Nightworld ac-6

by F. Paul Wilson

  The bigger ones tend to be slow; it will take them a while to get here, but they'll get here.

  Bill knew from the inexorable pull it exerted on Nick that there was no way he could resist its strength.

  In desperation he reached down to the tentacle encircling Nick's legs and slashed at it with the sword fragments. Another blinding, sizzling flash and suddenly the tentacle had uncoiled and was writhing and flopping furiously about on the stones like a beheaded snake.

  The villagers were now in complete disarray, stumbling about, swinging their torches and shields wildly in the air.

  "Back!" Bill cried. "Back to the keep."

  He pulled Nick to his feet and half carried him over the rocky ground toward the base of the tower, flailing about in the air with the metal shards, clearing a path through the bugs. Finally they were there, trailing some of the villagers, just ahead of a few others, stumbling through the doorway into the blessedly empty air of the keep. Bitten, bleeding, burned, they collapsed into panting heaps on the granite floor; compared to the rough stones outside, its smooth surface felt almost soft. Only the elderly Alexandru was standing, exactly where they had left him.

  "Where are the others?" he said, his eyes ranging through their ranks. "What happened to Gheorghe? And Ion? And Michael and Nicolae?"

  Bill lifted his head and counted. Only eight of the dozen villagers who'd gone out with him had made it back. He went to the door and looked out. Four torches burned smokily on the stones of the gorge. The men who had carried them were nowhere in sight. Behind him, the survivors began to weep and he felt his own throat tighten. Four brave men had sacrificed themselves so a stranger could dig up some chunks of old metal.

  Bill looked down at the fragments in his hand, then again at the four sputtering torches.

  These had damn well better be worth it.

  Outside, something huge and black dragged its enormous weight over the rubble of the gorge.

  Bill was ready to go. The two metal shards were settled deep in his pocket, Nick was strapped into the passenger seat, and the villagers had nailed a board across the land-rover's broken rear window. Bill hoped it blocked the bugs half as well as it blocked his rear view.

  "I don't want to go."

  Bill glanced at Nick and was shocked to see tears running down his cheeks.

  "Nick…?"

  "I like it here. I feel…better here. Please let me stay."

  "Nick, I can't leave you here. I've got to go back and we may need you back home. But once this is all over, I'll bring you back."

  He sobbed. "Do you promise, Father Bill?"

  Bill felt a sob building in his own throat. He gripped Nick's hand.

  "Yeah, Nicky. I promise."

  He felt miserable but hid it as he waved to Alexandra and the others.

  "Tell them I'll be back," he told the old man in German. "After this is all over, after the holes are closed and the monsters are gone, I'll be back. And I'll tell the world of the bravery of your people."

  Alexandra waved but did not smile. There were tears in his eyes. Bill shared his grief, not only for the dead but for Alexandra's little community. A village atrophying and dying as was his could not afford to lose four of its most vital men.

  "I'll be back," he said again. "I won't forget you."

  And he meant it. If he survived this, if he was alive to do so, he'd be back.

  He threw the vehicle into first, and started out the gate onto the causeway. The bugs swarmed around him. He was halfway across when the headlights picked up the first tentacle. It lay stretched lengthwise along the planks and lifted its tapered tip at Bill's approach, as if watching him, or catching his scent.

  Bill stopped and squinted into the darkness as other tentacles pushed forward to join the first. Soon the causeway was acrawl with them. He found the high-beam button on the floor to the left of the clutch and kicked it.

  Bill gasped and instinctively pressed himself back in his seat when he saw what waited at the far end of the causeway. The light from his high-beams reflected off a huge, smooth, featureless, glistening black mass, thirty feet high and at least a hundred feet across. He looked for eyes or a mouth but could find none. Just slimy-looking blackness. A huge slug-like creature with tentacles.

  And those tentacles were reaching for him, stretching closer.

