Singularity (30 page)
A pale rope extended from the thing’s mouth, attached to the base of Bolt’s spine. Sullivan could see some sort of coupling between the man’s tailbone and whatever extended from the thing. Barry’s wound suddenly became all too clear and Sullivan shook his head, anger rising up within him. They were marionettes. It was using people like puppets to do its bidding. Sullivan watched as the machine began to hum and a few loud clicks resounded from its shrouded interior.
It was starting; he had to move now. Sullivan ran through his options as fast as humanly possible and came to the same conclusion each time. There would most likely be no way he would live through this. His only hope was to destroy the machine and then fight until he was overwhelmed by the monstrosity below or its acolytes. Sullivan steeled himself, loaded four more shells into the shotgun, checked that the safety was off, and stood. He said Rachel’s name one time in his head and stepped out into the light.
A snapping sound came from the machine and there was a flash of light that lit up every surface in the cave. A wave of heat hit Sullivan in the chest and he heard his hair and eyebrows crackle as they singed at their ends. He fell back and landed in the mouth of the tunnel, and stared down at the scene before him. The crowd was parted to either side of the machine’s barrel, and they all watched something at the far end of the chamber in awed silence. Sullivan drew his eyes to where they looked.
A hole as black as a patch of night sky had appeared where only a large pile of rocks and boulders were before.
Its surface was flat and about ten feet across. Its edges waved like water, and at its oily center the darkness within moved and swirled hypnotically.
Sullivan leapt to his feet and shouldered the shotgun, meaning to shoot the machine’s controls, although it seemed pointless. The doorway was open and he deduced that the machine had nothing to do with what happened now. Bolt still stood transfixed behind the sighting shield, but he suddenly slumped forward, steadying himself with two weakened arms as the thing behind him detached its probe. All at once the air was alive with swinging tendrils that erupted from the thing’s mouth. Each ropy arm was almost as long as the creature itself, and tipped with different shapes of razor-sharp bone. As he saw one tendril that ended in a blunt stump, Sullivan remembered the object from Alvarez’s mouth. He lowered the shotgun, in shock, watching the snake-like appendages lash out and begin to slash at the scientist’s soft flesh.
Blood and tissue flew in all directions. It looked for a moment like the physicist was caught in a man-sized blender. Bolt tried to scream as his legs attempted to give out, but the creature stabbed a twisted barb through the man’s chest and held him in place as it worked, cutting off his cry before it ever left his mouth. Soon, the whiteness of bone became visible in the glow of the lights. One of Bolt’s arms fell from its socket and was carried away, only to be shoved into the waiting mouth of the creature. A second later both of his legs were ripped in different directions by the prying arms, and were consumed. Red and blue intestines spilled free of the scientist’s stomach and were wound into a ball before disappearing into the thing’s gullet. Sullivan watched, mortified, as Bolt’s head, surprisingly free of gore and cuts, came loose from his shoulders and fell. It was snatched in midair at the last instant by a lancing tendril that drove through one of the man’s eye sockets.
The last of the scientist’s body vanished, as though he’d never been there, and the creature’s dancing feelers retreated out of sight into its mouth. Sullivan raised the shotgun again to fire, the smell of blood heavy in his nostrils, but then noticed a flowing movement beyond the machine.
The crowd was kneeling on the rough floor, their heads all turned in the direction of the doorway, where something moved deep within its folds. A hinged black leg poked out of the hole and rested its pointed tip on the ground. After a few seconds, the rest of the creature became visible and slid free of the oily doorway, as if being born into the world. It was half the size of the original creature, but otherwise identical. Its black carapace shone in the light, and it made a mewling sound that sprung goose bumps across Sullivan’s flesh.
The thing beside the machine scuttled toward the doorway, knocking several men over as it hurried through the crowd. The two creatures met in the center of the floor and locked eyes, their movements becoming slower and more graceful. They leaned from side to side on their long legs and both emitted a low humming that was more felt than heard.
