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The cabin we've called home for the last eight months sits tucked away in a little valley halfway between civilization and complete wilderness. The pine trees and boulders that make up the landscape always remind me of my childhood in Colorado. Combined with the fresh air smell and the cool summer breeze, there really isn't anything to dislike about this place. Which is strange, because on paper, I should be the happiest I've ever been in my life.
But I'm not. And even if I don't want to admit it, I know exactly why. As I pull up to the cabin, the truck's tires crunching over the dirt road, my wife steps out onto the shallow covered porch and greets me with a smile. But even though she's doing her best, I can see the cracks in her cheerful demeanor. This has become our little ritual, our little bit of time together before we go inside with the kid.
I park the truck, kill the engine, and move to greet Myra. She's still the only woman I'll ever want. Her onyx hair, smooth skin, and exquisite features are irresistible to me. We embrace, and the fading sunlight dances over us as a breeze stirs the trees. "I love the way you smile," I whisper in Myra's ear. "This is also part of our ritual."
A kiss, an embrace, and a little compliment when I first get home from work. Never mind that it didn't come about organically. Never mind that I had to ask for this. Fake it till you make it, I guess. "I love the way you smell," she says with a genuine giggle. "Smell?" I say, moving back and putting her at arm's length. "I bet I smell awful." I sniff at an armpit and make a disgusted face.
Nope. Myra says, hugging me again, sticking her nose in my armpit, taking a big whiff. Ah, so musky. I laugh. Myra has always been good at making me laugh, and I kiss her again. Maybe fake it till you make it does work, I think. How was your day? She asks as I disengage and head back to the truck to get my stuff. Not great, I say. Apparently, there was another accident today. Another one?
"My God! Someone you knew?" "No. At least, not that I know of yet. I mean, they don't really tell those of us in the office anything, but there was a flurry of activity down in the pit. And the last time that happened, Simon got killed." "Jesus, I'm so glad you work at a desk now," Myra says. "Yeah." I head back toward her with my bag and jacket in hand. "Sometimes I miss being active, but not on this job. Not when it's this dangerous."
I follow Myra inside and see that our daughter, Faye, is asleep on the couch in the living room. She's seven years old, but Myra and I often joke that she's like a 70-year-old. She loves her naps, and she's not overly energetic, like the other kids her age. She's always been very calm, sweet, and somewhat reserved. In fact, when she was two, Myra and I worried that something was wrong with her, but the doctors assured us she was fine.
"You both radiate calmness," Faye's pediatrician told us after one checkup. "She just takes after her parents. Consider yourself lucky she's not driving you both crazy right now." It was a relief, although sometimes I wish she was more like other kids because she seems to have trouble making friends. Plus, it doesn't help that I dragged her out here to middle of nowhere Alaska. "How long has she been out?" I whisper, setting my stuff down on the coffee table.
"About 30 minutes," Myra says. "I was planning on getting her up just before dinner." I kneel next to our little black-haired princess and kiss her on one pudgy cheek. She doesn't stir. She's a deep sleeper. "Need some help?" I ask, standing. "No, relax and wind down. I've got dinner under control." "You sure?" I ask. "I'm sure," she says with a smile. I can tell she's lying.
I can tell she would love nothing more than for me to make dinner tonight, just for a change of pace. But I'm bone tired. I've been working all day, so I don't put up a fight. I shrug it off as proof of her love for me. I know how hard this transition has been for Myra before we moved out here. She worked as a radiologist, and she loved her job. She loved being active. She never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, and I was completely fine with it.
but she's made the transition for me, for us. I settle into the recliner and take my shoes off. The nights in this part of Alaska are eerily quiet, aside from the occasional owl hooting or the far-off call of a wolf howling. As far as manmade sounds, there's almost none past a certain point in the night. Sure, the occasional vehicle drives by, headed to or from one of the half-dozen other cabins in the area,
but that traffic generally stops by 10:00 PM. Our nearest neighbors are a mile and a half North. So there's not much chance of hearing them like you would in your average suburb, which is why some foreign sound pulls me suddenly completely from my slumber. My eyelids open and my mind switches gears like a professional race car driver going from fourth gear to fifth on a straightaway. My ears perk up as I stare at the ceiling. My heartbeat ramps up as thoughts go to my daughter in the room down the hall.
