I packed the ammunition in my backpack along with a flashlight, a few chemical lights, the bag of food Grace had given me—A couple of sandwiches and a chunk of cold roast beef—along with a canteen of water. I’d also packed an assortment of magical items just in case.
I took of the coat and tossed it into the back of the Scout before pulling on the backpack.
Once I was ready I set off north, back the way I had come, back to where the tracking potion was pulling me. The empty building.
I could see it there silhouetted against the horizon. I’d driven by the beast most days for as long as I can remember, yet I can’t recall what the building had been used for before it had been abandoned. To me it looked like the kind of massive structure that would house a factory of some sort. I could imagine rows of assembly line machines and employees in grease-stained coveralls working the line, pushing through whatever product the factory had been built to make.
But I’d never heard of a working factory out here in the hundred or so years I’ve lived in Eudora. I’ve always ignored the place, wrote it off as I drove by, and I was beginning to wonder if, after all this time, that that was something the place, the building, wanted to happen.
That took my thoughts down a path I didn’t want them to go, so I continued forward, trekking across the unplanted field toward the old factory, pushing the thoughts that were forming in my brain regarding the building being alive out of my head.
But then, as the darkness fell one last thought slipped in. What if that’s what the building had wanted?
38
THE SOUND OF SILENCE
HAVE YOU EVER FELT like you were being watched?
It’s a rather unique feeling and somewhat hard to describe. In fact, I don’t think that the feeling is the same for everyone. It’s just something you know, like deep down in your gullet, when it’s happening.
As I crept through the open farmland between where I’d parked my Scout and where the abandoned factory sat, the sense of being watched crawled over me like a hill of army ants. It was so intrusive that partway across I stopped and gave the surrounding area a good scan. But, as the light was quickly draining from the day, I couldn’t see squat. There could have been someone lounging in the dirt four feet from me and I probably wouldn’t have seen them.
But that didn’t stop me from trying.
I stood as still as I could, moving only my eyes, locking on various shapes in the field beyond me. I’d stare at a shape until my eyes watered, trying to catch movement, but coming up empty. Nothing stirred. Not for twenty minutes. Yet, I still felt eyes on me.
I’ve never liked that feeling, especially when I can’t see who, or what, has eyes on me. Makes me twitchy. I wanted to pull both my pistols and fire them off in every direction till I hit something.
But I didn’t.
Instead I tried my best to ignore the feeling and moved on.
When it comes to approaching what is most likely the secret lair of a group of psychotic fanatics, there are three schools of thought on how best to get inside without getting caught, captured, and then killed.
The first is the stealth approach. Use the cover of night to sneak up, take out any sentries as silently as possible, then use a lock pick or stolen key to get yourself inside.
The second option is to use trickery. Pose as a deliver person, meter reader, basically someone who belongs. Then, using said disguise and a cocksure attitude, talk your way inside. Actually, if you do it right, you won’t even need to talk.
I do things a little differently. I’m not all that sneaky, and I lie about as well as a cat in a canary costume trying to talk its way into a bird sanctuary.
I prefer to walk right up to the front door and force my way in — shooting, if necessary.
I didn’t want to do that here, however. I had to think about Maggie. If I walked up and just started shooting, the Brotherhood might jump the gun and kill her before midnight.
So I tried the stealth route.
Like I said, I wasn’t very good at it. Never have been. I can track a single squirrel across two hundred miles of forest; I just can’t do it quietly.
My feet found every stick, branch, and clump of dry grass as I made my way cautiously through the empty field. Basically, anything that made a noise, I stepped on it. I even managed to kick a sleeping cat that made the field its bed for the night. It hissed and yowled as it ran into the night.
Eventually I made it to the building. My plan of using stealth failed as I stepped nearer and walked into some type of motion sensor, causing all of the exterior lights to power up, bathing everything around the building in what was nearly daylight. I ignored the set back, but approached with a little more caution.
Then I hit my second roadblock. I couldn’t immediately find a way into the building. The south side was nothing but brick. The west side of the building was paved and wide. This was where the trucks would arrive and back into a docking area to unload. The docking area was there, but all of the doors had been removed and the opened spaces filled in with more brick.
I moved around to the front of the building, the north side, and finally found a door. Two doors, actually. They were glass and were mounted side to side. This would be the front entrance for visitors to the facility. I couldn’t see inside. Though the doors were glass, someone had covered them in black paint.
Then I noticed the camera. It was mounted just above the two doors. There was nothing on it that indicated if it was functional, most security cameras don’t come with the convenient red light on the front, but I had to assume that I was being watched.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned.
But, I had Maggie to think of. The tracking spell was pulling me toward those glass doors. I had no choice.
I tested the door. It was unlocked.
I backed away. I didn’t like this at all. It had just occurred to me that there should be a bit more security here than motion activated lights and a solitary camera. Where were the guards?
Something screwy was going on and frankly, I smelled a trap. I was being guided here by the tracking spell, which should be taking me right to Maggie, but only if the hair that Anthony grabbed hold of had been her hair.
