Paul Melko: The Walls of the Universe

Someone nudged him awake.

“What?”

“Shh!”

Corrundrum was in his face. “Out of the car,” he whispered.

“What?”

Corrundrum pulled the gun from his pocket. “Don’t make a sound.”

John got out of the car. He considered nudging Prime, but he was snoring in the backseat, beyond reach.

“Over there.”

The air was damp and dewy on his cheeks. His breath came in a white cloud.

“What are you doing?”

“Keep going,” Corrundrum said. The man glanced over his shoulder at the car.

“Corrundrum! We had a deal.”

Corrundrum chuckled darkly. “You’re not even singletons. You don’t deserve a transfer.”

“You can’t do this!”

Corrundrum nudged him with the pistol barrel. “Remove the transfer. Give it to me.”

“No!”

“It doesn’t matter to me, except it will take longer to remove from your dead body,” Corrundrum said. “Give me the transfer. Now.”

“I can’t,” John said. “My friends will die.”

“Fine.” Corrundrum raised the pistol.

There was a pop.

John tensed, but there was no pain. That wasn’t so bad, he thought. Then Corrundrum pitched forward.

Prime knelt ten meters away, gun held in a two-handed grip.

Corrundrum rolled over on his back, gasping for breath. Blood welled up black behind him.

“Jesus!” John said. “You shot him.”

For a moment, the handgun was still pointed at John’s chest. He stared down the barrel into Prime’s eyes. Then Prime slid the gun into his pocket.

“I don’t think I can ever trust anyone,” he said. “Except for you, except for Casey.”

“You shot him.”

John rushed forward and lifted Corrundrum’s neck. Blood and snot gurgled in his nose.

“Fuck’n-Fuck’n-,” he gasped. “Fuck’n dups.”

Corrundrum exhaled once more; then he died.

“He’s dead,” John said.

Prime shrugged, but his fingers were fists. He was shaking.

“Him or you, brother.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“We’re closer than brothers, but there’s no words for it,” Prime said. “Grab the body. We need to move. It’s past midnight.”

John stood up and walked past Prime. “You grab the body, bro,” John said.

He went and stood next to the transfer point marker. Had it been a mistake to ask Prime for help? Corrundrum was dead. Prime was armed. John felt naked, even with the device tucked under his shirt.

He turned as he heard the sound of Prime dragging Corrundrum’s body down the hill toward him. Prime grunted, then sprawled onto the ground. John felt a moment’s pity for him, then decided lugging Corrundrum’s corpse was penance for killing him.

Prime finally managed to get Corrundrum near the marker.

“Thanks for the help,” Prime gasped.

John said nothing.

“We’ll need to take him with us, to hide the body.”

John grunted. He dialed the machine to 7650, while Prime dragged Corrundrum’s body close to them. John shivered at the nearness of the corpse.

John found the dial that increased the radius of the field. He set it to the maximum radius.

“What are you doing there? What does that do?”

“You don’t know?” John asked.

“No!”

“Increases the radius of the field.”

“How do you know?”

“I took this one apart, remember? I built one from scratch.”

“Right.”

“Ready?”

“No.”

John looked again at Prime. He had one hand on Corrundrum’s shoulder. The other was rubbing Prime’s scalp. Even in the cold night air, he was sweating. He was genuinely scared.

“You don’t want to do this, that’s fine,” John said.

“No way. I’m coming. I owe… people.”

“Fine. Let’s go.” John stepped next to Prime, face-to-face with his twin. “Seven-six-five-oh, here we come.”

John’s ears popped, and the moonlit gray was replaced with pitch-black.

He fell, maybe a half meter, landing awkwardly on his left ankle. Nearby he heard John Prime land against something that rattled metal on metal.

“Flashlights,” Prime hissed. “We should have brought flashlights.”

“Let’s go back and get some,” John replied.

“God, I hate this,” Prime said. John listened in the darkness to Prime’s fast breathing, the stress in his voice.

“You’re okay, man,” John said. “We’re okay. You can calm down now.”

Prime laughed, almost hysterically. Then he paused and said, “Yeah, thanks.”

John spun slowly around. The air was moist. They were underground, not in the open at all as they had expected. Perhaps this was just as well.

“We missed the parking lot,” Prime said.

John reached out, felt cold cement blocks.

“We’re lucky we missed that wall,” he said.

“Shit.”

John reached along the wall. His elbow knocked into something that clattered, and then his fingers found a light switch. The room lit up.

It was a basement room, twenty meters long, filled with odds and ends, buckets, mops, old equipment, scuba gear. Rows of shelves were stacked with boxes. It was empty of any people, Goths or otherwise, save dead Corrundrum.

“Oops,” Prime said.

“What?” John asked.

“That’s how big it is.” The device’s field hadn’t quite reached Corrundrum’s feet. The corpse had been amputated at the shins. “Someone is going to get a surprise tomorrow morning.”

Blood flowed across the floor in a wave, reeking of iron. John’s stomach flipped and he looked away.

“I had been twenty-five percent sure he’d turn on us,” Prime said. “Guess I was right.”

“There were other ways to deal with him,” John said.

Prime stared at him for a moment. “This cleans up a lot of loose ends for me.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

There was a single metal fire door. John twisted the knob and pulled it open. It squeaked like old bedsprings. John paused, peering beyond the door into darkness. He could just make out stairs leading up. He jerked the door open, turning the long, slow squeak into a quick squawk.

“Upstairs,” Prime whispered. “It’s where we gotta be.”

The steps felt slick under his boots. The stairway smelled of mold.

At the top was another metal fire door. John placed his ear against the door but heard nothing. Prime knelt at the base of the door and pressed his eye against the crack.

“I don’t see anything,” Prime said.

“Nothing to hear,” John replied. He nodded and opened the door.

They were in a dim hallway, lit by sconces every few meters. There was a half-glass door across the hall, leading into a dark office. Prime slipped across the hall and tried the door. It opened. They stepped inside.

Prime turned the small desk lamp on. John hoped no one would notice the light; the window shades were drawn.

“ ‘Arturto Ildibad,’ ” Prime said, reading the name off the placard on the desk.

A manila folder lay open on the desk. A credit card receipt lay atop the papers, and the name on it was Grace’s.

“Look at this!” John cried.

“What?” Prime said.

John handed him the credit card statement.

“So?”

“That’s the part list for a transfer device. That’s how they found us out,” John said. “Grace put it all on her corporate card. They noticed.”

“Maybe, or they went looking after they found you guys out,” Prime said. “Don’t knock yourself out. These guys are professional assholes. Look at all this junk.”

Ildibad’s desk was cluttered with newspaper clippings and journal papers. Most of the clippings were from the U.S. Examiner, one of those disreputable tabloids. John noted the large number of UFO stories. There was also one about a modern dinosaur roaming Columbia, South Carolina. The accompanying picture showed a Tyrannosaurus Rex grabbing a Volkswagen Beetle in its teeth.