The silence made sense to Kathy now. So did the smooth walls. What she and the others might have thought of as physical discrepancies or anomalies elsewhere most likely meant the presence of the parasites or some other creature in the city, which wasn’t really dead at all. There was life in the uneven, rough surfaces of the buildings and streets, in the hums and buzzes and whispering. It might not have been life as human beings thought of it, but the physics were different here. Senses worked differently because the elements acting on them worked differently.
But silence—total silence—and the absence of triggers for the senses…that meant death. The absence of life. These parts of the city truly were abandoned, even by whatever existed elsewhere now.
Whether that made them safe, though, or was an indication of places where even devils dared not tread remained to be seen.
“There are tools there,” Markham said after a long silence. He was looking at the instruments suspended against any notion of gravity on the slanted counter. His skin had gone pale again, and he looked as if he was having trouble keeping his eyes open, as if every fiber of his will was stretched in keeping him standing.
“Yeah,” Kathy said. “Why don’t you sit? We’ll get what we need.”
Markham nodded, stumbled toward one of the wheeled slabs, and sank to the ground, leaning his back against the legs.
To the others, she said, “If we don’t get that arm off, he’s going to die. We need to find a way up to where the tools are, and we need to find a way to sterilize and cauterize. Any ideas?”
They had been making their way to the counter where the tools were, and as they reached the lowermost edge, they looked up. Perspective had caught up with them, it seemed, revealing that what had looked human-sized and accessible from across the room was anything but. The bottom ledge of the shelf was at least ten feet above their heads. Even if they could find a way to access it, it was on a slant. Those tools each had to be at least six feet long, and who knew how many pounds. If they’d had more time, Kathy would have suggested scrapping the whole idea and going somewhere else to find a cutting tool. As it was, though, she didn’t think Markham could make the trip back up the stairs.
Making this work might be their only chance to save him.
“I suppose we could boost each other up?” Jose said.
“If we were circus performers, maybe. We’d have to stand on each other’s shoulders to make it up there,” Hornsby said.
“Is there something we can climb on?” Kathy asked, looking around. “Maybe a box or something?”
The room had been swept pretty clean, though. There was nothing on the floor.
“Hey, what about that wooden beam in the tunnel? Do you think the three of us could drag it back here? If we could prop it up against the edge there, we might be able to walk up.”
Jose shrugged. “Can’t hurt to try.”
They made their way back across the room. As they passed Markham, Kathy noticed that his eyes had closed. If he heard them, he showed no sign. His chest was still moving up and down, though, so that was good.
“Do you think one of us should stay with him?” Hornsby said, following Kathy’s gaze.
“Yeah, I do, but honestly, I think it’s going to take three of us to move that wooden beam all the way back to the counter,” she replied. Seeing Markham pass out of sight as they re-entered the tunnel, though, made her feel ill at ease.
They walked for what seemed like too long a time. Kathy was beginning to wonder if they had missed it in the gloom when it resolved itself from the shadows a few more feet ahead. It was disconcerting how distances and angles were so inconsistent in this world. There was enough to make her feel like she was going crazy. She supposed she should feel lucky that the beam was even still there, and not moving and shifting and distorting with the rest of the city.
It might as well have been back on Earth, though, or on Earth’s moon, for all the good it was going to do them. They found that out as soon as they tried to move it. Even with the concentrated effort of all three of them, it was way too heavy to budge, let alone drag back across the morgue.
“Damn it!” Kathy kicked the thing, and the wood cracked where her foot made impact. She kicked it again and could have sworn that the crack healed itself. “That was a fucking waste of time.”
“It was a good thought,” Hornsby offered, and she tried to smile, but it just wouldn’t stick. She hated that she’d blown a half-hour at least of the few Markham had left.
Disappointed, they made their way back to the room. Kathy thought about the amputation. She supposed she could use the backpack straps or some of their clothing as a tourniquet. They had the sewing kits and the antibiotic, and despite its unwillingness to budge, she thought they might at least be able to use that damned timber for fire. It was the cutting instrument, really, that was holding up the works. They would just have to scour the place and see if there was anything they could use either to access those instruments or cut off Markham’s arm. It occurred to her then that her own bag with the handgun in it had been lost some time between the Subfloor 24 quarantine room and the morgue of a strange city on an alien world; her gun was gone. Markham still had his, though. Three, maybe four shots would sever enough flesh and bone that they could get the lower half of his arm off. It would be incredibly painful for Markham, but it would probably do the job…unless, of course, the physics of firearms were distorted, too.
