Nick Cutter - The Deep

The main lab was empty. Luke shone the flashlight on his brother. The stump was… gooey . Some gluey substance had already soaked through the cap of bandages; strings of ichor dangled to the bench.

“Al? LB?”

Luke’s despair thickened. After all this, Luke was left with his misanthropic, one-handed brother. He’d have to carry on as planned. Lug Clay to the Challenger and wait. If it became clear that Al and LB were truly lost and gone, he’d have to leave. He didn’t know how to pilot the damn thing, but Al said there wasn’t much to it. Seal the hatch, drop the weights, rise like a cork. Maybe he would rise too fast and the bends would twist the Nelson boys into human pretzels. Luke didn’t care. He didn’t want to die down here. If he had to die, okay, he was nearly resigned to it now—but he wanted to die while moving toward the sun.

He leaned on the bench, summoning the remains of his physical energy. His flashlight traced idle patterns on the wall. The beam touched the window, which was now covered in a gelatinous sheet of ambrosia. The stuff shuddered in the light—a sight not unlike a thousand eyelids snapping open and closed in rapid motion.

Luke swung the flashlight away, sickened. The beam landed on Westlake’s lab. The porthole was smeared with that tarlike black. The light pelted right off it.

Until a hand slapped the glass.

LUKE FLINCHED,even though the glass was too thick for the slap to have made a sound. He bobbled the flashlight and when he trained it on the porthole again, the hand was still there.

His arms broke out in gooseflesh. The hand pressed to the glass, that squalid black squeezing between its fingers. Then it was gone.

A small hand.

A feminine hand.

Al’s hand?

How had she gotten inside? The hatch was locked and only Westlake’s combination would open it… unless it’d come unlocked during the power outage?

When Luke tried to push off the bench to investigate, he was dismayed to discover his ass was tightly glued to it.

Get up, for Christ’s sake. Open that goddamn door.

He heaved himself up. His legs carried him forward as his mind raced through a View-Master’s reel of horrifying images, both real and imagined.

Click: Westlake’s scarified body in its cooling vault.

Click: The pages of Westlake’s diary smeared with black gunk.

Click: Huge fire-eyed bees droning around Westlake’s lab, trundling through carbuncled, ooze-dripping honeycombs.

Click: A hole in the lab wall, bees flitting in and out, the narcotic buzz of their wings melding with the whispers drifting from the hole.

Luke’s fingers fell upon the wheel on Westlake’s hatch. It wouldn’t budge. He stuck the flashlight under his armpit and used both hands. Nothing.

Did the lock have a fail-safe in the event of a power outage? Was it wedged shut from the other side?

Luke settled his ear against the hatch. He tried to pick up a sound apart from that frenetic buzz. Al’s voice, perhaps. Her screams, even.

“Al?” he whispered. “Jesus, if you’re in there…”

The drone spiked—a warning? an invitation?—then settled again.

Luke couldn’t get inside. But thankfully that meant Al couldn’t be inside, either.

Unless she’s locked herself in. And wedged the hatch shut .

Why in Christ’s name would she…?

Quit thinking about it , he chided himself. You can’t get inside. She’s not in there. She has more sense than that. This place is fucking with you again—it wants you to open the hatch, don’t you see? You’ve got to keep moving. Stick to the plan.

The plan. Okay. First things first. Transport Clayton to the Challenger .

Luke cut the Tensors and rolled Clayton onto his side. His brother showed no sign of awakening, but Luke filled another hypo with Telazol and slipped it into his pocket just in case. After a moment’s consideration, he slipped a scalpel in with it.

Luke raised Clayton’s arm and ducked his head under to heft him up. Clayton was incredibly heavy, especially with Luke as exhausted as he was. He’d manage it somehow. As he was leaving the lab, Luke heard a muffled thump from Clayton’s lab.

The cooler.

Oh, God. Its contents were thawing. And they wanted out.

He set Clayton down and shone the flashlight into the lab.

The cooler lid rattled ominously.

Thump. Tha-thump-thump .

The box of lab equipment Luke had set atop the cooler jumped. Before long, it would get knocked off. Then the creatures inside would be set loose in the dark.

Luke retrieved the Tensors he’d used to bind Clayton. Working quickly, he strung them under the cooler and knotted them tightly across the lid. When he was finished, it looked like a birthday present that nobody in their right fucking mind would want to open. He put the lab equipment back on top, thinking it couldn’t hurt.

With his ear pressed to the cooler, he could make out noises inside: long slow scratches, not unlike nails raking the inside of a coffin.

He shut the hatch to the lab and turned his attention back to Clayton.

“Okay, brother dear. Let’s get cracking.”

Dragging him through the tunnels was draining, awkward work. Luke tried a modified fireman’s carry, but the tunnel was too low for that. He tried carrying him the way you’d hoist a drunk, one arm hooked over his shoulder. Clay hung limp and heavy, toes scraping the floor. It was hard to carry him and keep the flashlight focused forward at the same time. Eventually Luke sat Clayton down and hooked his arms under Clay’s armpits, hands clasped across his chest, and dragged him. Luke hated not being able to see where he was going—he couldn’t see what, if anything, was waiting in the dark—but it was a lot quicker this way. Every few feet he stopped to sweep the flashlight behind him, ensuring that the tunnel looked as he remembered it.

He reached the crawl-through chute. Jesus. How was he going to manage this? It’d be easier to shove his brother in headfirst, humans being naturally top-heavy, but without anyone to catch him on the other side, Clay would fall bonelessly; he might smash his head open. So feetfirst it would have to be.

Luke shone the flashlight down the crawl-through. Its insides glittered fitfully; the beam didn’t penetrate the solid dark on the other side.

“Fuck it,” he muttered. “Upsy-daisy.”

He wrangled Clay’s heels and calves into the chute. It was hard work to shove and shoulder Clayton’s body up and in; Clay’s scalp got cut open on the grate and one of his arms got hooked behind his back in a painful-looking chicken wing. Luke was breathing hard by the time Clay’s knees cleared the lip of the chute. He felt like a mobster feeding a dead stoolie into a wood chipper.

Luke cranked Clay’s midsection up and levered him into the chute. Luke figured he should go feetfirst, too, his heels braced on Clayton’s shoulders to push him along. Progress would be tortuous, but he could do it.

He pushed Clayton down the crawl-through as far as he could using his hands, then pulled himself out, gripped the first overhead rung in both hands, swung into the chute, and settled his feet on either side of Clayton’s head. Pushing with his hips and hauling with his arms, he was able to get Clayton’s body sliding forward. Luke’s shoulders and head were swallowed into the chute. He braced his palms and pushed against the rungs, propelling their bodies forward. The flashlight jutted from the hip pocket of his overalls, shining directly into his eyes—

Something was behind him. Coming down the dark tunnel.

He couldn’t see it, not yet—but oooh, he could smell it.