Relic

by Douglas Preston

  The lights dimmed a second time.

  “Walden, is the emergency door coming down over the exit to the Rotunda?”

  “Just a second.” For a moment, the radio buzzed. “Shit, yes! It’s halfway down and still dropping! People [331] are jammed into that door like cattle, it’s gonna crush a dozen or two—”

  Suddenly, the exhibition went black. A dull crash of something heavy toppling to the ground momentarily overpowered the cries and screams.

  D’Agosta pulled out his flashlight. “Ippolito, you can raise the door with the manual override, right?”

  “Right. Anyway, the backup power should come on in a second-

  “We can’t wait around for that, let’s get the hell over there. And, for Chrissake, be careful.”

  Gingerly, they picked their way back toward the exhibition entrance, Ippolito leading the way through the welter of glass, broken wood, and debris. Broken pieces of once-priceless artifacts lay strewn about. The shouting and screaming grew louder as they neared the Hall of the Heavens.

  Standing behind Ippolito, D’Agosta could see nothing in the vast blackness of the Hall. Even the votive candles had guttered. Ippolito was playing his flashlight around the entrance. Why isn’t he moving? D’Agosta wondered irritably. Suddenly, Ippolito jerked backward, retching. His flashlight dropped to the ground and rolled away in the darkness.

  “What the hell?” D’Agosta shouted, running forward with Bailey. Then he stopped short.

  The huge Hall was a shambles. Shining his flashlight into the gloom, D’Agosta was reminded of earthquake footage he’d seen on the evening news. The platform was broken into several pieces, the lectern splintered and shattered. The bandstand was deserted, chairs toppled over, crushed instruments lying in heaps. The floor was a maelstrom of food, clothing, printed programs, toppled bamboo trees, and trampled orchids, twisted and smashed into a strange landscape by the thousands of panicked feet.

  D’Agosta brought the flashlight in toward the exhibition entrance itself. The huge wooden stelae [332] surrounding the entrance had collapsed in giant pieces. D’Agosta could see limp arms and legs protruding from beneath the intricately carved columns.

  Bailey rushed over. “There’re at least eight people crushed here, Lieutenant. I don’t think any of them are still alive.”

  “Any of them ours?” D’Agosta asked.

  “I’m afraid so. Looks like McNitt and Walden, and one of the plainclothesmen. There are a couple of guard’s uniforms here, too, and three civilians, I think.”

  “All dead? Every one of them?”

  “Far as I can tell. I can’t budge these columns.”

  “Shit.” D’Agosta looked away, rubbing his forehead. A loud thud resonated from across the Hall.

  “That’s the security door closing,” said Ippolito, wiping his mouth. He knelt at Bailey’s side. “Oh, no. Martine ... Christ, I can’t believe it.” He turned to D’Agosta. “Martine here was guarding the back stairwell. He must have come over to help control the crowd. He was one of my best men ...”

  D’Agosta threaded his way between the broken columns and moved out into the Hall, dodging the upturned tables and broken chairs. His hand was still bleeding freely. There were several other still forms scattered about, whether dead or alive D’Agosta couldn’t tell. When he heard screaming from the far end of the Hall, he shined his light toward the noise. The metal emergency door was fully shut, and a crowd of people were pressed against it, pounding on the metal and shouting. Some of them turned around as D’Agosta’s light illuminated them.

  D’Agosta ran over to the group, ignoring his squawking radio. “Everybody calm down, and move away! This is Lieutenant D’Agosta of the New York City police.”

  The crowd quieted a little, and D’Agosta called Ippolito over. Scanning the group, D’Agosta recognized Wright, the Director; Ian Cuthbert, head of this whole [333] farce; some woman named Rickman who seemed pretty important—basically, the first forty or so people who’d entered the exhibition. First in, last out.

  “Listen up!” he shouted. “The Security Director’s going to raise the emergency door. Everybody, please step back.”

  The crowd moved aside, and D’Agosta involuntarily groaned. There were several limbs pinned under the heavy metal door. The floor was slick with blood. One of the limbs was moving feebly, and he could hear faint screaming from the far side of the door.

  “Dear Jesus,” he whispered. “Ippolito, open the son of a bitch.”

