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I took a moment to get my own flashlight out of my pack, and once I was closer I shone it over the area. It wasn’t a wall of bodies. It was a wall covered by bodies, a barricade across the corridor that looked to have been made of anything that was moveable; desks, chairs, cabinets, sheets of metal, and slabs of stone. All had been piled into a heap the whole width of the corridor, and so high it was within a metre of the roof. I stopped a couple of metres away and looked for a way over or around that didn’t involve touching dead bodies.
I was out of luck. Wherever there was a way up, there was a body, which sort of made sense if whoever was on this side was trying to get over the wall. And it was probably what accounted for the bodies being two or three deep all the way along the foot of the wall.
‘It's no good,’ I said. ‘We either have to move them or stand on them.’
‘I can’t.’ said Pitr.
Alyssa held his hand again and his torch made her face glow in the dark.
‘We will.’ she said looking into his eyes.
I was waving my hand for them to be quiet. I had heard something, or thought I had. Pitr moved, shuffling his feet, but was what I heard after an echo? I could tell from his posture that Pitr was starting to get impatient, but I held my hand up, begging for a few seconds more.
Then I heard the sound of running. Several people running.. Pitr must have heard it to, because he swore softly. ‘Over the top. Now.’ I turned and started to move. Alyssa pulled Pitr with us
I didn’t stop to think what I was doing or what I was stepping in. I just climbed, pulling away anything I needed to so I could get a better handhold or foot hold. Alyssa climbed faster than me, reaching the top seconds before I did and turning around so that she could reach down and help Pitr. He was dragging behind; trying, but cringing from every contact with a body. I reach down and grabbed his jacket, pulling him higher until Alyssa could take his hands. I swung myself over the top, for an instant noticing how the bodies seemed to alternate almost perfectly in facing each way over the top of the barrier, then I was sliding down the other side. The bodies had been as dry as dust, and I skated over some and pulverised others in a cloud of powder.
Ahead of us, sixty or seventy metres away, was a massive door like those that sealed all the tunnels at home. Alyssa was still pulling Pitr on and I grabbed his other arm. Together we all ran for the door.
I tried to sweep the beam of the flashlight over the door, looking for a control panel of some sort. It wasn’t easy, and the pool of light waved around erratically as I ran. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach when I couldn’t see anything on the door or either side that looked like a control panel.
A wild thought hit me. There hadn’t been a control panel for the doors into Command Centre either. What if it was a way of controlling access to only officers with the neural link? I reached out and felt for the door. It was there, listening. I yelled at it to open, then added that I was on a special mission from Noah and under attack.
I don’t know if that did the trick, or if the door had just been thinking about it, but there was a loud clunk followed by a rumbling of gears. Slowly, the bottom of the door began to rise. From behind us, on the other side of the barrier, came a weird noise that was part hooting, part screams, but all very excited, and it started when the door began to move. I risked a look over my shoulder, but whoever it was hadn’t reached the top of the barricade yet.
Twenty metres to go.. I looked over my shoulder again and saw heads. Moving heads, silhouetted against the faint light behind the barricade.
Five metres now and I could hear the rattle as body parts and small debris skittered down the near side of the blockade. An age later, the door was above us, then behind us. We fell to the floor and I screamed at it.
‘Emergency,’ I yelled. ‘Emergency. Close now.’
Something squealed metallically, then there was an even louder clank from above the door. It simply dropped.