Critical Dawn (4 page)

Ben had vague memories of being in the elevator as a frightened teenager. More like déjà vu than a physical recollection.

The slight rock before perceiving motion. A strip of blue lights attached to a wall panel, changing tone as the cab moved between floors.

He felt a slight sense of weightlessness as they started to descend.

Ethan crouched in the corner, rubbing his palms on his forehead.

“Hey, you just might be the first member of the Ops Compartment to use this thing twice in a day,” Ben said.

“Or maybe the first in a century,” Maria said.

Ethan lowered his hands. “You’ve never been to stasis before?”

“First time for all of us. I doubt they’re expecting technical experts,” Ben said.

“Who’s in there? I mean, who got lucky enough to sleep their way through this?” Erika said.

Ben had heard rumors of rich celebrities, politicians, and corporations buying or imposing their way in. It was always that way on the ship. He wasn’t sure he believed it. What use would an aging rock star be when trying to build a new civilization from the ground up compared to a talented tradesman?

“Who cares?” he said. “It’s just our job to make sure they get there alive, isn’t it? We won’t be around to see the results of their work.
This
is our work.”

“Did Jimmy tell you anything else about this procedure?” Erika said.

“I’ve told you all I know. That’s all he knew. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting it to happen.”

“What about the segregation? The flu …”

“All that’s probably out of the window when the shit hits the—” Maria said.

The elevator juddered to a halt.

Maria took a sharp intake of breath as it jerked up. A cherry red, thimble-shaped light above the door flicked on and gave off a waspish, electric buzz. The door swished open.

Ben shuffled his way to the front of the group. “Follow me.”

He stepped out of the cab into a dimly lit metallic corridor leading to another airlock with a glowing keypad next to it. Ben’s breath froze in the air. Goose bumps formed on his limbs. He tried to remember Jimmy’s directions.

Ethan hugged himself, put his hands under his arms. “I’ve never felt cold like this.”

“I doubt any of us have,” Erika said.

Ben shook his head. “Me neither, but it has to be this way.”

He’d always been in a regulated temperature, although his recollections of childhood were limited to a few flashbacks, all of the same thing: controlled atmospheres, comfortable, unremarkable.

They could have at least given them proper suits to wear in these emergency situations. He doubted he could work for too long in the stasis segment when his fingers became too cold to even feel.

Another thought came to him as he remembered Jimmy’s procedure for entering the airlock. As a disobedient child, he had been dragged away, kicking and screaming, never to return to his classroom.

The children were told by the teacher every day that any misbehavior would lead them to being fed to the ship’s monster. Those kinds of myths are hard to remove.

Looking back, Ben hoped that one day he’d get chance to meet the teacher again and give him some lessons in attitude realignment.

He retrieved the stamped code from his pocket and started to punch in the numbers. It wasn’t like the warm, loose mechanism in the Operations Compartment. Each button required extra force to snap inwards.

“I bet Jimmy’s pissed. Imagine, on the day you retire, all this happens. All those years on the job, and nothing interesting happens,” Erika said.

“Jimmy won’t be the only one. Remember, I said this only happens in an emergency. Let’s make sure we do a good job. Don’t want them thinking we’re a bunch of clowns.”

The group collectively murmured approval.

After depressing the last button, the countdown timer started at five seconds.

The airlock door hissed open.

Ben stepped into a small room, facing another larger door.

“Door closing,” a computerized female voice said.

“Come on, get moving,” Ben said, urging the others inside.

Erika was the last through. She screamed and dropped to the ground as the door slammed against her trailing leg. It opened a few inches, crunched against her ankle.

Ben forced his shoulder into the gap and shoved the door with both hands. “Pull her through.”

Ethan and Maria hooked their arms underneath her shoulders and dragged Erika back. Ben jumped to the side, and the door thudded shut.

“Goddamn, that’s a bit vicious,” Ben said, testing the door.

The room was twice the size of the cab and was lit by a single red light on the ceiling. Through the gloom, he could see Erika squeezing her eyes tight, gritting her teeth, breathing in sharply.

“Are you okay?” Maria said.

“Does it … does it … look like it?” Erika said.

“How bad is it?” Ben said. “Can you stand?”

“I don’t know. Give me a minute.”

He checked the larger door. Felt around its edges. No keypad. The other side was the same. No internal way to get out of the room.

“What the hell? This isn’t like what Jimmy told me. Something’s wrong here,” Ben said.

“Maybe it’s controlled from the other side,” Ethan said. “They might get a notification or something that we’re here?”

“Perhaps it’s the wrong door?” Maria said. “Could it have been possible to have come into the wrong one? I mean, it’s all our first time down here.”

“No,” Ben said. “I don’t screw up like that. I remember his exact words. This is definitely the airlock to the stasis chamber.”

