The Dark Rift: Redemption (21 page)

Jodie and Chuck climbed for about five minutes before they came to an access door. "Should I, or would you like to?" Jodie asked, pointing to the door handle. "I mean, if there are normal people in there, it might be better if I open it. If there's something else, you might be better at dealing with that."

"Why don't I come up there next to you and we can open it together?" Chuck asked.

Now, why didn't I think of that, she asked herself. Or did I? The lack of sleep and constant fear were taking their toll. Jodie wanted to lie down. In fact, she was starting to feel a little sick to her stomach, too.

"Jodie, are you okay?" Chuck asked. "I mean, you don't look too good all of a sudden."

She put her head down between her hands on the ladder rung. The cool metal felt good on her hot forehead. "I don't think the candy bar set too well with me, but I'm fine." Jodie moved to one side of the ladder. "Scoot up here, Chuck, and let's have a look."

Chuck stepped up farther on the ladder. His feet sat two rungs lower than hers, yet they stood eye to eye. For a moment, she thought she saw a faint glow developing again, then he cleared his throat and looked away from her.

"Ready?" Chuck asked.

"As we'll ever be," Jodie said.

Chuck turned the handle slowly and pushed the door open about an inch. A cool breeze blew in. Air conditioning. Jodie put her ear near the opening and listened, hearing nothing but the humming of machinery.

"It sounds like some sort of power generator, or something," she whispered. After a few minutes of listening for something other than the constant humming, Jodie pushed the door open and looked inside. She could see a room ahead through a wall of windows. It was filled with what appeared to be computer equipment. Colored lights flashed on another wall covered with circuit panels. An empty desk sat at one end of the room, a small lamp illuminating a stack of disheveled papers.

“That’s someone’s office, but it looks like they’re gone,” Jodie said. “I’m going to check it out. You’d better stay here for the moment, Chuck. Those feet of yours are likely to ruin our element of surprise, if anyone's here.”

“Well, okay, but be careful,” Chuck said, extending a hand to help Jodie climb off the ladder and through the door.

Jodie pushed the door open far enough to slide through. Looking in both directions, she saw nothing but an empty hallway. She stood up and moved into the office, seeing no one, so waved at Chuck to join her.

Chuck stepped through the door and gently closed it behind him. His feet clattered against the floor tile as he joined her in the office.

“I don’t think anyone is around,” Jodie said. She opened a file cabinet drawer, finding it mostly empty. Closing the drawer, she went to the desk, seeing it covered with computer printouts. At the top of each was a name, followed by a series of numbers and letters that she didn’t understand. “Have you ever seen anything like this, Chuck?” Jodie pointed to the printouts.

Chuck picked up the paper and stared at it for a moment. “I saw something like it when I was talking to old man Tyler one day. You know, the coroner in Mountain City?”

“Yes, of course I remember him. Poor guy,” Jodie said, thinking it had been less than two weeks since they’d found old man Tyler’s body. She felt like she’d lived a whole lifetime since then.

“I think it’s genetic code,” Chuck said. “There was this case when I first started police work in Mountain City and a printout for genetic testing came to my office looking like that. I had to take it over to Tyler to ask him what it was.”

“Well, you know more than I do. We ordered a lot of DNA testing at the FBI, but I’ve never seen the results in this format before. We usually only looked at the summaries. You know, match, no match and the percentages.”

Chuck continued to stare at the printout. “I’m sorry to say that I can’t make heads or tails of this, though. If it really is genetic test results, then this person had twenty-five pairs of chromosomes instead of the usual twenty-three. I don’t think that’s possible.”

Chuck handed Jodie the printout and she folded it and stuffed it in her pocket. She sat down in the chair behind the desk and pulled on the pencil drawer. Locked. “Can you give me a hand, Chuck?”

“Oh, sure,” he said, walking around the desk next to her. “You might want to move back.”

“Yeah. Good idea,” Jodie said, standing up and stepping out of the way.