  Bill looked for a way out, a way to get around it, but its massive bulk blocked the end of the causeway. Even if he could run the land-rover over the tentacles, he'd end up against the immovable wall of the thing's flank.

  The tip of one of the tentacles suddenly appeared at the end of the hood. It coiled around the hood ornament and pulled. Bill shifted into reverse and backed up a dozen feet. The tentacles inched after him.

  I'm trapped, dammit! Trapped until morning!

  He pounded the steering wheel in impotent rage and undiluted frustration. He had the shards that he'd come for and he couldn't get them back to Glaeken, couldn't even set off for his return trip to Ploiesti until dawn.

  More time wasted. And another night without seeing Carol. He wanted to be with her. Every moment was precious. How many did they have left?

  Using the rearview mirror, he carefully backed the vehicle through the gates of the keep, then sat behind the wheel and swallowed the pressure that built in his chest as he stared out at the night. He felt like crying.

  "We're back?" Nick said, smiling. "Oh, I'm so glad we're back."

  WNEW-FM

  FREDDY: Jo's catching a few much-needed Zs, but I'm still here with you, and I'm afraid it's time to get back inside. It's 4:48. Ten minutes to sundown. Get your butts to safety right now.

  MANHATTAN

  Carol watched the light fade from the sky over the darkened city and thought of how lucky they were to have generators for the building. She thought of Bill. He'd been an integral part of each thought since he'd left yesterday morning, but especially now, with dark coming.

  "Where is he?" she said to Glaeken.

  He was passing behind her, carrying an empty tray from Magda's room. He paused beside her.

  "Still in Rumania, I should think."

  She glanced at her watch. Almost five here. That meant it was almost midnight over there. Almost Wednesday.

  "But he should have been back by now."

  "Could have been back, perhaps, but as for should…" He shook his head. "I don't think so." He reached out and laid a scarred hand gently on her shoulder. "Don't worry yet. Not until tomorrow. If he's not back by this time tomorrow, then worry. You'll have company then—I'll be worrying with you."

  He left her and headed toward the kitchen.

  Carol continued to stare at the darkening city, wondering about Hank now. The thought of him was a sharp blade sliding between her ribs. He'd deserted her. How could he do that? And yet, strangely, she felt no malice toward him. But where had he disappeared to?

  THE NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE

  By nightfall Hank was utterly exhausted, but he would allow himself no sleep.

  How could he? With darkness the drain pipe had come alive. First the sibilant stirrings, echoing softly around him, ballooning to a cacophony of hard-pointed mandibles clicking a hungry counterpoint to countless chitonous feet scraping against the concrete; then the sinuous shapes, faint and vague in the light of the rising moon slanting through the grate, undulating toward him from left and right, sloshing through the water below, crawling along the ceiling of the pipe directly above him, the thinnest of them as thick as his upper arm, the largest as big around as his thigh, ignoring him as they slid by, weaving over, under, and around each other with a hideous languid grace that seemed to defy gravity, blackening the pale gray of the concrete with Gordian masses of twisting bodies, blotting out the moon as they nosed against the closed grate.

  He heard a metallic scrape, a screech, then a clank as the grate fell back onto the pavement above. A sudden change came over the millipedes. Their languor evaporated, replaced by a hungry urgency as they thrashed and c
lawed at each other in a mad frenzy to join the night-hunt on the surface.

  Moments later, the last of them had squeezed through. Once again there was moonlight and Hank was alone.

  No…not alone. Something was coming. Something big. He knew without looking what it was. And a few minutes later he saw her huge pincered head rise and hover above him, swaying.

  Not again! Oh, no, Lord, not again!

  He'd worked since dawn on regaining control of his limbs, and for most of the day it had seemed a hopeless task. No matter how he concentrated, how he strained, his body simply would not respond. But he'd kept at it, and as the light had started to fail, he'd begun to achieve some results. He'd noticed muscle twitches in his arms and legs, in his abdominal muscles. Either the toxin was wearing off or he was overcoming it. It didn't matter which. He was regaining control—that was what mattered.

