Reliquary (Pendergast, Book 2) (Relic)

by Douglas Preston

  The Wrinklers came on, their eyes blood red and streaming, their skin mottled and burned from the intense light.

  She shook the squeeze bottles. “Hear me? Activated 7-dehydrocholesterol! Enough to kill all of you ten times over!” As the first Wrinkler reached her, knife raised, she hosed it in the face, and then hit a second Wrinkler just behind it. They fell backward, writhing horribly, small wisps of acrid smoke rising from their skin.

  The other Wrinklers paused, a gibbering sound rising from their ranks.

  “Vitamin D!” Margo repeated. “Bottled sunlight!”

  She raised her arms and sent two delicate streams of liquid arcing over the milling crowd. A wail rose up, some falling and tearing at their cloaks, splattering droplets on their companions. Margo stepped forward and hosed the rest of the front rank. They fell backward in sheer panic, the sounds of gibbering and wailing filling the air. She advanced again, spraying a thick line of solution from left to right, and then the mass of Wrinklers broke and turned, scrambling over one another to get away, leaving a dozen convulsing, smoking bodies on the floor, ripping desperately at their cloaks.

  Margo stepped back, and hosed the rest of the solution across the floor of the archway, then up along its sides and ceiling, leaving the exit tunnel wet and dripping. She tossed the empty containers into the Pavilion. “Let’s go!”

  She ran after the others, catching up to them by an open grating at the far end of the platform.

  “We’ve got to get back to the rally point,” the black-suited figure said. “Those charges are set to go off in ten minutes.”

  “You first, Margo,” D’Agosta said.

  As she dropped to the level of the tracks and began to descend into the drain below, a series of shattering explosions sounded behind and above her.

  “Our charges!” D’Agosta cried. “The fires must have set them off prematurely!”

  Pendergast turned to answer, but his voice was drowned in a rumble which, like an earthquake, was felt first in the feet, then in the gut, growing in violence and volume. A strange wind kicked up in the passageway—a gathering roar of air, forced along by the collapse of the Crystal Pavilion—pushing dust, smoke, scraps of paper, and the ripe smell of blood before it.

  62

  Margo dropped through the drain into a long, low tunnel, lit only by the sputtering glow of a dying flare. Several piles of rubble were strewn here and there, poking up from the standing water on the tunnel floor. Above her, the passages still rumbled and shook from the aftereffects of the concussion. Dust and debris drifted down through the drain, settling onto her shoulders.

  Smithback fell into the water beside her, followed by Pendergast, D’Agosta, and the diver.

  “Who the hell are you?” D’Agosta asked. “And what happened to the rest of the SEALs?”

  “I’m not a SEAL, sir,” the man said. “I’m a police diver. Officer Snow, sir.”

  “Well, well,” said D’Agosta. “The guy who started it all. Got a light, Snow?”

  The diver snapped a new flare to life, and suddenly the tunnel was illuminated by a harsh crimson glare.

  “Oh, God!” Margo heard Smithback murmur beside her. Then she realized that what she thought to be piles of rubble were actually rubber-suited divers, battered and headless, their bodies splayed in mute agony. The surrounding walls were pocked and scarred by countless bullet holes and the charred tracings of shells.

  “SEAL Team Gamma,” Snow muttered. “After my partner bought it, I ran back here to make a stand. Those creatures chased me up the drain, but then abandoned the chase on those tracks up there.”

  “Guess they were late for the debutante’s ball,” D’Agosta said, looking around at the massacre site, his face hard.

  “You didn’t see any of the other SEALs in there, sir?” Snow asked. “I followed the prints. I hoped some of them might have survived …” his voice trailed off when he saw the look on D’Agosta’s face. There was a moment of awkward silence.

  “Come on,” Snow urged, once again animated. “There’s still forty pounds of C-4 around here, waiting to go off.”

  Margo stumbled forward in a dark daze. She felt the floor of the tunnel solid beneath her feet, and she tried to draw that solidity up through her feet, her legs, and her arms. She knew she could not allow herself to think about what she had seen, what she had learned, inside the Crystal Pavilion: if she stopped to do that, she would be unable to go on.

