The Black Page 9

  Numbness was taking hold.

  His elbow found ribs, and he rolled, eyes still closed, kicking out, catching another form, knocking it backward. Trying to rise, he felt warmth start to build in his chest, moving outward to his arms. His limbs felt like rubber, and the sensation turned from pain to a pleasant glow. Relaxing, he lay back down, guided by the hands now. It was building to a disorienting but orgasmic wave. He felt himself inhale as the burning gave way to the sensation of bliss. He felt loved, like he had returned home and was being greeted by everyone who had ever cared for him. He could imagine the caring hands of his sister, her hand on his arm guiding him to lie down and sink deep into the earth.

  Melancholy washed over him. He missed her. He wanted her to stay with him. Be a family again. “Sue?” Dave said, but they sounded like someone else. A strange, muffled sound like it was coming from behind a wall.

  “Give me the alcohol,” a hurried voice said, and the pain returned as it splashed onto him. The pickling smell burned his nose as someone poured it inside. His head thrashed with the pain.

  “Open his eyes and mouth,” the voice said again, and Dave struggled against the destruction of the warmth, replacing it with pain and suffering.

  Why were they ruining it? Who were these people? Why were they taking Sue away?

  White-hot acid poured into his skull, and he sputtered, inhaling the fluid. His body rejected it, and he tried to fight it. Someone pinched his nose, and another jammed a tube into his mouth, filling it with the acrid juice. Coughing, he swallowed most of it, but a portion spilled into his lungs, making him hitch.

  “Get his hair,” the man’s voice said again, and they rolled him over, pouring more onto him.

  “What about the shed?”

  “Burn it; we don’t have a lot left. They can dig another hole.”

  The sound of breaking glass and heat flared up. Dave flinched, thinking about the explosion.

  “Stop…” he said, weakly shielding himself from the liquid as they cut away his clothes.

  He was exhausted, confused. Vertigo was overtaking him. There was no fight in him as he coughed and sputtered.

  “Is this the first time you have been dusted?” they asked. Someone was shining a lantern in his face, but the alcohol was making his eyes water and burn as they pried open his lids. Someone had propped him up.

  “I’ve never felt that before. What the hell was that?” Dave said. The muscles of his body felt like rubber.

  “He’s good. How are the rest?”

  “Alive, we got to them before they entered the house. One tried to dust the inside but never broke the seal on the tube.”

  “Good. We saved this one.”

  “Hope he’s worth it.”

  “He’s a good scrapper. We might be able to use him.”

  Strong hands helped Dave stand; a blanket was wrapped around him. He was exhausted, and the strength wasn’t in his naked legs. Someone had taken his clothes off.

  “Another minute and he would have been lost,” a blurry figure said.

  “Let’s get inside. Lock the doors; there may be more.”

  The wooden threshold closed behind them, letting the outhouse burn, crackling in the night.

  * * *

  Morning came gently into the room, and Dave peeled his eyes open. A woman sat on the small bed across from him, a small hatchet in hand, watching him.

  Dave tried to speak, but his dry throat refused to do anything more than a groan. Indifferent to him, the woman coldly stood up, opening the door and motioning to someone before closing it again. A quick hustle of feet down the wooden floor outside faded away.

  She sat back down as he coughed dryly. His lungs felt like sandpaper, and he could taste the alcohol he had not only ingested but inhaled. His head pounded. It was possibly the second worst hangover he had ever had.

  Propping himself up Dave leaned against the headboard, surveying the humble room. The motion caused his head to pound. Plywood walls were covered by a thin coat of white paint, and a dull grey light eased into the window.

  Struggling again, he turned to the woman. “Water…” The words choked out of him as a fit of coughing erupted again. It produced a bitter flavour, and he leaned over and retched… straight into a well-placed bucket.

  She stared at him, watching his struggles indifferently.

  Another bought of coughing. How much alcohol had he swallowed? He stank of it. His skin reeked like someone had tried to pickle him.

  “What happened?” he asked, finding his voice.

  She seemed satisfied by the fact that he was talking and placed the small hatchet into a leather sleeve on her belt. He could see that she wore darker clothing, a hooded sweatshirt, and loose-fitting black pants.

  A knock at the door.

  The woman stood and opened it, giving a thumbs-up to the person on the other side.

  In stepped a middle-aged man. “Thanks, Genie.” He held the door for her as she exited and closed it quietly. The man sat down in her spot and looked at Dave like a doctor surveying a patient.

  “How do you feel?” the man asked.

  “Like I have been horse-kicked,” Dave stated.

  The man squinted like he was confused. “Horse-kicked?”

  “Yeah, like I have been kicked by a horse. My head hurts. Water would help if you have any?”

  “None yet, you are not clear of the infection. Soon, though. Did you dream about her?”

  “I felt like Sue was with me.” Dave paused, savouring the memory of his sister. His heart sank as he remembered that she was dead.

  “The queen? Did you dream about talking to the queen?”

