Creepers

by David Morrell

  The noise, Balenger warned himself. Ronnie can’t possibly fail to hear it.

  Abandoning the rope, Balenger drew his pistol. But as he aimed along the green-tinted balcony, he became aware of a roar inside the hotel. It came from the storm’s vibrations. The sound of the room collapsing was merely part of the larger rumble. It was nothing that Ronnie would have thought suspicious.

  Balenger surveyed the hotel’s hollow core. Rain from the broken skylight formed a veil. Nonetheless, he was able to see toward the opposite balcony. Flames emerged from the fifth-floor wall over there while smoke wafted from the sixth.

  Amanda. Vinnie.

  He shifted down the corridor that led to the emergency stairs. The noise of the storm muted any sounds he made climbing the stairs. At the fifth level, he crept to the balcony, hoping to glimpse Ronnie above.

  No sign of him.

  Something dangled onto Balenger’s head. Roots. The tree that grew through the ceiling. Hours earlier, it had seemed strange. Now, compared to everything that had happened, it felt normal.

  He returned to the emergency stairs and went higher. The door was open. He left the stairs and inched along a short corridor. Across from him, the smoldering balcony seemed deserted. The flames would soon reach the penthouse. Despite his increasing urgency, he forced himself to go slowly, to make sure he didn’t get careless. At the end of the corridor, he peered onto the balcony. Still no sign of Ronnie. Except for Danata’s suite, every door was open. Ronnie could be in any of the rooms, listening for sounds above him.

  To the left was the tree. In front of it, smoke drifted from a doorway. Ronnie wasn’t listening for sounds above him, Balenger realized. He was starting another fire.

  Movement separated the smoke. As a figure backed from the room, Balenger tightened his finger on the trigger. A tall man in a suit wore night-vision goggles and held a pump shotgun. Ronnie! Balenger raged at the memory of his futile conversations with the man two years earlier. “And that was the last time you saw her?” “Yes. When she left my office at noon.” But somehow the monster looked different, not as thin as Balenger remembered him or when he’d appeared on the surveillance monitor a while ago.

  As Ronnie turned in his direction, Balenger shot twice, hitting him in the chest. The reports coincided with thunder, Ronnie jolting back. Before Balenger could shoot a third time, Ronnie’s backward momentum lurched him into the tree. Wood cracked. That part of the balcony, weakened by roots, collapsed. Arms flailing, branches snapping, Ronnie and the tree plummeted through the hole.

  Balenger hurried to it. Now he realized why Ronnie wasn’t as thin as he ought to be. He wore a bullet-resistant vest.

  Balenger aimed down through the hole, determined to get a head shot, but the only target was an arm as Ronnie frantically rolled away. Balenger had only three rounds left. He couldn’t risk wasting a bullet. He knew that by the time he charged down the emergency stairs to the fifth level, Ronnie would be impossible to find—too many rooms, too many other emergency stairs, too many secret doors.

  Balenger acted before he realized what he was doing, jumping through the hole, dropping to the balcony below. Since it hadn’t collapsed from Ronnie’s impact, he believed it would hold him. He landed, bending his knees to absorb the shock, tucking and rolling the way he’d been taught in jump school. Avoiding the tree, he rose to a crouch and searched for a target. But his unsteady footing alarmed him. The balcony wavered.

  Five doors away, he saw Ronnie aim his shotgun. As the balcony swayed, throwing Balenger to his knees, it jerked Ronnie off-balance also. The shotgun roared, pellets whistling over Balenger’s head.

  Before Ronnie could pump another shell into the chamber, Balenger charged. They collided, crashing to the floor, and at once, Balenger felt his stomach rise, the impact of their combined weights making the balcony drop.

  A section tilted, crashing down onto the next level. It formed a slide onto which Balenger and Ronnie tumbled over each other, hitting the bottom. The impact made that balcony waver.

  Ronnie’s hands found Balenger’s throat. He remembered Amanda’s insistence on how strong Ronnie was. Ronnie’s hands were certainly strong, expertly squeezing Balenger’s windpipe, but after all, the monster had years of practice.

