by John Sneeden
The captives and their contingent of guards brought up the rear. Zane was right. It would be foolish to attack now. There was still time to find a more suitable place and more suitable circumstances.
After crossing the plaza, the group arrived at a street. Zane moved to the right “This way.”
“I thought you didn’t have your map,” Amanda said.
“Yeah, well… it looks prettier this way.”
They had only walked a few yards when Carmen was filled with the sensation they were being watched. She stopped and turned back toward the plaza. People were passing the pool. For a brief instant, she thought she saw someone on the far side looking in their direction, but the crowd soon swallowed them up. She continued to stare for a moment but never saw the face again.
She turned and hurried after the others. The buildings seemed dark and deserted, and yet she felt as though something—or someone— lurked there, hidden in the shadows.
Waiting, watching.
***
Camilla Lawson walked slowly through the plaza, taking in the magnificence of the city. Goose bumps swept over her arms as she imagined the thousands of relics that must be hidden amongst all the stone. It might be the largest cache of treasure in the history of humankind, and soon, it would all belong to her and Roger.
She cast her light toward a temple on the left. She envisioned a scene from millennia past. Robed men and women walked in and out through the columned portico on their way to perform sacred rituals. But who were they? Who were the people who’d lived here in ages past? Roger believed it might have been an extinct race, the mysterious ones the world religions called the Watchers. Perhaps aliens descended here, passing along their technology to primitive man. That might explain some of the strange architecture.
Despite the excitement of the moment, Camilla couldn’t shake the sense of unease at leaving the Americans at the other site. Instead of killing them, Roger had chosen to play games, something he did all too often. His ego drove him to make everything a show.
Camilla pushed aside the thoughts. In the end, there was little chance the Americans would escape, and worrying about it wouldn’t make matters any better.
As they came to the end of the plaza, Camilla looked across the pool. A few members of the order were walking there. She was about to bounce her eyes away when a strange movement kept them there. One of the robed members had a distinct gait. Camilla slowed and examined the person more closely. Where had she seen that walk before? It was stiff and awkward, almost robotic.
She fought to recover the memory. An image flashed in her mind—someone else she’d seen walking earlier in the evening.
She stopped. Her chest tightened as she realized who it was she’d seen before—the Japanese woman who’d accompanied the Americans. Her walk was so odd Camilla thought she must have been in an accident at some point.
But was it really her?
Camilla looked at the group the woman walked with and counted their number.
Five.
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. It didn’t seem possible, and yet…
She looked ahead. Roger and the others were now some fifty yards away. She’d let them keep going. She had work to do.
Reaching into her pocket, she made sure her tiny revolver was still hidden there. The five had turned right and were disappearing down a dark street. Camilla hurried in that direction, slipping into the shadows behind them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“AM I THE only one who is really creeped out by this place?” Emily asked as they continued down the street.
“If you weren’t, I’d think you were strange,” Zane replied. “Just keep reminding yourself it’s deserted. The only thing we’re going to find here are stones and bones.”
Carmen disagreed but remained silent. She still felt the presence of something out there but had no proof beyond vague intuition. And in the absence of proof, there was no sense in making everyone unnecessarily jumpy. After all, they had important work ahead of them.
Zane looked at Keiko. “How deep are we below the surface?”
“We’re approaching a thousand feet, sir.”
“Good grief. That’s almost a quarter mile down. How are our oxygen levels?”
“Oxygen levels are satisfactory, and there are very low levels of carbon dioxide.”
As they walked, Carmen looked at a building on their left. For some reason, her eyes came to rest on a bottom-floor window. The shadows seemed to twist slightly, as though something pulled back out of sight. She stopped and stared, but nothing moved again.
Keep walking. It’s only your imagination.
Amanda looked up. “The architecture is so fascinating. As I said before, it’s a mix of so many different styles. Some of the structures—the columns, the fountain—remind me of known ancient cultures, but others look strange, almost futuristic.”
“I noticed the same thing,” Emily said. “Maybe successive cultures came and lived here.”
“Maybe,” Amanda said, “although it’s not the way you’d normally see it. In archaeology, you typically find one civilization built on top of another, not side-by-side.”
As they passed through an intersection, Carmen heard something down a street to the left. It sounded like the faint shuffling of feet. She froze, letting the others move on. A few seconds later, she heard it again, this time further away. This time, she wasn’t imagining things. This time, she was going to find out who or what was out there.
She hurried forward. “Zane.”
He stopped and turned.
She nodded down the street to the left. “I’m going to take a quick look at something.”
He glanced briefly in that direction then looked at her. “Okay, I’ll go with you.”
“No, this will only take a second. The rest of you need to keep moving.”
“What is it?” He frowned.
“It’s probably nothing. Just wanted to take a quick look around… Make sure we don’t miss anything.”
Zane seemed to suspect she was withholding something. “Is there—”
“I’ll let you know.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Give me two minutes. If I don’t find anything, I’ll come back and catch up.”
Zane stared at her for a moment then nodded.
