Then they moved on to the bodies of the others.
LEVEL FIVE
Jefferson Davis Obadiah Marsh huddled quietly in his cell. He wasn’t scared—not exactly, not anymore.
Marsh had been at the Site longer than any other surviving prisoner. Six years ago, he’d been in the Chipley lockup down in Florida. Drunk and disorderly again. Marsh’s adult life played like a highlight reel from
COPS
: meth bust, shirtless in the back of a squad car, kicking at the glass barefoot; bar fight, tazered and convulsing on the ground; meth bust, fleeing through a trailer park with a dozen sweaty cops behind him; DWI, meth bust, resisting arrest; a high-speed car chase in an unlicensed Chevy that might have actually made prime time if it hadn’t ended suddenly because Marsh had tried to outrun the police with the gas gauge already on “E.”
He hadn’t been disadvantaged as a kid; his parents came from money, and they’d done whatever they could to help out. But after the fourth arrest, they wrote him off as a throwback to the old New England Marshes, like his great-grandfather, the one who was never mentioned, even though it was his wealth that established the Marshes throughout the South.
Back in Florida, he was sleeping off a hangover and a beating he’d received from the other prisoners when he was wakened by a guard’s nightstick. The casual cruelty was something Marsh accepted. People tended to dislike him on sight. Something about his face—weak chin, gaping underbite, flat nose and bulging eyes—made it look as if he was always gawking at everything.
He struggled up on the cot and sat there, staring. “These people are here for you,” the guard said and left. Marsh was alone with two men in dark suits. They hustled him out and into a waiting Humvee. Nobody even signed any papers. Marsh went along with it as they drove across state lines. He didn’t have much choice. They treated him like some kind of super-criminal, keeping him handcuffed at all times, except to piss and eat, never letting him have a minute alone.
Then they injected him with something and when he woke up, he was in another cell.
He spent the next few years in the same routine. His blood was drawn every day. Occasionally, the doctors who came did spinal taps—he fucking hated those, they felt like a nail gun in his back—and occasionally shot him up with other drugs. Some made him high. Most made him sick.
It wasn’t all bad. He had his own TV with all the pay channels. They didn’t even mind if he watched porn. And they’d give him fried chicken and pizza on Friday nights. He got comfortable in his limited world. His stringy crystal-meth muscle bloated to fat, so he looked like a man-sized toad on the day the sirens blared and the cells opened.
Marsh had no idea what to do. He sat there for the longest time. He called for the guards, but they weren’t around.
Then he saw the Snakeheads, moving down the corridor next to the cells, drawn by his voice.
He wasn’t completely stupid. He lurched back into the cell and tried to slam the door after him. But it was locked into the open position. He tried to hide under his sink, but he was still grossly exposed.
The Snakeheads—two of them—came ticking into the cell on their clawed feet. They stared at him with their reptile eyes, white teeth stained with blood. He noticed some wore prison jumpsuits, in tatters. Others were dressed in what remained of jeans and T-shirts, lab coats or guard uniforms.
He trembled and pissed himself.
The Snakehead in the lead, one with the bare remains of a prison coverall, seemed drawn by this. It leaned forward, extending its serpentine neck, examining Marsh closely. Its tongue darted out and tasted Marsh’s sweat.
Marsh nearly lost it right there. But then the Snakehead pulled away. It moved backward, and the others did the same.
Marsh was about ready to believe he’d escaped when, almost as a parting gesture, the Snakehead reached out one claw and sliced a furrow deep into Marsh’s cheek.
He screamed and hid his face, tried to worm his bulk further into the corner of the cell, ready for more pain.
Nothing happened. When he finally opened his eyes, he was alone again. And despite the burning gash on his face, he felt pretty good.
It was almost as if they’d recognized him, he realized. As if they’d marked him as one of their own.
LEVEL FIVE
Zach was a dead man.
He’d seen Cade take on these things and he knew what they were capable of. They would run him down in less than a hundred yards. They would rip him apart like a crocodile snatching a gazelle from the bank of a watering hole. They’d open a hole in his chest and tear out his organs. They were faster and stronger. He was going to die.
He ran anyway.
He heard their claws on the floor, not too far back. He wasn’t sure where he was going—the place was laid out like a maze, but he kept turning corners, trying to keep the distance between them.
It wasn’t until he saw the steel door that he realized he’d just turned down a dead end.
He still wasn’t going to give up. Just like the idiots in the horror movies, he tried to open the door. When he found it was locked (of course), he pounded on it. Nothing.
Now he was really dead.
Maybe it was just as idiotic as pounding on the door, but he wanted to see the end coming.
He turned to face the Snakeheads.
Only there were no Snakeheads.
Somewhere along the way—Zach had been too busy running to notice when—the Snakeheads had stopped following him. He couldn’t even hear them now.
Zach waited, doubled over, trying to catch his breath.
The corridors behind him were eerily silent. As if the creatures had simply given up on him.
Zach had no way of knowing that he’d stumbled on the one thing the Snakeheads truly feared: the door behind him. All of them remembered, on a dim Pavlovian level, being taken behind that door. They knew horrible things had been done to them there. They knew that not everyone taken behind the door would come out. Even as twisted as their brains now were by the change, they knew that the door meant pain and death.
They weren’t going to get close to it again. Not ever.
Zach didn’t know this, but he wasn’t about to waste the chance he’d been given.
He waited as long as he thought possible, and then carefully made his way back to the main corridor.