Judging by Myra's breathing, she's still asleep. She hasn't heard the noise. But as I listen, I don't hear it again, and I can't even really identify what it was to begin with. I hope it's only Faye getting up to use the restroom, but even that doesn't seem like a possibility. I know how she sounds. I know her movements through the house, just as well as I know Myra's or my own. Now, this was something different.
Knowing I won't be able to get back to sleep again without checking, I slide out of bed and step to the closet, opening it up and retrieving a rectangular lockbox from the shelf. I punch in the code, open the box, and retrieve my loaded 9mm pistol. I leave the thumb safety engaged and my index finger pressed against the housing as I open the bedroom door and peer out.
The hallway nightlight shines along the hardwood floor like always. A small sliver of illumination reaching through Faye's cracked room door. I venture out into the hallway, looking into the bathroom to my right. It's dark and empty. The porcelain fixtures glow dully in the reflective light from the nightlight. As I push open Faye's door with my left hand, I tuck the pistol behind my back, not wanting to scare her if she's awake. But as the door swings open,
letting in more illumination and uncovering the inside of her room. My eyes take in and translate the information quicker than my brain can make sense of it. At first, I only notice that there's a man in the room, sitting on the bed. My eyes dart behind him, looking for my daughter but not finding her there. The bed is empty. I don't know if that's better or worse.
Propelled by my training, my right arm comes around again, bringing the gun forward without a conscious thought. "Mr. Haskins," the man says, "I need you to listen to me." I tense at the sound of his voice, my eyes finally darting up from the empty bed to focus on his face in the poorly lit room. I don't know him. I've never seen him before. "Where's my daughter?" I say, straightening my arm and pointing the pistol at the stranger's face.
"She's with some associates of mine," the man says. "You bring her back right now." He raises his hands, palms out. "Just relax, okay? She's fine. Where is she?" I say, no longer bothering to keep my voice down. "She's safe, but she won't be for long if you don't calm down and stop pointing that thing at me." I don't drop the weapon. My eyes bore into his, but there's something in them that I recognize.
Something I've seen in other men's eyes in wet work units. Something that comes into them after they've seen more death and destruction than any man should. It's a look I've seen in the mirror every day for the last five years. "Daddy?" Myra says from down the hall. Fear is wrapped around that one word. "Stay there, Myra," I say. Then I revert back to the stranger. "Tell me where my daughter is, goddammit, or I'll put a bullet in you!" The stranger shakes his head.
"If you do that, you all die. You don't want that, do you Benny?" He reaches back and moves the curtain away from the window over Faye's bed. There's a man standing outside with a suppressed MP5, the barrel pointing through the glass directly at me. The man wears some kind of fancy visor, which looks to me like a thermal optics device. Even through the curtains, he can see where I am.
What is it? There's a man in the hallway! And he's pointing a gun at me! Are you ready to do what it takes to save your family?
As I round the final bend before the security checkpoint, I pull over and vomit up the two cups of coffee I had this morning. As I lean out my truck window and spit stringy bile onto the dirt road, I go over the stranger's instructions for the hundredth time. Wiping my mouth, I direct the truck back onto the road, driving through the morning sunlight and bringing the security station into view. For the first time since I started this job, I see four private security guards at the station.
Usually there are two. They're all dressed the same, in dark clothes, with black baseball caps, sunglasses, and ballistic vests. And they all carry semi-automatic rifles attached to straps. There's no friendly banter as I pull up, and I only pray that they don't notice how badly I'm shaking as I hand out my badge. The guy swipes the badge, studies the computer screen in his little hut, and then studies my face.
The other three guys are arrayed outside the hut, holding their weapons, looking at me from behind their glasses. Before last night, I just thought of these guys as stoic professionals. Now, they have a decidedly more ominous tone about them, because they're standing between me and getting my daughter back. "Go ahead," the guard says. I look forward and see that the heavy-duty gate has slid open. I mumble, "Thanks," and then drive through.
