Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous: Tim Marquitz (8 page)

I told myself I must be mistaken, that I’d gotten
Hastings mixed up with one of the other workers. I desperately wanted
to believe that, but as iciness crept up my spine, deep in the pit of
my gut, I’d known I was right. Alone in my cabin, I brought up
Hastings on my computer pad and accessed his personnel records.
Scrolling down to medical history, I saw what I’d hoped against
hope I wouldn’t see. His appendix operation was listed. My
heart throbbed, my fingers numb against the computer pad.

I admonished myself to remain calm as I unpacked my
portable, computerized bio-chem analyzer. I then set about
programming the analyzer to scan for a particular variety of life. I
glanced nervously at the door. I’d never had to program the
analyzer in this way before; the unit was designed to detect
mutations in microbial sea life near oil drilling sites. However, I
knew the microcomp was capable of recognizing any DNA pattern, and it
had every known species in its database, so all I had to do was
program it to recognize human DNA. Opening my shaving kit and taking
out the wash cloth with which I’d wiped Hastings’ shaving
razor earlier when he wasn’t looking, I swabbed a slide with
the washcloth and pushed the slide into the analyzer.

My mouth grew dry as I waited for the result. I began to
chuckle, almost hysterically, the absurdity of the situation reaching
me through my fear. I pictured myself downing a bourbon a few weeks
from now, laughing at myself. My heart nearly stopped when the result
came through, those two words flashing red on the digital display:
finding negative
. An icy numbness spread through me as the
meaning of those words sunk in. Whatever that thing was that had
taken Hastings’ form … it wasn’t human.

Do you know what it is to live in perpetual fear of your
life, every waking moment? Afraid to fall asleep for fear you would
never wake? Obviously, I could tell no one on the rig what I’d
found. I had no way of telling which of the others were already like
Hastings. Since the only communication with the mainland was the
sat-link radio, which only the rig manager could grant permission to
use, I was completely on my own.

I stood in total darkness, my breathing rapid, my heart
pounding in my ears as the seconds ticked by.
Steady,
I warned
myself. A shock blasted through me as I heard the door lock click. My
heart froze, my sweaty fingers tightening on the heavy steel bolt
wrench I held.

Upon hearing the creak of the rusty door hinge, I
switched on my helmet light. Hastings stood in the doorway,
momentarily blinded. I drove the bolt wrench into his gut as hard as
I could. As he groaned and doubled over, I raised the wrench and
brought it down on the base of his skull. As he crashed to the floor,
the deck lights came back on. They’d tripped the breaker sooner
than I’d expected.
Damn.
Switching off my helmet light,
I struggled to drag Hastings into his cabin before someone saw us. My
brain was on fire as I strained. Sweat streamed down my face as I
pulled at his infuriatingly heavy bulk, kicking his legs up over the
threshold, and finally managing to force the door closed.

I fell back against the door, my chest heaving. My head
rested back against the metal hatch as I took off my helmet and
gratefully wiped the perspiration from my forehead.
I haven’t
killed a man,
I repeated over and over in my mind.
Whatever it
is, it’s not human. Not …

My blood turned to ice as I heard it. Something moved in
the pitch blackness. The sound of fabric tearing. I switched on the
cabin light. Hastings lay prone on the floor as I’d left him,
but something—some
thing
—was moving inside his
clothing. Inside
him,
it seemed, wriggling, bulging under his
coverall. Even as his smashed head hung lifeless, his back rose. My
mouth opened in a silent scream as the coverall split open, a tear
widening down its back.

My stomach turned at the sound of bones cracking. I
caught a glimpse of … something. Like a dark spur or claw …
some kind of blackish protrusion extending through the back of his
shattered skull, even as I heard his neck snapping, saw his head
twisting like the head of a broken doll. I clenched my teeth,
strangling the scream inside me. I swung the wrench again and again
with all my strength, smashing down blindly at the unknown thing I
did not want to see emerge from that gutted shell that resembled a
man. Whatever shred of doubt or guilt had pained me before melted
into pure, blinding terror.

