“Why did Stuart run?”
“I don’t know.”
I glared at her. “Why? Why would he do that?”
“I’m telling the truth,” she said earnestly. “I don’t know.”
I sighed. I believed her. “Well, this is a real clusterfuck you guys have created, isn’t it?”
She didn’t respond for a few seconds. “So what now?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t know.” I breathed out a heavy breath. “We need to stop it. Or find out what the hell it wants.”
“What if there are others?”
I glanced at her, eyebrow raised. “Then we’re screwed. That thing took bullets like they were fucking flies. The point-blank shotgun rounds just pissed it off. Chuck or Joe managed to take out its eye and that was the only damage it took.” I shook my head, thinking of the two cops. I rubbed my face; my eyes with the heels of my hands.
“What do you think it wants?”
“You think I know?” I retorted harshly, and Elise retreated into herself once more.
I thought about it. The thing had been to the garage, that was sure as hell. It had taken Nicholas’s head clean off, then had taken his skull. It’d also been to the pawnshop. It had left its MO on the shopkeeper, and it also explained the gaping hole in the big guy’s guts.
“It’s looking for something,” I said with the sudden realization.
“How do you know?”
“Because it tore open a safety deposit box at the pawnshop. It belonged to Stuart Arnold. You know anything about that?”
“It’s the backup!” she answered without having to think about it.
“What backup?”
“Of the project. Stuart made a backup hard drive of everything a few weeks ago. Just raw data. It’s the building blocks,” she said. “It’s got the software, the C++ source code I wrote, and the designs for the hardware. He told us he was storing it in case anything happened to the garage.”
“Okay. The creature must want to destroy the data. That could be why the computer was stolen at the garage. It probably took it back to its world.” I couldn’t believe what I was saying. To its world? What the hell was I talking about?
“We need to give it what it wants,” she said.
I nodded, thinking hard. “We need to find Stuart. And we need to do it before that thing kills again.” A horrible thought hit me. “Oh no.”
“What?”
“Chris. A detective. He could be in danger.”
I grabbed my cell and found his name under the recent call list. The ringing sounded in my ear. Once, twice, three times, four times . . .
“Detective Chris Romero.” I went to speak but his voice continued on. “I’m busy at the moment, but—” I hung up.
“Shit.” I thought about the creature. How many skulls had been hanging on the rope around the creature’s waist? Three. One was Nicholas Hartmann’s, one was the shopkeeper’s. Who did the third skull belong to? Dread welled up, sticking in my throat. “Oh God,” I whispered.
“We can’t leave,” Elise said, her eyes wide.
“We have to,” I said, returning her gaze. “People are in danger. And this thing isn’t going to stop until it’s got what it wants. I need to warn Chris, and I need to find Stuart Arnold.”
“Can’t we just stay here for the night?” she pleaded.
“No. I need to stop that thing, and you’re going to help me.”
“Please. Please don’t open the door.”
“I’ve got my keys. We’ll make a run for it.” I got to my feet.
“No. It can’t get us in here.”
“We’ve been out there with it all day long. It’s gone for now and we need to make the most of it. No one knows what we’re dealing with. We’re the only ones who can stop it. Now I’m getting out of here, warning Chris and everyone to stay the fuck away. And then I’m going to find Stuart Arnold and hand the tech over to that giant bastard creature from hell.” I held my hand out to her. “I need your help, Elise. I need to find Stuart.”
She stared back, fearful, reluctant.
I shook my hand. “Come on.”
Then she reached a trembling hand and I wrapped my fingers around it. Then I grabbed the door handle, twisted, and pushed it open.
FOURTEEN
I stepped out of the panic room and left the door open, in case the hellish creature appeared again. Then I pulled Elise along behind me, deliberate in my slow steps across the floor. I inched my head out of the room and glanced down the hallway. It was a damn mess. The floor tiles were cracked, the walls ripped apart and the ceiling torn down the center.
I remained still and listened. The valley wind whistled and blew through the house.
