Cemetery Planet: The Complete Series Page 9

  He headed into an area of large shrines and casks above as well as below ground, tightly organized like a maze. Several times he thought he’d lost the thing, then he’d see a fleeting glimpse here, a shadowy trail there, and keep running, deeper and deeper into the tangle of tombs.

  Out of breath and dizzy, he came upon a courtyard of sorts, with a handsome little fountain, benches, and covered areas. The oddity he’d been chasing seemed to have disappeared without a trace, and he was ready to give up when he spotted a large portico—the entrance to a structure that appeared to be, at least partially, built beneath ground.

  The entryway was quite massive, with tall columns bathed in white and three levels of steps leading up to a gigantic door. As he got closer and saw more detail, his nerves spiked at the sudden awareness that the door was open slightly. Deep down he knew this place, knew what was behind this giant slab of stone and steel.

  His suspicions were confirmed the second he peered inside and saw the inscriptions on the marble facings, the elegant decor, vaulted ceilings, and dusty chandeliers.

  He stepped back in disbelief. Yet he recalled the rumors of another mausoleum complex in another, now abandoned, part of the planet. Of course he knew of the several smaller underground vaults, many of which dotted the globe. This one was different. This mausoleum looked almost as big as the one at the visitor station. He could tell by one look at the building from the outside, and his view of the nearly endless corridor inside made it clear.

  Then he was stricken with the singular sense that he was led here for a reason. The door to the mausoleum was open for a reason—Lea. He tingled with anticipation, and with the sense that she was inside this place. The thing that took her…it lived here, haunted this murky dwelling. Harvey felt that if he went any further, he might not ever get out alive. He had no choice. His desperation to find Lea took that option away from him, and now he acted on pure instinct. He took a step inside, and decided not to look back.

  10.

  The state of disrepair in the ancient crypt appalled Harvey. He never would have allowed a complex under his supervision to go to hell like this. It was obvious there were no cleaner bots. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway, since the power had been out for quite some time.

  He took a few slow paces into the unknown, then reacted with a start to a strange and altogether too unnatural sound from deep in the underground structure’s bowels. Low and relentless. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it, and decided to change his mind. He made an about-face and strode, steadily and swiftly, to the exit. The moment before he was ready to step foot outside, a tremendous rumble forced him back. A metal grinding noise echoed in his ears, and the heavy slab of a door swung closed with a SLAM!

  He pounded on the metal until his hands were bruised, yelling for someone, anyone to open the door again. Then he noticed his rapid heart rate and high respiration numbers on the visor display, and went into a tailspin of terror over his air supply. Cut off from the PMD, and from any alternative air, he was looking at this place as his tomb. It was a matter of hours until his last lungful. He faced the mausoleum again, faced his fear. Maybe, if he was lucky, he would find something in here, some kind of life support system he could utilize. He knew it was only wishful thinking. The place was dead. No power for centuries. No life support. No air. No chance for survival.

  With that desolate thought lingering, Harvey witnessed an amazing thing. So wondrous, he felt like he was dreaming. His eyes stung at sudden illumination. He threw up his hands and shielded his view and heard another rumble, this time from above.

  His helmet display started crunching numbers, showing him the results. He didn’t need the computer to tell him what had happened. He knew that sound. He’d heard it droning on and on for so long. Inexplicably, the life support systems had kicked on, right along with the lights.

  He used the new illumination to finally get a good look at the place. Certainly a manmade wonder of its time. He had no idea when it was built, so he stepped close to a plaque near the main entrance.

  Masoleum Number One. Dedicated on this day, May 23, 2525.

  2525. That meant it was one of the first structures ever built on Cemetery Planet. A three hundred year old building with three hundred year old technology. He wasn’t sure whether he should trust it. His visor display, though, told him otherwise. Acceptable levels of nitrogen and oxygen, argon and carbon dioxide. Humidity 35 percent. Temperature 22 degrees Celsius. No airborne contaminants. Optimum conditions. All green. Since when did he believe the damn computer? But, in the interest of saving his suit’s air supply, he decided to take a chance.

  He clicked the lock on his neck seal and the helmet popped off with a quarter-turn twist. He took a small breath. His lungs didn’t explode. So far so good. Another quick gulp and he was breathing with ease. It was a little musty. The damp, dusty old smell made it marginally unpleasant. Soon enough his nose grew accustomed to the stench, and he found himself taking off the suit altogether.

  After the initial period of surprise, his inquiring mind began reflecting. Clearly, someone or something was aware of his arrival. It was also quite evident that these entities didn’t want him dead, at least not yet.

