Something crashed into the hallway door, startling them both. Sil was off the bed in an instant, her lips pulling back over her teeth in fear. Lennox was trying to kick in the door; so far it held, but it wouldn’t the next time. Disappointed by Stephen’s reaction and rejection, trapped in this room with no avenue of escape, she felt her human countenance slip away and dissipate entirely. The feeling was almost like falling and she went with it, relishing the split second of free-fall as her flesh and bone structure instantaneously re-formed, the surge of raw power that felt much more natural than the previous fragile camouflage of humanity. Stephen began to scream and Sil swung to face him, irritated at the harsh, repetitive noise; it only took a flick of her long, beautiful tentacles to end it for eternity.
The door to Stephen’s room gave way as it was struck again, and Press Lennox and his comrades spilled through. Press led the way, fighting to regain his balance after the assault on the door, the rest tumbling over each other at his back. Before they could compose themselves, Sil drew herself up to her full height and shrieked at them, her voice loud and high enough to make their hands automatically slap over their ears and make their eyes water. She would not endanger her unborn offspring by plowing through them physically—there was too much danger that one of their weapons might accidentally find its mark. She chose the closet instead, not caring that the entire group saw her dive into the small, dark space.
And, laughing in her piercing, alien voice, she burst through its far wall into the outside hallway and fled . . .
To freedom.
40
“Don’t bother checking,” Laura said. Her mouth twisted. “He’s dead.” Fitch turned away with a sick sound and left Dan, standing there with his hands over his mouth.
“Come on, Laura. We’ve got to stop that thing.” Press grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away from the twisted, bloody thing that had been Stephen Arden only a minute before. As they raced down the hallway they saw Sil far ahead, her oversized body skidding on the loose carpet runner as she turned into the fire stairwell. “We’re heading to the basement,” he yelled over his shoulder to Fitch and Dan. “You guys get in the stairwell and drive her all the way down. The fire door should trap her at the bottom—just be careful!” The elevator doors opened and they leaped through; Press was punching the close door and Parking 1 buttons before the doors had completed their cycle. They saw Fitch and Dan sprint past on their way to the stairwell; Fitch’s pistol was out, but Press had to wonder if he’d have the gall to actually use the weapon. “Come on, come on!” Press slapped at the Parking 1 button again, and finally the car began to move.
Press’s face was furious. His gaze was glued to the floor indicator as the elevator descended. “What are the chances she got pregnant, anyway?” he said, half thinking aloud. The small elevator magnified his voice, making it sound more frantic than it already was. “But in case she is, we’ve got to get to her before she gives birth. I mean, we can’t have two of those things running around out there, right?”
Laura laughed a little hysterically. “Two? Are you kidding, Press? Who knows what kind of a reproductive system she has. She could have a dozen children . . . or lay a thousand eggs!”
“Then we’ll find every one of them and fry them,” Press said rigidly. He started to say something more but the elevator bounced lightly and the doors slid open to reveal a concrete underground parking lot. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, throwing lighting that was more than adequate in normal circumstances but not nearly enough to make him feel comfortable right now. As they sprang out of the elevator every noise made a double or triple echo, and oddly, they could hear footsteps in the stairwell—Fitch and Dan, pounding toward them from nine floors up. Swinging to face the fire door, Press and Laura were met with the gray, tangled edges of a hunk of misshapen metal.
“Shit!” Press said in disbelief. “I don’t believe it—she went right through a steel door!”
Laura wrenched her head to the left, then the right, fear making her envision movement in every shadow between the cars. “Damn it, damn it!” Her voice had risen to a shout. “What is it going to take to stop her?”
“The weapons we need are in the van,” Press said. His eyes glittered like blue ice. “I’m sure we’ll find something.”
“Jesus!” Fitch exclaimed as he and Dan burst through the remains of the fire door. “I was positive you were right about the fire door, but it doesn’t look like it so much as slowed her down!”
