Robert Bennett - The Company Man

She sat up and looked back over at the building. “What do you think’s in there?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t think it’s good.”

“I don’t either. Do you think we can get inside?”

He raised an eyebrow. Then he smiled and nodded.

Hayes led her in a strange pattern across the clearing, ducking and weaving, pausing here and there. It seemed erratic and mad, and she was not sure what he was doing until she realized there were men patrolling the outskirts of the field, walking back and forth with rifles under their arms.

“It’s not guarded well,” he whispered as they moved. “Probably because they never expected anyone to come here.”

At the end they stopped and crawled low until they were near the building itself. Samantha saw it was set low in the ground. Mostly windowless, except in certain places near the ground level. Hayes led her to the closest wall, then sank down low and began pushing at the handle of one of the windows, murmuring to keep a lookout. He managed to shove it open but it wedged itself stuck halfway.

“We’ll have to try another,” he said softly.

“I can fit,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“We can find out.” She maneuvered her legs around and pushed them through, then slid all the way past the gap, her dress rising up above her knees.

When she landed she was worried that her feet would make some sound, but the floor was bare cement and she made no noise at all. She let her eyes adjust and saw she was in some enormous dark storage room. Crates and boxes were filed away along the walls with little paths running between them. The ceiling was low and cramped and she had a hard time seeing the rest of the room, yet somehow the layout felt familiar.

“You all right?” Hayes whispered above.

“Fine.” She turned back to begin to work at the window when she noticed an insignia on one of the boxes. She stooped to look at it and traced her fingers over the ink.

“Well? Are you getting this goddamn window open or not?”

Samantha frowned, then reached up and twisted the handle around to let the window open fully. Hayes slipped through, silent as a leaf falling on the forest floor.

“Look,” she said, pointing at one of the boxes.

He squinted to see. When he finally saw the imperial M on the side he nodded grimly and said, “Well. It’s as we thought, then.” He looked up and around the basement. Then suddenly he froze and tensed up like an animal hearing a gunshot ripping through the trees.

“What?” she asked.

“There’s… there’s something else here,” he said. “In here with us.”

“What else? What do you mean? More guns?”

“I… I don’t know yet. Something. I can hear it.”

“Should we go?”

Hayes swallowed and shook his head. “N-no. No, I have to see. I have to see what this is.”

“But why?”

He was quiet for a moment and then said, “Because it’s talking to me. Or trying to. It knows we’re here, Sam.”

They walked off into the boxes toward the back, where a dark stairway down loomed. Besides the sound of his shuffling feet and the slight moan of a distant fan the storage room was silent.

They moved down the stairway and came to the next floor. Down below they saw yet more crates with strange shapes covered in tarps between them. She wondered if they should peek under their folds, but for some reason she was afraid that the things underneath would wake and fall upon them. They were sleeping, or perhaps waiting for somebody to stumble by. Like an ancient museum, all shut down while it waited for its next visitors.

Hayes looked out on the lower floor and said, “No. It’s not here, either.”

“What isn’t?”

“There’s something here. Or someone. I’m not sure yet.”

They went down another floor and looked out at the next level. This one seemed empty, the blank cement floor stretching far back into the shadows. Hayes took one step out and looked into the darkness. Leaned forward as though drawn by an invisible string. His face drained of color and he said, “It’s here.”

He began walking forward. Samantha looked and saw a set of switches on the far right of the wall. She hesitated and then hit them. Out in the gloom orbs of light flickered, quavered, then strengthened and stayed on, revealing a small doorway at the far side of the floor. Set around that were chairs and charts and small tables set in a circle.

Hayes staggered toward the doorway, reeling drunkenly. Samantha rushed to keep up with him and called, “Mr. Hayes! Wait!”

He ignored her, stumbling as he kicked over a chair. Then he fell forward into the small black doorway and was gone.

Samantha slowed as she approached. She looked in and thought. Then she took off her watch and her belt and whatever other metals she wore, though she was not sure why, and took a deep breath and stepped through.

She had expected to feel something. Some change in the air or in the ground beneath her feet. But there was nothing. Just more cement, more cold air, more darkness.

“Mr. Hayes?” she asked.

“I’m here,” said his voice.

“Are you all right?”

“No,” he said quietly.

She reached out and felt along the wall, searching for a light switch again. When she could not find any she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small box of matches and struck one.

She could see Hayes standing nearby, staring into the darkness. He did not appear hurt. She stepped forward to tend to him and as she did the flickering light struck something mere feet ahead. Something immense and shining and golden.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“What is that?” she asked, and stepped closer.

The object’s surface was many-faceted, made of thousands of tiny rectangles of paper-thin gold that were as reflective as a mirror. Its side was rounded but the thing was so enormous it disappeared beyond the light of the match flame. As she moved she saw the match reflected in each of the tiny mirrors, even the ones that, by her guessing, were not at the angle to fully reflect it. She was not sure why but suddenly she felt that all the little mirrors were eyes and each one was watching the light, the image of her face trapped in each of their flat golden pupils.

“It knows we’re here,” Hayes said softly.

“What?”

“This. This thing. I don’t know what it is. But it knows we’re here. It’s thinking. I can feel it.”

Samantha drew away until her back touched the wall. In the dying light of the match flame she saw the light switch at the other end of the room. She paced over and hit it and the room lit up and they saw the thing fully, sitting in the center of the room like an enormous beached whale, long and tapered at both ends with a mass of strange piping hanging truncated from its midsection. It looked like some nameless organ of a massive clock, some great machine that had spent its long life connected to a dozen others in constant movement, back and forth, patient and ageless. In some places clumps of dirt and ripped-out, ancient-looking tree roots had woven their way into the innards of the device and remained lodged there. Some of the mirrors were broken and missing, leaving its glittering hide patched and dark in places.

“This… thinks?” she asked.

“Yes. I can feel it,” Hayes said faintly. “Not like a person. Not like when I’m standing near you. Less than a person. But also more. Like it’s doing only one or two things in comparison to our hundreds, but those things… They’re so big.”

“It’s doing them now?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not fully. It’s trying to talk to me, Sam. But it’s not… not smart enough. But, Christ, just the fact that it’s trying…”