  “Shine your light over here.” Ippolito pointed to a small keypad next to the door, then crouched and punched in a series of numbers.

  They waited.

  Ippolito looked nonplussed. “I can’t understand—” He punched in the numbers again, more slowly this time.

  “There’s no power,” said D’Agosta.

  “Shouldn’t matter,” said Ippolito, frantically punching a third time. “The system’s got redundant backups.”

  The crowd started to murmur.

  “We’re trapped!” one man yelled.

  D’Agosta whirled his light onto the crowd. “All of you, just calm down. That body in the exhibition has been dead at least two days. You understand? Two days. The murderer’s long gone.”

  “How do you know?” shouted the same man.

  “Shut up and listen,” said D’Agosta. “We’re going to get you out of here. If we can’t open the door, they’ll do it from the outside. It may take a few minutes. In the meantime, I want you all to get away from the door, stick together, find yourself some chairs that aren’t broken, and sit down. Okay? There’s nothing you can do here.”

  Wright stepped forward into the light. “Listen, [334] officer,” he said, “We’ve got to get out of here. Ippolito, for the love of God, open the door!”

  “Just a moment!” said D’Agosta sharply. “Dr. Wright, please return to the group.” He looked around at the wide-eyed faces. “Are there any physicians here?”

  There was a silence.

  “Nurses? First aid?”

  “I know some first aid,” someone volunteered.

  “Great. Mister, ah—”

  “Arthur Pound.”

  “Pound. Get one or two volunteers to help you. There are several people who look like they got trampled. I need to know number and their condition. I’ve got a guy back at the exhibition entrance, Bailey, who can help you. He’s got a flashlight. We also need a volunteer to help collect some candles.”

  A young, lanky fellow in a wrinkled tuxedo came out of the gloom. He finished chewing, swallowed. “I’ll help with that,” he said.

  “Name?”

  “Smithback.”

  “Okay, Smithback. You got matches?”

  “Sure do.”

  The Mayor stepped forward. His face was smeared with blood and a large purple welt was emerging beneath one eye. “Let me help,” he said.

  D’Agosta looked at him with amazement. “Mayor Harper! Maybe you can take charge of everyone. Keep them calm.”

  “Certainly, Lieutenant.”

  D’Agosta’s radio squawked again, and he grabbed it. “D’Agosta, this is Coffey. D’Agosta, do you read? What the hell’s going on in there? Give me a sit-ref!”

  D’Agosta talked fast. “Listen up, I’m not going to say this twice. We’ve got at least eight dead, probably more, and an undetermined number of wounded. I guess you know about the people caught under the door. [335] Ippolito can’t get the fucking door open. There’s about thirty, maybe forty of us here. Including Wright and the Mayor.”

  “The Mayor! Shit. Look, D’Agosta, the system’s failed totally. The manual override doesn’t work on this side, either. I’ll get a crew with acetylene to cut you guys out. It may take awhile, this door’s built like a bank vault. Is the Mayor okay?”

  “He’s fine. Where’s Pendergast?”

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  “Who else is trapped inside the perimeter?”

  “Don’t know yet,” said Coffey. “We’re taking
reports now. There should be some men in the Computer Room and Security Command, Garcia and a few others. Might be a few on the other floors. We got several plainclothes officers and guards out here. They were pushed out with the crowd, some of them got messed up pretty bad. What the hell happened in the exhibition, D’Agosta?”

  “They found the body of one of my men stuffed on top of an exhibit. Gutted, just like the rest.” He paused, then spoke bitterly. “If you’d let me do the sweep I requested, none of this would have happened.”

  The radio squawked again and went silent.

  “Pound!” D’Agosta called. “What’s the extent of the injuries?”

  “We’ve got one man alive, but just barely,” Pound said, looking up from an inert form. “The rest are dead. Trampled. Maybe one or two heart attacks, it’s hard to say.

  “Do what you can for the live one,” D’Agosta said.

  His radio buzzed. “Lieutenant D’Agosta?” said a scratchy voice. “This is Garcia, in Security Command, sir. We got ...” The voice trailed out in a burst of static.

  “Garcia? Garcia! What is it?” D’Agosta shouted into the radio.

