Submerged (31 page)

“Explain,” Finn demanded.

“You’re an idiot, Finn,” Zeisler snapped.
“And you brought a band of idiots with you. How much water have you
seen in this place?”

“Sanders’s report said the sand turned to
sea,” Finn fired back.

“All appearance. This isn’t pretend water.
It’s reacting with the material in the pit. Now where do you
suppose that water might come from?” Zeisler pointed up.

“You’re not suggesting—”

“I am,” Zeisler said. “What brought you
here?”

“That’s top secret.”

“We already know the secrets, Finn.” Zeisler
raised his voice another handful of decibels. “We are standing in
the secret. Let me guess. You picked up some kind of signal. Radio
wave or microwave. Something like that. Right? How do you suppose
that signal got out after all these years?”

Carl rose and approached the ring. He
examined the brown spot, which no longer looked like sand but more
like slime. “Hey, that looks like the stuff along the lakeshore. I
found a couple of oars when I was looking for Barrett. They were
covered in that stuff.”

“That would mean the sand material was
expelled to the surface,” Perry said. “Which means that there’s
some kind of opening above.”

“This is some kind of trick.” Dean leveled
his weapon at Perry’s chest. “I know a distraction when I see
it.”

“The water has been above this site for three
decades, Sachs. There’s no reason to believe that it’s crumbling
now.”

“This place is dying, Finn!” Zeisler shouted.
“The message you got was a distress signal sent out to someone,
probably the original team that investigated this place. Look at
the exterior of this building. It’s incomplete. The sand is a
different color because much of the biotronics or whatever they
are, are dying, out of power, nonfunctioning—I don’t know what the
correct term is, but it is bad. This place can no longer hold
itself together. The dim light in here, and everything else we’ve
seen, proves it.”

“We have to go,” Perry said. “We have to go
now.”

“I’m not releasing anyone,” Finn warned.

“At least it will be quick,” Jack said
calmly. He too rose.

“Sit down,” Finn ordered. “Sit down now!”

Jack refused. “I’m tired of sitting. I prefer
to die on my feet. Take a guess, Finny boy. How much water do you
think is over our heads? Millions of gallons, and they taught me in
school that every gallon of water weighs over eight pounds. You do
the math. If we’re lucky, we’ll be crushed before we’re drowned. Of
course, the result is the same.”

“What if they’re right?” Tuttle asked. “I
mean, if just a portion of the roof gives way, we’re dead
meat.”

“That’s right, pal,” Jack said. “Of course
your friends won’t have to bury you since you will already be under
more dirt, rock, and mud than anyone will want to dig through.”

A few more drops fell, and the acrid smell in
the room increased. “That stuff is toxic,” Gleason said. “If we’re
going to leave, we might want to do it soon.”

There was a groan, and Carl returned to
Janet. She opened her eyes and looked confused. Then her eyes
widened, and she reached for her chest.

“You’re okay,” Carl said. “The vest did its
job.”

She sat up. “Ow. Serious ow. I feel like an
elephant stepped on me.” She coughed, then looked around. “I see
the company hasn’t improved.”

“No, and we have other problems,” Carl
said.

“Oh, my . . .” Janet’s words failed, but her
expression and trembling hand did the trick. Every eye turned to
the door. The large form of Matthew Barrett filled the opening.

Finn, Dean, and Tuttle staggered back. All
three spoke and swore at the same time and pointed the barrels of
their weapons at the phantasm.

“He doesn’t look so good,” Jack said. Perry
thought he heard a waver in his friend’s voice.

Jack was right. Barrett had changed. Before,
he appeared solid and wet. Now the illusion was gone. Half of
Barrett’s face undulated as if oil boiled beneath it. He wore no
clothing, but he was not naked. His torso and legs were smooth and
gray like the belly of a fish. He looked more like a mannequin than
a man. Only his face remained animated.

“Help me. Help me.”

Finn and his men moved back. “Stay where you
are!” Finn ordered.

The Barrett entity moved forward, and Perry’s
skin crawled with fear. “Help me.”

“Don’t come any closer!” Finn shouted. “Any
closer and we’ll open fire. Do you understand? Stay where you
are!”

