Fear the Abyss: 22 Terrifying Tales of Cosmic Horror (28 page)

A nice town with very clean streets,
he thought and couldn't stop a shudder.

Ahead, he heard a rustling sound where the side streets intersected the main road. The rustling grew to a patterned roar and, like an opened floodgate, swarms of people suddenly flooded out onto the main road.

Grimes stopped for the briefest instant and he thought he heard Newby gasp.

A blast of cold in his head--

(--don't stop don't you dare stop now--)

--and Grimes found his footing again.

The people, dressed in blue, grey, and green jumpsuits, surrounded them, lining the building fronts three deep. Grimes couldn't read a single expression on any man, woman, or child. No one spoke. Their heads turned as one to watch the group pass.

The sight of all those people, blank and uniform and eerily silent...they hurt his
mind
. His eyes couldn't focus on one person. They made his footsteps louder, his migraine thump more painfully.

The Welcome Committee took no notice of them. They might not have been there at all.

Up ahead, cranes rose out of the wide crater of the mining pit. What must've been hanging mine dust cast a strange, flickering yellowish light over the various mining machinery.

Dugan turned left, away from the pit, before Grimes could study it more closely. Behind them, Grimes thought he heard a deep sigh.

He refused to look back. His flesh prickled and crawled.

They passed the colony's Congo Church--the only un-boxlike structure in town with its neo-Catholic pointed steeples and rounded corners.

On the sermon display next to the front walk were two words:

FREE IT!

Free what?
Grimes wondered.

*****

Dugan dumped them unceremoniously at the Delta barracks, a long L-shaped building outside of town. From one of the slit windows, Stephens watched them leave.

"Aren't they going to guard us?" Newby asked.

Stephens turned away. "Why bother? There's nowhere to
go
. Besides, who can they spare to guard us with the military gone?"

"You think the civilians offed them?" Grimes asked. He looked around. The barracks could've housed a hundred soldiers.

Stephens's eyes darkened. "Yeah, although I don't know how. Those rifles all but clinched it." He frowned. "I think that
whatever
the civs are up to, military isn't welcome."

"And that's why you faked being Nelson," Newby said, then winced.

"Headache?" Stephens asked.
             

"Since we landed."

He turned to Grimes. "You?"

Grimes nodded.

Stephens rubbed his temple. "Me, too. It's the electro-magnetic field, I think. It's..." He trailed off. "I bet compasses would be useless here.

"You're a Psi," Grimes said. "Why didn't you tell us?
Jesus
, when you sent that first message--"

"Alphas aren't encouraged to divulge it." He looked at them. "You both from Earth?"

They nodded.

"I was raised on Ellis-7. Any child that tests high for Psi capabilities is sent there. Psi-abilities have something to do with the brain's electrical impulses. It makes us
very
sensitive to any planet's EMF. Tartan-6's off the charts."

"You think that crashed our ship?" Newby asked.

Stephens shook his head--he didn't know.

Grimes paced the barrack's central aisle, scrubbing his face with shaky hands. "Jesus fox-trotting
Christ
, what's going on here? The military's gone, the town is acting..." He couldn't come up with a word to describe the faceless mass they'd seen. "...and you're saying a
planet's
EMF is all messed up." He looked at Stephens and Newby. "Why the hell were we being taken to the
Chaplain
? Two-thirds of the Fed planets don't even
have
religion."

Stephens rubbed the stubble on his cheek. "We'll find out why soon enough. They won't give us much time--twelve hours at most--before saying screw it. That's not enough time for the beacon to draw anything useful."

"Then what?" Newby asked.

Stephens merely looked at him.

The Congo Church rose in Grimes's mind. "Free it," he muttered.

Newby and Stephens stared at him as he shivered.

*****

Night on Tartan-6. Stars like cuts in black velvet shined brilliantly in alien constellations. Grimes would've happily given anything to be staring at Orion or Cassiopeia with
Janey.

They showered and changed into new jumpsuits. Newby found aspirin. Stephens begged off--he needed his head clear.

There was nothing to do except stare at each other and watch the clock and ponder the same question over and over:
How long do we have?

Finally, Stephens headed for the door. "I'm going out."

"What for?" Grimes asked.

"Get some clue of what's going on. Maybe check the ship if I can." He studied them. "Try to sleep. You might not get it later."

But sleep never felt further from Grimes when he lay down. The idea that he could wake up with Dugan standing daunted rest. 

He fell into a scratchy doze and dreamed of Janey, of seeing her in her gardening sun-hat, its floppy band obscuring her heart-shaped face. His relief in the dream was palpable, but tinged with uneasiness.

He kept thinking he saw a pit out of the corner of his eye, flickering with a yellow light.

*****

Stephens's haggard voice, calling down a well: "C'mon, Grimes."

Grimes opened his eyes to see Stephens and Newby standing above him, faces pale. He cried out as a lightning bolt of pain struck his head.

Grimes sat up slowly. His muscles felt like cheap concrete, his bones made of crushed glass. Newby handed him four aspirin.

"What's it like outside?" Grimes asked, dry-swallowing the pills. 

"No signs of struggle. The Deltas are just
gone
." He shook his head. "An untrained civilian population disposed of nearly one hundred Deltas and there isn't a sign of battle
anywhere
? How in the
hell
did they do that?"

Grimes shook his head. "Those people didn't look like they had any migraines," Newby offered

Stephens nodded. "Yeah, so why us?"