Maria had her arm around Erika. She glanced up at Ben and shrugged.

“Looks like we don’t have a choice,” Ben said. “Hopefully, they’ll be here soon.”

“You know what?” Maria said. “The Ops Compartment seems comfortable compared to here. And I thought we pulled the short straw.”

Erika groaned, rubbing her ankle. “Tell me about it.”

Ben hoped the first person they encountered would be sympathetic and take Erika away for treatment. The last thing he wanted was for word to get around that their team wasn’t capable of making it through a couple of airlocks.

Especially on his command. He’d worked hard throughout his time and didn’t want any blemish on his record. Or worse: have to go visit the superiors. He remembered one guy, Brad, who screwed up. No one ever saw him again. Must have been transferred, but no one knew for certain.

Just another of the many mysteries of life on the ship.

However, this was a chance for the team to prove themselves outside their enclosed domain. Maybe they’d land better job roles. Go up the levels, remove some of the restrictions of working in Ops.

He also wanted to find out if they were really being watched. There were so many stories that they were always monitored.

He considered it might just be a case of a rumor to keep the workforce from slacking off, which he could understand. When you were relying on people to maintain a generation ship over the centuries, you didn’t want a group of ill-disciplined people putting everything in jeopardy.

“Hey, what’s this?” Ethan said.

He leaned down and picked up a thin piece of metal.

Ben instantly recognized it by its shape. It was in a letter ‘J’ cut from a foil tray that their food came served in. Jimmy’s bookmark.

“That’s Jimmy’s. He’s been here too,” Maria said.

“Must have dropped it on his way out,” Ben said.

“Don’t blame him. He’ll have a real bookmark,” Erika said. “Can you help me up?”

Ben began to crouch but bolted up after a siren started to blast. It sounded similar to the ones he’d heard watching clips of twentieth-century car chases. It was different than the usual warnings alarms.

A cold shiver of dread crawled down his back. Something wasn’t right here. He could just sense it.

The light on the ceiling began to spin, accompanying his previous thought.

Behind the large door, he heard a rattling sound, like somebody dropping a chain. The bottom edged shuddered and lifted up a couple of inches, sending bright light streaming into the small room.

“Hello?” Ben said, “We’re from Ops. Come to run protocol checks on the stasis chamber as per the—”

The solid door jerked up a few inches at a time. No one responded. He could see shadows beneath the door. He held his arm toward Erika. “Come on. Let’s get you on your feet.”

He looked down and saw a pair of dark gray, smooth leather boots on the other side. They looked huge, much larger than usual. Just who was that on that on the other side? Ben took a step back as the door continued to rise.

Charlie ignored Pippa’s protests and headed for the sinkhole.

The sheriff stood in front of him, his arm pressing against Charlie’s chest.

“I’m sorry, son, I can’t let you get any closer. It’s not safe.”

“I’ve done this kind of thing before. If that’s one of our kids down there, I want to get down there ASAP. Your guys don’t seem in much of a rush.”

The fire chief joined the sheriff. “We have to use procedure to make sure no one else gets hurt. We’re doing all we can. We’ll be mounting a rescue shortly.”

“How?” Charlie said. “You’re busy watching the monitor. You should be having people down there with ropes and climbing gear. But you don’t have any of that stuff, do you? Where are the resources for this kind of rescue?”

The sheriff looked sheepish. “We’re stretched at the moment is all. We’re managing with what we’ve got.”

Pippa joined Charlie. “He’s right, Charlie, let’s not do anything drastic here.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not waiting. I know what I’m doing.”

With that, Charlie turned away and tied the end of his two-hundred-foot rope to the grill bars on the fire truck. He followed his usual climbing prep procedure, fit his harness, checked his knots, put on his head-mounted flashlight, and headed for the hole.

The place smelled of fresh dirt. It reminded him of days spent in the summer working on farms picking strawberries.

The fire crew remonstrated with the sheriff but ultimately realized like Charlie that it was quicker if he went down there.

The chief came over to him. “Son, don’t do anything stupid, okay? Take the camera with you. Pull it up and show us what you’re seeing as you go. We’ll be right here if anything happens. We’ve got resources on the way, but with the sinkhole on the farm and one opening up in the town, we’re really pushed at the moment.”

“Don’t worry about me, Chief. I’ve done this a thousand times. Is there audio on the camera?”

“No, but take this radio. It’s already tuned to our frequency.” The chief handed him a small but rugged two-way, which Charlie clipped to his harness around his chest.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Pippa said, reaching out for him. “I mean, it’s dangerous. What if … I couldn’t …” she broke her eye contact then, looked off into the distance.

