(6)
Over what seemed like hours, but were mere minutes in real-time, the couple dodged bullets, chainsaw wielding fiends, and even a rather vicious looking Grandmother who insisted her "poison soup" was good for what ailed them.
John and Helena paused briefly between it all, after out-running a fully armored medieval knight with a swinging mace, and hiding in an alcove. They leaned close to one another, absorbing a little of one another's strength and warmth, and feeling a brief but significant attraction.
Then, gathering themselves, they moved out again. Their circumspect walk brought them to the Recreation Center and both thought they should leave quickly. God only knew what trouble they could get into where there was a dart board, pool cues, and ping pong paddles. Yet, both were unpredictably please when they discovered it quiet.
"Want to play a game of chess?" Helena asked, looking at the unattended board on a table, attempting humor despite their situation. "Bet my queen can beat your knight."
"I think you have been hanging around Alan Carter too long." Koenig suggested, somewhat distracted, looking about the large room. "Sounds like something he'd say."
Helena chuckled gently and slowly strolled to the shower area, hoping she did not see something revolting.
On the other side of the locker rooms was an enormous swimming-pool chamber, completed a week before Alpha closed down do to astronaut illnesses and just after Victor Bergman arrived on the moonbase. It was their engineers pride and joy at the time and it also featured a generous five person jacuzzi.
A little further from the pool was the solarium where Alphans, ten at a time, laid about under heat lamps, attempting to get a nice even tan.
She was about to return to the Commander, as he pressed buttons on the Rec Room's compost, checking to see if Godzilla was still racing about the moonbase, when she heard a sound, possible splashing. It came from the pool area and Helena felt herself drawn to it. Her brain told Helena she would just check very briefly to see what it was then she would report back to John, but another part knew she should be calling to him even as she walked through the locker room to the pool-room.
Helena could hear music … or no. Someone was singing.
She looked from the doorframe into the large area with the Olympic sized pool. She could not believe what she was seeing although, by now, it should have made perfect sense that it was merely another vision.
Helena watched as mermaids were swimming back and forth through the water, laughing, lounging, singing and appearing fully feminine, voluptuous and beautiful. There were also a few male mermaids too, muscular and handsome. Surely, this was not someone's nightmare, was it? It seemed more like an idealist fantasy.
"Oh look!" One of the mermaids with dark hair and a small heart-shaped mouth called. She was looking directly at Helena, "Come and join us!" she urged.
"Oh, do!" cried another, this one with auburn hair, swimming to the edge of the pool. She lifted herself out, only about twenty feet away from Helena, and her lovely lavender colored fishtail flapped gently, softly smacking against the pool apron's marble tile.
A male also came to the pool's edge, smiling at her with a perfect row of white teeth against smooth mocha skin. He was obviously there to charm and entice. "We want to know you better." he said. "Come swimming."
Sweet song penetrated her mind. 'A siren song.' Helena thought and tried to resist it allure. She tried to be a professional and told herself again and again that this was not real but Helena felt so tempted to take them up on their invitation - but did not know why. She felt her eyes closing. Dr. Russell should have been thinking logically but, instead, felt herself weakening under the mermaids insistent imploring!
Her feet began to slide forward …
"Helena." His hands were on her shoulders, keeping her still. John, from behind, whispered in her ear: "I see them too but it's not real."
"I know but …"
A sudden roar was heard, bellowing from the deep end of the swimming pool, violently knocking Helena out of her trance. This time it was not Godzilla but a sea monster!
John and Helena watched in horror as it raised out of the water, red eyes savage with fury and hunger. Mermaids screamed helplessly as it took them three at a time in its huge mouth, crunching and thrashing. They heard gurgles, death groans, as blood ran down the monster's long, green neck.
When the beast saw them, Koenig came back to himself and pulled a terrorized Helena backward, out of the poolroom, and both raced, returning to the Recreation Center. The creature did not follow them.