As I'm approaching the pit, I notice several black helicopters flying low over the trees in the distance. There are also a ton of black SUVs around the perimeter. Heightened security, I realize. It must have something to do with the stranger and what he told me to do today. "This is crazy," I say to myself as I park in the dirt lot outside the long, low building on the south side of the massive pit.
I get out of the truck and go into the building, stopping to give my phone to a security officer inside, and then saying hello to my few co-workers before I get to my desk. I look out the window at the pit, which was once an open-pit gold mine. It's an irregular hole about 4,000 feet wide at its widest and 6,500 feet long. It's widest at the surface and then gets narrower as the stepped sides go down toward the bottom.
The steps, called benches, have ramps between them, allowing trucks and heavy machinery to go down to the bottom, where there's a large facility, like a warehouse, built over the hole. As far as I've been told, the hole is for research on supercritical geothermal energy, harnessing the Earth's heat as a clean energy source. Now, I'm not so sure what's going on here.
After last night, I think there's some other reason for digging the deepest hole in the world. If I want to see my daughter alive again, I have to find a way to get into that facility at the bottom of the pit. I have to find a way to get the stranger what he wants. He said that the data he needs is in the facility, at a protected computer at the bottom of the hole. Of course, I have no idea what he's talking about. I know nothing of a protected computer. I didn't even know you could get to the bottom of the hole.
I just figured it was a narrow hole drilled in the Earth with a large drill bit. Everything is so compartmentalized. We simply crunch encoded data and then send it over to another department where they decode it and, presumably, send it to another department. I always thought the level of secrecy was strange for a supercritical geothermal energy research project. Then again, figuring out how to harness the Earth's energy could be worth billions.
Maybe trillions. If the technology is patented and sold. Maybe the stranger wants the plans for the technology. I shake my head. Just think about getting Faye back. That's your only job. Nothing else matters. Just get him what he needs and get Faye back. Then you're done. I continue staring out the window, watching as a dump truck rolls down a ramp between benches, headed for the bottom. They extract more material out of the earth than the dump trucks can keep up with.
so there's an enormous pile of dirt and rocks at the bottom of the open mine. Dump trucks move up and down all day, but that is one thing I've noticed in the last week. The pile of material is not getting any bigger. They must have stopped digging, which means they found what they were looking for, or maybe they found something better. I fire up my computer and look at the time. It's just after 9 in the morning. The stranger said he would create a distraction at exactly 10:15.
What kind of distraction? He wouldn't say. "Just be ready," he told me. "If you hurt my daughter, I'll end your miserable life," I said to him after he finished telling me what he wanted me to do. "If you help me, I won't hurt your daughter," he said. "Why are you doing this?" Myra asked. "Because they didn't hold up their end of the bargain," the stranger said. "They used my employer's money and then forced him out just when things were getting interesting."
"The CIA thinks they can do anything they want." "The CIA? What the hell are you talking about?" I asked. "You didn't know you were working for the CIA on this little job?" The stranger said with a laugh. "I thought better of you, Benny. After reading your file, I thought better of you." "What's down there?" I think as I watch the dump truck going down. "What did they find?" "I don't know, but I'm going to find out."
I get up from my desk at 10:12 and move to the bathroom near the front of the office building. I have to pass through the main entrance, and the security officer glances up at me, then immediately back down to his book. My whole body feels stiff. My muscles are like rocks. The anticipation is killing me, but my worst fear is nothing happening.
Because if there isn't some kind of distraction, I don't know how I'll get down into the facility unnoticed. I don't even know if I'll be able to manage if there is a distraction. I sit in a bathroom stall, feeling my hollow pit of a stomach. My thoughts oscillating between Faye and Myra. Maybe I should have alerted someone as soon as I got here. The stranger warned me specifically against it. But maybe I should have called his bluff. Maybe.
Sirens I've never heard before start blaring through the building. The sudden noise causes me to flinch. It's time. I lurch up from the toilet and rush out of the bathroom. Moving past, the now empty security station as the alarm continues to sound. I step outside and see the security officer looking toward the front gate. Radio held to his ear with one hand. He spins around and gestures toward the door. "Go back inside!"
before I can think of something to say. A concussive boom erupts from the woods about 300 yards west of the main entrance. Both of us flinch and look toward the source of the noise, seeing a ball of fire rolling up through the trees, dissipating into black smoke in the sky. What the hell have I gotten myself into? I think, but my training kicks in, helping me recognize an out when I see one.
