Singularity (31 page)

When he reached the top, he paused only to assure himself that the creature wasn’t waiting on the other side,
then
plummeted down without seeing where he stepped. A loose rock gave way beneath his left foot and he uttered a short cry before falling to his back, the entire rear of the pile sliding downward in a rumbling avalanche of stone. Sullivan managed to keep his balance and landed on his feet as soon as he hit the floor. Several rocks hit the back of his legs, but none were large enough to knock him flat. To either side he heard cries of terror and saw scurrying forms in the dark, seeking shelter from the burning tide that came closer with each second. He moved straight ahead, following the course the female creature was traveling on before she’d vanished from sight.

The darkness closed in over him as he navigated as fast as he could around waist-high rocks and over small cave-ins that littered the floor. He could tell that the floor was gradually moving up. The slope rose at a small angle and the craggy ceiling came down to meet the floor. Sullivan prayed as he ran that he would find the exit that Andrews had mentioned without knowing it. If the creature sometimes hunted in the forest around the prison, then there must be an alternate route from beneath the facility.

A series of boulders surrounded his path, and in the dim light he saw that the track he was on narrowed ahead. The screams of the cooking men behind him were a mingling staccato of agony that would not stop. Just as one voice became silent, another would take up its course and rise to a crescendo before falling away. Sullivan took two more steps and stopped, the heat at his back a reminder that death was less than thirty seconds behind if he didn’t find a way out. He squinted into the darkness around him and saw a deeper shadow a few yards to his right. Holding out the handgun before him like an unlit torch, he continued, his other hand groping at the nearby wall that closed in around him. He followed the curve of the tunnel, and the true darkness of being underground closed its fist over his vision. He stumbled over something and kept going, the floor becoming more hazardous with small outcroppings of rocks.

After a few more halting steps, he tripped, and when he put his hand against the ground to stop his fall, he knew he’d found the way out.

The leaf beneath his palm crackled with dryness, but its texture was undeniable. After he steadied himself, he pushed the handgun deep into the back of his pants and started climbing again. The incline was steeper than the man-made descent on the far side of the underground cavern and more riddled with rocks and debris. A misty light came from somewhere above and he could see the tunnel he traveled through was large enough to accommodate the bulk of the creature. The only question was how far she’d gotten ahead of him. With a renewed vigor, he leapt toward the next outline of rock, ready to surge forward and close the distance between him and the beast.

A cold hand gripped his ankle and yanked him backward.

Sullivan grunted as he fell to the floor, his body colliding with its jagged embrace. He felt pain radiate outward from his ribs and rebound at the top of his head, only to make the circuit once again.

“You fucking worthless prick!” Sullivan rolled over to find Andrews standing above him, the older man just a shadow with two burning eyes full of hatred. “You ruined everything, you self-righteous shit!”

Sullivan kicked at the warden with half the strength and speed he normally possessed. Andrews caught his ankle in two bony hands strengthened with animosity.

“Now, you’re
gonna
burn with the rest of us for taking
Maddy
away from me!”

Andrews hauled on Sullivan’s leg, and Sullivan felt himself slide several feet, his back scraping over several razor-edged stones as he went. He tried to grab the gun at his back but it was pinned beneath him as he slid. He kicked out again, but the older man merely laughed and pulled,
skidding
them both down the slope, and now Sullivan could feel heat building from the chamber below. The only escape for the radiation-tainted steam was the natural vent they were in now. Panic began to grip Sullivan with thoughts of how his skin would feel as it blistered and bubbled under the scorching touch of the steam. He could already see the flesh dropping off his bones like an overdone piece of poultry, as the skeleton that used to be Andrews grinned over its shoulder, its vacant eye sockets swallowing his soul.

Sullivan cried out as his hand closed over a baseball-sized rock. In one motion he pulled the stone from its bed in the soil and drew back his leg. Andrews leaned toward him, staggering from Sullivan’s movements. Sullivan brought the heavy rock up and over in a viscous arc that connected with a wet, breaking sound as it met Andrews’s face.

