by John Inman
“The creatures need to be centrally located, you know, to get where they go as fast as they do.”
“So I’ve been told. Over and over again.” By you, Terry didn’t add. He let the silence linger a moment longer. “You wanna fuck?”
Jonas rolled his eyes. “Maybe later.”
Terry nodded as if he expected as much. “Just thought I’d ask.” He eyed the windows along with Jonas. “You want to go up there, don’t you?”
“Does it show?”
“Yeah, it shows. And I gotta tell you something. Personally, I’d really rather not.”
There. He’d said it.
Terry was about to drag Jonas back to the Jeep whether he wanted to go or not when a sliver of glass from one of the broken windowpanes high above their heads suddenly shimmered through the air and exploded on the sidewalk at their feet. Tiny diamonds of glass shot out in every direction.
“Holy shit!” Jonas exclaimed, jumping back and pulling Terry with him. “That was jarred loose. There’s something moving around up there for sure, and whatever it is, it’s not particularly small.”
With his eyes still trained on the windows, Jonas unlatched the holster at his hip and tugged out the .38. He cradled it in his hand like a man who had never held a gun before in his life. Which, as Terry damn well knew, wasn’t far from the truth.
“What are you doing?” Terry asked, his heart sinking deeper even while it started thumping in alarm. “You’re not really going to do this, are you?”
“I thought we were looking for the creatures.” Jonas’s head was still craned back, his eyes still trying to burrow through the darkness behind those third-floor windows.
“You can’t possibly think this is going to turn out well,” Terry all but whined. Then he lifted his head, swallowed his fear, and really tried to see what Jonas was seeing.
“Screw it,” Jonas whispered. “Let’s go inside. We have to know what’s up there, right?”
For the life of him, Terry couldn’t think of a single argument against it.
Oh so carefully, he flicked the safety of the shotgun off.
Side by side, elbows touching, they edged carefully forward, crunching over the broken glass. Neither had a breath left in his body. Terry’s heart was banging around behind his ribs like a squirrel trying to batter its way out of a cardboard box.
“I still want that fuck later,” he whispered.
“If we live long enough, I’ll be glad to give it to you,” Jonas whispered back.
Chapter Twenty-Five
TERRY AND Jonas circled the abandoned research facility, seeking a way in. Scroll-down security screens, rusted now with age and clogged with spiderwebs and leaves, had been placed over the windows and doors on the ground floor. The place was sealed up tighter than Terry’s cabin back on the mountain.
Overlooking an alley at the rear of the building, they discovered a rusty fire escape that zigzagged its way up the back of the structure all the way to the roof. Shielding their eyes from the sun, they squinted upward. As at the front of the building, all the third-floor windows back here were broken out as well. They couldn’t see movement inside as they had in the front, but all the glass was shattered, leaving only ragged shards here and there stabbing inward around the battered window frames.
“Something’s definitely going on up there,” Terry said. “Let’s go home, get naked, and think about it.”
“Wuss,” Jonas replied, dragging Terry forward. He leaped up and grabbed the bottom rung of the pulldown ladder that extended from the bottom of the fire escape. The ladder screeched and clattered as Jonas dragged it toward the ground. An avalanche of rust and filth sprinkled down on their heads. Up above, the entire fire escape shuddered and shook as the ladder descended.
“Is that thing safe?” Terry asked, not looking happy.
“Heck yeah. What could go wrong?” Jonas tried to sound cockier than he actually felt. In fact, he was starting to wonder if this was a good idea at all.
“What could go wrong? Is that what you said? Geez,” Terry drawled, “give me a minute and I’ll make you a list.”
“Kidder,” Jonas said, too preoccupied to grin. He elbowed Terry again, more gently this time, trying to find his own bravery while teasing Terry into finding his. “Come on, lover. Show some cajones. Follow me where no man has gone before.”
“Nor would a normal man ever want to,” Terry muttered to himself.