I turn and run around the building before the security guard can do anything. The one dump truck nearby is completely stopped two benches down in the pit. I can see the driver looking toward the source of the blast, even though he can't see it from where he is. It doesn't matter. I run toward the pit and slide down the rocky slope to the first bench. The benches are cut at angles to prevent rock falls, so they aren't sheer drops, which is the only way I'm able to get down without hurting myself.
My pants are dirty and torn in places by the time I finish my slide down the second slope. I ran toward the dump truck, but just as I'm reaching the passenger side of the truck, another explosion sounds from above. Jesus Christ! It sounds like a war zone up there!
The driver's attention is too fixed on the billowing smoke from the second explosion to notice me until I yank the door open. "Hey!" he says, reaching for his radio. I throw myself into the cab, placing both hands on the guy's head, slamming him into his window. The glass spiderwebs, and the guy's eyes go dizzy. I bash my elbow into his face, knocking him unconscious.
It's a small matter of unbuckling him, opening the door and shoving him out. I put the truck in gear and head toward the next ramp down. An implacable sense of unreality washes over me as I shift gears, going as fast as I dare down toward the facility at the bottom of the pit. The only reason I got this job was my security clearance and my past work for the US military.
I spent over 10 years being contracted out to the CIA for officially unofficial missions in places we weren't supposed to be. But once we had our daughter, Myra begged me to stop doing missions. She begged me to find a safer job, one that wouldn't make her sick to her stomach whenever I left for work. Finally, after seven years, I found this job, and it might be the most dangerous one yet. The US government trained me well, but I never thought the day would come when I would use that training against them.
That kind of crap only happens in movies and books. But here I am. The roar of the heavy diesel engines fills my ears as I get closer and closer to the warehouse-like facility below. I watch as men with guns and tactical gear pour out and take up defensive positions.
I'm not sure if they're coming out for me or just because of the explosions. Maybe both. I take the last ramp down and push the gas pedal to the floor, heading directly for the wide overhead door they use to transfer the rubble out of the facility. The metal door is closed, and there are men with guns behind concrete barriers on either side of it, but I have confidence that the truck will break through, provided I don't get shot first. If I do die down here, maybe the stranger will let Faye go.
Maybe my wife and daughter will come out of this thing unscathed. Maybe. Too many goddamn maybes. When it's clear to the awaiting private security contractors that I'm not stopping, they open fire. I duck down, keeping one hand on the wheel and my foot on the gas as bullets punch through the windshield. One strikes the seat back a few inches above my head. Another tears through the outside of my upper left arm, causing me to clench my teeth against the bright flare of pain.
The truck lurches as it crashes into the metal door. I barely keep my foot on the gas, only letting off when the entire cab is inside the building. As fast as I can, I open the passenger door and jump out. I run to the wall next to the smashed open door. A second later, a security officer peeks through, leading with his rifle. I grab the barrel and jerk it upward, using my other hand to grab the man by his ballistic vest and yank him off balance.
A heartbeat later, I've pulled his sidearm out of his holster and pressed it against his head. "Let go of the rifle!" I say to the man. He lets go, letting the rifle hang down from its strap. Another man looks through the doorway and ducks back when he sees me with my hostage. "If I see anyone come through that door, I put a bullet in his head!" I shout. There's no answer.
So I back up with my hostage, glancing over my shoulder to see the wide hole in the middle of the floor, surrounded by yellow and black partitions everywhere except where three elevator-like structures juts out of the hole. Somehow, I expected more here, maybe monitoring stations or more security. Granted, everyone who was in here probably ran outside to defend the building.
As we back up toward the elevators, I hear a third explosion from outside. This one sounds like it's much closer, maybe inside the pit. I drag the guy into the middle elevator and make him press the button to take us down. The elevator, which is a little more than a large metal cage with no top, starts descending immediately.
