Horrifically Terrifying Post Holloween Sci Fi

THE BASEMENT

JACK BRAGEN

copyright 2011.

I was hired as a janitor at the Lake Hollows hospital; it had been a hard job to get. Part of my routine was to clean the Nuclear Medicine section. Adjacent to the MRI machine, there was a heavy, unmarked, locked door. I had never seen it used. The hospital was built into a hillside and I assumed that parts of it must be underground. I wondered if the door might lead to a fallout shelter. I was to learn that it did not.
The daytime segment of my shift rotation was during the first week of August. The hot weather made me glad to be in the air-conditioning of the hospital. I carefully wiped down walls in the hallway adjacent to Nuclear Medicine, using a special dusting tool that didn’t spread lint. I had a sudden dizziness and headache and I rubbed my eyebrows and sat down on a plastic bench intended for patients. I glanced to the left and realized that the door I had wondered about was wide open. A red strobe light above the doorway flashed steadily. I heard a deep moaning coming from around a corner. I lumbered up from the bench and went to investigate; it took effort to move. A man was half sprawled on the floor against a wall, and I could see he was writhing in agony. He wore a bunny suit (that’s what they call a suit designed to block bacteria or other particles.) The top half including the hood was zipped open and draped around his waist. Under the bunny suit, he wore a gray, short sleeve shirt. His arms and face were covered in white lumps. He had no teeth. Most of his hair was gone; what was left of it was in sparse bits that were glued to his head by sweat and oil. He moaned quietly and occasionally with loudness. His hands shook violently.
“Not feeling well?” I said, not knowing what else to say. It might have been a comical line were I not observing that this man appeared to be suffering from some kind of severe radiation sickness.
“Close the door,” the man said. He spoke with a lisp, but the words were apparent. The man lifted a hand to point at that door. I went up to it and closed it, while movement of my feet still required effort. I came back to where the man lay sprawled, but when I returned, he was gone. Instead, my supervisor stood in the same spot and wanted to question me about the work I had done on my shift.
“There was an incident,” I protested. He put out the palm of his hand. Resting on it was a pill that resembled a chewable vitamin C tablet.
“Eat this, and never tell anyone what you saw,” he said. “This didn’t happen. Is that clear?”
“That’s clear,” I said. I was angered but held back. This had been a hard job to get and it paid relatively well. Ordinarily, no one talks to me that way.
“You have the rest of the day off, and then report to work tomorrow as usual.” I nodded and went to my car. I was dizzy on my way home, and barely ate the dinner my wife had prepared before falling asleep.

##

The following day, my boss, Mike Riley, stood by the door of the utility closet which is the spot where I normally began my shift. He put out a hand as I approached, which meant to me that he had been waiting specifically for me.
“Wait Jeff,” he said. “We have another position we want you to consider.” He took a microphone from his lapel, pressed a tiny button on it and spoke inaudibly. Then he said to me; “Hang on. We’re going to interview you.”
“Excuse me?” I was baffled. “You and who?”
The mysterious door near nuclear medicine opened, and out of it came a gray haired, mustachioed man in blue overalls with numerous pens in his breast pockets. Obviously this was an engineer of some kind. He walked up to me and put out a hand. “Brent Wiley,” he said. “Are you the one who witnessed something strange?”
“I had a bout with the flu afterward, and I thought I had radiation sickness, but I recovered too fast,” I replied. “There’s no radiation through that door, is there?”
“You say you recovered fast. Do you feel normal now?” he asked, ignoring my question. I nodded in response. “And what can you do?” I shrugged my shoulders. “Not much other than cleanup?”
“I used to repair television sets, a very long time ago. I was a teenager,” I said.
“Oh, well that might come in handy. Then you know soldering?” I nodded. “How’s your math?”
I said, “I didn’t get as far as calculus.”
“Let me ask you this: do you know your metric prefixes and your scientific notation?” He asked. What sort of position was this? I nodded. “And, when you repaired TV sets, did you have a chance to work on any of the old tube type ones from the nineteen sixties?”
“I did a few, but they were falling to pieces. The tube sockets were disintegrating and stuff,” I said. He nodded.
“Okay. You’re hired if you want the job. I think you’ll do well.”
“Doing what?” I asked.
“Assisting with what we do downstairs,” he said, pointing at the floor.
“But we’re already on the bottom floor. You’re pointing at bedrock,” I said, baffled.
My boss interjected; “No, there really is a downstairs.” He had been standing quietly.
“I need twenty four hours. I have to run it by my wife,” I said.
“We need an answer now,” said the man in the blue jumpsuit.
“No, I really need the twenty four,” I said, firmly.
“Alright. But tell no one of this other than your wife,” said Mike. “You have the rest of the day off.”
I said, “That suits me just fine.”