With a mischievous leer, Jonas began ascending the rusted ladder, one dusty rung at a time. When he reached the second floor, he gazed down to make sure Terry was following. When he saw that he was, and that he had his shotgun dangling off his back by the gun strap, Jonas proceeded upward, finding some little bit of courage of his own in the weight of the .38 at his hip.
Both men moved carefully, jarring the ancient fire escape as little as possible while they climbed. As they passed the second-floor windows, they tried to peer inside, but it was hopeless. The interior was pitch-black, and the windows were so filthy from decades of neglect that they couldn’t have seen anything even if there had been searchlights burning inside.
Under their combined weight, the old fire escape made some unholy noises. Rusty bolts clamping it to the wall began to squeal and complain. Trusting the damn thing less and less the higher he climbed, Jonas slowed his pace to keep the shaking to a minimum. He tried to distribute his weight more evenly and softly whispered for Terry to do the same.
Terry grumbled a response that sounded a wee bit like “Bite me,” and Jonas smiled.
The moment he did, against all odds, he began to enjoy himself. The feeling surprised him, to say the least. Creeping closer to those annihilated third-floor windows, which constituted the only route he could see to get inside the building, Jonas wondered what the hell was wrong with him? One glance at Terry told him Terry certainly wasn’t enjoying himself, so why the hell should he? What was it exactly that made him feel that way?
He didn’t have to search too deeply to figure out what it was. It was exultation, pure and simple. Exultation at being the stalker for a change, rather than the one being stalked. The hunter instead of the prey. He was being afforded a shot at fighting back against all the misery these creatures had brought to this place. This town. This mountain. And the pain they had inflicted on the man he was now in love with. Suddenly here he was, on a mission to avenge Bobby’s death. A man Jonas had never even met. How weird was that?
He hung from the ladder for a long moment while shooting a prayer skyward. It was a simple prayer. Basic and to the point. A “give me the courage to finish this shit and not get killed” sort of prayer.
When gentle fingers lightly circled his ankle—Terry probably wondering why he had stopped—Jonas muttered a hasty amen and continued to climb.
Two seconds later, he was in front of a busted-out window, and he got the first whiff of rotted flesh. The smell stopped him cold. He gathered his courage and leaned in closer to the broken window. Somewhere in the distance, down in the bowels of the building, he could faintly hear the shuffle of what he imagined to be countless wings and fat bodies scraping against one another. Worse than that, he could hear what, in his imagination, he interpreted to be the minute cries of hungry young.
Baby monsters! He swallowed a ghastly rush of fear that rattled through his body from one end to the other like some vile candy clattering around inside a piñata. The feeling left him almost breathless. Then slowly his courage began to seep back in.
“I’m going to regret doing this,” Jonas whispered to himself. Shaking like he had malaria from the adrenaline coursing through his system, he climbed carefully through the broken window and disappeared among the shadows.
Startled, Terry cried out from the fire escape, “Where the fuck are you going?”
“I’m not going. I’m already there,” Jonas answered calmly, poking his head over the windowsill and gazing out with a nervous grin. “Come join me. Don’t be afraid.”
Terry clambered h
astily through the window in Jonas’s wake, snagging his bootlace on a shard of glass and bitching and moaning every inch of the way. “Don’t worry,” he snapped. “I’m too scared to be afraid.”
“That makes no sense whatsoever,” Jonas wisecracked back with a grin.
Kneeling side by side, they stared into the gloom in front of them, stunned to horrified silence by the mind-numbing reek of decomposed flesh that seemed to reach up and grab them by the lapels, shaking them senseless.
“Whatever we find in here, it’s not going to be good,” Terry breathed, groping for Jonas’s hand.
“Courage, kemosabe,” Jonas whispered back. This time neither one of them smiled.
