And connected. The broken, oozing body of the chew wasp—its jaws still smeared with blood from Alan’s ear—bounced off the door and fell to the floor. Immediately, one of the tentacles coiled around its squirming form and yanked it outside.
Alan chopped at a particularly thick tentacle, severing it halfway through. As he drew back to finish the job, something slammed against his back, shooting a blaze of pain through his right shoulder. He grunted with the sudden agony. As wings buzzed furiously by his ear, he dropped the billy and reached over his shoulder. When his questing fingers found the horny beak piercing his flesh, he knew a spearhead was trying to make him its next meal. It must have come in at an angle and glanced off his shoulder blade. A direct hit would have put it right through to his chest cavity. Had to get it out before it dug itself deeper and finished the job.
He wrapped his fingers around the twisting, gnawing beak and yanked. He was rewarded with another eruption of vision-dimming pain, but the spearhead came free. It writhed and twisted and wriggled and flapped madly as he brought it around front. But as he raised his hatchet to chop it in half, the tentacle he’d wounded seconds ago coiled around his right wrist and wrenched it toward the door. He groaned as the sudden movement sent a bolt of pain lancing down his arm from the shoulder wound. His fingers went numb momentarily; he lost his grip on the hatchet handle. But he couldn’t worry about that. Had to get his right hand free. Now.
So Alan struck at the tentacle with the only weapon he had—the bug writhing in his left hand.
Using the spearhead’s pointed beak as a knife, he stabbed and slashed madly, repeatedly. Desperate breaths hissed between his teeth. This was out of hand now. He’d lost the high ground and was on the defensive. He spotted a slew of new tentacles sliding under the door—how many did this thing have?
Had to retreat. He was going to be in very big trouble if he didn’t pull free in the next few seconds and get out of reach.
He took a big swing with the spearhead, angling it so it cut into the open, oozing area he’d previously damaged with the hatchet. As the bug’s sharp beak pierced through the far side, Alan pushed it deeper, cramming it into the tissues. It must have struck a vital nerve trunk because the distal end of the tentacle went into spasm, coiling and uncoiling wildly.
Alan pulled free of its grasp and rolled away from the door. Leaving his wheelchair behind, he rose to his hands and knees and scrambled across the foyer toward the living room.
He almost made it.
He cursed his legs as they slumped beneath him, slowing him down. His right arm was letting him down too. Had to depend on his arms for a good part of his speed, but the right was wounded. His left hand was just inches from the living room carpet when he felt something coil about his ankle. Even then, a good strong kick might have freed him, but his legs didn’t have one in them. He realized then that he should have tried for the stairs. If he’d been able to reach the newel post of the banister he’d have had something to hold on to.
As the tentacle dragged him back, Alan clawed at the marble floor, looking for a crack, a seam, anything to hold on to, but found nothing. It had been too expertly installed. He kicked feebly with his free leg but then felt another tentacle wrap around that ankle and worm its way up to his thigh.
Now he was being dragged back at a faster rate.
He spotted his hatchet where he’d dropped it. He tried to reach it. He stretched his good arm and fingers to the limit, until he thought his shoulder would dislocate, but could not get near it. Like a departing sailor gazing at his home port from the stern of a ship, he watched the hatchet slip farther and farther out of reach.
Next came his wheelchair. He grabbed at that, caught hold of a footrest, but it simply rolled with him. He clutched it because it was all he had to hold on to.
And then other tentacles, Alan couldn’t count how many, looped and coiled around his legs, and no way he could kick free now, even if he’d had two good legs. He was helpless. Utterly helpless.
I’m going to die.
Although he never stopped struggling against the inexorable tug of the tentacles, the realization was a sudden cold weight in his heart. Fear and dread shot through him, but no panic. Mostly sadness. Tears sprang into his eyes, tears for all the things he’d never do, like walking again, or watching Jeffy grow up, or growing old with Sylvia. But most of all, for the way he’d be dying. He’d never feared the moment, but then he’d always imagined it arriving when he was gray and withered and bedfast, and that he’d welcome it with open arms.
