Dark Forces

She only glared at me and bared her teeth again. With an inhuman low croaking voice she replied, "I hate you. And I will destroy you and your world and as I do, I will love every minute of it. AVE SATHANAS!!!"

Then, somehow, she snapped, and with an inhuman cry, she sprung at me.

I screamed and screamed, in equal parts horror, shock, sadness and terror. I was fighting her/it off, shoving her into the bars of the cell. Fighting, scratching, with inhuman strength, she/it overpowered me and threw me to the ground. I found myself pinned, she was somehow not only stronger than I was, despite her smaller size, but seemed to actually possess nearly inhuman strength. Her face, teeth bared, loomed closer and closer to my throat. Suddenly two guards rushed into the cell and somehow subdued her, jabbing her/it with a syringe. She went limp, but not before I saw her eyes return from demonic black to their deep blue that I knew so well. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but right before she went totally limp and the guards hauled her away, I thought I saw a tear well up in her eye. But the horror of what I had witnessed in that cell in that episode would leave dark stains on me forever.

"So be it. You have made a choice and the human part of me will respect that, for now. But you will never leave this place alive. We will, however. Your mother, your lover, and all the rest. For we are many. Stay here and fade away and it is no concern of mine." The smiley man said to me then.

For the next several hours- days- who knew- I could only sob in tears of grief and utter loss. Until the food came and the drugs took me back down to blessed relief.

16.

The smiley man brings food and water sometimes, but mostly he brings peace. Time is irrelevant. The part of me that misses the sunlight, the open air, the outside, and freedom is receding, replaced only by an inner peace that the smiley man brings. That's all right though. Sometimes he says I get frightened. But a little drink always helps. It tastes a little bitter at first, but it's all right. Everything is all right.

I was no longer counting days, but then, after one long interval, he stopped by with the food and the water as he often did.

"Feeding time is coming soon for them, too." The Vacant Smiley Man said. "They are hungry."

"But don't be scared boy." He smiled vacantly. "You'll LIKE it. It will make you feel really REALLY good. They make you feel good. Better than this drink." He said this last in a whisper.

I wasn't scared. Whatever happens it will. I wanted the drink, and I took it. To feel good. Really good. Time drifted on in a kaleidoscope of fluorescent light and beautiful dreams.

"I am sorry for your loss" his vacant smiley voice said, intruding on my dreams. "But your mother just was not strong enough. Maybe you are. Maybe not. We will see in the end, won't we."

I didn't quite register what he was telling me until much later, after I had slipped into pleasant dreams, remembering my mother's wisdom and her quiet strength.

But then, once in a while the dreams were dark and I wasn't myself. I dreamed of ripping, tearing, and destroying. Just being in a murderous rage and with an insatiable desire to cause suffering and distress. I dreamed of churches burning and crumbling, of altars being defiled, holy places being desecrated. I thought of myself as part of an unstoppable and terrible destructive force. I would wake up from these nightmarish visions in a cold sweat, my throat hoarse; had I been screaming? And then the horror of what I had dreamed would sink in and I would wonder if I, too, was succumbing to the madness that seemed to infect every living soul who is brought to this infernal place.

Then, one time I dreamed of Erin. Scantily dressed and beautiful, of course, but somehow no matter how hard I tried, it was like I could never physically touch her. She was always at arm's length. But she was being her flirtatious self again, as I remember her, and it was good. It's always good. "You want to drill me good. Huh? Stick it in me and drill me deep? Well it's too late. They've already drilled too deep. It's coming! They drilled too deep and now the fires are coming... oh god I'm COMING!!!" And then, she dissolved into orgasmic ecstasy, as did I. Maybe the drugs that the Vacant Smiley Man brings don't put everything to sleep.

17.