  The balcony vibrated. Or perhaps Balenger’s mind was swaying. As his green-tinted vision turned gray from the effect of strangulation, he tried to shoot, but the only angle available to him was toward Ronnie’s chest, toward his bullet-resistant vest.

  Balenger pulled the trigger. Although the vest blocked the bullet, it couldn’t muffle the shock of the impact. As if struck by a sledge hammer, Ronnie fell back. Balenger dove for the solid floor of a hallway. An instant later, the remainder of the upper balcony collapsed onto this one. Ronnie screamed amid rubble as the balcony fell away, struck the next one, and caused a chain reaction, the rest of the balconies crashing to the lobby, splashing into the water.

  From the solid footing of the hallway, Balenger gaped down at the wreckage. Dust rose, only to be flattened by the rain pouring from the open skylight.

  Amanda. Vinnie. He holstered his gun and raced for the emergency stairs. One level. Another. Coughing from the smoke, he emerged onto the sixth floor and tried to figure how to get to the penthouse. The door to Danata’s suite was barricaded. Were there secret doors in any of the other rooms? Was that how Ronnie got into the stairwells and rigged the traps? Where were the doors?

  Choosing a room away from the new fire Ronnie had set, Balenger hurried in. The bureau caught his attention. It would be easy to hide a door behind there. He yanked the bureau down, but all he found was an apparently solid wall. He took the crowbar from his knapsack and whacked it against the wall. He struck again and again, his frenzy mounting, his desperation making him wail. The hole got larger, revealing a gap between two-by-fours, a hidden corridor. He walloped as hard as he could, widening the space. One more fierce blow, and he could squeeze through.

  He put the crowbar in his knapsack and entered the corridor. At once, he saw the dangling spiral staircase, its moorings pulled from the wall. My God, I’m under the penthouse dining room. Amanda, Vinnie, and I tried to come down these stairs. They have hardly any support.

  He put his weight on the stairs. They wobbled. He eased upward, trying to move smoothly, to keep the staircase steady. Again, it wobbled. Please, he thought. He stepped higher, gripping the curved banister. He felt as if he were on the unsteady deck of a wave-tossed sailboat. Unable to get enough air into his lungs, he reached the trapdoor and pounded. Twice. Three times. Once.

  The trapdoor opened, Amanda looking at him in relief. “There’s a second fire.”

  “I know.” Balenger crawled from the staircase. The pressure of his shoes pushing him away from the stairs was enough to send them crashing down.

  The penthouse was filling with smoke. As they rushed to Vinnie in the kitchen, Amanda said, “I was afraid I’d have to open the shutter and put Vinnie outside, then join him. At least we’d have been able to breathe, even if we got hypothermia or the damned building collapsed.”

  “Help me get him to the bedroom. We’ll take him down to Danata’s suite.”

  “Ronnie. What about—”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s dead.”

  “Maybe?”

  “I hope. Can’t be sure.”

  They put Vinnie’s arms over their shoulders and dragged him toward the bedroom, no longer caring if they made noise.

  They set him down at the bedroom’s trapdoor. Then Amanda unlocked and lifted the hatch while Balenger aimed into it. Only two rounds left, he thought. Can’t waste them. But all he saw was green-tinted smoke.

  The moment he entered the staircase, he hesitated. “Wait a second.” He took a step upward and grasped the block of plastic explosive he’d set aside when disarming the bomb.

  “What can you do with that?” Amanda asked.

  “Don’t know.”

  “You said it was useless without a deton
ator.”

  “It is.” He stuffed the explosive into his knapsack. Just below the opening, he waited with his back turned. Amanda slid Vinnie onto him. He carried Vinnie down to Danata’s living room and again set him on the floor. With effort, he and Amanda tugged the heavy tables and chairs from the door. He aimed as Amanda opened it.

  Flames rose on the other side of the hotel’s core. They also spread from a room on this side.

  “It was dark for so long, I thought I’d give anything if I could see.” Vinnie was appalled by what he faced. “Now I wish I couldn’t.”

  “Help me get him on my back,” Balenger told Amanda. “Vinnie, hang on to the straps on the knapsack. Can you do that?”

  “My legs are messed up, but there’s nothing wrong with my hands.”