The tentacles dragged his legs through the opening at the bottom of the door. The jagged wood raked the backs of his thighs and then dug into the flesh of his hips and buttocks as he became wedged into the opening.
He wasn’t going to fit through. At least not in one piece.
Oh God, oh God, oh God, I don’t want to die like this!
And suddenly amid the fear and the grief and the pain he realized that he had to die a certain way. He’d been given no choice in how death was coming to him, but he had a say in how he met it.
Silently.
He groaned as the traction on his legs increased and the ligaments and tendons and skin and muscles began to stretch past their tolerances.
Quiet!
He reached up and grabbed the thin cotton blanket from the wheelchair and stuffed it deep into his mouth, gagging as the fabric brushed the back of his throat.
Good. Gag. Then he couldn’t scream. And he mustn’t scream.
Oh God, the pain!
Had to be quiet because if he let out the pain and fear in a scream, Sylvia would wake and come for him … he knew her, knew if she thought he was in danger, she wouldn’t hesitate, she’d charge, she’d wade through a storm of bugs and tentacles to get to him …
Alan screeched silently into his blanket-stuffed mouth as the ball at the head of his right femur twisted free and dislocated from the hip socket with a grinding explosion of agony, and screamed again as the left one followed.
Quiet, quiet, QUIET!
… because it was too late for him and if she came upstairs they’d have her too, and after they got Sylvia, they’d get Jeffy and then Glaeken wouldn’t be able to assemble whatever it was he had to assemble and the Otherness would win it all and the bugs would feast on everybody … he just prayed he’d bought Sylvia and Jeffy enough time … prayed his body would stay wedged in the opening and block the bugs out for a while because soon Toad Hall would be swarming with them and if they had enough time they’d gnaw through the cellar door and all this agony would be for nothing … so he had to hold on and keep quiet for just a few more seconds because in just a few more seconds it would be over and …
Alan’s blanket drank the howl that burst from his throat as his right leg ripped free of his body and slid away into the night and yet he smiled within as he felt his consciousness draining away in the warm red stream pumping from his ruptured femoral artery, smiled because nothing was quieter than a dead man.
“Alan?”
Sylvia awoke with a start and stared wildly around, momentarily disoriented in the darkness. Then she saw the candle flickering on the Ping-Pong table and remembered she was in the basement. She reached out a hand and found Jeffy’s slumbering form curled next to her on the old Castro Convertible.
She squinted at the luminous dial on her watch: 7:30. Had she been asleep that long? She must have been more tired than she’d thought. At least the night had gone quickly. Daylight was due at 9:10. Another long, long night was drawing to a close. She stretched. Soon Alan would be knocking on the upstairs door, telling them all to rise and—
Then she heard it.
On the upstairs door—scratching. She leapt out of bed and hurried to the foot of the steps to listen again.
No—not scratching. Gnawing.
Trembling, chewing her upper lip, Sylvia crept up the stairs, telling herself with each tread that she was wrong, that it couldn’t be, that her ears had to be playing dirty tr
icks on her. Halfway up she caught the smell and abruptly ran out of denials. She rushed the rest of the way to the door where she pressed her palms against the solid oak panels and felt the vibrations of countless teeth scoring the outer surface.
Alan! Dear God, where’s Alan?
She turned the knob and gripped it with both hands. Bugs in Toad Hall. She had to see. She could hear them and smell them but she had to see them to believe so many had invaded her house. She edged the door open a crack and saw a sliver of hallway. The creatures immediately attacked the opening and she slammed the door shut. But she’d seen enough.
Bugs. The hall … choked with them—floating, drifting, darting, bumping, hanging on the walls.
Sylvia began to tremble. If the halls had been taken over, where was Alan? To invade Toad Hall they had to get past Alan.
“Alan?” she cried, her face against the vibrating door.
Maybe he’d reached the movie room and locked himself in. Maybe he was safe.
