“What the hell is that?” He moved back towards it and placed a single finger up against the glass. The grey cloud clustered in towards the warmth, swarming into a thick black circle. Louie pulled his finger away, and the circle slowly started to spread back out, breaking up and becoming grey once again. “My God, what were they working on down here?”
If Louie could’ve studied the creeping grey mist on a microscopic level, he would’ve discovered over a billion crawling ticks. He had to find that out by reading more of the scattered papers. TICK LDV3 stood for TICK Lyme Disease Variant 3. Louie pulled the stool as far from the container as possible and continued reading at the corner of the work counter. When he’d finished deciphering what he could, Louie pushed the papers away. He stared at the container and watched the grey cloud sway back and forth.
“I don’t know if you little frickers are dangerous or not, but I’m betting you could really get under the skin of some friends of mine.”
Louie decided to wear a hazmat suit for his second trip down to level 10. He held the container out at arm’s length the entire way, watching in revulsion as the dark mist broke into two groups, and clung up to the sides where his gloved hands were. This is bad. I think this might be really bad. He carried on anyway.
There was a computer on the desk in the reception area of level 10. Louie placed his package down carefully and went behind the counter. He sat in the chair and brought up the video image on the other side of the doors leading into the emergency evacuation living quarters. The gurney was still up against the wall, and the containers filled with disease Louie had tried to kill his co-workers with were nestled on top. There was no one in sight.
Do it fast, Louie. Open the doors, throw it against the floor, and get the hell out.
He picked the container back up and went to the doors. He hesitated putting the key card into the slot. Maybe I shouldn’t do this. Maybe I should think things over… sleep on it. He remembered Tom Braden’s condescending face on the surveillance monitor. “He’s not better than me. None of them are.” The card went in and the light turned green. The three deadbolts snapped back into the wall, and Louie opened the doors. He tossed the glass box into the air like a grenade ready to explode, and watched. It hit the floor on one corner and clunked over three times. It didn’t shatter into pieces.
“God-fucking-damn it!” Louie ran in and grabbed one of the disease sample canisters. He gripped one end in both gloved hands and swung down like a caveman wielding a club. It smashed into the glass and a spider web of cracks blossomed out. The grey mist inside merged towards it in a frenetic rush.
Richard appeared at the far end of the corridor. “Louie? What the hell are you trying now?”
Louie struck the container again as the security chief ran towards him. The glass didn’t shatter, but the ticks had found enough space in the cracks to get out. They crawled up the canister’s surface in a dozen strings of black for Louie’s hands. He released it and backed up for the open doors. Richard was less than twenty feet away. Louie slammed the doors shut and removed the key from the wall. The locks clicked back into place.
What have I done?
Louie thought he was going to vomit inside the sealed helmet of his suit. He worked it off and sucked at the air outside until the nausea passed. He looked at the gloves on his hands and wiggled the fingers. He tore the Velcro straps open and shook the gloves off. They’re on me. They’re crawling up under my finger nails and biting in… biting, burrowing deep. Louie studied his finger tips. He turned his hands over and stared at the palms, looking for black lines moving along the wrinkles. He saw nothing. They hadn’t gotten to him.
Louie removed the rest of the suit and let it fall to the floor with the gloves and helmet. There would’ve been no escape for Richard. He was running straight into them when the doors closed. What did they do to him? What must it have been like?
There was only one way to find out. Louie left level 10 for the last time, and headed back up for the security control room.
Chapter 18
Richard was lying face down on the floor with one bloated hand rested up against the door. Louie adjusted the controls and zoomed in on his former boss. He wasn’t moving. Richard Sheffield was dead. That nauseating feeling crept back up into Louie’s throat. He had totally intended to kill them all, but seeing this one dead man—the first of many—finally hit Louie like a punch in the gut. I killed him. I did that.
Louie adjusted the camera’s angle, zoomed in closer on the corpse’s hand. He thought he’d seen something. Perhaps Richard wasn’t quite done yet. Why were his fingers so swollen? Louie brought the image into focus and gasped. The fingers were vibrating. Something was inside of him. One of the fingers suddenly jerked. The hand snapped back at the wrist. Louie watched in terror as Richard’s arm slid away from the door and his entire body began to spasm. He flopped over onto his back, and Louie cried out.
The man’s neck had swollen out like a balloon ready to burst. The skin was grey and mottled over with moving black patches. The ticks were inside him, moving about, feeding on his cooling blood and growing. Richard lurched up into a sitting position. His head twisted from side to side until the skin could take no more. It burst open at the center of his throat, like a giant pustule popping. Brown gunk erupted out in a stream and splattered across the floor. The liquid started creeping along the tiles; it climbed up the walls, and it slithered over the gurney wheels. The gorged ticks had multiplied a million fold in the last few minutes, and their babies were searching for food. They moved down the corridor, like a terrible black wave, towards the living quarters beyond.
Louie snapped the monitor off and puked all over the keyboard. He stood on legs that barely worked, and swayed back and forth. “What have I done? I never meant… I never suspected… Oh dear God… what have I done?”
He had to get out, and not just out of the control room. Louie had to escape from this underground hell. The thirty-seven people left on level 10 would be dead in minutes at the rate those things were multiplying and spreading out. Louie didn’t plan on becoming one of them. He went to the stairwell next to the elevator and tested the door for the first time. He’d lied to Richard; he didn’t know for sure whether or not the outside world was completely cut off. Louie only knew the main elevator couldn’t travel up any further than level 2.
The door opened and Louie craned his head up. Part of the stairwell had collapsed, but he knew he could get out. He could see dim, grey light poking through the battered chunks of concrete and flattened drywall. Louie climbed up into the rubble, wondering to himself why he’d waited so long to try and leave this place. Because I was too afraid to find out what was really out there. He yanked on a twisted piece of stair railing and pulled. Plaster rained over his head, and Louie coughed on dust. The cracks of light had turned into a gaping hole. No, I wasn’t afraid. I wanted to stay down here because I wanted to know how it felt to be in control… of other people… of their lives.
Louie crawled through the rest of it, pulling himself up and out into the depressing grey light of day. As sick as it had made him to watch Richard die, Louie wished he could have seen it happen to the others as well. I should’ve stayed.