Once I was sure it wasn’t getting up again, I
switched off the light. The darkness terrified me, but I couldn’t
bring myself to look at the dead thing. I winced, shutting my eyes
and crying silently in pitch blackness. I felt my sanity slipping
away, but somehow … blind survival, I suppose …
somehow, I held on. Someone banged on the door behind me. “Hastings!”
a man’s voice called out.

“Coming,” I replied, muffling my voice with
the sleeve of my coverall. Climbing into Hastings’ bulky,
insulated rubber suit, I pulled his respirator mask over my face and
attached the micro-camera as inconspicuously as possible. Covering
Hastings’ body with a blanket, I slipped through the door,
locking it behind me. The team of men I’d expected clambered by
in their dark rubber suits, pushing on wheeled skids the hermetically
sealed barrels marked with HAZMAT warning symbols. I joined them,
taking Hastings’ place in the crew as I’d watched him do
many times. This was closer than I’d ever been allowed to get,
of course. Oh, I’d always inspected the barrels, making sure
the seals were secure, done chem tests to ensure there were no leaks,
but I’d never been allowed to accompany the excavation crews
down the drill shaft. The company couldn’t guarantee my safety,
and would not allow my presence in the
secure
zones
for reasons of liability. Their lies
seemed so transparent now.

As we wheeled the barrels into the elevator, I reflected
darkly on how many
friends
the company had in Washington D.C.,
pulling strings to enfeeble our inspection rights. Even in the sweaty
confines of that hot rubber suit, I felt chilled as I wondered, for
the first time, just how high up this … whatever the hell
this
was … went. My heart skipped a beat as the elevator gates
slammed shut behind me.

In the dim light of the elevator, I kept my eyes down as
the lift started downward to the grinding of hydraulic winches. I
reminded myself what a monstrous behemoth this type of rig was. Its
shaft reached deep beneath the ocean floor, branching out into
siphoning lines that stretched for miles, resembling some nightmarish
giant squid parasitically draining oil out of the earth and poisoning
the air above. I couldn’t escape the feeling I was sinking into
Hell. I fought to keep my breathing steady as we descended. It grew
colder as we went deeper and deeper, through the ocean’s depths
and below, into the bowels of the earth. Even through the insulated
suit, the cold sank into me like a knife. My sweat seemed to freeze
against my skin, my breath fogging the faceplate of my respirator
mask like frost on a windowpane.

After what seemed like forever, our descent stopped, the
platform shaking as the elevator gates slid open. Pitch blackness
yawned on the other side of the gate, like the mouth of some huge
cave. I shivered, coldness, like death, sweeping over me. A fetid
wind, like rot and waste, assailed my senses, even through the
respirator. As we pushed the skids out of the elevator and into the
passageway beyond, I heard something moving in the murky darkness
ahead of us. Something huge … crawling … slithering.

My heart slammed my chest as we entered what appeared to
be a kind of central cavern. The only light came from the
shoulder-mounted, portable strobe lights carried by the other
workers. Frigid water dripped from the cavern roof, spattering off my
suit. The pale electric light diffused through a low mist like sickly
yellow fog. The clinging rot under my boots felt as though I was
walking through a huge charnel pit. Soft, yielding … nothing
solid. I could swear I could feel something pulsing beneath the soles
of my feet. I slipped and nearly fell once or twice. I was terrified
of calling attention to myself and being found out.

Then, it happened. They opened the barrels. How I
avoided vomiting inside my respirator, I still wonder. I remember the
blood draining from every capillary in my body, all sensation
freezing into ice. Thankfully, I guess my stomach muscles were simply
too numb to clench even at the sight of disemboweled human remains
emptied from those barrels into the slime pit in which we stood. Who
were the victims, you may wonder? Who can say? Mariners lost at sea,
perhaps. Pirates, smugglers, peasant fishermen from remote coastal
villages. People who wouldn’t be missed, or who had been given
up for lost. All I can surmise is that they were probably delivered
to the rig … quite regularly … in the
supply boats
that dropped off hermetically sealed, refrigerated cartons labeled
food.

