Exile to Hell Mark Ellis(1)

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and again moved in a straight line. Finally she halted in a broad area surrounded only by shadows. Round
holes in the floor showed that some large piece of heavy equipment had once been bolted there.
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Craning her neck, she looked straight up. The men followed her gaze. Attached to a length of frayed
cable, a photoelectric-eye device dangled overhead. Extending an arm, Brigid passed her hand in front of
her in a right-to-left arc.
Inches from her feet, a square section of flooring began to turn over with a grating of stone and creak of
metal pivots. It rolled up and stopped on edge, revealing a dim passageway leading below. The air wafting
up from it was dank and laden with the acrid odor of chemicals.
Brigid said, "A disguised entrance, so the uninitiates of Overproject Excalibur wouldn't stumble over the
real fruits of their labors."
Grant eased to one knee, studying the yawning opening. "What do you mean?"
Brigid's lips moved in a half smile, and she gestured theatrically to the square hole in the floor. "Welcome
to Nightmare Alley."
Chapter Thirty-One
A short flight of stairs brought them down into a low-ceilinged anteroom. Another photoelectric sensor
registered their presence, fed the signal to the portal and the square of concrete overhead rolled back into
place with a crunch. Kane tensed, waiting for the brief wave of claustrophobia to pass.
"You okay?" Grant's voice was an anxious whisper.
"I'm grand," Kane responded in the same low tone.
Brigid shushed them into silence. She eyed the door at the far end of the room. It was of simple,
innocuous wood. A push button was screwed into the frame with a small plastic sign above it.
'"Ring For Attendant,'" she read aloud. "Should we?"
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"I hope you're joking," Grant snapped.
"I am. I don't think the peopleor whateverwho took over this place still observe the predark security
procedures."
"Let's go, then," said Kane, the Sin Eater filling his hand.
The door opened easily at the turn of the knob. They gazed down a tile-floored corridor, lined on either
side by machines shrouded in plastic dust covers. Some were very large and bulky. As they walked
between them, Brigid was able to identify much of the equipmentfluoroscope, an oscilloscope, centrifuge,
evaporator, distillation tanks, a chromatograph.
"Old medical machines," she said softly. "Must have been moved down here when the facility was
reactivated. Guess there wasn't much use for them anymore."
At the word "reactivate," Kane mechanically consulted his chron. "We've got one hour and seven minutes
left."
"I'll track the time," Grant offered, "or we'll get stuck here."
Kane gave him an okay sign, then grimaced. The tart scent of chemicals was very strong, almost cloying,
but they smelled and could almost taste a worse odor, the taint of death.
A set of sheet-metal double doors divided the corridor. Kane toed aside the one on the right, and Grant
pushed open the left. Another corridor lay beyond, very long and nearly twenty feet wide. The ceiling was
still low, lit by an arrangement of red bulbs, though the wattage seemed higher. The walls were composed
of sheets of glass, all canted at forty-five-degree angles. The chromium frames glinted dully in the muted
illumination.
"What's with this red light?" Grant demanded. "You could go blind in here."
Kane didn't offer a reply, though one part of his mind pounced on the most likely answer. The eyes of
Balam were huge and black, and therefore extremely sensitive to light levels above a certain brightness
and spectrum. If this level of the Dulce complex housed Balam's brethren or his spawn, then it would
have been converted for their comfort.
Brigid stepped forward. Kane reached for her, but she was too quick. She walked only a dozen feet before
halting suddenly in front of a glass wall. Kane nearly trod on her heels.
Angrily he said, "Where are you?"
His words caught in his throat. On the other side of the glass barrier, spread-eagled on a metal framework,
was a flayed corpse.
It was a mass of yellow-white adipose tissue, ropy blood vessels and red-blue entrails. The body was all
muscle, tendon and ligamentbut the soft organs were pulsing wetly. It was covered, held together, by a
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clinging sac of transparent plastic.
Kane felt his belly fill up with something. Brigid lurched away, making a strangling, gasping sound. He
was only dimly aware of Grant stepping up beside him. Both of them stared in horrid fascination at the
face, at the stripped head covered with a cohineal pattern of black-blue veins. Then an eye opened and
stared back at them. It was a brown eye, and it held no particular expression.
Grant stumbled back a few paces, Sin Eater coming up reflexively. "It's still alive! Chill it!" he snarled.
"No!" Brigid whirled, securing a grip on his forearm. "We'll be discovered!"
Grant struggled for a second, then the tension went out of his arm. Brigid released him, struggling to
regain a bit of her poise. The look she cast Kane was so filled with soul-wrenching horror and disgust, he
could say nothing but "We're running out of time."
They walked along, and the sights they saw inside the glass-fronted cubicles didn't become any less
nauseating but they didn't get worse, either. Perhaps the clinical atmosphere and the red lights contributed
a sense of unreality, so even though they were on the edge of it, they didn't panic.
Kane's mind distanced itself from the externals, as though his eyes were vid cameras transmitting the
images to the real him at some distant, safely removed location. He glanced past the glass walls, each one
of them holding an artifact of horror, each one of them threatening his tenuous grip on sanity.
They passed glass cases and fluid-filled jars with floating human internal organs. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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