"Do you know what's down there?" the guy asks, still keeping his hands up. "I don't care," I say. "You should, because if you're doing what I think you're doing, you're going to die." "Shut up and unclip the rifle," I say. "Do it slowly, and if your fingers get near the trigger, I'll kill you." "We're both dead anyway if we go down there." "Just do it," I say, pressing the pistol hard into his temple.
He does it, letting the rifle drop to the floor. The elevator cage has lights on the outside, shining on the passing walls of the hole, which is about 40 feet in diameter. The rough rock walls pass as a blur, the cage speeding down faster than any elevator I've ever been on. A minute passes, then two. "How long does this take?" I ask. The security officer scoffs. "You know how deep this part is? This part? What does that mean?"
Jesus man, you really are stupid. You have no idea what's down there. If you did, you would be as far away from here as you could get. Alright, I say. Enlighten me, what's down there? Hell. Where is the computer? I ask, ignoring his comment about hell. Computer? He says. What the hell are you talking about? You mean for one of the machines? Don't mess with me, I know there's a computer down there.
I mean, I guess there's a couple of computers down there. What exactly are you looking for? Because there's nothing of importance on those computers. There's nothing down there but some guys working feverishly to undo their massive fuck-up. Right, I say. How did they fuck up? Did they open a portal to hell? You expect me to believe your bullshit? There's still time to stop. Just let me push that button. We can go back to the top. We don't have to do this. We don't have to die like this.
The guy actually sounds genuine. His bravado seems to fade as we go deeper into the earth. "What's your name?" I ask. "Desmond," he says. "I'm Desmond Serra." "Well, Desmond, I don't believe you. They put you up to this, didn't they?" "Who are they?" "His people," Desmond says. "Gerald Holland's army of psychos." I shake my head. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Who do you think funded this whole thing? Desmond says. You think Congress would have approved funding to dig a giant goddamn hole in Alaska? Those do-nothings can't get shit done. Why would they approve this? For clean energy research.
Damn! You must believe everything you read on the internet, huh? This is all a pet project of a deluded billionaire named Gerald Holland. Sure, he might have said it was for supercritical geothermal energy, whatever the hell that is, but I guess he knew something no one else did, because he was here when they reached 50,000 feet.
He wanted to go down there first, but Director Thompson wouldn't let him. The guy freaked out, and Thompson had to call security to get him out of here. I was part of that team. As we escorted him off the site, Holland said all sorts of crazy shit, making threats. I'm guessing you've been played by his people. I'm silent, sweat springing up on my skin. As the elevator descends, the temperature rises.
"So what's down there?" I ask finally. "And don't give me some bullshit answer like 'hell'. You say we'll die if we go down there? How? What will happen? And why aren't the people already down there dead?" "They are," Desmond says. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. They are dead. And we will be too, unless we turn around right now."
Before I can ask what the hell he's talking about, the elevator slows considerably. "Oh shit!" Desmond says. "God damn it, please man! Just let me press the button! Let's go back up! We can get out of here! Please!" Desmond tries to pull away, but I hold him in place, peering out of the cage at the brightly illuminated equipment of the people down below.
Desmond continues squirming and fighting, so I hit him with the butt of the gun. He falls to the floor, unconscious. I put the pistol in my back waistband and pick up the rifle. When I look back out of the cage, the ground is only about 100 feet below, and as I peer down, I see something that turns my blood to ice. The sides and bottom of the pit are lined with red root-like appendages that reach about 50 feet from the floor.
The strange appendages turn black just beyond this invisible line, as though they can't reach beyond it without dying. Soon, as the elevator descends, I can look out of the cage at these strange fleshy veins. They are maroon and glisten like exposed flesh. The large ones are about the size of my upper arm, while the smaller ones are the size of my fingers. Following them to their source, I see that they all protrude from a hole in the middle of the pit.
a hole that is about four feet across and is currently filled with some sort of large piece of equipment attached to a tall crane that juts up the middle of the pit. Since there's no way I traveled 50,000 feet in the elevator, the smaller hole must be the continuation of the pit, but whatever they drilled into released… something. The elevator clatters to a stop at the bottom and several people in lightweight work clothes look over at me.
