The Void (11 page)

III

Both Clifton and Embry stared at Morgan in wonder and anger respectively. The three had relocated to Clifton’s mobile command unit as the rest of his men worked on processing and organizing the now calm crowd ready for transport. Despite the no smoking signs, Embry lit a cigarette with shaking hands and inhaled gratefully as he cast a mistrustful eye towards Morgan, who was absolutely calm as he sat opposite Clifton. The room was also surrounded by armed guards, who were weapons ready, even if they weren’t directly pointing them at Morgan and Embry.

“Okay,” Clifton said, looking at Embry. “Somebody talk to me and tell me what the hell is going on here.”

“You guys are the army, if you don’t know, we really are screwed,” Embry shot back, inhaling deeply on his smoke.

“Care to tell me how you survived that explosion just now?”

Embry inhaled, coughed, tasted blood, swallowed it back down, and then inhaled again. “I don’t know.”

“We ought to have someone take a look at you. That cough sounds bad.”

“So it should. Cancer,” Embry said, managing a smile.

“I’m sorry,” Clifton said, unsure quite how to respond.

“Me too,” Embry replied as he blew smoke out of his nostrils.

“She had to die.”

Both Embry and Clifton looked at Morgan; who was staring at the tabletop, tapping it with a forefinger.

“Who did?” Clifton asked.

“The girl. They said they wanted her. She was spoiled.”

“Which girl? Who wanted her?”

“There was a girl, a young kid, in my house before that chopper of yours crashed. She didn’t make it.” Embry glared at Morgan as he said it, but the boy ignored it.

“Do you know what’s in the hole, son?” Clifton asked, trying to coax the information out of the boy.

“Yes.”

“What is it? What’s down there?”

“Fear,” Morgan said, smiling at Clifton.

“But you aren’t afraid of them, are you, Morgan?” Clifton asked.

“No, I don’t need to be. Neither does he,” the boy said absently, jabbing his thumb towards Embry.

“Why?”

“Because we’re protected. They can’t hurt us, no matter what.”

Embry looked just as surprised as Clifton and gawped at Morgan.

“And what about us, the rest of us, I mean.”

“It’s too late.”

“Why?”

Morgan looked Clifton in the eye, and the smile melted from his lips. “Everyone else is already dead. You can’t stop them.”

“Then who can, Morgan. Please, what can we do?” Clifton was pleading now because he was afraid. The hole was unnatural, it had an aura that he could feel even here down the street in his command unit, and he would do anything to be rid of it.

Morgan looked at Embry, then back to Clifton.

“Come with me,” he said, hopping off his seat and towards the door. The armed guards bristled and visibly tensed, but Clifton stood them down and followed Morgan outside, Embry in tow.

The incident with Embry and the helicopter had given the army enough time to regain control of the streets. Already, there was a heavily armed line as people were processed and sent to waiting buses in the adjoining streets, ready to be shipped out to temporary refugee camps which had been set up at the shopping mall a quarter of a mile away from Maple street. Although it was now empty, the street told its own story, and was littered with debris from the burning buildings and the crashed chopper, as well as spent bullet casings and occasional pockets of blood, which were already drying into the concrete.

All paled in comparison to the void.

It now covered the entire width of the street and seemed to thrum with an energy and power of its own. Morgan walked towards it and, as he followed, Clifton noticed that his watch had stopped working, and that the air tasted like the very edge of a coming storm after a sticky, hot summer. Morgan walked down the middle of the street, absently sidestepping the occasional twisted shard of rotor blade or chunk of concrete debris. He came to a halt around twelve feet from the hole and looked around at the empty houses which surrounded them. Embry watched, fascinated and more than a little afraid as the boy frowned, chewing his lip as he looked at the surrounding houses, then he slowly dropped to one knee, and placed his hands palms up on the asphalt at either side of him.

They came instantly.

Out of the dark places, under window frames and eaves, from under rocks and shadow-draped corners of homes they skittered on spindly legs towards Morgan. He closed his eyes and waited, and still they came, clambering onto his upturned palms and waiting there for the rest of their brethren. Embry and Clifton watched, mesmerized by the display as spiders of all shapes and sizes attached themselves to Morgan, climbing over each other in order to retain a hold. Soon enough, his palms were fully covered, and so the spiders started to spread up his arms. Embry felt his cancer ravaged innards squirm a little as he watched the bizarre display, and not for the first time wondered how the hell he had been pulled into such a situation.