  The tunnel took a long, shallow bend. Ahead, Margo could see Snow and D’Agosta already moving into a large vaulted space at the end of the tunnel.

  Beside her, she could hear Smithback’s breathing turn choppy. Her eyes drifted toward the tunnel floor. Around her lay the torn and bloodied bodies of perhaps a dozen Wrinklers. She caught a glimpse of a dirty hood, burned away to expose skin seamed and veined to an extraordinary thickness.

  “Striking,” Pendergast murmured at her side. “The reptilian traits are unmistakable, yet the human attributes remain dominant. An early way station, so to speak, on the way to the fullblown Mbwun-hood. Odd, though, how the metamorphosis is so much greater in certain specimens than in others. No doubt due to Kawakita’s continual refinements and experimentations. Shame there’s no time for further study.”

  The echoes of their footfalls grew broader as they moved into the large space at the end of the tunnel. There were several more still forms lying scattered in the shallow water.

  “This was our rally point,” Snow said as he sorted quickly through the rows of equipment lining one side of the vaulted space. Margo could hear the sharp edge of nervousness in his voice. “There’s more than enough scuba equipment here to get us out, but no suits. Look, we’ve got to move quickly. If we’re still here when those charges blow, this whole place is going to come down on top of us.”

  Pendergast handed her a set of tanks. “Dr. Green, we have you to thank for our escape,” he said. “You were right about the vitamin D. And you were able to contain the creatures within the Pavilion until the explosions blocked their escape. I promise you’ll be welcome on any further excursions we may make.”

  Margo nodded as she snugged her feet into a pair of flippers. “Thanks, but once was enough.”

  The FBI agent turned toward Snow. “What’s the exit strategy?”

  “We came in through the Sewage Treatment Plant on the Hudson,” Snow replied, shouldering his air tank and strapping on a headlamp. “But there’s no way to return through the plant. We were to leave via the north branch of the West Side Lateral, to the One Hundred Twenty-fifth Street Canal.”

  “Can you get us there?” Pendergast asked, quickly passing air tanks to Smithback and helping to fit them.

  “I think so,” Snow panted, pulling masks out of the equipment pile. “I had a good long look at the Commander’s maps. We retrace our route as far as the first flow riser. If we ascend the riser instead of descend, we should reach the access spillway leading out into the Lateral. But it’s a long swim, and we’ll have to be extremely careful. There are sluice gates and evacuation shunts. Get lost down those, and …” His voice petered off.

  “Understood,” Pendergast said, shrugging into a set of air tanks. “Mr. Smithback, Dr. Green, ever used scuba gear before?”

  “Took a few lessons in college,” Smithback said, accepting the proffered mask.

  “Skin-dived in the Bahamas,” Margo said.

  “The principle’s the same,” Pendergast said to her. “We’ll adjust your regulator. Just breath normally, stay calm, and you’ll do fine.”

  “Hurry!” Snow said, real urgency in his voice now. He began to jog toward the far end of the vaulted space, Smithback and Pendergast close behind him. Margo forced herself to follow, tightening her tank belt as she ran.

  Suddenly, she was brought up short by Pendergast, who had stopped and was looking over his shoulder.

  “Vincent?” he asked.

  Margo turned. D’Agosta was standing behind them in the center of the vault, the air t
anks and mask still in a pile by his feet.

  “You go on ahead,” he said.

  Pendergast looked inquiringly at him.

  “Can’t swim,” D’Agosta explained simply.

  Margo heard Snow curse fervently under his breath. For a moment, nobody moved. Then Smithback stepped back toward the Lieutenant.

  “I’ll help you out,” he said. “You can follow me.”

  “I told you, I grew up in Queens, I don’t know how to swim,” D’Agosta snapped. “I’ll sink like a damn stone.”

  “Not with all that blubber, you won’t,” Smithback said, snatching a tank off the ground and placing it on D’Agosta’s back. “Just hold on to me. I’ll swim for both of us, if need be. You kept your head above water back in the subbasement, remember? Just do what I do and you’ll be okay.” He thrust a mask into D’Agosta’s hands, then pushed him ahead toward the group.

