Adam Baker - Terminus

The creature looked back at him. It lifted its head.

‘Must be quite a line at the pearly gates right now. Hell of a queue. And when they’re done, when Saint Peter has ticked off the last few names, he’ll close those gates for good. Padlock and chain. Because no one else will be coming.’

He took aim at the missionary’s forehead. He began to squeeze the trigger.

‘There’s nothing, is there? That’s the truth of it. No Jesus. No angels. Nothing but the dark.’

‘Sir?’

Chief shut off the laser and turned around.

Byrne at the foot of the stairwell.

‘Sir. We got problems.’

The Chief descended the steps. His boots crackled on frozen blood. He holstered his pistol. He pulled off his respirator and gloves.

‘They’ve disabled the generator, sir,’ said Byrne. We’re trapped. We’ve got no way back to the roof.’

Jefferson hurried across the ticket hall to the elevator. He jabbed the Up button.

No response.

‘They took some kind of fuse, some kind of breaker,’ said Byrne.

‘Can you fix it?’

‘We don’t have the tools or the parts.’

‘Cunts,’ spat Jefferson. ‘Motherfucking cunts.’

‘They must have done it the moment we arrived,’ said Byrne. ‘Waited for the elevator to reach a standstill, then pulled the plug.’

‘Then they’re still close by. Find them. Bring them to me.’

‘Sir.’

‘About time we straightened a few things out.’

Lupe crouched in the conduit. She stuffed the generator fuse into her pocket.

She crawled through the narrow brick pipe. Knees and elbows rubbed raw. She paused and caught her breath. She wiped sweat from her face. She let her head sag and rest on brickwork rough as pumice.

She was sick. She was tired. Focus and fight suddenly overwhelmed by an enervating wave of self-pity.

What would Wade say if he were here, beside her in the tunnel? What hectoring drill-sergeant diatribe would he deliver if he found her ready to lay down and die?

‘Feel it,’ he would say. ‘That wave of infantile helplessness. Wallow. Let it happen. Allow yourself a moment of pure snivelling melancholy.

‘Then pick an enemy.

‘Hate someone. Nothing galvanises like anger. Pure rocket fuel. Stoke your rage. Despise the Chief. Loathe his rank, the star on his collar, the flag on his sleeve. The walking embodiment of every uniformed, buzz-cut, paramilitary, hide-behind-a-badge asshole that ever demanded you bend and cough.

‘Compose yourself. Get your shit together.

‘Now get up and kill him.’

Lupe lifted her head.

‘Come on.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘Move your ass, bitch.’

She gathered strength and continued to crawl.

Distant glow. Lattice light. A grille in the conduit floor.

She inched forwards, quiet as she could, and looked down.

She was in the crawlspace above the ticket hall. The Chief was directly beneath her. She looked down on the top of his head. Close enough to hear him clear his throat, close enough to see beads of sweat on his brow.

Chief checked his pistol mag, then holstered the weapon. He took a hip flask from his breast pocket. He threw his head back and swigged, and for an instant Lupe found herself looking directly at his face, his half-closed eyes.

He capped the flask and tucked it back in his pocket.

He cupped his gloved hands and shouted:

‘Hello? Hello? I know you can hear me.’

He listened to his voice echo and die.

‘You’re hiding. I don’t blame you. I shot Officer Donahue. That was a mistake. A terrible, idiotic mistake. I’m sorry. I didn’t want her to suffer. That’s the honest truth. I wanted to save her the pain and degradation of a slow death. It was stupid. I fouled up. What can I say?’

He waited for a reply.

‘I have to make decisions. That’s my job. I have responsibilities. The men look to me for leadership, protection. I have to make the calls.’

He uncapped his hip flask and took another swig.

‘You need help. You’ve absorbed a massive amount of radiation. More than I anticipated. I swear, I wouldn’t have dispatched a rescue team to this hellhole if I fully understood the danger. We have medical gear back at Avalanche Lake. Come with us. You could live.’

Long pause.

‘Come on. Talk to me. How do we straighten this out?’

The Chief waited for a reply that didn’t come.

He was joined by Byrne.

‘We have to get out of here, sir.’

‘Not without Ekks. Search the place.’

‘We did.’

‘Search it again. He’s here. You missed him. There can’t be many places to hide.’

Lupe looked up from the grille. A preternatural instinct. A sudden, skin-prickle conviction she was being watched from within the tunnel.

She looked beyond the grille, into the conduit darkness. A monstrous, malformed shape blocking the pipe. Galloway/Cloke. Broken, dying.

The hybrid had folded into a small alcove. Water pipes lagged with asbestos. Stopcocks furred with dust. It huddled in the narrow space, arms wrapped across its chest as if it were preparing to pupate, entering a period of deep hibernation that would last until some strange new life-stage cracked the husk of its old, human shell and squirmed free.

Lupe let her eyes adjust.

A monstrous, elephantine head. Fused skulls jostled for position behind Cloke’s face. Lips pulled to a wide gash, exposing double rows of teeth and two plump wet tongues.

Bulbous double eyeballs protruding from taut lids, black and featureless like the orbs of a shark.

‘Galloway,’ she whispered. ‘Can you hear me?’

The hybrid had been cut clean in half at the waist. Internal organs ripped from its thorax. Shuddering respirations. Circulatory system bled dry. Twin hearts slowly fluttering to a standstill. Nothing to pump. Ventricles clogged and clotted with stagnant blood.

Dead yet alive. Inert meat animated by impulses sent through the fibrous metallic tendrils which permeated every muscle and nerve. A hijacked corpse still induced to twitch and dance, like severed frog legs pinned to a dissection table and convulsed by electrical stimulation.

‘Hey,’ hissed Lupe. ‘Look at me.’

The grotesque head slowly turned. Black eyes glittered in the darkness.

‘Galloway. Are you still in there? Can you hear me?’

No reaction.

‘It’s Lupe. Remember me? Remember the cuffs? The chains?’ She reached in her pant pocket. She took out the empty matchbook. Juggs XXX Bar. She held it up. ‘Think back. Me and Wade. We took your smokes. We took your gun.’

The creature began to stir.

‘Yeah. That’s it. That’s right. You remember. Listen. I need one last favour. Do one last thing for me, then you can sleep for ever.’

A clatter from the IRT office.

Byrne and Bingham shouldered their rifles and trained them on the door.

Craven swung the SAW and braced his legs.

The Chief drew his Colt and took aim.

Lupe walked from the office, hands raised, red dot of the laser sight centred on her chest.

‘Might have known you would survive,’ said Chief. ‘Fucking roach.’ He cocked his pistol. ‘I’m going to count to three. Where’s Ekks?’

Lupe shrugged.

‘If you shoot me, you’ll never find him.’

‘Yeah, we will. One.’

‘You’ve been here half an hour. That’s twenty-eight minutes longer than you intended.’

‘It’s a small station. We’ll rip the place apart. Two.’

‘He’s all yours. Seriously. I don’t want the fuck. I just want to cover my ass.’ She gestured to the body slumped at the back of the freight elevator. ‘I don’t want to end up like Donnie.’