“Let’s go!” Fitch’s van was parked at the end of the row and Press ran to it and pulled on the handle of the driver’s door. Locked, of course. He spun and drew his elbow up—
“Keys!” Fitch yelled. He threw something and Press’s arm stopped its reverse motion and darted up instead, snatching the small ring of keys before they could sail over the roof of the vehicle. “Otherwise the alarms’ll go crazy.”
“Gotcha.” Two steps to the right and he jammed the key into the lock and twisted it; the side door slid over and he was inside and pawing through Fitch’s portable defense arsenal. “Grab some flashlights,” he told Laura when she climbed in beside him. “Where the fu—found ’em!” His mouth stretched in a tight, dark grin and he held up a couple of flamethrowers with backstraps. He heaved one next to Laura and slung the other on his back, then reached for a Mossberg Model 590 Special Purpose shotgun with a speed-feed stock. A titanium-coated Specwar knife snapped to his belt completed the ensemble, and he and Laura clambered out of the van.
“Did you see her?” Fitch demanded as he leaned inside and seized a flamethrower for himself.
“No, she was out of the stairwell before we got down.” Laura wrestled her own flamethrower onto her back. “God, how much does this thing weigh?”
“Fifty pounds, give or take ten.” Press reached over and yanked it the rest of the way in place. “You know how to operate it? Short bursts, not long ones. The fuel doesn’t go far.”
“Just give me something to point at,” she retorted. “I’ll figure it out.”
“I think your ‘something’ came through that door,” Dan said worriedly.
“Which way did she go?” Fitch scanned the parking garage. “Any idea?”
“Not a clue,” Laura said. “Has everybody got a weapon of some kind? Hey—where’d Press go? Jesus, I’ve never known anyone who could sneak around like that guy!”
The three team members whirled as a man’s scream suddenly cut through the air. Four rows of cars away, a metal door marked BOILER ROOM banged open and smacked the wall behind it with a nerve-shattering clang!
“Press!” Laura’s face went white and she bolted for the open door, the others at her heels. Reeling through the opening, she staggered down a flight of creaking iron stairs and spun around the first landing, nearly ramming into the barrel of Press’s shotgun.
“Jesus, Laura—be careful!” Press swung the gun back, pointing it down the dimly lit landing.
“What was that scream?” Fitch hissed from behind Laura. “Was that her?”
“I don’t know,” Press said. “Let’s go, and for God’s sake,” he threw a reproachful look over his shoulder at Laura, “watch where you’re going before you get there!”
With Press in the lead, the group inched down the last of the stairs, then darted around a corner. Press stopped them with a chopping motion of one hand. At his feet was the disfigured body of a hotel maintenance worker. “Well,” he said in a low voice, “I guess she’s around here somewhere. One way or the other, we’re going to find her.”
“If she’s down here,” Laura words were a pseudo-whisper that could just be heard above the thunderous noise of the boiler in the middle of the room, “we’ve got her trapped. There’s no way for her to get out without going past us.”
“Look over there.” Press used the Mossberg to point at a smaller door marked ELECTRICAL at the far end of the dim room. The door was ajar and in the murky light trickling into it from the boiler room, they could barely see ci
rcuit breakers lining the wall beyond the entrance. No other light shone from its interior. Press’s eyes skimmed the boiler room one last time. “There’s no place else she could have gone,” he said. “Come on.”
The electrical room turned out to be hardly more than a large walk-in closet. The light switch was on the inside right wall but Press skipped it, unwilling to fully illuminate their own position when they didn’t know Sil’s. Besides, the beams of their lights, Afterburner Ballistics, were as good as directed cones of daylight in the small space and more than enough to show the farthest corner, where a jagged crater three feet in diameter had been dug into the concrete floor. “Damn it,” Press said, lowering the shotgun. “She’s dug her way out—again.”
Fitch peered over Press’s shoulder, trying to see. “But this is concrete!”
“Apparently that didn’t matter to your little creation any more than the steel door did in the garage.” Press and the others sidled up to the hole as he aimed his light into it; below them, a smooth-sided tunnel dropped a couple of feet, then curved away into darkness.
