Sanitation Run

Chapter 18: Repeat

NATURE PARK (LATE AFTERNOON)

Spent, late-autumn leaves carpet the ground. The sky is an indecisive navy bearing sign of neither snow nor stars and framed with the skeletal limbs of trees.

Bruce (arms crossed) leans against the rusted frame of a swing set. Valerie idles on a swing, her phone in her lap. Breath materializes as she speaks.

VALERIE: This is it, then?

BRUCE: (shakes his head) We’ll have a minute when you arrive.

VALERIE: If.

BRUCE: When. I’m going ahead to prepare things.

VALERIE: (snickers) You’re going ahead because you can’t run.

BRUCE: I can multitask.

VALERIE: Realistically, what if I do fail? I run out of steam, I’m swallowed up.

BRUCE: Hopefully I can find the Nexus.

BRUCE: (internal) And another you.

BRUCE: But you’re not going to.

BRUCE: (internal) This time.

BRUCE: Have faith.

VALERIE: (unconvinced) Faith.

BRUCE: Give me a ten-minute head start. I need to find some wheels. And then--

VALERIE: All hell flows downstream.

NATURE PARK (TEN MINUTES LATER)

Valerie finishes a stretch routine.

The swing set creaks in a foreboding breeze. It’s only growing darker among the trees. Liquid shadows blend and flow behind the bushes.

Valerie has never felt so alone.

The shadows encircle like pythons.

She takes a swig of water and leaves the bottle and everything excepting her phone and the bottle of pills, which she puts in the pocket of her parka.

Valerie snaps out of her momentary ennui and presses an earbud into action.

The music takes her away to another plane--something akin to home--as she turns into the run.

Deja vu chases her up the gravel footpath toward :.REDACTED.:.

The battery wanes.

CEMETERY HILL (LATE AFTERNOON)

No men in long jackets chase Valerie across the dead, crispy grass hill this time but inchoate phantoms. Wispy appendages and torsos pull themselves into existence out of thin air and lurch for her.

Bitter mist stings Valerie’s face despite the cloudless sky; the stuff of frostbite. She rubs it away BLACK on her sleeve.

A STRINGY BLACK TORSO lunges at her knees. She topples, cartwheeling down the slick face of the hill, banging an elbow, a shoulder, a hip.

She MIRACULOUSLY catches herself, snapping back to her feet in time to hurdle a half-formed shadow and land on tarmac, driving out through the cemetery gates.

PARKING LOT (EVENING)

Where before there was an orchard of abandoned, chopped-up cars now there is nothing. Normal. Almost. The shadows amassing on Valerie’s periphery suck the light out of the atmosphere.

The sterile lamps struggle to illuminate the surroundings as Valerie streaks across the empty lot, a shadow of her own. Her heartbeat throbs in rhythm to the music feeding her earholes: fast, doomy trance.

A music which calls all alien shadows out to play.

FOOTBRIDGE, HIGHWAY OVERPASS (EVENING)

The traffic below is but headlights. The drivers, seeing things, swerve into medians and sidewalls.

Crashes echo across the highway like another layer of drum track.

Valerie takes it all in stride. :.Smile.:

STREETS, OLD TOWN (EVENING)

People peeking out of windows and doors retract like so many tortoise necks when they see the STORM OF WRITHING SHADOWS on Valerie’s heels: curiosity giving way to abject fear.

Valerie counts the doors until she gets to the laundromat and shoulders inside.

LAUNDROMAT, OLD TOWN (CONTINUOUS)

This laundromat is still in operation: unmanned and lit in a ghastly chartreuse.

Ambient noise ambushes Valerie between music tracks: stacked machines rumbling, spinning, filling, draining.

Valerie walks toward the back door, drenched in sweat.

A brief reprieve. A chance to catch her breath.

A WET BLACK HAND slaps the inside of a glass washing machine door and leaves a streak, expelling what breath Valerie has managed to catch.

