Lauryn noted the individual stones sweating and slick, and the broken mortar disintegrating between them. The architecture appeared art-like, an ode to man’s construction craft. Except for the cracks in the mortar, the tunnel appeared almost seamless between stones, as if a giant, fat worm had eaten its way through the underground, leaving a perfect path of segmented earth behind it. She darted her flashlight upward, wondering for a moment if it was an interstate or a moat over their heads.
They walked like that for a while, deliberate and steady, with the only conversation being the occasional complaint from Megan about the smell or from Stavros about their pace. As they bypassed branches in the tunnel reaching left and right, someone would beat the darkness back with a flashlight. A rat would scurry, or on occasion a possum with its shining, narrowed eyes would waggle its oblong body out of the light and into the secrecy of the shadows once again. Every shadow, every drip, every echoing click of an animal’s claws on the stones, their eyes widened, their heads jerked around. Everyone’s nerves were fraying at the edges.
“Hold it,” said Colt. The scientist bumped into him from behind, and the boy whirled around and pushed him back.
“Hey!”
“I said, hold it!” hissed Colt.
“What the—”
“Everyone. Just stop a minute.”
Megan bent down and grabbed Jasper’s collar. He was staring down the tunnel too, his eyes fixed on some dim, distant point. Lauryn stepped up beside their scout, who was holding his flashlight steady and squinting ahead.
“What’s wrong?”
“I heard something,” the boy whispered. “A wet, slapping sound.”
“You’re hearing things,” said Eamon without a care for the volume of his voice. “We’re taking too—”
“Stavros, for once. Will you please just shut up?”
Giving Lauryn a look, the scientist complied.
A drop of water echoed in the passageway. Magnified by their fear and the acoustics of the stonework around them, it sounded like someone tossing a bass drum in a swimming pool.
“What is that?” asked Megan, pointing where Colt’s light shined.
Lauryn peered closer at the spotlight made by his flashlight, then added her own to it. The light was reflecting back at them, she noticed. Something was obscuring it.
“It’s fog,” said Eamon, his breath a sigh beneath his words. “It’s the orange fog.”
Jasper growled.
“They know we’re coming,” said Colt.
“We don’t know that,” replied Lauryn. Now who’s bracing her fear with words?
She glanced backward with her flashlight. The ladder they’d climbed down was a half-hour behind them at least. Swinging her spotlight forward again, she saw its glare was thrown back at her quicker than it had been a few seconds before.
The fog was advancing. And it was growing thicker.
Then they all heard it. The slap-slap-slap of human feet on the reeking mud. The fog seemed to amplify it somehow, as it had the water dripping.
Jasper barked.
The fog and the feet inside it were coming closer.
“There!” said Colt, backing up a step.
The creature burst through the billowing fog, its bare feet smacking hard on the wet mud under them. Rags hung from its emaciated body, and its hooked fingers extended like claws as it reached out, ready to grasp whatever was in front of it. Its eyes followed Colt’s flashlight beam to its source and locked onto the boy. The thing shrieked until the entire tunnel resonated with the sound.
“It’s an Exer!” cried Colt. “Get back! Get back!” He felt the party make way behind him as he retreated, a primal fear gripping his gut. Where there was one Exer, there were always more.
Many, many more.
Jasper answered the creature’s shrieking with a stream of barking. He charged, ignoring Megan’s desperate screams to stop. Lauryn braced her flashlight and pistol together, aiming one as the target for the other, but the thing was charging too fast. Before she could adjust her tracking, Jasper leapt into the line of fire and she pulled her finger off the trigger.
Despite his shaking, Colt sloughed off his backpack and pulled out one of the homemade grenades, then started feeling around inside the pack.
Jasper knocked the Exer to the ground, and while the creature fought to hold him off, the dog’s teeth ripped into one of its withered hands. The creature grabbed the dog by the lower jaw, ignoring its own pain, and snagging Jasper by the scruff of the neck with its free hand. The dog tried to jerk back as the creature pulled him to its mouth, opening wide over rotting teeth and grayish gums. When the tainted teeth bit into his neck, Jasper yelped in pain.
