49

“They don’t die easily,” Anna explained. “You can shoot them and they just keep coming.”

Callie Dexter hefted the weapon she’d been handed. A kind of plasma rifle, with the barrel modified. When fired, it would, so Anna claimed, send out a stream of energy, but send it in a cutting line rather than focused to a point. “Good for taking off a limb,” she said. “Don’t bother with the heads; it’s the limbs that matter. Once those are gone, they can’t move.”

“I’ve never fired a gun before,” said Callie.

“Neither had I until a few days ago,” said Anna. Her face was drawn and tired. “Don’t worry, you get used to it quickly.”

They started into the hall, Callie turning in the direction of the control room.

“No, you can’t go that way,” said Anna, grabbing her arm. “We have to take the long way around. There are several of those things between us and the Marker, and Briden has set up a few guards as well, loyal fanatics who are likely to kill you on sight. We’ll have to take the long way around.”

So instead they went the other way, away from the control room.

“What does Briden think he’s doing?” asked Callie.

“He thinks he’s bringing about the next stage of existence,” said Anna. “He’s convinced himself that he’s a prophet, and that Istvan is as well, that together they know the will of the Marker.”

“Crazy,” said Callie.

Anna nodded. “He thinks those things are servants in the service of Unitology. But they’re mindless. That’s not what Unitology is about. And there’s something strange about them in relation to the Marker. They won’t come near it.”

“No?”

“It’s safe there,” said Anna. “That’s where he and Istvan stay, dictating to everybody and anybody who will listen the will of the Marker. There’s almost nobody left now—most of us have become those … things. He’s lost his way, but he’s got a loyal following of the dead. He’s a madman.”

Halfway down the corridor, the hallway began to change. The tendril and rotlike substance that had long been found here and there in the halls had started to build up thickly on the floors, a kind of slick organic substance that bunched like a brain. As the hallway continued, it built up on the walls as well. Anna stopped, opened an access panel leading into the ventilation system. “We’ll go through here,” she said.

“Why don’t we just continue down the hall?” Callie Dexter asked.

“Trust me,” she said. “You don’t want to see what’s down there.”

*   *   *

The passage was narrow and constricted, and it seemed to Callie very hard to breathe. They had to go on hands and knees, bodies bent low, with Callie pushing the rifle in front of her. The access panel led up a steep incline to the ventilation system itself, and she followed Anna through the ducts, watching their shadows flicker large, listening to the low hum of the ventilators and feeling the turgidly moving air. From time to time, where the ducts intersected, Anna would pause and take out a scrap of paper and unfold it and examine it before deciding where to go. These moments were the worst for Callie, when she felt both cramped by the duct’s walls and immobile. It was in those moments that, despite the lights they carried, she felt the duct closing in around her.

At a certain moment, she was certain she heard something behind them. Turning, she saw a brief flash of movement, but then it was gone. “Anna?” she said.

“What is it?” asked Anna.

“Who else uses these ducts?”

“What else, you mean,” said Anna. “You see anything, shoot it, and ask questions later.”

This did not reassure her, and added to the confined and stifling atmosphere to make her feel highly jumpy.

They continued on. Where can we possibly be? wondered Callie. Are we turning in circles?

And then she felt something close around her ankle.

She cried out and felt herself dragged back the way she had come, rattling and banging through the passage. She nearly lost her gun but just managed to hold on to it. For a moment the dragging stopped and she dragged herself over onto her back to face it, saw the tip of a thick tentacle curled tight around her ankle, the ropy remainder of it stretching far down the passage. It was, she saw, coiling itself up, gathering itself to pull her farther.

“Shoot it!” she heard Anna yell. “The pustule!”

The pustule? she wondered. And then she saw it, a distended yellow sac farther down the passage, sprouting off the tentacle and partly hidden by the rolls of the curves of tentacle between it and her. Good, she thought, at least now I know what to do. She worked the gun around, banging it against the sides of the duct passage but finally managing. She aimed, but before she could fire, the tentacle jerked tight and she was flipped onto her stomach and dragged painfully farther along.

It stopped again, the tentacle coiling itself, gathering itself, and she managed to flip over and get the gun aimed. She fired once and seared the wall, then again, and hit the tentacle but not the pustule, and seemed to do no damage. She kept calm. Third time’s the charm, she told herself. When the tentacle swayed, she could see the hole where it had come from, a deep tear in the wall. If it tried to drag her through it, she knew, it was likely to tear her apart.

She aimed carefully, feeling the tentacle beginning to tense, and fired one last time and this time caught it. The pustule ruptured and exploded, tearing the tentacle in half. There was a roaring sound and the remainder of the tentacle whipped away and back into its hole.

