Return of the Ancients (5 page)

The flashing red lights, which made the inside of his T-shirt pulse red every second, suddenly went dark, and he was pushed to the floor. A familiar voice sneered, ‘So long, Singer – I hear radiation shrinks your balls. But that shouldn’t worry someone who didn’t have any to start with.’ There was a soft, cruel laugh, the sound of a door closing, and then . . . complete darkness.

Arn rolled over and sat up, pulling the shirt down from his head. He blinked. Everything was so dark, it was as if his eyes had been painted black. He managed to gulp air into lungs that still didn’t want to fully inflate, and he got to his feet holding his arms out in front of him.

He was like a blind man who had lost his cane. He couldn’t tell if he was in a room as big as an aircraft hangar, or as small as a broom closet. He certainly couldn’t hear the sound of his college group anymore.

*****

The class was herded back into the lift. Edward tried to ask some questions, but Harper, distracted, kept checking the time and apologising for keeping them so long. The laser test-firing must have been nearing its countdown.

The lift took them back up towards the monitoring room. Harper turned to the chattering class and put his finger to his lips before he opened the door. He spoke softly to Beescomb and pointed to the rear of the room, and then went to join the technicians.

The room, which was so quiet before, was now a hive of frantic activity. Edward wondered why they had needed to be silent, as instructions, countdowns, and equipment checks were shouted from one scientific team member to the next.

Edward narrowed his eyes to concentrate on the multiple screens and display panels within the room, his gaze at last resting on a digital clock counting down in hundredths of a second – there was little more than four minutes remaining.

He stood on his toes and looked for his friend.

*****

Arn slowly felt his way around the room. His outstretched hand and fingers drifted over locker doors, then some empty space, and then . . . He jerked back his hand, his heart pounding hard in his chest for an instant when he thought he felt a person there, standing quietly in the impenetrable dark.

He swore softly as he gripped the sleeve, and began to laugh in relief – it was just some sort of suit. Feeling around some more, his hand brushed across the top of a bench, knocking a plastic cup to the floor and sending a ballpoint pen rolling across its surface. Finally his fingers closed on a small plastic cigarette lighter.

He flicked the wheel, but other than a spark from the flint, there was nothing. He tried again and again – but obviously there was no gas. Still he held it out and flicked the wheel a few times more, spying the outline of a door in the split-second illumination. He stuck the lighter in his pocket and felt about the door until he came to the locking mechanism. He found, as he had hoped, that the door locked from the outside, but not from the inside. There was a button. He pressed it and pushed – the door swung open easily.

‘That’s one I owe you, Barkin.’

He stepped from the chamber and looked left and right. He was close to the laser acceleration track, and not far from where the ring bulged around the pipe. With all the cameras positioned there, he expected he’d get someone’s attention pretty quickly.

Barkin is going to pay for this
, he thought, and jogged towards the bulge, leaning in close to the mechanism and waving his arms.

*****

‘Moving into ignition  lockdown.’ The room fell into silence. Even the chattering students were silenced by the suspense as they watched the screens.

A computer-generated voice counted down from thirty seconds:
Twenty-nine–twenty-eight–twenty-seven–twenty-six . . .

One of the technicians was on his feet pointing. ‘Wha . . . what the . . . there’s a kid in there!’

The room descended into shouting, panic and confusion. Beescomb went as white as a sheet as he recognised the figure on the screen. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came.

Twenty–nineteen–eighteen–seventeen . . .

‘Shut it down, shut it down!’

Barkin smirked at the rear of the observation room and nudged Otis. Harper grabbed and lifted one of the technicians from his seat, taking control of his command board. The scientist’s voice had gone up several octaves as he screamed over his shoulder, ‘Abort, abort! For God’s sake, abort!’

Five–four–three–two . . .

The synthetically calm computer voice intoned, ‘Laser firing commencing.’

The room froze as if time had stopped. There was no sound or movement as everyone watched the screens. Edward held his breath.

The photonic diamond glowed, turning the chamber, and their screens an infernal red as the particles, which were travelling at a fraction under the speed of light, were given an extra kick by the laser.

On the screen, they could see Arn stop waving and turn to look at the bulge. The screen blurred slightly, like it was recording something behind a gauze veil. Then Arn blurred as the veil thickened and became more like a waterfall of oil.

Edward sucked in a breath in horror. Arn seemed to bend unnaturally for a moment, his body distorting, his mouth opening in a silent scream of pain and confusion. The Hadean red glow of the diamond, coupled with Arn’s horrific contortions, made it a scene straight from the pit of Hell.

The display went black.

The only sound Edward heard was Becky screaming Arn’s name.
She actually cares after all
, he thought with surprise.

The screen came back on.

Arn was gone.

Excruciating pain, dizziness and nausea. Light, then swirling colours, then darkness. Arn fell with a thump into mud and shards of something hard.

He blinked. There was nothing in front of his eyes. He sat up and pushed the heels of his hands into them and rubbed hard. He opened them again – there wasn’t the faintest ray or particle of light. His head hurt, reminding him of the time he had spent too long at the beach and got too much sun on the back of his neck.

It was like he was still locked back in the storeroom.
Or have I gone blind?
he thought dismally. He held out a hand, and waved it around – nothing.

He sniffed. There was a rank dampness, and something else unpleasant. He held his breath and strained to hear – there was faint dripping coming from somewhere far away. Arn stood and reached out again. He took a few steps, groping in the darkness like a blind man, and then his hand touched a wall. It was slick with slime.

He flicked his fingers. ‘Yecch.’

Arn stepped sideways and his head banged into something metallic, showering him with flakes of what he assumed was rust. He swore loudly, and after the echo died away, he heard something in the distance – a movement, like a shuffling or dragging.

‘Hello?’ No response. The noise stopped. ‘Hello, anybody there?’