Helena, who had been brave since the start of this on-going nightmare, sobbed. Face buried in her two hands, the woman looked completely defeated. Koenig took her in his arms and listened to her distraught lament: "I don't think I'm going to get through this, John!"
"We're almost done." He tried to assure but felt weakened himself. What more could they do to prove their worth? "We have to be almost done! Victor is waiting for us both in Medical Center. If we don't return …"
"Medical Center." Helena repeated. Then stricken, she pushed gently away from John and looked up at his questioning expression. "We need to go there, John." She said, "That is where this started and it's where it will finish."
Koenig nodded, unsure. It made as much sense as anything else that was happening in this crazy world the two of them had been forced to fight their way through. "Are you ready?" he asked, seeing her regain composure by the second.
"Yes." Helena said and meant it.
His arm slipped around her shoulders as they cautiously walked from the room into their next nightmare.
"Neither one of them is marked." Dr. Mathias reported, once again looking down at his two patients.
"That is a good sign." Bergman presumed.
"Could be but look at their pulse and heartrates." He indicated the monitors above their heads, "Their bodies, even in this state of relaxation, are being taxed and if they do not soon come out of it one or the other might be the sad victim of heart failure."
Victor understood and looked as worried as Bob. Even human beings as heathy as John Koenig and Helena Russell could take only so much cerebral strain. Whatever was going on mentally and emotionally to them was working to breakdown their bodies. "How much longer?" he asked Mathias.
"Three minutes." He replied.
"Oh, dear God." It was not like John Koenig to utter the name of a deity. However, what greeted he and Helena upon their last thirty meters to Medical Center was, they hoped, the finale nightmare and - it being Helena's - it was an ultimate stumbling block.
The couple stood their ground for a moment, hearing what might have been chimes. They then looked upward and saw the surgical instrument, all sharpened and deadly, dangling above their heads.
"It makes no sense." Helena said, feeling defeated. "We can't walk underneath them or we'll be struck and possibly killed."
Experimenting, Koenig waved his hand underneath the hanging medical tools. None fell. He looked at Helena briefly then unclipped his comlock. He waved it as well and again, no instruments fell. He then tossed it and the comlock hit the ground with a loud 'clack'. Thirty surgical instruments came down and skewered the communications device. They also penetrated the tiled floor surrounding where it had fallen. Koenig looked up and saw that new instruments had replaced the others.
"Great." Helena gulped.
"We can do this." John said.
"How?"
The only time there is danger is when sound is heard. If we are very careful, do not make a reverberation as we walk, we might make it into Medical Center before the door tone brings anything down.
"John, in my dream it was also motion that brought them down." Helena reminded.
"And that is why we have to be very slow. We might get superficially cut but we cannot cry-out or move if that happens, for both our sakes." He then looked at her, "Do you think you can manage, Helena?" The thought of any sharp instrument slicing through her clear, lovely skin was unimaginable, but they had to be strong if they were going to make it out of this nightmare.
"I have very little choice in the matter." She sighed and looked up into his worried but calm blue eyes, "Yes. I can do it if you can." And she allowed a gentle but tired smile.
He smiled back at her. "Just do not physically react – no matter what happens."
With a deeply indrawn breath, John and Helena very slowly, silently and studiously began to walk down the hall that would lead them to Medical Center and hopefully freedom. They could hear the instruments dangle over their heads, touching each other, from above.
It did look like it was going to work until they began to hear some tiny squeaks. The noise came about slowly, at first, but then grew a bit more raucous. In the middle of the hallway, not wanting to believe what their minds were telling them, both the Commander and Dr. Russell very deftly looked over their shoulders and saw thousands of …. rats.
"One minute!" Dr. Mathias called. He was not alone. Besides Professor Bergman he now had three nurses and Dr. Wyatt in wait by the Commander's and Dr. Russell's beds. He, like Bergman, noticed the expression on John and Helena's faces had changed, becoming more fretful, but there was nothing they could do now.
They had passed the point of no return.
Apprehensive, Victor saw a splash of red spread across Helena's left shoulder.
(The final Chapter - 7 - will be out soon!)