  “Sorry, sir, the batteries on this mobile transmitter [336] I’m using are weak. We got Pendergast on the honk. I’m patching him over to you.”

  “Vincent,” came the familiar drawl.

  “Pendergast! Where are you?”

  “I’m in the basement, Section Twenty-nine. I understand the power is out throughout the Museum, and that we’re trapped inside Cell Two. I’m afraid I’ve got a little more bad news of my own to add. Could you please move to a spot where we can speak privately?”

  D’Agosta walked away from the crowd. “What is it?” he asked in a low tone.

  “Vincent, listen to me carefully. There is something down here. I don’t know what it is, but it’s big, and I don’t think it’s human.”

  “Pendergast, don’t play with me. Not now.”

  “Vincent, I’m entirely serious. That isn’t the bad news. The bad news is, it may be headed your way.”

  “What do you mean? What kind of animal is it?”

  “You’ll know when it’s near. The smell is unmistakable. What kind of weapons do you have?”

  “Let’s see. Three twelve gauges, a couple of service revolvers, two shot pistols loaded with capstun. A few odds and ends, maybe.”

  “Forget the capstun. Now, listen, we have to talk fast. Get everyone out of there. This thing went by me just before the lights went out. I saw it through a window in one of the storage rooms down here, and it looked very big. It walks on all fours. I got off two shots at it, then it went into a stairwell at the end of this hall. I’ve got a set of old blueprints here with me, and I’ve checked them. You know where that stairwell comes out?”

  “No,” said D’Agosta.

  “It only has access to alternate floors. It leads down into the subbasement, too, but we can’t assume the thing would go that way. There’s an egress on the fourth floor. And there’s another one behind the Hall of the Heavens. It’s back in the service area behind the platform.”

  [337] “Pendergast, I’m having a hard time with this. What the hell exactly do you want us to do?”

  “I’d get your men—whoever has the shotguns—and line up at that door. If the creature comes through, let the thing have it. It may have already come through, I don’t know. Vincent, it took a .45 metal-jacketed slug in the skull at close range, and the bullet grazed right off.”

  If anyone else had been speaking, D’Agosta would have suspected a joke. Or madness. “Right,” he said. “How long ago was this?”

  “I saw it a few minutes ago, just before the power went out. I shot at it once, then followed it down the hall after the lights went. I got off another shot, but my light wasn’t steady and I missed it.. I went down to reconnoiter just now. The hall dead-ends, and the thing has vanished. The only way out is the stairwell leading up to you. It may be hiding in the stairwell, or maybe, if you’re lucky, it’s gone to a different floor. All I know is that it hasn’t come back this way.”

  D’Agosta swallowed.

  “If you can get into the basement safely, do it. Meet up with me here. These blueprints seem to show the way out. We’ll talk again once you’re in a more secure place. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said D’Agosta.

  “Vincent? There’s something else.”

  “What now?”

  “This creature can open and close doors.”

  D’Agosta holstered his radio, licked his lips, and looked back toward the group of people. Most were sitting on the floor, stunned, but a few were trying to help light the armload of candles the lanky guy had scrounged.

  D’Agosta spoke to the group as softly as he could. “All of you, move over here and get down against the wall. Put those candles out.”

  [338] “What is it?” somebody cried. D’Agosta recognized the voice as Wright’s.

  “Quiet. Do as I say. You, what’s your name, Smithback, drop that and get over here.”

  D’Agosta’s radio buzzed into speech as he did a quick visual sweep of the Hall with his flashlight. The remote corners of the hall were so black they seemed to eat the beam of his light. In the center of the hall a few candles were lit next to a still form. Pound and somebody else were bending over it.

  “Pound!” he called out. “Both of you. Put out those candles and get back over here!”

  “But he’s still alive—”

  “Get back now!” He turned to the crowd that was huddling behind him. “None of you move or make a sound. Bailey and Ippolito, bring those shotguns and follow me.”

  “Did you hear that? Why do they need their guns!” cried Wright.

