“Sure.”
“All I require from you guys is to keep out of that room. There’s sensitive equipment in there. It’s easily damaged.”
“Why worry about that, Phoenix? From what we saw, it’s redundant now. There’s no government to sue us for trespass.”
“I know, guys, but… well, you know how it is? I kind of feel responsible after all this time.”
She hissed again. “He is hiding something… watch him, watch him,” she warned in that low whisper so he wouldn’t hear. “He’s trying something.”
I looked up at the screen. Phoenix had backed toward a desk, where he sat down beside a computer. Almost idly, as if toying with the keyboard, he slowly tapped the keys with one finger.
Michaela sang out: “He’s shutting us down!”
“Phoenix,” I shouted, “what are you doing?”
“Oh, nothing really, guys. But running two communications centers really shoots away the juice. I’m just conserving fuel. Don’t worry, it’s cool. Go back to the lounge and we’ll chat there. Help yourselves to some-”
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Michaela punched keys. “What are you hiding across there?”
“Shit, nothing. Now get out of that room!” Panicky, he turned ’round to begin hitting the computer keys, his face locked onto the screen, watching the cursor fly through the menus.
Michaela’s fingers sped faster across the keyboard, hitting camera code after camera code. Once more images flew across the booster screen.
“It’s only going to take him a few seconds,” she said.“He’ll be able to shut down this backup system from across there.”
“Can we do the same to him first?”
“If I knew how, maybe.”
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to access as many of the closed-circuit cameras as I can before he switches us off…” Her eyes flicked across the images now racing across the booster screen. “Didn’t you sense it? When he realized we were talking about his drug habit he was relieved. There’s something else across there that he doesn’t want us- there! I’m into a new batch of cameras. Keep your eyes on the booster screen.”
Images tumbled one after another. I saw shots of corridors, stairwells, doorways, locker rooms, laundry rooms, bedrooms, a boardroom, the sick bay again, with the empty drug cartons, a shot of Phoenix hitting computer keys with all the force of a maniac. He roared, “Get outta there! Get out! Get out!”
Another image flooded the screen. This showed a corridor lit with weak ceiling lights. Michaela struck another key. Now the booster screen showed a room that seemed to be underwater. Through the murk I could make out the line of a closed door, then a bathtub.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I said at last. “You must have two camera shots overlapping each other.”
“No, that’s not possible.”
I stared at the bathroom, wondering if it had filled with mist or smoke. The whole thing had a pinkish tint. And were those objects hanging there, as if suspended by invisible wires from the ceiling?
“I’ll zoom in.” Michaela hit a key.
The lens homed in on one of the hanging objects. Something dark and roughly round in shape filled the booster screen. It could have been a sick-looking planet hanging in space with frayed material floating from it disgustingly, while the surface had been deformed by lumps and swellings.
Then the object rotated upward.
“Oh, my God!”
Michaela’s scream jabbed my ear. I started back, too, my throat muscles contracting because there, filling the screen seven feet high, hung a vast misshapen face. Rattails of hair swirled in the liquid that supported the head.
Then the eyes opened. Two colossal circular eyes that were disks of sticky whiteness. From them two pupils stared out fiercely. The mouth yawned open with all the ferocity of a shark’s. And from the mouth came a sound that was part moan, part roar, part warning.
This was the secret Phoenix had been hiding.
“My God, it’s in the bunker.” I backed away from the screen as if tumors erupted from it. “It’s a hive.”
Forty
It’s a hive…
The words rolled ’round that concrete room then back at me with the ferocity of a punch. It’s a hive.
“It’s in the main bunker.” Michaela’s seemed to shrink before that monstrous stare.
“Jesus, he’s living with that thing. Why?”
Shaking her head with disgust, she returned to the keyboard. “I’m trying something different.” She worked the keys hard, perspiration glazing her face. “I’m going to try to see what he’s doing before he pulls the plug on us… Keep watching the screen, Greg.”
The booster screen still contained the image of that great, bloated head floating in pink gel, the eyes burning with hatred fixed on the CCTV lens… but my God, they seemed to be looking right at us. As if it knew we were there. Now Michaela opened up more camera shots, but instead of replacing the image of the head they flashed up around the edge of the screen to form a border.
“I’m trying to keep as many views of the bunker on screen as possible,” she explained. “We need to have a complete view of what’s going on across there.”
“If Phoenix will let us.” I glanced back at the door. “You never know-he might walk in here any minute with a gun.”
She shook her head. “He’s frightened of contamination… genuinely frightened. We went through decontamination, remember?”
“Yeah, but if he’s living with a hive in the main bunker… he’s already run the risk of infection.”
“Not him. It. He’s protecting it.”
“You’ve got the main communications center back.” I nodded at one of the smaller images on the edge of the booster screen. It revealed Phoenix, working like a madman at the computer. Either the program’s complexity slowed him down or maybe he knew as much about the operating system as we did.
Phoenix’s voice bellowed over the speaker. “You’re gonna regret this… you guys are dust… fucking dust!”
Then Michaela accessed a camera that showed something entirely different.
“Take a look, Greg. Now we know.” Her eyes narrowed. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, as if something repulsively slimy had just wormed its way in through her lips and over her tongue.
“Hell, the bastard… the filthy, murdering bastard…”
The inset screen seemed to hang beside that floating head with its venomous, staring eyes. Rattails of human hair coiled in the fluid. A black tongue worked with a hungry kind of gloating across blistered lips. But for once it was the smaller image revealed by another camera that had my attention nailed. It showed a pair of double doors that stood wide open. Beyond those a pink wall of gel pulsated. The membrane was just like the one I’d found back in the apartment in Sullivan. Objects were stuck to the wall… no, it’s cruel to say objects. People. That was what they were. Or what had been people once. But now the damn thing called a hive had taken them, then turned them into objects of ruin. I saw shriveled bodies that had been sucked dry. They were nothing but bones with a covering of skin that looked like dry paper.
“That’s why Phoenix was so hospitable,” Michaela whispered.
I swallowed. “He fed his visitors to it.”
Some of the shriveled corpses still wore clothes. I recognized the green sweatshirts and pants. The corpse of a young child with holes in its face where the eyes had been still wore those absurd white rubber sandals. Those goddam rubber joke sandals that would have people laughing at you in the street.
There was something pathetic and cruel about those dead people all at the same time. Phoenix had lured