The sound of the equipment in the hole is so loud, it prevented them from hearing the elevator until it reached the bottom. There are five people all together, four men and one woman. They have all been previously busy with pieces of sophisticated equipment. A man and a woman stand away from the hole, monitoring several computer screens set haphazardly on equipment boxes. They glance at me warily, but don't move from their station.
The three other men confer, talking excitedly while glancing over at me. I'm so busy taking everything in and trying to comprehend what I'm seeing that I just stand in the elevator, holding the rifle, gaping. As one member of the trio starts over to me, I snap out of it, raising the rifle but not pointing it at him. As far as I can tell, none of the people are armed. I open the elevator door and step out, feeling one of the fleshy veins squish under my foot.
Disgusted, I remove my foot and place it on even ground, looking expectantly toward the approaching man, who's a thin intellectual type with shrewd eyes and poor posture. He's about ten yards away when his demeanor suddenly changes. I realize why, but just a second too late. Desmond slams into me from behind, and I barely manage to hang onto the rifle as I go down. The strange roots partially cushioned my fall.
I feel Desmond pull the pistol out of my back waistband as I'm struggling to turn around. I jerk myself up and throw a wild left elbow behind me. I feel it connect, and Desmond grunts as he falls back. I flip over and point the rifle at him, pulling the trigger just as he fires the pistol at me. I feel the bullet smash through my ribcage, pulverizing the vital organs within.
Acting purely on muscle memory, I fire the rifle again and again, putting a second bullet into Desmond's abdomen and then a third through his neck before he topples backward, landing in the elevator cage once again. Setting the rifle down, I reach up and feel through my shirt, fingering the bullet hole just under my left nipple, as if I can plug it up and stop myself from dying with my fingers.
The pain is blasting through the curtain of adrenaline now. I feel the wrongness of my lungs struggling to pull air, and my damaged heart fighting to pump blood. The stooped man steps up beside me and looks into my eyes, but I don't see empathy there, only contempt. He shakes his head and says, "You damned idiots! Help!" I croak, coughing up blood. He reaches down and takes the rifle away from me. I let it go without a fight, feeling my body shut down.
My thoughts turn to Faye and Myra. I would give anything to hug my daughter and kiss my wife once more. I just hope they get away from this mess unscathed. The stooped man walks over and takes the pistol away from Desmond, who's convulsing in the elevator cage. He shakes his head at Desmond and then walks back over toward me. "Not that it really matters," he mutters. "This whole thing's about to blow wide open anyway." As I drown in my own blood, I feel my heart lurch once more.
Panic crowds in as I find myself unable to move, to breathe, to think clearly of anything. I stare up toward the unseen top of the hole and wait for eternal darkness, or reincarnation, or the kingdom of heaven, but none of them come. I continue to stare as the panic slowly subsides, along with the pain, leaving me with a feeling of empty numbness. And soon, I blink, furrowing my brow. I try to move my hand. It works.
Piece by piece, I move my body in little fits and starts, expecting pain and feeling none. Finally, I sit up and look over toward Desmond's body. A jolt of fear strikes me as he raises a hand and touches the hole I shot in his neck. Then he sits up and glares at me. He moves his mouth, but only pitiful, scratchy nonsense comes out. Suddenly, his words from earlier make sense. "We're dead. We're both dead. But we haven't passed on.
"How?" I pull my senses to my body, not feeling the small, taken-for-granted movements of blood and breath and all those functions that keep a body alive. But I can still move. And I can still think. "How?" I stumble to my feet and move over to the stooped man who took the guns. He stands next to the pair at the station with several computer screens, but he steps away when he notices me coming. "Just stay back!" he says. "How?" I ask. He rolls his eyes.
I ask, gesturing at the equipment in the hole.
"That's not a drill. It's an energy weapon. We're trying to close the hole to prevent them from getting out." "Them?" I ask, but the man's gaze moves up and past my shoulder. "Oh Jesus!" he says before turning around and running over to the men at the other control panel. I turn around and see one of the other elevator cages descending, getting close to the bottom. The cage has several people in it, most of them armed to the teeth.