When she spoke, Laura’s voice sounded like a tightly wound spring. “Oh, God, Press. Does this mean . . . ?”
“Yeah, it does.” He swung the Mossberg’s strap over his shoulder, his eyes squinting in the beams of the Afterburners. “We’re going to follow. It’s time to go to the real party.” Without saying anything else, Press dove headfirst into the burrow.
“Oh, I really hate this,” Dan said unhappily as he and the others scooted in after Press. Weaponless and bringing up the rear, he found himself wishing he’d at least picked up a pistol or a knife from Fitch’s van. “Where do you think this goes, Press?”
After a moment of silence, Press answered from his position farther ahead. “Right here, guys.” He waited, sharp eyes following the sweep of his light, as the others crawled out of the tunnel and found their footing.
“Where’s here?” Fitch asked breathlessly. “What is this place?”
Press dragged the beam’s light across the pipes lining the ceiling that curved high above them. “Welcome to the Los Angeles sewer system,” he said in a hushed voice.
Speechless, the team gazed around. Their Afterburners did a great job of illuminating a room-sized portion of the huge pipe in which they stood, but an elbow turn in both directions sent the sewer back into blackness. As their voices faded away, other sounds moved in to fill the space: water dripping, an occasional small splash, the faint, scurrying echoes of rats moving along the catwalks on either side. A wide, sluggish river of cold, vile-colored water flowed at their feet, separating them from the walkway on the far side of the pipe. While the smell was none too pleasant, it still wasn’t as overpowering as the stench from the empty cocoon Sil had left on the train.
Press turned his beam in both directions, uncertain. Nothing either way moved or made a sound that was outside of what they would have expected. “Which way do you think she went, Dan?”
Covered in dirt from the burrow, Dan’s face looked sweaty and vulnerable in the harsh, compact circles of light. He stared one way, then the other; ultimately, he could only spread his hands. “I’m not sure. I just can’t be certain.”
Fitch grabbed the shoulder of Dan’s shirt and gave it a hard yank. “Well, think about it, will you? For Christ’s sake, Smithson, I thought you had some kind of extrasensory powers that would tell us this sort of thing!”
“I’m an empath, not a psychic,” Dan cried defensively. “It’s different!”
“Never mind,” Laura cut in. “We’ll find her—”
“That way,” Dan said. His glance to the south end of the tunnel was tense. “Let’s try that way.”
“It’s as good a bet as any.” With one hand on the Mossberg, Press moved off in the direction Dan had indicated. Laura followed, her gaze skipping quickly around the walls and the walkway, the rancid water at their feet.
“We’ll go the other way,” Fitch said firmly. “That way we’ll have both ends covered.”
Dan couldn’t move. “I—I’m not so sure we should do that, Dr. Fitch.”
“Get your ass over here, Smithson.” In the backwash from his Afterburner, two scarlet spots of anger dotted Fitch’s white face. “I’m not going alone and you’re the only one left. Come on!” He stalked down the catwalk a couple of yards, the nozzle of his flamethrower clenched in one hand. Above the trickling sounds of the water, the slow buzz of the double pilot light was less than comforting.
“Please, Dr. Fitch—wait!” Dan could see Fitch’s back, but the older man refused to slow his gait. “I—I may have gotten it wrong. I think we should go back and get help. Dr. Fitch, wait! Don’t go—” His voice choked off as a line of bubbles broke the surface of the water directly below his position on the catwalk. “I think there’s something down here!” he cried.
From the corner of his eye, Dan saw Fitch, flamethrower ready, spin and start back. “Stay put!” the doctor called. “I’ll be right there.” Moving as fast as he dared on the slick, narrow walkway, Fitch hurried toward him.
The bubbles at Dan’s feet multiplied, then abruptly disappeared. Terrified, Dan flattened himself as much as he could against the moist, curving wall behind him. His sight fastened on the water and he saw something pale and shiny—a spike?—break the surface halfway between him and Dr. Fitch for an instant. Then it disappeared below the brownish liquid.