  But all his efforts would be for naught if the queen dosed him again with her neurotoxin.

  She made no move, simply hovered there with her head hanging over him. Did she suspect anything?

  Oh, Lord, oh, Lord, oh, Lord, oh, Lord!

  He'd spent the entire day willing his muscles to move, now he was begging them to be still. One twitch, one tremor, one tiny tic, and she'd ram her proboscis into his gut again and put him back where he started.

  She watched him for what seemed like forever, then she began to move—

  No!

  —her head lowering toward his belly—

  NO!

  —and past him. She arched over him, her hard little feet brushing across the skin of his abdomen. He could feel nothing but he saw his abdominal muscles twitch and roll with revulsion and he prayed she wouldn't notice.

  She didn't. Her near-endless length finally cleared him and she wound her way up through the drain opening and into the night.

  Now he was alone! And now was the time for action.

  He strained his arms and legs upward as if fighting against steel manacles. To his delight he saw the muscles bulge with the effort. His fingers didn't move, didn't close into the rebellious fists he willed for them, but he watched the veins in the undersides of his forearms swell as blood coursed into the resistant muscles, watched his abdominals ripple and swell around the wound as he tried to sit up.

  But nothing was happening. His veins and arteries continued to swell, stretching against the envelope of skin, his abdomen rippled like the Atlantic in a hurricane, but there was no sign of voluntary movement, only chaos.

  And then his eyes snapped to the wound below his navel. Something moved there. Something wriggled within it. This morning's scream built again in his unresponsive throat as two slim black pincers, each no more than an inch long, poked into the air. A multi-eyed head, deep brown and gleaming, followed. It paused, glanced around, fixed Hank with its cold black gaze, then dragged its long, many-legged length from the wound with a crinkling slurp. Another identical creature quickly followed. Then another.

  Hank's once quiescent and unresponsive body was moving now with a will of its own, writhing, bucking, convulsing, rocking up and down, back and forth in its webbed hammock as his veins and arteries bulged past the limits of their tensile strength and ruptured, freeing more wriggling, pincered, millipedic forms.

  Something snapped within Hank's mind then. He could almost hear the foundations of his sanity begin to crack and give way. And that was good. He welcomed the collapse.

  Yes. Welcomed it. A whole new perspective. Everyone above ground was dying. Dying and decomposing. Not Hank. No way. Hank was alive and would stay alive through these, his children.

  Parenthood at last.

  If only I could cry!

  He'd wanted it so long, now it had happened. His children. They'd grown within him. Fed off him. Made him part of them. He'd go on living through them while everybody else—including the cop lieutenant and his two renegade underlings—died.

  If only I could laugh!

  He watched with pride as dozens more of his children broke free of the cramped confines of his body to swarm and crawl with wild abandon over his skin. So good to see them free and moving about, stretching their slender, foot-long bodies, gaining strength before heading to the surface and joining the great hunt. Some of them tangled and began to rake and spear each other with their pincers.

  No fighting, children. Save it for topside.

  Just then two more broke free from the sides of his throat, trailing remnants of the arteries through which they'd been traveling. They reared up and faced him, swaying back and forth like cobras before a snake charmer.

  Yes, my children, he wanted to tell them, I am your Daddy and I'm terribly proud of you. I want you to—

  They darted forward without warning, each burying a pincered head hungrily into one of his eyes.

  No! he wanted to say. I'm your Daddy! Don't blind Daddy! How can he watch you grow if you eat his eyes?

  But they were naughty children and didn't listen. They kept burrowing inward, deeper and deeper.

  If only I could scream!

  WPIX-TV

  dead air

  MAUI

  Night was falling.

  Jack stood in the great room and stared again at Moki's giant sculpture. The closer darkness came, the more repellent he found the piece. The stench of rotting fish from outside only made it worse. Its foulness urged him to smash it back into its component fragments.