Barrett moved two steps toward them.

“This is your last—”

Tuttle opened fire, his MP5 machine gun
spitting a burst of rounds at the thing trying to be Matthew
Barrett. Each round hit the thing square in the chest. Barrett
stopped.

“No one told you to fire!” Finn shouted.

The bullets disappeared into the corpse’s
gray flesh, leaving tiny holes behind. A second later, small
streams of powder began to flow from the wounds, then the flattened
bullets reappeared and dropped.

Tuttle said something, but Perry wasn’t
listening. His eyes were fixed on the thing before him as it
morphed before his eyes. The Barrett creature had been facing Perry
and the others, but as Perry watched, the thing’s face disappeared
and the back of Barrett’s head took its place. Then, as if sliding
on ice, it moved to the doorway.

“We did it,” Tuttle said. “We scared it
off.”

“I think you’re wrong,” Perry said. “I think
you made a very big mistake.”

Barrett the man began to change. He stopped
at the threshold of the opening. His back became his front
again.

“I wish he wouldn’t do that,” Jack said. “It
makes me a little queasy.”

“Just a little?” Zeisler said.

“Okay, maybe a lot.”

Barrett’s legs began to widen, as did his
torso and head. His features stretched, as if he were made of
Play-Doh.

“He’s filling the doorway,” Zeisler said.
“He’s sealing us in!”

“How can a man do that?” Dean asked.

“It’s not a man,” Perry said.

The last feature of Barrett’s to disappear
was the mouth that had been stretched into a hideous line. “Help
meeeee . . . .”

“No!” Tuttle screamed. He pulled the trigger
of the machine gun again, and the sound of gunfire pierced the
confined space. Perry covered his ears. The rounds buried
themselves in the place where the door used to be.

“Stand down, Tuttle!” Finn ordered, but
Tuttle kept the trigger down. When the clip was empty, he reached
for his spare. He never touched it. Dean backhanded Tuttle across
the nose hard enough to knock the soldier down. Then he reached
down and pounded a fist into the man’s cheek.

“You were told to stand down.” Dean turned
his own weapon on Tuttle. “Let me have the weapon, son.” Tuttle
surrendered it. “Sidearm, too.”

Tuttle handed the pistol to Dean, then drew
the back of his hand across his face, smearing the blood that ran
from his nose.

Dean studied him for a moment. “You stay put
until you regain your composure.” He stepped to Finn. “I apologize,
sir. I take full responsibility for his actions.”

Finn nodded. “Break down the extra weapons,
including those belonging to the deputies. We are the only ones to
be armed. Understood?”

“Understood.”

The smell of spent gunpowder burned Perry’s
eyes and nose. Through the haze, Perry watched as Dean removed the
slides from the 9 mm pistols and field-stripped the MP5 machine
gun.

“Now that the party has settled,” Zeisler
said with a cough, “maybe we could address this little issue.”

Perry followed his gaze. The occasional drip
in the pit had turned steady. A drop descended every second. As it
did, more noxious fumes rose in the air and mixed with the acrid
smell of gunpowder.

Without fresh air, Perry estimated that they
had less than fifteen minutes to live.

Chapter30

Perry’s eyes burned
and flooded with tears,
trying to purge the stinging fumes
from his tender corneas. His skin felt hot and tender, as if he had
spent the last few days under a blistering Sahara sun. He coughed,
then coughed again. Forcing himself to take shallow breaths, he
pulled his undershirt up over his nose. The others followed his
example. Janet pulled a white handkerchief from the rear pocket of
her uniform.

“I’m open to ideas,” Perry said. No
suggestion came.

Jack had moved to where the doorway had stood
and was examining the material. He had taken with him the backpack
that Gleason had packed. Perry joined him just as Jack dropped to a
knee and began riffling through the pack. He removed the battery
powered rotary tool and attached one of several routing bits. He
flicked the switch, and the tool came to life. Jack plunged it into
what had once been the figure of a man named Barrett. The drill
slowed as the bit’s sharp edge began plowing away material.

“It worked on the chain-link fence, maybe it
will work here.”

“That will take too long,” Carl said.