Lauryn was already moving deeper into the sewer, trying to get an angle on the snarling combatants, when Megan flew past her, yelling Jasper’s name.
“Stop, Megan! Let me—”
But her daughter wasn’t listening, and Jasper’s howls were more frightened than fearsome as the dog fought to free himself from the monster’s grip. Megan reached them and thrust her hands among the twisting bodies, snatching Jasper by the collar and hauling backward. The dog’s teeth caught a tendon in the Exer’s arm, and the creature screeched and let go. Megan and Jasper fell together into a heap in the gray mud.
Eamon moved forward to help and targeted their entangled bodies with his flashlight. But the spotlight helped the Exer too, and it scrambled on all fours like a spider after the girl and her dog. Jasper pulled backward out of his collar and turned on the creature again to protect Megan. The dog moved more warily this time, circling around behind it as Megan crab-crawled away, her eyes wide with terror.
“Get back!” yelled Colt again, clicking the lighter he’d finally found. He held the Mason jar with its mixture of accelerant and nails in one hand, the tip of the lighter on the firecracker wedged into its thin, metal lid. “There’ll be more, get back!”
Lauryn ignored him, marching straight at the anorexic creature as it shifted focus left, then right, unable to decide between the two prey. Jasper’s barking echoed off the stonework as he circled around behind the attacker. Megan continued her crabwalk retreat, fighting for purchase in the reeking mud. Finally, the creature decided on the least threatening of the two and turned its hungry eyes on Megan’s pink flesh, flushed with blood and stinking of fear.
Everyone acted at once.
Colt tried to light the firecracker fuse.
Eamon shouted a warning.
Jasper leapt forward.
Lauryn took aim.
The Exer’s hands gripped Megan’s frantically kicking feet as a second flashlight found her. Its yellow beam reflected off the dull gray of the Exer’s flesh, and Megan’s scream was matched only by the creature’s shrieking as Jasper vice-gripped its ankle in his teeth.
Then a single shot subdued all other sound in the tunnel. Jasper kept pulling at the thing, and the monster’s claw-like hands fell slack as the dog dragged it off Megan. She scrabbled back against the dank wall of the tunnel, pulling her hands and feet in tight.
Lauryn lowered her weapon, and Jasper released the creature’s leg, sniffing at it. As the echoes of her gunshot died away, the only remaining sound was the unsuccessful flicking of Colt’s lighter. He still hadn’t gotten it to catch.
“I think you can stop trying to light that thing now,” Eamon said, keeping his flashlight directed at the gray rags. Lauryn bent down to examine the creature.
“But there’re always more,” repeated Colt.
“Not this time, I guess,” said Lauryn, inspecting the hole in the back of the creature’s head. She felt a sickening mixture in her gut of satisfaction and terror and revulsion.
Whatever it was—whatever it had been—the creature was dead.
Chapter 16: Wednesday, dawn.
“What was that thing?” Megan asked, shaking. She sat with her back pressed hard against the stone of the tunnel wall, arms binding her knees close to her chest.
Holste
ring her weapon, Lauryn left the gray corpse lying in the fog and kneeled at Megan’s side. She stroked her daughter’s hair, told her everything was going to be all right.
“I’m okay, Mom,” the teen said, her voice calming quickly. “It’s just … I was afraid for Jasper and then, when it came at me…” She unwrapped her arms and hugged Lauryn briefly, then levered herself to her feet. Walking over to Jasper, she admonished him with a stern finger and slipped his collar back on.
“Yes, what was that thing?” Eamon asked, his eyes fixed on the skin-covered skeleton on the tunnel floor. Turning to Colt, he said, “You seemed to know.” His tone wasn’t exactly accusatory, but it could’ve been a close cousin.
The boy was already stepping further into the tunnel, the beam of his flashlight rebounding off the yellowish mist that seemed to be dissipating. “It’s more orange the thicker it gets,” he said apropos of nothing. “Up top, where you breathe, it’s more yellow and misty. Down bottom, more an orange soup.”