  At the far end of the chamber, an underground river ran off into darkness. Margo watched as first Snow, then Pendergast, adjusted their masks and eased themselves into the dark liquid. Pulling her mask down over her eyes and placing the regulator in her mouth, she slid in after them. The air of the tanks was a welcome relief after the foul atmosphere of the tunnel. Behind her, she could hear a loud splashing as D’Agosta half swam, half floundered through the viscous, lukewarm liquid, Smithback urging him on.

  Margo swam as quickly as she could through the tunnel, following the flickering light of Snow’s headlamp, expecting at any moment to feel the massive concussion of the SEAL charges bring the ancient stone ceiling down behind them. Ahead, Pendergast and Snow had stopped, and she pulled up beside them.

  “We go down here,” Snow said, popping the regulator from his mouth and pointing downward. “Be careful not to scratch yourself, and for God’s sake don’t swallow anything. There’s an old iron pipe at the base of the tunnel here that leads—”

  At that moment they felt, rather than heard, a vibration begin over their heads: a low, rhythmic rumbling that grew to a terrible intensity.

  “What’s that?” Smithback gasped, coming up with D’Agosta. “The charges?”

  “No,” Pendergast whispered. “Listen: it’s one continuous stream of sound. It must be the dumping of the Reservoir. Prematurely.”

  They hung there in the foul liquid, mesmerized despite the danger by the long rolling sound of millions of gallons of water roaring down the ancient network of pipes that crossed and recrossed above their heads, heading directly for them.

  “Thirty seconds until the rest of the charges go,” Pendergast said quietly, checking his watch.

  Margo waited, trying to steady her breathing. She knew that if the charges failed, they’d be dead within minutes.

  The tunnel began to vibrate violently, the surface of the water jiggling and dancing. Small pieces of masonry and cement began to rain down into the water around them. Snow tightened his mask and took a last look around, then sank beneath the surface. Smithback followed, pushing the protesting D’Agosta before him. Pendergast motioned Margo to go next. She sank into the darkness, trying to follow the faint light of Snow’s headlamp as it descended into a narrow, rustcoated pipe. She could see the ungainly thrashing of D’Agosta subside into more regular movements as he became used to breathing tank air.

  The tunnel leveled out, then snaked around two bends. Margo took a quick look behind to reassure herself that Pendergast was following. In the dim light of the swirling orange effluent, she could see the FBI agent motion her forward.

  Now, she could see the group pausing at a junction ahead of her. The ancient iron pipe ended and a gleaming steel tube continued onward. Beneath her feet, at the point where the two tunnels met, Margo could see a narrow tube leading downward. Snow gestured ahead, then pointed upward with his finger, indicating that the vent riser to the West Side Lateral was directly ahead.

  Suddenly, there was a roar from behind them: an ominous, deep rolling sound, horribly magnified in the tight water-filled space. Then a sharp concussion sounded, and another, following one upon the other in rapid succession. Beneath the wildly flickering beam of his headlamp, Margo could see Snow’s eyes widen. The final set of charges had gone off barely in time, crushing the spillways from the Devil’s Attic, sealing it forever.

  As Snow frantically signaled them toward the riser, Margo felt a sudden tug at her legs, as if a tidal undertow were pulling her back toward the rally point. The feeling stopped as quickly as it had begun, and the water around her seemed to grow strangely dense. For a split second she had the strange sensation of hanging motionless, suspended in the eye of a hurricane.

  Then an enormous blast of overpressure boiled up from the iron pipe behind them, a roiling cyclone of muddy water that caused the tunnel itself to jerk and dance spasmodically. Margo felt herself battered against its iron flanks. Her mouthpiece came loose and she reached for it frantically, hands grabbing through the storm of bubbles and thrashing sediment that surrounded her. There was another burst of pressure and she felt herself forced downward, sucked into the pipe beneath her feet. She righted herself desperately and fought to swim back up to the junction, but a horrible suction only pulled her deeper into unguessable depths. The roaring sound continued like the rushing of blood in her ears. She felt herself being knocked from side to side against the walls of the pipe, a piece of flotsam in the flood. Far above her head now she could see, through the dim illumination of Snow’s headlamp, Pendergast staring at her, his hand reaching down, tiny as a doll’s, from what seemed countless miles away. Then there was another blast, the narrow tunnel collapsed above her head with a shriek of protesting metal, and as the endless rumbling continued, she felt herself falling ever farther into a watery darkness.

