Holes in the Ground

by J. A. Konrath

  “You will beeeee the first to dieeeeeeeeee.”

  “Killing me isn’t going to be as easy as you think, but you’re welcome to try.”

  “I will doooooo more than tryyyyyyyyyyyyy.”

  “I expect you will. So what is your grand plan, then? Kill me, escape here, destroy most of humanity and enslave the rest?”

  “My vengeaaaaaance,” Bub said, grinning horribly, “will beeeeeeeeee biblical.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Andy rushed into Sun’s room, stopping abruptly at the foot of her bed.

  She wasn’t there. The handcuffs were still attached to the bedrail. They were bloody.

  He did a quick turn, looking all around, including under the bed and in the bathroom.

  “Sun!” he shouted.

  Andy turned back to face the doorway. Dr. Chandelling was standing there, seemingly baffled. “She’s not here?”

  “No. Get the nurse.”

  Dr. Chandelling nodded and went to turn away, but instead he froze in place, his features contorting into a picture of horror.

  Andy caught sight of the man’s fear and spun around. At first he saw nothing, but when he looked up…

  Sun hung from the ceiling, upside-down, her legs curled around an overhead beam. Her face twisted in a snarl, and her tangled hair was matted with sweat. And the hand that had been handcuffed to the bed…

  Sun’s thumb was broken, bending the wrong way, the bone jutting out and dripping blood.

  “Jesus Chr—”

  Dropping down like a bird of prey, Sun landed on her husband, pinning him to the floor. The sudden weight on Andy’s chest knocked all the breath from his lungs.

  Dr. Chandelling cried out, almost feminine in his high pitch. Sun’s head swivelled in his direction, a line of drool escaping her bared teeth. She growled.

  “I don’t think she’s well. No, not at all,” Dr. Chandelling said, backpedalling out of the room.

  “Hoooooow are yoooour eeeeeeears?” the creature said.

  Dr. Chandelling practically tripped over himself to get out of the room.

  Andy fought to suck in air as he reached up for his wife’s shoulders, trying to push her off. She slashed at his face, drawing blood from talons—Jesus, she has talons. Then she cocked her head and stared down at him, her demonic features softening.

  “Aaaaaaaandyyyyyy.”

  Andy fought two conflicting emotions, each primal and overpowering; the need to help the woman he loved vs. the need to get the hell away from the monster she’d become.

  He gasped. “Sun? Are you in there? Can… can you understand?”

  “Suuuuun is goooone.”

  She smiled, and her tongue flitted out between her lips. A thin, black tongue, split at the end like a snake’s.

  Sun leaned down, as if to kiss him, but instead began to lap at the slash mark on his cheek. Her tongue was cold and clammy, like a raw piece of liver being dragged over his face. It dug into his wound, twisting around and causing sparks of pain. Then it slipped between his lips, wiggling and trying to get past his clenched teeth.

  Andy did all he could not to vomit.

  “Oh my God!”

  A nurse had come into the room while Andy pushed against the creature that was once his wife. Sun’s head snapped up at the intrusion, twisting one-hundred-and-eighty-degrees so it faced the wrong way. Andy heard Sun’s neck vertebra pop in rapid succession, like stepping on a roll of bubble wrap.

  “Hellooooooooooo nurse.”

  “Sedate her!” Andy screamed.

  Sun jerked up to her feet, as if unseen hands were pulling her, and then she ran backwards at the nurse. Her shoulders dislocated with a sharp SNAP! as they stretched out behind her, reaching for the woman.

  The nurse screamed, and Andy kicked out a leg, tripping his wife and sending her backward—or rather face-first—to the floor.

  “Get Gornman!” he bellowed, then crawled onto Sun’s legs, trying to pin her down.

  Sun’s torso twisted, her spine torqueing in half, so once again her head and arms faced him. She looked like a doll with its parts all misaligned.

  Andy’s mind couldn’t comprehend it all. This was his wife. His mind was overloaded with fear, and revulsion, and sorrow, and love, and as much as he wanted to get away from her, Andy also wanted to hold Sun tight enough to stop her from turning herself into knots.