Charlie gave her a hug and while close, whispered in her ear, “I’ll be right up, you’ll see. No worries, no stress.” He gave her a reassuring smile, but she didn’t look convinced and held onto him a few moments longer than would be considered usual for just friends.

He had a brief thought of holding on, staying on the surface, but seeing Steph’s pale face as she stood by the fire truck gave him the motivation to carry on and break away. “I’ll be back,” he said with a wink.

The chief and another fire officer explained the controls of the camera and discussed a few rote safety procedures, but Charlie had heard it all before. “Okay, I got it. I’m going in.”

He had hooked a second climbing harness over his shoulders. If Luke was down there, the others would be able to lift him or use the winch on the truck.

A tug on the pair of ropes ensured the knots were solid.

Charlie stepped backwards until he found the edge of the sinkhole. He leaned his weight back until he reached nearly ninety degrees, dug his heels into the topsoil, and walked his way down into the darkness.

His light shined against the dirt. As he continued to abseil down, he noticed there was little clay, and the walls were smooth. He reached out and touched the edge, feeling it with his hands. He didn’t recognize the sensation.

It was too smooth. Unnatural.

The further he descended, the more he recognized a degree of uniformity on the surface. There were striations, spiraled like the inside of a gun barrel. Even the various layers of rocks, halfway down, were smooth, almost to the point of polished. Charlie thought that perhaps it was more of a burnishing, done with great heat. And yet the smell was of cold, damp, earth.

He shivered slightly, thinking of the temperature.

The entrance hole was shrinking away, the angular morning light dissipating, unable to penetrate the gloom. His head-mounted flashlight cast a single, weak beam into the void.

The two-way radio crackled to life.

“Charlie, this is Pippa. Are you okay? Over.”

He stopped his descent, ensured he was secure, bent his head to the radio, and responded, “I’m fine, Pip. Just over halfway by my reckoning. The surface of the hole is strange, smooth. It’s like I’m going down a steel tube or something. Over.”

“We’re not getting the video, Charlie. Can you check the camera? Over.”

“Shit, sorry, I forgot. I was distracted. Let me sort that out now, and I’ll head lower. Talk soon. Over.”

The camera was attached to his harness. Its umbilical cord twisted up to the surface alongside his own rope, the last two things to connect him to the real world.

His movements didn’t echo.

Any sound was hungrily consumed by the hole, snatched from the air as soon as the sound waves birthed. Even his heartbeat that pulsed through his ears seemed muted as if shrouded and stolen by the darkness.

Filming with one hand, Charlie slowly panned the camera round and down, giving those on the surface a chance to see what he saw. His hand shook as vibrations ran up through the hole.

Fragments of dirt fell away from the sides as the noise of moving earth roared louder, gas and air and debris shot up, making him cough. He swung forward, hooking the camera to his harness but pointing down. He dug his feet in firmly and clung to a half-inch-wide groove.

The shuddering vibrated through his hands. It felt like an earthquake.

He’d experienced a number of them during his time in California, but there was something about this that just didn’t sit right with him.

One particular time, he was half a mile underground, exploring a cave system when a quake struck. That was more violent than this one, but the roar of moving earth and air beneath made it seem like the hole was alive and devouring anything within its gullet.

He wondered then that if Luke were indeed down there, he’d likely have gone lower as the hole continued to sink.

“Charlie, what’s happening down there? Are you okay? Over.” Pippa said over the radio. He looked up to see her face poking over the edge.

Taking one hand away from the groove to depress the radio he replied, “I’m fine. The hole has sunk further I think. I’m going lower. And stand back. I don’t want you falling in. It’s hard to tell how safe the ground is around here. Over.”

“The camera showed the basin of the hole fall away,” Pippa added. “There’s a shelf of some kind not far below. I think Luke’s there. We can see a coat among the dirt. Over.”

“I’m heading down right away. Over.”

It took a few minutes of descending into the darkness until he found the shelf. The material was solid rock, jutting incongruously out of the sides of the hole. The edges were smooth, rounded, almost as if something had shaped them that way for some unknown purpose.

Letting the ropes dangle a further twenty feet below the shelf, Charlie crouched down and looked over the side, shining his flashlight into the gloom and pointing the camera down.

Something shined beneath the light.

A piece of fabric.

It moved.

“Luke? Is that you? Can you hear me?” Charlie shouted. He cupped his ear, waited for a response, but could only hear a low, subterranean rumble and his own pulse.

“I think I’ve found him. Over.”

“Is he alive? Over,” Pippa said.

“There was movement; I’m going closer. Hold on. Over.”

Charlie turned his back to the hole and repeated the abseiling procedure and back off the ledge, letting the rope rest with a notch on the edge of the ledge. He zipped down the rope and stalled his progress a foot above the mound of dirt and debris.

