Chapter Twenty Nine
The elevator doors opened onto a room with glass partitions splitting it into sections. It was lit with a dim red glow: some form of emergency lighting was running on the bottom floor.
There were guard stations on either side of the corridor beyond the elevator and signs stating the floor to be 'Level Eight Security Access Only.'
"Well would you look at that? Turns out I'm level eight cleared," Coal said as he whipped out the ID badge he had pocketed earlier.
A few steps beyond the elevator, a smoked glass wall blocked our path. The centre of it held a door which had a keycard scanner.
"Here's hoping there's enough power left to make this work," Coal said, swiping the card.
"Welcome to level eight, Eric," a mechanical sounding voice greeted us as the door slid open.
Coal grinned and we moved inside. The room was laid out in a kind of twisting pathway which threaded through all of the partitioned zones. Smoked glass encased the zones which each contained a computer console with more buttons than I had any idea what to do with and several screens.
"Jackpot." Alicia smiled broadly and strode ahead. The room twisted on and on and soon I couldn't see the elevator behind us.
A thin, ringing clatter, like something falling to the floor, drew my attention back the way we had come. I paused and glanced over my shoulder.
"Did you hear that?" I asked the others.
"What?" Laurie turned her head too and we stood for a moment, listening.
"I dunno, I must have imagined it." I shrugged and we hurried to catch up to Alicia.
Coal stood for a moment longer, frowning back the way we had come but he soon followed on too.
Each of the consoles had a bunch of wires rising from them that connected together and ran along the ceiling in a thick braid, leading the way onwards.
"These should lead to the super computer," Alicia said, pointing at the wires.
We moved on, following the twisting path between consoles that headed further and further into the depths of the bunker.
"It must be pretty important if they felt they needed to hide it away down here," Laurie commented.
"Seems a bit excessive to me," I replied.
A movement in the corner of my eye made me turn to look at one of the small desk areas but the shadows didn't shift again as I scrutinised them. I took a step towards the console.
"Ah ha!" Alicia announced in triumph.
She was standing before a huge doorway, built into another smoked glass wall, where the wires disappeared inside a darkened room. We proceeded inside carefully. The emergency lights weren't working within so the others flicked their torches back on and pieced the room together with the combined beams.
It was massive. Row upon row of black pillars, lit with little lines of flashing blue LEDs, filled it in every direction. The nuclear power source must have had its work cut out, keeping that thing going for all those years. I ran my fingers along the bumps and grooves on the front of one of the panels wondering how we would tell where to plug in the transmitter.
"It's programmed to light up green when we're at the right console," Alicia said, holding up the transmitter as if she had read my mind.
We started pacing up and down the aisles. Our footsteps echoed loudly in the open space.
A slight rustling drew my attention back to the room we had come from but the dim emergency lighting didn't show anything out of place. Around the twentieth aisle, I started to drift behind Alicia who was still striding forward purposefully holding the transmitter in front of her. Laurie was by her side and they were chatting away about something, words like 'transmission' and 'break-horse power' floated back to me as my attention wandered.
"What's going on in your head?" Coal slowed to walk with me.
"I was just thinking, there must have been hundreds of people who worked down here."
"And?"
"And, where did they go? Why did none of them ever come back?"
"I guess they went to find their families."
"And the fact that there are beds, showers, some sort of power source and a massive computer capable of god knows what all tucked away safely down here didn't draw any of them back?"
Coal shrugged.
"It just seems strange that no one would come back, or at least tell someone else about it who would want to come here," I said.
"Maybe it's just because it's Creeper country. Even if they tried to come back, they might not have made it down here like we did."
I nodded, though it still seemed odd to me.
"Found it." Alicia's voice echoed across the room. She had disappeared from view with Laurie while we were talking and we moved on quickly to locate them.
Something rattled across the floor and hit the side of my boot.
"What's that?" Coal asked, bending down to retrieve it. He held it up. It was a rusted metal drink can.
"Where did that come from?" I asked.
We looked down the row. At the end, a silhouette was outlined by the dim red light of the room through the smoked glass beyond.
"Laurie?" I asked, but I knew it wasn't her. The silhouette was too tall, the limbs hung at strange angles and it was positioned almost like a wild animal waiting to pounce.
I felt Coal's hand close around my wrist as he took a step backwards, the silhouette moved into a crouch and let out an inhuman snarl. Coal's torch swung up to illuminate an all-too-human face that was twisted in a growl of rage.
"Run," Coal gasped and flung me around to face the opposite end of the row.
We sprinted, the sound of bare feet slapping against the solid floor sounded too close behind us.
Coal pulled a knife from his belt and turned, flinging it in one fluid motion at the Creeper. We didn't pause to see if it hit the mark but we heard a screech of rage and the footsteps slowed.
"Gunshots will just draw more of them to us, try not to use them," he said.
"Okay," I agreed and moved my hand from my pistol to the hilt of my first knife.
"Alicia? Laurie?" Coal yelled as we barrelled from the end of the row and skidded to the left.
Two more figures loomed out of the darkness in front of us. We spun to head back the way we had come but we were surrounded. Coal shifted to stand between me and the nearest Creepers.
I stayed close to him, looking back at the moving shadows behind us as he held two knives ready and started forward.
We quickly closed the distance between ourselves and the two attackers. As we moved forwards they held their ground seeming unsure, obviously not expecting us to take the fight to them.
We passed another line of computer consoles and Coal stopped.
"Run," he hissed at me.
"What?" I whispered back.
"Don't argue with me, just run."
He turned slightly and shoved me sideways with his shoulder. I stumbled into the passage. Coal ran the last few steps between him and the Creepers and launched an attack.
I hesitated for a moment as the struggle took Coal further away from me. Just as I stepped forward to help, the remaining Creepers moved into the end of the passage, cutting me off from him.
I took a step backwards instinctively, then another. There were four of them and they all seemed intent on coming after me rather than Coal. I did the only thing I could and ran.