Brian Evenson - Dead Space - Martyr

He came conscious facedown, half-on and half-off the catwalk running the edge of the chamber. He had been lucky. He was alive and coughing up water rather than floating facedown in the center of the room, dead.

He struggled and leaned back against the wall, gathering himself. Then he inched to the edge of the catwalk and jumped off and into the water.

He couldn’t find the plasma cutter. Maybe something had gone wrong. Maybe it had shaken loose when the doors were closing and had slid out into the water. Maybe it was gone.

He resurfaced, holding on to the edge of the catwalk, and then went down again, searching more carefully this time. He found it wedged behind a float, all but impossible to see until he was almost touching it.

He worked it free and surfaced again, pulling himself out and onto the catwalk. Then he lay there on the grille a moment, breathing, trying to recover.

When he got up, he was still shaky, his nerves jittery. He wiped the droplets off the wall com unit with his palm and connected to the Marker chamber.

“Hello?” said Harmon, his voice a little panicked now. “Hello?”

“It’s me, Altman,” he said.

Harmon squinted at the screen. “Altman,” he said. “I wondered if you were still alive. You still are, aren’t you? This isn’t a vision, is it? You look different.”

“I’m still alive,” said Altman. “Just a little wet.”

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Submarine bay,” said Altman. “Not far.”

Harmon nodded. He pulled a holofile up and spun it so that Altman could see it.

“Here you are,” Harmon said, and a red blotch appeared on the map. “It’s simple,” he said. “Down this hallway, the one with the slight slope. Then into a new hall, past these two labs. A final hall and there you are.”

“What’s between you and me?” asked Altman.

“Close to the Marker, nothing,” said Harmon. “They won’t get close to the Marker. If you can get into the final hallway, you should be all right. Before that, it might be a little trickier.”

He flashed Altman a view of the hall just outside the submarine bay lock. The camera made a slow sweep, showing a pile of corpses, a pallid batlike creature fluttering above them, and then dissolved into a wall of static. “This was just before the camera was destroyed,” he said. “Who knows what’s there now.”

The view changed, two separate cameras, two labs. In one, a spiderlike creature like the one he’d killed before, only this one had a third head and a ridge of spines along its back. In the other, two of the creatures with the scythelike blades. They lay on the ground motionless, perhaps dead. “These are current,” Harmon said. “I’d suggest being quiet going past the labs. The hall itself, and the hall after it, seem to be empty.”

Altman took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “Here goes nothing.”

He stopped the airlock mechanism when it was only slightly open and looked through. The hall outside was dim, some of the emergency lights fluttering, others burnt out completely. But he could see from the dim shapes and tell from the sounds being made that they were there.

And then an arm reached through the opening and grabbed him, wrapped itself around his own arm and pulled hard, dragging him against the airlock.

Or at least at first he thought it was an arm. As he tried desperately to pry it off, he realized it wasn’t an arm at all, but something more like a bundle of sinew stretched long and hardened somehow. He tried to get the plasma cutter up, but his arm was flush against the hole, no space to cut. It tugged again and almost tore his arm off. He pulled back hard but couldn’t get any purchase. Not knowing what else to do, he kicked the lever to continue opening the door.

As soon as the opening was large enough, the sinew pulled him through. The hall had been remade, was covered in an organic layer, smeared with an approximation of flesh. It was like he was being tugged down an intestine. He cut at the sinew with the plasma cutter, but the blade didn’t go all the way through. The sinew jerked, just dragged him farther down the hall. He cried out in pain, cut again, and this time cut through.

There was a roaring sound. The rest of it slid rapidly down the hall and disappeared into an air duct. The piece that he had cut off was still digging tightly into his arm, cutting off the circulation. To get it off, he had to carefully section it.

It was like walking through a nightmare. Blood and flesh everywhere, no idea where they were going to strike at you next. He was becoming jumpy, he knew. He needed to relax, needed to calm his nerves, or they’d get him. But how could you relax in a hell like this?

Aching all over, he stumbled down the hall, wading through a kind of putrid slurry, trying not to touch the flesh-coated walls or ceiling. There was a corpse blocking the way. He tried to kick it out of the way, but as soon as he touched it, it hissed and lashed out at him. He stumbled back and slipped and then it was on him, trying to slash his head off with its scythes, scythes that had been hidden beneath the water. He raised his knees and turned to see it up and over him, its drooling mouth just centimeters from his throat. He somehow got his hands between it and him, held it away. It hissed and shrieked in frustration, leaning hard on its scythes and trying to get closer, its breath enough to make him want to retch.

With a groan, he gave a mighty push and threw it to one side, then spun over and pulled the cutter out from under him. It was already looming over him again, but he had the cutter now and lopped off one of its scythes. It kept coming at him with the other scythe and the stump. He brought the casing of the plasma cutter down hard, pulping its head. It kept coming. He scrambled back and away from it, stopped only to swipe at it. He took the rest of the stump off, then most of the other scythe. It thrashed for a while, half buried in the muck, and then stopped.

It was only then, in the brief quiet, that he realized there was something coming up behind him. He leapt to his feet and turned, and a scythe cut through his forearm, making him drop the plasma cutter. He screamed and struck the thing open-palmed in the chest, hard, feeling the sickening smack of its dead flesh. It staggered back a little and he managed to get the cutter up again, wincing with pain. It rushed again and he dropped to avoid its scythes, which whistled over his head, and kicked its legs out from under it.

It fell on top of him and for a moment, trapped in the muck and beneath its stinking, rotting flesh, he had the impression that he was already dead, that he was wandering the afterlife, living out a peculiar hell for all he had done wrong in this life. The cutter was trapped between his body and the creature above him. The creature was gnawing at his shoulder, working its way over to his neck, and was trying to prop itself on one bone scythe so as to swing the other through him.

He pressed the trigger for the cutter, hoping it wasn’t too low and pointing down rather than up. The blade sprang between his knees and he angled it up hard and through the creature’s pelvis, forcing it up bit by bit, sawing it slowly in half. It fell to either side of him, but he still had to get up and stomp each of the halves before it stopped moving.

He stumbled up. Blood was still spilling out of the cut in his arm. He tore off the bottom of his shirt and awkwardly bandaged himself. It wouldn’t stop the bleeding, but it would slow it, and that would have to be enough for now.

Two more hallways, he thought. That’s all.

He went to the end of the hall. He had to cut away the growth around the door to find the controls, but once he’d done that and scanned his card, it opened fine.