Cemetery Planet: The Complete Series (11 page)

11.

A new burst of energy propelled him quicker than he thought possible. One foot in front of the other, faster and faster, up the slope and into the heart of the labyrinth.

Scratching and shrieking and stomping. The manufactured monster was on his heels.
Clang, clang, clang
went its footsteps. Further off, he heard more of them. An all-out alert. And his only way out was a maze of dizzying choices. The corridors grew taller and wider. Then he saw light ahead, and found himself in the mausoleum again. But he wasn’t home free yet.

Clang…clang…clang…

The alien cyborgs were still coming. No time to think. The lights flickered, and he heard strange voices. When darkness took over for a few fleeting moments, he saw clusters of misty human figures.

One passed him by so close he felt the moistness from its stale touch. A wave of icicles slithered down his spine. But he couldn’t stop running, even with the dimness impeding his vision, even with the very real possibility that these apparitions were less then friendly. The most dangerous threat, the one that consumed him, was the constant metallic clomping and at his back.

It wasn’t long before he sensed his pursuers lagging behind. He was making it. Then something happened that almost made him lose all control of his bladder.

A grave marker flew straight off the wall. Before Harvey could make sense of it, the casket inside came out so fast it slammed into the opposite side of the hallway, cracking the marble tiles.

Another coffin ejected from its slot with a violence that shocked Harvey, and as he stepped away, a third sarcophagus came flying out, crashing on top of the other two, forming a daunting obstacle.

He backed off. Heart racing. Blinded by terror. The alien cyborgs were still coming. Their metal claws clanged and scraped the stone floor. Their screeching howls grated his nerves. It was at that precise moment, the very moment he thought his life was over, that Harvey heard Lea’s sorrowful voice, beckoning for him.

He followed her voice down another corridor, up a flight of stairs, into an open area with an artificial skylight. On and off the lights flickered, and when they went out, he saw glimpses of the vaporous forms, swooping rapidly, circling and twisting in a ghoulish dance. He knew they were the remnants of human souls. Ghosts. But that knowledge didn’t make it any easier. And the sounds of the approaching androids thumping in his chest, louder and louder, their shrill wails making it damn good and clear they meant nothing to Harvey but harm—all of that went away when he saw Lea.

She stood not more than twenty meters from him, in a sort of atrium. She disappeared when the lights came back on. Then, when they went out, she was there again. Only this time she was surrounded by other apparitions. The malevolent ghosts overpowered and dragged her deeper into the crypt. Then the lights came back on and she was gone—except for her haunting cries.

“Harvey! Harvey!”

He chased the sound into another wing of the vast cemetery structure. Forks in the road. Lefts and rights. Confusing twists and turns. He would have instantly gotten lost if not for Lea’s ceaseless calls for him. The lights went out again, and he saw he was close to catching up with her. She reached for him, and he reached for her. They were on the verge of touching, when a terrible reverberation in the wall had him shielding his head in terror. The rumbling climaxed when out came a casket, dirty and dusty, smashing onto the floor. The next casket flew out of the wall, and the next one, until Harvey’s path was obstructed once again.

He heard roars of satisfaction. When he turned, he froze in alarm. Androids. So many, they clogged the corridor, their articulated appendages swinging in long, lurching strides. When they saw Harvey had spotted them, they let out a series of hellish cries and doubled their speed.

Harvey scaled the wobbly caskets, up and over, panting and thanking whoever, whatever had created this barrier that so effectively kept the automated behemoths from getting to him.

But the barrier didn’t stop the alien cyborgs for long. Tossing the big, bulky coffins aside, the machines wasted no time getting through, keeping their menacing glares fixed on Harvey.

Stricken with panic, he took flight. This time he only made it a single step when, with a rumble, yet another casket barreled from its hiding place inside the wall. Instead of falling in front of him and blocking his path, this large box came straight for him. No time to move out of the way. No chance to avoid being hit straight in the jaw. He didn’t remember much after that. Just the darkness, the cold floor, the electronic howls and scraping claws coming closer.

Clang, clang, clang…

He woke up with a splitting headache. When he tried to reach for his face, he couldn’t move his hands.

“Hello? Hello, anyone?”

No light. No sound. Nothing to let him know where he was. He tried to get up and smashed his nose against the low ceiling. Or was it a ceiling? Was he in a room at all or something else…something strangely familiar and too terrifying to acknowledge?

“No…no please! Somebody, please!”

There was no denying it. He knew where he was. When he shouted into the cold, silent density—the thick concrete walls and the mounds of dirt—he knew he’d been placed in a casket, slid into a grave slot and locked away in the ancient mausoleum.

PART III

1.