He had only a glimpse of the warden’s wide eyes above the oblong rock, lodged solidly in the wreckage that was once his nasal cavity and cheekbones, before Andrews tipped backward and plummeted away into the gathering steam below. A choked bellow filtered up to Sullivan, and then was gone, along with the warden’s lanky outline. The solid wall of steam continued unabated.

Sullivan scrambled to his feet and climbed again. He felt the back of his pants growing moist and hot, which only spurred him onward. There were men on the earth who were afraid of hell and its fury. Sullivan had been there and seen its occupants, and now ran from it with all the strength he contained.

The tunnel sped by as the howling voice of the irradiated mist chased after him. The aboveground opening came closer and closer, until he was finally free of the tunnel. Cool, fresh air that tasted almost sugary hit him full in the face as he struggled free of the earth’s clutches. He fell out of the cave’s shaft and onto the ground. Light drops of rain and soft green blades of grass welcomed him, asked him to sleep in their embrace, but he stood and stumbled, drawing the pistol as he went.

After a few wobbling strides, Sullivan collapsed and fell back, his chest heaving and his eyes taking in the rim of gray daylight that dawned in the east. A whistling sound vibrated behind him and he turned, squinting at the hole in the earth.

A blast of steam so thick and solid that it appeared to be a vertical river flew from the passageway. It mushroomed out into the cool air of the early morning and descended upon him, a soft blanket of death.

Sullivan struggled to his feet and ran down the rise he’d rested upon. With a look back, he saw a partial view of
chainlink
fence topped with razor wire standing on the shoulder of the hill, and beyond that, the morose silhouette of Singleton. He faced back in the direction he ran, the grass groping and tangling at his feet. As he moved he noticed the foliage around him was bent and trampled flat, as if a steamroller had driven through the spot over and over again.

A thick rumbling that rattled his heart against his rib cage echoed through the morning air. He scanned the brush and tangled screen of greenery before him until he spotted it. The creature stood, looking back over a massive shoulder at him from the edge of a roaring stream. Sullivan threw the handgun up in front of him and squeezed off two shots. At the reports, the beast scuttled away with an uncanny speed. He followed, his feet slipping on a patch of wet ferns, as he half ran, half slid down the little hill.

The stream was swollen beyond its narrow banks with the accumulation of rain over the last few weeks. The water spit and flew off rocks and trees that bordered its normal path. Sullivan sloshed through a few inches of water and stopped at the stream’s edge, making sure the creature hadn’t fled into the current or swam to the opposite shore. A sapling snapped in half farther down the stream on his side, and he began to run again, his breathing erratic and punctuated with a heartbeat that never seemed to slow. He knew now where it was going. Andrews had told him and Barry the first day they set foot in his office. This stream fed a larger river, which emptied into
Lake Superior
.
Lake Superior
was attached to the ocean. It was heading for the sea.

The thought of the creature escaping into the depths of the ocean to birth its young made his feet quicken their already hurried pace. The sky was lightening more in the east, a shine beginning to spread across the clouds overhead. He ducked beneath a fallen birch and
hurdled
a rotting stump. The ground became wetter the farther he went, and all at once he realized he could no longer hear the thing’s passage over the sound of his own footsteps.

The bone-tipped tendril hit him in his left side. He felt the jagged edge tear through the thin T-shirt and strip meat down to his ribs. He screamed and fell dangerously close to the edge of the stream. As he rolled to his back, the cool water washing around him and stinging the new wound at his side, the creature stood from its hiding place behind a cluster of fir trees. Like a gigantic scorpion, it articulated closer, its hinged body swinging obscenely. Sullivan leveled the handgun at its head just as the rest of its tongues emerged from its mouth, their bone edges shining in the early light. He fired.

The bullet hit the bundle of appendages in its open maw. The hard ends of each tendril exploded like porcelain hand grenades. The beast staggered and the ruined tongues withdrew from sight, as
ichor
began to flow from its slack mouth. It coughed, a surprisingly human sound, and nearly fell. It legs bit and tore into the sopping earth as it regained its sense of direction and ran between two towering oaks, raking the heavy bark off as it went.