  63

  Hayward jogged up the Mall toward the Bandshell and Cherry Hill, Officer Carlin by her side. For all his bulk, he ran easily, with the grace of a natural athlete. Didn’t even break a sweat. The encounter with the moles, the tear gas—even the chaos they’d found when they regained the street—hadn’t fazed him.

  Here, in the darkness of the Park, the noise that had seemed so distant before was now much louder: a strange, ululating cry, continuously rising and falling, possessing a life of its own. Odd flickers and gouts of flame arose, blushing the underside of the ragged clouds overhead with patches of bright crimson.

  “Jesus,” Carlin said as he jogged. “It sounds like a million people, all trying to murder each another.”

  “Maybe that’s what it is,” Hayward replied as she watched a troop of National Guardsmen double-timing northward ahead of them.

  They trotted over Bow Bridge and skirted the Ramble, approaching the rear line of the police defenses. A long, unbroken string of news vehicles was parked along the Transverse, engines idling. Overhead, a fat-bellied helicopter glided, its huge prop smacking the air as it moved at treetop level. A row of policemen had formed a ring around the Castle terrace, and a lieutenant waved her through. With Carlin in tow, she crossed the terrace, then moved up the steps toward the Castle ramparts. There—amidst a milling throng of police brass, city officials, National Guardsmen, and nervous-looking men speaking into portable telephones—was Chief Horlocker, looking about ten years older than when Hayward had seen him barely four hours before. He was speaking with a slight, well-dressed woman in her late fifties. Or rather, he was listening as the woman spoke in clipped, decisive sentences. Hayward moved closer and recognized the woman as the leader of Take Back Our City, the mother of Pamela Wisher.

  “… atrocity unlike anything ever seen in this city before!” Mrs. Wisher was saying. “A dozen of my personal friends are lying in hospital beds as we speak. And who knows how many hundreds more from among our ranks have been wounded? I promise you, and I promise the mayor, that lawsuits are going to fall like rain on this city. Like rain, Chief Horlocker!”

  Horlocker made a valiant attempt. “Mrs. Wisher, our reports indicate that it was the younger element among your own marchers that incited this riot
ing—”

  But Mrs. Wisher was not listening. “And when this is all over,” she continued, “and the Park and the streets are scrubbed free of the filth and ruin that litter them now, our organization will be stronger than ever. If the mayor feared us before tonight, he will fear us ten times more tomorrow! The death of my daughter was the spark that set our cause on fire, but this outrageous assault on our liberties and our persons has set it ablaze! And don’t think that … ”

  Hayward backed off, deciding this was perhaps not the best time to approach the Chief. She felt a tugging at her sleeve, and turned to find Carlin looking at her. Wordlessly, he pointed over the Esplanade toward the Great Lawn. Hayward glanced over, then froze, stupefied.

  In the close summer darkness, the Great Lawn had become a plain of fire. Several dozen groups of people were clashing, withdrawing, attacking, retreating, in a scene of pandemonium. The flickering light of numerous small fires in the trash cans that dotted the outskirts showed that the lawn, once a beautiful carpet of grass, had become a sea of dirt. The combination of darkness and dirt made it impossible to determine which of the rioters were homeless and which were not. To the west and east, double lines of police vehicles had positioned themselves, headlights pointed in toward the scene. In one corner, a large group of well-dressed marchers—Take Back Our City’s last remaining elite remnants—were retreating behind the police barricades, apparently realizing that the midnight vigil could not possibly take place. Squads of police and National Guardsmen were moving forward slowly from the periphery, breaking up fistfights, wielding batons, making arrests.

  “Shit,” Hayward breathed with fervent conviction. “What a balls-up.”

  Carlin turned toward her in surprise, then coughed disapprovingly into his hand.

  There was a sudden flurry of movement behind them, and Hayward turned to see Mrs. Wisher moving gracefully away, head held high, leading a small knot of retainers and bodyguards. In her wake, Horlocker looked like a fighter who’d finished a bad twelve rounds. He leaned against the sand-colored stone of the Castle wall as if seeking its support.