Looooordloveaductthhhh… it sputtered, putrid bits of goo flinging from its mouth. Looooordlovvvvaducthhhhh…
OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod—this was the only thought Luke’s mind could summon, a brainless yawp of fright. He rammed his heels into his brother’s shoulders, trying to get them both moving again.
The Beth-maggot squelched deeper into the tube; Luke could hear its massive body drumming against the tunnel, coiling and bucking like agitated eels in a bucket. Its mouth opened with stunning elasticity, a rubbery O big enough to consume his entire head. Its insides resembled a huge intestine, a funnel of suffocating corrugated flesh.
He grabbed another rung and pushed. His brother’s body lurched as his feet dropped out of the crawl-through chute and hit the floor.
The maggot was a yard from Luke’s face. It shuddered over the flashlight, which lit up its body—it looked, Luke thought with paralyzing horror, like the vein-strung insides of an eyeball. The featureless white was strung with tiny veins and capillaries. Next, the flesh split raggedly down the middle of the maggot’s face. It made no sound, as its skin had the consistency of a waterlogged sponge.
It’s too big to fit, Luke thought frantically. It’s ripping itself apart.
He watched, horrified, as his mother’s face tore in half. A new face was pushing through the split, though, and this one was also all-too-familiar…
Nononononono—
Abby. White and gory as a newborn babe. Her eyes were wet jewels; her lips stretched across the canvas of her horridly misshapen features, pursed in a lascivious come-on.
Giveuttthhakistthhh, babbeeeee…
Luke knew that if those lips touched him, he would go insane.
Are you sure you’re not already? asked a frail voice in his head. At least a little?
Elbowing, squirming, he retreated down the chute in total desperation. The Abby-maggot squelched after him, hungering for a kiss. Just one little kiss, baby.
Its face split for a final time—just as Luke knew it would, in the deepest chambers of his heart. The crowning detail. Abby’s face tore apart, molting in wet, waxy rags, her mouth issuing a very human scream of pain and despair, and, bristling through her sundered face like a knotted fist… his son. It looked nothing like Zachary—a face so wizened and repellent that it could only belong to some terribly ancient and hateful thing that had never tasted sunlight on its flesh, its eyes peering with a cheery and mocking avarice—and yet it so clearly was Zachary. It was what this place had made of him, and Luke’s soul shuddered to see it.
Daaaaaddeeeee… it lisped through cracked, pus-weeping lips. Heeelp meee…
Luke’s feet slipped from the tube. With one convulsive shove, he propelled himself out. His feet got tangled with his brother, who was slumped gracelessly on the floor. Luke tripped backward, his son’s voice—Daddeeee—still ringing in his ears; his skull rung off the side of the tunnel and—
—he came to with a spastic jerk of his limbs. He squinted. The flashlight had rolled out of the crawl-through, pinning both him and Clayton in its beam.
The crawl-through chute was empty. He didn’t need to see that to know.
The maggot was gone. The station had had its fun and, for now, was satisfied.
He picked up the flashlight, hefted Clayton, and continued on.
14.
LUKE REACHED the storage tunnel hatch and hesitated.
The station wants to keep you frightened so you’ll make mistakes, Luke. Make enough of them, take long enough, and it’s game over.
Clayton’s eyelids twitched. Was he waking up? Luke fingered the hypodermic in his pocket. He didn’t want to overdose his brother. But the last time he’d been conscious, he hadn’t behaved all that nicely.
He could leave Clayton right here at the hatchway. He was a lot closer, at least…
Fuck half measures, Luke. Dump his ass at the Challenger, then either wait for Al and the dog or go find them.
Luke gripped the wheel. The lock disengaged with a thunk. The hatch opened half an inch. For an instant, Luke swore that hell itself was breathing through that gap.
The feeling ebbed. He opened it and shone the flashlight into the storage tunnel. Nothing moved. Nothing appeared out of place.
He dragged Clayton around the gooseneck to the Challenger. The generator was making odd whirrs and clicks like a computer warming up.
He rested with his hands on his knees, centering himself. He felt okay. Dog tired, but okay. Things were falling into place. He had Clayton where he needed to be. He’d find Al—this sudden surety filled him with a bright gaiety that pushed the bleakness away a fraction. He would find her, or she would come to him. And LB, too. The world owed him, didn’t it? The world had taken, and now it would give back. That was the way things worked, wasn’t it? On a long enough time line, you paid what you owed—but you also got paid back. And hadn’t they all paid enough? Weren’t they owed, by God? Al, the dog, his brother. That was all Luke was asking for. A helping, fortuitous upward draft. Let a single beam of light in and let him follow it up, up, up out of the dark—
Click… click…
Luke trained the flashlight in the direction of this new noise—with the station swathed in darkness, sound had become his key sense. He slid one hand into his pocket and closed it around the scalpel.
Click… click…
A head appeared around the gooseneck. Two eyes shone like balls of mercury in the flashlight’s glare.
“LB?”
She woofed—a grating, jagged note. Her jaws widened, strings of saliva stretched between her teeth as she chewed anxiously on the air.
She’s scared. Totally terrified.
Luke swung the flashlight behind him. Nothing. When he swung it back, LB had emerged a little more—half of her body was now visible. Her fur was torn away in places, each spot almost perfectly round. Luke didn’t see any blood.
“Come on, girl. It’s okay. It’s only me.”
She whined plaintively, then ducked back behind the bend. The click-click of her nails retreated.
“LB!”
Luke scrambled after her. He ran the way he should have run after Zach that afternoon in the park—as if the devil himself was on his heels. She yelped someplace ahead, a harrowing note that stung Luke’s heart.
He reached the spot where LB had been. Drops of some viscid substance swayed from the floor grate. A smell rose to Luke’s nose: dank and vinegary, with an undernote he couldn’t name.
He rushed on. The flashlight lit the holes along the Trieste’s hull. They bulged. Bubbles pushed up from their surfaces, shiny with tension.
“LB!”
He gritted his teeth and dove into the crawl-through chute, sliding for a few feet, then transitioning to his back and hauling himself over the final yards. He could hear LB barking not far ahead.
He ran into the main lab. Clayton’s lab hatch was open again; he could see something moving inside. Luke edged up to the hatchway and shone the flashlight inside.
LB’s head poked from behind Clay’s bench. She barked consumptively.