Shining her own light on top of his, then scanning behind them, Lauryn said, “You didn’t answer his question. What was that thing?”
Colt kept his eyes forward, searching. The light was reaching deeper in as the mist thinned out. “It’s an Exer. I didn’t know you had those here, too. Maybe our worlds aren’t so far apart after all.”
“A what?” asked Eamon.
“An Exer. A mutant cannibal. They’re all over the place in my world. They’re like lab rats from a failed experiment that didn’t stay in their cages.” He cast a hard look at Stavros. “You know something about that, right Doc?”
Eamon held his gaze but said nothing.
“Stay on topic,” said Lauryn as she came to stand beside him.
“Megan says where we are now is five years before my time,” said Colt, still scanning down the tunnel. “I don’t know if that’s true. But it was just about this time in my world when a new weight-loss drug came out: Slenderex. Heard of it here?”
“As a matter of fact I have,” said Lauryn. Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago she’d considered trying the drug, a way to make herself more attractive to Mark, maybe win him back from his slut co-worker-with-benefits, Iris? Back when such hope-filled fantasies were brilliant strategies for holding on to her husband, not desperate attempts to keep from being alone. That’s how she saw them now. She glanced at the emaciated corpse facedown in the sewer.
There but for the grace of God…
“We all have,” said Eamon. “It’s the biggest wonder drug since Viagra.”
Colt snorted, holding out his useless lighter to Eamon. “I need another one. This one sucks.”
The scientist took it, waggling it back and forth. “It’s empty, that’s why.” He reached into his bag and handed the boy a heavier replacement. Colt flicked it on, just to make sure. It lit the first time.
“Now that’s more like it. Come on,” he said, taking a step forward. “I can’t believe it, but I think that Exer really was by itself.” He moved off down the passageway.
“I’m fine, by the way,” Megan called after him as she stroked Jasper’s head. The dog nuzzled her hand in return.
“I’m glad,” called Colt, his mind elsewhere.
Megan gave her mother an exasperated look, and Lauryn merely arched her eyebrows and shook her head: Men. “Come on, doll. If you’re really okay, we need to get moving.”
The teen’s face took on a stony quality, and Lauryn thought maybe there was something of herself in Megan after all. She’d seen that look often enough in the mirror following a fight with Mark. The set jaw. The flat eyes.
“Fine, let’s go.”
Down the tunnel, Eamon was saying, “But what happened?”
“Happened with what?”
“Slenderex.”
The boy shrugged as he scouted ahead. “No idea. All I know is what I heard. What Ellis told us. And what I heard from other folks.” Colt recited what he knew absently and without passion, his eyes darting back and forth along the mucked-up path in front of him. “Made people who wanted to be skinny ravenous for protein. Eventually it’s all they thought about. Eating and running to their next meal.”
“Atkins on steroids,” muttered Eamon. “The drug worked too well. Taken to an extreme it was never meant to achieve. Now, that sounds familiar.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” replied the scientist. His voice, like Colt’s, was only semi-present in the conversation. The gears in his mind were tumbling and clicking. Exhausted as he was, the distraction of analysis brought him comfort. At last he had new evidence to add to his theories.
“They run in herds,” said Colt, halting briefly as one rat, then another, skittered away from his flashlight to hide in the shadows. “That’s why I thought that one wouldn’t be alone. But ever since I got here, things have been weird. A handful came through with me, actually. And there was fog then, too.”
“Maybe whatever it is that connects our realities is sporadic, inconstant,” said Eamon. “And the fog is part of the connection between the different realities. Like a doorway. We saw a few of those anorexics—Exers—a couple of days ago.”
“That’s when I got here,” confirmed Colt.
The scientist nodded. More grist for his mill. He was smiling as he worked the problem.
