CRYERS (10 page)

Part Two

Dream

Chapter 16

2070

2,635 meters underground

253 kilometers northwest of Winnipeg, Manitoba

Six
minutes—maybe a little less. Edna looked away from the clock on the wall for
what seemed like the hundredth time in the last sixty seconds and continued
writing. The world would be a very different place in six minutes. She didn’t
have any more time to waste. Edna typed feverishly a few moments longer. She
finished with her name, leaned back and read over the most important—and
last—letter she would ever write.

Dear Great-grandfather,

The solar storms that started in 2067 have
intensified. Over half of the world’s power grids have fried and left billions
without the means to sustain themselves. We have walked on the surface of Mars
and established manned stations on moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn. But for
all the wonderful advances in technology you’ve slept peacefully through during
the last century, mankind’s ignorance and inability to preserve itself has left
us wide open to the most natural of threats.

They knew the ‘big’ coronal ejection was coming
weeks ago. Science has at least timed the beginning of civilization’s decline
down to the minute.

My father—your grandson—saw it coming decades
ago. You would have been proud of him. He carried on your work, created a
formula to bring the sleeping back. It was our family’s greatest achievement.
But he didn’t stop there. Other enhancements were discovered. Your body was
thawed in 2055 and the enhancements were introduced into your DNA.

I don’t have the time to explain it all. You
can learn more through the same computer you’re reading this letter on now. It
has been programmed to respond to the sound of your voice. Ask questions and it
will answer. There will be instructions on how to revive your descendants and
the thousands of other ABZE clients you offered a second chance.

You will be the first. It’s what Father
wanted—what we all wanted. The man that started it all will bring us all back.
Hopefully your rest will be a relatively short one.

The Dauphin facility will continue to run on a
bare minimum of power until the world energy shortage is resolved. It will
remain powered, if need be, for the next two thousand years. Had the world
opted for nuclear battery technology earlier, civilization might not now be on
the brink of collapse. Fortunately ABZE has always thought ahead. We still look
to tomorrow and build for that future with our clients’ investments. It was my
decision to power all twenty-one installations with nukebatts. It was costly,
and the board of directors fought me. But I won out in the end. Not all
Eichbergs are scientific geniuses. Some of us are better suited to the business
end of things.

Thank you, Great-grandfather, for your vision
and your brilliance—thank you for this life that never has to end.

All my love and hopes,

          
Edna Eichberg

Edna saved
the letter and left the office. She glanced back at the clock one last time
halfway through the door.
Four minutes.
Four minutes to travel two floors down to
E
level and have herself frozen with all the other surviving Eichbergs.

The internal
clock inside her brain took over, a habit Edna had picked up since before she
could remember even learning to count. The seconds clicked down as she hurried
away.

235…

234…

233…

Chapter 17

Cobe could no
longer make his fingers touch with both hands wrapped around his left knee.
“It’s swelled up real bad… Hurts like a somma bitch.”

Willem
remained propped up against the open elevator door, sitting and watching his
older brother struggle with the pain in the shadows. “You shoulda landed on
your feet—not your gawdamn knees.”

“I was trying
not
to land on
you
.”

Willem chewed
his thumbnail and watched a little longer. “We sitting in here all day, or are
you gonna try and stand on it?”

Cobe tried
bending his leg at the knee again. The finger massage hadn’t helped. The pain
brought tears to his eyes and he had to bite down on his lip to stop from
crying out. They couldn’t afford to make noise. The lawman—the only one who
knew anything about the place, and the only one capable of protecting them—had
been torn to shreds by a howler, and howlers had awfully good hearing.
 

“Don’t bend
it,” Willem offered. “Stand up straight and use it like a crutch or something.”

Smart thinking
. Cobe felt for the steel cable running up into
the darkness. He pulled with all his strength and pushed with his good foot. He
kept his left leg straight, poking out in front like a stick. It reminded him
of the awkward way Trot ran. Pain, along with remorse for the simple-minded
man, caused him to whimper. His head grew light and he felt suddenly cold.

“You
alright?”

Cobe didn’t
answer. He sank back down slowly onto the cool, cracked cement floor of the
elevator shaft and wiped the tears from his cheeks.

“You must’ve
broke something inside,” Willem said. “Maybe you spained it.”

“Sprained.”

“Whatever.”

The two boys
sat in glum silence for the next minute. Something rattled above; the metallic
sound echoed down the shaft, causing both to jump. Cobe winced as needles of
agony shot up his leg.

“You figure
it could be the lawman?” Willem asked.

