superman." She thought for a few seconds, "Cowl, mask, or should just I go naked like Superman?"
"You don't wear glasses."
"I could start."
Hawthorne abandoned her vigil over the operation below and turned to face Anne, "You think you could fly if you tried?"
"The guy who gave me the atomic hickey sure couldn't." Her face darkened as an unexpected funk interrupted their conversational repartee.
"What?" Hawthorne said, concerned.
"He warned me."
"Who?"
"He said that they were coming, said it was up to me now."
"Who?"
"He didn't say who... just that 'they' were coming."
"Yeah," Hawthorne said, actively managing her frustration now, "but
who
said that?"
"Oh... right. I'm not sure. A little Down's Syndrome kid in the middle of a car crash."
Anne got the message, "Right... While the fallen guy was abusing my neck, the pain knocked me clean out, and I start having this dream... parts of it were as weird as my normal dreams, but other parts..."
Hawthorne nodded. After a pause, Anne continued, "Other parts were vivid, frightening... sad. In these parts, the fallen guy was always trying to get me with these huge shark's teeth..." Anne paused, shaking her head. "No, that's not fair. He was trying to talk to me, but he kept sprouting these teeth... every time it happened he'd get exasperated and I'd book on out of there."
Hawthorne bit back the questions, rode the pause out.
"I was scared like I'd never been before. Shocked... scared stupid. I thought I was dead, thought he was trying the find-me-eat-my-soul kind of thing. 'Nother weird thing: I didn't remember any of it when I woke up on top of him."
Hawthorne couldn't resist, "You're just remembering this
now
?"
Anne shook her head, "No, I re-dreamed it in bits since then. I can't wait to see what's on the all-weird dream channel tonight."
"Re-dreamed." Hawthorne said, dubious.
"Since then, I keep dreaming parts of that first dream, but I remember it kinda like déjà vu. I'm eating thanksgiving dinner at the kids' table, he's sitting where my cousin should be. I'm running through darkness and he's a descending angel. I'm in a... food store, he's the server, always acting friendly, followed by a spooky tooth-head transformation and then I'm running for my life again through another hokey scene."
"You said something about a kid with Down's Syndrome in a car crash..." Hawthorne prompted, nearly ready to slap Anne a few times and see how badly she'd be killed for it.
"Yeah, and that isn't even the weirdest part of the dream." Anne smiled, trying to keep the mood lighter than she felt. "That was the saddest part though, and by far the most vivid. I'm almost certain it really happened, but not to me."
Anne noticed Hawthorne's confusion and paused, regrouped. She told her the story of the minivan wreck as concisely as she could.
"So what did he tell you?" Hawthorne asked when Anne had finished.
"That 'they' were coming, that it was up to me... that he hoped to see his parents again soon." She thought for a moment, "I think he did."
"Did what?"
Her voice thickened uncomfortably, "See them again. I think I caught a glimpse of them as I was waking, as he was dying."
"What? The kid died in your dream?"
"No... yes. I think the little kid was the guy who attacked me. I think being the kid was just his way of making me sit still long enough to listen to him. I think he was with me when his body died... I think I saw his parents come to get him."
"So you're saying he jacked into your mind." Hawthorne said, not hiding the skepticism.
"Yeah, that's ridiculous... vampires definitely can't do that." Anne came back.
Hawthorne snort ne"Touché." Behind her business face, the implications were sinking in around the confusion... life after death? Who was this guy? She didn't buy the vampire story, but she had a feeling the truth was going to be deeply weird.
Hawthorne stood quiet for a moment. "Did he say anything else?"
"I think so, something about cracks in a room, ghosts slipping through... betrayal. Something about how I had to find some people, let them know that I'm the key... that's all I remember."
"You're the key?"
Anne shrugged, "Whatever that means."
"Ghosts?"
"Yep."
"That's all?"
"Uh-huh."
"So you basically forgot the most important part." Hawthorne shook her head.
"Check. Maybe I should try to take a nap... it might come back to me."
***
"Wake up, baby!" Rae shouted through the rush of the wind.
Desperation colored her voice. She strained against the seat belt, shaking Alex's leg as he slumped in the back seat. She twisted back around, released her seat belt and scrambled between the seats. The car only swerved slightly as she bumped and jostled the driver on her journey to the back seat.
