Sean fired again and again and then crashed to the ground in a heap. Jordan was quick to his side and pulled him to his feet.
“Jesus Christ! Are you all right?”
Sean nodded and leapt up onto the grate. The lock had been obliterated. He yanked on the grill and it dropped a quarter of an inch. He yanked down again and the grill dropped three inches more.
Then they heard it.
A rolling thunder shook the tunnel, nearly sending Jordan to his knees, followed by the orange-red light of flame.
Sean yanked again and again on the grate as Jordan stared wide-eyed at the wave of flame that charged toward them.
“Jordan! Help me!” Sean screamed.
Jordan jumped onto the grate bars and applied all his weight to bring it down.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Sean whispered.
Finally, the grate swung open and both men dropped to the floor. They scrambled to their feet and Sean nearly threw Jordan up through the gap.
A wave of fire rushed toward Sean. He jumped and grabbed the grate then took Jordan’s outstretched arm. He slithered through the gap and crawled head first into the dark. They scurried away from the grate seconds before a column of flame shot straight up from the hole in the floor.
Sean and Jordan stared at each other for a long moment.
“You okay?” Sean asked.
“No. Not at all, really.”
Sean squeezed Jordan’s shoulder.
“You’re okay.”
It took them a moment to regain their bearings, to find their flashlights, switch them on and scan the room. They were in a small room with a lot of empty metal shelving attached to the walls.
The sound of shuffling feet and movement below in the tunnel brought them back to the opening. Sean and Jordan aimed their flashlight beams and their weapons at the hole in the floor. They tensed as hands curled over the edge. With their fingers on their triggers, they watched Bishop calmly pull himself up into the empty room, looking ashen as always. He scanned the weary men as they let out a long sigh of relief and lowered their weapons to the floor.
“Good,” Bishop said, “you’re not dead.”
Sean and Jordan nodded numbly.
“Then let’s go.”
35
Jordan lead them out of the storeroom and, after taking a quick look down the hall in both directions, they slipped through a door marked RESTRICTED ACCESS into one of the mine’s rock tunnels.
Here at least the ceiling was higher than in the sewer, which was both good and bad. Good because they were no longer forced to hunch over and thus had a wider range of motion, but bad because the Zijin had a penchant for clinging to high ceilings. Sean’s light constantly scanned the ceiling and the surrounding area while Jordan’s light was pinned to the floor as he searched for sinkholes and debris, among other things.
“How much further is it?” Sean asked.
“We’re close to the bottom here,” Jordan replied. “They hit water about twenty feet below us. I figure they’re probably in the main auditorium. It’s the biggest room down here. I’m taking us around behind it. Hopefully, they’ll be surprised, give us more of a chance.”
Jordan stopped dead.
“What?” Sean asked.
Sean moved to Bishop’s right and swept his light over the tunnel ahead. The rock floor had apparently given way and was covered with a network of planks. The boards didn’t look like they’d hold the weight of their flashlights let alone them.
“Is there another way?” Sean asked.
“No,” Jordan replied.
“And even if there is,” Bishop said, “we don’t have time.”
They had to keep going.
Jordan studied the boards with his light. Finally, he nodded.
“Are you sure?” Sean asked him.
“What choice do we have?” Jordan replied, “We’ll go one at a time.” Sean pushed to the front of the line and took the first step onto the planks.
He was five feet out on the wood floor when he knew it was a terrible mistake. The floor swayed under his weight and trembled with every step. He moved very slowly, inching along. The boards cracked and groaned. A cold sheet of sweat popped out over his skin. He froze and waited for the whole thing to collapse beneath him. But after the moment passed and the structure didn’t collapse, Sean took another breath and started moving again.
Up ahead, the planks ended and solid rock returned. He stepped off the planks and breathed a little easier. Next Bishop passed over the boards and finally Jordan.
All eyes were on Jordan as he shuffle-stepped his way over the creaking boards. He looked scared and young and helpless as a crack ripped through the board between his feet.