Sullivan stood and addressed his newest wound with what light he had. The rip in his shirt dripped crimson, and when he touched it he realized the flaps of his skin almost perfectly matched the tears in the fabric.

“Fuck!” he swore, his voice coming back to him off the flowing water and surrounding trees. Another tree fell to the ground beneath the thing’s weight, fifty yards downstream. Hissing at the continued burning in his ribs, he began to run again. Without stopping, he ejected the magazine from Barry’s pistol and checked the round count. The empty clip met his gaze and he slammed it back home, cursing. There was one shot left, seated in the chamber. He’d have to make it count.

A black slick on the surface of the water appeared, first in small patches, and then in glossy thickening pools that covered the area he ran through. He hoped the creature’s own organic shrapnel had cut an artery, or what passed for such in the alien organism. Perhaps he’d finally catch a break and come upon its lifeless body after a few more steps. A loud rushing sound that dwarfed the call of the stream grew. The river was very close. Sullivan caught a glimpse of the creature’s swaying form as it attempted to crawl over a deadfall, and he skidded to a stop, drawing a bead on where its head would be. The gun shook with his rushed breathing, and then the thing scuttled up and was gone behind the scraggly branches of the downed tree.

He ran again. His legs felt like hunks of lead, threatening to fold him to the watery ground, and several alarming bursts of light began to flash at the corners of his vision. He couldn’t fall now, not when she was so close to the river. If she disappeared beneath its surface, he’d have failed.
Failed not only Barry and his family but every other human being on earth.

The roar of the water was everywhere now; the air was alive with it. Sullivan ran around the tip of the deadfall and saw the stampeding flow of the river to his left. Its banks, within inches of overflowing, curved in a scythe toward him, and then swung away to the southeast, where it dropped into the foaming jaws of white rapids. The smaller stream joined its brother from the right, forming a peninsula of land. Sullivan sprinted toward the point and slid to a stop directly in the path of the scurrying creature.

She paused in mid-
step,
her insect-like form shuddering and contorting with what he assumed was pain. Black liquid drooled in a steady flow out of her ruined mouth, and she swayed drunkenly on unsteady legs. She looked down at him as he stood to his full height and pointed the pistol at her face. Both eyes shone like volcanic glass and glared at him, into him, with hatred so palpable, he felt it bore into his chest. The smaller legs near her back end gripped and pulled at the ground, digging wet furrows on both sides.

Suddenly she cried out. A bellow loud enough to make his eardrums flutter like speaker skins ripped through the clearing, as the creature’s long front legs dug into the earth. A harsh tearing sound followed, along with several dry cracks, like kindling breaking.

Sullivan watched, his eyes bulging in disbelief, as the back segment of the creature tore free and fell to the ground. The four sets of legs still attached to the pregnant portion danced and pulled as they struggled to lift the considerable weight.

“What the fuck?” Sullivan said, feeling his head tilt to the side despite himself.

More black blood spewed from the separation and coated the squirming egg sac, which dragged itself toward the surging stream. Sullivan snapped from his trance and sighted down the barrel at the rear half of the creature’s body and fired.

The bullet hit dead center in the mass of flexing flesh, with a sound like a melon being struck by a baseball bat. Yellowish pus squirted from the wound in a curving fountain, and the legs holding up the weight of the sac stumbled and fell. The creature spun on shaking legs toward her lower half, studied the wound, and then turned back to Sullivan. Its antenna snapped and slashed the air in fury, and it bellowed again as it took a step toward him.

Sullivan glanced down at the gun in his hand, the slide open and locked back, the empty chamber staring at him like an uncaring eye. When he looked back up, the beast had taken another step, its weight awkward with the missing balance of the rest of its body. His hand snaked down to his pockets, searching for something, anything he could use as a weapon, while he backpedaled toward the roaring river. A small cylinder met his groping fingers, and for a moment he could only look down at what his hand had produced from his pocket.