Before the elevator even reaches the ground, gunfire erupts from the cage. I duck instinctively, but they're not firing at me. Looking back toward the hole, I see the three men at the energy weapon control panel writhe as bullets hit them. They fall away, but the shooter keeps firing, punching holes in the control panel. The loud energy weapon sputters out and then powers down, leaving behind the loudest silence I've ever heard.
As the men who've been shot die without dying, the elevator touches the floor, and the door opens. Six men pour out of the elevator, five of them taking up position and pointing weapons at us while the sixth steps out. I can't see his face because he's dressed in a suit of body armor, like those suits bomb techs wear to disable bombs. But as he steps out, he takes off his helmet, revealing the wrinkled and liver-spotted head of a man who must be in his 80s or 90s.
I'm surprised he can even move in that suit, considering how frail he looks. This must be the billionaire, Gerald Holland. Then I notice a familiar face, the stranger. He's part of the old guy's entourage. He looks at me and winks. Without thinking, I charge him. I have no weapon, but I'll tear him apart with my bare hands if he gives me half a chance. I expect him to shoot me, but he performs a complicated takedown, and I end up lying on my back with his foot on my throat.
"Where's my daughter?" I croak. The stranger smiles. "You did good. You created just enough confusion for us to do our thing. You did good, Mr. Haskins. Your wife and daughter are safe at home, just like I said they would be." The ground rumbles under us, like a short, weak earthquake. "Let me go," I say. "I want to leave." The stranger looks at Holland, who has been watching this exchange with interest.
The old man looks at me, a faint grin on his face. "You've been shot," he says with a surprisingly powerful voice. "But you're not dead." "No shit," I say. The ground rumbles again. It seems to be getting more powerful, or closer, or both. "Does he have a pulse?" Holland asks the stranger, who reaches down and puts two fingers under the corner of my jaw. After a moment, the stranger looks up and smiles at the old man. "No pulse."
Amazing! You got what you want, so let me go. Let him go if he wants to go. You fucked us! You fucked us all!
As if to prove his point, another deep rumble comes from the hole in the middle of the pit. The energy weapon shakes, gently at first, but soon with building violence.
As I near the elevator cage Desmond and I took down, the energy weapon flies out from the pit, the crane holding it up. The metal screams as it bends and snaps. The whole assembly flies upward. It pauses for a moment as it changes direction and then comes crashing back down. It crushes two scientists and three of Holland's bodyguards. I rush for the elevator, getting inside just a moment after Desmond pulls his legs in.
I shut the door and hit the button to take us up. Then I turn around to watch as the cage lifts off the ground. Holland stares at the pit as the strange veins or roots come out of it like a pulse, as if there's liquid pumping through them. Just as the elevator reaches the area where the roots stop, they all explode at once, sending red-black liquid all over the place. Since I'm standing, I only get some splashed on my left arm and leg, but Desmond is sitting, and the stuff gets all over him.
"What the hell?" I say, shaking my arm to get the stuff off. It doesn't hurt. I don't even know if I can hurt anymore, but it provokes a sense of revulsion in me. Below, everyone left behind at the bottom of the pit has been covered in the stuff, but they soon grow small as the elevator continues to climb. Desmond, whose apathy seems depthless, simply wallows in the strange liquid, staring at nothing.
I expect to feel different once we're away from whatever we inhaled that is keeping us alive, but I don't. My body remains numb, but my emotions are as strong as ever. All I want to do is get back home to see Myra and Faye, and then get them the hell away from this place. After so many years of Myra asking me to stop working for the government, all it took for me to do it is my death. I try to think what that will mean for us.
but it's just too much to handle. So I take a page from Desmond's book and just stare at the passing walls of the pit as the elevator takes us back to the surface. I hear occasional bubbling sounds from below, but I refuse to think about them too. I simply keep Myra's and Faye's faces in my mind, hoping they're okay, praying I can embrace them one last time at the very least.
The elevator finally reaches the surface, and I step off, only glancing back once to see that Desmond is still in the cage, still staring at nothing. There are several abandoned SUVs outside the facility, probably from Holland and his men, and I take one up out of the pit. As I leave the area, I try not to look at all the dead bodies arrayed around. What had been the main security checkpoint is now a smoldering ruin that I drive through carefully.