The car rocketed through the sparse suburban residential neighborhood at over twice the speed limit. It swerved again slightly as Ping felt in the glove box for his sunglasses. He pulled them from the case with one hand and put them on. Outside, night and artificial day interleaved as they tore through the wash of street lamps. Ping adjusted the glasses for night vision, and the world outside clarified and tinted yellow. The glasses also provided a windbreak that allowed him to stop squinting into the wind blasting through the shattered windshield.
In the back seat, Rae was patting Alex down, looking for bullet wounds. Ping spared a few glances at them through the mirror. He didn't see any blood. Rae checked his pulse. "He's alive, but the pulse is weak! I can't find any wounds!" she shouted, worry and relief mixing in her voice. "Wake up!" she yelled. She smacked him lightly on the cheek, kissed him on the lips- smacked him harder.
"Doctor!" Ping yelled through the wind, "Perhaps you should get a second opinion before you continue that treatment!"
She hugged Alex so hard Ping thought she might break him. "What's wrong with him? What did they do?" The worry in her voice was deepening, skittering along the edge of panic.
"I'm sure he's fine, probably just blew a magical fuse like at the libr..."
A car shuddered to a halt in the intersection less than fifty meters ahead. Automatic weapons fire erupted from the back seat.
"Down!" Ping yelled, ducking his head. He stood on the accelerator and steered for the center of the car ahead.
He heard more automatic gunfire, but didn't hear or feel the thing it usually implied; no shells hit the car, shredding through plastic and metal, tearing through flesh. Either these guys were shooting blanks or they were the worst shots in the universe. It was like having a firing squad of evil B-movie henchmen. Cool. It was nice to have incompetent types try to kill him for a change.
They bore down on the car with reckless speed. As they got within twenty meters, the driver of the other car tried to accelerate out of the way. He must have figured that Ping was either dead or crazy. Either way, he probably figured that Ping wasn't going to try to avoid a solid collision at well over a hundred kilometers per hour.
Just as he thought it might be too late, Ping gave the wheel a controlled jerk and the car did it's best to accommodate his wishes. All four wheels turned, all four motors compensated as needed to maximize traction, and the suspension actively leaned the car into the turn.
Still, it wasn't enough. There was a violent pop as the front left corner of their car connected with the other car's left rear fender just behind the rear wheel. The impact shook through them, wrenched them forward for the briefest instant, bones seeming to flex from an instant of sharp deceleration, but then they were past the other car.
In his mirror, Ping could see the other car spinning end over end- a body that flew from a popped door was ejected vertically about three meters before tumbling down, limbs flailing.
"Wha...?" Ping wondered aloud, looking at the kinetic havoc in their wake. Fragments of metal and glass joined plumes of erupting dirt and grass as the car made its third impact with the ground, crossing the sidewalk and tearing through a beautifully tended front yard. The ejected body disappeared into the chaos. Ping's eyes moved from the mirror to the deformed corner of their car. The bumper hadn't been able to absorb all of the impact, so the frame of the car had bent slightly. The corner panel and hood were slightly crumpled. The car pulled a little to the left.
Well, that wasn't exactly what he was expecting from all the
Blood on the Highway
videos he'd been forced to endure in driving courses at the academy. In the mirror he saw the car behind them bounce through the lower branches of a tree, then finally skid to a halt across a driveway on what was left of its roof. It looked like a cargo tractor had hit it head-on at supersonic speed. He looked forward to his own car's damage. It looked like he'd had a parallel parking mishap.
Cool. It was nice to crash into incompetent cars for a change. Ping's chuckle was more confusion than humor.
"Uh...
what
just happened?" Rae asked, still staring back into the storm of dirt and smoke that surrounded the wreckage "I think I blinked and missed the rest of the crash."
"Ask your boyfriend. I don't think a bullet has hit us since we left Roy's garage... you think he put some mojo on our wheels?"
"Yep, strange and mysterious are the ways of my Alex... WAKE UP!" She smacked his cheek again so hard that Ping heard the report above the rushing wind.
Their first indication of gunfire was shattered glass filling the car as bullets blew through the rear window. Metal twanged as bullets plucked it, the right rear wheel seized when its motor took two direct hits. Ping wrestled with the steering wheel as the seized rear wheel skidded along the road. The car pulled hard to the right. He compensated by steering left and accelerating.
