The Trench Page 4

  A jet of fire erupted from behind the pack, engulfing them in the sudden inferno. Black smoke filled the corridor. Nicole collided with Michael, sending them both staggering against the wall as they tried not to choke in the spreading cloud of smoke. A moment later, a shrieking figure blundered out of the flames, careened off the wall, and toppled over.

  The blast of fire cut off. “You two! Follow me!” a man’s voice yelled from the swirling smoke. A digital alarm sounded at the same moment, and the sprinkler system started to flood the hallway with a dousing spray.

  Nicole leapt over a blazing corpse, Michael on her heels. “What the fuck was that?” she managed.

  “I have no fucking idea,” he replied and they ran.

  Chapter 8

  A bearded man in a gasmask, carrying a homemade flamethrower, waved them through an open door. After Michael and Nicole ran into the room, he slammed the door, cutting off the smoke and noise of the alarm system.

  The room was dry, and the bearded man gestured for them to follow him past shelves loaded with boxes of medical equipment. The hissing flamethrower he carried sputtered and went out.

  “Who are you?” Michael demanded.

  “Shut up and keep moving,” the man replied, his voice muffled behind the gasmask. He opened a door on the other side of the room, checked the space beyond it, and then waved them through.

  With no other choice but to follow, Michael and Nicole found themselves in a deserted corridor. A Chinese woman with a spiked club stepped up behind them, her weapon raised and ready to hit a home run.

  “Whoa! Easy, Sue! Easy!” The bearded man waved his flamethrower until she relaxed.

  “Who the fuck are they?” Sue demanded.

  “We just got here!” Michael screamed.

  The man looked around. “It’s not safe out here. Come on.”

  “We’re with the marines!” Michael said. “We should go back and help them!”

  He was ignored as the bearded man opened another door and pushed them through. Michael and Nicole found themselves in a dark room. Once the four of them were inside, Sue barred the door with a length of metal pipe wedged against the handle.

  The bearded man pulled his gasmask off, sweat streaming down his face, leaving pale tracks on his brown skin.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Michael demanded.

  “I told you they weren’t marines, Bernie,” Sue scowled.

  “Just shut up,” Bernie replied. “Start with your names.”

  “Michael Armitage.”

  “Nicole Saint-Clair.”

  “Doctor Michael Armitage?” Sue blinked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Your research on hydrozoans is fascinating. I’m surprised they didn’t send you here sooner.”

  “Thanks. Though, I don’t tend to get a lot of work from the US Navy.”

  “Marriage was too much work for you.” This came from somewhere else in the room. Michael swept the room with his flashlight. Propped up on a makeshift cot with a stained bandage wrapped around her abdomen was a woman wearing Navy fatigues, with short, dark hair and an intense stare.

  “Gretchen?” Michael stared back at her.

  “Hello, Mike,” she replied. “If they sent you here to rescue us, then things are much worse than we thought.”

  “What the hell happened?” Michael went to the cot side and crouched down.

  “Not sure myself…” Gretchen’s face was pale and breathing seemed to cause her pain.

  “Can someone try and explain?” Nicole asked.

  “Bernie?” Sue asked.

  Now that the moments of adrenaline-filled action had passed, the bearded man looked like he might be about to collapse himself. “I’m not entirely sure either…”

  “Just tell us what you know,” Nicole said.

  “Something has happened to the crew of this installation,” Bernie said. “We don’t know exactly what, but it seems permanent and they are…” he trailed off.

  “They are no longer human,” Sue stated. “They are not human and they are dangerous.”

  “Was that woman, Hayley Cross, one of them?” Michael asked.

  Bernie started to shake his head. “I think so? I mean… it’s complicated.”

  “We saw the video. That was you, right? Bernard Saul?” Nicole asked.

  “Yeah. Someone took it seriously. We had a squad of marines here within twenty-four hours.”

  “You had marines in here before we arrived?” Michael asked.