Sullivan swore and leapt down the short steps in front of the tunnel’s mouth, landing in a puddle of water and gore from Bolt’s remains a few feet from the machine’s control panel. The water’s flow leaked all the way past the base of the stairs and was expanding quickly. He skidded to a stop and huddled for a moment behind the protective shield. His mind spun with thoughts of how to stop what was happening. He’d missed his chance to destroy the machine, and now there was another creature to contend with. He tried to control his rapid breathing as he stood and peered over the top of the panel, through the sighting shield.
The creatures had finished their greeting, and now the smaller of the two extended itself up as tall as its legs would reach, behind its larger mate. A slit in the smaller creature’s belly opened and Sullivan realized, without a doubt, that it was male. A jutting protrusion roughly four feet long extended out into the open air, its rigid form pulsing in the low light. The tip of the organ dripped a grayish fluid before it disappeared into a fold of flesh beneath the female’s thrashing tail. The male wrapped its crustacean-like legs around the bulging female’s body and hugged her close as his entire body shuddered.
Sullivan fell back to his haunches, abhorrence thick in his chest at the sight of the two alien beasts mating. He had to do something now. The puddle that he knelt in finally crept to the bottom edge of the machine and kissed the metal there. A hiss of steam and the smell of ozone met Sullivan’s nose. He looked down to see the water bubbling around the first inch of the enormous gun’s housing. The steam scalded his flesh beneath his pants leg and he moved back, an idea taking shape in his mind. He risked another glance through the sighting shield and was alarmed to see that the two creatures had uncoupled and were both facing the doorway, which now fluttered more forcefully at its edges. Several more sets of legs appeared in its opening and began to descend to the floor. Without another moment allowed for thought or consequence, Sullivan stood, his eyes finding the red button at the center of the console. He slammed the heel of his hand down on it.
There was a rapid clicking sound and a sequence of flashes that throbbed at rear of his eyes. Blinking, he tried to focus on the doorway. A cloud of smoke billowed from a shimmering oval shape that hung where the black hole had been. It was like seeing a condensed mirage normally reserved for an expanse of desert in the hot sun. Five twitching segmented legs lay on the floor beneath the anomaly in a pool of dark fluid. Fevered vapor rose from the stunted ends where they’d been cut mid-step. Clouds of boiling steam shot up next to Sullivan as more water flowed around the overheated machine, engulfing him in a heavy cloud. Every eye in the cave swung toward him, along with four alien orbs that narrowed with hatred so pure he could feel it.
Warden Andrews struggled to his feet and pointed with a bony arm at Sullivan. “Kill him!”
Sullivan heard the shuffling of hundreds of knees as the crowd rose to its feet with murderous speed. He looked to his right, and then to the left, until he spotted a rock the size and shape of a large textbook. He snatched the rock off the ground and carefully laid it across the red button on the console, successfully pinning it down.
Sullivan dove away from the machine as a series of snaps rang out in its steel belly. The harsh ripping of electricity outside of its insulation met his ears, and a massive cloud of steam flew up nearly two stories in the air as more water washed down to cool the atomic device.
He gained his feet just as a group of guards and inmates rounded the side of the massive weapon and ran toward him, their eyes silvery with loathing. Sullivan leveled the shotgun without bringing it up to his shoulder and fired.
Two prisoners at the front of the group sprouted red leaks that poured through their uniforms. Their legs pumped several more times before they collapsed in heaps, their bodies dead before their minds could comprehend it. A guard drew his sidearm and threw a wild shot at Sullivan, who ducked, feeling the passage of the bullet beside his face. The shotgun boomed in his hands and he watched the guard scrabble at his throat as several tendrils shot out of the holes left by the buckshot. Sullivan fired three more times, leveling the rest of the group that had rushed him. His hands felt wooden as they dove into his pants pockets and fumbled for more shells. A huge shape loomed on the other side of the mist forming in the cave, its legs articulating at a speed that was scary for something so large. Sullivan stuffed the last shell into the bottom of the shotgun and pulled the stock to his shoulder, waiting to see the black of the thing’s eyes before he fired. The head of the male creature came into view through the haze, its mouth open, revealing swaying ropes that slashed like daggers through the air.
