David Koepp - Cold Storage

Naomi, indeed, had problems of her own. Climbing down with two hands had been difficult enough with no suit, but now she faced all the same obstacles as Teacake, plus she was clutching a fully loaded Glock 19. She’d had to climb every rung with her left hand, while her right held the gun free. That meant her left arm, her weaker arm, had been doing all the work, and it already burned so badly she almost couldn’t feel it.

And then there was her hearing. She was still deaf in her left ear, and the ringing in the right, though it had abated, intensified whenever the radio frequency was activated. It was as if the suit was deliberately trying to mute everything Teacake said, raising the level of the ringing to obscure his words, then going back down when he was silent.

But his second shouted “I can’t see!” had gotten through—clearly enough, anyway—and she shouted back, “Why not?”

“Sweat. Fogged up. Can you?”

“Yeah. Mostly.”

“How much farther?” he asked.

She paused, wrapping her left arm through the rungs of the ladder, bending her torso back and to the right as much as she possibly could, and strained her eyes all the way to the edge of her mask. “About fifty rungs. Maybe less.”

“Okay.” He kept climbing down.

Naomi’s left arm shook violently, and she knew she’d have to take a chance and switch gun hands. She pulled her right arm up and reached behind the rungs, to pass the gun to her left. It clanked against the rungs and she lost her grip on it. Her hand lashed out, pinning the gun against the wall. She was no longer holding it; she was just sort of trapping it there with pressure.

Teacake must have heard the clank and he asked her something in the headset, but it was lost to her under the ringing sound. She ignored him, eyes focused on the gun, still held tenuously up against the cement wall of the tube. She stretched out the fingers of her left hand, got one of them through the trigger housing, and pulled her right arm free. The gun spun over, upside down, held up only by her left index finger. She readjusted her grip on the ladder, now with her freed right arm, and slowly withdrew her left from behind the ladder.

She closed her left hand around the handle of the gun and moved that arm free of the ladder. Blood flowed through her left biceps again, washing away enough of the built-up acid to give her some amount of relief. She closed her eyes, grateful. She looked down. Teacake was about ten rungs below her. She continued her descent.

Flat on his back, Roberto stared up at the sky. This is why, he thought. This is why I didn’t take the backpack. In case this happened. God, I hate being right all the time.

There weren’t as many stars out as before; heavy clouds had blown in and obscured them, making the night darker. He looked up at the heavens and wondered if the satellite look-down window was still open, if the thing was somewhere overhead right now. Were Ozgur Onder and his girlfriend, Stephanie, watching him at this very moment on Ozgur’s laptop, sitting up in bed, wondering why the hell the guy who fired the gun was just lying there on his back, not doing anything?

Being right was little comfort to Roberto, given his current position. Initially, he’d thought he was paralyzed from the waist down, but after a minute or two some of the tingling had eased, replaced by intense, paralyzing pain in the lower half of his body. Getting up was out of the question, as were crawling, rolling, and any other form of locomotion he could think of. He was on his back with his head near the front door of the building, and if he turned it to the left—which was only possible with its own unique hell of shooting pain—he could see Dr. Friedman’s dead body on the ground five or six feet away from him.

Okay, Roberto thought. Okay. He counted breaths to steady himself. I’m here now. I’m here now.

He was still wearing the thermal imaging goggles, and he could see that the dense amount of thick fungus on the dead man’s body was very much alive and quite industrious. The churning ooze was already moving off the corpse to explore its environment, but it seemed to have slowed as soon as it hit the gravel on the ground beneath him. Slowed, but not stopped.

Roberto heard a chirping sound from nearby and his eyes searched the area around him. His Bluetooth had been knocked out when he hit the ground, and lay about five feet from him, lighting up with a soft blue glow as it rang. It would be Abigail, calling in to say, “What are you doing, man? Why don’t you get up?” But getting himself five feet across the gravel to answer a phone call was beyond his capabilities.

Roberto turned his head again, this time craning it backward, digging the back of his skull into the gravel as hard as he could and rolling his eyes up, to get a look at the entrance to the building. It was upside down, but he could see it. The lights were on inside, and he could hear screaming and shouting. No one appeared to be coming out, at least not yet, and he wasn’t sure what he would do if they did.

He looked down at the ground and saw the machine pistol, just a foot away from his right hand. A foot. Twelve inches. That was maybe possible. He dug his fingers into the gravel, summoned himself, and clawed toward it. His upper body moved an inch and a half, and he screamed in agony. His vision blurred and doubled, and he felt himself nearly pass out.

But then it cleared, and he was an inch and a half closer.

He raised his eyes, looking at the three still-operative Harleys, leaning on their kickstands, awaiting their riders.

Nobody leaves .

Roberto dug his fingers into the gravel again, repeated the motion, screamed again, and felt the darkness nearly descend.

Nearly. But not quite. Nine inches to go.

He would get to the gun or pass out trying.

BACK IN THE HALLWAY OUTSIDE G-413, GRIFFIN HAD PIVOTED FROMDr. Friedman as soon as the dentist had disappeared around the corner. He pointed the gun at Ironhead and Cuba, swinging it wildly from one to the other. “Stay the fuck away from me the fuck away from me stay the fuck!” he’d managed to spit out, though they were making no attempt to advance on him.

Cuba raised her hands and spoke first. “Easy, man.”

“Yeah, come on, Griff,” Ironhead chimed in soothingly. “We’re all in the same boat here.”

Griffin looked at the locker behind them, its walls, ceiling, floor, and TV boxes covered with pulsating globs of fungus. “What boat, what the fuck kind of boat, what fucking boat are you fucking talking about?! What the fuck is going on?!”

Ironhead took a step forward, his hands up, palms out, and his tone calm. “Definitely some strange what-have-you taking place here, my friend, I know. You weren’t even in there, man.”

“That was horrible,” Cuba added, and she meant it.

It’s okay, her brain told her. Everything’s fine. Better if you all just get out of here.

“What do you say we all get out of here?” she suggested.

“Yeah, no shit we’re leaving! You first!” Griffin said, gesturing with the gun. “You go ahead of me!”

“Sure, man, no problem,” Ironhead said. He turned and looked at Cuba, nodded his head toward the entrance, and started walking that way. She fell into stride beside him.

Ironhead was cool. Best he’d felt in a long time. That dude behind you is crazy, his brain told him. Don’t do anything to upset him. He doesn’t know up from down. Let’s just go.

They kept walking. As they reached the corner, Griffin looked back over his shoulder, at the mess in the hallway, and the greater mess oozing out of the storage locker. Forget figuring out what was going on, none of it made any sense, he just wanted to get gone. He turned back to the front and watched Ironhead and Cuba as they walked ahead. There was something on the backs of their necks, or in the backs of their necks, maybe. The skin was mottled and moving, pulsating from underneath. He didn’t care what they did once they got outside, but for himself, he was getting on his Fat Boy and putting as many miles between him and this place as he possibly could. If anybody got in his way, they were going down.