Chuck reached down and yanked on the drawer, which remained locked. “Tough little thing, aren’t you?” he said, pushing his metal-clad finger into the lock and shoving it all the way into the drawer. He yanked again and the drawer came free. He pulled it all the way out, finding it completely empty. “Does it make sense to you that someone would lock an empty drawer?”

Jodie moved closer. “Not at all. Let me see what I can find.” Chuck backed up and she stepped next to the desk and sat down in the chair again. She reached into the drawer, feeling all along the sides, finding nothing. Next, Jodie felt along top of the drawer opening, but came up empty-handed. “One last place to look,” she said, pushing the chair back. Jodie knelt on the floor and looked at the bottom of the drawer. “Got something here,” she said, peeling back tape to reveal a key card. “Well, this could belong to about a million and one things.”

Chuck sighed. “We better hang onto it, though. You never know, right?’

“My sentiments, exactly,” Jodie said, slipping the card in her pocket. “What do you say we go exploring? It doesn’t look like there’s anything here to help us.”

“Yeah. Let me fix that drawer, first,” Chuck said. “Don’t want to tip off anyone that we were here.” Grabbing the lock, he pushed the entire assembly back in place and smoothed out the kinks he’d made in the metal. Jodie thought if the person who used the desk didn’t look too closely, they would never know it had been tampered with. “Okay, I’m ready.”

“Got any feeling for which way to go?” Jodie asked.

“None at all. You lead, I’ll follow,” Chuck said.

Great, Jodie thought. The blind leading the blind. She pulled out the map for the underground installation and unfolded it, trying to figure out which direction to go. She didn't believe that Mei was gone, taken away in a ship, as David had told Fester. Jodie felt as if she could sense her presence for some reason, but feared they would never find her in this labyrinth of corridors. Hearing the sound of someone opening a door, she folded the map quickly. She could make out two voices as a man and a woman approached from down the hallway. “Someone’s coming,” Jodie said. She stepped back, bumping into Chuck.

“There’s nowhere to hide,” he said.

“Let’s move to the other end of the hall into the shadows,” Jodie said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and they won’t see us.” More like, maybe they’ll get lucky, she thought. Who knew what Chuck would have to do if they saw him.

Chuck stepped as quietly as he could, the tile grinding under his feet. Moments later, the two people emerged from the shadows and entered the office. Jodie could overhear them talking and moved up closer to the window to see inside.

“Michael, your desk is a mess,” said the woman, the only one of the two Jodie could see.

Michael laughed. “I’ve been sorting through the records we need to keep. We’re supposed to pack it up later today and move into the cryogenics wing. Ted wants us to prep the population sample trays.”

Jodie wondered if Ted could be Ted Renfro, whose name she’d heard more than once lately.

“Good old Ted,” the woman said. “Always wants everything done yesterday and doesn’t think he needs to help anyone get it finished.”

“Well, I’d just as soon get out of here quicker, anyway,” Michael said. “We’ve been on lockdown for what? A week now? I’d like to see the daylight at some point.”

“Vitamin D shots not enough for you?” the woman asked.

“Not nearly,” Michael said. "All this darkness wreaks havoc on my sex drive."

"I bet I could fix that for you," the woman said.

The woman moved out of her field of view. Jodie could hear the chair scraping across the floor and the obvious sounds of heavy, passionate breathing. She wanted to throw up. To come all this way and be stuck waiting in the dark while these two copulated on a desk seemed so unfair. She found herself wishing she could just go in and shoot them so that she and Chuck could move on. Sounds of papers, a cupful of pencils and a metal inbox tray hitting the floor rang out as the couple staggered toward the desk, tearing at each other's clothing while trying to get into position. Jodie turned away from the sight as best she could. She didn't really want to watch them, but found herself doing it anyway.

The desk started to creak and groan rhythmically as the man thrust himself upon the woman, lying naked and spread eagle, gripping onto the edge of the desk. The stapler next to her head bounced up and down, eventually falling to the floor. Jodie looked up at Chuck, whose facial expression seemed to indicate disgust. She noticed something else, too. Chuck was growing a beard.