But still, I had to chance it. Besides, the best way out of a trap sometimes is to spring it.
I cleared leather on the left Peacemaker, and using my right hand, eased one of the doors open. I slid inside, the barrel of the pistol leading the way.
I found myself in a well-lit lobby with clean, new furnishings and freshly waxed wood floors. The door closed behind me, its closing arm quiet and smooth as it pulled the door shut. I heard a mechanical click as the door came to a stop. Curious, I reached out and pulled at the handle.
Locked.
Figures.
I was now trapped inside the building. That is unless I wanted to smash through the glass of the door, which I wasn’t above doing, but I wasn’t interested in getting out. Not yet anyway. Not without Maggie.
It was about this time that it dawned on me that I’d made a mistake. And a pretty big one to boot. In my hurry to find Maggie, I never updated Pat on my progress. She had no idea I was out here, locked inside an abandoned factory building.
I don’t carry a phone. Never have. I find them annoying and intrusive. I have a CB radio in the Scout, I could have gotten through to Pat with that, but again, in my haste it had slipped my mind. As I stood there facing those locked, glass doors, I started to re-think my phone prejudices. But then, whatever I decided wouldn’t do my any good now so I pushed it out of my mind.
I moved quickly around the room, taking everything in.
A desk stood just a half a dozen feet from the door in the center of the room and against the back wall. No one behind, or under it.
To the left of the desk was a couch and four chairs arranged around a coffee table, atop which sat a fan of magazines. They were all current.
There was a small table to the left of the couch an
d chairs. It held a coffee maker, four white mugs, sugar, sugar substitute, creamers of various flavors, and a few plastic spoons for stirring. The carafe was full and the power light glowed red. I touched the carafe and found the glass hot. The coffee was fresh. It smelled wonderful.
To the right of the desk was an unmarked wooden door with no window. The tracking spell pulled me toward it.
I left the door and sat behind the desk, which had nothing on it. No computer, no stapler, no little cup full of pens and pencils, and no phone. I checked the desk drawers and found each of them but one empty. The beep bottom drawer on the right contained one three by five index card. On it, written in thick black magic marker, was one word:
BEGIN
I pocketed the card and stood. I moved to stand about four feet away, but facing, the plain wooden door. From there I stood, waiting and listening.
I could hear nothing but the occasional car passing by outside on the highway. But then, in the silence between each vehicle I began to pick up a hum from somewhere beyond where I stood. I could feel it beneath my feet.
The tracking spell gave me a sharp tug. I wanted to give in and get moving, but I didn’t. I continued to listen. If there was anyone waiting for me beyond the door, then I was gonna see if I could wait them out. If they were there, they knew I was here.
Eventually they might grow tired of waiting for me to stumble on to them. They may start wondering what I’ve been doing out here for all this time. They might think that maybe I left, or fell asleep, or had a heart attack, or went crazy and ate my own feet. The possibilities were endless. Regardless, if I could wait them out, they might come looking for me.
If that happens, if that door opens, I start shooting.
That’s when I heard the scream. A woman’s scream. It had come from the other side of the door.
I rushed forward and kicked the door so hard that it flew off of its hinges and slammed violently somewhere inside the room beyond.
39
INTO THE LABYRINTH
THE ROOM BEYOND WAS not a room at all. Instead it was a brightly lit corridor about fifty yards long.
The walls of the corridor where white. The same with the floor and ceiling. The only non-white object in the corridor was the red door at the other end.
Apart from the broken door that lay on the ground before me, the corridor stood empty.
That was when I’d noticed that the pull from the tracking spell had stopped pulling. That got me moving.
If the tracking spell had stopped working, well... It could mean a number of things. The most likely being that Maggie was...
I didn’t want to think about it.
I ran the fifty yards and threw open the red door without thought for what might be waiting beyond. The door opened toward me and through the opening I could see a thick haze. It was as if a wall of smoke stood in the opening. But it wasn’t quite smoke. It was... well, an obscurity. That’s the only way I could describe it.
A wall of obscurity.
I poked at the wall with the barrel of a pistol. It wasn’t solid. The barrel slid through the obscurity with no effort. When I pulled the gun out, there was nothing on the barrel to make me think that the obscurity was harmful... At least not to inanimate objects. It could eat through flesh like bleach through a red shirt for all I know.
But again, I didn’t have a choice.
Actually, that’s not true. I could turn around and go home. Maybe grill a burger. Binge-watch Friends on Netflix. But that wasn’t me. The burger and Friends was me, but I couldn’t just walk away from someone who needed my help
So I stepped through the obscurity.
It was like stepping through an icy waterfall that wasn’t actually wet.
The other side was another corridor. But this one was stone with fluttering torches set in the wall at regular intervals. The tracking spell kicked back in as well, pulling me forward.
The stone hallway ended about thirty yards later with an option to go right or left. The tracking spell pulled left. So I went left. Before I did, however, I pulled one of the chemical lights from the backpack, gave it a crack and a shake to activate it, then dropped it there on the floor. I didn’t know what kind of path I might take in wherever this place was, figured I might want something to help me get back out if necessary.