##

It was a balmy weekend, unusual in August. I took my wife and my little boy on a drive through the hills. There was a spot where you could look down on most of the bay.
“This would be a way of finally moving up in the world, for both of us,” I said.
“What about him?” said Jamie, motioning toward the child in the back of the Valiant.
“Him, too,” I said.
“You know what I mean,” Jamie said. “He needs a father. A man who is absent all the time won’t be good for him. And what if something goes wrong in the reactor and you get killed. Where will we be then? Or, what if the next child comes mutated?”
“Why can’t we just enjoy the drive?” I said, attempting to get off the subject.
“Look who started it. We need to discuss this anyway. I don’t want you doing it,” Jamie said. She gave me her best pouting look, the look that got me to propose to her five years previous. The look had made me ignore all the others. Jamie was special, I thought.
I planted a big kiss on her. “Please?” I said.
She caught her breath and whispered; “You’re being played. Why did they pick you?”
“They thought I could do the job,” I replied.
“They probably thought, ‘no big deal if this guy gets irradiated to death. After all, we got insurance.’” Jamie said, taking on a sarcastic tone. “Sucker,” she breathed.
And then, it hit me. “You know, you’re right. My math is practically elementary, and the most I can do is mop their floors and replace a few light bulbs. I must be their experimental subject. That’s what he meant…”
“What are you talking about, ‘that’s what he meant’?” Jamie insisted.
I paused and then shook my head. Jamie got the idea. She was right.
“Oh shit,” said Jamie. “You are their test subject.”
“Mommy, Daddy, I’m getting tired,” said the little boy in the back seat. “Can we go home now?”
“Okay, got it,” I said. “I’m refusing the job.” I turned the ignition key on the Valiant, and it started up with a roar; (it was in need of a muffler.) I turned on Peak Road, and steered the Valiant downhill toward the freeway. As I merged onto the highway, I felt a foreboding sensation in my gut.

##

It was the week that followed my refusal of the other job, and I was less worried that there would be retaliation for it.
As I turned the corner in the hallway (while mopping the floor) and faced Nuclear Medicine, I caught sight of one of the radiologists slumped in a chair, unmoving, with shut eyes and a blue complexion. I jumped about three feet, realizing I was seeing a dead person. And then I spotted a person laying, sprawled on the floor, his head, at the ears, wedged in the door I had never seen open. I almost crapped in my pants. Over the loudspeaker, then, came an alarmed voice of the woman who did most of the announcements: “Attention; code Gamma. This is not a drill. Code Gamma. Evacuate the premises immediately.”
I turned about, readying myself to sprint out of the building, but was face to face with another dead person. However, this one had a hunk of rock in his hand that glowed yellow, and that was in the process of incinerating the flesh of the [dead person’s] hand, to reveal the bones of fingers that clutched the glowing rock. My face was warmed by the hunk of rock even though I wasn’t right up against it, and I had an eerie and strangely pleasurable sensation in the backs of my eyes. I started toward the exit, stumbling, and do not remember the events that immediately followed.

##

“He looks better. I wonder if he has a chance of regaining consciousness,” said a voice to my left. I realized I was flat on my back, tried to sit up, and could not move. I opened my eyes and saw a face looking back at me. I was in a well-lit room although my vision was badly blurred.
“Well, Mr. Maddox, congratulations on being the savior of the human species, and on the billions it’s worth,” said the man whose face hovered over mine. “The subject is waking up.”
After I lay for an hour trying to gather my strength, I was able to sit up in bed. I was disoriented, but by this time, guessed that I was in a hospital bed. I rubbed my eyes and tried to focus. A man in a business suit stood in the hospital room and stared fixedly at me.
“Jeff, I presume,” he said, in a formal sounding voice. “I’m the new appointee in charge of the facility downstairs.” He paused, “I’d like to make you an offer that’s hard for you to refuse.”
“Can’t you see I’m resting?” I replied, feigning indignation. I believed it would be helpful in getting this guy to up the ante. In fact I was beginning to feel stronger. I thought it must not have been radiation sickness that I had. No one recovers like this from radiation.
“You’re useful to us. You might have guessed that by now.” He scratched his left ear and put his shoe on top of a chair that was next to my bed. It made me uncomfortable.
“I’m useful because I’m expendable,” I replied. “If I get toasted after a month, you won’t have to pay whatever salary it is you’re offering.”
“Jeff, we’ve tested something on you; something important.”
“Get out of here, you bastard,” I said. How dare they use me as a test subject without telling me? “You got a lot of nerve, you fuckhead. Get out or I’ll get up out of this hospital bed and mop the floor of this stinkin room with you.”
“I can see you need time to think. How does a hundred thousand in cash, up front sound?” The suited man had backed up a few steps in case I tried to make good on my threat, but stood his ground near the entrance to the room.

