Charles Sheffield - Aftermath

“That settles one thing,” Dana said softly. “We’re not the only ones with the idea. What sort of people were sentenced to this facility?”

“Murderers, mostly.” Seth was bending low, examining the footprints. “Rapists, sadists, torturers. Terrorists. Enemies of the state, whatever that means. Hey, I see different sizes here. Men and women both, by the look of it. Question isn’t, who’d they put here? It’s who’d try to bring somebody out at a time like this? Most people have trouble fending for themselves.”

“Anyone afraid that the Q-5 judicial sleep maintenance system has broken down, like everything else. Anyone with a relative or friend they’re desperate to save.” Art was moving on ahead of Seth. He didn’t have time for philosophical questions, only for whether Oliver Guest was alive or dead. Did that make him worse than Seth, more obsessive about his personal future?

“There’s a gate ahead,” Dana said. “A big one. And it looks open.” She was hurrying along behind Art. She caught his arm, slowing him down. “Art, be careful. We have no idea who has been here. They may be here still.”

“She’s right.” Seth was coming up behind. “Some-thin’ weird about this. There’s a regular driveway from the main road to the gate. You can follow its line from the shrubs on each side of it. The snow on the drive hasn’t been disturbed, all it shows is birds’ feet and animal tracks. Then there’s the cleared path we came in on, runnin’ along the fence and back toward the river. Why didn’t they use the real road?”

“Whoever came here, it wasn’t an official maintenance group.” Art had reached the gate, twelve feet across and nine feet high. The trampled path through the snow turned in, leading toward the double doors of the facility itself. “See, they hacked right through the locks. That takes a heavy bolt-cutter and plenty of strength. I don’t think I could do it.”

“You’d be surprised. You could if you had to.” Seth moved to Art’s side. “I agree with Dana, we gotta be careful an’ ready for anything. But there’s no way we stop. Let’s go.”

They were approaching the building from the north. As they moved from bright sunlight into its squat shadow, the drop in temperature hit Art hard. He saw Dana shiver. Physical, or psychological? Within that two-hundred-foot faceless cube, more than eleven thousand living humans had been placed in judicial sleep.

And what lay there now? Eleven thousand prisoners, or eleven thousand corpses?

“Main door locks are broken, too.” Art found himself speaking in a whisper. “More proof we’re not seeing official action.”

“But the doors are closed.” Seth’s voice was as soft as Art’s. “If the lights don’t work inside — I’ll take bets on that — it’s a good sign. They already left, whoever they were. What’s wrong?”

The last words were to Dana, who had stopped and placed her hand on her throat.

“The smell.” She stepped back a pace. “Don’t you smell it, too?”

Art didn’t. That was no surprise. He was a family joke for his inability to identify — or even to detect — odors. ("The milk is a bit spoiled, you think? Give it to Uncle Arthur; he’ll never know the difference.")

But Seth was nodding. “I do now, after you point it out.”

“What is it?” Art asked.

“Same as in the city, only not so strong.” Seth pulled the double doors open wide and grunted in disgust. “Except now it is.”

Dana gagged and put her hand to her mouth. Even Art couldn’t miss it. A ripe, sweet smell of rotting flesh surged out from the opened door and hit him in the face like a hand from the grave.

“Put somethin’ round your nose.” Seth was tying a scarf around his head. “We have to find out. Is it all of ’em dead or just some?”

Dana shook her head and stepped back again. “I can’t. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”

“You stay here.” Art squeezed her hand. “Watch the doors. Shout if anyone comes.”

He tied a cloth around his own face, though he was not sure he would need it. He and Seth went forward. Shouts from Dana would do no good, because if they were caught inside there was no other door. It was just a way to make her feel better.

He was more than pleased when a few seconds later she caught up with him.

“You’re a gutsy lady,” he said. “Will you be all right?”

She nodded. She was veiled up to her eyes. Even he could smell her. “Drenched my head scarf in the only perfume I have.” Her speech was muffled. “I was saving it for some big seduction scene, but I guess I’ve blown that chance.”

“Perfume’s wasted on me. I can’t smell worth a damn, you know that.” He nodded forward, to where Seth had taken out his flashlight and was shining it around. “Save it for him.”

Her eyes rolled. “Don’t make me laugh, or I’ll have to breathe.”

Cheerful small talk. The surest sign that you were edgy.

The inside of the syncope facility matched the outside: gray, drab, and utilitarian. One long corridor led to the left, a matching one to the right. From each, all the way to the back of the building, side aisles ran off at sixteen-foot intervals. They held the body drawers, two feet by two feet by eight, packed side by side and one on top of the other like a library stack of stored humans.’

The elevators for higher floors were on either side of the main doors. They were not working now, but iron stairs for use in emergencies stood next to them, rising up and up in dizzying turns until they vanished in the upper gloom. Seth’s flashlight was not strong enough to carry its beam the full twenty floors to the dark ceiling.

“We still got the same problems.” Seth stopped cranking the light. They stood together in the faint light coming in through the open double doors and waited for their eyes to adjust. “We didn’t solve ’em comin’ here, and I don’t see we’re nearer to solvin’ ’em now. How do we find Oliver Guest? How can we be sure we got the right man? I’m not even askin’ how we revive him when we find him.”

“There has to be a filing system.” It seemed gruesome to apply that term to stored people, but Art couldn’t think of a better one. “And I bet it’s simple, because the only people you can get to work in a place like this have to be morons.”

“Or necrophiliacs,” added Seth. “I doubt if most of them are any too bright, though.”

They walked slowly to the first tier of body drawers and picked the third one from the bottom. Its aluminum end contained a grille for the circulation of air and was held shut by a cheap catch at the top. Seth shone his flashlight on the square panel.

“Not wasting the public’s money on extras, are we?” he said. “Here’s one question answered. This is an ID plate. 1-0128-394, that has to be a prisoner number. And Desmond Lota must be his name. And here’s a date, 27/04/11. That has to be when he gets out. He’s a JS short-timer, can’t have been in for much. A year from now he’ll be up and moving.”

He placed his light flat on the grille and bent beside it. He shook his head. “Can’t see a thing. Oh, well.”

He reached up and turned the catch. The end panel dropped vertically until the drawer was fully open. Seth leaned forward, but at once jerked back and took two steps away. “Shit.” He was coughing and choking behind his scarf. “It’s putrid. I think I’m gonna puke.”

“Let me.” Art grabbed the light, worked the crank, and stepped to peer into the open drawer. The judicial sleep criminals were stored feetfirst and he was staring at the top of Desmond Lota’s head, hairless and purple-blotched in the pale beam of the flashlight.

The drawers sat on lubricated runners that must have been designed for ease of maintenance and were useful now. An easy pull brought the drawer out until Art could see the whole body. It lay naked, with IVs and sprays still in position. Desmond Lota’s skin sagged on his arms and legs, but bulged tight on his grossly swollen belly. The pneumatic system that rotated the criminals to prevent sores was still functioning at some level, because as the drawer reached the end of its travel the body was rolled through thirty degrees on its air pad. That led to a loud belch of escaping gases and a smell that made even Art blench and step back.