The slithering grew louder, all around, as though
something were coming towards us, out of the darkness. Then, as we
began to unload the last of the barrels, a new sound …
gnashing and tearing, like an animal gnawing on its prey. That’s
when I caught my first glimpse of …
them
. They crawled
out of the brine, just at the edge of the light, taking the flesh
that was offered. I desperately wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.
Spidery black limbs, as long as a man, crawled out of the darkness.
Claws tore human flesh. Monstrous fangs and mandibles glinted pale
white in the darkness, reddening as they cracked bone and sucked
marrow. The lurid, hellish red light of glowing and bulbous,
cyclopean eyes.

My hair stood on end. Just the need to keep still was
driving me mad. One of the workmen … Johansen, as I saw by the
name tag on his suit … motioned for me to help him with one of
the barrels. I prayed he wouldn’t notice the trembling in my
hands as I approached the skid. As I numbly helped him lower the
barrel, I could swear I felt something moving inside it. As we set it
down, I heard a muffled cry. Johansen unsealed the barrel and removed
the lid. I nearly fainted. There was a living man inside, bound hand
and foot, his mouth covered by duct tape. A wild look of fear was in
his eyes. He was one of the workmen. One of the last, apparently.

I’ve never been a religious man, but since that
night, I’ve seen Hell waiting for me in my dreams every time I
close my eyes. Why, you ask? Because, God forgive me … I
helped them. I had to. I was terrified of being suspected, so I
helped them carry that poor man to his fate. Not even the darkest
image of Hell my imagination could conceive could be anything less
than comforting compared to that black pit at the bottom of the
world.

Johansen and I, and two of the others, carried the
struggling man into what appeared to be a kind of tunnel; a wide
snaking tube between rows of arched supports, formed from fossil
remnants, perhaps. There was something about it that seemed alive and
yet dead at the same time. In the dim light, I started as one of
those
things
took the man from us, lifting him in its horrible
exoskeletal appendages, its inhuman voice hissing and perhaps, in a
way … laughing. I was amazed my sanity had endured, stretched
like a slender thread. What I saw next may have just been enough to
sever that thread. Huddled in a dark corner, in a kind of cocoon-like
formation, amid numerous melon-sized, egg-pods jacketed in mucous,
was another of the workers from the rig.

Cooper, I think was his name. What I saw happen to him …
it was difficult enough to watch and film without giving myself away.
Describing it is even harder, so please bear with me. Cooper was …
dividing. Duplicating, like an embryonic cell in utero, splitting
into what would become twin fetuses. A second, identical full-grown
man … another Cooper … grew out of the first. It was
like watching Siamese twins growing apart with horrifying rapidity,
finally sundering and going their separate ways. Cooper’s face
split into two as a second head, second neck, second body …
grew out of the first, duplicating cell for cell, it seemed. The
expression of excruciating pain on his face—on both faces—was gut-wrenching.

The cloned Cooper’s skin was slightly translucent.
I could dimly make out muscles, nerves, and capillaries as his skin
still formed. Behind the clone was one of those hideous crustacoid
organisms; a smaller one. Its limbs penetrated the newly formed body,
apparently growing directly into his central nervous system.
As
with Hastings,
I thought. It horrified me as I realized what I
was seeing. These abominations were growing cloned human bodies as
hosts.

I gasped when the arched supports all around us began to
move, as though the whole tunnel were about to collapse, burying us
alive. I went numb as the walls of the tunnel pulsed and undulated.
How was this possible? Then I knew, even in the dim light. The
supports
were the multiple jointed legs of a gargantuan
creature. Truly a titan, like a living leviathan as it turned,
twisting like some monstrous worm, the size of a train. Its two rows
of legs wriggled in mid-air as the monstrosity passed over us. I
nearly doubled over, unable to watch as the monster arched and
turned, its terrible head coming down on the mound of dead bodies.

I winced as it began to feed. The sound of human flesh
and bone crunching between its grinding fangs sent a wave of bile
rising into my throat. I dared not look away, dared not display my
revulsion, for fear of being suspected. My stomach cramping, my eyes
slowly adjusting to the gloom, I began to discern dim shapes in the
darkness at the edges of the cave. My blood ran cold as I recognized
immense mounds of human skulls and bones piled high against the
walls.