  “Hello?” he sent a rather meek message echoing down the long corridor “Lea?”

  “HARVEY!”

  His knees buckled at the sound of Lea’s voice. He called out her name again, and before he knew it, started sprinting, as fast as his wobbly legs would take him. The grave markers on the walls blended in a haze, the hallway stretched in front of him into infinity.

  Lea called out for him again and again, and Harvey kept running. He came to a stairway leading down and her voice grew louder. Instinctively, he followed the sound.

  It was a forgotten mausoleum. A place he scarcely knew existed. He was amazed at how deep it went, marveling at its breathtaking enormity. And the deeper he descended, with each new level down, the sound of Lea’s cries for him grew that much louder, that much more distinct. He was getting closer, but how far down must he go?

  As he bounded down the staircases, another sound began to overtake Lea’s voice. Crunching and churning and rumbling. Then he realized—this sound, this mechanical, industrial sound had been there all along, in the background.

  The rumbling got so bad the ceiling and floors were fractured in places. His instincts turned against him. They told him to get out of there. However, Harvey was eternally curious, and that inquisitiveness kept him moving forward, into a place with no graves along the walls. The vast crypt had ended, and a new type of vault had begun. Dark stone, shiny in the ambient light up ahead, the same direction from which the terrible noise was originating.

  He knew he should have turned back. The signs of the mausoleum were long gone. The light, airy environment had given way to a murky, dark atmosphere where the walls closed in on Harvey with every step. Lea’s shouts had long since been overtaken by the deafening mechanical sounds—the shrieking of grinding metal, the clanking of heavy parts, the turning of giant gears.

  Every reason for his being there had vanished, and every alarm of common sense rang inside his head. Get out! Get out now! That was the message from his conscience, unequivocal and unrelenting. But he kept going. He wanted to know. He had to know what was making this terrible commotion on what was supposed to be a lifeless, abandoned planet.

  The passageways closed in on him at every turn, and he had to stoop under the low hanging stalactites. Then he saw, up ahead, a red glow so terrifying it made him want to stop in his tracks. Still, he kept going forward, like iron to a magnet, as the awful rumbling and clanking grew louder and louder. The fiery glow increased in brightness, until the cramped surroundings opened up to a vast cavern. Harvey tripped and fell to his hands and knees. Perched precariously over a towering cliff, he overlooked the oddest sight he’d ever seen.

  A massive factory floor. Steel framework conveyer belts twisting and bending, crossing and extending far into the distance of a gigantic under
ground chamber. It wasn’t the immense scale of the operation that had him trembling in terror. It was what he saw on the conveyer belts, a vision so fear provoking, he went numb from head to toe.

  Bodies. Human corpses. Mostly skeletons, and many just heaps of bones. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Hell, when he considered the vastness of the operation, he calculated probably hundreds of thousands were involved. All these remains, placed with care in an intricate system of transport, moving them to God knew where. But somewhere, and for something. Harvey could only guess. Whatever it was, he knew it couldn’t have been good.

  His first thought was DeepSix. What kind of fraudulence were those cheapskates up to? What he noticed next made him abandon that theory and revert again to complete terror. He knew what it was by the scaly, oddly-camouflaged skin, and the cold, calculating way it moved. The alien cyborg. The very same one that had tried to murder him.

  Initially he cursed himself for not disassembling the damn thing. Then he saw another one of the beastly robots, and another. Suddenly he was seeing all kinds of them, milling about the conveyer, stationed at several different positions along the line, managing the operation and keeping it functioning like clockwork.

  He watched this activity from his ledge, with a sweeping view of it all. Straight below him, some commotion caught his eye. That’s when he saw the most terrifying sight yet. Three alien cyborgs were directly below his position, investigating something and deliberating between each other. Then one of them looked straight up, and met stares with Harvey.

  He jerked back from the edge. He’d been spotted. But maybe not. To be sure, he peeked over the ledge once more, and froze at the sight of one of the androids, halfway up the vertical cliff face, reddish eyes, filled with malicious determination, fixed on Harvey. Its massive claws dug into the rock, permitting it a speedy climb. Only seconds until it would reach the top.

  He scrambled backward and scuffled to his feet. Before he made it just two strides, he heard the unmistakable sound of motion in the gravel behind him. And a strident screech, reverberating through the subterranean cavern, told him the immense and powerful machine was only meters away.

  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.

  “Don’t leave me in here! Please…HELP ME!”

  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 o
n 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.