The public, those who were still being processed, were now watching the spectacle, and the excited whispers grew into a nervous chatter as people gathered close, straining to get a closer look at the boy in the middle of the street.

“What the hell is this?” Clifton said, looking at Embry with a face that appeared stretched and exhausted.

“I don’t know,” Embry replied, unable to take his eyes away from Morgan and his arms full of spiders.

IV

Sheppard had cleaned himself up as best he could, and amid the chaos, blended in perfectly with the crowd as they waited for the military to process them. Images of his daughter exploded into his mind, and it took all of his will to stop himself from reacting there and then. He pushed through the crowd to get a better look, keeping a cautious eye on the soldiers, who were, much like the public, staring at the boy who now had twin sleeves of spiders. Sheppard didn’t know how or why he had done such a thing and cared even less. His only concern was for revenge, which throbbed and pulsed at the very center of his being like a rotten tooth.

He pulled the baseball cap lower over his eyes, and adjusted the backpack on his shoulder, shifting the weight of the bomb and its devastating payload across his spine. The idea of what he was about to do didn’t frighten him as he might have expected, in fact, the tight knot in his stomach was one of anticipation and excitement at avenging the death of his daughter. He nudged past a family, the father glaring at him, but perhaps seeing the emptiness in Sheppard’s eyes, averted his gaze and steered his family towards the line for processing. Sheppard moved closer, getting to the barrier less than ten feet from the boy and the two men. Under his shirt, he wore a vest packed tightly with blocks of C4 explosive, which in turn were wired through the back of his coat and into the backpack, where the bulk of the device was located.

He held the trigger in his hand, a simple push button device. When depressed, an electric charge would instantaneously detonate the C4, then the container within the backpack, which was filled with iron nails, ball bearings, and other shrapnel. The effects would be devastating, the loss of lives severe, and yet he could accept the casualties because it would mean that he had avenged his daughter, and done so with glory. He cautiously eyed the soldiers, who were still watching the spectacle unfold in the middle of the street. Discreetly, Sheppard reached under his sweater and armed the device. He took a deep breath and prepared to commit the ultimate sacrifice.

He was ready.

V

With his arms now a skittering mass of spiders, Morgan stood and looked at both Clifton and Embry.

“This way. Let me show you,” he said, and then walked towards the lip of the void. Embry and Clifton followed cautiously, both aware that for now, they were just bit part players in whatever Morgan was trying to show them. As they neared the hole, both Embry and Clifton were more aware of the energy, which emitted from it. There was a palpable energy, a sense of not only immense depth but of incredible power.

Morgan was fearless as he walked to the edge, allowing the toes of his sneakers to hang over the edge.

“Not too close, kid,” Embry said, but his voice felt somehow muted, changed by the atmosphere around the hole. Embry looked down and was overcome with an intense feeling of vertigo as the black depths of the void stared back at him.

“It’s okay,” Morgan said.

Clifton could only watch, his tongue limp and useless as it sat on the floor of his mouth.

“Watch,” Morgan said and extended his arms out over the hole.

The spiders reacted, releasing their grip on Morgan and tumbling into the void. Embry and Clifton stared as spider after spider launched itself down into the depths.

“I... I don’t understand…” Clifton managed.

“They’re not afraid. If you’re not afraid, it makes them weak.”

“But people are calm, people aren’t afraid now.”

“This isn’t for what has already happened, this is for what comes next.”

“What do you mean? What comes next?” Clifton asked, flicking his eyes to Embry, who looked every bit as shell-shocked as he was.

“For the man. The man with the bad thing.”

“Who? What man? You’re not making any sense!”

The last of the spiders fell into the darkness, and Morgan sighed as he watched them fall.

“What is it kid, what’s happening?” Clifton pressed. “Tell me about the man.”

“He’s here,” Morgan said, then turned and pointed back towards the street.

Sheppard had already cleared the barrier, and was racing towards the three of them, his face set in a determined grimace. Embry saw the backpack and the trigger in the man’s hand, and he saw the same features of the girl who had been obliterated in his front room, the one who had left only a smooth pale hand behind, and he knew that it wouldn’t be cancer that finished him, but this man who was bearing down on them.

For Clifton, the situation was different. For the first time in the last hour, this was a situation that he not only knew, but he could also control.

“Stop that man!” he roared, whilst at the same time smoothly drawing his sidearm.