Callie pried the tentacle’s tip off of her ankle, saw the red gash it had left. She turned and crawled back the way she had come.

She met Anna after just a dozen or two yards. She was crawling rapidly her way, but stopped as soon as she saw Callie.

“You’re alive,” she said. “You made it.”

“Don’t act so surprised,” said Callie. “What the hell was that?”

“One of them,” said Anna. “They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. As soon as we’ve figured out how to deal with one type, another type appears. Luckily that was one we’d seen before.”

“I hope to hell I never see one again,” said Callie.

*   *   *

They continued on, crawling through the ducts. At some point Callie had completely lost track of where they were. She began to hear noises that she wasn’t sure were there. Is it a function of the Marker broadcast? she wondered. Or was it paranoia, plain and simple? Part of herself she felt giving in to the darkness and confinement and beginning to imagine the devil in every shadow. But another part of her, the part that was the scientist, simply observed this struggle from a distance, curious to see what would happen.

Up ahead of her, Anna had suddenly stopped.

“What is it?” Callie asked.

“One of Briden’s men,” she said. “Or used to be. I had to kill him on the way to find you. Now he’s blocking the passage. We’ll have to crawl over him.”

“What?” said Callie.

“It’s the way we have to go,” said Anna. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s got to be another path,” said Callie, but Anna had already started forward. Callie watched her crawl to the body and then gingerly bring first her hands and then her knees onto the corpse. But with the body in the passageway she couldn’t manage on hands and knees and in the end she had to wriggle through, almost flat. It was uncanny to watch her, the man’s body slowly emerging as she passed over it—his staring eyes, the rigor mortis of his mouth.

It was a man Callie had known well, by the name of Dixon. First name, John. She had never liked him but, well, at this point, that hardly mattered.

“Come on,” said Anna from the other side of the corpse. “Come through.”

She waited a moment, finally sighed and approached. The body had a sour smell to it, but was fresh at least, hadn’t yet started to decompose. She pushed her way slowly onto it, trying not to strike his head with her hips or knee. Very slowly she crawled along it, feeling absurdly obscene. There was barely enough room to get by. She wriggled her way forward, then reached out and grabbed his boots and pulled herself farther and finally clambered off.

Anna patted her shoulder. “It’s not that bad. You’ll see worse,” she said, as if that were some sort of consolation. And then she continued crawling forward.

*   *   *

There was, after a while, a sound she couldn’t place, some kind of pounding.

“What’s that?” asked Callie.

Anna stopped, listened. “I don’t know,” she said. “Probably one of those things.”

“No,” said Callie, shaking her head. “It’s too regular.”

Anna shrugged. “Then one of Briden’s crew,” she said.

They kept on. After a little while, Callie said, “We need to see what it is.”

“Why should we?” said Anna. “It’s a waste of our time.”

“I’m curious,” said Callie. “I want to know.”

For a moment Anna looked angry, and then her face softened into indifference.

“Fine,” she said. “It’s your funeral.”

And yours, too, if things go wrong, thought Callie, but she didn’t bother to say so.

They found an access ramp and left the ventilation ducts. Down below, in the building proper, the noise was louder. The hall they descended into was deserted, and they carefully tracked the noise down it until they came to an airlock.

“There’s someone in there,” said Callie. “Somebody who wants to get in.”

“It’s just those things,” said Anna. “Some of them must be trapped. We don’t need any more of them than we already have.”

Callie crossed her arms. “It’s not them,” she said. “We already determined that. The pounding is too regular, almost like a code.”

She was reaching out toward the emergency release when she heard Anna say, “I don’t think I’d do that, Dr. Dexter.”

The tone of her voice was odd. Off somehow. Callie turned, saw that Anna was pointing her weapon at her.

“What’s wrong, Anna?” she asked, trying to keep her voice level and calm.

“I don’t know,” said Anna. “You, but, I…” She shook her head. “You’re with them,” she said. “You want to get them out and together you’ll kill me.”

“Them?” asked Callie.

“Those creatures,” said Anna. “You’re with them. You’re on their side.”

Callie shook her head. “I’m not one of them,” she said. “Something’s confusing you, Anna. You’re not being yourself. You came to get me, you need me—there’s no reason to kill me.” She reached out slowly and put her hand on the emergency release. “I’m going to open it,” she said evenly. “Please don’t shoot me.”

She watched Anna, holding her breath. For a moment there was a struggle within her and then her face contorted and she let the gun barrel dip down. Callie let her breath out, then pulled the emergency release.