  But it was like wrestling a giant, wriggling cobra that wanted to bite you. She writhed in his grasp, slashing with her talons, hissing as her long tongue managed to slide itself up Andy’s left nostril.

  Andy shook his head, trying to dislodge the squirmy invader, choking as it forced itself through the nasal passage and into Andy’s throat.

  Then, suddenly, the tongue pulled out and Andy noticed someone giving Sun a shot in the neck with a large syringe.

  “Goooooonrmaaaaaaaan!”

  Sun bucked Andy off, sending him flying backward, and then twisted onto all fours and slashed at Dr. Gornman with her clawed hand.

  The doctor dodged the blow, leaving the syringe sticking out of Sun’s neck. Sun clawed at it, pulling it out, and then bolted through the door.

  “She won’t get far,” Gornman said. “I gave her enough azaperone to drop a rhino.”

  Andy got to his feet and scrambled out into the hall.

  Sun was nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Dr. Chandelling ran to his room, his back against the locked door. It had taken him a long time to adjust to working around monsters, and they’d always been locked up. To have one loose in the Spiral was enough to make his bladder clench.

  With his desktop computer he could view the surveillance cameras—he was only one of a few Spiral employees who had complete access to the entire facility—but Chandelling was too frightened to check. What if that creature Sun Dennison-Jones had become was killing people? Chandelling couldn’t bear to watch that.

  Or even worse… what if it was outside his door?

  The door to his room was for privacy, not security. A good shoulder butt would pop it out of its jamb, easily. The heavy duty security was meant to keep the creatures in their cells, not prevent them from getting into employees’ rooms.

  Chandelling put his ear against the door, closing his eyes, trying to listen.

  He heard some ruckus, screaming, but it was far away.

  The seconds ticked by.

  The screaming stopped.

  Then there was silence.

  Chandelling held his breath. He could hear his own heartbeat, a drum solo tap-tap-tapping in his chest.

  More silence.

  More seconds passing.

  Chandelling was gathering up the nerve to go to his computer when something scratched the door.

  Something like a claw being dragged across the wood.

  Chandelling recoiled, crab-walking on all fours away from the sound, bumping into his desk.

  For a moment, he wondered if he imagined the noise. His fear making him hear things that weren’t really there.

  Clearing his throat, he managed to squeak out, “Is anyone there?”

  No answer.

  Louder, Chandelling asked, “I said, is anyone there?”

  “Yeeeesssssssssssssssss.”

  The door burst inward, and the Sun-demon scurried inside Chandelling’s room on all fours. Chandelling was too frightened to move, rooted to his spot on the floor like a deer paralyzed by the headlights of an oncoming truck.

  The Sun-demon crawled up to him, placing a taloned hand on his chest. She smiled, a black tongue darting out of her mouth and poking Chandelling in the nose. Then it snaked around and—

  Jesus, no!

  My ear! That vile thing is in my ear!

  Chandelling began to buck and push as hard as he could. He remembered a date, decades ago, a girl had kissed his ear and he’d freaked out. This was a billion times worse.

  He felt his ear canal fill with warm, slimy tongue, pushing in deeper, deeper, until i
t rested up against his ear drum.

  Chandelling wet himself. The tongue withdrew suddenly, with a wet slurping sound.

  “Yoooooour card keeeeeeeeeey,” the creature said.

  That would be bad. With the card key, the creature had access to the entire Spiral. It could even escape.

  Or could it? Chandelling remembered that the most secure parts of the facility, including the surface exit, required a security code. The card would let it use the elevator, and run around the halls, but there were cameras everywhere except for employees’ rooms. Rimmer and his team would deal with this monster quickly. In fact, they were probably already on their way.

  So giving up his card key wasn’t an act of treason. It would be harmless. And besides, he could always say the Sun-demon simply stole it from him.

  “Jacket p-pocket…” he managed.

  Its claw deftly sliced open the breast pocket on his lab coat and snatched the key.

  “Coooooooooooooooooode.”