“Run Jordan!” Sean shouted. “Run!”
But Jordan was pinned in place, afraid to move. Another crack like a lightning strike erupted until the sound of cracking wood seemed to come from everywhere.
Jordan’s lower body disappeared. He threw out his arms and clung to the board he had, until recently, been standing on. He tried to pull himself up, but it was cracking, breaking away. He climbed hand over hand. He was ten feet away from solid ground.
Sean stopped and aimed his light back toward Jordan then raced back out onto the planks.
“Sean! No!” Bishop said.
Jordan looked up in time to see Sean racing over the boards.
“Sean!” was all Jordan had time to say before the board he had clung to snapped and Jordan dropped into the darkness.
“Jordan!” Sean screamed. He crawled to the edge of the hole and shone his light down into the depths.
“Jordan!”
Jordan fell hard into the wet rock floor. Something cracked in his leg and he squealed with pain.
About twenty feet down, Jordan found himself sitting in two feet of water. His body ached, but nothing hurt more than his right leg, just below the knee. He probed the darkness with his flashlight and took stock of his new surroundings. High up above he spotted Sean’s light and gave him a little wave.
“You all right?” Sean asked.
“Just fucking wonderful,” Jordan whispered to himself. “Yes! I’m alive,” he called up to Sean. Jordan put his hands down to push himself up into a sitting position and screamed out.
“Fuck!”
Sean was right back at the hole shining his light down into the depths.
“What is it?”
Jordan ran his hand down his leg and found it. His right knee was facing ninety degrees the wrong way.
“It’s my knee.”
“Can you walk?” Sean asked.
Jordan tried to stand, or even roll to a crawling position but any movement brought excruciating pain. He cursed and swore and then flopped back down onto his back in the water.
“No.”
“C’mon, what do you mean, no.”
“I mean no. No, I can’t walk, I can hardly move.”
“Okay, hold on, we’re gonna rig something up and get you out of there,” Sean said. “Just sit tight.”
“Was that a joke?”
“Just sit there, relax, we’ll get you out.”
Sean’s light disappeared from the lip of the hole and Jordan suddenly felt completely alone.
Sean crawled away from the hole and pulled rope out of his pack. Bishop stood very still, scanning the tunnel walls.
“Pull the rope out of your pack, we might need it,” Sean said.
“Sean, we don’t have time for this,” Bishop replied.
“We’re gonna make time,” Sean said. “We’re not leaving him down there.”
“Even if we get him up here we can’t take him with us, and we can’t leave him. He’s as good down there as anywhere.”
Sean pulled the rest of his rope out of his backpack and tied a harness.
“I’m not leaving him,” Sean said. “You can help me, or you can stand there, but I’m not leaving him behind. No one else is gonna die today. Now gimme your fucking rope and help me pull
him up.”
Bishop shook his head and scanned the darkness, “Stubborn son of a bitch.”
Sean lowered the harness as Bishop focused the beam of his flashlight down into the hole. Jordan yanked on the rope when he was ready.
“Okay, hold on!” Sean said.
Hand over hand they slowly brought Jordan toward the surface.
Jordan held a flashlight in his left hand and a pistol in his right. As he rose he scanned the crevasse. Tiny veins of water sluiced down over the rock walls. Long scratch marks scarred the rock. Jordan stopped breathing. He spun gently, but he craned his neck and twisted his arms to keep his light on the scratch marks. They were everywhere.
Jordan looked up to the mouth of the hole and it seemed a million miles away, as if he were being slowly pulled to the moon. He squeezed the pistol in his hand and took a few deep breaths. He was seven feet off the ground.
The chittering came first, and it was as if someone had thrown ice water on his heart. Everything stopped. Jordan spun toward the sound of running footsteps rushing out of the darkness. He brought up his light and illuminated the Zijin as it leapt toward him. Jordan screamed and fired.