Once I'm out, I hit the gas and race toward home. As I drive with both hands on the wheel, I notice something is happening to my left arm, where the strange liquid splashed onto my skin. The flesh has turned bright red, and it's bubbling up slowly. Reaching over with my right hand, I press on one of these quarter-sized bubbles and wince at the pain it causes. So I can still feel pain. The thing inside the bottle is not empty, like a balloon. There's something inside it, something moving.
By the time I pull up to the cabin, my left arm and leg are heavy and distorted with these growths. I leave the SUV running as I leap out and limp around toward the porch. Myra steps out holding my pistol in her hands, but when she sees it's me, she lowers the weapon. I step onto the porch and move to embrace her. Her little ritual, but she steps back, revulsion clear on her face. "What happened? What's wrong with you?" Suddenly looking down, I wonder how I could have been so selfish.
With sickening clarity, I realize that I've always been selfish. I've only been lying to myself, thinking that I do everything for my family. It's bullshit, and now I know it. I've been doing everything for me. I could have quit and found a private sector job years ago, but I didn't want to let go of my career. And now it's too late. Whatever is happening to me is not going to stop. "Where's Faye?" I ask, fighting back tears. "Is she okay?"
She's fine. She's inside. They kept up their side of the bargain. Can I see her? I ask. Tears spill down Myra's face as she looks at me. What happened? Are you in pain? What are those things? Still, the urge to grab my wife and hug her is nearly impossible to resist. I don't know. I say. I can't explain any of it. Something shifts on my arm, and I look down to see that one of the now much larger bubbles has popped.
revealing a freakish alien mouth with tiny sharp teeth and a hill of scaly flesh. Myra whimpers and steps away toward the open front door. Another couple of bubbles pop and small segmented tentacles emerge, squirming and waving like the arms of a newborn baby. "Jesus Christ!" Myra says, darting back into the house and shutting the door. "The same thing is happening on my leg. It's just not as easy to see because of my pants. The liquid must have soaked through to my skin."
I limp over to the closed door and lean my forehead against it. After a moment of collecting myself, I speak. "You and Faye need to go. Take the SUV and drive away. Do it now, Myra. I'll move away from the cabin and I won't approach. If I do, you have to shoot me in the head, okay?" I pause, listening to Myra crying. Pretty soon, Faye starts crying too, asking Myra what's wrong between Saabs.
I just want to see her one last time. I continue. Just once more. I move off the porch and into the woods, on the side of the cabin opposite the driveway, placing the left side of my body behind a tree so Faye won't be able to see it. I call out that I'm ready. Myra opens the door and steps out, holding the gun in one hand and Faye's hand in the other. She has her purse slung over her shoulder. The two of them move down the porch steps. Faye's eyes are fixed on me the whole time.
"Say goodbye to daddy," Myra says. Faye tries to pull away, to come toward me, but Myra stops her. "Do what your mom says, baby," I tell her. "And remember that daddy loves you so much." "I love you too, daddy," Faye says, still crying, clearly confused. They stand there next to the porch for a long time. "Go," I say. "Please, just go now. I love you. I love you too," Myra says.
They get into the SUV and reverse down the driveway. I limp out to the road and watch the vehicle head away. But as I watch, the ground shakes and a massive shadow blots out the sun behind me. I know that's the direction of the pit. I turn around and look at the sky, seeing a massive and impossible creature with a form that defies the imagination. Its eyes, thousands of them, roll in their massive sockets as it takes in its surroundings.
It's bigger than anything I've ever seen. Small objects seem to fall from its body, and at first I think it's debris tumbling from its fleshy folds. But they don't fall. They fly. I realize they're creatures, although their form is impossible to see from the distance. Hundreds of holes open in the massive beast's body, and a piercing, insanity-inducing shriek comes out. But it's not just a sound. It's something else. A thought. A feeling.
A notion that pierces into my brain and begins to dig around like a mad brain surgeon with a knife. I clamp my hands to my ears, but it does no good. And before I lose my mind entirely, I feel one of the tentacles now growing out of my arm slide up my left nostril as though reaching for my quickly falling brain.