* * * * *
The stairwell was lit. Dimly, but lit. Fluorescent lamps shuddered weakly on the cinderblock walls, strobing throughout the tall, square chamber of concrete steps and steel handrails. The smell of rot and mildew churned up from beneath, rushing for the open door as if the air had been trapped in this place for a very long time.
Jackson paused just inside the threshold, waiting for some reaction to the startlingly loud moan the door had made upon being opened, but there was none. The only sounds that answered were the hums and taps made by the feeble lights. Looking down, he could see that the building had an unexpected depth; it appeared to have a basement, something they hadn't noticed from outside. Four flights of steps above the basement entrance was the ground floor landing. Four more flights above that was the upper level, where he and Jesse now hesitated. Not a thing moved beneath, and they felt sure that the stairwell was empty.
Jackson and Jesse did, anyway. Khan, apparently quite sure of something else, lurched past them and began hurtling down the steps in threes and fours. He moved as if a pistol had gone off for a race only he was aware of, his feet slapping hard on the concrete steps, somehow never failing him.
Something had his attention.
"What the hell, man?" Jackson leaned over the railing, surprised by the volumous echoes of his own voice. Below, the steps formed a deep square spiral of gray shapes, hard shadows, and rigid angles. Khan was already halfway down to the unexpected basement.
Jackson growled and started stomping down the steps at a normal pace. "Seriously. What is his deal?"
"Oh, who knows," Jesse sighed, moving lithely down the steps to catch up. He swayed in close, intentionally allowing his shoulder to bump Jackson's. "Maybe he knew how badly we wanted to be alone ...."
Jackson pushed him away with enough force to flip him over the railing, which was his intention. As expected, Jesse righted himself in the air effortlessly and wafted down to the next landing, where he paused to wait with a devious, triumphant grin. A grin that disappeared when his back pocket began to buzz. His phone. The message. He reached to pull it out―
And froze. Jackson froze, too. With one foot still hovering above a step, he locked eyes with Jesse. Together, they looked over the railing, down toward the new sound.
It was Khan, racing back up the steps, kicking distance between himself and the basement. When he reached the landing just below Jesse, he flung himself around and stopped.
The basement door flew open with a startling noise, steel slapping into cinderblock. And then the stairwell exploded with footsteps, so rapid and dense they sounded like water pouring against the concrete floor.
Way too many feet to just be me, Corin, Ghi, and Abe.
Jackson and Jesse stepped away from the railing and started backtracking upwards quickly, exchanging glances of horror. Jesse lent a sliver of attention to the phone, then put it away.
"They found her," he confirmed hastily, but there was no space for relief in his voice.
When they were nearly out of stairs to climb, Jackson chanced another look down through the vertigo spiral of steps and rails. His eyes snapped against their tendons. The basement level of the stairwell was crawling with bodies, all rushing upward. More of them flowed from the basement door with every second.
"How many?" Jesse whispered over the incredible sound.
Jackson wordlessly pushed him toward the top of the stairs.
Too many.
Of course the upper level door made the same ungodly moan when opened again, and the footsteps of the Hollows quickened pace in response. Jackson looked down again, searching for Khan and spotting him at the ground floor landing, where he was pressed close to the wall like a tattooed shadow, poised and unmoving. There was no mistaking Khan's intent: he was a land mine lying in wait.
Jackson's brow set itself into a horizontal line, parallel with his mouth, which even then was upturned in the faintest hint of a smirk. Those Hollows didn't look so tough.
"Is he coming or what?" Jesse hissed impatiently, waiting by the door. Behind him was the pitch-black, hellish sanctuary of the upper level, empty and safe.
Jackson shoved him through the door and slammed it shut.
He gripped the handle firmly and waited, not allowing it to twist so far as a millimeter when Jesse fought to turn it. Jackson forced himself to focus, to let the vibrations of the cool metal drown out all the other sounds, just for a second.
"Hey!" Jesse shouted, drumming on the other side of the door. "Hey! Are you crazy? Come on!"
Jackson tuned him out. His senses invaded the steel, all its separate pieces, solid and resilient, malleable only to him. He flashed his teeth with satisfaction when the bolt locked, expanded, bonded to the doorframe itself and became part of it. He dropped his hand.