As they re-emerged, Kathy glanced over to check on him, and swore again.
The men turned.
“Jesus,” Jose said, looking at the empty spot and pool of blood where Markham had been moments before. “Where the fuck did he go?”
“This is all my fault,” Kathy said, fighting the urge to scream. “Fuck.” To Hornsby, she added, “You were right. We never should have left him alone.”
“It’s not your fault,” Hornsby replied. “You were trying to save him.”
“Why didn’t he say something? Shout if he was being attacked?”
“Maybe he wasn’t,” Jose offered. “I don’t mean this to sound sarcastic, but maybe he got up and walked away. Markham’s strong and he’s stubborn. If he’s also delirious, he might think he can help himself. Look—the blood’s still pretty fresh.”
Jose was right. The blood pooled by the giant gurney where Markham had been sitting hadn’t begun to congeal yet, and a smeared trail of it moved away toward the far wall. It was possible that Markham had gotten up and walked away, although Kathy couldn’t imagine how, in his state. Still, nothing in Hesychia followed any kind of known logic, so maybe it was foolish to try to apply any to the situation.
“You could be right. Let’s follow the blood.”
The trail was irregular, formed from smears a few inches wide. They struck Kathy as the smears a severed arm might make if dragged off by a wild animal. She hated to think that they were tracking an arm and not a man, but there was no other choice. The blood trail was the only lead they had. They followed it until it petered out, but then they saw it continuing several feet away, and picked up the trail again. It took several inexplicably circuitous routes across the vast floor tiles, but ultimately, it led straight to one of the bottom cold chamber drawers. A semi-palm print with fingers splayed reached for the bottom left edge of the drawer. It was big enough to be Markham’s, Kathy supposed.
Up close, the drawer faces were enormous. Kathy estimated them to be about three stories high and three times as wide. They looked to be made from the same metal as the gates, although they didn’t glow. The drawers didn’t appear to have any means of distinguishing one from another—no labels, no markers, nothing Kathy could see that might identify one body from the next. There didn’t appear to be any way of opening them, either. Kathy saw nothing that could be construed as a handle. In fact, the surfaces of the drawer faces were more or less smooth.
“He couldn’t have gotten one of those open himself,” Hornsby said. “Right?”
“I don’t see how,” Kathy replied. “Damn it. We need to find him.”
They crept up to the drawer. None of them voiced it, but a creeping doubt made them cautious.
Maybe it was Markham’s blood smeared across the floor like that…but it maybe it wasn’t. The latter possibility kept them from shouting for him. Sure, he needed help and they wanted to find him, but they wanted to find him alive, if they could. It seemed wiser not to draw attention to their search…just in case. If Markham had staggered off somewhere, he’d be safer if nothing knew where he was.
Kathy put her ear against the cold metal surface and listened. Hearing nothing, she knocked gently and in a quiet voice, said, “Markham? It’s us. Are you in there?”
She waited. Jose threw his hands up, silently asking, “Well?” and Kathy shook her head.
“I don’t hear anything,” she said after a moment, moving away from the metal. “Think we can get it open?”
Hornsby stepped forward. “Let me try something.” He searched around the side edge of the drawer—all of them protruded a few inches away from the wall—and finally uttered a small “Aha!”
A moment later, there was a heavy grinding noise.
“We should step away,” Hornsby said, and backed off to the side. The others followed.
“What did you do?” Kathy asked.
“Had a dream about this place once. This particular building, I mean. Had a lot of dreams about this world, all of them bad. Anyway, in the dream, hands came out of the walls and pressed these circular indentations on the sides of the drawer, and they all opened.” He shivered. “It was pretty awful, that one. I used to think the worst part of my job was seeing the bodies of dead children. No dead body is pleasant, but with children…anyway, a decomposing human body, even a child, is nothing compared to what the bodies of otherworldly things do after death.”
The grinding stopped, and they could see a long and badly dented drawer extending out onto the floor, beneath the glow of the orbs above. Cold air poured out of the top of it, along with an unpleasant whiff of something stale. Kathy waited. Hornsby’s retelling of the dream, in that tired way cops had of only lifting the lid off a trauma, had left her uneasy. If he had been right about the mechanism for opening the drawers, then he might be right about what he had seen inside them.