I turned to look at Elise. “It’s clear.”
She inched behind me like a mouse, clutching onto my arm with a viselike grip. We hugged to the wall as we made our way down the broken corridor, and when we reached the end, I peered into the living and kitchen area. With the glass wall now gone, the cold rainy night was blowing into the house, and the drawn curtains fluttered like sails into the room, lashing out, snapping like whips. Leaves blew over the polished white tiles in swirls, and the rain pattered against the rocks of the Japanese garden outside.
It was dark out there. The clouds suffocated the moon and the only light came from the house, barely pressing against the outside world. Was it watching us? Waiting until we were at our most vulnerable?
I couldn’t think like that. I had to press on. I had to warn Chris, and I had to find Stuart.
I didn’t want to look at Chuck and Joe’s bodies. The two men had saved my life, and they were dead and I was still here. I owed them everything. They were a damn mess and it broke my heart.
“Come on,” I whispered.
I found my Smith at the bottom of the bamboo steps. I swapped out the magazine, the muscles around my shoulder joint twisting in agony as I holstered the pistol beneath my arm.
The front door was ajar, the wood frame splintered where Chuck and Joe had broken through. The door softly bumped against the broken lock. I pulled it toward me and took in the outside view. A steady drizzle washed down from the night sky, blown around by gusts of wind. The surrounding trees rustled and swayed, branches creaking from within the darkness.
“Come on,” I whispered to Elise, and I stepped onto the gravel.
Each step crunched underfoot, my senses hypervigilant, tracking the sounds of the night.
We moved quickly around the marked car and over to the Road Runner. Then I gripped hold of the wet steel handle and pressed my thumb into the button. The handle clicked and the door opened with the screech of an old steel hinge.
“Get in,” I told Elise, looking around. She scuttled over to the passenger side and I followed her in, pulling the door shut as gently as I could.
I fumbled the key into the ignition, shared a look with Elise, then turned. It clicked once. It clicked twice. Ignition on. Then I twisted and the engine turned over.
Re-re-re-re-re . . .
“Shit,” I spat. “Engine’s cold.”
I tried it again.
Re-re-re . . .
The fuel inside the eight cylinders ignited and the engine snarled to life. The wipers began jolting up and down, up and down. I put it into reverse, then flicked on the headlights.
And that’s when Elise screamed.
The monster stood in front of the car, lit up in the beams of the Road Runner’s headlights, like a satanic statue carved into the likeness of the devil himself. Rain cascaded over its hard, scaled body, its snapping turtle–shaped head, its long, deadly arm and spider-like hand. And then its mouth opened wide and it screamed into the night, a sound so deafening it hit me in my chest.
“Hold on!” I cried and stomped on the gas.
The rear tires spun hard in the gravel and the car bucked backward out of the drive. The reverse lights weren’t up to the task of going backward into the darkness. I couldn’t see shit. Except for what was in
front. The creature. And it was chasing us.
It didn’t have to contend with slippery tiles out here. Its claws dug into the dirt and it was running after us like a creature out of hell. Like some damn dinosaur, a velociraptor hunting its prey.
The Road Runner’s 505-cubic-inch stroked big-block V-8 was revving out at over 5000 rpm. The engine was screaming louder than the creature chasing us, and yet we weren’t gaining any distance on it. Reverse doesn’t come with more gears. There’s just one gear. The gearbox had nowhere to go. If I pushed it any harder, the thing would explode. Then we’d come to a stop and . . . I didn’t want to think about that.
The thing was gaining and I was struggling to see out the rear window. The car bucked and bounced all over the place. Potholes were throwing us up and down, the engine was screaming, Elise was screaming.
I was looking back, then forward, back, then forward.
“BLAKE!” Elise cried.
The thing was almost on us now. We were in a race, and we were losing.
“Shit!” I spat.
I didn’t have a choice. I had to spin the car. The more I put it off, the closer the thing was going to get.