  Shit. It knows about the security codes.

  Chandelling was terrified, but he realized he couldn’t answer. He’d sworn an oath to make sure the monsters in the Spiral never got out. Upon penalty of death. Just one of these monsters, loose in the world, could cause untold disaster. And Chandelling had little doubt that General Kane, who walked around like he had a broomstick shoved up his ass, would follow the rules to the letter and execute Chandelling for giving away secrets.

  So Chandelling summoned up a deep reserve of courage he didn’t even know he possessed and told the creature, “No.”

  The demon grabbed Chandelling by the side of the head, and there was a moment of white-hot, blinding pain, followed by a tearing sound. Chandelling thrashed, trying to free himself, and when he focused on the demon once more it was dangling something pink over Chandelling’s face.

  That’s my ear!

  “Cooooooooooooooooooooooooooooode.”

  Chandelling screamed as blood flowed into his ear canal and muted the hearing on his right side. The silence, its meaning, the memories it brought back; it overwhelmed him.

  The Sun-demon moved her mouth to Chandelling’s other ear.

  Chandelling thought, in rapid succession: She’s going to bite it off. She’s going to bite off my ear.

  Then: I’ll have no ears. My hearing will be ruined.

  And finally, incongruously, ridiculously: How will I wear sunglasses? Duct tape them to my head?

  But she didn’t bite. Instead, the demon whispered. “I will feeeeeeeed you your eeeeeeears. Then I shall pop your eeeeeear druuuuums.”

  “H-how did… how you know?” he asked, whimpering.

  “Gooooormaaaaaan. She shoooooowed us your personnel fiiiiiiles.”

  Dr. Gornman. That traitor. What was her angle?

  Chandelling didn’t care. He didn’t care about Kane, either.

  All he cared about was his hearing. He couldn’t lose it again. He’d rather die.

  “I-I heard y-you have healing powers. C-can you fix my ear?”

  The demon cocked its head. “Weeeeeee caaaaaaaaaan.”

  “You… you can fix me… and you’ll let me live?”

  “Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssss.”

  Chandelling had never believed in God. He’d prayed too many times for the earaches to end, for his hearing to return, for his life to get better, and God hadn’t helped.

  Maybe he’d been praying to the wrong guy all along.

  “My code is 6-4-5-6,” he blurted out.

  Chandelling half-expected the Sun-demon to kill him right then. He realized, belatedly, that he should have gotten it to heal him first.

  But instead of ripping out his throat, it released him.

  Chandelling cleared his throat. “So… you’ll heal me?”

  “This vessel caaaaaaaaaannnnnot. The other mussssssst.”

  “The batling?”

  “Yesssssssssssssss. Waaaaaaait heeeeeeeere.”

  The demon dropped Chandelling’s ear on his chest, then sprung to its feet and fled the room.

  For a moment, Chandelling was in shock and unable to move. Then he finally pushed past the fear and pain and sat up, his ear falling to the floor. He picked it up, unsure of what to do with it, and caught sight of his aquarium in his peripheral vision.

  Cool water. I can keep it in cool water until Bub can fix it.

  Chandelling sprang to his feet, scurrying to the aquarium. His goldfish, Satchmo, eyed him passively. With no further thought, Chandelling opened the feeder panel on the tank and dropped his ear inside. It sank slowly, billows of blood staining the water around it, and finally came to rest on the multicolored gravel at the bottom.

  There. That will keep it cold. Now I just need to stop the bleeding and—

  Satchmo, normally docile, raced up to the ear and began to nip at it with the ferocity of a piranha.

  “Satchmo! No!”

  Chandelling banged on the glass, but the goldfish was in a feeding frenzy, attacking the ear in rapid nips, eventually getting the lobe into its tiny mouth and swimming for its little underwater castle.

  Chandelling tore off the top of the tank and spent the next two minutes trying to grab Satchmo and get his ear back.