##

I was escorted through the door that I had wondered about. A pair of beefy guards flanked me. Was I a prisoner? We walked down a stair case that descended about fifty feet and I guessed that forty of those feet were underground. We went through a second heavy door. I saw that we were in another hallway. The walls were painted a miserable gray. The tile on the floor was miserable yellow with miserable brown dots as a pattern. They had better give me my hundred thousand or I’ll find a way to…
Three geeky men emerged through another door into the hallway where I stood with the two guards. They walked up toward me and the three introduced themselves. Their names were: Johnson, Michaels, and McKinnon. McKinnon was in charge of reactor electronics. I would be working with him much of the time since I had once repaired TV sets. Michaels was in charge of plumbing and this included reactor cooling and the turbines that generated power. And Johnson was in charge of containment of the nuclear material. I realized that the faces of the three men before me were an unusually pale pink with white spots. The three men were also quite thin and wore white lab coats over their plaid shirts. The shirts varied slightly, indicating that they were not in uniform; they just dressed the same. I realized that the three men were functioning communally as one unit.
“Either you’re expecting cooperation, or you need these two guards on me. Which is it, gentlemen?” I said. I pulled my right arm from the grip of the guard on my right, and I am sure he was surprised by my strength. “And where is the hundred thousand I was promised?”
“We have it,” said McKinnon. “We are waiting to see if you’re going to do adequately well.”
“No, I don’t think so,” I said. “I was promised this money in advance. And I will get it in advance. I’m in a legal position to sue for damages,” I asserted. “And I’m sure you don’t want a bunch of publicity about this place.” My words were met with silence. “The money now, please,” I said. I pulled my left arm free of the grip of the guard on my left. “And while you’re at it, tell these two gorillas that they’re dismissed.”
“You’ll have it by the end of your shift at six o’clock today,” said McKinnon. “That’s the best I can do. We must see if there is even a possibility that you can do the job. I don’t know what the head guy was thinking offering you this much.”
“And starting tomorrow night, you’ll bunk here,” added Johnson. “We’re letting you go home tonight to put your affairs in order.”