When, after a few minutes, nothing dead or otherwise scrambled over the top of the drawer to meet them, they spread out and began to examine the length of the drawer’s side.
“Hey! Hey, come here! I found a crack in the metal. I think we can get inside,” Jose called from the far side of the drawer. Kathy and Hornsby made their way around to meet him. Sure enough, close to the wall, there was a six-foot-high dent in the metal, the center of which had split open. It looked just wide enough to squeeze through.
“Okay, let’s go, then,” Kathy said.
“Wait.” Hornsby glanced around the empty morgue. “We have a potential issue here. A mechanism on the outside of the drawer opened it, right? If we all go in there and the drawer closes again, that crack is going to be blocked off, and we’ll have no way of opening the drawer again. I mean, I can’t imagine there’s a way to open it from the inside. Who would need it?”
“Good point,” Jose said.
“We could split up, but if—I’m just saying if—Markham didn’t just get up and walk away in his delirium, I mean, if something took him, then it probably picked him off because he was alone.” There being only three of us, if we split up, someone’s going to be alone. I’m not saying not to do it. Just saying there’s a risk.”
“No, you’re right,” Kathy said. It almost struck her funny how quickly they’d gotten used to the level of risk already present just by being in that world. Hornsby did bring up some solid points, but in Kathy’s mind, the new level of risk couldn’t be avoided. “Maybe you and Jose should stay out here and guard the door, and I’ll go in there and look for Markham.”
“Kathy, if that was his blood, he’s in bad shape, and you can’t carry him back here by yourself. You need someone to go with you,” Jose said.
“Listen, I’ll stay here.” Hornsby leaned a hand against the metal. “Jose’s in better shape than I am, so you two go in there and find Markham. I know how to work the mechanism over there, and if it closes, I’ll just let you back out.”
“Are you sure?” Kathy asked. “It was this side of the drawer Markham disappeared from.”
“I know. I’ll shout if anything funny happens.”
“Good.” Kathy squeezed his shoulder. “We don’t want to lose you, too, Carl.”
He smiled at her, blushing a little. “Go on then. Find Markham.”
She gave him a nod, and then followed Jose through the crack in the drawer.
“Be careful!” he called after them.
They slipped into the drawer. The length of it exposed to the glow of the orbs was fairly well lit, and it was clear from a cursory search that it was empty. Markham, if he was in the area at all, was not in the drawer proper. That left the interior recess of the wall.
It was dark, like the stairwell had been.
“Sergeant? Sergeant! If you can hear me, let us know where you are!”
No response, no signs of movement. The recess yawned before them like the mouth of a cave. It smelled funny too in the drawer; it wasn’t a smell she would have normally associated with death, but it was unsettling all the same. It reminded Kathy of the breath of sick people, the slow rot of gangrene, the flesh forgotten under a plastic bandage, the—
“I’d kill for a flashlight,” Jose said, breaking into her thoughts. He smiled at her. “And a hot roast beef sandwich.”
“With gravy,” Kathy added, glad to focus on anything but that smell.
“Of course. And maybe french fries.”
Kathy smiled, too. “Maybe there’s a stash of sandwiches down there.”
“I suppose the only way to find out is to go look,” he said.
The smile slipped off Kathy’s face. “I hope Markham is okay. That was a lot of blood.”
“We’ll find him.”
Kathy didn’t answer; it was the kind of thing people said to comfort others, but while it was a nice gesture, there was no real promise behind it. Kathy thought there was a strong possibility that Markham was already dead. She didn’t say that, though. Instead, she headed for the recess in the wall.
She felt Jose moving closer to her as the darkness swallowed them. She was glad not to be alone in there. She thought of Reece back at home. He knew sometimes she couldn’t call to check in, but it didn’t stop him from worrying. Ever since the murders up in Connecticut, when he’d gotten a glimpse of what she really did for a living, he worried. He was easy going by nature, but what he felt, he felt with passion—love, anger, joy, worry, all of it. He said it was his Irish blood, and that she was the kind of woman worth feeling every bit of those feelings for. Still, she hated to put him through the worry. He wasn’t a jealous type, not really, but she wondered how he’d feel about her leaning on another man in the darkness a whole other universe away.
