Time passed. Darkness stayed.
“We’re in trouble here.”
“I know.”
“Okay.”
“Is that it?”
“I’m tired of being the one asking the questions is all,” said Sveta.
The light began everywhere at once, a soft golden uprising radiating from giant glass globes positioned throughout the vast underground chamber. Sveta held her breath momentarily at the sheer beauty of it. The sound of a faint electrical humming filled the air, and twin ceramic columns the size of steeples and ringed by levels of silver discs began to spark erratically. Electric complaints crackled through the air like old bones forced to move.
“It’s incredible,” said Sveta.
“Magic,” agreed Zoe.
“What is this place?”
“Magic is better than questions.”
“Then those must be magic bells,” said Sveta and pointed at eight golden bells lined up in a row on a dull black platform wide enough to hold a tractor trailer.
They were individually suspended from an overhead I-frame and each looked big as an elevator car. In the magic light show of gold and sparking arcs of searing white, they shone bright as golden stars in a technology firmament.
“He’s coming back,” said Zoe, and pointed to Drogol mounting the steps.
He was a priestly figure, his legs hidden beneath his long coat as though he was wearing a cassock. Because she was a mercenary, the thought crossed her mind that he might be concealing a weapon.
When he stepped onto the small platform again, Sveta realized how small it was. She stepped back but found herself stopped by the railing. He brought his hands from behind his back and she saw to her relief that they were empty. Zoe plucked at his sleeve to get his attention. When he looked down at her, Sveta saw her grasp his hands, bring it to her lips, and gently kiss his palm. There were tears in her eyes when she raised her head and let go of his hand.
“Thank you, Father,” she said.
Drogol looked at her a long time, and though it was not at all possible, she could feel his attention on the young woman like a light, electrified pressure that caused her skin to prickle. Something about the way Zoe said the word Father caused Sveta’s heart to fill with dread.
“You have a conscience and a good heart, my girl,” he said. She was about to speak, to protest, but he held up his hand and said, “I know much, but I too have a heart and you have touched it. And your sight was true. You have returned hope to my very soul.”
He spoke as though he was a holy man, but this night she had seen only violence and destruction wherever he went. The way Zoe looked at him, submissive and reverent, was enough to put Sveta’s nerves on edge.
“Why did you bring us here?” demanded Sveta.
Although she tried to make her voice confrontational, the awe and wonder and fear she felt at the place below them gave her voice a tentative edge.
When he turned to face her, his stare was as real as a caress. Her face felt flush, and she colored. She felt the need to draw her pistol and keep it leveled between them. She felt the need for safety.
“You wanted to know who I am, is that not so? You want to know why they hunt me like an animal.”
“And you brought me all the way down here to tell me? You couldn’t have told me this while we were in the car?”
“I offer you sanctuary such as you will not find in your world. Soon, I will tell you what you wish to know, but I warn you that you may neither understand nor believe what I say.”
Sveta began to feel weak kneed. He had moved closer still to her, and she could smell his rich, musky sweat.
“Okay, let’s go,” she said brusquely.
But he only moved closer.
She felt his hand brush across her cheek.
“I have waited all my life for a sign that I should do that which we will do tonight. You are that sign. Young Zoe brought you to me. And now, as I stand so close you, I feel life roar through my body. I feel the heat of my heart catching fire again. For the first time in over a hundred years, I feel hope again.”
When he turned abruptly and descended the stairs again, it was a full minute before she could pull herself together enough to follow. Before she took her first step, she switched from three round burst to full auto on her AK47.
Sveta caught up with them at the bottom of the stairs, just in time to see Drogol cry out in pain again, then grasp the railing once more for support. Zoe rushed to him, but he thrust her back with one powerful movement, sending her over the opposite railing in a tumble of arms and legs. She hit the ground hard.
The air around Drogol charged with electricity and wavering lines of dark, oily light. He began to blur within them.