As Carmen moved off, he called after her. “Remember, two minutes.”
She probably should have let him come with her, but she felt the need for stealth. Two people might make too much noise. Besides, it might turn out to be nothing.
Alone, Carmen thumbed off her flashlight, plunging the street into greater darkness. She removed her pistol and made sure there was a round in the chamber. She stopped about three buildings down. It was impossible to know exactly where the noise had come from, but for some reason, this felt right. She focused on a building to the left. Like the others, it was three stories of mortared stone. Two windows flanked the ground-level entrance.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. It was the same feeling she’d had at the pool, only this time stronger. Someone was watching her, staring at her back. Somehow, it always seemed to come from behind. She spun around, raising her pistol at the same time. The building was an exact duplicate of the one she’d just been looking at. Her gaze swept across the windows, one by one. There! A head hovered in the shadows of a second-story window. She shifted the sights of her gun, but the silhouette melted back into the darkness.
She raced to the entrance and slipped her robe over her head. She wore black underneath, which might make her less noticeable in the dark interior. After listening briefly, she slipped inside. The darkness swallowed her. When her eyes finally adjusted, she found herself in a foyer. A corridor ran toward the back, and there was a stairwell on the right.
A scratching sound carried down from the upper floors.
Carmen started for the stairs then paused. What if this was a trap? What if someone had purposefully lured her away from the others? She pushed the possibility
aside. Whoever it was and whatever their purpose, she was relatively sure they didn’t have a gun.
She took the stairs. Thankfully, the stone steps absorbed the sound of her footfalls. She paused near the second-floor landing and listened. She thought she heard something again, but it was so faint she wondered if it might be coming from another building. She took a few more steps, bringing her eyes high enough to see the second floor. From her vantage point, it seemed most of the space was open, save for a few piles of stone on the left. Seeing and hearing nothing, she climbed the rest of the way. She cleared every direction with her pistol, but the room was empty. If something had been here before, it wasn’t now.
A large dark blotch drew her to the right side of the room. As she approached, she spotted a jagged opening in the wall. It started about four feet off the ground and stretched to the ceiling. She assumed it led to the building next door.
Maybe that’s where the person went.
Slipping her pistol into her waistband, she climbed onto the ledge. She balanced herself and peered into the abyss on the other side. It was pitch black. If someone was hidden there, she had little chance of finding them.
As she reached for her flashlight, she heard a scratching behind her. She turned back to the room. The scratching grew more intense, and it seemed to be coming from the rear wall. As she lowered her gaze, she noticed a large hole near the floor. Strangely, she hadn’t seen it before. The noise seemed to rise through it.
The scratching grew louder, then something emerged from the hole. It looked like an animal, a creature of some kind. Its nose sniffed the floor as it warily moved out into the room. Seconds later, two others followed. Before long, there were a half dozen creatures crawling around. Carmen gripped her pistol tightly. What on earth are they?
She leaned forward and squinted, trying to make out more detail. Finally, one of the creatures moved into the light spilling through the front window. Carmen’s blood froze. A massive rat sniffed the air. She guessed it was three feet long and a foot high at the shoulders. It was essentially a pit bull with the legs of a rat.
As it continued in her direction, she noticed the animal was hairless. Gray skin stretched over rippled muscles. Carmen’s family had always joked about some of the big rats they’d seen in Rome, but these creatures were unlike anything she’d seen outside of a horror film. One of them would have no trouble killing a child. She shuddered to think what a dozen could do.
The closest rat was only about five yards away now, its nose a mere inch or two from the ground. Carmen noticed something bizarre—the animal had no eyes. Cave dwellers. Possessing no vision, they likely hunted by hearing and smell.
What now? She was way beyond the two minutes Zane had given her, but right now, that was the least of her concerns. Shooting one of the rats should be enough to send them all scurrying back into the hole, but the sound of the shot might draw the order’s attention if any of them were close by. Still, she might have no other choice. She was extremely fit, but the massive rodents might swarm her if she tried to sprint through.
Carmen stood slowly, balancing herself on the ledge. She pulled her pistol from her waistband. She would take out two or three of the animals then hope the others would flee back into the crevice. That was the plan, anyway.
She raised the pistol with two hands. As she adjusted her position, the nearest rat swiveled its head in her direction. Had it felt her move? She trained her gun on its head. As she did, a loose rock on the ledge fell to the floor. The rat, hearing the noise, moved toward her. Its sudden move made Carmen flinch. She tried to hold her balance, but soon, inertia took over, and she tumbled forward into the room. Her body hit hard, sending her pistol spinning across the floor.
She turned with her fists in balls, ready to punch the rats that would surely converge on her. Instead, they scurried toward the pistol. They circled it cautiously, gnashing their teeth and snarling. They’d probably never smelled metal or polymer before. Finally, one moved in and bit the barrel, thrashing it around. That seemed to encourage the others, who attacked the gun en masse. She could only imagine what that would feel like if it were her leg.