  Recognizing Coffey’s voice on the radio, D’Agosta switched if off with a brusque movement. Moving carefully, flashlights probing the darkness ahead of them, the group crept toward the center of the Hall. D’Agosta played his beam along the wall, found the service area, the dark outlines of the stairwell door. It was closed. He thought he smelled something strange in the air: a peculiar, rotten odor he couldn’t place. But the room stunk to begin with. Half the damn guests must have lost control of their plumbing when the lights failed.

  He led the way into the service area, then stopped. “According to Pendergast, there’s a creature, an animal, maybe in this stairwell,” he whispered.

  “According to Pendergast,” said Ippolito sarcastically under his breath.

  “Stow that shit, Ippolito. Now listen up. We can’t stay here waiting in the dark. We’re gonna go in nice and easy. Okay? Do it by the numbers. Safeties off, shells in the chambers. Bailey, you’re gonna open the door, [339] then cover us with the light, fast. Ippolito, you’ll cover the upward staircase and I’ll cover the down. If you see a person, demand identification and shoot if you don’t get it. If you see anything else, shoot immediately. We move on my signal.”

  D’Agosta switched off his flashlight, slipped it in a pocket, and tightened his grip on the shotgun. Then he nodded for Bailey to direct his own light onto the stairwell door. D’Agosta closed his eyes and murmured a brief prayer in the close darkness. Then he gave the signal.

  Ippolito moved to the side of the door while Bailey yanked it open. D’Agosta and Ippolito rushed in, Bailey behind them, sweeping the light in a quick semicircle.

  A horrible stench awaited them inside the stairwell. D’Agosta took a few steps down into the darkness, sensed a sudden movement above him, and heard an unearthly, throaty growl that turned his knees to putty, followed by a dull, slapping sound, like the smacking of a damp towel against the floor. Then wet things were hitting the wall around him and gobs of moisture splattered his face. He spun around and fired at something large and dark. The light was gyrating wildly. “Shit!” he heard Bailey wail.

  “Bailey! Don’t let it go into the Hall!” He fired into the darkness, again and again, up the stairwell and down, until he was pumping an empty chamber. The acrid smell of gunpowder blended with
the nauseating reek as screams resounded in the Hall of the Heavens.

  D’Agosta stumbled up the stairs to the landing, almost tripped over something, and moved into the Hall. “Bailey, where is it?” he yelled as he jammed shells into his shotgun, temporarily blinded by the muzzle flare.

  “I don’t know!” Bailey shouted. “I can’t see!” “Did it go down or through?” Two shells in the shotgun. Three ...

  “I don’t know! I don’t know!”

  D’Agosta pulled out his flashlight and shone it on [340] Bailey. The officer was soaked in thick clots of blood. Pieces of flesh were in his hair, hanging from his eyebrows. He was wiping his eyes. A hideous smell hung in the air.

  “I’m fine,” Bailey reassured D’Agosta. “I think. I just got all this shit on my face, I can’t see.”

  D’Agosta swept the light around the room in a fast arc, the shotgun braced against his thigh. The group, huddled together against the wall, blinked in terror. He turned the light back toward the stairwell, and saw Ippolito, or what was left of him, lying partway on the landing, dark blood rapidly spreading from his torn gut.

  The thing had been waiting for them just a few steps up from the landing. But where the fuck was it now? He shined the light in desperate circles around the Hall. It was gone—the huge space was still.

  No. Something was moving in the center of the Hall. The light was dim at that distance, but D’Agosta could see a large, dark shape crouched over the injured man on the dance floor, lunging downward with odd, jerking motions. D’Agosta heard the man wail once—then there was a faint crunching noise and silence. D’Agosta propped the flashlight in his armpit, raised his gun, aimed, and squeezed the trigger.

  There was a flash and a roar. Screams erupted from the huddled group. Two more shots and the chamber was again empty.

  He reached for more shells, came up empty, dropped the shotgun and drew his service revolver. “Bailey!” he yelled. “Get over there fast, get everyone together and prepare to move.” He swept the light across the floor of the Hall, but the shape was gone. He moved carefully toward the body. At ten feet, he saw the one thing he’d wanted not to see: the split skull and the brains spread across the floor. A bloody track led into the exhibition. Whatever it was had rushed inside to escape the shotgun blast. It wouldn’t stay there long.