“Unidentified—skkkttt—level one!” crackled someone over the common channel. “Concentrate fire on—skkkttt—eliminate or con—skkkttt—” The channel went dead.
A voice bubbled through the mud packing Thorne’s mind. It was like a hand pulling her out. “Agent Thorne,” it said. She turned to see Ross at the top of the stairs, leaning over the curved rail. “I think you’d better follow me.”
Twenty-Six
Beth followed the thing’s path with her eyes. The devastation was near total. Broken planks rippled up along the way like time-twisted piano keys. A ten-foot length of the roof rail had been knocked clean off with one whip of her tail. Even the body of the man who had been trapped in the pod was crushed flat and swept away, nothing left but a smear.
The staircase was still there, but the hole leading down to it was now twice as large, a shark’s mouth of jagged splinters. Jack stood over it, staring into the open maw.
He turned to her. “Are you all right?”
“I’ve been worse,” she lied. Her words siphoned through her crushed trachea like diamond chips, and her throat ached from her clavicle to her ears. “What the hell was that thing?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she do to you?”
“I don’t know that, either. She touched my mind somehow. I saw things. I felt things.” Jack turned to the towering mound and whatever else was inside it. “She’s protecting that. I think . . . I think she was trying to see if we meant her harm. Meant it harm.”
“Do we?”
Shouts came from beneath them, along with screams and gunfire.
“Not as much as they do, apparently.”
Beth’s eyes landed on Jack’s ruined pistol, now just so much twisted metal. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“How?”
Beth shook her head. There was no way they were fighting their way back out, not the way they’d come. All they had left were salt, stakes, and road flares. None of it would do much good against that thing if it came back or against the Division, either. “There has to be an exit. Fun houses are like that, right? The way out is through? So where is it?” Her eyes racquetballed around the rooftop, bouncing from dead end to dead end, until they finally landed on the deadest end of them all, the one Jack was pointing at.
“It’s that way,” he said, his voice as hollow as a dry well. “Or should be . . .”
There was an exit. It was the one any park attendee would have taken back when the place was up and running. And that exit would lead them in the opposite direction of both the creature and the Division. It might even lead them right outside. There was only one problem. The way was blocked—totally, impenetrably blocked by that giant spiral mound. “Can we burn our way through? Use the flares?”
Jack reached out a hand to feel the mound’s papery skin. “It’ll go up fast. And it’ll take the rest of this place right up with it.”
The chamber closest to Beth was open at one hexagonal end, as were most of the chambers. But a few near the bottom were sealed. “Those are people in there? In those pods? Aren’t they?”
Jack shook his head. “Not anymore. She’s done something to them.”
“Done what to them?”
Jack had no answer. He just stared forward as the deck beneath them began to shake. Then came bursts of gunfire, childishly thin-sounding. Nothing but Fourth of July firecrackers, lied Beth’s ears.
“We can’t stay up here,” she said, quickly checking over the side to see if there was anything that might break their fall. Sixty feet down was nothing but an endless slab of concrete crawling with the shadows of Division agents. More screams, more gunfire, and hard cracks of breaking timber echoed from beneath them.
“Okay, then,” he said. “How many flares do you have?”
Beth checked her belt. “Four.”
“Me, too.” He turned again to the mound. “We’ll set that on fire. I think she’ll try to protect it. I know she will. After she comes through the hatch, we’ll drop back down and start tossing more flares behind us as we go. She’ll be stuck up here with no way out, and maybe, just maybe, we can make it to the Ferris wheel tower.”
“Jack, that’s suicide.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think we’ve got any other options.”
She took another hard look at the mound. Once this was over, even if they survived, they would never know just what that thing was. It would be as much of a mystery to them as the creatures they hunted. They would never know where she came from or why she had entombed those people like larvae.
Jack tugged a flare from his belt. Red-orange sparks spit from the end as he clacked it to life. He wavered over to the base of the mound.