  They worked their way into a corridor and reached the entrance to the emergency stairs. Again, Balenger aimed. Again, there wasn’t a target. Bent forward with Vinnie, he climbed down as quickly as he could without losing his balance. Fifth level. Fourth. Third.

  “I hear water,” Amanda said.

  “So many roofs to collect it. So many holes. The place is flooding,” Balenger told her.

  Second level. First.

  They were submerged knee-deep as they tugged a door open. The water chilled them, but not as much as what they saw: the chaos of the lobby. Now Balenger understood why furniture piled up, tangled against columns and doors. The force of the water falling from the upper levels was dismaying, the din overwhelming. Any object that wasn’t anchored got swept away.

  “How do we get out?”

  The voice startled Balenger, almost making him pull the trigger. It belonged to a man struggling through the current toward them. The figure wore goggles. He had bulging pockets that weighed him down. Tattoos covered his face.

  “I tried the tunnel door!” Tod shouted. “The bastard really did weld it shut! I tried every other door and shutter I could find! We’re trapped!”

  “We’ll use the crowbar! We’ll try to wedge a door open!”

  The instant Balenger stepped into the current, it almost knocked him over. Twenty feet to his right, a waterfall cascaded.

  “This whole damned place is about to come down,” Tod said.

  “Get rid of the coins. If you fall, they’ll hold you under the water.”

  “Then I’d better not fall.”

  Balenger saw a chair rush by, carrying a rat. He dodged the chair, only to stagger from Vinnie’s weight. Amanda grabbed him, holding him up. They waded past a pillar, where rats teemed on a jumble of furniture.

  “What happened to him?” Tod said.

  “His legs got burned. Ronnie blew the detonators.”

  “I’d love to shove a detonator down his throat if I ever get my hands on—” Tod gaped in shock.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “A body just floated past. A woman. The woman I saw in the corridor.”

  Blond hair disappeared in the current. Balenger was sickened by the thought that it could be any of the other corpses that Ronnie hid in the building. Or maybe it’s Diane, he thought.

  Objects spattered the water. The roar in the lobby was sufficiently loud that Balenger realized only belatedly that a shotgun had gone off behind him. Fighting the current, he reached a pillar, taking cover behind the furniture caught against it.

  “Amanda!”

  “Here! Behind you!”

  “Where’s Tod?”

  “There!”

  She pointed toward a neighboring pillar.

  Balenger gave Vinnie to Amanda, drew his pistol, and peered around the furniture jammed against the pillar. The wreckage of the main staircase faced him. Piled next to it was the twisted debris of the balconies that had collapsed, providing a warren of places in which Ronnie could hide.

  Leaning as far out as he dared, Balenger thought he saw movement beneath a tangle of railings. Only two rounds left, he thought. Need to be sure. As the water kept rising, he shifted back behind the furniture and the pillar. Pellets tore a chunk from a table next to him. Hiding, he didn’t see the muzzle flash.

  Eager for a better sense of Ronnie’s location, Balenger took the walkie-talkie from his knapsack. “The rain will eventually put out the fire,” he said into it. “You can’t possibly destroy all the evidence.”

  He turned the walkie-talkie to a minimum volume and strained to listen for Ronnie’s voice across the way. But the roar of the waterfall made it difficult to distinguish any other sound.

  Useless to Balenger, Ronnie’s voice came from the walkie-talkie. “The fire and the rain will destroy fingerprints. The rest of the evidence can’t be linked to me. No one, except you, knows I come here. The police will think intruders did this.”

  Balenger cocked his head, focusing on Ronnie’s voice. He was almost certain that it came from the right, from a pocket in the tangle of railings. Get him to say more.

  Ronnie puzzled him by readily talking. “It’s just as well the city’s forcing me to go. The floods were never this destructive. When a storm came, it used to be all I needed to do was purge the swimming pool. Then the water from the storm would fill it again. The overflow drains would handle the rest.”

  Yes, definitely from that tangle of railings, Balenger thought. But why is he talking so much? Is he trying to bait me again? Is he shifting his position, hoping I’ll waste another shot?

  “Do you know the word ‘exponential’?” the voice asked.

  Balenger decided he had to answer, to encourage Ronnie to keep talking. He spoke into the walkie-talkie. “In the military, I understood it to mean something like a rapidly increasing series of attacks.” Immediately, he again reduced the volume.