The creature took three shots in the chest and kept coming. It leapt off the floor and slammed into Jordan. As they plunged back into the pit, it wrapped its arms around him and squeezed. Its smooth head darted toward Jordan and it drove its fangs into his left forearm. The creature’s razor sharp teeth tore easily through Jordan’s coat and skin. His sleeve filled up with blood as the bones in his arm were ground together between the creature’s teeth.
“Jordan!” Sean screamed.
Jordan landed on top of the Zijin. With his free hand he fired and fired at close range, pressing the barrel of his weapon to the creature’s head. Black blood of the Zijin splashed over his face and into his mouth but he couldn’t stop firing. The Zijin whimpered and slowly its grip on Jordan loosened.
Jordan couldn’t catch his breath. Everything hurt, including his knee, but he was standing. Standing on his good leg in the water and shaking violently.
“Jordan?” Sean asked.
“Get me the fuck out of here!”
Sean and Bishop got to their feet and worked faster, hand over hand. Jordan tried to reload his weapon, but his hands shook and he dropped the fresh clip into the water. He cursed and tried not to scream.
At his feet dead Zijin’s head looked like a pumpkin that had been dropped from a roof.
But there was more than one.
All around him was the drumming of feet and the scratching of claws and that horrible sound they made.
“Faster. Please. Faster guys!” Jordan whispered. “They’re coming!”
Jordan searched his pockets for another clip. His hands drove the fresh clip home into the pistol as his mouth opened to scream. He spun wildly from the rope, trying to shine his light around him. He was ten feet from the surface. He shone his light over the rock walls and found the Zijin waiting for him. They hissed and shrieked and clawed at the light.
“No,” he whispered, as they launched toward him. Jordan fired and in a blur of moving darkness they were upon him.
Sean and Bishop were ripped to the ground by the sudden weight on the line. The rope burned through their palms as it sped toward the hole to disappear over the edge.
Sean crawled to the hole and shone his light down into the depths. His light illuminated the dirty pond and Jordan’s pack, but nothing else.
“Jordan!”
Inside the crevasse was silent and dark and still.
“Sean,” Bishop whispered.
A Zijin claw arced out of the darkness and narrowly missed Sean. He rolled away from the broken planks, scrambling to get to his feet. Bishop was ready as the first one poked its head up through the floor. He fired two bullets through it.
“Jordan!” Sean shouted.
“He’s gone, Sean,” Bishop said. “We gotta go!”
Claws reached up through the cracked floorboards, as the reinforcements fought their way to the surface. Bishop fired as they ran.
36
Sean and Bishop moved deeper into the mine through the network of tunnels, turning corner after corner. They moved steadily downward, deeper and deeper into the earth.
Up ahead was a flicker of firelight. They crept to the corner of the tunnel and peered around its edge.
Small fires had been left staggered throughout this section of tunnel, providing a weak, warm light.
The illuminated passage spiralled down and to the left. The spiral was less fortified than the rest of the mine and it occurred to Sean that they were probably near the site where the mining exploration had ground to a halt. The firelight had grown brighter as Sean and Bishop neared the end of the spiral.
At the end of the spiral they found a huge natural cave the size of an auditorium. Scattered near the mouth of the cave were the remains of mining equipment and materials. Timbers and boards cut to strengthen the tunnels lay in moldering piles, slowly disintegrating.
The two men stepped to the entranceway and peered down into the cave. Beyond a short, forty-foot rockslide of rubble, a wide flat floor fifty yards square was riddled with fires. Some raged as large as funeral pyres. Red, orange and golden tongues of flame snapped and reached for the high ceiling, hidden behind a pall of darkness and dense smoke. Others smoldered, mere embers, a breath away from extinction.
From the cave opening Sean stared in disbelief at the sheer number of Zijin.