“No,” he screamed and doubled over.
His face was twisted with helpless rage and fear.
“Run, run to the train,” he screamed.
Sveta stepped back and brought up her AK.
Drogol shouted something she could not understand, then his face distorted and his body blurred again. An impossible, howling wind leapt into the air around her, and it seemed to be blowing right out of Drogol’s midsection. His words sounded as though they’d come through a voice distortion machine.
“I can’t understand you,” she shouted.
Her finger nervously gripped the trigger, not knowing what to expect.
“Take Zoe, run to the train. Windows barred. Bolt doors.”
“What is happening?”
Drogol’s body was ripped back an inch, then shoved forward by an unseen force.
“Can’t control this … can’t … run. Please, God, run.”
She saw it again. Something black and turbulent forming within him. A horrible sound, like those she heard in her uncle’s slaughterhouse. Sveta turned, went to Zoe, and helped the horrified woman to her feet.
“Run,” Drogol screamed again, but his voice was distant, far away, as though shouted down a dark tunnel.
Sveta swung over the railing and dropped onto a hard earthed floor.
“Get up,” she said and shook Zoe so hard that the girl cried out.
“No time to think, just get moving,”
Sveta couldn’t wait for Zoe to get to her feet by herself. She grabbed a handful of hair and part of a coat and yanked her up hard.
“Go, go. Get to the train.”
A horrifying roar behind her, and Sveta turned and saw Drogol shaking like a marionette. She spun and ran as hard as she could after Zoe. The girl stumbled and almost went down, but Sveta grabbed her sleeve and pulled her along. They dodged electrical capacitors, bundles of coiled snake cables, and knocked over a cabinet full of glass ampoules.
A furious roar stopped her heart and she knew then that death would soon be after them.
Thirty feet more.
Sveta risked a look over her shoulder. She saw Drogol pulled to his feet as though yanked straight up by a hidden set of strings. His mouth opened. His body ballooned inward then outward and he screamed as he was yanked back into oblivion and for just an instant Sveta saw an aperture, like a tear in thin gossamer fabric, and from that opening shot out a hideous apparition of slavering teeth and claws. It hit the ground and then stood on its hind legs. She saw red eyes and fury and felt terror such as she had never imagined.
Twenty feet.
The train ahead was painted a lustrous black but covered with the dust of many years. Windows barred as though it were a prison train. Big. Iron. Safe. Behind her the cavernous laboratory echoed with rage as the beast howled. Sveta’s breath came in painful gasps. A desk seemed to appear from nowhere and slam into her knee. She went down with a painful cry.
Zoe stopped and turned to help her.
“Run,” shouted Sveta. “Run to the train.”
Zoe hesitated, then ran straight back to her and picked her up off the ground. She slid her shoulder underneath Sveta’s and helped her move.
Behind them they heard something crash and sparks shot up high in
to the golden glow as the monster shrieked and spat.
“Wait,” Sveta said.
She turned, aimed the AK at the oncoming beast and let loose a deafening barrage of bullets that enraged it but didn’t slow it down. Sveta had seen nothing like it.
“Run,” yelled Sveta, and she and Zoe hobbled and bounced toward the train. They were closing the gap quickly, but the sound of pounding fury was charging up more quickly still.
Chapter Fourteen
“I’m bringing it up now,” said Hauck.
He’d been sleeping for forty-five minutes, trying to ignore the annoying bleeping that sounded vaguely like an underwater alarm clock. When it finally hit him that it was his phone, he sat bolt upright and snatched it off of the small table next to his couch. The room was dark except for the faint blue-green glow from his computer monitor. Hauck reached for his pistol as he flicked the phone open.
“Yuri?” he asked.
“None other, boss. Still working with only one arm. Do I get time and a half for this?”
“I’ll give you double time if you tell me you called with something I can use.”