  “Great,” Nicole breathed with relief. “Where are they?”

  “Dead or infected,” Sue replied.

  “Listen,” Nicole insisted. “We are with a squad of marines. These guys are serious, professional soldiers. They took out a lot of the – the people that attacked us.”

  “The first squad of marines was professional too,” Gretchen said. “Real ass-kickers. Experienced. Highly trained and, ultimately, casualties.”

  “Cross seemed human enough,” Nicole said. “I mean, she was a little weird, but she was definitely human.”

  “They look human. Right up to the point where they don’t,” Bernie said.

  “Is everyone else… what, dead?” Michael asked.

  “I think so,” Sue replied. “Kincaid and a couple of marines were holed up in the water reclamation station, but we haven’t heard from them since yesterday.”

  “They might be okay,” Bernie spoke up.

  “They might be dead!” Sue snarled.

  “Okay, okay.” Michael waved for silence. “There’s a US Navy submarine docked with this facility. We need to get back there and get them to do whatever it is that they do in situations like this.”

  “Situations like this? Chri–” Gretchen broke off in a convulsive cough. “Shit…” she muttered. Michael lifted a towel and dabbed the blood from her lips.

  “We need to get you to the sub. You need medical attention,” Michael said.

  “Yeah, I’m not going anywhere. If we bring more marines or anyone else in here, they’re going to end up as dead as we are.”

  “We’re not dead yet,” Michael said.

  Gretchen moved her gaze to stare at him, “I’m sorry to see you. I mean, in this place.”

  “I didn’t know you were here,” Michael admitted.

  “Of course you didn’t. Even if we were still talking, I couldn’t have told you anything about my assignment.”

  “Well, I’m here now. Care to explain what this place is?”

  “No harm in telling you now I guess,” Bernard spoke up. “During the Cold War, billions of dollars were spent in developing underwater submarine bases at strategic points around the world. This was one of the last commissioned, and by the 1980s, defense ideas had changed. Most of the bases were either flooded or demolished. I have heard that there are three left, including this one. Only one of the others is still being used for surveillance of submarine traffic. The other one has been turned over to research, like this place.”

  “What kind of research?” Nicole had asked the same question of Mr. Suit and she still wanted a clear answer.

  “All kinds,” Sue replied. “Virology, genetics, chemical warfare, alien environment survival. We had a guy here for six months who was trying to train cockroaches to be astronauts.”

  “Animals are being sent into space all the time,” Michael said. “I’m pretty sure cockroaches have logged more hours in orbit than people.”

  “That may be true,” Sue replied. “But this guy was training them to fly tiny rockets and manipulate complex machines. He wanted to send these trained roaches to Mars and have them pilot a roach-sized craft there, land it, conduct experiments and then, return.”

  “Did it work?” Michael asked, intrigued in spite of his cynicism.

  “I don’t know. What I can tell you is that after six months, he had cockroaches doing things that no roach should be able to do. Then he left, took his equipment with him, and we never heard anything more about it.”

  “If
it had worked, we would have heard about it,” Nicole spoke up.

  Sue regarded her steadily. “Like you knew everything about the SUDS before you signed up for this?”

  “Well no, but…”

  “What does SUD stand for?” Michael asked.

  “Submarine Underground Defense Structure. You’re standing in SUD-8,” Bernard explained.

  “Great,” Nicole straightened, “can we leave now?”

  Michael nodded. “I agree, back to the sub. Get the fuck out of here.”

  Bernard sighed and hefted the launch tube of his flamethrower. “We can’t let anyone leave.”

  “Why the hell not?” Nicole demanded.

  “Until we know exactly what the vector of infection is, we have to all stay sealed in here.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Nicole snapped. “Clearly we are not infected!”

  “Okay! Hey! Everyone calm down!” Michael walked between Nicole and Bernard. “Doctor Saul, Bernard? You’ve been in touch with the Navy, right? They know what the situation is?”