Dreaming again. I was in a grieving place, a cement recessed courtyard with terraced risers that was oddly like a miniature model of some mine I had once explored, long ago. It was a moonlit night. Erin and I had held hands and kissed here once, but Mom told me Erin was gone, just ashes in this memorial mausoleum. And now she had to redecorate, reorganize the abalone tiles of the floor bricks, and I was sad that this would erase all memory of her from my life, the girl I had loved. Mom just turned to me and replied, "Attention. Core meltdown in progress. Baaank baaank. All personnel evacuate to the surface immediately. Emergency. Core meltdown in progress." Mom smiled as she said this but then drifted away, and left me alone in this shrine of grief. But then I could feel her gently shaking me, as if it was time to get up for school, and I'm in high school again. But that's okay because it's Friday morning and maybe Erin will be wearing that tiny red cheerleader skirt and this time I finally have the nerve to ask her out, and maybe after school we'll be able to hold hands, and steal a kiss under the bleachers... "All personnel. Evacuate immediately. Silly boy!" she said, crushing my fragile ego. Young girls could be so cruel. "Core Meltdown in Progress. Billy and I have a date tonight, and you're just stoned. A big fat stoner. You need to Evacuate Immediately."

More drifting. The sadness of faded visions in the end dissolved, because everything was beautiful. Red lights, sounds, sirens, colors, it was all here in this, place, my palace. Wasn't there some old black and white sci-fi TV show where the people were hypnotized by some bottled brain things into believing they were in this luxurious opulent city, when in reality they were lying in mud and pig shit? That can't happen to me can it? Not with a core meltdown in progress. Whatever that was. It didn't apply to me whatever it was.

In the back of my mind, I could hear sounds of alarms and rumbling. I wish I didn't have to hear that. It was slightly annoying. The light, the lights were strobing red now and it was so pretty, all I wanted to do was feel the strobing light, it was all I cared about, so beautiful. That sound, it was loud, it probably meant something, like maybe I should do something, or something maybe bad was happening? But I didn't care. I only wanted to feel the beauty of the rock wall and the cool metal of the bars on this cage, there was so much to see here, if only that shaking wasn't so bad. It was getting hot, too. But I didn't care, I couldn't feel the heat, I was escaping, drifting...and from somewhere far away I seemed to hear a voice say:

18.

"Hey you! Buddy! Let's get the FUCK OUTTA HERE while we have the chance!"

A man was standing in front of the cell. He wasn't one of the men with the drugs and the food. He was beautiful though, like Jesus, rail thin, long scraggly blonde hair, scruffy beard, pockmarked face with a few missing teeth, ripped white t-shirt, jeans...

Ooh man, not now, go away, if you don't have more drug, I don't want you...

He had an electric key card, and although it worked, it still took him a lot of muscle to force the cell door open more than eight inches. I watched all of this with the same calm, utterly placid detachment I felt nearly all the time now. Well, almost. I was slightly annoyed this guy had intruded on my meditation.

"Get your pecker in gear and let's MOVE!" he screamed. He was waving a pistol, and a rifle was slung on the other arm. "Here!" he said, tossing me the pistol.

My thoughts were only "Uh. What do I do with this? What do you want?"

Suddenly there was a flicker of understanding in his eyes. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small ziplock bag that appeared to be coated with the remains of a foul smelling brown slimy substance. Inside the bag was some yellowish-white powder. The man knelt down next to me, unzipped the bag, and poured out some of the powder into his hand. Moving his hand up to my nose he said, "Here. Snort some of this. This oughtta work for you the way it did for me. He heh, I forgot, if I hadn't swallowed this bag when they brought me in, I'd be just as much of a fuckin' vegetable as you are. Quickly!"

"Uh, I really don't wanna do this, what is this."

"JUST SNORT THE SHIT!" he screamed.

Wow, okay buddy, I thought, sleepily, anything to make this loud noise, and YOU, stop bothering me... and with that...

...I snorted the powder from his hand. And suddenly it was like a jolt of adrenaline shot through me and in a flash, I realized what was going on. Like being awakened suddenly from a pleasant dream. Had I been asleep? What was this?

"Sorry, it smells like shit. But, well... you know. Come ON!" he shouted.

I stood up. My heart was pounding and I realized, for the first time in a long while, that A) I was still a prisoner in this hellish facility, and B) that now I actually had a chance of being rescued.

And C: Shit had seriously hit the fan.

"Aw fuck! Thanks man! Wow! Who are you?"

"Matt Dunnigan. Hey, grab that pistol there and follow me. We gotta get out of here!"

Too surprised to say anything else, and my mind still trying to shake the last of the cobwebs from my drug-induced stupor, I squeezed through the bars and ran after him.