Grimes couldn't think of a reason. "Anyone see you?"

Stephens shook his head. "
Everyone
was standing around the crater. You noticed that yellowish...light? glow?...earlier? It's coming from
within
the crater. Everyone was looking into it and sighing." 

"Why?" Newby said.

Stephens shook his head slowly, his face confused. "I don't know."

Questions crammed Grimes's aching head, inarticulate and impossible for Stephens to answer. "What'd you do, then?"

"Went to the Entrance Chamber--no one was there--and out to the ship."

"Why'd you go out there at all?" Grimes asked. "The ship's destroyed."

Stephens opened his Suit and pulled out three bolters, setting the boxy plastic-and-metal handguns on the bed. "For
these
."

*****

Outside, Grimes heard nothing except the muted rumble of the climate-control systems. He could see no lights on anywhere. A soft breeze whistled between the buildings.

He stopped suddenly. "Where's the wind coming from?"

Both wore incredulous expression, which then melted into puzzlement. "How the hell do you get wind in a
dome
?" Newby muttered.

They started again, heads down between hunched shoulders. Beneath the glow of the stars, the town was a rippled monolith of black.

Grimes's hand tightened over his bolter. He'd only handled one during training sessions. His combat experience had been strictly
behind
the front.

If it gets me closer to Janey,
he thought,
I'll blow everyone away.

They stopped at the edge of town, crouching down behind an outcropping of rock, and looked at the loading bay. There was a fair distance of open ground between here and the safety of the shipping containers.

"They might come after us," Stephens breathed. His bloodshot eyes were nearly black in the gloom. "Can you handle it?"

"We don't have much choice," Grimes said.

Stephens nodded. He looked like he wanted to say something else, and, at that moment, despair washed over Grimes, drowned him. What were they doing? What did they hope to accomplish? He thought of Janey and it was like thinking of an old photograph. He had no faith he'd get back to her. He was already dead.

He looked at Stephens and Newby and, oddly, that helped. They weren't giving up. Stephens wanted to know what happened to his fellow soldiers. Newby just wanted to survive. They had faith they could do this. It radiated from them, like a phosphorescent glow.

When Stephens glanced over the rock and made his move, Newby close behind, Grimes took a deep breath and followed.

They trotted hunched over, soldiers across No Man's Land. The Entrance Chamber, obscured by shipping containers, drew slowly closer. Grimes thought the distance had been shorter before.

The spotlights clicked on as they reached the halfway point, pinning them like bugs. Disappointment surged through Grimes as he turned, but he felt no surprise. Not at all.

The town stood silently beneath the lights, the glare cloaking them in black.

Stephens grunted and an icepick stabbed Grimes's temple--

(--hide the bolters.)

They jerkily shoved the bolters inside their jumpsuits. Grimes wondered what the point was, and he felt a glowing green hatred for the townspeople.

"Stop where you are," Dugan called.

"We
did
, you idiot," Grimes snapped.

Three men detached and approached with an air of ceremony.

"Trying to leave?" Dugan asked. "That's not particularly nice."

"How'd you kill the Deltas?" Stephens asked.

Dugan's smile widened. "Ah, the resident Alpha speaks. I know Tartan-6 must be particularly
brutal
for you."

"How'd you kill the Deltas?" Stephens repeated.

"We freed them, Alpha," he said. His smile was chilling and Grimes felt a drillbit of fear burrow into him. "They've been Saved. You'll see."

Dugan stepped aside to reveal the other two men. One was just a townsman, a military rifle bulky and awkward in his unskilled hands.

The other was obviously the Chaplain.

Grimes thought he might've once been a handsome elder gentleman, but those days were long gone. He was a scarecrow, his black jumper and Roman collar hanging off him. His hands were gnarled into claws. His head was too large for his body, nearly a rounded triangle. His corkscrewed white hair had fallen out in patches, leaving an uneven mane. His face was a relief-map of wrinkles from which cherry-eyes--identical to Stephens's--beamed, entirely present and completely insane.

"My fallen flock," he croaked. His hands clawed the air at his sides. "Do you believe in paying for rewards to come? Do you believe in creating a platform from which Greatness shall arise?"

Grimes's mouth worked on its own. "Free it."

The Chaplain suddenly beamed. A gnarled hand gripped Grimes's arm and Grimes shuddered. His touch was cold, but Grimes felt a vein of unspeakable energy and power beneath, a thrum of heat. "
Yes
! Yes, that is
exactly
it!" The Chaplain turned to Dugan. "Its ascension will be complete with these three! They
believe
! Oh, the
wonders
It has foretold! We mustn't wait any longer!"

Grimes allowed the Chaplain to pull him along as the others followed. The bolter banged against his stomach like an unfulfilled promise.

They entered town. The only illumination came from the yellow glow of the crater at the other end, reflecting against the dome's ceiling.

The Chaplain let go of his arm to gesture at the town. "This is our altar and we keep it is as such. This is merely one way we show our faith and love for It Who Carries Us."

"A nice town with very clean streets," Grimes muttered and felt sick.

The Chaplain's horrible eyes blazed. "
Yes
. We are in Its
home
, the way the church has always been the supposed home of God. Do you desecrate your Lord's home? Do you, perhaps,
shit
in the pews and
piss
in the holy water? No!

"It is amazing you see," the Chaplain went on. "It Who Carries Us has touched you three, and that means Its reach is growing from Its prison--
It is almost here
."