It started again; this time it was closer. There came a soft murmur.

Arn remembered the cigarette lighter in his pocket, and pulled it free, frantically spinning the strike wheel. A split second of spark showed he was in a long tunnel. Plenty of debris, but he could navigate it.

The soft murmur came again, followed by a sound like a child giggling.

‘Who . . .?’

He was breathing hard through his mouth, and felt his heart thumping in his chest. The shuffling was closer, and he spun the lighter’s wheel again.

He shrieked, and fell back. There had been a ghastly face, all milky eyes and chisel-shaped teeth looming before him. The body looked slimy and colourless, but thankfully it had shrunk from the spark.

He had fallen into a puddle of slimy water, and he frantically spun the flint wheel again and again, trying to keep up a continuous flashing of sparks. There was a scuttling and splashing from further away in the darkness, but thankfully there were no more
things
being illuminated in front of him.

‘Must have been a wild dog.’ Arn spoke this thought aloud, simply to take comfort from hearing his own voice. It didn’t work. He sounded scared and his voice was about several octaves higher than normal.

Once more he spun the small wheel, another spark of light and this time a small red glow flashed back at him from the ground ahead. He scrambled forward, and felt around in the dark muck. His hand closed on a cylindar about three inches long, smooth, and strangely warm. He flicked the lighter again, and in the split second flash he saw the red glass-like rod.

‘What the hell?’ It was Fermilab’s diamond. ‘How did you get here? What’s going on?’ From some reason, Arn thought he’d be in real trouble now. He shoved the finger-length stone in his pocket, and wiped his hands on his shirt.

His constant flicking finally encouraged the last squeeze of gas to erupt in a tiny flame, and the bright light made him squint. In the seconds of light he had, he saw that the tunnel went on for miles, but he also saw that the small tongue of flame was bending –
a breeze.

‘Thank you God,’ he whispered. ‘If air is coming in, then I’m damn well going out.’ Arn scrambled to his feet.

His thumb ached and he bet he had a blister forming, but he kept flicking the wheel. He moved as quickly through the damp tunnels as the debris would allow. He only slowed to glance over his shoulder when he heard a strange shuffling coming from behind him. It was impossible to see in the inky blackness, but he increased his speed, knowing that if the flint wore out on the lighter, he may never find a way out . . . and he had a feeling that the
thing
didn’t need light to see
him
.

Arn had been changing hands to share the load on his thumbs, but after what felt like hours of trudging through the thick darkness, the wheel spun without sparking. No matter what he did, it refused to do anything more than spin uselessly. The little orange lighter had given up.

Orange?

He’d forgotten . . . it was orange. He didn’t know how long he had been travelling underground, but he now also noticed that he could make out the dim shapes of the debris covering the floor.
Light
, he marvelled. He dropped the lighter and started to run, leaping over fallen rocks, decayed steel girders, and in one instance what he thought looked like a weird rib cage.

He eventually came to a shaft of blue light falling from the ceiling across a tumble of boulders blocking the tunnel.

He pulled in long ragged breaths, feeling the fatigue of the run and the heavy mental drain of wandering through pitch darkness with nothing but sparks of light, and some weird
things
for company.

The hole in the collapsed ceiling led to a shaft going straight upwards. No sky was visible, so the shaft must have twisted on its way to the surface. But there was definitely natural light coming from somewhere further up.

He didn’t give it a second thought and pulled himself up into the hole. It was narrow – that was good; it allowed him to brace himself between the walls, and slowly inch himself higher. His muscles protested, and his back was scratched a thousand times over by the sharp walls, and felt sticky with blood.

He had to pause several times to work out how to traverse some difficult sections, and he wished he had have spent a little more time on the gym rope, or the rock-climbing wall at school. It didn’t matter; he was going to get out, even if it meant his back was shredded.

What felt like hours later, he pulled himself up and out into the light. He rolled onto his back and sucked in a deep breath, wincing from the pain and waiting for his breathing to calm. He sniffed and frowned. The air smelled different, strange.

He opened his eyes and just as quickly had to shut them. They streamed with tears from the glare. After hours in the gloom, it would take a while for him to adjust to bright light again.

Sitting up, he cupped his hands around his eyes and squinted between his fingers, breathing slowly and allowing his vision to come back into focus.

What . . .?

What happened? Where am I?
Arn had assumed there’d been some sort of explosion and the Fermilab facility had collapsed, burying him inside. But now . . .

He blinked another few times and got slowly to his feet, still cupping his hands over his eyes against the glare. For as far as he could see, there was nothing – no modern facility with its strange, sagging sandwich building, no roads, no metal sculpture, nothing at all.

He turned in a circle. In fact, there were no trees, no grass, not even any hills. It was like a desert, but not quite as hot and dry. He looked at the sun, just up over the horizon – was it morning? A warm breeze blew past him; that was what he had found strange – it smelled like . . . nothing. The word 
sterile
 came to his mind.

There must have been a nuclear explosion,
he thought
.
But when he knelt down and sifted through the sandy dirt, it ran freely through his fingers – no melted or fused glass or rock, no building debris, nothing but grains of bleached rock.

 ‘But . . . what was that thing, then? A dog, a deformed dog . . . or maybe a giant rat.’

But it giggled – it was watching you, following you. It looked like a . . .
He shook his head to clear the argument that was washing back and forth in his mind.

He licked his lips; he’d need something to drink soon.

Maybe he should wait here, otherwise when Dr. Harper or Mr. Beescomb came to look for him, they’d never find him. Arn looked back at the hole he had just climbed out of. It was just an open wound in the flat surface, like a dry sinkhole. He turned again, looking at the ground, and then the landscape – it had a wiped-clean look – like someone had dragged a giant beach towel across the sand, flattening all the features.