“Stop! Don’t move!” Clifton bellowed.

The man didn’t listen. If anything, he increased his speed. Embry could only stare at the trigger clutched in his hand, and wonder if death would come quickly, or in agonizing slow motion. Clifton fired, the bullet tearing through the man’s shoulder, but it didn’t take him down, or even slow him. Clifton went to fire again, but Morgan pushed his arm, making him miss.

“God-damn it, kid. I—”

It came out of the hole. A wet, black protrusion, bringing with it that stomach-churning stench that had so far been subtle from the edge of the void. It grabbed Sheppard, wrapping around his chest and face and lifting him into the air. As quickly as it had appeared, the tentacle-like appendage retreated with its prize, pulling Sheppard past the trio and into the void. The three of them looked down as he disappeared into the darkness, and with a last defiant glare, Sheppard depressed the detonator.

The trio’s world filled with a brilliant flash of light, followed by a searing heat which launched them back through the air as the bomb exploded. Fire and smoke erupted from the void, sending debris falling down into the hole. The sound was deafening, and, although most of the blast had been contained, some shrapnel still escaped, zinging through the air and causing the recently calmed crowd into another bout of blind panic. Embry covered his head with his arms, and then felt himself grabbed roughly under the armpit.

“Get your damn ass up!” the hot-breathed voice yelled in his ear.

Embry looked up to see Clifton, the unconscious Morgan held under one arm as he pulled Embry to his feet with the other. Clifton’s face was covered in a mask of crimson, his eyes staring out wildly as he dragged them to safety. Soldiers raced to meet them, pulling them behind the barrier.

Clifton and Embry sat on the grass, looking at the void, which was now billowing with smoke. The ground began to rumble. It was subtle at first, but grew in intensity, breaking windows and dislodging more rubble from both Embry’s house and the ravaged apartment building.

“What is it, what’s happening?” Clifton said, wiping the blood from his face with the forearm of his jacket as Morgan moaned and sat up, rubbing his grimy head with a forearm.

Morgan stared at the hole, and for the first time, fear was etched onto his face.

“They’re coming,” he said.

Clifton and Embry looked towards the hole, and once again, Maple Street descended into chaos.

In the city, hospital rooms filled quicker than the overstretched staff could handle. Soldiers and special force agents came in with gunshot wounds, wheeled in gurneys, as nurses dashed to and fro to sedate the screaming men. One of them, Pino, shot out a bone-chilling gargle, as he felt an unbearable pain race from his lower abdomen down to his left leg. He looked down while the doctor worked on him, stabilizing his pulse, and injecting him full of saline solution for hydration.

The bone under his skin was exposed. Muscles hung in tatters, their network of flesh hanging limply like raw, minced steak. Cut cleanly in half, the shin bone jutted outwards at a strange angle. He was about to pass out, barely hanging on. He concentrated on the good things: his wife back home, his two kids, an eleven and a fifteen-years-old. Overwhelming pain washed over him in waves. He stifled a shriek as the medical surgeons placed him on the operating table. They said it was unsalvageable.

What—what was unsalvageable? Dear God. But, he knew, it was his leg. They discussed at what location they should remove it as if they were ordering take-out dinner.
That’s my leg, for god sake!
They said the other one had to go too. The hospital staff watched the nurse administer a sedative through the intravenous tube that could knock out a horse. Before, the drugs kicked in, Pino heard the electric saw whir to life, making its metallic buzz. He replayed the events back in his head, the last forty minutes of it all.

He saw the recoil of his glock pistol, and the brain gushing outward in a volcanic eruption. His friend—he had shot his friend, in the head. The fucker had gone crazy! Mad! Bat-shit insane! Then it all went to hell. The citizens were shooting from every direction, from every house windows that lined the street. Who could’ve known so many Americans owned guns? What was it? Seventy million? One in three Americans owned firearms? Why would they shoot at him?

Then after things had died down a bit, he’d felt a blast; a denotation that rocked his whole body, sent him flying. It threw him off his feet. Just a forward momentum of a bomb ejecting shockwaves with propulsion-like accuracy, ripping his tendons below his knees.

Now, here he was in a twisting, writhing agony. He saw black and a rush of lightheadedness and then, in a second or two, he was out cold.

II

Conflicting reports were dispatched to the President of the United States. The first news that trickled in was the hole had gotten wider. Second, there were casualties. A few guards had taken substantial damage when an explosion went off. Many derailed in deep psychosis, turning psychotic, claiming the neighborhood had gone berserk.