Valerie (shaking her head) pushes through the service door into:

BACK ROOM, LAUNDROMAT (CONTINUOUS)

Amidst a cave of bulk detergents and estranged laundry sits a BALDING, BEARDED, EYEGLASSED MAN illumined by the harsh light of a CRT monitor. This is Sena.

Valerie freezes, reads the man's lips:

SENA: Stop the music. Close the door.

Valerie touches an earbud, reaches behind her and tugs closed the door.

A muted howling comes from the streets. It could be wind. It’s not.

SENA: Never mind that. You must be tired. (gesturing to a chair) Sit.

Valerie approaches but does not sit.

VALERIE: Who are you?

SENA: Do names matter at this point?

VALERIE: What are you?

SENA: An appeal to reason. That you might know a future.

Sena stands. He’s shorter than Valerie but wide, muscular.

Valerie eyes the hall beyond him leading to the sewers.

SENA: Don’t go down that path.

VALERIE: Why not?

SENA: Do you know where you came from, Valerie?

VALERIE: I have parents. Somewhere.

SENA: (shaking his head) You. You came from you.

VALERIE: (cocks her head)

SENA: You really fried the future. Opened the door to the shadows.

VALERIE: Me?

SENA: Doctor Valerie.

VALERIE: (making to move past) I don’t have time for this.

Sena stands in her way. He’s holding a TRANSCEIVER.

SENA: Give me the phone. (extending a hand) Give me the phone and I promise you all this will end.

VALERIE: I’ll end it on my own terms.

SENA: You’re tired, Valerie. Don’t kid yourself. You need sleep. You deserve it.

Valerie walks the perimeter of the desk, probing the man’s defenses. He moves to intercept.

SENA: Your partner has ulterior motives. Are you sure you trust him?

They continue to revolve around each other like pole and antipode.

VALERIE: (internal) Would Bruce trade humanity for his wife and child? Would he gamble on a thin potential?

The CRT monitor sits between them on the desk. The white glow of the backlight turns pink and beings to curdle.

VALERIE: I trust, yeah. I trust me.

Valerie lifts the CRT and throws it, cords and all. Sena unexpectedly catches it as the pink mist overtakes him.

SENA: (roaring into his transceiver) CAVALRY DESCEN--

The pink mist swallows Sena up and disappears along with the CRT. THE TRANSCEIVER, fallen to the floor, beeps incessantly.

The building QUAKES. Ceiling tiles crack, fall, and crumble. The roof SPLITS OPEN to reveal a swarm of black-armored soldiers descending on ropes.

Valerie navigates the mounds of laundry in the back room and charges up the:

BACK HALL, LAUNDROMAT (CONTINUOUS)

More deja vu paves Valerie’s ninety-degree turns through the back hall. There are lights this time, long and flickering fluorescent tubes mounted overhead parallel to the hall.

She corners too fast, banging into lockers, and screeches open the door at the end.

UPPER SEWERS (CONTINUOUS)

Valerie checks that her pockets are zipped up before leaping onto the scaffolding and descending like a gymnast.

She lands in a squat and pauses only to engage her music before sprinting alongside the gushing canals. The music changes everything: warps her reality, hones her focus, fills her with fervor for the run.

She can’t hear the collapse of the scaffolding in her wake. The music in her ears is DEAFENING.

She jumps as a bullet ricochets off the floor, drawing her trajectory deeper into:

DEEP SEWERS (CONTINUOUS)

The black waters start to BUBBLE AND RAGE over the sides of the canal, waves like zombified hands swiping at Valerie’s ankles.

She leaps and kicks, driving onward, pulling in breath as the alien shadows are born around her.

Valerie stumbles toward the stairs, clutching at her throat. The smell has gotten to her: asphyxiating.

Chancing a glance as she spirals up the rusted grate stairs, she sees the swarm of shadows, their howling wide maws gaping silently into hell against the music playing through her head.

She ascends and breaks out into evening.