Alone. Trapped. Confined to only centimeters in each direction. It felt like the walls were closing in, like Harvey was the only one in the entire universe who knew he was there, like his next breath would be his last. That didn’t stop him from beating his elbows, slamming his knees, screaming at the top of his lungs for someone, anyone to release him from this dreadful prison. This was how the end would come. No matter how much he tried to deny it, he knew. He’d spent too much time lingering over the oceans of graves on this deserted world. He’d spent too much time on this godforsaken wasteland of the dead, and now he’ll become one of them. He’ll perish on Cemetery Planet.

He shifted from hitting the walls and ceiling to kicking with his heels, fantasizing he could break free. But it was only fantasy. The box was as solid as exotanium. He collapsed, contemplating the idea of eternity inside this casket, never seeing Lea again.

Exhausted, Harvey could do nothing but wait for the inevitable. Lea’s face flashed in his eyes every time he closed them, and her soft voice came to him when he felt like all was lost. He knew it was a hallucination. He also knew the great cracking sound was another hallucination. Then he felt movement. His head struck the side of the casket, and, though it was padded, he still felt a good jolt. That’s when he knew it was real.

“Hey! Let me out!”

He didn’t care if it was the deadly cyborgs. He wanted out.

“Who are you? What do you want! Why don’t you let me go!”

His demands fell on silence. He was certain the robots were taking him to the depths of the ancient structure, beneath the mausoleum to those giant conveyers. He pictured his dead body included in the endless assembly line. What those corpses were being used for, he had no clue, and he wanted no part in finding out.

He cursed his captors, the ones behind this shameful enterprise. Whoever, whatever they were, he damned them to Hell. Spit and cussed and called upon everything he knew that was righteous in the universe to come and strike them down with brutal karmic justice.

That didn’t happen. Nothing happened but the steady shuffling, the constant shifting, the continuing descent.

Heavy rumbling. Giant motors humming. He sensed this was the place. This was the mammoth factory where the dead were being transported like consumer goods. He was sure of it. When he felt the casket being lowered and then, with a jolt, hitting the floor, he had no idea what would come next.

What came next was nothing. Not a sound. Not a movement. Harvey tried to be still in the eerie silence. The constricted space began to take its toll on him, and he lost all control of his caution. No more waiting. He had to get out.

He pushed and pushed. Hands and knees. With all his strength. The lid had to open. It had to. No luck. Damn thing was jammed. Or worse—locked. His first instinct was to deny it. Push again. Try harder. No avail. It felt like a thousand kilogram sarcophagus lid. His one last chance was to plead for his life.

“Help me…please! Whoever you are!” he beat his knuckles raw against the solid top. “Please don’t leave me in here…please!”

Nothing. Even the rumbling had died down, though he heard it in the background. He called out again, determined to get a response, and would have kept shouting if not for a tremendous quake, shaking the casket and jarring the lid open a tiny fissure. He shut up just in time for another heavy shock that moved the lid even further, enough for Harvey to sit up.

He lost his breath at what he saw.

2.

Never in the history of Cemetery Planet had Harvey heard of such a primitive place. He saw it with his own eyes, yet still disbelieved. Sandstone caverns with carved niches loaded with countless human skulls, femurs, ribcages. In the distance, he saw the gruesome ossuary had multiple levels and corridors. He’d heard of such places. Places where people would entomb their dead when population density prevented above-ground cemeteries. The same principal as Cemetery Planet, only underground. He’d seen pictures of the Catacombs of Paris, and even heard rumors that they’d transferred them to Cemetery Planet. Harvey never believed those stories. He did now.

The high humidity hung like an oppressive fog, and in spots this fog grew thicker before Harvey’s eyes. One after the other, accompanied by a whispering wind, mixing and materializing. A heavy, dense, grayness spilled from between the skulls, from the dark recesses and crevices. Wisps of smoky dust gathered around Harvey like cloudbanks, a sudden storm front in miniature, violent and electric and menacing.

In the mist he began to see human forms, hazy figures, dozens of them, descending from the domed ceiling to the coffin where Harvey sat dumbfounded. He glanced left and right—nothing but semitransparent figures, all in ancient attire, all sending him dead, cold stares. It put a shiver in his spine, and a sense of dread in his gut.

Then, with one sighting, all his anxiety, all his abhorrence vaporized, and he scrambled out of the casket as fast as his stiff muscles would let him.

“LEA!” his voice boomed throughout the cavern. She was on a small landing overlooking the main floor. She opened her arms in a welcoming gesture, sparkling and aglow with joy. The spirits seemed stunned at Harvey’s sudden burst of activity, and even made way as he ran to the stairs. Then, suddenly, a fierce collision with something very fast and very solid stopped him in his tracks.

“NO! Don’t hurt Harvey!”