Lauryn walked beside Megan and Jasper, registering the conversation ahead but paying little attention. The talk of failed experiments and connected realities and magic fog made her brain hurt. And her energy was focused elsewhere; needed to be focused elsewhere. Since the creature’s attack, her senses were hyperalert. She mechanically passed her flashlight down another branching tunnel as they passed.
Something moved, dashing back into the shadows. It was bigger than a rat. Another possum, maybe? She held the light there a moment longer, but whatever it was had eluded her.
The mumbling continued ahead. Mostly Eamon talking to himself. Lauryn glanced backward, darting her flashlight at where the Exer should still be lying in the mud. They hadn’t come very far.
It was gone.
She halted, her pistol filling her palm again. Lauryn jerked her flashlight back and forth, her gaze sharpening with every curve revealed by the light. She finally found the withered corpse again, and yes, it was right where they’d left it. Its coloring and bony frame had blended so well with the sewage, she’d missed it the first time. Releasing a breath, she turned to catch up with the rest of the party.
“Now that we know what they are,” she said, interrupting Eamon’s questioning of Colt, “and in case there are any more around, can you boys kindly shut the hell up and concentrate on getting us out of this sewer? We have to be close to the end by now. I want us up in the light where we can see.”
“No argument here,” answered Colt, moving forward a bit faster. The sloppy sucking of the mud sounded like a landed fish trying to catch its breath. “I think our batteries are getting low anyway.”
“Great,” said Megan. “Did we get anything that actually works at Wal-Mart?”
They all picked up their pace.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, they were staring up at a vertical shaft, the end of the line. A metal ladder led upward. Pale, manmade light shone through the open hole.
“This is the basement of the facility?” asked Eamon.
“Should be,” replied Lauryn, wrapping her hand around the first rung of the ladder. “Looks like we got lucky. Someone’s already moved the manhole cover up there.”
“I’m not sure that’s lucky,” Eamon said, trading a knowing look with Lauryn.
“Want me to go first?” asked Colt.
“Not this time. If they’re up there waiting for us…” Lauryn patted her .40-caliber. “Not this time.”
“Okay, I’ll stay down here and protect Megan then,” the boy answered.
Megan shot a glimpse at Colt, then looked away smiling.
“Sounds like a plan,” Lauryn said, half grinning as she began her climb. The dull
clomp of muddy boots on metal rungs followed. The others watched from down below as Lauryn cautiously stuck her head through the hole above and scanned her flashlight around.
“Well?”
Damn Stavros. Again with the patience deficiency.
“Okay, we just got lucky after all,” she whispered down. She crawled through the hole and disappeared for a moment. A very long moment.
“Mom?” Megan yell-whispered.
Lauryn’s face reappeared. “Just making sure there’s no one around. Eamon,” she said, “can you haul Jasper up here? It’ll be tougher going up.”
“Yeah,” he answered uncertainly. “Yeah. Let down a rope and help haul us up. I’ll hold on to him.”
Five minutes later, they were all standing in a dark room with the sound of generators humming through the walls. Backup servers for TranStar’s computer systems flashed and blinked around them. Half a hundred tiny fans evacuated the heat from as many CPUs into the room. It was warmer in here than it’d been in the sewer.
“We have to get out of this room,” said Lauryn.
“I just wish we knew where we were going,” said Colt.
“I remember Dad’s tour. There’s a monitoring room across the hall. It’s for backup security, Dad said. From there, you can see the whole facility on the security cameras. Inside and out.”
“Are you sure?” asked Lauryn.
Megan shrugged. “I know what he told me. I remember this room. I remember the heat and all the computers. The security room is just across the hall.”
At that moment, a loud boom shook the building above. Everyone instinctively crouched where they stood. Jasper whined and moved closer to Megan.
“What the hell was that?” asked Colt.
In the muted light of the basement, no one saw Lauryn close her eyes. She knew exactly what it was: a second concussion above, and what might’ve been glass shattering.
“We need to get to that security room now,” she said. “Someone’s trying to get into TranStar from the outside. And they’re using explosives to do it.”
Ironheart (The Serenity Strain Book 2) Page 14