  “I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”

  “Do you feel like you are connected to something greater than yourself?” came another carefully worded question. The tone gave Dave the impression that it had been said a thousand times.

  He was about to make a smart-ass comment when he noticed that the man’s hand was sitting on the handle of a sheathed machete. Taking the moment seriously he replied, “No. I don’t feel ‘connected.’ I feel sick.”

  “Last question, and an important one. If you could leave the confines of the curtain and travel to the old world, would you?”

  “For damn sure,” Dave said, leaning back. “They have water and Advil, which you clearly don’t.”

  “My name is Serif.” He extended a hand to Dave.

  Dave reached out and grasped it, wincing when the man shook. “What happened?”

  “You were dusted. We were following those three. Had seen them earlier in the day start to move toward the outer perimeter and followed them. It seems that you were the target. Well… both of you, I think.”

  “Is Tony okay?” Dave suddenly realized that his friend wasn’t in this room.

  “He’s fine. So are the mayor, and all of his people. We killed the zealots before they could infect everyone.”

  “Infect?” Dave asked.

  “You must have felt it. That was the ‘dust.’ It infects the body. Gives the queen a connection to the infected. Eats away at their minds until they end up just husks like those you met. You would have shared the same fate if we hadn’t gotten to you first.”

  “Thanks for that. I think.”

  “Your friend Tony says that you are both from beyond the curtain. Is the world really going to explode? Will we all die?”

  “Yup. If that’s what Tony says, it’s true. He’s the smart one. I just got us in here. Into this mess.”

  “How did you get inside?”

  “I don’t quite know. We spent ten years trying to get in. I wish you were talking to someone else. Someone who understood, but we got here because of an accident. I’m not even sure how it happened. One minute we were at the end of the tunnel in an explosion, the next we were in the grass on the inside.”

  The man looked at him. “We have work to do. You need clothes.”

  “And water. Please. Water,” Dave pleaded.

 
“No water. The infection needs it. The less water you have, the easier it is to get over. You need to be dehydrated for a day or so. If you survive that, you should be fine. Don’t drink any water. Don’t eat. Just try and survive it, and tomorrow you will get as much as you need. For now, just endure.”

  The man got up from the room, and the door opened, closing behind him. More whispers. Dave relaxed and closed his eyes, trying to sleep through a headache. Another coughing fit made him roll over, and he spat out the pungent phlegm.

  Chapter 11

  The next evening Dave felt well enough to move from the small bed to the living room. The mayor had been kind enough to source some clothing in his size. A pair of worn and faded pants with patches over knees fit as long as he kept the belt tight, and the top appeared to be a hooded shirt made from thickly woven cotton.

  The ever-persistent headache slowly began to fade after he was allowed to drink his fill of water. Tony watched from across the sofas as Dave devoured a thick stew of thinly stripped meat and sliced carrots. It barely quelled the ceaseless hunger but seemed to satisfy some of the thirst that Dave was consumed with.

  “Tell me again, who were those guys that jumped me?” Dave asked Serif.

  “They are the eyes and ears of the queen. The dust connects them and makes them susceptible to her suggestion. The longer they use the dust, the more connected they become. Eventually, none of the things that make them human remain. They are the puppets of the queen. Those were at that stage. They are easy to spot because she doesn’t nourish the bodies of the zealots. She lets them starve slowly.”

  Tony limped into the room, carrying a tray of cracked cups, followed by the mayor.

  “Why? Why us? That wasn’t random,” Dave said.

  “Apparently it is because of how we arrived,” Tony said. He had been using the last day or so to get acquainted with their new situation.

  “Yes,” Serif agreed. “The lights usually bring odd things. They get deposited on the outer rim. It’s not very common these days, but we suspect that she can ‘sense’ when the lights occur.”

  “Where is the old man who brought us here?” Dave asked.

  Tony passed out mugs of warm broth. “He went home earlier today. Said he had to tend to his garden.”

  Dave drank back the remaining warm broth of the stew. The savoury aroma filled his nose and quelled the nausea he had felt for the last two days. His sides hurt from vomiting and coughing.

  “We sent a scouting party in toward the centre. If what you say is true about the curtain failing, there may be changes. We have noticed more heavies toward the centre recently. So some of what you have told us makes sense,” Serif continued.

  Tony slouched back in the chair. “With the time dilation on this side of the field, it’s hard to tell when it will happen. I suspected that it was a matter of a few weeks to a month on our side before we would really start to see the increased discharges.”

  “Was it that close? You never told me.” Dave looked at his friend hurt.

  “You didn’t need to know. We were ahead of schedule because of finding the tunnel. The board felt that telling everyone who was working on the job site what was actually happening would be disruptive and risk panic. We needed everyone focused on the task at hand.”

  Dave shook his head. “I would have been working harder to get that tunnel cleared.”

  “It was out of my hands.” Tony shrugged.

  There was a long silence as Serif assessed the two men’s displeasure.

  “What can we do to save our little community?” the mayor asked. “There are a lot of good people here who would like to continue living. I am sure that there are many on the outside who would like to do the same.”