  Bernard nodded. “Yes. When the marines arrived, the Death Valley Protocol was cancelled. They had an override code and things were still pretending to be normal. That was over forty-eight hours ago. We have been in hiding since then.”

  “Hiding from the others?” Nicole asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How many are there?”

  Bernard sighed and cradled the flamethrower while he rubbed his eyes. “Ahh… there were about a hundred and forty of us on site. Then the marines; there were what? Twelve of them?”

  Sue nodded. “Yes. Twelve marines came in.”

  “By yesterday,” Bernard continued, “there were just the three of us.”

  “That we know of,” Sue interrupted. “There might be others.”

  “Bernard, we saw the video you sent. What else can you tell us?” Nicole started pacing up and down.

  “People started changing. The first was Andrew Filden, a lab technician. He was missing for a day, and he had no explanation for his absence. When Andrew came back, one of the Navy crew disappeared. When he was found, he had no answers either. Then more people started disappearing, just not being around one moment and then, within twenty-four hours, they turned up again with no explanation for their lost time. The effect spread exponentially. Two, four, eight, sixteen. By the time I saw the pattern, it was too late.”

  “Tell them about Doctor Nakiro,” Sue added.

  “Yes, Doctor Nakiro,” Bernard continued. “She was our chief medical officer. I talked to her about doing blood tests. Then she disappeared. When she came back, she insisted everything was fine.”

  Sue gave a derisive snort.

  “Yeah, they’d gotten her too.”

  “Exactly what is responsible?” Michael asked.

  Bernard lowered the flamethrower and set it down carefully at his feet. “We don’t know.”

  “Something new must have entered the closed environment,” Nicole said while continuing to pace. “Some new parasite, bacterium, or virus? Some kind of toxic poisoning? Bad food? Illicit drugs?”

  “There was no sign of drugs and we all ate the same food,” Bernard replied. “If I can get back into the lab on level three, then I can start checking the recent specimens for anything that might… do that to a person.”

  “What are the initial symptoms?”

  “Hayley Cross; her hand was changing,” Sue said. “I hardly noticed at the time. I don’t know of any biological agent that could do that to human tissue, without fever, inflammation, other symptoms.”

  “We don’t know what the first symptoms are,” Bernard replied. “It’s not like I’ve had a chance to study any of them under laboratory conditions.”

  “You said Cross’s skin was changing. Changing how?” Michael asked.

  Sue thought hard for a moment. “It was starting to glow, turning translucent, like jelly…”

  “Mesoglea,” Michael said absently. “The translucent material between the two layers of membranous skin on your standard jellyfish. If a person had tissue like that, they would be dead.”

  “I’ve seen others. They had skin patches that were going the same way,” Sue’s voice dropped to a shocked whisper. “They weren’t dead. Dead people don’t do what they did to Xue, or Chun.”

  “Some don’t survive,” Bernard said. “Simon was our galley manager. He tore his own eyes out and ripped off most of his face. It was like he was trying to dig into his own skull. He died before whatever it is finished with him.”

  “How many dead, do you think?” Michael asked.

  “Twenty? Thirty?” Sue replied. She and Bernard exchanged looks and shrugged. “Honestly, we don’t know. Bodies disappear.”

  “There’s a body, a man, back in the corridor where Bernard found us. Half his head is missing, and his brain is gone.”

  “Did you touch him?” Sue asked.

  “I guess?” Michael replied.

  Bernard snatched up his flamethrower and clicked the lighter under the muzzle until the pilot flame flared blue.

  “Hey! He’s fine! He barely touched the body!” Nicole pushed in front of Michael.

  “Bernard!” Gretchen’s voice was rough, but she spoke with authority. “Stand down!”

  Bernard’s grip on the flamethrower was white-knuckled. He looked from Michael to Nicole and then at Gretchen. “You know this guy, right?”

  “Yeah,” Gretchen said. “You could say that.”

  “Gretchen is my wife,” Michael said with a shrug.

