His left hand felt something solid just ahead, but there was some sort of spongy material all around it. This must be the valve, he thought as he began to pull the stuff away from what seemed to be the end of the tunnel he was in.
As he cleared away the messy substance, something gelatinous ended up in his face, and it seemed to get stuck in front of his mask. Nick mumbled a curse in his mouthpiece as he brought his right hand up to scrape the pulpous material away, and he inadvertently brought the beam of his flashlight parallel with the mask. What he saw made him shriek in horror and he quickly tried to push himself backwards.
It was a human eye, and it had stuck itself onto the glass of his mask, the brown iris staring back at him, less than an inch away from his nose. Exhaling deeply, he scraped the horrid thing away while pushing the rest of the spongy pieces of flesh to keep them from floating near his face.
Nick exhaled deeply, his own yelling reverberating in his throat before going out in a stream of bubbles through the regulator. All the muck around him were rotting human organs and entrails, no doubt the creature’s victims, and he was swimming in it.
The bile rose at the back of his neck and he began to choke. His throat had constricted as his mind raced from one nightmarish instance to the next. The entire tunnel was apparently filled with human bodies putrefying in the salty liquid, and he must have certainly swallowed at least a few mouthfuls during his time in the water.
It was all too much, and he soon found himself instinctively pushing off, trying to backtrack his way out of the hole before he was able to mentally compose himself again. For a few minutes he didn’t move as he stopped hyperventilating, and he slowly began to breathe deeply once more.
Nick pushed away the thoughts of horror and disgust to the back of his mind. He closed his eyes, thinking about his family, and how much they needed him. His hands were clenched into fists, and he slowly opened them. Running away wasn’t an option. Nick had a task to do and he had to finish, no matter the cost.
Once more he pulled himself forward until his hands could feel the outline of the valve. He stopped thinking about the thick, viscous substance still clinging to his hands while grasping the device and began turning it.
A rumbling noise started somewhere nearby, and he could feel a sudden moving current, as if he was in the inside of a vacuum cleaner. His body tingled while the gelatinous stuff all around him moved past, like it was their time to leave.
There was a crashing noise behind him, and he immediately figured out what it was. A large piece of furniture must have gotten stuck just outside the accessway, and it blocked the flow of water so the draining could no longer work properly. He needed to go backwards and free it somehow.
Using his hands to push himself back, Nick scraped his elbows and knees on the bottom of the tunnel as his muscles strained against the opposite pull of the increased current. The thought of being holed up and drowning in a drainage pipe made him breathe rapidly once more, and the regulator began to jam, giving him less air.
Nick’s muffled screams were of no help, but he did it anyway. Something solid pushed its way into his back and wedged itself behind his oxygen tank, pinning him in place. He started thrashing around, hoping to dislodge whatever it was, but he remained trapped, unable to move backwards anymore.
He could hear Quentin’s faint voice reverberating through the larger adjacent corridor, and that meant it was no longer submerged. Nick knew his only chance now was to disengage the BCD vest and let go of the regulator so he could wriggle free and make his way out. But it would also mean he would have to make it using just the air in his lungs.
Nick knew he was out of options. The debris behind him was building up, and it would soon fill the narrow tunnel with so much gunk and debris that there would be no way to move out of it.
Taking a deep breath, he tore the straps of the vest loose before ducking down and pushing himself backwards, his arms passing through the sides of the vest. The dive mask had already been ripped away from his face, but it didn’t matter now. His lungs began burning once again as he fought his way through the now thickening liquid all around him. Nick crab-crawled backwards, doing whatever he could to get back to the outer lip of the accessway. Move, move! Keep moving!
He soon felt his legs dangling in the air and heard more of Quentin’s shouts. A hand gripped his right ankle and pulled. The next thing he knew his head was above water, and he took a deep, resuscitating breath.
Quentin stood above him. The water in the once-flooded corridor now only reached his shins. “You alright, mate?”
Nick could only nod solemnly. He wanted to forget his time down in that hole.
53
CATHY DIRKSE AND HER son made their way through the ready room and into the adjoining corridor by themselves. They knew the two men had succeeded when the floodwaters began to recede, and they now could freely make their way deeper into the complex.
“Dad!” Scott said the moment he saw Nick. The boy ran over and hugged his father, who stood by the wall, still dripping in his wetsuit.
Nick didn’t say anything as he placed his own arms around the boy. The memory of his time inside the accessway was still fresh in his mind.
Scott pulled away from him while pinching his nose. “You stink!”
Nick wearily shook his head, pointing to the edge of the still submerged maintenance tunnel by his feet. “Yeah, I had to go in there.”
“What did you find down there, Dad?”
“You wouldn’t want to know,” Nick said softly. The wetsuit he wore still had traces of slime on it.
Cathy smiled as she walked up to Quentin and handed the gun back to him. “I knew you both could do it.”
Quentin took the Glock and put it back in his waistband. “Your husband did it all, Cathy. Nick’s the top man here.”
Her eyes grew wide when she saw the blood dripping down his wet shirt. “You’re bleeding again!”
Quentin smiled gingerly at her. “It’s alright. Let’s worry about this later. We need to find your daughter right now.”
“Okay,” Cathy said.
Nick had put his glasses on after Quentin had given them back while they waited for Cathy and Scott to join them. The overhead lights in the corridor had somehow automatically turned on by themselves, and flashlights were no longer needed. Nevertheless, they all slung their flashlights on their wrists or over their shoulders, just in case.
The corridor led to another steel door, and it was unlocked. Quentin pushed the latch open and peered inside before entering. He wanted to tell the others to prepare themselves, but felt it was unnecessary.
Nick and Scott were both speechless, while Cathy made an audible gasp the moment they entered the room. The whole area had been flooded just a few minutes before, and the floor was still sticky with black muck. Waterlogged furniture was strewn about, no doubt upended by the deluge. Along the walls were giant upright glass tubes, and what they contained elicited both wonder and revulsion. The transparent cylinders were apparently displays of assorted specimens, both human and inhuman, suspended in clear fluid.
The tube beside the door they had just come through contained what looked like the naked, dissected remains of a five-year-old boy, but the head was abnormally large, and there was a single eye in the center of his face. The nose seemed to be nothing more than a flap of skin, the mouth a horizontal slit. The top of the head had been removed, revealing a hollow inner skull. The four of them could only stare at it for a few seconds before they all looked away.