Darkness was permeated by the red flash of the emergency strobes lining the corridor. The light briefly illuminating the windowless stretch of plastic paneling stretching down the middle of the corridor. The screeching blare of the siren had long since died out and now the empty hallway was engulfed in near silence. Near silence, but not completely silent.
The sleek hard metal door to unit D-13 softly hissed open as the strobes continued to bathe their surroundings in brief washes of dark red light. Like the corridor, the room was devoid of light save for the intermittent flashing of red coming from within. A hand tentatively grasped the door frame, followed by a brow, searching eyes and pursed lips. The woman’s head quickly veered left and right to glance down both directions of the long expanse, affirming both its emptiness and that the red strobes were not limited to just her room.
Something had gone wrong. Something had gone horribly wrong. Rachel reversed back into her residence and had it not been for her hand still holding the doorframe firmly, would have tripped over her son who was now standing directly behind her legs. Chet whispered the faintest of apologies and stepped aside to give her room.
She glanced down at the child and saw that he was fretfully fingering their interior commlink embedded next to the door, trying, as she had earlier, to decipher any form of communication through the static. This was not the first time the comms had failed. In fact, it had only been four months since she and Garrison had both jolted awake in the middle of the night to a cacophony of static that had suddenly blared directly into their eardrums. That time however, the static only lasted for seconds. That time, the static was quickly followed by the reassuring voice of Lieutenant Commander Essex apologizing for the inconvenience and clarifying that the interference was due to an unintended energy spike caused by the maintenance crews servicing the generators while they slept. Essex, a man who earned his rank largely due to his ability to manage public relations and bring calm to a crisis, reassured the residents that this happened on occasion and the situation had been remedied in mere seconds. After checking in on Chet to ensure he was ok and then relieving herself, Rachel had been back asleep in a matter of minutes.
This time, there was no break in the static. No words of reassurance from Essex. And now, no Garrison.
This month’s shift assignments had come as an unwelcome surprise to Rachel, but Garrison, ever the optimist, insisted the change to the graveyard shift would finally allow him the precious hours to spend with Chet during the waking hours. That and the fact that this was only a temporary accommodation until the next class of cadets graduated and a more junior engineer could backfill his new role. Rachel knew better. With an increasing reliance on their finite fossil fuel reserves, fewer engineers were being trained up on their arcane geothermal operating procedures. With fewer cadets being groomed for her husband’s dying profession and his own youth, he was at the end of a long and slow moving queue to transfer back to a waking hours shift.
Given that Rachel herself was still on a waking hours shift at the aeroponics growery, she would be out the door by 07:45 with Garrison arriving back at their unit shortly after 08:00. This meant she wouldn’t see him until she returned, closer to 16:15, allowing them a precious few hours together before she would retire for the night and he would prepare to leave for his prompt 00:00 start time. He insisted he slept most of the eight hours during her time at work, but she knew this was far from the truth, as Chet would relay the day’s adventures with his dad upon her return.
Glancing at the LED clock on her nightstand, also red, the time stood at 03:47, close to the damn middle of Garrison’s shift. This meant he was far from the D wing, far from all the residences, which meant Rachel would have to figure out for herself what was going on.
It had been four minutes since the alarms had woken her from her slumber and still no other doors on D wing had opened other than hers. She knew this wing was sparsely populated, but still, she had assumed she’d at least see Angie and the twins pop out of D-06 down the hall. Perhaps they had already surveyed the situation while she was busy dressing herself prior to popping her own head out. D wing was the closest to the primary education center, intended for young families such as hers, but with fewer and fewer of Rachel’s colleagues opting to raise a family, the wing had slowly vacated as cadets graduated and moved into units of their own in the more prominent A and B wings. Chet, at the tender age of six, had just begun schooling two years ago, prompting Rachel’s return to the growery. Outside of being a year older than Angie’s twins, there were few other families Rachel had come across with younger children.
She made up her mind she would try Angie’s door to see if she was any more privy to the situation, but first decided she would dress Chet. In the event there was an air quality issue, or worse yet, some sort of seismic activity, she didn’t want to have to evacuate the boy out of the residences, still clad in his stock pajama set.
She ran her fingers through the boy’s coarse brown hair while kneeling down to face him.
“We’re going to go to Nora and Tyler’s to go see what all this noise is about”, she softly told the boy. “But before we do, I need you to go fetch your trousers and jacket I laid out for school tomorrow and throw those on.”