  He turned at a sound behind him and saw Kolabati emerging from the bedroom. Alone. Finally. Her dark eyes flashed with excitement as she strolled toward Jack. And as she passed she pressed something into his hand—warm, heavy, metal. He glanced down.

  The necklace.

  "Moki?" he said.

  She motioned him to follow her to the lanai.

  "He's wearing your fake," she whispered when they'd stopped at the railing.

  "And he's still…?"

  Bitter anguish dulled the animation in her eyes as she nodded. "Still the same."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Put it on," she whispered, touching the hand that held the necklace.

  Jack thrust it into his pocket. "Better not. He'll notice."

  "Put it on. You'll need it. Trust me."

  Jack shook his head. "I'll be okay."

  He looked out over the darkening valley. In the ocean beyond it he saw the white water of the whirlpool fading to gray. The maelstrom was slowing. Soon the geyser would begin and the air once again would be full of dying fish and hungry bugs.

  But there was still time to make it to Kahului and take to the air.

  He turned back to Kolabati. "What about the rest of it? What about you? Are you coming back to New York with me?"

  "Do you trust me, Jack?" she said. Her gaze drilled into him. The answer seemed very important to her.

  "Yes," he said, not completely sure of the truth here, but saying it anyway.

  He sensed the new, improved Kolabati could be trusted further than the old, but how much further he couldn't say. He wasn't quite ready to stake his life on it yet.

  "Good. Then I'll return to New York."

  Jack couldn't resist wrapping his arms around Kolabati and hugging her. She truly had changed.

  "Thank you, Bati. You don't know what this means to me, to everyone."

  "Don't get the wrong idea, Jack," she said levelly. "It's good to have your arms around me again, but I'm not giving up my necklace. I have no intention of doing that. I'm going back to New York just to talk to this ancient man you've told me about. That and nothing more."

  "That's fine. That's all I ask. I'll leave the rest up to Glaeken. I know he can work something out with you. But let's get moving. We haven't got much time."

  "Not so fast. There's still tonight's ceremony."

  Jack pushed her to arm's length but Kolabati clutched his forearms, refusing to let him go.

  "Ceremony? You're going to let him kill another—?"

  And then Jack remembered how last night Moki had let the Niihauan stab him first. Wa
s that what she wanted? To see Moki die? Did she hate him that much for going crazy on her? He looked into her eyes and couldn't read them.

  He would never understand this woman. Fine. But could he trust her? Her allegiances seemed as mercurial as her moods.

  "That's my condition. After the ceremony, I'll return to New York. You have my word.

  "Bati?" a voice called from inside.

  And then Moki stepped out onto the lanai. His eyes flared when he saw the two of them touching. He took Kolabati by the arm and pulled her away.

  "Come. We'll start the ceremony early tonight." He glared at Jack. "I'm especially looking forward to this one."

  As Kolabati followed him into the house, she looked back at Jack and mouthed three words: Wear…the…necklace.

  When they debarked from the Isuzu, Moki turned to Jack and jabbed his index finger at his chest.

  "We came early because it will be you who faces Maui tonight."

  Jack smiled. "I don't think so."

  "If you can defeat me in the ceremony, you may have her. Otherwise she stays with me and you return to America."

  Jack noticed how Moki had said "America" instead of "the mainland." Apparently Maui had seceded from the union, at least in Moki's mind.

  Jack looked at Kolabati. She returned his stare coolly.

  "So…this is what you meant by 'after the ceremony.' Swell."

  She nodded. That was all.

  "Come," Moki said, gesturing to the crater's edge. "It's time."

  Jack hesitated. This was happening too fast. None of it was in his plan. He didn't like surprises, and this was a particularly ugly one. Kolabati had known about it before when they were whispering on the lanai. Had she cooked it up with Moki, or was this all his idea?