But those were only words. She could find no place in her heart and mind that truly believed them. A sob built in her throat and ripped free as a scream.
“ALAN!”
Homecomings
Monroe, Long Island
Ba heard Jack shout, “Watch out!” as Kolabati cried out.
He swerved to avoid the panel truck that had cut through the intersection ahead of them, missing it by inches.
“Christ, that was close. Ease up, Big Guy. If we T-bone someone we may not get there at all.”
Ba could not ease up. He had commandeered the steering wheel at the Ashe brothers’ airfield. He was unused to handling Jack’s big car. He barely slowed for stop signs and none of the traffic lights were working. No matter. He had to get home. Now. The Missus needed him.
As the familiar streets and storefronts of downtown Monroe flashed by, his anxiety increased with every passing block. Empty streets, smashed storefronts, and only a few frightened people and fewer cars hurrying through the waning afternoon light. The town had deteriorated badly in the two days since he’d left.
Ba felt Bill Ryan’s hand on his shoulder.
“Jack’s right. Between us we’ve traveled more than halfway around the globe and back. Be a shame to crack up and die so close to home.”
A new voice: “Yes. No need to hurry.”
Who? The strange one, Nick, had spoken.
“What do you mean, Nick?” Bill said.
But Nick said no more.
No need to hurry …
Did that mean nothing to worry about? Or … too late to matter?
Ba had spent the entire trip from Maui in this state of anguished fear. He could not escape the feeling that something terrible was happening at Toad Hall without him. He had called the Missus time after time from the phone on the jet. Just a word or two from her was all he would have needed to ease his mind. But he could not make the connection.
Fortunately the trip had gone well. They had caught the jet stream and had made excellent time. Even more fortunate, Bill Ryan and Nick had already arrived and were waiting for them when they touched down.
Ba had tried to call again from the hangar phone but still no response. And so now he approached the scene of a tragedy. He knew it. He should not have left Toad Hall. If anything had happened to the Missus and her family …
Here was Shore Drive. Now the front wall of Toad Hall’s grounds, the gateposts, the curving driveway, the willows, Toad Hall itself, the front door—
“Oh, shit,” Jack said softly. “Oh, no.”
“Missus!”
The word escaped Ba when he saw how the bottom half of the front door had been smashed through and torn away. He was out the door and running toward the house, taking the front steps in a bound. The door hung open, angled on its hinges. He burst through and skidded to a halt in the foyer.
Carnage. Furniture strewn about, wallpaper hanging in tatters like peeling skin, the Doctor’s wheelchair sitting empty in the middle of the floor, and blood. Dried blood puddled on the threshold and splattered the outer surface of the door.
Fear such as he’d never known gripped Ba’s throat and squeezed. He’d battled the Cong and fought off pirates on the South China Sea, but they’d never made him feel weak and helpless like the sight of blood in Toad Hall.
He ran through the house then, calling for the Missus, the Doctor, Jeffy. Through the deserted upstairs, back down to the movie room, to another staggering halt before the cellar door. The door stood ajar, its finish gnawed off, its beveled panels splintered, nearly obliterated. Ba pulled it open the rest of the way and stood at the top of the stairs.
“Missus? Doctor? Jeffy?”
No answer from below. He spotted the flashlight lying on the second step. He picked it up and descended slowly, dreading what he’d find.
Or wouldn’t find.
The basement was empty. A red candle had burned down to a puddle on the Ping-Pong table. Ba’s finger trembled as he reached out and touched the pooled wax. Cold.
Feeling dead inside, he dragged himself up the stairs and wandered out to the front drive. Jack and Bill stood by the car. Kolabati and Nick waited within.
Bill said, “Are they…?”
“Gone,” Ba said. His voice was so low, he could barely hear himself.
“Hey, Ba,” Jack said. “Maybe they left for—”
“There is blood. So much blood.”
“Aw, jeez,” Jack said softly.
Bill lowered his head and pressed a hand over his eyes.