  “Wow…” Nicole said.

  “You came here for her?” Sue glared at Michael.

  “No. I had no idea Gretchen was here. We’ve been, what? Separated? On a break? Shit, I don’t know. We haven’t seen each other in about four months now.”

  “I shipped out here eighteen days after you didn’t respond to my final text,” Gretchen said.

  “I didn’t get your damned text. I was on a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.” Michael’s tone suggested that this was an argument he had been waiting to have for a long time.

  “You had a goddamned satellite phone. You could have totally made contact!” Gretchen sat up, one hand pressed against the stained bandage around her abdomen.

  “I get back from my research trip, can’t reach you, and I don’t hear from you. All the fucking Navy will tell me is that you are on a deployment and can’t be reached.”

  “Well, they weren’t wrong.”

  “You could have said more than a fucking text! We were married, for fuck’s sake. You don’t end a marriage by text!”

  Gretchen’s eyes narrowed. “You’re telling me I ended our marriage? You were off on your damned research trips nine months of the year.”

  Michael closed his mouth, suddenly aware that everyone was staring at them.

  “This is why we can’t be married,” Gretchen said, the bitterness in her voice more resigned now.

  “This is not the time, or the place,” Michael said.

  “No shit,” Nicole said.

  “Who are you? His girlfriend?” Gretchen started to stand, gritting her teeth and leaning on the wall for support.

  Nicole looked surprised, “What? No. I’m just here on Navy business.”

  “You don’t look Navy. You look like the kind of surfer girl Michael always trips and lands on after a few drinks.”

  “Hey, fuck you!”

  “Michael’s sloppy seconds? I don’t think so.”

  “Seriously?” Nicole looked to Michael who managed to wince and shrug in the same gesture.

  “Don’t look to him for help; it never did me any good.” Gretchen stood, her face pale and her lips blue.

  “You should be resting.” Sue left her position by the door and went to Gretchen’s side.

  “I’ve been resting. Now it’s time to do something.”

  “What can we do?” Bernard asked.

  “We can fight. Find weapons and destroy every infected person. Bring this place b
ack under control.”

  Nicole shook her head. “That’s crazy. We should be finding Sergeant Nolan and his men. They can contact the submarine and get more armed marines in here. They are trained to deal with this kind of thing, right?”

  Gretchen let her gaze slide across the others. “Are you not listening? They sent marines in here, and they failed. The people who are still alive are in this room. I know who I would rather have with me on this mission.”

  “We just got here…” Nicole whispered.

  “And if you want to leave again, then work with us,” Sue snapped.

  “Okay! Okay…” Michael took a turn pacing up and down. “What is the plan?”

  “Simple,” Gretchen said. “Get to the nearest laboratory. MacGyver some weapons, like Bernie’s flamethrower. Then we sweep through this place. We burn everything organic. Destroy the infectious agent and its hosts. Once the place is sterile, we send confirmation to the mainland and they let us leave.”

  “What about the Death Valley Protocol?” Nicole said, and the others all looked at her in surprise.

  “What do you know about that?” Gretchen asked.

  “Enough,” Nicole replied.

  “It could be activated. The marines that came in, and they shut it down,” Bernard said.

  “I still don’t understand how it works,” Nicole said.

  “You don’t need to know,” Gretchen replied.

  Michael continued circling. “They are going to want to know what happened. They’ll want samples, research data, and some kind of explanation.”

  “We can tell them,” Bernard said, nodding. “Our data is backed up to off-site servers. Everything we know, they will know.”

  “Everything?” Nicole asked.

  Bernard nodded. “Yeah.”

  Nicole regarded him steadily. “If that were true, they don’t need you, or any of us.”

  Sue and Bernard looked at the floor.

  Nicole gave a short humorless laugh. “You have something that the admiral or the government or whoever it is that stirs this pot of shit wants to get their hands on?”

  “When things started going weird… we stopped some of the data feeds into the backup system,” Bernard replied.