Chapter Twenty-Six
GLAD TO be off the wobbling fire escape but by no means pleased to be where he actually was, Terry crouched beside Jonas in the shadows and clutched his hand for emotional support. His throat was so dry he could barely swallow. Rivulets of icy sweat poured down his rib cage, and every muscle in his body seemed to be stretched to its limit, twanging like a guitar string. With only the feeble light spilling through the broken window at his back, Terry couldn’t see two feet in front of his face. Nor did he want to. He had never been so scared in his life, and Jonas’s courage in the face of everything that was happening was starting to make him feel guilty. And here he had always considered himself the butch one of the two. Hmm. Might have to rethink that.
The darkness was saturated with the stench of death, the air foul enough to strip his breath away. It was almost as if the smell of rot and corruption was so thick that it laid a physical sheet before his eyes. He imagined reaching out and pressing his fingertips to the vile reality of it like he might a putrid screen of decomposed flesh hovering there in front of his face. Behind that foul stench, another abhorrent smell tried to bleed its way through, to register itself on his already overloaded senses. This one was an acidic smell. Biting and sharp. More chemical than organic. A brittle ammonia that burned the nostrils. Like a festering reek of pus and putrescence that caught in the throat and made the stomach cramp up in disgust.
“Hear them?” Jonas hissed in his ear.
Terry jumped, startled. He was such a nervous wreck he had almost forgotten Jonas was there. Then when Jonas’s words soaked in, he nodded. Slipping up through the filthy stink on the air, coming from somewhere down below where Terry knew he would never ever want to go, tiny voices chittered plaintively in the dark. They rose up from deep in the bowels of the building, far below his feet. Impatient, greedy, pleading voices. Insistent mewlings accompanied by the continuous scritch of what sounded like a thousand miniscule talons, clamoring for food perhaps, clawing for attention. Like baby birds from hell, demanding, demanding, demanding. Unholy infants of some prehistoric creature that had somehow clawed its way up from the depths of another world to gorge itself on the flesh of this one.
That was as far as Terry’s imagination could take him at the moment. Craving light, he reached for his Maglite, but Jonas grabbed his hand to stop him.
“No lights. Wait a minute. Maybe our eyes will adjust to the dark if we get these sun visors out of the way.”
Together, they slowly lifted their face masks, pushing them to the top of their helmets with trembling hands. When the visors clicked in place on top their heads, they lowered their hands, discouraged to find themselves still blinded by the shadows in front of them. Although perhaps not quite as thoroughly blinded as before, Terry thought, relying more on wishful thinking than actual fact.
“That helps,” he lied. “I can almost see now.” It wasn’t true, of course. He still couldn’t see for shit. Yet it made him feel better to say he could.
“It also makes the smell ten times worse,” Jonas complained.
“Can’t have everything.”
“Thanks, Confucius. Our faces are exposed now. Try not to get a nosebleed.”
Terry couldn’t argue with that. Even if he bit his tongue, the creatures would be on him in a heartbeat. If it really was the creatures they were hearing down below.
Now that his face was uncovered, the fetor of decay washed over him unhindered. He slapped his hand to his mouth, trying not to retch. It took every ounce of willpower he possessed not to barf up breakfast and maybe a lung or two to boot. Swallowing copiously, he clutched at Jonas’s arm until the feeling passed.
By the time he could breathe again without puking, he realized Jonas had been right. His eyes were adjusting to the dark.
The floor felt odd beneath the soles of his boots, and Terry saw now that they were crouching on some sort of metal catwalk. It seemed to be a single walkway leading in a direct line from one side of the vast building to another. As he eased forward on his knees, the catwalk groaned beneath his weight. They would have to move slowly and carefully, or whatever the hell was making those godawful noises down below would hear them creeping around. Terry was pretty sure that would be a very bad thing indeed.
“What is that?” he hissed. “I’ve heard the real creatures, and they don’t sound like that at all. What is making that noise?”
“The young,” Jonas whispered back. “At least I think that’s what it is.”
Terry didn’t like the sound of that. “You mean to say the creatures are breeding?”
“That’s what living things do,” Jonas said softly, his mouth close to Terry’s ear. He had two fingers stuffed up his nostrils to fight the smell.