He didn’t have to count them. By the look of it, he was sure that every resident of Danaid was down there, all one hundred and seventy odd people. Men, women and children. Friends, neighbors and family. They all knelt, murmuring a chant, bent forward at the waist, their arms outstretched in a display of absolute worship toward a makeshift throne constructed of wood, carefully placed stones and pieces of metal. Only one person could command such respect.
Petra sat on the Zijin throne looking as beautiful as ever. Her eyes were bright and her skin shimmered. She looked out over her children, her family, with a small smile on her lips.
“You should go,” Bishop said.
“I’m not leaving without my son.”
“Your son is dead, Sean,” Bishop replied angrily. “It’s time you realized that. They don’t play favorites. They don’t take hostages. He’s somewhere down there, one of them now.”
“I have to know.”
Bishop had nothing left to say. He stepped toward the cave entrance.
“Where are you going?”
“I came for her head, Sean.”
Sean looked down into the lair and his stomach did a quick forward roll.
“You’re going down there?” he asked. “You’ll never get close. What then?”
Bishop opened his coat and revealed the explosives that lined the interior.
“Then at least she’ll be a while digging herself out of this shit hole,” Bishop replied. “Just be ready to run.”
And with that, Bishop stepped into the cave.
Sean could hear him moving steadily down the rockslide. He crept closer to the edge. The hunter had reached the cave floor and moved toward the Zijin.
Sean was alone.
Boldly Bishop passed the worshipping Zijin, heading straight for Petra. His heart beat wildly in his chest. She smiled and the Zijin grew silent and still. Their black eyes followed his progress as he stepped between their ranks to their Lord and savior.
He got within ten feet of her before she spoke.
“Welcome,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”
“Too long,” he replied.
“Have you come for my surrender?”
“No,” Bishop said, “I’ve come to kill you.”
Petra cocked one eyebrow.
Sean peeked down into the cave. Again the sight of the Zijin made his head spin. Bishop moved through the rows of them, heading straight for Petra. He pulled his head out of the doorway and flattened himself against the wall to catch his br
eath.
“Fucking suicide,” he whispered.
A grating sound brought up his weapon and his flashlight. He took a few steps back up the tunnel. The firelight threw their shadows over the walls, stretching them and twisting them as they made their way down the spiral.
“Daddy,” a child’s voice sang out. “Daddy.”
Sean stepped farther up the spiral and saw the owners of the shadows, a tight group of five children ranging in age from five to fifteen. They crowded together in a pack, filthy, wearing next to nothing. They stared at Sean vacantly, coldly. One of them, the oldest, dragged his long black fingernails against the rock wall.
“Kevin?” Sean asked.
Sean took a step toward the group.
A small boy eased his head into Sean’s light. Kevin looked thin and dirty and very pale, nearly gray.
“Why did you let them get me, Daddy?” Kevin whispered.
For the first time, Sean really looked at his son. Firelight flickered and snapped, twisting shadows over Kevin’s beautiful face. Sean aimed his light at Kevin. His blue-gray eyes were black. The gray skin of his face hung from his skull in tatters, revealing the translucent skin of the Zijin beneath.
“Stay,” Kevin whispered. “Stay.”
Kevin charged his father, mouth open, and clamped down on Sean’s shoulder, drawing blood.
Sean pried Kevin off and tossed the boy to the floor. Behind him the other children advanced. Their skin peeled, their bodies grew, bones stretching, muscles bulging. They stared at Sean with black eyes full of hate and hunger.
Sean drew his gun and aimed it at Kevin. Kevin rose, his voice no longer his own, but something deeper, ancient.
“Don’t be afraid,” he hissed. Kevin’s lips and the fanged teeth of his mouth were stained with blood.
“Don’t be afraid, Daddy.”
Sean’s finger curled around the trigger.
“Please forgive me.” Sean pulled the trigger.
Click.
A wicked smile twisted Kevin’s lips into a sneer. He opened his mouth and with a lion’s roar the entire group rushed Sean.
Sleepers Awake Page 19