“No.” Cobe
had fallen down the elevator shaft only seconds after his brother—he’d seen the
howler’s nails tear into the lawman’s clothes and flesh—it had been long enough
to be certain Lawson was dead. Nothing could lose that much blood and live.

Willem was
whispering now. “You can’t move, and I sure as hell can’t look after
you…especially if that thing comes down after us.”

“I can move.”

“No, you
can’t.” Willem stood and took a creeping step away from the elevator. He looked
back, found Cobe’s round eyes in the dark, filled with fear and pain. “I’ll
come back. I gotta find something…a weapon…anything.”

Lawson had
wanted Cobe to take a gun from the armory room. Cobe had refused. He groaned
and looked down, away from his brother’s stare. “Won’t do no good. You can get
back into the room with all them guns, but only Lawson could get inside the
cabinets.” He pictured the little gold key stuffed in the lawman’s pocket.
“Help me up…I’ll climb back upstairs and get the key off his body…maybe grab
his guns and them grenades he took too.”

Willem didn’t
answer. Cobe looked up and saw that his brother was gone.

***

Willem’s plan
was time-consuming, but simple. There were dozens of long aisles in the armory
room and hundreds of locked cabinets. If the little gold key could open any of
them, then perhaps the one person originally responsible for their safekeeping
had missed locking one of the doors. Surely the lawman hadn’t tried them all
since he’d come into possession of the key. There had to be at least one. After
fifteen minutes and over three hundred doors, Willem still hadn’t found it.

A female
voice spoke—the same one Willem had heard with the others when they’d attempted
to punch in number codes on the doors of resting people.

“Unauthorized
entry detected in Level E…Cylinder Room Eichberg…Lothair. Security, proceed
with caution.”

Level E? What the hell’s going on way up there?

He rounded a
corner, ready to try another aisle, and saw the office Lawson had taken them
into for the books. Willem’s heart beat faster.
What happened to the books we took? We can’t get onto Victory Island
without them.
The thought was ridiculous and almost made him laugh. Neither
he nor his brother knew where Victory Island was—they hadn’t even known of its
existence a few days ago—and the lawman was no longer around to show them the
way. The two brothers would likely remain trapped down in Big Hole without him.
We’ll die fast with Cobe on one leg and
me with a single arm. What a useless gawdamn pair we are.
He imagined his
mother snapping at him for thinking such negative things. It wasn’t much of a
stretch from there to picture the lawman smacking the back of his head and
telling him to stop feeling sorry for himself.

The female
voice repeated her strange warning about Level E in a tone that suggested she
didn’t care one way or the other. The sound seemed to come from all around him.

The lawman
was dead. Trot was missing and likely turning cold as well. Cobe would join
them soon if Willem didn’t find
something
to fight back with. His eyes glanced over the bookshelf behind the chair.
Throwing old books at howlers wouldn’t get the job done. He needed something
heavy, something made out of metal. He pulled the chair away from the desk and
started rifling through the drawers. Willem lifted an ancient stapler out and
tossed it up and down in his hand.
Where
do the bullets come out?
He placed it on the desktop and continued
searching. The woman’s voice droned on about unauthorized entry and the need
for caution. Willem ignored her and continued rummaging. He considered using
one of the dozen or so ballpoint pens as stabbing utensils, but remembered
howlers had no eyes to poke out.

The bottom
drawer was the biggest of the three and it was locked. Willem rattled it back
and forth ineffectively. There was a little room, he noticed. If he could jam
something into the gap and use it as some kind of lever—he looked at the
stapler. Willem picked it up a second time and studied it more closely. He
slipped his thumb into the space that ran down the length and it popped open.
Willem worked the thinner end into the half-inch-wide opening above the drawer
and pulled back. It opened some more but the old lock refused to give way.
Willem twisted the stapler until the flat end was sideways, giving him more
leverage. He stood over it and pushed down. Something snapped and the drawer
slid out on its hidden rollers for the first time in centuries.

Willem’s eyes
lit up when he saw the pistol sitting atop a pile of ancient manila folders. He
lifted it out, surprised at its light weight. This was a gun made for the likes
of him—light, compact, and undoubtedly deadly. He left the office and rushed
down an aisle of locked weapons, anxious to get back to his brother.

The elevator
doors were shut when he returned. Willem held the gun out before him and turned
in a slow circle. His brother was gone. Cobe would never have left him behind
without a damn good reason. Something had either spooked him so bad it got him
up and moving on his bad knee, or that same something had taken his brother
away.