He started looking for a way out.
LEVEL FOUR
Darnell Pendle was off-shift, dozing in front of a TV screen in the rec room, when the alarms sounded, only to be stopped in mid-screech. Huh. That was weird. He went back to sleep.
A little while later—he wasn’t sure how long it was—Pendle sat up. He thought he heard something. It almost sounded like someone whispering, “Hush.” Now he knew something was off. Nobody in the dorms was ever quiet, especially when he was trying to sleep.
“Anyone there?” Pendle called.
He heard it again. Hush, hush.
He knew what made that noise.
Pendle went for his gun.
Something lashed out at him, whip-fast. He felt a quick, sharp pain at his wrists.
He looked down and realized he didn’t have the gun. He couldn’t hold it because he had no hands.
At the ends of his wrists, there was nothing but exposed white bone and empty air.
There should be blood, he thought numbly, and then it came jetting out of him.
He heard himself screaming, although there was no real pain, not yet. Or if there was, his brain simply hadn’t caught up with it yet.
He looked up, and the Snakehead’s claws were coming down again. This time, he saw the long, knife-like edges—
It tore across his face, and his right eye no longer worked.
He knew someone had to hear him screaming by now.
His one good eye saw the blood all over him. The Snakehead ducked in with his teeth, right at Pendle’s chest.
He was no longer screaming, he realized. Maybe it was because he couldn’t feel much of anything. Or more likely, it was because he couldn’t seem to get any breath into his lungs.
He looked up again and saw the Snakehead over him. The white teeth, peeled back in what looked like a grin.
He raised the stub of his arm, but the Snakehead nuzzled it aside, almost gently, and then opened wide again.
Pendle felt cold all over, but he still wanted to ask how this happened. How did the thing get out of its cage?
The Snakehead didn’t have any answers, of course. It just kept grinning, tearing away great strips of skin with each jerk of its head.
LEVEL FOUR
Marsh walked the corridors with a crooked smile. He listened to the occasional sound of gunfire, the occasional scream. He nodded his head, agreeing with some unspoken question.
A soldier ran screaming down the hall, blood all over him. Marsh didn’t even look twice.
The bleeding on his face had stopped. It seemed stupid to wait inside the cell any longer. And he didn’t feel like he was in the slightest danger. He couldn’t explain it. But he didn’t stop to think much about it, either.
Suddenly, Marsh was pulled into a room off the main corridor. A small group of soldiers blockaded themselves inside.
They shouted things at him he didn’t bother to understand.
After a while of shouting, they left him alone, his back against the wall, as they looked out into the hallway, standing guard against whatever was out there.
Marsh decided he could wait here awhile. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, but he knew it was coming. Whatever it was, he was looking forward to it.
He had never felt so happy in all his life.
LEVEL FOUR
Dobbs walked into the toilet. He wasn’t the typical Archer/Andrews recruit. He was out of shape, with an undistinguished service record. But he was the guy who could get you anything. Someone had dropped him in supply and logistics at the start of his army career, and an obscene kind of genius flowered there. He supplied soldiers the world over with illegal drugs, porn, hookers and guns.
Then he discovered the real money was in livestock.
It began with a fluke. An Afghan warlord wanted to celebrate a victory with some Special Forces guys. Only problem: they were in a desolate section of the mountains where all the local livestock had been bombed, along with the people. Dobbs found himself transporting a dozen live goats, in crates, in a top-secret military aircraft.
He was pissed. He’d been ordered to do the job, so he didn’t make any money. He even had to clean the plane afterward, because the regular crews didn’t have security clearance for it. Everything about the mission was classified, even the goat shit.
Dobbs had one of those lightning flashes of business genius. He could transport more than just goats. Those crates with air holes could fit something far more valuable.
The U.S., Europe and Saudi Arabia all wanted children. For all kinds of different uses. And the one big surplus in any war zone or disaster area was kids. Wandering around, stunned and stupid, ready to follow anyone with a uniform and a candy bar.
So for a year before he was recruited by Archer/Andrews, Dobbs ran a successful child-smuggling ring. That’s how he joined the Company.
Like any good middleman, Dobbs didn’t think about what happened to his cargo once he got it from Point A to Point B. With the magic of the U.S. Army’s international transport system, he could have those orphans, sleeping quietly in a ketamine-induced coma, anyplace in the world in seventy-two hours or less.
You had to allow for some breakage in-flight. Not enough air in the container, overdose of sedatives, whatever. But the profit margins were amazing; even better than drugs.
Dobbs lowered his bulk onto the toilet.
The lights went out.
Bastards, Dobbs thought. “Hey,” he said. “
Hey!
I’m in here!”
No reply. He heard the sirens wail, then die almost immediately. Must be a power outage. The P.A. would have an announcement, but there were no speakers in the latrines.
“Asshole!” Dobbs yelled, just in case.
He heard the restroom door slam. A scratching noise, tentative at first. Like a dog or cat trying to open the stalls.
No, Dobbs thought. His throat closed. He began sweating wildly. There were no pets at the Site. There was only one thing that could be scratching.
The scratching continued. It went down the line of stalls, opening each door in turn.
For some reason, Dobbs thought of one of his shipments.
The missing fingernails, the broken knuckles. The skin gone blue and cyanotic at the edges. He’d seen this hand when he pried open a crate on one of his first deliveries. He’d misjudged the amount of air, and he’d lost six of ten of his cargo.