Lea shrieked in his defense. It didn’t help. He regained his footing and made another attempt at the stairs. Another rush of gray slammed into him, this one knocking him over. Lea screamed again. So did the spirits. Cursing, shouting angry, accusing words.

“He’s one of them!”

“Yes! One of them!”

“Criminal scum!”

“Don’t let him escape!”

In their vitriolic displays, the misty figures became almost real in appearance…and in presence. Harvey felt one push him—hard—into several others. A slap to his face. A punch to his kidney. A scrape to his neck. A furious attack, and in the chaotic violence, Harvey lost sight of Lea. For a terrifying moment he was beginning to believe this whole thing was a trap. They’d used Lea to lure him into this terrible place and do away with him once and for all.

For what reason? Why did the spirits want to torment him? He begged for an answer as they jabbed and pecked and clawed at him. He fell to his knees and prayed for a reason. All he got in return were the same, angrily repetitious cries.

“You’re one of them!”

“You’re corrupt! A scourge to all that’s decent!”

His heart pounded in his ear, and the throbbing seemed to be getting weaker. He was getting weaker. His only thoughts were of Lea. He came here to save her and he failed. He convinced himself Lea had gone, so it was a tremendous shock when he saw her again.

“Stop!” she swished her hands and dissipated several of the spirits. Her own appearance was of smoke and dust too, but she seemed to possess a fury that allowed her more power, and she pushed aside the aggressors, then rushed to be next to Harvey.

“He’s not one of them!” she shielded him. “And he can help us!”

“But he works for them!” countered one of the apparitions.

“There’s no doubt!” added another.

“That’s true,” Lea admitted, and the ghostly group surged forward, roaring with aggression. “Wait!” she held them off, but just barely. “Let me finish. He does work for them…but he doesn’t know!”

To that the spirits issued a general hiss of disbelief. Lea wouldn’t accept their dubiousness.

“I mean it! He doesn’t know anything about it. He doesn’t have a clue, but I know he can help us!”

The spirits would hear none of it, and rushed forward even more. Three of them overpowered Lea and pulled her, kicking and screaming, away from Harvey.

“One of them!” the accusations came out again. “He’s working with them…he’s one of them!”

Before he could blink, the ghosts were swirling about his face, barraging him with blunt force. He’d never felt so much pain from so many places on his body at the same time. Small slices to large bruises to tiny things like his hair being pulled from the follicles or his skin being peeled from his forearms. Torture of the worst kind.

“We’ll teach him to do this to us!” one of them proclaimed, and they all agreed. “We’ll give him a fate worse than death!”

“Please listen to me,” Lea lifted into the air, just above the heads of the enraged spirits. “I’m one of you. I’m in the very same situation you’re all in. We’re all facing the same fate, so you have to believe me when I tell you Harvey’s an honest, hardworking man. He would never do anything like this.”

Grumbling. Groaning. Not one soul seemed to believe.

“I know you’re afraid. I am too. We all are. None of us knows what will happen, and that’s driving us to this. We need to right this wrong. We need to come up with a way to solve this, but harming Harvey isn’t the way.”

“You’re just in love with him,” came a gruff grumble. “That’s why you’re defending him!”

The gallery of ghosts erupted in acerbic laughter.

“That’s not true!” she insisted. Then her forlorn gaze drifted to Harvey, and he saw tears. “Not entirely. I mean yes, I love him…but that’s only because he is such a sweet and generous man. He’d never do the things you’re accusing him of doing. Never.”

The group consensus was an overwhelming repudiation of Lea’s claims. They wanted revenge. For what, Harvey still had no idea, and it had him so puzzled, he almost wanted death to take him. If it weren’t for Lea, he would have accepted it by now. But she fought for him, and that in turn made him want to live. The spirits, though, didn’t see it that way.

Harvey felt pressure on his wrists, ankles, then around his neck. Tighter and tighter. Squeezing the life out of him. He locked eyes with Lea. She struggled against an army of hands holding her in place. All she could do was watch as Harvey was taken closer and closer to his end.

Then a voice, as familiar as it was commanding, issuing an order that was impossible to ignore.

“Everyone…stop this madness, NOW!”

Instant relief. Harvey’s air passages opened, and he gasped for breath. Then he gasped again when he saw the owner of such a commanding tone. Standing atop a staircase like a grand conductor was a man Harvey would recognize anywhere—Kip Broders. His broad shoulders and barrel chest gave him an authoritative presence. He regarded the large open pit below with an air of dignity and was afforded the respect of the leader by his companions. Harvey didn’t know whether to be relieved with this revelation or to be even more afraid. However, he had no alternative than to wait and listen. And what Kip Broders had to say was nothing short of fantastical and frightening.