The elite police unit fights as they’re trained to do. But they’re not soldiers, and they’ve never faced numbers like this. They’re seconds from being overrun.
Liz’s heart is in her throat as she turns and sprints back into the undiscovered tunnel. The two detectives and Fozz pound behind her with most of the SOG guys she thinks, but the adrenaline floods her system so quickly she can barely focus on anything except the narrowed sliver of sight before her, the tunnel arcing around and around, then angling down even further into the earth. Then the banks of plants beside her suddenly cut out and twenty feet ahead the tunnel splits in two.
She hesitates and Austin barrels into her. “Left, left, go left!”
He pulls her along by the collar and she stumbles, then finds her footing and she’s running again, glancing back for a stolen glimpse. Sees the black-clad Shepherd reloading as he runs, waving her on. Behind him roiling shadows.
Two of the SOG members cut right, not seeing them detour as they fire behind. Shepherd roars but they keep running, disappear. The mass of residents pursue them, but that leaves only two remaining SOG, the two detectives, and her and Fozz. To battle an entire building.
It’s insane. Too insane to rationalize and her brain is overwhelmed as she pounds on, unthinking. She almost doesn’t register the huge room looming ahead until the roof opens out again and she stumbles into another massive ammo dump vault. There’s even old marked boxes lining the walls. But the rest of the floor space is taken by banks of Black Lung plants. Row after row. There must be a hundred mature plants in here, bathing under heatlamps. Condensation drips from the ceiling and drainpipes and she’s dizzy just looking at the dark bounty. Her vision swims. Then she remembers her mask, realizes she’s dropped it far behind somewhere.
“Blast door,” Shepherd is yelling, and Liz rouses and turns, sees him and the detectives and the last SOG officer all grab the heavy steel doors on either side of the entrance. A screech and the old machinery starts to crawl shut.
Liz slams next to Shepherd, wrenches with all her strength. Her arms feel like they’re pulling from their sockets.
Then the sound of distant gunfire and strangled screams. The two soggies buying them precious seconds.
“Hurry!” Collins is shouting and Liz almost stumbles at the look of uncharacteristic fear on his face. He has kids, she knows — Jasmine and Jasper — had even met them and his wife one night for dinner. Had glanced in at him, sprawled on their bed, reading stories as they jumped and swung from his bulk like he was their pet tree.
Detective Austin has a cat that shadowed his ankles like a dog. Fozz and Liz had been invited to his apartment once, too. Small but neat and clean, and his current girlfriend looked like a stayer. He’d had trouble finding anyone who could cope with the hours, but she was a paramedic, so her shifts were even worse.
Fozz she’s known for years. Is probably her best friend in the world. Her only one left. She’d pushed everyone else away. The look of helplessness on his face now is heart-breaking. It’s her fault he’s here. He’d been putting off leave for months while she chased this drug thing. He was already burnt out and now he’d die in here.
They all will. No one would see their families, their loved ones, their pets again.
Shepherd must see her mind slipping because he’s in her face, that tight skin around his eyes like he’s a shouting mannequin: “Close it!”
The rusted doors creak closed, the rusted grating echoing the screams again coming toward them, then the steel slabs give a final groan before abruptly stopping, still leaving a gap of inches. There’s no way they can budge either one.
“Son of a—” Jacko, the last of the SOG unit says, still straining to shut out the nightmare tunnel behind them. The cords of muscles on his neck like they’re about to pop. But panic and wishful thinking mean nothing now.
“The boxes!” Shepherd points at the stacked crates and starts shoving metal tables aside. The others take his lead. Liz grabs one of the hydroponic trolleys to help and looks right into the leaves of its plant, can see every vein spiraling out from its shaft, every feather of its leaves. She’s close enough to inhale its ash scent and even that much contact triggers flashes of light behind her eyes. She sags, hands gripping the table as if stuck.
“The girl… She wants us to—”
“Hey!” Collins is shaking her. “Stay back from that shit.” He pulls her away until she’s on empty floorspace.
“She was there.” Liz looks past his shoulder.
He looks to the back of the room. The carved-out room narrows until converging at the far end in a rock formation. A hole to a cave system perhaps. There’s no one there. But for a moment she thought she’d seen—
A flash of shadow across the gap: figures hitting the junction again, pouring back down after them. Screaming fills the tunnel.
Fozz drags a box and, in his panic, trips and upends it. He stares down at the contents peeking through the broken lid. “Ah, you think this is the best thing to use?”
Long thick gleaming brass bullets rest on straw: old M1 carbine. Artillery shells nestle within another. All utterly useless to them, but also entirely unstable and volatile. They have no choice.
The screams get closer like a tidal wave of water. Flashes of darkness as shadows surge in the narrow gap. Fill it. Crazed cries of rage, the gangbangers and co-opted residents fueled by whatever psychotropic effects Black Lung causes in its victims.
The ragtag group shoulder the door. Dig in their toes.
Then too many feet stampede toward them, the noise eclipsing everything. There’s a huge crash as the first bodies slam against the blast doors. Everyone skids back across the slick floor.
Liz can’t help it. She screams. But so do the others.
5 ‒ CONTINGENCY ADJUSTMENT
ONCE, WHEN SHE’D been a young cadet, she’d been sent to interview a home invasion victim. Nowadays you did most interviews by phone or Skype, most research on the internet, but twenty years ago it was all footslog work. There was no substitute for seeing a person’s reactions in the flesh. The man had invited her in, hunched and injured, but as she’d spoken to him, she began to see something animal behind his eyes, a too-intense hanging on her words, an unconscious tongue licking his teeth. She realized she’d been invited alone into the house of someone wrong, that despite his victimhood, he saw a moment of advantage. And when she saw him break up a tablet into her coffee, she fled. Despite reporting to police he was an innocent random homeowner, the guy was in fact a drug dealer targeted by greedy clients. She’d rubbed up against something evil and tainted, glimpsed beneath the veil of society to the easy corruption lurking ever-present. A glimpse that became a deluge the more she worked, until her own family was torn apart by it.
A voice calls to her. Distant, incoherent. She stares with unfocused eyes, and then makes out a face near hers: Fozz. Saying something, imploring.
She smiles at him. Wishes they could close the gaping rent in the veil. But perhaps she’d known it would always end like this, undone by her own curiosity. Her own pigheadedness.
Behind him, she can see a figure across the room at the rock pile. See, she points. I was right. It calls to us now.
The figure turns from peering into the cave tunnel and it’s Shepherd, sprinting back toward them as he dodges around the hydroponic trolleys.
“Liz! Damn it, listen to them.”