Hauck scanned the living room. Looking for something incongruous. Trying to feel if something felt out of place. Realizing he hadn’t lived a normal life in so many years that he’d forgotten what a normal life was like. He moved over to the kitchen and logged onto the terminal. He reached for the single-cup coffee maker and pulled it straight toward him.
“Yeah, I found something. You’ve got to see it yourself, though, or you won’t believe it.”
Hauck connected to the IP address that Yuri sent him and saw nothing but gray blur.
“There’s nothing here,” Hauck said, switching to speakerphone. “Just a mess of screen static.”
“Authenticating,” said Yuri. “Give me a bit so I can let you in.”
The screen resolved to show a sweeping camera view moving down from a rooftop to the streets below. It was shot using combined wavelength gradients, so the picture was as clear as if it had been shot in broad daylight.
“Your van?” asked Hauck.
“Yeah, that’s my van. Video courtesy of Evgeny’s spotter. I’m slowing everything down now, just so you know. The beast is going to come straight on screen in just a sec. It’s going to be moving real slow because of what I want you to see. I may have to tune it up as we go; are you good with that?”
“If it’s worth it, I’m good with whatever we have to do.”
“Oh, it’s worth it,” chuckled Yuri. “Son of a bitch broke my arm and got me popping pain pills and made it so I got to quit typing to swig coffee. He’s going to pay.”
If Yuri were not on pain pills, Hauck would have cut his pay for swearing. He did not tolerate swearing in his organization. It was a small thing, but, in his experience, an excellent point of discipline.
“I see something, like a clawed hand,” said Hauck.
“That’s the hairy bastard. Check the way the claws shine.”
“What am I looking for?”
“They’re not made of whatever claws are made of—they look like metal or something, but whatever they are, they’re definitely very weird.”
“This is what you got me out of bed for?” demanded Hauck.
“That’s just an appetizer. Keep watching.”
Hauck loaded in a coffee pouch, filled the small, stainless steel unit and pressed the button. Realizing he’d forgotten something, he quickly took a ceramic blue cup off a little metal tree and slid it under the nozzle just as the first drop of coffee fell. After a few seconds of operation, he leaned his head over to inhale the fumes. Too many hours, too little sleep.
He swiveled his head to stare at the computer screen. He had just seen something impossible.
“Yuri?”
“Wondering if you caught that. I’m saying to myself—”
“That is a bullet trail, am I correct?”
“As ever.”
Hauck clenched his fists.
“Yuri, listen carefully. Did that bullet hit the beast?”
“Oh yeah. When Evgeny shoots, Evgeny scores. But now Evgeny’s got a new kind of target. Keep watching, boss. Every bulled Evgeny fired hit the son of a bitch. But they didn’t do shit. It’s like he was firing paint balls instead of bullets. No wonder that thing kept coming and knocked me and my van straight over on our asses.”
Hauck got up and moved around his apartment, wondering about what he’d just seen. It wasn’t impossible. Could the beast have absorbed that many rifle rounds filled with mercury amalgam and kept on moving? This was not cinema, this was reality. Impossible. Outside, he saw the faint edgings of light gold at the horizon, and knew that night would soon be at an end.
A soft beep signaled his coffee was ready, so he walked back and put it on a coaster to cool.
“Does Evgeny know about this?”
“Nope. You’re the first to know.”
“You’re forgetting the spotter,” said Hauck.
“Spotter didn’t catch it. Couldn’t catch it. You can’t see any of what you were looking at with the naked eye. He just takes the pictures; I enhanced them because that thing wrecked my van. Something insane about the way it went down, you know what I mean? Evgeny tells me he pounded mercury filled bullets into the thing but it kept on moving.”
“Bring Evgeny up to speed on this,” said Hauck. “Good work.”
“There’s more,” said Yuri.
“Oh?”
“This is the weirdest part.”
“Get on with it.”