“Should we open them up?” she asked, unable to tear her eyes from the sealed chambers. There were people in there. They were alive, no matter what Jack said. “Let them out? Give them a chance? Maybe some of them—”
“No,” he said. “They can’t survive on their own. You saw what happened to that woman. She lasted all of about two minutes after she hit the deck . . .”
“Yeah, but . . .” Jack’s voice melted into a distant hum. That woman, that’s what he’d said. That woman . . . she lasted . . . Only Beth hadn’t seen a woman. She’d seen a man. She forced herself to remember the face. How could she have missed it then? It belonged to the boy with the seeker’s eyes, the same face the creature that had gotten squashed flat in Kentucky had worn when she saw it.
“Jack,” she said. “I didn’t see a woman. I saw a man.”
He swiveled his gaze to her, eyes wild. “What?”
“I saw a man. It’s not people in there, Jack. It’s creatures.”
Jack froze. “She’s not killing them. She’s collecting them.”
“Collecting them?”
An unspoken why floated between them, a bubble that would not burst.
The flare in Jack’s hand sputtered, almost as if to remind him of its existence, to remind him of what needed to be done. He took another step, ready to thrust the burning end deep into the nearest hollow chamber, when there came a deep and unfamiliar voice from behind them.
“Throw the flare over the side. Where it won’t hurt anyone important.”
Beth whipped around. At the head of the stairs stood a man and a woman, both in suits, both brandishing Tasers. The man’s eyes went wide when he spotted the mound, now painted red in the flare light. “What is that?”
“Whatever it is, Ross,” Jack answered, “it belongs to that thing down there.”
“Then we wouldn’t want any harm to come to it before she’s been contained.”
“Contained?” Beth couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Are you insane?”
“Agent Thorne,” Ross said, as if Beth’s words were nothing more than errant puffs of milkweed. “On my mark.”
“Copy,” said Thorne.
“Mark.” A tangle of wires burst from Ross’s Taser, hitting Jack square in the chest. He stiffened and went to his knees in a spasmodic jerk. Thorne fired, too, but Beth dodged, and the probes landed in the papery husk of the mound.
Jack’s flare fell from his hand, still sparking as it rolled away from his twitching body. Beth dove for it, just able to sweep it up from the floor. She rose, holding it aloft. “Stop it. Or I’m setting this whole place on fire.”
“You two certainly like to burn things, don’t you?” Ross bore down on the Taser, sending a fresh burst of electricity coursing through Jack. “Tell your companion to see reason, Jack.”
“F-f-f-f-fuck off.”
Thorne was fumbling with her Taser, desperate to jam another cartridge into it.
“I mean it!” Beth thrust the flare to within inches of the mound. She could hear the bodies of the creatures writhing in the pods as the sparks hit the husks, could see their silhouettes twisting inside.
Thorne saw it, too. “What are those in there?”
“If you don’t drop those fucking Tasers, you’re never going to find o
ut.”
Ross eyes flared, betraying the deep hate of a man who isn’t used to losing.
Beth shifted closer to the mound. Its skin began to blacken like newsprint in a fireplace. “Throw those down! Do it!”
Thorne threw her Taser to the ground first, and after a moment, so did Ross. Jack yanked the probes from his chest, stumbling to his feet.
Another eruption of gunshots clanged beneath them. More screams came from the open hole behind Ross and Thorne. The floor beneath them shook, tilting as one of the high-tension wires anchoring the giant head popped its mooring. The steel cable zipped in between them, trailing a lethal chunk of masonry. It whipped over the side, shearing through one of the ramparts. The sole remaining cable bayed like a theremin. The metal frame of the giant groaned as gravity came to claim it.
“You have to let us go!” Beth howled at Ross. “Or we’ll all die!”
“And?”
It was useless. She could see that in his eyes. If they tried to fight him with a single road flare, they would lose. There was only one way out, the way they’d come in. The Ferris wheel tower. But between them and it was nothing but a hundred feet of empty air.
