Chapter 20: Tango
OFFICE, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (NIGHT)
The lights are off, the door locked and barricaded.
Bruce crouches at the window, staring through his rifle scope. He pulls the trigger. Adjusts. Pulls. Adjusts. Pulls. Pulls back.
A bullet returns through the window, shattering a light into a shower of glass.
Bruce crosses the room through the dark and peeks through his scope out another window. He spots a black shape fallen on the snow-covered catwalks. Shadows crawl toward it.
BRUCE: (swears)
CATWALKS, AERATION BASIN, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (NIGHT)
A cacophony from the outside world fills Valerie’s head. Her music’s off.
Helicopter blades chopping air; bursts of gunfire; distorted screams; the sloshing of wet meat.
Snow fills her face and packs the hole in her hand. It bites. It numbs. It slows the bleeding.
Something grabs Valerie’s leg and pulls her toward the reservoir.
For a few seconds she’s content with it.
End it already.
But a memory changes that:
FLASHBACK: BASEMENT STUDIO (AFTERNOON)
Valerie sits on the edge of her bed pressing numbers into her phone. She keeps erasing them, rearranging them, trying to get them right. She can’t remember...
VALERIE: Claire...
Frustrated, she throws the phone into her mattress. It bounces onto the floor.
VALERIE: Maybe... you were right. But I can’t turn back now. I can’t. The only way for me is forward. Maybe if I keep going forward I can find home again.
CATWALKS, AERATION BASIN, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (NIGHT)
Valerie twists and kicks out at the WET SHADOWY APPENDAGE starting to digest her leg. It’s stuck to her--STINGING--like boiling oil adhered to the flesh.
VALERIE: (screams)
Valerie digs through the snow with her good hand and wedges her fingers into the grate. She goes taut. The WET SHADOWY APPENDAGE threatens to pull her apart.
Then there’s another.
And another.
DOZENS OF SHADOW SHAPES climb out of the reservoir and amass like so many drooling chess pieces.
A wet THWACK precedes the freeing of her leg as a BIG SHADOW swings his way through the gathering with a crowbar.
SCARRED BRUCE: (roaring) GET GONE!
Valerie (wincing) scrambles backwards over the snow as the man stabs and bats and kicks the shadows into the raging reservoir.
SCARRED BRUCE: We didn’t (stab) build this (thwack) for you to (kick) fail us now.
The shadows spring back from the reservoir, surrounding him. He fights and falls and is dragged into the black waters.
Valerie finds her feet and her music and (tightly wrapping her bleeding hand in a sleeve) limps onward toward the office building.
LOT, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (CONTINUOUS)
A soldier takes aim at Valerie and promptly FALLS to a shot through his throat.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
SETTLEMENT RESERVOIRS, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (CONTINUOUS)
The flood lights go out.
Still Valerie limps toward the great looming shadow of the office building, her leg oozing black.
FLASHFORWARD: BASEMENT STUDIO, RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT (INDETERMINATE)
SCARRED BRUCE: Few more dominoes to stack.
VALERIE: The lights?
SCARRED BRUCE: Need to shut ‘em off. We left ‘em on. The first time. Mistake.
More stomping overhead. Something bludgeons the door.
VALERIE: We’re down to the wire.
SCARRED BRUCE: (holding the phone) Back in a jiff.
Valerie turns and admires the contents of her old studio apartment: the sole frying pan on the stove, the unmade bed, the ancient TV atop a shoddy dresser. She sees boots cross outside the small windows near the ceiling and starts at a noise behind her.
Bruce (panting) is back.
SCARRED BRUCE: Here we split.
VALERIE: What do you mean?
SCARRED BRUCE: I had to be sure, so I peeked. I need to go in.
VALERIE: But the phone--
SCARRED BRUCE: You need to deliver it. That’s the impetus that will set it all in motion.
VALERIE: You’re going in without a tether?
Bruce rounds on Valerie, grabbing her by the shoulders. He’s too hard to look scared, but his eyes say it’s THE END.
SCARRED BRUCE: You give me all the time you can. When they break the door down, you go. Make the drop.
Valerie shrugs out of his grip, rearing to protest.
An EARTH-SHATTERING slam rocks the building. Spices fall from the cupboard, SMASHING on the floor.
SCARRED BRUCE: (shaking his head) Nothing that happens to me matters if we do this. If we succeed.
Bruce walks sharply away from Valerie and engages the Nexus. He sets it on the counter and lingers on the perimeter of its pink aura.
SCARRED BRUCE: Vale. Luck.
Bruce disappears. The phone remains.
OFFICE ENTRYWAY, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (NIGHT)
The place is empty, hollow, void of sound and life.
Every shadow manifests as a monster and then disperses to scenery.
Valerie struggles up the stairs to:
HALLWAY, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (CONTINUOUS)
Valerie drags herself down the hall. Whatever drug she’d imbibed has run its course and now she’s spent.
Valerie pounds on the office door. Three pathetic whaps of her knuckles.
VALERIE: (croaking) Bruce?
She holds the phone :.the Nexus.:, battery two percent and depleting.
The sound of moving furniture precedes the opening of the door.
BRUCE: You made it.
Valerie can barely nod.
BRUCE: Come on.
OFFICE, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (CONTINUOUS)
Bruce closes the door behind her.
VALERIE: (hoarse) They’re here.
Bruce plucks the phone from Valerie’s hand and plugs it into the main computer.
A storm of gunfire comes from the lot.
BRUCE: The two pincers have met. We’re sending it all away.
Bruce wastes no time engaging the Nexus. He types furiously into the computer as the CRTs still in operation immediately fill the room with a pink hue.
Black splotches appear on the screens like alien spores even as the pumps start up, pulling the black water through the treatment system.
Valerie slumps in a chair.
The fans in the computer tower whir at max RPM. Wires start to short. Sparks rain down from the ceiling. The CRTs fry and surrender their spirits in wisps of smoke.
BRUCE: Ya did good, Vale.
VALERIE: (unresponsive)
BRUCE: Vale?
FLASHFORWARD: BASEMENT STUDIO, RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT (INDETERMINATE)
The door comes down. The ceiling caves in. Valerie draws her phone and fires before the wreckage can consume her and jumps to:
OVERGROWN LOT, RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT (EARLY MORNING)
Valerie’s breath materializes before her. She sends a message on her phone, walks through the grass to the rusted incinerator, and yanks open the door.
She shuts off the phone, packages it, and puts it inside.
She touches her fingers first to her lips and then the handle, sealing it with a kiss.
And then she walks away, fading into the dark silhouetted woods.
OFFICE, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (NIGHT)
The gunfire ends. The chopper engines die. The computer fans stop. SILENCE fills the lot, the office, the world.
Bruce shakes Valerie. She doesn’t move. He checks her pulse and observes the gentle heave of her chest: she’s still breathing.
He disconnects the phone from the (dead) computer and crouches next to Valerie and engages the Nexus with its final bit of battery: T4NG0.
Fade to dream pink.