“It’s like it fades in and out of the video, like it’s not always there. I’m going to play it again for you. I’ve modified the speed and the light spectra. Watch how it blurs and shimmers. It’s like it’s fading in and out.”
Hauck watched it again with Yuri’s new settings. His stomach began to knot. What the hell was this thing? All his certainties about what they were facing dissipated like morning fog.
“You’re a genius, Yuri.”
“You bet I am.”
“Any ideas?”
“Well, if this thing is a werewolf, boss, then Universal Pictures and Lon Chaney got it all wrong. Question is, if that’s the case, how the hell are we going to kill it?”
*****
Zoe grabbed Sveta and hauled her up the train steps. She was too terrified to look over her shoulder and see how far back the beast was. The door to the car was open so she shoved Sveta straight into the car and slammed the door behind her. Her hands scrambled over the door handle looking for a lock. Finally she found a metal bar and slid it across into a half circle welded onto the door frame, then collapsed with her back against it. She gulped in air until she grew dizzy and her head spun.
The world outside the train car went silent.
“Zoe,” whispered Sveta. “Are you hurt?”
“I’ve been better,” she whispered back. “How about you?”
“Knee hurts like hell, but I’m okay. You hear anything?”
Zoe looked up and around at the inside of the car. It was plush with velvet chairs and drapes, the inside lit by a single globe at the far end where she saw to her horror another open door.
“Close that door,” she said. “There’s a bar to bolt it shut like the other one. Hurry.”
Sveta got the message and hurried across the floor on all fours, her knee hot like it was on fire. When she made it to the far end, she nervously reached up, grabbed the door handle, and cautiously pulled it toward her. It closed with a soft click, and she immediately slid the bolt home.
“Done.”
“Thank God. What is that thing?”
“Drogol’s pet. I think he needs a bigger leash.”
“What?”
“It’s the same thing,” Sveta said, “that killed all those men in the warehouse. It’s been chasing us since Drogol’s house. Remind me not to do that again, will you?”
Before Zoe could answer, they heard a crash loud as an explosion, and the entire car lifted up
in the air and slammed down again. Sveta saw one side of the train wall cave in like it had been hit by a wrecking ball. She rose and then fell backward, hitting the floor as the whole car hit landed on its side with a horrible crunching noise. She scrambled about looking for her weapon, and finally locked her fingers around the butt of her automatic rifle.
Velvet curtains ripped loose and fluttered away to hang by one end. Glass shattered and sprayed throughout the car. Metal bars over the windows bent back and Sveta could see light. An apparition of wiry hair and claws rushed past the window as Zoe screamed.
“Did you see that?”
Her voice was distant and confused. Sveta felt like reality was disintegrating around her.
Movement outside the window again; Sveta fired off a burst of bullets. There came a roar like another explosion and Zoe slapped her hands over her ears.
“I shot it. I hit it,” shouted Sveta.
They both stared at the bulge in the train car wall. The beast’s strength was unbelievable. The impact of it ramming into the side of the car had been enough to lift it off the rails. Both women scooted back against the far side of the car, moving together without thinking. Victims huddling in the face of an unnatural disaster.
Silence outside, as though the creature had given up.
“What do we do?” whispered Zoe.
“Wait.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know,” said Sveta, “but what else can we do?”
“Can I have a gun, too?”
“Do you know how to use one?”
Zoe nodded.
“You’re sure?”
“I can handle it.”
“The duffle,” said Sveta. “Over there. Bring it here. There’s plenty of firepower in it.”
Tentatively, Zoe reached toward the bag.
“You’ve got to crawl over to get it. Quietly. And keep your voice down. It may think we’re dead.”
“You think so?”
Sveta shook her head no.
The bag seemed a long way away, but Zoe wanted the gun very badly. She started crawling. When she finally got within distance, she grabbed a section of the shoulder strap and slowly, very slowly, slid it over to where Sveta knelt.
“You sure you hit it?” she asked as Sveta started sorting through the contents.
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