"This way!" He led me to a long flight of stairs heading up. As I climbed after him, another huge tremor, this one bigger and more violent than before, shook the place. The air grew thicker with smoke and dust, and it was starting to get really hot. The flight opened onto a door, and, with a huge kick, he knocked it down and drew the rifle. It opened onto a long, narrow large office with banks of computer terminals. Dunnigan pointed the rifle warily around the room but it was, thankfully empty. However, the floor was littered with dark yellow glass globes, all of which were shattered and broken.

"Looks all clear, but let's keep our heads down. Here, duck."

We crawled past a series of windows that looked out onto some kind of balcony.

"Don't know how many more of those fucking bastards are around. Most of 'em evacuated, I think, once the turbine went critical. But you never know. I already snuffed one of 'em." He said to me.

My head was spinning. "So, how did you get here? And how did you get out?"

"Me and my brother were caught here a week ago by those government freak science motherfuckers. Bastards rolled up onto our ranch, three carloads of 'em, and we thought they were fucking cops!! Guys got out, surrounded us at gunpoint, and man, we thought about taking some of 'em out, we had the firepower to do it, but they were too quick and too many of 'em."

"So they cuffed us and stuffed us here. I thought they were cops, so I swallowed the ev'dence, so to speak. Lucky for me I did, 'cause they clearly aint cops. Never even read us our rights nor even told us what we did wrong. Didn't even question us, just said 'git in the truck' and then stuck us in this rathole. Hurry up, this way!" He quickly stood up ran down to the end of the room, which opened onto another corridor, and, glancing around the corner, he waved his arm for me to follow.

"We was high as fuck when they brought us here, so I wasn't knocked ass out like you probably were. They thought we were though, he heh. They thought we were too far gone on them knockout drugs to be paying attention when the dragged us in. Anyway, thing is, I remember how to get outta here. There was a service elevator across the main gallery that takes you to the surface where them generators are. But there was a stairwell next to that, and we oughta be able to blast through it even if it's locked down... (waving his gun) 'cause I'm not sure the elevator's gonna work... oh SHIT!!"

Suddenly the place shook with the biggest and most violent quake yet. Both of us were knocked down. A section of roof behind us caved in, steel beams crashing to the ground followed by a cascade of rock and rubble. And the rumbling and shaking continued. I could see smoke behind us, and...maybe it was my imagination, but was that a strange black shadow that moved out of the corner of my eye as I looked back?

"Dude, we gotta move man. Quick! Whole place gonna collapse on us!" I followed him down a series of corridors.

"So what's your name little buddy?" Dunnigan asked.

"Ryann. Ryann Jessick."

"Oh shit... You're Ryann...that little red haired girl; was she with you?"

"Erin! You saw her?"

"Oh fuck, I'm sorry man. I think you were the one she was crying for. Once the, whatever the fuck kind of drugs they gave her wore off, she couldn't stop crying."

"Wait, we gotta go back for her!"

"No! We Can't! Forget about it man, I'm sorry, but she's fucking DEAD!"

"NO!! What do you mean! We can still get her!" I started to run back, but he grabbed me.

"No! Listen! The whole fucking bottom level's collapsed and buried under this mess! I haven't even told you, but the only reason I even got out in the first place was I was able to climb out of my cell after the roof fucking caved in. After this whole shit show started. You don't understand, man. Everything's blowing up."

"What the fuck do you mean, Everything?" I cried.

"They must have fucking triggered a volcano with that drilling they was doing. That lava's already started flooding the place, whatever they dug up with that drilling thing, there's lava and molten rock and shit flowing everywhere down there, and even if the whole bottom level isn't just pancaked in, anything down there is probably burned to cinders by now. You think them guys didn't evacuate 'cause they weren't scared? Everyone in this place is about to die, we will be too if we don't fucking MOVE!"

More shaking and rumbling. This time, the lights flickered, and went out. And now, behind me, I could see a dim, eerie orangish-red glow. There was something else, too. At least two strange shadowy figures drifted and danced in the glow. In addition to the noise of the blaring alarms and rumbling, I almost thought I could hear something else. It sounded like a strange sloshing sound.

"But... Erin..." Tears were in my eyes. I turned around, but once again, he grabbed my arm.