“Maybe it’s something else,” Terry pleaded. “Rats, maybe. Or feral cats.” He wasn’t making any sense, and he knew it. Still, he wasn’t quite ready to accept what Jonas was suggesting.
Apparently Jonas wasn’t ready to accept Terry’s suggestion either. “Yes, I’m sure that’s what it is,” he drawled, rolling his eyes. “Feral pussycats.” He gave Terry a hooded glare, like a schoolteacher confronted with the dumbest student ever.
Terry opened his mouth to defend himself, but Jonas flapped a hand in his face to shut him up. He pulled the .38 from his holster and held it out in front of him. Still stooping low, he duck walked forward a couple of steps before Terry snagged the back of his jacket to stop him.
“Where are you going?”
“I think I see a stairwell leading down,” Jonas said. “We have to see what we’re up against.”
Terry tried to think of a snappy comeback, but his brain was on lockdown. He merely nodded silently, as if accepting the fact that things were now out of his control and he might as well deal with it. Cradling the shotgun in his arms, he made sure the safety was still off before whispering, “Lead the way, bwana.”
So Jonas led the way.
Humbly, Terry followed. Duck walking like Jonas, he stayed close to Jonas’s back. “How come you’re not afraid?” he whispered into the darkness ahead.
Jonas stopped long enough to look back, his face scrunched up in amazement as if he couldn’t believe what Terry had just said. “Are you nuts? I’m scared to death.”
“You don’t act it.”
“I’m determined to save your house.”
“What?”
Jonas clutched Terry’s shoulders and held him there, face-to-face, their mouths inches apart. “I liked your little house. I want to live there with you. If we find these fuckers, we can tell the authorities to pinpoint their bombing raid on this one building. Make a surgical strike. Maybe we can keep the damage minimal. Not blow up your whole town and mountain in the process. Take out the nest and be done with it.”
“This is the nest?”
“I think so. Yeah. We’ll know for sure in a minute.”
Terry blinked, stunned. He was also trying to ignore the ache in his knees. Duck walking sucked. “When did you have time to figure all that out?”
“When we were outside hanging on the fire escape.”
Terry let that soak in for a minute. Meanwhile, he enjoyed Jonas’s breath washing across his face. It was sweet enough to help dispel the stench from whatever the hell was waiting for them down below.
“Do
you really think those are the creatures we hear?”
“What else could it be? And don’t give me that line about rats and pussycats again. I’m not in the mood.”
“Well, don’t get snippy.”
“I will if I want.”
Terry almost smiled. “So what’s the plan, then?” he asked, shooting for a more businesslike tone, while deep down inside he was merely trying not to blubber like a baby. He really hated being in this fucking building.
Jonas heaved a slightly impatient sigh. “The plan is we get as close as we can to whatever’s making that noise so we can see if they really are what we think they are.”
“The creatures.”
“Yeah. The creatures.”
“That’s all?” Terry asked. “That’s all we’re doing?”
“For now,” Jonas answered. “Yeah. That’s all we’re doing.”
“What happens later?”
“Depends on what we find. Oh, and one more thing.”
“What’s that?” Terry asked, his knees singing an aria now. His back aching. The shotgun weighing a ton in his cramping arms.
“Keep trying not to bleed,” Jonas said, and leaning in close, he gave Terry a gentle swipe across the mouth with his lips. “Now come on. Let’s finish this. I still have a fuck on hold. You promised.”
Terry groaned. “Jesus, grow up!”
Jonas snickered and turned away. Both men rose to their feet, kneecaps clicking audibly. It was so painful, Terry almost cried out when he straightened his bunched-up legs. They inched forward, their racing heartbeats accompanying them every step of the way. Under their feet, the narrow catwalk squeaked and groaned and sprinkled rust flakes, like filthy snow, down through the shadows below. Clearly, human feet had not walked here for decades.
Great smears of a white, powdery substance stained the catwalk’s handrails. It didn’t take a genius to figure out it was some sort of fecal matter, dried to dust. Both men avoided touching it, even with their gloves on.