She was just about to mention his facial hair to Chuck when the couple reached the pivotal moment of their exchange, crying out in ecstasy. Jodie wondered if the woman had faked it.

"Do it again," the woman begged.

Yes, obviously, she did fake it, Jodie thought. "We can't," the man said, putting on his clothes. "We're already late for our meeting."

"Shit," the woman said. "Well, then, right after. Promise me."

Jodie turned her head as the woman reached into the front of the man's pants. For a moment, she thought they were going to go at it for a second round, until he pushed the woman to arm's length. "You're such a sexy babe," he said. "Right after, then."

Sexy babe? Who even says things like that? No wonder I'm nauseous, Jodie thought. They moved out of sight again for a moment and she heard the sound of a zipper, followed by a file drawer opening and closing. “Here are the printouts we'll need. The classified group is in lockup. I just need to open the security vault. Let me get my key card.”

I hope that’s not the same key card that’s in my pocket, Jodie thought.

“We can use mine,” the woman said. “Let’s go.”

As the footsteps came closer, Jodie pushed a little bit closer to Chuck, deeper in the shadows of the darkened hallway. The light in the area they were in grew noticeably brighter as the man and woman walked toward the exit, buttoning and zipping their clothes. Once they were completely dressed, the woman smoothed her hair down and they exited through a door. Jodie realized she was leaning against Chuck, whose body had begun to take on the glow of a warm fire. She moved away from him, ever so slightly.

“I guess we know which way to go now,” Jodie said. Looking up at Chuck, she could tell he was embarrassed. “You know, Chuck, you really know how to put on a show for a girl,” she said, grinning. “We’d better get going if we want to find out where they went.”

“Sorry about that,” Chuck said. “I don’t know if I can do anything about it, though.”

“Well, it would be quite beautiful if it wasn’t putting us in mortal danger,” Jodie said. Looking up at his face, she was surprised to see dull spots appearing on his otherwise gleaming metal. We’re both looking worse for the wear, she thought, but there was no time to dwell on that now.

They approached the door and opened it slowly. It led into an auditorium-sized room with high ceilings and bright overhead lights. Jodie could hear people talking behind a thick plastic sheet that hung from the ceiling; separating the rest of the room from a corner where something was being sprayed down by a half-dozen people in what appeared to be hazmat suits. She walked farther, coming to a narrow gap between two plastic sheets, and slowly pulled one back to see what the focus of everyone’s attention was.

Ahead of her, suspended above the floor about two feet, was what looked like an airplane. Flat and matte black in color, it hovered over a platform, seemingly unsupported by anything except the air beneath it. Workers clad in white and yellow suits sprayed the vehicle with some sort of gaseous powder, coating it in a white film.

“What is that?” Chuck whispered. “It looks like they’re freezing it.”

Jodie shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe decontamination, or something. What I’m more curious about is what’s holding it up.”

“Maybe it’s like the train we were on,” Chuck said. “You know, an electromagnetic field.”

Ahead of them was a preparation area. Boxes of the white and yellow suits sat on the floor. “I have an idea, Chuck. What size would you say you are? Maybe extra, extra, extra large?”

* * *

Nick crept down the corridor as silently and quickly as he could, glancing back to see if everyone was keeping up with him. They needed to find some way to move up one floor to access the auto fleet garage. Nick felt as if they were walking in circles until he finally saw a sign depicting steps hanging over a door. It was a stairwell, possibly a way out, if it wasn’t already filled with the creatures.

While Nick hoped and prayed that Jodie was safe with Chuck, he also knew that his own responsibilities were mounting moment by moment. The group with him was growing weary. Lack of food, water and sleep, combined with constant exposure to terror, had forced him into a level of exhaustion he’d never experienced before. He worried that, if they didn’t get out and get to safety soon, a fate too terrible to imagine awaited them. Coming up to the stairwell door, Nick gritted his teeth. He turned to address the group. “It’s just one floor up to the auto fleet. Just one. Everyone be very quiet and stay right behind me.”