Jesse wasn't at all impressed by this neat trick. He gave up on the doorknob and began banging frantically on the door itself. "What the hell are you doing?! Get out here!"
The dust on the door's narrow window fell away in grimy clumps as Jackson smeared it with his hand, casting quick glances over his shoulder toward the growing noises of the Hollows. There was instant gratification in seeing Jesse's face, outlined in darkness and panicked of course, but above all utterly outraged.
"You got five minutes to get out of this building," Jackson shouted calmly through the thick glass. "Send a message to the others, tell them the same thing. Tell them Khan and I will be a little while."
Judging by the berserk way Jesse began throwing himself at the door, he did not agree with this plan.
"Stop wasting time, idiot!" Jackson slapped the glass. "Five minutes! Go!"
He turned away from the continuing protests and didn't look back. Jesse would eventually muster the common sense to do what he'd been told― Jackson hoped he would, anyway. There wasn't time to negotiate. There was only noise, and the violent scent of death, rising through the stairwell, buzzing up and down his spine, both invigorating and revolting. These things weren't going to get out of the stairwell, not if he could help it. They weren't going to get out of the building. By the time he was through, there wouldn't even be a building left.
Jackson reached the ground floor landing and halted for a moment, bracing himself at the sight. Khan had not moved; he stood facing down the rest of the stairs, shoulders squared, his sightless eyes unblinking and unflinching. And below him, a grotesque spectacle. Tens upon dozens of Hollows were packed rail to wall, all the way down to the basement door, writhing and grinding against each other. The ones closest to the top were blocking the way for all the others, paused just steps beyond Khan. They snarled and gaped up at him, unnerved and unsure, their bodies swaying eagerly from side to side, unable to hold still, yet not willing to leap.
Jackson had never seen anything less human in his life.
Shaking off the revulsion, he slapped Khan's shoulder and bounded over to the door.
"You want out?" he offered.
Khan's murky eyes never left the Hollows. His answer was a snort, an amused sound. Are you kidding? The shadows swarming across the cinderblock walls began to surge upward. The dying could no longer hold themselves back.
Jackson grinned. "Well, don't bottle it up on account of me," he said, locking his hand around the door handle. He nodded over his shoulder. "Roast 'em."
He heard Khan's soft laughter. And as he welded the door shut, just as he had welded the one above, he saw its metal surface reflect the sudden splash of orange, felt the bold wave of heat on his back.
Turning, Jackson saw what he expected. Pandemonium. The first wave of Hollows swathed in rolling flames, sweeping toward Khan, who was now standing within a pillar of white-hot fire. The creatures stormed the landing even as they were falling over one another and over the rails, screaming and cursing in ancient tongues. Beneath them squirmed countless more, clawing their way indiscriminately through their burning brethren.
Jackson pressed his back to the door, surprised by the suffocating heat.
He wasn't going to collapse the entire stairwell just yet, not with Khan still in there. But maybe he could cleave a section of the stairs away and trap the Hollows below, in a kind of giant concrete barbecue pit. Jackson leaned out over the railing, chewing on the idea. The basement door was still wide open, and for a second, he thought he heard something―a voice or a warning―coming from it. Which was stupid. Nothing, not even a Tyrannosaurus in heat, could have been heard over all the noise around him―the fire, the Hollows, the awakening hiss of the long-dormant sprinklers.
They will seek him.
The landing was filling up fast. Jackson, being that he wasn't on fire, easily became the more attractive target, and the Hollows soon diverted their eager attention to him. The first one to reach him was shoved over the railing immediately, and then another. A third Hollow dug jagged fingernails into Jackson's face before going down, and another wound its shifting black octopus of a hand around his arm. Jackson wrenched free and dove for the stairs, ducking under smoke and melting feet. A few bodies fell heavily around his waist and legs, trying to bring him down, but they didn't know that he'd once been star receiver for the Filbert High Falcons. No sir. He drove through, flung himself to the edge of the landing, threw his hands down on the first step, and told the solid construction of stone and metal what he wanted.
With massive and very satisfying snapping sounds, the entire length of steps fell away, along with all the Hollows who were fighting to get to the top of it―and also about half of the main landing.