Willem moved
slowly towards the stairwell. The gun shook in his hand, its short barrel
quivering back and forth.
Gotta calm
down. Have to think like the lawman. Have to be brave like him.
He went up
the first five steps and stopped, unwilling to reach the first landing—too
afraid to see what he might see around that first corner. The lawman’s bravery
had got him killed. Even armed as he now was, Willem knew he was no match for a
howler. He backed down the steps and returned to the elevator doors.

Another
thought occurred to him. Maybe Cobe had heard something coming. Maybe he had
figured out a way to shut the doors on his own to keep safe. Willem tucked the
small gun into the waist of his pants and tapped lightly on one of the doors.
He pressed his ear against the join and listened. He knocked louder and
whispered his brother’s name. He pounded with his small fist and called out,
“Cobe, you in there? Cobe! Open up and let me in.”

The doors
opened. Cobe wasn’t inside.

The dark
shaft he and his brother had fallen into was gone. Willem pulled the gun back
out and stepped into the small white room. A smooth rail of black plastic ran
around three walls and ended at what looked like another keypad next to one of
the doors. Willem touched it with the end of his pistol and the doors slid
silently shut.

Chapter 18

“Installation
compromised…Eichberg, Lothair cylinder reactivated…awaiting further thaw and
evac proce ——— U
nauthorized
entry detected in Level E…Cylinder Room Eichberg…Lothair. Security, proceed
with caution.”

Trot was
dimly aware that the female voice out in the hallway had started saying
something else. Her tone was the same, but the words were different. The
majority of his attention was focused on the old man rising from the metal
cylinder like a waking skeleton. The green light flashing through the crack of
open door only added to his sense of paralyzing fear.

 
“I ain’t got no food,” Trot said. Both thumbs
twisted at the rope strung through the holes in the waist of his pants. The
strange man before him lifted an emaciated leg from the cylinder and slid the
rest of his body after it. He leaned against the edge and stared at Trot, his
pink eyes and black pupils unblinking and unreadable. Trot looked down; the man
was naked. He looked more like a corpse than a living person, his bones poking
through white skin, casting sickly shadows of gray in the recesses above and
below. Trot dropped his gaze to the floor, unsure what to say next and feeling
more than a little uncomfortable. “Ain’t got no clothes either.”

The old man
glanced down at his nudity. “I’m sorry…I’ve been cooped up so long I forgot
what state I was in when I was frozen.”

“You were
frozen? Why… Why ain’t you dead?”

He looked at
Trot and tilted his head to one side, as if summing up the man before him fully
for the first time. “You’re not quite
all
there
, are you, Trot?”

“Folks say
I’m stupid, but I manage on my own… What did you say your name was?”

“Lothair.”

Trot took a
step back to the door. The smell in the room was terrible since the cylinder
had opened. “I was looking for my friends…I got lost and I need to find them. I
ain’t got no food.” He took another step back. “I’ll be going now.”

“Stop.”

Trot stopped.
“Please don’t make me stay. I got to find my friends. My hands hurt.”

“Do you have
a last name, Trot?”

“My name’s
Trot…don’t have no other.”

“My full name
is
Lothair Efrem Eichberg
, and this
cylinder—this room, this entire complex belongs to
me
.” Lothair moved in front of Trot, blocking him from the door.
“You are trespassing on
my
property.”

“Don’t know
what trespassin’ means,” Trot whimpered.

“It means you
have entered my home without permission. You owe me some form of explanation.
What year is this?”

Trot’s face
quivered. He shrugged. “There’s this year and last year… Didn’t know they had
names.”

Lothair
looked about the small room. It had served as his crypt for centuries. The
cryo-cylinder had been his tomb. But things seemed different. The cylinder he’d
voluntarily lain inside back in 1976 was a behemoth over sixteen feet long and
weighed almost a ton. It had been made of titanium, its exterior surface
painted white. This one was smaller, its surface silver and gleaming. He
stepped back in front of it, ran the tips of his wrinkled fingers along the
door’s open edge. It was warm and moist-feeling. It felt like something alive.
He pulled the lid down and heard it click into place. A soft hiss sounded from
somewhere as air was forced back inside.

“I’ve been
lying in this cylinder since before you were born. I was here before your
father…before his father and his father, before they were born. People have
lived their lives and they’ve died…generation after generation. I’ve been here
the entire time.”

Trot made a
nervous laughing noise that sounded like snot lodging in the back of his
throat. “That ain’t true. Nobody can live that long…’specially not all in one
place with no food and water.”