Twenty-Seven
Beth turned to Jack. He was still weaving from the Taser hit. “How are you?”
“I’ve been worse,” he said, echoing her earlier statement but keeping his gaze firmly on Ross and Thorne.
She flicked her eyes to the giant’s hollow head, now just moments from collapsing. If her dimly remembered geometry lessons didn’t fail her, when it fell it would just about hit the Ferris wheel tower. “Up for hitching a ride out of here?”
Jack almost smiled. “Sure.”
Ross spotted the exchange. Beth could see the tumblers falling into place behind his eyes. He lunged forward, but in that same instant, she jammed the flare deep into one of the mound’s hollow chambers.
It blazed instantly. Ross yanked off his jacket and tried to beat back the flames. They bolted for the giant. Jack scrambled into the concave hollow, and she followed. Together they climbed.
This has to work, she pleaded with the Universe as she pulled herself up, hands seeking any crevice that would give purchase. It just has to. And it could work. At least in theory. If that last cable snapped, all they had to do was hang on long enough to make it to the tower; then it would work. If the cable would snap before one of the agents shot them, then it would work. If the force of the collision didn’t topple the tower, then it would work. If that thing didn’t come back. If if if . . .
A shot rang out. Beth froze, cowering. But it wasn’t a gunshot. It was the cable. Suddenly, they were weightless, riding the giant. It was falling forward, those child-snatcher hands leading the way. The head slammed into the tower midway up. An electric thwang rippled through every one of Beth’s bones, and the whole tower rang out like a six-story tuning fork.
An eerie quiet that Beth thought might only be in her mind washed over everything as they hung there, suspended for a few eternal seconds before the head began to crater.
Beth clambered up. Splinters dug deep into her palms as she wrenched herself forward, hand over hand over hand. She felt the touch of cold metal. She’d made it to the tower. She scurried up with squirrel quickness.
The castle was in full blaze now. Smoke billowed from the top like a cauldron, and flames licked the roof. Below, the Division agents scrambled to get out from under the collapsing giant. And those who had gotten clear were already taking aim at her.
Jack was still in the hollow crater of the giant’s head when it buckled again, buckled deeper, splitting like a cheap Styrofoam cup. He tumbled back, sliding toward the divot as the pitch went nearly vertical.
Beth didn’t pause to think. She dropped down to a lower crossbeam, gripped it with one hand, and reached out. “Jack! Take my hand!” He reached for her. She felt her tendons stretching to the breaking point, but her fingertips merely brushed his.
“You’ll have to jump!”
He did. As his feet left the plywood deck, a deafening crack split the air. His hand grasped her wrist as the giant crumbled to the concrete floor in a jet trail of debris.
Beth swallowed a scream as her hand went numb, and her shoulder popped from its socket. She hauled Jack onto the nearest beam. The pain was like lightning dancing through every fiber of her body. She finally Jack let go, but the agony only doubled as her arm snapped back into place.
A pair of Taser probes plinked between her boot soles. She felt the tower shudder, heard more clanging, and looked down to see that three Division agents had already mounted it. And they were gaining fast. No time to worry about her arm. No time to worry about anything. She climbed and did not look back.
• • •
The lip of the roof came into sight. Beth could taste the open air, taste freedom. If they could just make it there, they might be able to hold off their pursuers. They climbed more frantically, spidering diagonally up the beams as more Taser wires burst all around them like New Year’s Eve confetti streamers.
They made level with the roofline. Beth was just about to jump for it when she heard that unworldly howl again, piercing the roar of the flames like a javelin. It was the same cry she’d heard on top of the castle, the raptor cry of that new creature.
She was perched on the roof of the burning castle, backlit by the inferno like an angel of the Apocalypse. She reared back, high on her coiled tail, and dived straight down, hitting the ground with daisy-cutter force. The concrete cracked in a web, jagged chunks heaving upward.