I’d done it before. As a teenager in a paddock, but there wasn’t a monster chasing me and I didn’t have trees around me either. I didn’t die if I screwed it up. There was no room for error here. None at all. I was on a dark and rainy road filled with potholes, and I had to complete a maneuver I only knew how to do from an old memory. And yet, I had no fucking choice but to do it.
“Hold on!” I yelled.
I spun the wheel, hard and fast, and punched the brake pedal. The rears held up and the front end of the car hurtled around. I pulled the pistol grip shifter into neutral and, before the spin was complete, banged it into drive. The car straightened and I stomped on the gas. The engine roared out, tires slipping all over the wet road as I fought to keep it in a straight line. I’d done it! It wasn’t perfect but—
An almighty force slammed into us. The car bucked forward, as if hit from behind by a truck.
I cried out, whipping the steering wheel around.
The creature’s spidery fingers were buried in the trunk lid, its body dragging behind.
Elise was curled up, screaming, hands over ears, her voice and the engine competing.
I pulled my Smith from its holster and started shooting over my shoulder. The gun barked out. The back window shattered and the .45 Super rounds pounded the thing’s head, one after another, as I aimed for its one good eye.
The creature’s arm was unfolding. Once that happened, it was all over. The creature would slice through the Road Runner like a can opener.
I was snapping my head backward and forward, backward and forward, driving like a maniac and shooting like a Wild West outlaw on a horse.
Bullets were bouncing off its head. I changed tack and leveled the gun, aimed at its clawed fingers and started shooting. The gun popped and black blood spat up from one finger. A weakness! The digit came out of its hold. I shot at the next finger and the creature screamed as another dislodged. No armor scales there, I thought. I shot another finger and it too let go. Only one long-clawed finger remained, dragging its enormous body behind it. I had it. I felt the wild smile on my face. This ugly ass bastard wasn’t going to kill me!
I aimed. Pulled the trigger. The gun went click. No more bullets.
“No!” I cried.
I had a backup pistol in the glove compartment, but it wasn’t loaded. There was a box of bullets in there too, but I couldn’t pull over and take a breather while I loaded them into the chamber. And somehow I doubted the screaming girl beside me knew how to load a revolver. So what to do? It was moving again. Fingers finding their way back into their holds.
The creature’s mouth opened and it roared out in satisfaction. So I did the only thing left for me to do. I threw my pistol into its open mouth.
The thing fucking choked. It choked like a dog swallowing a chicken carcass. It toppled backward, rolling into the darkness of night, and the Road Runner lunged forward as it lost the weight.
Elise was still screaming. And screaming. And fucking screaming.
“It’s all right!” I yelled to her. “Hey! It’s gone. It’s all right, goddammit!”
I threw the car onto Summit Road and the rear end slid out on the wet surface as I almost hit oncoming traffic. There were horns beeping and lights glaring. I got into my lane and took a hard breath of air, and then I screamed out, “Yes! Eat that, you son of a bitch!”
I looked down at Elise. She was curled up like a possum, her copper eyes staring up at me, almost childlike.
“Are we okay? Is it gone?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re okay. We’re safe . . . for now.”
FIFTEEN
We were back in the Valley. The rain was falling steadily as the old wipers jolted up and down, blurring the lights of the traffic around us. I was in a daze, driving on autopilot. I was thinking about all the cars, all the people inside them. Living just another day of their lives. Car after car, person after person, life after life. And all of them completely ignorant to what was out there. Up there in the hills, lurking . . .
“Where are we going?” asked Elise. She was huddled up in the seat, wrapping her arms around her legs to keep warm. The rear window was blown out and the air was blowing around us.
“Nicholas’s house,” I said solemnly. “It’s the last place I sent Chris.”
She didn’t respond. She shivered and stared out her window.
I thought back over the day. One minute I had been watching game shows and the next I was being chased by a creature from another world. It was so unbelievable. So fucking absurd. I wanted to slap my face a few times and tell myself to snap out of it. Yet there was no denying it. My world had changed and there was no going back from that truth, and it found a place somewhere inside me, burying itself like a barb. A splinter of truth that I could never remove.