“What do you mean berserk?” Evans shouted into the phone.

“Mr. President,” said his advisor. “The secretary of defense just got word from the homeland department that a suspected terrorist by the name of Sheppard Singh was seen screaming for his daughter before detonating an explosion.”

“How’s that even possible? I thought our airstrike took him out.”

“He must’ve escaped, sir.”

“Wasn’t he on target?”

“Yes, he was.”

“Who gave the go ahead orders?”

“You did, sir.”

“This is why we shouldn’t have closed Guantanamo,” he snapped.

The president looked out the window. Sprawling green grass freshly cut “How could something like that slip us by?” He swept his hair with a jittering hand. “Have they found any survivors?”

“None. We’re doing door to door seizures now. Except, I’ve been informed that there are human remains in the elevator shaft. Looks like there’d been an explosion and the whole elevator had been severed from its cable. A firefighter found the bodies as he made his way in, or what was left of them.”

“Has the fire been extinguished?”

“The fire has been contained, yes. Mr. President, I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear—”

Evans whirled around and nearly tripped on the golf bags placed on the floor, after a few rounds with the secret service, yesterday evening. “You damn well should know this is not what I want. Another terrorist attack on our soil? This is going to be a PR nightmare.”

“I understand that, Mr. President.”

Evans picked up a golf club and swung at an invisible white pin. “So what’s the bad news?”

There was a pause in the intercom. The commander in chief heard the soft labored breathing of his lower down through the speaker phone. “The bad news is that we were able to identify the remains going by the mailing list and by their cell phone records.”

“And?”

“And, they’re Saudi nationals.”

Evans stopped swinging and placed the golf club back into its black bag. He took off his white gloves and hurled them at his desk.

“I don’t believe this”

“I’m sorry. If the company had known the occupants of that building housed foreign students who were the heirs of the prince of Saudi Arabia, we wouldn’t have recommended using a drone strike.”

“It’s too late for hindsight now.”

“Nothing’s too late, Mr. President.”

“What do you mean?”

“You do what you had planned before. Under the terms of the condition, you can run for a third term. And you must apologize to the Saudis, even if their sons had been radicalized. Otherwise…” the voice trailed off.

“Otherwise, the citizens will blame me for the inaction of rising gas prices. What’s the price at the pump, now?”

“It’s six dollars, sir.”

“That’s cheap compared to last year,” Evans said, trying to rub the headache away. He’d send his wife or the vice-president on Air Force One, first thing come next morning. “We need to get this shit back in order. We’ll do whatever it takes. You understand?”

“Yes, of course. We are always humbled to know that you’re sitting in the presidency seat. We wouldn’t be here without you.”

“Keep me informed.”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a click and the buzzing silence of a dead ring tone.

III

The emergency response crew shifted through the debris. The stealth copter had broken up inside Embry’s home. It burned the hallways, the smoldering ashes billowing up and out of the gaping hole where the roof one stood.

A moan escaped Edgar’s mouth. The co-pilot of the fighter bird unbuckled his harness and crawled out, wondering why the pilot, Lance had jumped just seconds before his world was engulfed in fire and white light. He had third degree burns on much of his upper torso, an agonizing fire within a fire. Pus oozed out as the skin blistered, turning salmon red. His fingers were charred and blackened. He could see his bones through the melted flesh as he dragged himself out of the hatch.

He heard the sounds of a rescue dog. It was barking in the distant. Pain ignited all over his body as he tugged his lifeless feet and burnt boots across the floor. Blood thumped in his eardrums.

A little girl’s voice called out to him. “Hey mister, you don’t look so good.”

Footsteps approached him. Those small legs belonged to a childlike figure with long brunette hair. Tina’s face had been bent out of shape when the wooden beams had fallen on top of her. She had also burned in the fire, her skin blackened and cracked, her eyes hollow sockets that shone beams of light, spilling radiation outward.

The sides of her stomach were ripped open, where the ribcage joined the back of the spine, protecting her kidneys. What Lance saw horrified him as he tilted his head to better see the impossible abomination.

The girl had hairy insect-like legs protruding from her sides.

Her actual feet didn’t touch the ground, and the sounds he had heard, the peculiar scraping noise of footfalls, were those of Tina’s extra appendages which clicked and clacked on the hardwood floor.