Fitch saw it, too. With his finger on the trigger of the flamethrower, he halted at the spot and peered over the edge of the catwalk, trying to see. Another round of bubbles floated to the top of the slimy water and broke—bloop! bloop!—but nothing else followed. Was it Sil, or just a swimming rat?
“Dr. Fitch,” Dan pleaded as the other man leaned farther out over the water. “Come back, okay? This is very bad—”
Fitch never had a chance to do it himself, but Dan screamed for him as something huge burst upward from the sewer water and clamped itself around the doctor’s face. Transparent tentacles flailed madly in the air below a sharklike mouth with multiple rows of teeth that ground through flesh and bone, sending a spray of crimson blood across the moldy wall in back of Fitch’s vibrating body. Still screaming, Dan glimpsed a huge, diaphanous torso below an oversized, elongated head topped with coils of metallic-looking hair; something large and darker than the rest of the life-form pulsed within its abdomen below the purplish-red tinge of vital organs. As Fitch’s body toppled into the fetid liquid, the scientist’s flamethrower slipped off his back and fell to the walkway floor, useless.
With a frenzied rush of icy water and spikes, the creature dove back under the surface and vanished as Press and Laura pounded down the catwalk toward Dan’s position, then slewed to a halt.
“Aw, shit!” Press swore. He reached out, trying to snare Fitch’s coat, but it was too late; bobbing leisurely, the man’s corpse drifted toward the opposite wall. Dismayed, they watched as a current took the body and made it do an obscene swirl before it floated quickly out of sight. “Shit,” Press repeated.
Dan was dripping and shivering from the cold water and his eyes were wide with remorse and terror when his gaze slid to Fitch’s surplus flamethrower. He picked it up with a grunt and struggled into it. “I never thought I could feel like I wanted to kill something,” he said despondently. Under the false sheen of the water, his skin had a ghastly gray overtone to it. “But now—”
“No,” Press interrupted. “Don’t think like that—it’s not healthy. I should know.” Dan didn’t answer and Press scrutinized the darkened areas of the pipe. He turned to look at Laura and Dan. “We have to go after it,” he said softly. “If we don’t risk it, there won’t be a world left for us to live in.”
“Okay,” Laura said. Her voice was shaking but the hands griping the stock of her flamethrower were steady. “I’m ready.” She glanced at Dan and he nodded. “We’re ready,” she amended. “Let’s do it.”
The catwalk again, leading them farther into the sewer and away from the Biltm
ore Hotel somewhere above. For some reason it was inexplicably darker the deeper they went, until their Afterburners seemed like pitiful candles in the blackness. Beneath their feet the walkway turned and they followed the pipe to the right, the only sounds accompanying their ragged breathing were the faint dribbling of running water and the tiny, faraway splashings of unseen creatures. Around the turn and twenty feet, thirty, then forty—
“Stop!” Dan said urgently. “She’s so close. I can feel her . . . arrogance.”
“Arrogance?” Laura asked, bewildered.
The glare of the Afterburner in his hands made Dan nothing but a disembodied voice behind her, a ghostly phantom. “Yeah. She’s . . . watching us, I think. Laughing because she sees us but we can’t find her.” He sounded petrified. “Viewing us as such easy prey.”
Press ran the light’s beam rapidly along the walls in front and in back of the group, the catwalk, the water. Nothing. Finally, he tried the ceiling of the main shaft, glimpsing only glistening pipes running off into the flat blackness. He swung the beam down and over the water’s surface again; they were lucky they weren’t being dripped on by the moisture above them—
With a yell of recognition, he brought the Afterburner back up, aiming it at the shining area on the ceiling. Shouting in surprise, Laura and Dan backpedaled as the light flashed across Sil’s eyes. They glittered redly for a half second, then she released the piping and sprang over their heads. Press let go with a blast from the flamethrower, but she was already gone. With a geyserlike spray, the sewer water enveloped her.
“My God,” Dan gasped. “She’s so fast!”
“And bigger,” Press said flatly. “A lot bigger.” He shot a glance at Laura and she nodded.
Species Page 23