“Yes…they
can.” The pink eyes were on Trot again. The black pupils held him in place.
“And in all that time I never once felt
sorry
for myself. I never
grieved
for the
family I left behind. I never
missed
anyone. Something went wrong centuries ago. A malfunction…a glitch in the
thawing process occurred and I was left lying in that cylinder, wide awake and
waiting. Decades…centuries could already have passed before I awoke. Can your
slow mind even begin to imagine what that was like?”

Trot shook
his head again. They stood in silence and stared at each other.
 
“Please let me go. I
have to find my friends…my hands hurt.” Trot started for the door again and
Lothair grabbed his arm. It felt like ice.

Lothair only meant to stop him
from leaving. He pulled with half his strength and Trot flew back into the
cylinder. He rebounded from the unyielding metal and fell to the floor. Trot
curled his hands into his chest and made one final yelp as his head struck
tile.

Ages ago Lothair might have been
shocked to see someone hurt right before his eyes—or at least excited to see
pain inflicted on another human being. He felt nothing but mild surprise. How
had he done that? Where had he found the strength?

Blood started to pool slowly under
Trot’s head. The gnawing hunger that had kept Lothair company for centuries
twisted in his sunken gut and clawed up into his chest and throat. He could
feel it aching in his tongue and gums. Lothair was on his hands and knees
before his mind could give the command. His thin blue lips smacked at the
cooling dark liquid, his gray tongue lapped it up. He sucked on the floor’s
surface until it was dry, and then he went to work at the back of Trot’s sticky
head. He clamped his mouth over the still-oozing cut and felt the blood slide
down his throat and warm his gut. He gnawed lightly at the clammy skin on
Trot’s forehead until the man started to groan.

A red light blinked on an
unfamiliar control panel set into the wall next to the cylinder. It made a
beeping sound. Lothair pulled himself off Trot with an effort and staggered to
the light. He recalled the setup of things when he’d been laid to rest in the
twentieth century; a single computer larger than a refrigerator had been
connected to one end of the cylinder. A backup power generator, bigger still,
had been tied into the other end. The cylinder now was much smaller; the
hulking forms of the mainframe and generator were gone altogether. The entire
room seemed different—cleaner, less cluttered...almost alien. Lothair began to
wonder if he was even still in the Dauphin installation.

The light blinked again. Lothair
studied the smooth black screen it had come from.
What am I supposed to do with this?
He lifted his hand towards it,
but before his fingers could touch the reflective surface, a female voice
spoke.

“Eichberg, Lothair…recognized…
You have one message.”

 
The message appeared on the screen in
aqua-blue-colored letters. Lothair read the letter his great-granddaughter had
written him.
How odd. To read the words
of an ancient relative sent directly to me. An ancient relative who is also my
descendant.
He made the calculations quickly. Lothair had been frozen for
ninety-four years before the final massive coronal ejection had forced the
installation into a power-conserving lockdown. Something had gone wrong and
Lothair’s cylinder had accidently reactivated at that same moment.
A glitch in the system
. A glitch that
had him lying awake in the cylinder for nine hundred and ninety-six years.

“What year is this?” Lothair knew,
but he wanted to hear it from the computer. He wanted to know how this
technology—centuries old, yet completely new to him—worked.

“3066.”

Trot stirred on the floor behind
him. Lothair looked down at the writhing figure. The urge to tear out his
throat and suck down the blood was almost impossible to resist.
I can break his neck, put an end to his
suffering, and feed on his intestines.
Lothair could feel drool running
down his chin.
But I don’t care if he
suffers. He would taste so much better warm and alive.
Lothair studied his
hands. He stretched out his fingers and curled them back into fists. They may
have looked weak—pale white, wrinkled, and covered in liver spots—but a raw
power was awakening in his body. He could feel the DNA enhancements his
granddaughter had mentioned in her letter growing as he moved.

This newfound strength gave
Lothair an even more insidious idea. He would break the man’s spine over his
knee, render him immobile, and eat him alive. He lifted Trot effortlessly into
his arms and placed him across one leg. He pressed down on his upper chest and
lower abdomen. Pain started to bring Trot back to consciousness. He groaned in
agony as the pressure against his spine intensified. “No…it hurts…Lawman…
Where’s the lawman?”

Lothair stopped pressing. Who was
this
lawman?
Was he one of Trot’s
missing friends? More questions challenged the raging hunger in his brain.
How many of them are there? How did they get
down into the installation?
Lothair lowered Trot back to the floor and
watched him drift back into unconsciousness. The Dauphin facility needed to remain
secure. Lothair’s frozen family and clients had to be protected. As simple as
he was, Trot would have to remain alive a little while longer.

Lothair went back to the black
screen. “My granddaughter…Edna… Where is she, and how do I go about reviving
her?”