"Looks like we're on our own!" Rae shouted, releasing Alex from his harness and pushing him to the floor.
Behind them, a sedan, a light SUV, and a microvan sped toward their slowing car.
"I told you to stop hitting him!" Ping yelled, trying to keep the car going generally forward.
"Yeah, like this is my fault! You definitely blew our mojo destroyin' that car back there! Uhg!" she made a sound like Ping's mom made when she thought she was doing everyone's work, "Be right back!" Rae opened the door behind Ping and leaned out. She gripped the frame of the door with her left knee inside the car, her right knee outside, and her left elbow on the roof. She used her left arm to steady the fletcher as she dialed minimum dispersion and snapped off three quick blasts at the lead car behind them.
A quick glance in his mirror showed Ping that she was a fair shot. The driver's window shattered. Holes appeared in both the driver's-side doors. The gunman leaning out the rear window was surrounded by a halo of dark human aerosol. His gun jumped and popped end over end across the pavement and he slid, limp, back into the car. The dead man's gun finally impacted on the swerving microvan's bumper.
The driver's head bounced off her wheel, filling the night with the abbreviated bleat of her horn. Her head recoiled from the impact and she slumped right, pulling the decelerating vehicle into a right turn that the SUV behind her barely avoided. The driverless car jumped the curb, crossed a well-manicured front lawn and slammed into an ancient maple tree.
"Rae!" Ping yelled as the right front motor burned out, throwing the car into a sharp right swerve. This was enough to break the grip Rae had on the car, her open door swung wide and she exited the car backwards without a sound. Ping fought in vain for control of his crippled car.
Rae flew backwards through the cool air, clutching her fletcher like a severed lifeline. She brought her knees up hard, accelerating her reverse somersault, watching the starry sky swing by. As the ground filled her vision, she threw her arms and legs wide, slowing her spin, reaching out with her feet. The impact was harsh, but she allowed her legs to crumple. Her body again curled into a ball as she spread the impact across her legs, back, then shoulders. As she went over again, her bent knees slammed into the pavement and the shock of the impact unwound her. Her breath blew out of her as the ground slammed into her back.
Starbursts. Pretty. Ouch.
She was still holding the fletcher. Now that's determination, she thought somewhat blearily. The screeching of tires filled the air, but around that sound, a million imaginary insects seemed to be chattering, harmonizing with the pretty light show in her head.
Her eyes snapped open when the car's screeching terminated in a jarring crash. She was up far faster than she could have been a year ago- thanks Alex. ...Alex! Fletcher in hand, aching body protesting, she sprinted toward the three cars from behind.
Their car had passed her and swerved onto the sidewalk on the other side of the road. The SUV had crashed into the passenger side. The microvan was about five meters behind their car. The driver covered the wrecked car with an automatic weapon braced against her open door.
She could make out the sound of someone yelling angrily from the direction of Ping's wrecked car, then two shots rang out in rapid succession. A shock wave of panic crashed through her. She poured on the speed. Twenty meters to go.
Ping's head slammed into the window's safety glass. The glass turned partially opaque as micro-fractures spread away from thewas hart. He felt like his head had just struck the biggest gong at the Shaolin Temple, its reverberant ring lingered in his ears.
Turgid cloth filled his vision, fouled his every movement- trapped! He had a claustrophobic moment, already the sole inhabitant of the toe-tagged Ping Bannon memorial body bag. He struggled against the restraining cloth, and choked on some kind of burning chemical that filled the air. Coughing hurt his head, which had taken entirely too much damage in the past few days.
Suddenly there was a diffuse hiss and the restraining cloth relented. With tingling arms, he fought to clear it from his face. He was free! Then he understood: though the impact with the SUV wasn't
Blood on the Highway
bad, it did manage to slam him into the side window and deploy the car's airbags.
Then another realization hit him... he'd just been T-boned by a team of professional killers. Right! Time to move!
The spider webbed glass of his window exploded inward. He was showered with glass shards the size of pebbles, then with rifle butt. Stars exploded around him while he got cozy with a little more head trauma. The universe compressed for an instant to the few electric centimeters on the side of his head where the pain blossomed like a small mushroom cloud. His vision flashed, then went dim.