The left path took a sharp right a dozen steps later, then another right, three lefts, two rights, and then I found myself facing three possible options: Left, right, or keep moving forward.
I was in some sort of dern maze. It was like the goblin warren all over again, except this was man made.
I tried not to get frustrated. I had the spell to guide me, so I put my trust in it and made each decision based solely on where the spell pulled me, dropping more chemical lights as I went.
Fifteen minutes later, the spell pulled me into a room about half the size of a school gymnasium. Like the halls, the room was stone and lit with torches.
Unlike the halls, the room was occupied.
In the center of the room sat a cyclops in a large, stone chair. It rose as I entered, holding a spiked club. The creature was about twice my size and it smiled down at me as it licked it lips in anticipation.
“It’s about time,” it said. “I didn’t think you were going to come.”
“Parking was a real hassle. You should think about investing in a valet service, or maybe even a shuttle,” I said.
“You have a mouth on you,” the cyclops showed its teeth. “It’s been a while since I’ve have had a meal talk back to me. Why, I think I’m going to—”
The shot from the pistol echoed through the room like one of them super bouncy rubber balls.
The great thing about a cyclops is the eye. It provides the perfect target.
The monster dropped where it stood and I moved on, replacing the spent cartridge in the Peacemaker as I did.
With the tracking spell as my guide, I moved through the maze with speed and efficiency. The cyclops wasn’t the only monster I’d encountered on my journey.
Ten minutes after the cyclops, I entered a room full of goblins. Too many to shoot down before they could overwhelm me. I dug out one of the magical items I’d collected over the years. It was a small marble carving in the shape of an antique salt mill. I called it the Edith.
I pointed the Edith at the goblins and said the word “Salis.” Before I could so much as blink, each and every one of the short, green creatures had been turned into salt. I pocketed the carving and moved through to the other end and out of the room, leaving the salt goblins behind.
The Edith was probably one of the most powerful magical objects I owned. Unfortunately it can only be used once every five years, so I try not to pull it out but for a special occasion. A room full of goblins fit the bill nicely in my opinion.
After the goblins there was the giant slug. Not to be confused with a colossal slug.
A giant slug is just that, a slug the size of an elephant. The giant slug is a carnivore. It’s slow, sure, which meant most average folk could outrun one, but they didn’t depend on speed all that much. They’re trap hunters, laying down a pool of slime for any unwary creature to walk into. The slime contained a paralyzing agent. Not a big deal if you were a human being that wore shoes and such, but for anything smaller than a blue whale, skin contact turned it still in seconds flat. At the point the slug just crawled along and ate you up.
Beyond it’s immense size and paralytic slime, the giant slug was still just a slug. Which was ironic because the Edith sure would have come in handy there. I had nothing on me that could stop a giant slug, so I ran back the way I’d come. But not too quickly, like I said, giant slugs aren’t known for their speed, and I wanted to make sure this one followed me.
And it did just that, right into the room of salt goblins. The slug didn’t last long after that.
After a few more twists and turns I entered a room occupied by a three headed dog. He was a big fella too. Standing on all four legs it could
look me in the eye.
The dog looked a bit like one of them pit bulls, all sinew and muscle, and the Brotherhood had him chained to the wall. Had it not been chained up, I could only assume that the dog would have been roaming the maze, looking for something to maul. I based this on the way it had reacted when I’d eased into to the room. It charged me as soon as it sensed my presence. The chain kept the three heads from chewing me to pieces, so I had to give thanks to that.
But I had to get by the dog to get to the exit on the other side of the room.
Luckily, I have a way with dogs. They love me. It’s just a thing I have. Of course, the hunk of cold roast beef that Grace had sent with me didn’t hurt.
I reached into the backpack and pulled out the meat, unwrapping it and then showing it to the dog. All three heads stopped barking and started sniffing. Three tongues lolled out of three slavering mouths and the dog sat back on her haunches. She even whined a bit before I tore the beef into three pieces and tossed them onto the floor. The three heads gobbled them up in no time.
Soon the dog was looking at me, three sets of eyes full of anticipation. Her tail wagged. I held out my right hand, palm up and let her sniff me. The sniffing was followed by licking. The wagging tail could have taken out the walls of Jericho.
I pulled the sandwiches from the satchel, four in all, and opened them up to find bologna and cheese on each. I kept the bread, the dog got the rest.
It wasn’t long before the dog was on her back and I was scratching her expansive belly. I had to use both hands. But in the end, I had to go.
“I have to leave you here, girl,” I said as I scratched away. “I’d like to take you with me, but I don’t know what I’m gonna to find when I reach the end of this maze. You look like you can take care of yourself, but I’d feel better knowing you were back here, safe and sound.”
I gave her one last scratch and rose. The dog rose with me, tail wagging.
“I’ll come let you lose on my way back, I promise,” I said.
The Adventures of Norman Oklahoma Volume One Page 22