“He’s not cutting an escape hatch, Deputy,”
Perry said. “He’s trying to make an airway.”

“How long do you think we can all stand
around taking turns grabbing a breath of fresh air?” Tuttle
demanded.

“As long as it takes,” Perry said. “Do you
have a better idea?”

The question silenced Tuttle. Perry directed
his attention back to Jack and the rotary tool. Bits of dust and
flakes of material flew as the high-rpm tool ate away at the
surface.

“This thing has power, but the hole fills
seconds after I cut anything away,” Jack said.

Perry had trouble believing his eyes. He
watched the tool eat a one-inch hole in the wall; then, the instant
Jack removed the tool, the hole filled in again.

Perry riffled through Jack’s pack. Gleason
had packed tools, but he had not brought as many as Jack made it
out to be. Inside the pack was the plastic case that held the
rotary tools, various drilling and routing bits, and a small
assortment of grinding disks. He found a hammer, a three-piece
chisel set, bungee cords, plastic ties, and a small power
screwdriver.

“I don’t think Gleason is much of a camper,”
Jack said. “Not your usual tools for a couple of nights in the
woods.”

“He loves his tools,” Perry said. “Who could
have anticipated this?”

The others gathered around as Perry removed
the hammer and the largest of the three chisels. The hammer was
what Perry considered an “in-home” hammer; it was light and small,
nothing like the framing hammer he wished he had. Nonetheless,
Perry rose and started working the hammer and chisel into the
surface. No sooner than he chipped away a chunk of wall, it filled
in again. He stopped.

“You’re not giving up, are you?” Janet asked.
“It can’t do that forever.”

“It’s been doing it for more years than we
can count,” Zeisler said.

Perry watched as the chunks he had chipped
away and the dust that Jack had ground away moved back to the wall
and assimilated themselves into the surface. He patted his friend
on the shoulder. “We’re going to have to think of something
else.”

Jack agreed. “I have this horrible image that
all that sand outside is piled up against the door, just waiting to
fill any hole we make. We’d be here a lifetime. The batteries would
be long dead before we made a decent air hole . . . even if we
could make one.” He tossed the tool into the pack.

The air was growing thicker and more pungent.
The steady drops of water were coming faster. Soon they would be a
trickle.

“No one will ever find us,” Tuttle said. His
anger had become despondency.

Perry’s mind raced. He might die here, but he
would do so trying to find a way to save his friends. He closed his
eyes and recalled everything Zeisler had told him, living through
his imagination his father’s experience. What an odd irony. He had
come all the way here to save his father’s life, and now he might
die before his father did.

And then an idea hit him. “Electricity.”

“What?” Zeisler demanded. “What about
electricity?”

Gleason picked up the idea before the others.
“Of course, the system must be electrical in some sense. If the
nano-sized flakes are not biological and therefore chemical, they
must be mechanical—or a combination.”

“So?” Finn asked. His cough sounded wet. “No
one knows that. You’re guessing.”

“True, and prayerful guesses are all I have.”
Perry looked at Janet. Tears trickled down her face. Carl stood
next to her. They were holding hands.

“What?” she said. “I don’t know what to
do.”

“Turn around,” Perry said.

“Why . . . ,” she began, then did as Perry
asked.

He saw it. He crossed the room and reached to
her Sam Browne utility belt and pulled an electronic device he had
seen on television. He held the black plastic item in his hands.
Two chrome leads protruded from one end.

“This is a stun gun, right? It’s a
high-voltage, low-amp weapon meant to immobilize an uncooperative
suspect.”

“Yeah,” Janet said. “Be careful who you touch
with it.”

Gleason’s eyes lit up. “Brilliant. It might
work.”

“Someone fill me in,” Finn demanded.

“If the sand—the flakes of biotronics that
make up the sand—are electronically controlled, then a sudden burst
of electricity might disrupt their ability to reform or to bond.
The electrical connection between them has to be very low voltage.
I’m hoping to knock them out of commission.”

“Do you think it will work?” Janet asked.

“I know one way to find out.” Perry found the
trigger switch on the device. “Stand back.” Everyone did. Perry
held his breath as he plunged the contact points into what had once
been an open passageway.