Beth’s feet slipped out from underneath her as the shock wave hit the tower. She hung on tight, catching sight of one of the agents below her as he fell kicking and clawing, trying to find some purchase on the void for a few sick moments before smacking into the ground. His head caved in on impact like a ripe pumpkin, brains oozing onto the concrete.
Beth scrambled to get a better grip on the tower, watching helplessly as the thing snaked toward them with a speed that didn’t seem bound by the laws of physics.
She lashed out with her tail. The whip end hit the ankle of one of the remaining agents, wrapping around it. She plucked him off like a grape and dropped him, screaming, into the roiling twist of her coils. His wails cut to a hard crunch as the coils constricted, a sheet of blood slicking them.
The agents on the ground opened fire. They showered the thing with bullets, sodium silver-nitrate pellets, even Taser blasts. Every ounce of firepower at the Division’s disposal was trained in a tight vortex with her in the center, and it did nothing. All of it simply ricocheted off her chitin armor.
“Now!” Beth yelled to Jack. “While they’re distracted.” This was their only chance at escape, no matter how willowy. Beth jumped for the roof edge.
Jack followed.
Twenty-Eight
Fireworks exploded in Agent Thorne’s vision as she ran headlong into the glass. She heard the hard crunch of cartilage reverberate through her skull, felt a gush of blood and snot run hot down into her mouth. She peeled herself from the mirror, still reeling from the blow. Her flashlight only lit up the maze in patches, but she caught one quick glance at her own reflection. She hoped the image, nothing but her frightened eyes staring through a smeared red splotch, wouldn’t prove prophetic.
Don’t panic, she commanded herself. Don’t panic! DON’T PANIC! She clenched and unclenched her fists. You can do this. You made it through here. You can make it out again. She reached out both hands, fingertips brushing the mirror and glass walls, seeking the rare arch that held neither, all the while pushing the swelling panic deep.
The Crystal Palace had been difficult enough to navigate on the way in, when there was nothing behind her but Agent Lamb. But here in the dark, with that thing closing in on her, escape had never felt so far away.
The image of Lamb’s severed head, lolling mouth open, on the fun-house floor sent fresh waves of vomit and bile to the back of her throat. She swallowed hard, choking back another retch at the
taste.
She had lived. She had lived when so many others had died. Why? She shook her head, trying to blot out the images of what she’d witnessed—the limbs flying, the heads twisted off, the blood coating the coils of that thing’s—Stop it! Just stop it!
She repeated it in her head—Stop it! Just stop it!—until it became a mantra. She clung to it as she wormed her way along the maze’s twists and turns.
No matter what Ross had said, for her, priority one was survival. It was getting the fuck out of here. If Ross had a problem with that, he could take it up with her later—if either of them somehow managed to make it out of this abattoir.
The last she’d seen of Ross, he was still beating his suit jacket against the flames on the castle roof. Jackson and Becker had just gone over the side when that . . . that woman . . . that thing burst through the stairway hatch, raining planks and nails all around them. She had to be fifteen feet long at least, even larger than she’d seemed in the hallway. And when she saw the fire, she knocked Ross aside like a green plastic army man on her way to that hive or whatever the hell it was.
And then the thing had screamed. Thorne still couldn’t get that scream out of her head. God, it would haunt her till the day she finally slept under the dirt. An unholy cross between a bird of prey and rending steel, at the volume of a fleet of jet engines. It was that scream, more than anything else, that had sent Thorne running.
She’d managed to slip back down the spiral staircase—or what was left of it. It seemed like only every third step remained clinging to the center mast. The hallway where they’d first fought that thing was in ruins, one wall smashed to hanging splinters and the other knocked down completely. Thorne had to step over the torn and bloody remains of at least ten agents just to make it to the door, the shifting floor slick with blood and worse, the rusty stench of gore crawling up her nose.
Outside the fun house, Thorne looked up just in time to see the monstrous creature leap from the castle ramparts and land on the concrete floor, leaving a cracked crater where she’d touched down.
As the Worm Turns Page 48