##

The next morning, at the beginning of my shift, McKinnon brought me a bulky electronic device that he had sitting on top of a cart. It resembled a large amplifier from the nineteen sixties.
“What is it?” I asked.
“This is a power regulator that feeds power to a motor control.”
I looked at the item and did some tests on it with my meter. McKinnon was clearly impressed with what I told him.
“You might actually carry your weight around here,” he said. “You weren’t expected to have this technical ability.”
The power plant was run with badly outdated, antique electronics from forty years previous, and I believed it ought to be reported. No one would keep a television set this long. I was good at troubleshooting this stuff because I had repaired TV sets a decade earlier when a teenager, and I was working on stuff that was junk back then.
I observed that everyone in the power plant showed signs of health problems caused by exposure to radiation. I hoped that the bottle of anti radiation pills I was given would protect me. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that my actual purpose there was to test this drug. And, in fact, I didn’t tell anyone.
In my second week, a man in his fifties who had collapsed while working in the reactor control room was taken away on a stretcher.
They had me sleeping in a bunk among the lower echelon workers on the premises of the reactor. I did not intend to keep the job very long with not being able to sleep at home with my wife. However, being able to quit this job required planning, since they didn’t want to have me run loose with the knowledge of the existence of this reactor, as well as being the only human test subject for their new drug.
At some point, I overheard conversation about the containment being flawed and that the reactor at some point would probably blow up. I was in my bunk, and I pretended to roll over in my sleep, while muttering something incomprehensible in a muffled voice; pretending to talk in my sleep. They wrongly assumed that I could not understand Spanish and they spoke in whispers.
“What is your plan for when it blows?” one of them said to the other in Spanish.
“I’m going to quit at the end of this week, and I’m going to move me and my family to Southern California, far enough away that I won’t be affected when it blows up,” responded the other man.
“And what about this guy’s money?” asked the first man. “Do you think he buried it in his backyard?”
“No doubt he deposited it in the bank.”
“Then you will have to leave without money,” said the first man.
“Then so be it,” replied the second man.
I almost chuckled; it would have revealed that I was awake and understood what they were saying. This could have gotten me in big trouble with these two men. They didn’t know that I was keeping the hundred thousand under the spare tire in the trunk of the Valiant. I believed that no one would think to look there.
A few days after this, I had figured out part of a plan of quitting as well as moving up north to Oregon with my wife and son. I was at the start of my shift, and it was a Wednesday in September. I was in the main hallway that led to the reactor control room, when I was surprised by the approach of the three team leaders.
Johnson, Michaels, and McKinnon stood in a semicircle around me and my back was to the wall of the hallway.
“How come you’re healthy? You’ve been here a month,” said Johnson.
“Have you got something we would want?” said McKinnon. “Cough it up.”
I shoved Johnson, who stood directly in front of me. My shove threw his flimsy frame back by several feet. “Right now I could easily take on all three of you, no problem. I work out, I’ve boxed, and I’m in better condition than you three. Now get lost,” I warned. My voice was elevated with chi that was much more powerful than theirs. The secret to winning a fight is to have better chi than your opponent. Most people don’t realize this.
“Not so fast,” said Michaels, pulling a box cutter. I was on the verge of cleaning Michaels’s clock when we were interrupted by the piercing sound of an alarm. It was a different alarm, one I had never heard.
“Oh shit,” all three would-be attackers said at the same time.
“Core breach in progress. We’re dead.” McKinnon turned and walked in the direction of the sleeping area. I saw through the doorway that he lay down on his bunk and put the blanket over his own head. Meanwhile, Michaels took the box cutter and slid the blade directly across his throat, and then collapsed to the floor with blood spurting from his neck.
“What’s going on,” I asked Johnson, the only one who remained.
“Death. Death for all of us and anyone within about thirty miles of this reactor,” he replied. He took a step and slipped in the blood that was accumulating on the hall floor, slipped, fell and went into convulsions on the floor. I swallowed an extra tablet from the bottle of anti radiation pills in my pocket, and then re-pocketed the vial. I went quickly to the staircase that led to the exit.
I flung open the door that led back to the hallway of Nuclear Medicine. I was lucky that the extra steel barrier had not yet been activated. I ran through the hall without bothering to close the door behind me, and from the corners of my eyes could see the expressions on people’s faces as I ran by them. I got out to the parking lot and saw that the Valiant was still in its parking space. I got in, turned the key, and it started up. I drove hastily out of the lot, passing the parking lot attendant’s kiosk without handing him a token, and I sped down the road toward my house. I got out of the car, and ran inside. My wife was watching television with my young son, and I could smell the hot lunch she had prepared on the stove. She stood up and looked at me, startled by my sudden appearance.
“Babe, we gotta go.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, on the verge of being horrified.
“The reactor; it’s gonna blow. We need to go. We need to go miles. Hundreds of miles,” I said.
“But—“
“There is no time. Both of you have to get in the Valiant. Now,” I said.
“Okay. Let me turn off the stove and get a few things,” she said.
“There’s no time for that,” I said. “This is urgent.”
She got the idea. She picked up my son and we walked to where the Valiant was parked on the street. We got in and I turned the key. The battery was a bit weak, but the car started. I popped it into Drive and hit the accelerator. We sped through streets and got to the freeway. I drove across the Barrow Bridge without stopping at the toll booth, and floored the gas pedal. The car could do ninety at best, and I eased up on the throttle just a bit. In the rearview mirror I saw two CHP cars with their lights on. One of them pulled alongside me. I glanced at the officer, pointed backward with my free hand, and made an exploding gesture with my hand and mouth. And then I displayed my radiation badge, which had gone deep red, indicating a usually fatal dose of radiation. He nodded, and he hit his own accelerator and sped off ahead of me into the distance. Of course he wanted to save his own ass. The other CHP vehicle did the same. We were seventy miles north of town when I saw the humongous explosion in the distance, behind us.
When we approached Redding, the gas tank was near empty, and I pulled into a Chevron station. The gas station attendant was armed and demanded cash if I wanted to fill the tank. Luckily I was carrying about fifty dollars in my wallet, and I gave all of it to the armed attendant. That bought me three gallons. We drove some more and stopped at a rest stop. I made certain no one was watching me. I checked under the spare tire, and the handbag with a hundred thousand dollars in it was present. I reached in and took out three hundred dollars, which, at the next gas station was deemed enough money for a full tank.
We made it to Oregon and began our new life. I did not experience symptoms of radiation sickness.