There was another world out there, and from that place came a nightmarish creature, intelligent and unstoppable. And it terrified me beyond words.
“Why do you keep doing that?” asked Elise.
“Doing what?”
“Looking in the mirror.”
“Paranoid, I guess.”
“You think it’s still following us?” She looked over her shoulder.
“No. Someone was following me earlier today. I just want to make sure they’re not still at it.” I glanced in the mirror once more.
I was mindful of the silver Lincoln, but the reality was I couldn’t shake the thought of the monster. I felt like a child again, looking under my bed, because as long as I was watching, nothing could be there. As long as I had my eye on the mirror, there was no way the thing could appear.
I looked away from the reflection and the yellow eyes appeared in my mind once again. I forced my mind away from the image and turned my attention back to the road, a shiver crawling up my spine.
It didn’t take long to get to Nicholas’s place in Cupertino. I turned left on the 88 and followed it until I hit Stevens Creek Boulevard. Cass Place was a little cul-de-sac street, filled with neat houses and tidy lawns, shining wet under the streetlights. It was an idealistic kind of street, appealing family houses with maintained gardens, stone pathways and hedges. Almost looked like a street from a movie set. Like Edward Scissorhands, or . . . Elm Street.
Nicholas’s place was at the end of the cul-de-sac, a white wood house with a dark blue door and framed windows. It had a well-kept lawn, pots of flowers and a picket fence, in need of a new paint job.
Sitting out in front of the house was a beige Crown Victoria. My stomach dropped like an anchor in the sea.
He should’ve left a long time ago. I shook my head and sat for a moment, just staring at it, the wipers pushing away the rain, the engine idling, my fingers tightening on the wheel.
I looked over at Elise. She had fallen asleep, curled up in the big seat of the muscle car. It had been a lon
g day for her, and I guess sometimes the body just decides you’ve had enough and it’s time to rest. Time to switch off from the horrors you’ve endured. Sweet dreams, I thought, enjoy it while it lasts.
I reached over, opened the glove compartment and pulled out my .38-caliber revolver, along with the small box of ammunition. The pistol was a compact Smith & Wesson M&P Bodyguard—a handgun for concealed carry in undercover work. It had a buried hammer, five-shot capacity, and two-inch barrel. It was small but packed a hard punch. I loaded it with five rounds of .38 Special, then just stared at the thing in my hand. What fucking use was it? I thought feebly. I shook my head, then stuffed it into my jacket pocket, glanced at Elise once more, and got out of the car, leaving the engine running and the heater on.
I stopped briefly when I saw the back of the Road Runner. The thing was a damn mess. There were deep scratches everywhere and the rear bumper was bent and hanging by twisted bolts. There were holes in the trunk lid, and I touched them with a finger, feeling where the creature’s sharp fingers had passed through the steel. It looked like someone had gone at my car with a pickax. It was real, my mind told me again.
Then I made my way through the rain and up to the front door of Nicholas’s house. I reached out, took hold of the door handle, and twisted. It was unlocked and I pushed softly against it. The door creaked open into a dark void and I stood there, silhouetted by the streetlights behind me, breathing in the familiar odor. One which I had hoped would not be there.
The smell of death.
I found Diego in the darkness of the kitchen. His neck was broken, his head at a ninety-degree angle to his body. Spinal bones jutted against the skin from within the neck like a tan stocking stuffed with walnuts. His dark eyes were open, and his face was snapped in a horrified rigid expression.
I stepped into the gloom of the bedroom, where the smell was strongest. The smell of a butcher shop . . . a slaughterhouse.
Detective Chris Romero, Hotshot, of the SJPD, was lying dead, his Glock still in its holster, his right hand grasping the grip. His other hand was twisted up in a palsied spasm.
Beyond the Spectrum Page 9