It was a strong possibility she wouldn’t make it back to Earth. That was her line of work, case after case of strong possibilities she wouldn’t make it out alive at all. Was he worrying about her now? She felt guilty. She loved Reece, possibly more than she’d ever loved anyone, even her own family, but she couldn’t help feeling sometimes like his life would be a lot simpler without her in it. He didn’t agree about that, and it was another reason why she loved him, but it wasn’t lost on her that even his love had to have limits.
Jose must have been on a similar thought track, because he suddenly said, “You know, I always liked Claire,” in a wistful kind of voice that, despite its softness, echoed in the drawer. “I mean, really liked her, as more than just a colleague.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. She was the whole package. Beautiful, smart, enthusiastic, funny. She was my boss, though, and Paragon has this thing about interoffice dating, so I never said anything. Well, to be honest, I told myself that was why I never said anything. The truth was, I was always the kind of guy who got by on wit and a big mouth. I got the girls who liked to laugh, you know? And Claire…well, she was always dating these really smart, wealthy stiffs…”
They tried the flashlights again, working the feeble light around the drawer, but the light didn’t go far. So far as they could see, there was no sign of Markham.
“I used to think about it, though,” Jose went on, “about telling her how I felt. I mean, we were here more or less alone together in this beautiful world, like it was made especially for us, you know? And we’d watch the sun set and the moons rise together and I thought, if this doesn’t bond you to someone, this once-in-a-lifetime experience, nothing will. I’d watch her every day and find another new little quality about her to like. To love. I thought I loved her, actually. I was going to tell her that, the night we went into the city. Was going to tell her on our way back to camp.”
“Do you think she knew? Some women are pretty perceptive that way.”
The flashlights wavered and went out, but they kept moving. The far end of the drawer was some distance away yet.
“I don’t know. I don’t think she did. Like I said, I have a big mouth and I’m a wise-ass—I used to tell her she got the sarcasm from both ends—so she didn’t take me that seriously. I think that was one of the things I liked about her.”
“Well, you can tell her how you feel when we find her.”
She felt Jose beside her, heard him walking, but couldn’t see his expression.
“I just left her here.” His voice was soft.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“She used to tell me she could always count on me when she needed me, and I just…I left her here.”
Kathy stopped suddenly, and Jose bumped into her. She found his shoulder in the dark and gave it a squeeze. “Jose, none of this is your fault, okay? None of it. You were working hard, dedicated to doing your job, and people higher up in the company took advantage of that. That’s on them. All of this is on their shoulders, not yours.”
He patted her hand. “Thanks, Kathy.”
“Sure. Now, I think if we keep taking this path down the middle here, we can break at the far back end and sweep up the sides. If Markham hasn’t collapsed on our way, then he’s likely leaning against a wall.” She thumped the side of the flashlight with the palm of her hand and it flickered, spit out a faint beam of light, then sputtered out.
“Sounds like a good plan,” Jose said. “I—”
Just then, a moan came from somewhere off to the left. It sounded like Markham.
“Hey! Hey Markham, is that you?” Jose started toward the sound.
“Jose, wait—” Kathy began, but Jose was closing the distance.
“Help me.” It was Markham’s voice, weak and shaky. Kathy jogged to catch up to Jose.
“We’re coming, buddy,” Jose said. “Hang in there. Keep talking. We’ll find you.”
From somewhere farther off in the darkness, there came a giggle, like that of a small child.
Something else was in the drawer with them.
“Kathy, I think I found him.” Jose’s voice was close, right in front of her. She reached out until she felt his shirt, and he took her hand and pulled her down toward Markham.
“Let’s get him back into the light,” she said. They managed by touch alone to each get a shoulder under Markham’s arms and lift him. It was awkward, but he was surprisingly light, lighter than he should have been. She’d expected dead weight, more or less, but given the shuffling of his movements, he was trying to do the work of standing and shuffling along on his own.
“We got you,” Kathy said as they moved him out of the darkness. “Stay with us, Markham.”
“My arm,” he murmured.
“Stay with us,” she repeated.
Over their shoulders, bouncing between the walls of the drawers, came the echo of the giggling again. Even if acoustics didn’t have their own arbitrary rules in this world, it would have been impossible to determine a more specific direction, or how close behind the source was to them. Kathy got the sense that whatever it was, it was holding back deliberately, amused, watching them struggle with their friend.