“What do you want us to do, Ba?” Jack said. “You name it, we’ll do it.”
A good friend, this Jack. They had met only a few days ago and already he was acting like a brother. But nothing could ease the pain in Ba’s heart, the growing grief, the bitter self-loathing for leaving the people he loved—his family—unguarded. Why had he—?
He whirled at the sound of a car engine starting in the garage at the rear of the house. He knew that engine. It belonged to the 1938 Graham—the Missus’s favorite car.
Fighting a surging joy, afraid to acknowledge it for fear that it might be for nothing, Ba stumbled into a run toward the rear. He had gone only a few steps when the Graham’s shark-nosed grille appeared around the corner of the house. The Missus was behind the wheel, Jeffy beside her. Her mouth formed an O when she saw him. The old car stalled as she braked and then she was out the door and running across the grass, arms outflung, face twisted in uncontrollable grief.
“Oh, Ba! Ba! We waited all day for you! I thought we’d lost you too!”
And then the Missus did something she had never done before. She threw her arms around Ba, clung to him, and began to sob against his chest.
Ba did not know what to do. He held his arms akimbo, not sure of where to put them. As overjoyed as he was to see her alive, it certainly was not his place to embrace the Missus. But her grief was so deep, so unrestrained … he had never seen her like this, never guessed she was capable of this magnitude of sorrow.
And then Jeffy ran up, and he too was crying. He threw his arms around Ba’s left leg and hung there.
Gently, gingerly, hesitantly, Ba lowered one hand to the Missus’s shoulder and the other to Jeffy’s head. His elation at seeing them was tempered by the slowly dawning realization that the picture was incomplete.
Someone was missing.
“The Doctor, Missus?”
“Oh, Ba,” she sobbed. “He’s gone. Those … things … killed him and dragged him off! He’s gone, Ba! Alan’s gone and we’ll never see him again!”
For a moment Ba thought he glimpsed the Doctor’s face peering at him from the shadows in the backseat of the Graham, thought he felt the warmth of his easy smile, the aura of his deep honor and quiet courage.
And then he faded from view and something happened to Ba, something that hadn’t happened since his boyhood days in the fishing village where he was born.
Ba Thuy Nguyen wept.
As the Change progresses above, so progr
esses the Change below.
Rasalom revels in his new form as it grows ever larger. Suspended in its cavern, he is the size of an elephant now. To make room for him, more earth drops away into the soft yellow glow of the bottomless pit below.
With his senses penetrating deep into the earth, Rasalom sees the Change progressing unimpeded, far ahead of schedule. Chaos reigns above. The sweet honey nectar of fear and misery, the ambrosia of rage and ruin continues to seep through the strata of the earth to nourish him, help him grow, make him ever stronger.
And in the center of the dying city, Glaeken’s building stands unmolested, an island of tranquillity in a sea of torment. Members of his pathetic little company now rush back from trips here and there around the globe with their recovered bits and pieces of the first and second swords. All of them still clinging so doggedly to their hope.
Good. He wants to let that hope grow until it is the last great hope left for all humanity. Let them think they’ve been doing something important, something epochal. The higher their hope lifts them, the longer the fall when they learn they’ve struggled and died for nothing.
But Rasalom senses them taking comfort in their relative safety, drawing strength from their comradeship. Their peace, uneasy though it may be, is a burr in his hide. He cannot allow this to continue unchallenged. He does not wish to destroy them—yet. But he does wish to breach their insulation, unsettle them, vex them, start them looking over their shoulders.
One of them must die.
Not out in the streets, but in the heart of their safe haven. It must be an ugly death—nothing quick and clean, but slow and painful and messy. And to make the death as unsettling as possible, it must befall a dear member of their number, one who seems the most innocent, the most innocuous, one they never would expect him to single out for such degradation.
The new lips gestating within the sac twist into a semblance of a smile.
Time for a little fun.
The Complete Adversary Cycle: The Keep, the Tomb, the Touch, Reborn, Reprisal, Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) Page 224