Khan shouted something in wrathful Korean behind his veil of fire, leaping back from the crumbling edge just in time. Far below, the falling section of steps flattened at least two dozen Hollows.
"Sorry!" Jackson cringed and jumped to his feet, dodging the remaining Hollows. Though aggravated, Khan got the general idea right away. At his prompting, the basement level quickly filled with fire, transforming into a sort of hell that the Hollows could no longer climb out of. Nor could they exit in any other way, Jackson noticed, stealing a fast downward glance. The doomed were throwing themselves against the locked basement door, a sight which made Jackson do a double-take. Had that door not been open just a moment ago? Was all the heat and stench messing with his head?
There wasn't time to wonder about it. Jackson still needed to give Jesse and the others―Khan, too―a few minutes to get out of the building before he brought it down. And there were still more Hollows on the landing. More open, screaming mouths. More black coils, lashing and snapping toward him, circling around Khan. Jackson got back to work trying to force them off the broken ledge of the landing, with little success. There were just too many. Dozens. And they weren't waiting in line to tear him apart. They were at him like a pack of dogs.
Were they climbing out? He could no longer tell. The stairwell was tar-black with smoke, putrid with the scent of scorched death. There was something else in the air, too, something that twisted like the shadow of a flame. It struck at the fire surrounding Khan, shrinking and diffusing it, forcing him into a corner. Something was wrong.
And something hurt.
Jackson grabbed a handful of tangled hair and yanked at the Hollow whose teeth were buried in the tendon behind his knee, hurling her into the basement.
Reeling, he backed away from the countless fingers and teeth and slacked against the scalding metal door, forsaking all his firefighter's training for the emptiness in his lungs. He panted for air, pulling in only smoke and something else, something that felt like thorns against his windpipe. The same feeling coursed through his arms and legs; it circled his throat and filled his chest.
Jackson stared through the black haze at his own forearm and saw the long gash there, spilling over with blood and thick, gray fluid. Just a laceration, a cut. Nothing. No big deal.
Before his eyes, the gash split another four inches, tore itself wider and deeper.
And behind his knee. Around his neck. Both his hands. It was all over him, spreading and tearing, everywhere they had touched him.
"Jackson!"
The door behind him thumped. "Jackson! Let me in!"
Jesse, you fucking idiot. Jackson slumped around to face the door, cupping his hands against the dirty glass of the tiny window, unable to see out. How did he even get down here so fast?
He opened his mouth to shout, to say whatever it would take to make Jesse go away, but the pleas outside suddenly reached a fierce level of hysterics. And then they just became screaming. Awful, wordless screaming. The door banged and shook against Jackson's butchered hands.
Jesse wasn't beating on the door, he realized. He was being beaten into the door.
They were everywhere. Not just the stairwell.
Jackson grappled at the door handle. "Jesse! Hang on!"
The door didn't budge. Shit. Of course. He'd welded the bolt himself. He could un-weld it―
He never got the chance. Bodies slammed into him from behind, pressing him against the door before ripping him sideways. The door spun away, along with the floor and the broken railing. Jackson flailed, flipped, twisted in the air, watched the edge of the landing above slip out of reach.
Jesse wasn't going to catch him this time. He fell.
He fell to the bottom of the stairwell. Into Hell, a fiery mosh pit of bodies, still jumping and moving and moaning, spouting gobs of black plasma for heads and arms, sticking and melting into one another amid the flames. Jackson never felt the hard concrete floor, only the hot, squirming forms that crumpled beneath him. Without pause, more of them toppled over him like displaced water, one solid wave of disconnected hands and gasping mouths, pulling and tearing and burning.
He could bring the entire stairwell down and flatten every single one of them. He could do more than that. He could drive all the broken fragments into the earth and compress them until the whole place and the Hollows themselves were nothing but dust―
His reaching, grasping fingers touched the basement door, and he heard it again. He heard it somehow without actually hearing it, the same way Khan had heard it before charging down the stairs. There was laughter on the other side of that door. Death's laughter.
They will seek him.
And he will seek them.
Jackson roared and banged his fist against the door once, furiously. The side of his mangled hand split open like a rotten peach, and then burning limbs dragged him under.
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Vessel, Book I: The Advent Page 59