  He failed.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Dr. Gornman watched her computer monitor while chewing on a wart she had on the knuckle of her thumb. The camera she’d selected was outside of Dr. Chandelling’s room, which she’d selected after Sun had broken in. There were no security cameras in private rooms—a silly privacy issue Gornman had never understood—so she had no idea what was happening inside.

  Had the demon killed him?

  Gornman had given it every opportunity to. She’d showed the Bub batling personnel files on all the staff members, holding them up to its cell glass, assuming a creature of such high intelligence could read quickly. The demon knew everything she did about every employee in the Spiral. Then she’d diluted the knock-out gas and tampered with the moving crate, weakening the lock before they attempted to transfer the demon. Her goal was for Bub to escape, and the goal was a selfish one.

  Everyone knew that if you made a deal with the devil, you got whatever you wanted.

  When Bub had bitten Sun, Gornman had given her shots of saline, saying it was broad spectrum antibiotics. If Bub had infected her, as Gornman hoped, she didn’t want to accidentally halt the process.

  Sun had become infected, in a big way, and Gornman had given her an amphetamine shot, saying it was a tranquilizer.

  Now she had to wait and see if Bub was as smart as the Samhain debacle showed he was.

  If he was, then Sun would soon free him, and Gornman could make her demands.

  She had a few doozies.

  No doubt Bub would take over the world. Gornman had studied the Samhain event like it was her graduate thesis, and was convinced the demon was destined to rule mankind.

  It would need a second-in-command. How did the old saying go?

  I’d rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.

  Gornman had been serving in hell—the Spiral—for far too long. Working with military idiots and ambitious bureaucrats and short-sighted scientists who cared more about useless research than practicality. Gornman’s vision, and her leadership skills, had been ignored. She’d been predicting Bub’s arrival for years, and now nothing would stop her from attaining the power she deserved.

  Chandelling’s door swung open, and the Sun-demon hurried through. It was too fast to make out any major details, but Gornman clearly saw a key card in its claw.

  It had gotten Chandelling’s access card. And no doubt his code as well.

  She leaned back in her chair, smiling, and then switched cameras, following the demon as it headed for the elevator.

  As expected, it chose subbasement 5.

  Going to free its master.

  Dr. Thandi Gornman smiled.

  Let the games begin.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Rimmer led Jerry down a ha
llway, past a cell containing a long, shiny log with hundreds of legs.

  Jerry squinted through the window. The log began to twist and undulate.

  A tree that could move?

  No, make that a giant centipede. One with mandibles large enough to grab a lamb, and black, beady eyes the size of baseballs.

  Bloody terrifying.

  I’m already terrified enough. Rimmer is probably leading me to my death.

  Will he shoot me?

  Or worse—stick me in one of these cells with some monster, or the unicorn like he promised?

  “So what now?” Jerry said, barely able to keep his knees from knocking together as he marched toward uncertainty. “You make me kneel down, put two in the back of my head?”

  Rimmer didn’t respond. Not a good sign. Jerry had been partly kidding, but now he wondered if he was, indeed, marked for execution.

  Jerry turned to look at him while he walked. He forced bravado. “So, do you kill innocent people a lot in your line of work? Or is this a special treat? Most people just get their kicks on Call of Duty.”

  Rimmer kept his stare forward. “You’re not innocent, Mr. Preston. You committed an attack against one of this nation’s secure, top-secret facilities.”

  “I was playing fetch with an over-sized dog. That’s my only crime. You saw it yourself.”

  “It’s not my place to say.”

  “No, you just take orders. You’re as much a dog as Wolfie was.”

  “Keep moving.” Rimmer’s pager on his belt went off. He checked the number. “Faster. I’ve got to go.”

  So this is it. I’m dead. This goose-stepping lackey is going to murder me in cold blood.

  Jerry’s thoughts turned to his mother, and how an embrace from her would hold value above all else at that moment. He thought about Ben, about stealing from his estranged father. He thought about fighting back when Rimmer pulled his trigger and dying like a man.

  “Why don’t you just do it here?” Jerry said, stopping, forcing himself not to cry. “In the hallway, for the cameras to see? Or does Kane want this kept off the record?”