  Tony nodded. “The thought was that if we can find the centre, the core of the sphere, we can shut down whatever is generating the field. The team we were sending in was going to spend time analyzing it and making those decisions. I just don’t think that they are going to be coming. We got through. It’s a lucky break, actually, now that I think of it.”

  “They should be able to clear the rubble and break through the wall.” Dave lifted a metal mug full of water to his lips and sipped at it.

  “They might, but what about what happened during the explosion? We got pulled here. There is no tunnel entrance. No opening that was left from the blast. If it does exist, it might be buried under hundreds of feet of topsoil. What if the event that pulled us here is related to the lights? The lights in the discharges that were interfering with things, with the excavations?”

  “The detonation cord that was in the tunnel was cut. No one was down there after I set the demolition. It’s possible that one might have arced across it. We’ve seen that before. It’s just energy.”

  “Energy that seems to have gotten in the way of things. Constantly. Like the last ten years of us trying to tunnel under the dome.”

  Dave gently shook his head. “It’s all speculation. Right here and now the question is about where the other crew is. Why aren’t they here yet? Even if they did clear the tunnel, why couldn’t they get through?”

  “Agreed. Let’s say that they spent only one day to clear the rubble and walk out of a perfectly formed tunnel, then maybe we would see them in…” he worked out the mental math, “…maybe … maybe ten to twenty days here.”

  “We could wait for them?” Dave said.

  “But what if it takes them another week?”

  “So what? We wait, they’re the professionals.”

  Tony slid forward on the aging sofa. “If it’s a week, then it’s almost three months… Three months of wondering if we should be doing anything. If there is a way we can affect change, or fix the issue, we should be doing so. In the worst-case scenario, we fill them in on all the information that we found out.”

  “That does make sense,” Dave agreed.

  “What is it that you are looking for? What does the ‘core’ look like?” Serif asked.

  “We don’t know. Someone ran the math once and said that it would be at the dead centre of the bubble, and probably the size of a yoga ball.”

  “Yoga ball?” Serif’s face was painted with confusion.

  Dave held up his arms, showing him the size.

  “How would we find something like that?” the mayor asked.

  Tony thought about it for a moment. “The idea is that there should be a lot of technology generating the field… the curtain… it should be surrounded by some sort of complex structure. There should be something controlling it. In our scenarios, we surmised that it would need a control mechanism to maintain the structure of the field.”

  “Do you know how to turn it off?” Dave asked.

  “Maybe… but if it’s an alien technology, it may be something that might take us decades to figure out. Imagine a person from the 1800s trapped in a room with an electronically locked door. The only thing in the room is a laptop connected to the door. How long do you think it will take him to figure out how to open the laptop, let alone boot it up, hack the password protection, find the right program, and open the door?”

  “So you’re saying we are screwed,” Dave said, sitting back.

  “No… I’m saying it’s going to take a long time to figure it out. But we have to find it and get a look at it first.”

  The windows glowed a subtle green, fading to purple. The hue was strong enough to overpower the candles and lamps inside. The mayor smiled, pointing to the window. “Ah… this is a great treat,” he said, rising, “The north lights. Come take a look.”

  The mayor ushered everyone out the front door and down the steps into the unlit street. Others were outside, looking up, smiling. Serif scanned the dark for threats, his hand resting on the hilt of his knife.

  Above them were bands of energy shimmering like green and purple ribbons across the outer curve of the domed ceiling kilometres above them.

  “It’s beautiful,” Tony said.

  The ribbons started in small circles, swirlin
g the apex of the dome, and moved outward, flowing and expanding like ripples in a pond, changing colour as they went.

  “How often does this happen?” Tony asked the mayor.

  “Maybe once a year when I was a child. It has been happening a lot more lately. Maybe once a month. It is considered good luck.” The man smiled and looked to the sky.

  Tony looked at Dave. “I think that this is related to the core.”

  “The discharges?” Dave asked.

  “Yeah. Probably brought on by the core releasing energy. I have a theory. It’s like a car engine. It is trying to build up enough of a charge to ‘turn over’ and generate a stronger field. Each time the discharge went through, it was discharging into the ground. It’s why we could get through the field in the tunnels if we used the copper mesh. Well, I think it is building enough energy to overcome the discharges and start running.”

  “Remind me again what happens when it does?”

  “The core continues moving, travelling in the direction it was originally going.”

  “Right through the Earth?”

  “Yes.”

  They stood there and looked at the coloured sky, contemplating their next move.

  Chapter 12

  The mayor, Tony, Serif, and Dave sat around the kitchen table. A hand-drawn map was laid out over the rough wood and covered most of the surface.

  “The centre is here.” Serif pointed out at the hand-drawn boxes. “It’s in the middle of the city. Genie’s been that far into the interior. She says that the area is crawling with the converted, and truthfully I am not sure how easy it will be for us to get into. She says that she hasn’t seen anything that fits your description of a ball, but there is a lot of the mixing in that area.”