Liz blinks as the commander hits the door beside her, lending his weight. The world swims back into focus. Her anxiety returns like a sledgehammer.
“We… we hit it as a group,” Shepherd’s saying, pointing to the dark tunnel across the room. “Close off the rocks behind. We’ll have a better chance of holding them off.”
“Do we even know it goes anywhere?” Collins demands.
“You want me to scout more?” They’re all close to hysteria, but Shepherd’s able to fight it, slow his breathing. He calms himself, looks at the rest of them. “It goes further. They’ve been using it. That’s enough. These doors aren’t going to hold.” He glances at Liz. “You still spacing?”
“I’m okay.”
He looks at her, fighting words. She braces for his sarcasm, knows it might push her over the edge this time. Her defenses are shot. When he speaks his voice is softer: “Just hang in there. I’ll get you all out.”
She stares at him. Realizes how responsible he feels for them. He’s already lost most of his men. And it’ll be all of them if he can’t get this plan to work.
“It was a trap. They waited for us to enter.” Jacko is quiet, the hardened SOG man close to losing it. “They were foxing.”
“We haven’t got time to worry about—”
“But why?” Austin cuts Shepherd off. They need this, need a moment to understand what the hell’s happening. “Why would anyone cultivate anything this psychotropic and destructive? If that’s what’s really affecting them. And where did they get the strain in the first place?”
Fozz points at the ocean of plants in the room. “If that’s what’s affecting them? You think it’s not this shit? An entire building’s trying to rip us apart is a coincidence? They’re fucking evil. You can smell it.” He shudders, tries to huddle into himself.
They all know it. Can feel the Black Lung cuttings in the room like a presence. Something malevolent lying in wait.
“Maybe it wasn’t intentional,” Shepherd finally says, looking around the room. “This has taken too long to engineer. And D2S’s empire is founded on a smooth-running organization, violence included. They still had workers sensible enough to be wearing protective equipment, even while others had gone batshit crazy. So maybe there’s something down here that affected everything. Maybe the plants became Black Lung somehow down here.”
“Could it be a fungal infection or something?” Liz says as she stares up at the waterpipes along the line of the roof. They’re strangely darkened. Not rusted but more like… the black mold she’d seen in the rooms upstairs.
“Infected how?” Shepherd asks.
“I don’t know. But ergot mold used to infect bread and cause hallucinations and sometimes insanity. They think it’s where a lot of our fears of monsters and other realities came from, because those affected would see horrifying visions they couldn’t explain.” She looks at the two detectives. “You guys hear about anything like that—” Something shifts on the edge of her vision. When she looks back at the pipe, there’s nothing, just the honeycombed cobweb. But when she turns away again, she has a sense it’s moving. She shuts her eyes.
“They built these buildings in the ‘60s,” Fozz says, staring up at the pipes. “Piled people in and let the whole thing rot. Like they do with everything. It’d be fitting if they caused this.”
“I don’t give a shit who caused what,” Collins says, turning to Shepherd. “They’ll know this has gone to hell. How long before Command sends someone?”
“Who are they going to send? Next call’s the army. Maybe they’ll just bomb the whole fucking thing.”
“Maybe they should,” Fozz says.
They stare at him. “All the more reason to get as far away as we can—” Shepherd starts to say.
Then Liz nearly screams as a white eye appears at the gap in the door: one of the residents looking in right at her. The man starts biting the metal, scrabbling at the sharp edge. Bright blood splatters in at them and she shies away. She can’t take much more of this.
Jacko braces against the door. “I’ll buy you some time. Better be room at the end for me, though.”
Shepherd grabs his arm. “I’m not leaving anyone Greg—”
“They’ll be through before you get across the room. I’ll be behind you, Shep.”
An unspoken moment between them, a lifetime of service together. Shepherd nods.
He looks at the rest of them. “We good?” They nod, but Liz can see the fear in their faces, the clenched hands, can feel the apprehension descend like a caul over her and almost take the will from her legs. But there’s something that continues to drive her, even now, even as the numbing release of death finally beckons her, a promise to her past perhaps. “Then we move out,” Shepherd says, and Liz sets her feet, grits her jaw and prepares to push off the door. “Ready… Now!”
They burst away from the blast doors and thread through the maze of tables. Behind them there’s a shriek as someone spots the movement and the door’s slammed with a huge weight. Liz hears Jacko grunt.
She can’t risk looking. Can’t do anything but dodge through the field of plants. Each passing flash of black leaf seems to dig into her consciousness, tug at her vision and stretch at awareness like elastic. If smoking this substance has taken over the minds of so many, imagine what it could do for her. Imagine what it could blot out in her life. Her memories, her past. Her whole existence. Wipe it clean. Absolve her.
She stumbles with the weight of temptation and Fozz sees and comes back as he always does. Always doing so much for her. Now risking his life. She can’t let him.
She pushes him on. He has to save himself first. She’ll be okay. She’s right behind.
And as she looks past him to the tunnel, she sees Detective Collins just in front of her colleague, sees the big man slow, fixated upon the passing plants so close to his touch. The policeman stops, reaches out a hand.
“No!” she screams, but it’s like she’s in slow motion, and he runs a hand down a darkened frond then rips it free and jams it in his mouth.
Fozz slams into him, bounces off the big back like he’s hit a wall. The broad shoulders turn, and Collins looks down at him, still chewing, as dark veins spread from his mouth across his cheeks. His eyes have turned black and fathomless.
Collins’ skin ripples and shifts as if something within is trying to break free, like he’s becoming possessed by something. The image is impossible for her to reconcile, and for a moment she can see another face beneath his. A man also but not the same detective she’s known over so many weeks. A face twisted with hatred.
Collins grabs Fozz’s head with one huge hand, lifts him clear off the ground. Her friend flails, scratching at the immovable flesh, then he swings his precious camera like a weapon. It explodes against Collins’ temple, shatters in a rain of jagged plastic and blood. It’s like hitting concrete.
Liz smacks into them, tries to hook under the detective’s fingers, beating futilely at the thick arm. His black eyes turn to her and it’s as if she’s looking into nothingness, like she’s being sucked into the void within him. Then he dismisses her, turns back to Fozz, and squeezes.
Liz screams at the sound of crunching bone. “Get back!” Shepherd’s saying, sighting his gun.
Liz is too enraged to listen, to get out of the way. She gives up trying to pull Fozz clear and spots a metal bar against the wall beside them, part of a broken trolley, and she grabs it, turns back. Collins senses her at the last moment, but she avoids becoming trapped in his eyes and just swings—
The bar clips his jaw and he finally staggers, but his grip on Fozz’s face is unending and his fingers compress and collapse the skull in on itself. Liz swings again. Harder, all her rage in the strike. The bar slams home, the jar numbing up both arms and she has to let go. The length of metal remains stuck in mid-air.