“Bleed, bleed, bleed!”
Kathy flinched at how close the giggling voice was to her ear. It only partly registered that there was no accompanying breath…
“It’s…it’s got me,” Markham’s voice said, weak but tinged with panic. “Go on. Get out of here.”
“No!” Kathy said. “We’ve got you. We’ll get you out of here.”
She and Jose moved faster. Markham was heavy, and they could barely see. Behind them, the giggling grew louder. It seemed to come from everywhere.
“Almost there,” Jose said, breathing heavily.
They emerged into the light and set Markham down. Before they could feel any sense of relief, though, reason began to splinter and fall away. For starters, Markham’s bad arm, which had been draped across Kathy’s shoulders in the dark, was gone—all of it, right up to the elbow, just gone. It wasn’t bleeding; rather, the end of the stub was crusted with a dark purple scab. Second, what was left of Markham was clearly in no shape to have talked to them at all; the bottom half of his face was gone, as well as most of his throat. The ragged, torn flesh of what was left of his head waved like fingertips, like the open maw of those things in the library. His eyes were wide, fogged over in death, and his clothes were torn. He was also missing a foot.
For several seconds, Kathy and Jose could only stare in horror. It made no sense. He’d been okay. They had found him and he was going to be okay, and—
Just beyond the edge of the darkness, a misshapen silhouette giggled again.
“Tricked you,” it whispered. “Tricked you tricked you tricked you…”
The remains of Sergeant First Class John Markham began to twitch as if laughing along with the creature in the shadows. All around the silhouette, high-pitched laughter echoed through the drawer.
“Trickedyoutrickedyoutrickedyou…”
Kathy glanced at Jose. He had a look in his eye she’d seen before; people on the verge of breaking looked like that. She grabbed his hand and tugged him away from the twitching thing at their feet. They ran for the crack in the drawer.
“Wait! Wait for me!” Markham’s twitching remains called out behind them, and fresh peals of laughter erupted all over the drawer.
Kathy and Jose squeezed through the crack, then took off around the length of the drawer toward the other side.
They found Hornsby propped casually against the wall. When he saw them running and took in their expressions, he looked alarmed, and pushed off from the wall to join them.
“What? What happened? Did you find Sergeant Markham?”
“Well…we…we found…” Jose managed between panting breaths.
Kathy shook her head. “We’ve got to go.”
Without another word, Hornsby nodded. Kathy and Jose moved quickly across the room, Hornsby hurrying to keep up. The three of them made it to the tunnel and trudged its gloomy length in silence. Kathy figured Hornsby had questions, but he kept them to himself.
The trek back up the stairs required supreme force of will, and it was exhausting. A combination of disappointment in not being able to save Markham and the sensory deprivation of the stairwell created a weight on them, pulling them down, dragging at their feet until it was all they could do not to just sink onto the steps and stay there. It took a very long time—it seemed like hours—but they finally made their way to the top. The smooth, empty room stretched out before them, silent as a tomb. They crossed it and trudged out into the street.
“You two okay?” Hornsby finally asked.
Neither Kathy nor Jose spoke, but Kathy offered a half-hearted shrug. The moons overhead had shifted in the sky. It was late, and they were all tired.
“I’m…sorry about Markham. He seemed like one of the good guys.”
“Yeah.” Kathy looked around the empty street. Across from them were ruins of a building that Kathy couldn’t remember seeing before. Most of the first floor was there. It looked like it was open to the sky, but the stone was smooth, and Kathy held on to that as a sign they might be safe there for a while. “Listen guys, we need to rest. We can’t keep going on fumes.”
“Where? Backtrack to the forest?” Hornsby asked.
“This place isn’t going to let us leave now,” Jose said, and flinging an arm out in the direction they’d come, he added, “Look.”
They turned back toward the road they’d come up…how long ago had that been? Hours? The library was gone. The buildings there looked completely unfamiliar.
Kathy turned back to the ruins. “How about holing up there for the night? It’s better than being out on the street…or shut up in one of the buildings.”
Jose shrugged. “Fine with me.”
“Me too,” Hornsby agreed.
“Okay then,” Kathy said. “Let’s get some sleep.”