Chet nodded, paused as if he was going to ask a question, but instead nodded again and silently went over to the trunk at the foot of his cot. While he struggled to maintain his balance hiking the pants up, Rachel put on her own boots before helping him with his. All the while the strobes continued to flash and the hallway remained empty.
Dressed and ready to depart, Rachel took Chet’s hand in hers and took one final glance at the clock. 03:51 and still no word from Essex, or anyone for that matter. She tried to shrug off the creeping sense of dread continuing to build in her chest. Eight minutes of this, or at least eight since she had woken. Even if there was some kind of emergency and Garrison had immediately headed back to check on them, there was no way he could arrive in less than ten or even eleven minutes. The freight elevator from the lower levels alone takes at least five minutes, not to mention racing past the other residence wings to arrive all the way at D. By the time she checked in with Angie, he would likely just be getting to their wing.
She squeezed Chet’s hand as they began to walk down the hall. It took ample amounts of her self-control not to sprint, but Chet’s silence clearly evidenced his worry, and she didn’t want to unnecessarily panic the child any more than he already was.
Rounding the corner, Rachel’s heart sank. The door to D-06 was wide open and the unit was clearly vacant. Evidence of a quick departure were apparent, with pajamas strewn about the cots and beds unmade. She stood in stunned silence for a moment too long, which prompted Chet to pull on her hand and finally whisper to her.
“Mom, where is everyone”?
Before she could reply, there was a distant crash at the end of the residence hall. Garrison, it must be him trying to wrest the doorway to the wing open. Now she did run. Practically dragging Chet behind her, she raced past D-05 and then D-04 as she headed towards the entrance to the wing. The doors were sealed during the graveyard shift hours to prohibit nosy neighbors and petty thieves from being where they weren’t supposed to. Garrison must be trying to manually open the door to get to them. Another bang cut through silence, clearly coming from the other side of the door.
“Garrison, we’re ok. We’re coming to let you in”, Rachel shouted, trying her best to sound in control and not panicked.
Just as they neared the door Chet let out a grunt and jerked on her hand as he lost his grip and slipped behind her. Rachel quickly pivoted and saw the boy had fallen in a puddle pooling out from under the closed door of D-02. A leak? Is that what’s going on? Had some of the grid’s piping burst? But as she again grasped his hand to help him up she immediately noticed the thick and sticky feeling of the wetness on her son’s skin. No not water then, but oil. Oil…or…
The latest crash of metal interrupted her thoughts and her head snapped back and she saw the D wing’s door shake. Chet began to whimper and then cry.
“Oh honey, it’s ok. Daddy’s coming. That’s just him trying to get to us”, she said as she turned back to face him.
However, Chet was not looking at the entrance to D wing, but the door to D-02. Rachel’s squinted in the darkness, not able to make anything out, until the next bath of red illuminated the room. That’s when she saw what looked to be clumps of hair sticking out from beneath the sealed door. The strobe blinked out and Rachel blinked in disbelief. Chet was crying more fiercely now and began to cling to his mother’s legs, tightly wrapping his arms around the back of her thighs and burying his face into the side of her hips.
The light flashed again, and the horror of confirming what she saw began to wash over Rachel. Not just clumps of hair, but long locks cased to the floor by what she had now come to understand was ounces of blood. Impossible to tell the exact color in the darkness, but a notably lighter hue of hair leading back to the door. The safety mechanism would typically catch anything substantial in the way upon the door closing, but assuming someone was laying on the ground, the hair may not have been enough to trigger the safety reverse as the unit’s door closed.
“It’s Nora” Chet sobbed, muffled by his mouth pressed against her hips.
As the light flashed yet again, Rachel made out a single pink sailor bow in the thickest clump of hair. The same bow Angie Schaeffer adorned her daughter with every day.
Rachel instantly pulled Chet in tighter to her while simultaneously hitting the door release switch on D-02. The mechanical clanked but didn’t open. Jammed. Rachel knelt and tried to pry her fingers underneath the bottom of the door to gain some leverage, carefully avoiding the hair and blood protruding from beneath it. Without anything to get a firm grasp on, manual opening would be near impossible.
Another crash of metal from behind her brought her attention back to Garrison trying to enter. He would be able to help them.
“Garrison, we’re coming” she yelled.
She scooped Chet up and ran the last few dozen feet to the residence entry door. This time when she slammed the door release switch with her hand there was no issue. The hydraulics on the door hissed as it began retracting toward the ceiling. With adrenaline coursing through her veins, Rachel ducked under the door and into the residence mezzanine area to get to her husband.
What she saw was not Garrison. What she saw was not even human. Her courage now exhausted, she screamed into the void.