"Hey man, I'm sorry, bud. I really am. I was the only one on that bottom level that got out. Even the guards were dead, that's how I got these guns by the way. And you were at least two levels above me. I couldn't even find any of the other prisoners that were in any condition to be saved otherwise I'd have helped them too. I saw shit, I mean, you got all kinds of mutants, mutated people, evil people screaming and vomiting blood at me, and I saw some really fucked up shit in this place. Most of them people in here, I mean, you were the only one still normal. And that dope they had you on had you pretty far gone."

"What about your brother?" I asked, still choking back tears. Even if Erin had been lost, there had still been hope that somehow...whatever it was, whatever thing that was burning her soul and consuming her body could be cured. But she was now irrevocably dead, her body likely burning too.

And she was not the only one.

When I asked Matt Dunnigan about his brother he only turned at me and scowled darkly.

He shook his head and said simply, "I'm going to make those bastards pay. And I motherfucking hope there ARE some of them left alive upstairs. Because it's fucking payback time." He said, grabbing his gun. "Come on."

I followed him, ducking and running, through a series of darkened rooms. With all the noise, shaking, and smoke, it would have been difficult for anyone to spot two fugitives making their way through the complex, and thankfully we saw nobody. We were practically feeling our way along. Another tremor brought more collapses in the tunnel we were following. A steel beam and more rubble caved in front of Dunnigan, just missing him by inches. "Jeezus BALLS!" he shouted, squeezing his way past the cave in.

At once, the alarms ceased, as whatever electricity or backup power that ran them now failed. There were other sounds, though, besides the tremor and the rumbling. The odd, thick sloshing sound that I thought I had heard earlier was unmistakable. Along with it were some weird inhuman growls. And I realized that even with the power out, the place was lit with some infernal light source. Behind me, the weird orange red glow, from which the slurping was emanating, was growing closer.

Finally we reached yet another stairway. "I think this leads the main hangar, right where the bottom of the old ore pit is. I don't know if we want to chance it, they may have guards out there but, fuck it, it's our only shot."

We climbed up several flights of stairs in the dimness. Every so often the shaking would start again and we grew fearful, hoping that the stairwell wouldn't simply collapse. Even worse, I could see the molten glow, now unmistakably the glow of volcanic lava, below us. It was not only getting brighter but it looked like it was starting to quickly rise. We emerged from the door frame and into a large cavernous interior space, like a large warehouse, only it was littered with fallen metal beams and rock piles. Bits of broken metal equipment were strewn everywhere. We ducked behind a large cylindrical machine near the door we had emerged from, which to me looked like it may have been some kind of tunnel drilling apparatus. To our right were what looked like a row of elevators. The lights were still working in here, although they were flickering badly. We made our way across the warehouse to where a familiar sign indicated the exit. But suddenly there came a shout.

To our dismay, two uniformed guards, in full riot gear, were rushing toward us, guns drawn.

"Go. GO!!! I'll deal with them. I'll cover you! Just head for the door! Fucking go for it!" Dunnigan shouted.

On the far side of the vast ruined man made cavern, I could see the shattered, crushed remains of six huge steam turbines. They had been smashed by the rock falls, and were now covered by piles of rock and rubble. Pools of water, steaming and smoking, were everywhere, while jets of water still gushed from broken pipes overhead. I crept around the fallen piles of debris toward the door, as quickly as I could. Meanwhile, Dunnigan had drawn their attention.

"Motherfuckers!! This is for Jimmy!" he screamed. He raised his gun, ducked around a chunk of shattered machinery, and took aim.

I could hear the burst of gunfire from automatic weapons as the remaining guards traded fire with him. But as I turned to Matt Dunnigan one last time, he only waved his arm and shouted, "GO! Just GO! Get the fuck out of here motherfucker!!" And in one last burst of gunfire and one last yell, this time of pain rather than exaltation, I knew that he would not be joining me in the escape.

I fled through the exit door, oblivious to the pursuit and to the danger, and out into the open air.

19.

In the bottom of the ore pit, where there had once been a row of neatly parked vehicles, huts, trailers and machinery, there was now just boulders piled high, many of them as big as a house, or bigger. It became hard to walk, harder still to keep my balance, amid the near continual shaking and roar of noise. More rocks came down from the sides of the pit on top of the growing talus pile. I knew that I needed to get out of here as quickly as possible to avoid being crushed. In fact, before I got very far up the slope, I watched a fall of boulders bury the entrance to the complex that I had just exited moments ago, trapping whatever pursuers there were.