The rumble continued from below.

He tried to ignore the idea that it sounded like some great beast, its maw open just waiting to swallow him whole. Tentatively, Charlie placed his feet on patch of soil and tested his weight.

It seemed solid enough.

Luke’s blue windbreaker stuck out of the soil, his arm and hand held up, the fingers moving. Charlie reached down and grabbed his hand, traced his body until he found his head cocked to one side, half-buried in debris. Charlie cleared some of the soil and turf away from the kid’s face. His eyes were open and glinted with recognition beneath the flashlight.

“I’m here, buddy,” Charlie said. “We’re gonna get you out. Can you move? Is anything broken?”

“I … don’t know,” Luke said, his voice barely a whisper, the weight of the soil on his chest making him breathe in shallow breaths. “I thought I was going to die …”

“It’s okay, buddy, don’t talk. Conserve your strength. I’m going to help get you out and put this harness on. You’ll be lifted out of here. You’re going to make it. Just squeeze my hand if I hurt you, okay?”

Luke nodded gently and squeezed his hand.

Before Charlie started excavating him from the debris, Charlie informed the others. He could feel the relief over the radio.

“Okay, I’ll go slow,” Charlie said as he lowered himself until he straddled the boy. With his free hand, he started to shift the clods of earth from around the boy’s arms and legs. He made quick progress, but Luke hadn’t moved a muscle.

Paralysis, Charlie thought. He could have broken his back.

For a brief moment, he wondered if it was such a good idea getting the harness on him, but with the rumbles getting louder beneath him, he didn’t think he’d have enough time to get an EMT down there to assess him properly.

Charlie made a judgment call: he’d get the kid out and worry about the rest later. It was better he took him out alive and injured than leave him to die.

“I’m just going to let go of your hand for a moment, buddy. I need to get this harness on you. Just nod or make a noise if I’m hurting you.”

Luke did just that, nodding and making a breathy, squeaking noise that sounded like, “Do it.”

Each moment felt like a lifetime as Charlie worked on freeing the boy. He could feel the vibrations of the rumble below travel up his legs.

Five minutes later, or what felt like five years, Charlie had managed to clear enough debris from him that he could slip the harness over Luke’s legs and waist. He attached the ropes and various safety gear and applied tension to test the connections. It was solid.

Luke didn’t budge or make a noise.

“Can you grip the rope?” Charlie said, handing it to him.

The boy’s grip was weak, but he’d only need it to stop himself from falling backwards as they hoisted him up.

“Good lad. This might hurt, but it’ll only be for a short while, and you’ll be back on the surface. Try and keep hold of the rope as they lift you up, okay?”

“Okay,” Luke said. “Thank you.”

Charlie stood back and reached for the two-way radio, readying to call up to the others. But the surface beneath him rocked and shook, making him drop the radio.

He lost his balance and fell backwards, cracking the back of his head against the rocky surface. He slumped forward as pain bloomed in his skull, making him see white flashes.

Before he knew it, the dirt below dropped away in a roar that made his ears pop. The pressure changed, and below him, watching in horror, the remaining debris fell away into a dark void.

The harness gripped around his legs and waist as he swung out, his weight making the rope twang with the sudden tension.

Luke yelped as he too tensioned against his rope. His grip failed him, and he fell backwards, his limbs flailing. The harness held him to the rope, but his eyes flashed wide with sudden terror.

“Oh shit,” Charlie said, “Hold on, Luke. I’m coming.”

With a twist of his body and pushing off against the hole, Charlie sent himself swinging out to the center of the hole, reaching out for Luke. He grabbed him by the arm and helped lift him upright.

“Grab the rope,” Charlie said as he helped direct the kid’s hands. “Are you hurt?”

“I can’t feel my back or my legs,” Luke said, his eyes closing tight.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of here.”

Charlie looked up to the hole and was about to shout up when he heard another roar from beneath him.

This time, it was different. It wasn’t the sound of earth falling but rather something mechanical. When he looked down, he saw a belch of smoke bubble up. It made him choke and cough. The white smoke continued to fill the hole, tightening his throat so he couldn’t yell out.

And in the smoke, gaining on them, a large, metallic object the same diameter as the hole rose up.

An eerie, yellow light came from the front of it as it kept on climbing.

Luke screamed when he saw it.

Charlie’s spine went cold when he saw electricity flicker on the shape’s surface. He tried to lift his legs as the machine within the smoke came closer, but he wasn’t quick enough, and a bolt of electricity shot out, striking against his leg.

His vision closed to tiny specks, consciousness dancing on the edge, the darkness consuming him, taking him away until he could no longer feel anything. His last image was the light at the top of the sinkhole, the small silhouette of Pippa looking down at him.

He wanted to scream a warning, but it was too late.