  “Something like that,” the voice said across the way.

  From the same place. On the right. Among the wreckage. If I don’t shoot, will he decide I’m out of ammunition? Balenger wondered. Will he take the risk of coming for me? Can I bait him?

  “That’s what happened to this hotel. Exponential attacks,” the voice said. “By the way, you sound cold.”

  Balenger did indeed feel cold, shivering in the frigid water.

  “You’ll soon have muscle cramps. You won’t be able to defend yourself.”

  “You’ve got the same problem.”

  “No,” the voice said. “I’m high and dry.”

  “Hey! Ronnie!” Tod yelled from the neighboring pillar, surprising Balenger. “I’ll make a deal with you!”

  “What possible deal could you make?”

  “I can’t hear you!” Tod yelled. “I don’t have a walkie-talkie!”

  Good, make Ronnie shout, Balenger thought. Help me be certain where he is.

  “You don’t have anything to bargain with!” Ronnie said.

  Now the voice seemed to come from a different location. Again, the chaos of noises in the lobby made it difficult for Balenger to judge where Ronnie hid.

  “Sure, I do. I’ll help you get the others. If I do that, will you let me go?” Tod yelled. “You don’t need to be afraid of me.”

  “I’m afraid of no one.”

  “I’m not a threat. All I want is to get out of here. I don’t have a reason to go to the cops. Not with these coins.”

  “Ah, yes, the coins.”

  Balenger’s legs were numb. He wondered if he’d be able to move when the time came.

  “If I help you get them, do we have a deal?” Tod asked.

  “Help is always welcome.”

  “But do we have a damned deal?”

  “I can always use a friend.”

  What the hell is Tod up to? Balenger wondered. He watched Tod pull something from the water: a long railing that floated by.

  “Get ready!” Tod shouted. “Here they come!”

  In dismay, Balenger watched Tod poke the railing at the tangle of furniture he, Amanda, and Vinnie hid behind. A table shifted. A chair moved. Tod poked harder. As the wreckage was about to drift away and expose him, Balenger didn’t see any choice except to use on
e of his last two bullets on Tod.

  He aimed.

  In response, Tod let go of the railing and splashed through the water, taking cover behind a section of stairs jammed against the pillar. Abruptly, something leapt from the wreckage and made him scream. It struck his head, wrapping around his face, claws raking his cheeks and neck. White. With three hind legs. The cat. As blood spurted from his neck, Tod stumbled blindly in the water. Weighed by the coins, desperate to pull the animal from his face, he staggered from the pillar, wailing.

  His chest erupted from a shotgun blast. The coins in his pockets provided so much resistance that instead of jerking backward, Tod sank to his knees. He toppled sideways, his face disappearing. In the swirl, the cat surfaced.

  Balenger heard wood scraping. The chair Tod had pushed broke free. The table came with it, releasing other debris. All of it swept around the pillar. Balenger holstered his gun. When he turned to help Amanda keep a grip on Vinnie, he lost his footing. Something banged into his legs. He went under. Holding his breath, he struggled to the surface and managed a glimpse of Amanda and Vinnie as the current took all three of them. He thought he heard a shotgun. Then the water shoved him under, thrusting him through the lobby.

  He had the sense of cascading down stairs, of streaming along a corridor, of speeding through parted doors. He grabbed for something, anything, to stop him, but all his fingers clutched was a chunk of wood. Fighting to the surface again, he saw Amanda and Vinnie ahead of him. He sucked in air and saw a blur of tiled walls. The swimming pool area.

  The current tugged him through an open door. He slammed against a gigantic metal storage tank. The utility room.

  He strained to breathe. “Amanda!”

  “Here!”

  The flood was above his waist. Shivering violently, he swam toward her. “Vinnie? Where’s—”

  Facedown, Vinnie floated away. Balenger and Amanda grabbed him, bracing his head above water. Vinnie coughed. Around them, the surface was covered by panicked rats squealing to reach pipes and claw their way up. The white cat struggled past. Light-colored objects surged by, and Balenger realized he was seeing hair. The blond hair on Ronnie’s victims.