Lance screamed, again, this time in absolute fear, pure and baseless. He tried to maneuver away from the monstrous child, limbs feebly moving, only to hear the growl of an overgrown mastiff, over his exposed neck. Tina’s feelers touched the backside of Lance’s burnt skin and hairless head as it caressed his dissolved clothes and open, simmering skin.

He heard rescuers drawing closer. “Help me! Somebody, help me!” he gargled, just one voice in a chorus of hundreds dying and wounded. He saw the rippling reflection of the K9 unit dogs surrounding him. He turned his head and caught a glimmer of the girl diving into the floor, meters ahead of him, and disappearing into a cutaway hole, giggling.

Isis…
she chuckled.
Isssissss…

She grinned, her mouth a yawning maw and winked a dead eye before vanishing like an oily substance.

The rescue dogs came on the run, and they refused to stop. By the time their masters caught up, Edgar was already dead.

IV

Meredith hacked into the body with a handsaw. Her neighbor, Hanna, mumbled something through her teeth that were shattered. Her gums flapped as she shrieked loudly, body gyrating, a propulsion of blood splattering upward. Meredith had covered the basement floor with a plastic tarp, as flies settled down on Hanna’s skin. Two feet had been severed at the ankle down. Meredith pulled up to finish off one of Hanna’s hands.

For the past couple of hours, she had been working furiously on disposing her neighbor’s body. She didn’t hear the gunshots outside or the crash of something metallic and a loud boom, nor the sirens of ambulance and fire trucks just outside her door. It was meaningless. They all meant nothing in the grander scheme of things. Except for the phone calls.

At four in the afternoon, her fiancé Don called. He seemed far away; faint, as if he was calling through an electrical line. Static masked the monotonous tone of a man knocked under. He was breathing heavily and said he needed help.

“Where are you?”

Have you been doing as I say?

“Donald? Is that you?”

I need help. Come to me.

“Where are you?”

We need to get rid of its body.

“
Did you find who was calling on her phone?” Meredith looked down at the corpse. Her eyelids showed white. Mouth frozen in a gaping hole, Hanna had finally succumbed to the other side. “What is it?”

You know, don’t you? You’ve always known.

“No, I don’t know—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she murmured, sweat pooling down her neck and coagulating on her collarbone. Her arms pumped up and down as she sliced into the neck.

It’s me, your husband.
The voice on the other line changed, and it sounded like the man whom she had loved for six years before he died in the fiery accident, crashing his vehicle, and plowing into innocent bystanders.
It’s me, honey…

The phone was full of static again. She turned off the handsaw and put it down.

“You’re not alive. How can you be here?” she whispered, angry, confused and upset.

You must destroy them. You must stop them from getting in to this world.

“That’s what I’ve been doing,” Meredith whispered, covering her mouthpiece with one hand. “She wasn’t human. I had to kill her. I had to use self-defense.”

Your son.

“Morgan? My Morgan?”

Find him…

“What do you want me to do with him?”

Do you want to die? Do you want him to die?

“No.”

Kill him…

“Why? He hasn’t seen what I’ve done.”

He sees everything.

“It wasn’t my fault.”

For God so loved this world. They’re everywhere.
The line went dead silent.

Meredith woke up from a nightmare. She showered. She rubbed the foggy mirror with a hand, wiping it clean. Her son knew what was going on—he said he saw things which weren’t there. She stared at herself in the hollowed eye-sockets, wild and brimming red. She inspected herself, watching her youthful body age forward in a flash sequence, small petulant body sagging—the belly once retaining its youthful beauty, loosening and drooping. She had washed all the blood away, her skin spotless from the sacrificial blood of the lamb.

She awoke to a fresh start. She hid the dismembered body in a roll-away laundry hamper. It was time to find her son.

V

As the forensic teams gathered the evidence near the sinkhole, Morgan and Embry were told to go to a shelter, a refugee center at the school called Hillside Elementary. There was a meeting in progress. Fifty people in the community sat in retractable chairs which were placed side by side in the auditorium.

When darkness fell, and the clock struck eight o’clock, the vice principal, Valerie Jun, and few board members settled in their seats behind a long hickory table. They took questions. Originally, the meeting was about the rampant bullying that had affected the school inner grounds, but the questions eventually turned towards the sinkhole.

“Can you believe the gall of our officials?” one man asked in the back. “They’ve been taking away our rights. So what if the hole took away Mr. Robin’s home? Our homes are intact. Why are they forcing us out?”