A loud thumping sound arose from Sullivan’s right, and he turned his head just in time to see the machine’s steel cowling buckle and mushroom outward with a pop. A heavy access door shot from the side of the weapon, like it was flung from a colossal sling. It sang across the cave in a runner of smoke and sliced through the male creature’s torso without stopping. The monster’s body fell in two halves, and it uttered a sickening growl deep in its chest. The smell that gagged Sullivan earlier washed over him and he covered his mouth to keep from vomiting, as a thick wash of black fluid flooded from the creature’s torn body. Somewhere deeper in the cavern a blaring roar resounded. It was the sound of distilled rage.
The machine’s outer assembly continued to melt, and Sullivan watched as the long barrel tilted and finally struck the ground with a hollow boom. Water flowed constantly around the machine and continued to kick up vast amounts of steam that reached all the way to the ceiling and crept outward at a steady rate. A few screams were audible on the opposite side of the cave, which was obscured by the curtain of vaporized water, and Sullivan knew the steam was doing its work.
He ran past the fallen body of the male creature and jumped over a still-twitching leg, firing the shotgun into a cadre of hissing inmates as he went. Through the crawling fog enveloping the cavern, he spotted the female creature—
she.
She was moving away from the encroaching steam, farther into the darkness that cloaked the far end of the cave. A shot rang out somewhere to his right, and a few pieces of rock kicked off the stalactite he was running past and showered the top of his head. He spun and fired blindly in the direction the shot came from, and kept moving. In that instant as he turned, he saw that a large portion of the crowd was trying to circumvent the scalding steam that continued to boil off the melted weapon. He realized that they were heading toward the tunnel’s entrance, but there was no getting past the atomic-fueled mist.
Up ahead, the remaining creature scrambled over a pile of rocks two stories high and disappeared into the darkness that hung thick because of the slanting earthen roof toward the floor. Sullivan sped up, not willing to lose the impregnated abomination.
Can’t let it get away, can’t let it get away,
he repeated in his head, hoping the mantra would somehow allow him to stop her before she made it to the world above.
He rounded the last boulder that stood between him and the rock pile the creature had disappeared over, and slid to a stop. No less than fifty inmates and guards stood in a half circle before the rock pile. All of the guards’ handguns were trained on Sullivan, and Warden Andrews stood at the center of the group.
“Shoot him!” Andrews screamed.
Sullivan dove behind the nearby boulder just as bullets cracked and whined off the rock’s skin. Sullivan crouched there, his heart thundering in his chest, each breath like a lungful of acid. He checked his pockets for more shotgun shells but found none.
We had a good run,
he told himself,
but this is the end of the line.
Bullets continued to chip away at the protection of the boulder, and he drew Barry’s handgun from his waistband. If he was going out, he’d go out killing as many of the infected as he could. Just as he was about to step out and unleash hell, he heard a loud sizzling sound and looked to the far end of the cavern.
A gush of water barreled out of the tunnel’s mouth and engulfed the atomic gun. The melting reactor in the center of the weapon, along with the molten steel surrounding it, vaporized the floodwater instantly and sent a near-solid plume of steam in every direction. The infected men and women who stood to either side of the machine were overtaken in a flash, and Sullivan heard their dying screams as the steam blistered every inch of their bodies. A few tried to run in his direction but were swallowed by the billowing mist as it expanded exponentially, covering the cavern from top to bottom in its cleansing haze. The wall of steam rushed steadily onward, until Sullivan could feel its heat begin to curl the hair on his head. Pushing the 1911 back into his belt, he spun away from the rock and ran headlong into the mass of waiting men.
The surprise of rushing his attackers was the only thing that bought him the few seconds he needed. Most of the inmates and guards were staring at the approaching cloud of boiling mist when Sullivan stepped out and began firing. His last few rounds from the shotgun caught four of the armed guards in the chest and head before they’d taken aim. He dropped the empty shotgun on the ground as he ran toward the remaining cluster of men and drew the heavy .45. He saw a glimpse of Andrews’s long face folding in anger and frustration, and then it felt as if an oven had been opened behind him. Sullivan saw the group split in half and run in either direction, away from the encroaching steam. Without pausing to fire any more rounds, Sullivan ran up and over the hill of stones before him, his feet finding purchase on the various edges in the deepening dark.