Although her body ached, Carmen knew she had to take advantage of the distraction. She had to get up and sprint for the stairs. Wincing, she rolled onto her side. It was a risky—but necessary—move. She needed to push off on one arm in order to get up.
One of the rats turned in her direction, sensing something had moved. It sniffed the air, trying to determine what was there.
Carmen couldn’t afford to wait any longer. She rose up on one elbow, careful to move as slowly as possible. The rat’s nose twitched excitedly. Carmen froze again. The animal’s head was turned toward her now. Like it had radar, it had locked in on her position. It knew she was there.
Carmen slid one foot into position, readying herself to push up. Feeling the movement, the rat let out a long hiss. Before she could get off the ground, it charged.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
ITS TEETH BARED with lust, the rat bore down on Carmen with shocking speed. The other rats, drawn by the movement, ran just behind. In seconds, they would swarm over her soft flesh. Carmen wanted to retrieve her pistol, but at this point, she knew her only option was to get back to the ledge and hope the rats couldn’t climb. She pushed off the ground as they closed in. Turning, she took two steps and leaped. The minute she left the ground, she realized she was too far away. Her lead foot hit the wall right under the ledge, and she slid to the floor.
Forced to climb, she grabbed the ledge and pulled herself up. Just when she thought she was going to make it unscathed, teeth sank into her lower leg. She cried out in pain as she pulled her legs up. The rat snarled and bit harder, shaking its head back and forth. Carmen grabbed the cold, hairless neck with one hand, while pounding its head with the other. At first, the rat held on, but finally released her to defend itself from the blows. The minute it let go, Carmen flung it away. It dropped into the swarm of rats below, who were in such a frenzy they momentarily thrashed their comrade. Seeing the frenzy of oily gray skin turned her stomach.
Finally, the rats realized their mistake and shifted their attention back to the wall, trying to climb on top of each other to reach their prey. To be safe, Carmen brought her legs up onto the ledge. As they hissed and snarled below her, she pulled out her flashlight and directed her beam into the next building. It might be her only way out. As she’d feared, the entire structure had been gutted, including what looked like a partially exposed basement. It was at least a thirty-foot drop, something she’d only attempt if it were her only option.
The sound of claws scurrying across the floor drew her attention back to the room. The rodents moved back toward the crevice in the rear wall. Strangely, they were silent. No more snarling and snapping. Something was either drawing them out of the room, or something had scared them off.
Carmen looked around. Nothing moved, but there was a change in the atmosphere. Maybe it was the chilled feeling at having her leg gnawed on by a hairless rat. Dropping off the ledge, she retrieved her pistol. If they came back, at least she’d be able to fill a few of them full of lead.
She was about to start for the stairs when she felt the air grow cold. The eyes had returned, and this time, they were in the same room. Turning slowly, she looked back toward the front window. There, in a dark corner to the left, something moved. She took a step back.
A figure stepped out of the shadows. Carmen flinched in surprise. It was a child—a young boy, no more than five or six years old. Strangely, he wore a suit. Even stranger, it looked like the ones worn by people in the nineteenth century.
What was a child doing this far beneath the earth? Did people still live here? Carmen knew there were large groups of people living in abandoned tunnels beneath Paris and other places around the world, but she doubted anyone could survive here. What would they eat?
The boy took a step closer. The cold preceded him.
Carmen remained in place bu
t gripped her pistol more tightly. “Who are you?”
The boy remained silent.
“What’s your name?”
“May I come over there?” He spoke with an awkward cadence, like someone who wasn’t used to speaking. Something seemed odd about the boy. The strange voice, and his face twitched.
“Not until you tell me who you are.”
The boy ignored her question and took two more steps. “Is it time to eat?”
Carmen frowned. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes, I’m hungry. May I come closer?”
Carmen’s inner voice told her not to give him permission. The boy remained in place, as though hindered by some invisible wall. She stepped toward him for a better look. As she studied his features, she recoiled. The child’s eyes were black. Pitch black. Opaque lifeless pits, devoid of emotion. Carmen took a step back. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew it was no boy.
“May I come closer? I’m hungry.” His voice was like a recording stuck on an endless loop.
Carmen wanted to turn and run, but the same inner voice that had spoken before told her not to turn her back. Instead, she backed up a few steps.
Without warning, the boy’s head swiveled sharply toward the stairs. The movement was surprisingly quick, as though his previous lethargy had been a ruse. It was obvious he could be fast if he needed to be. Carmen was tempted to look back to see what he was staring at but was afraid of taking her eyes off of him.
A sound came from the ground floor. Something or someone had entered the building. Was it another child? If so, she was going to be pinned. Footsteps came up the stairs. Someone was on the way up. Carmen debated her next move. On the one hand, she didn’t want to take her eye off the boy. On the other, she didn’t want to be attacked from behind. She struck a compromise, shifting in such a way that would allow her to see both the stairwell and the boy.
A dark figure appeared at the top of the stairs. This one seemed to be moving faster than the other. Her instincts kicking in, Carmen aimed her pistol and slid her finger over the trigger.
