“They kept running at us, man. That shit wasn’t right. You see their eyes—”
“Stay liquid. All right?” Shepherd raps the man’s helmet. Focuses him. “We’ve seen worse.”
Liz shudders to think what that might mean. “But where the fuck are they all?” Mad Dog says low. “There should have been dozens of bangers—”
“Maybe they’re all whacked out upstairs. They look in control? We got the drop, all that matters. The boys’ll hold the fort.”
“Yes, boss.”
“I want to see how far this goes. You and Halo hold here.”
Mad Dog twitches a nod.
Shepherd passes, sees her watching. “We have a problem?”
It takes her a moment to realize he’s talking about the shooting. She shakes her head. She has bigger fish to fry. And she’s just found a smoking gun. Let the government try to explain away the effects of criminalizing low-level drugs now. She’d have her justice—
“Good. I won’t shoot you both, too.”
Austin laughs. But Liz can see a tightness around Shepherd’s eyes. He’s unsettled by all of this as well — the weird behavior of those possibly affected by the drug, the scale of the operation down here, the difficulty they’d have securing the whole place.
If he’s unsettled, where does that leave the rest of them?
The plants are bizarre, but Liz can’t quite make out why until she moves closer and realizes that their somehow muted color isn’t due to the mask she was wearing. The leaves of the mutated trees are darker than normal, beyond a dark green to almost a black, like they’ve been burnt, somehow leached of pigment growing down here despite the warm lights arranged every two feet ad infinitum.
They’re fascinating, and she wants to reach out and touch the darkened fronds, something about the feathered patterns calling to her. And yet something fundamentally wrong about their entire existence screaming anathema at the same time.
“Like a negative image,” Fozz says softly, chimping at his viewscreen, doing that “oo” mouth snappers do at a good shot. Maybe that’s it. Because the plants are so familiar and yet unlike anything she’s ever seen. That anyone’s ever seen.
“Black Lung’s real, hey?” Austin breathes. “This is some hinky shit. Doing the world a favor when we burn this to hell.”
Collins claps his shoulder. “Amen to that. Biggest crop I’ve ever seen though.”
“And it’s still going,” Shepherd says. He checks the bonds on the cackling Roach and his men. The gangbanger tries to get in one last taunt at them, but everyone ignores him. The suited workers lie beside them, resigned and seething. “You good?” Mad Dog nods. “Stay on the radio.”
The SOG unit stalk ahead out the vast ammo room and down the concrete tunnel. Liz follows in their wake with God and the drug squad guys. Fozz spray-and-prays the long line of plants, frowning. “Light’s shit. They’re gonna bleed out, even with the fast lens.”
“You can always use my phone,” Collins offers.
Fozz glowers, hit right where a snapper-boy hurts.
The black-clad troops move silently ahead, stepping through the gathering puddles like lithe cats. It’s only then Liz looks down and notices the increasing lengths of water beneath their feet. The further they go, the more the walls seem to bead with sweat too, and as she looks at the passing plants she can see droplets of moisture on the leaves now. Then she sees a drop pull a leaf off the nearest black lung plant and fly upwards to the roof—
She staggers, hits her back to the wall. The next drop falls and splashes on the metal of the tray beneath. A trick of the light. She’s seeing things.
But as her hand slides on the slime of the wall, it suddenly sticks like a flytrap and for a moment she feels she’s being pulled backwards into the concrete and everything shimmers around her as she sinks into the choking bosom of the wall.
She flails, trying to pull free, and then freezes when she sees the girl in the distance. A small figure in white moving ahead of them, flickering in and out of sight at the end of the gunlights’ range. An ice chill dances up the back of Liz’s neck into her hair. It’s like death’s fingers gripping her skull.
They’re not alone.
What would a little girl be doing down here? She has to be seeing things, has to be imagining it—
The girl stops. Starts to turn. And the burning horror flares up Liz’s throat and she knows she can’t see her face, can’t look into the blackness of her eyes–
She jerks her hand clear of the wall, falls forward to her knees, and the girl in white winks out of sight.
Liz kneels panting, staring ahead. There’s nothing there. She drops her head and it’s like the bottom of the puddle beneath her is stretching away, becoming depthless. Then her stomach contracts and she convulses and almost vomits.
The raver on hands and knees vomiting a great stream—
No, no, that can’t be what’s happening—
Fozz notices her fall, comes back to help, ever vigilant. Then the radio crackles, echoing in the narrow confines.
“…all of them— We can’t hold—”
Shepherd and the SOG team freeze. “Repeat. Interference.”
It’s one of the uniformed officers at the stairwells. “Killing everyone. They’re fucking ripping them apart… insane—” There’s a scream, a sound like growing thunder, then he cuts out.
“Halo: report.”
“Contact! We got movement upstairs. Shots fired. Oh shit, Commander. They’re coming down the shaft.”
Shepherd doubles back, face stretched like thin paper across his bones. “Numbers. What’re we facing?”
“Oh Jesus. All of them. It’s all of them Shep—”
The whole team’s radios short out inexplicably as if short-circuited, small bangs and puffs of smoke whispering from the gaps in the plastic, then the sound of semi-automatic gunfire reverberates through the enclosed space.
“Are they shooting at civilians?” one of the soggies — Jacko, Liz thinks he’s called — asks. “What the hell are they doing?”
Shepherd starts to sprint then, and the other SOG flash past. Liz and Fozz can only stare, and even Collins and Austin hesitate, unsure what to do. Instinctively, they start to follow, then the entire SOG unit skids to a halt. A distant rumbling in the distance grows to a deafening roar.
Liz’s breath hitches as the police switch as one from their non-lethal guns to the AR15s hugging their backs. Take aim as they start to retreat.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Holy fuck,” is all one of them says and she follows his wide-eyed look up the tunnel back towards their entry point. The sight paralyzes her.
A wave of shadows surges toward them, pouring in through the gap above. The tower’s residents, in an unending stream of bodies, descending after them. They hit the ground and those who aren’t trampled are instantly up and racing on, filling the tunnel.
“What do we do?” someone yells as they retreat.
Shepherd is staring stunned at something in the midst of the crowd. Something dark-clad and doll-like in their midst.
Halo. Now just a broken rag puppet as the crowd tear him apart. A glimpse of crazed faces.
“Just fucking shoot!” the commander yells.
They open up. The noise is deafening, disorienting — and their efforts utterly useless. Suppressing fire is supposed to overwhelm with its blanket of bullets. Any rational being will seek cover.
But there’s nothing rational about this.
The swarm of screaming, drug-affected men, women and even children — oh God, there’s children among them, falling beneath the stampeding feet even as they try to keep pace with the mob like tiny zealots — keep surging forward despite the SOG mowing down their front lines.