Relic (Pendergast, Book 1)

by Preston, Douglas

  “Pendergast?” said D’Agosta, removing his radio once again.

  “Reading.”

  “We’re past the first fork, but we’ve hit a steel door, and it’s locked.”

  “A locked door? Between the first and second forks?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you took a right at the first fork?”

  “Yes.”

  “One minute.” There was a shuffling sound.

  “Vincent, go back to the fork and take the left-hand tunnel. Hurry.”

  D’Agosta wheeled around. “Bailey! We’re heading back to that last fork. All of you, let’s go. On the double!”

  The group turned wearily, murmuring, and started moving back through the inky water.

  “Wait!” came the voice of Bailey, from the head of the group. “Christ, Lieutenant, do you smell it?”

  “No,” said D’Agosta; then “shit!” as the fetid stench enveloped him. “Bailey, we’re going to have to make a stand! I’m coming up. Fire at the son of a bitch!”

  * * *

  Cuthbert sat on the worktable, absently tapping its scarred surface with a pencil eraser. At the far end of the table, Wright sat motionless, his head in his hands. Rickman stood on her tiptoes by the small window. She was angling the flashlight through the bars in front of the glass, switching it on and off with a manicured finger.

  A brief flash of lightning silhouetted her thin form, then a low rumble of thunder filled the room.

  “It’s pouring out,” she said. “I can’t see a thing.”

  “And nobody can see you,” said Cuthbert wearily. “All you’re doing is wearing out the battery. We may need it later.”

  With an audible sigh, Rickman switched off the light, plunging the lab once again into darkness.

  “I wonder what it did with Montague’s body,” came the slurred voice of Wright. “Ate him up?” Laughter spluttered out of the gloom.

  Cuthbert continued tapping the pencil.

  “Ate him up! With a little curry and rice, maybe! Montague pilaf!” Wright chuckled.

  Cuthbert stood up, reached over toward the Director, and plucked the .357 from Wright’s belt. He checked the bullets, then tucked it into his own belt.

  “Return that at once!” Wright demanded.

  Cuthbert said nothing.

  “You’re a bully, Ian. You’ve always been a bully, a small-minded, jealous bully. First thing Monday morning, I’m going to fire you. In fact, you’re fired now.” Wright stood up unsteadily. “Fired, you hear me?”

  Cuthbert was standing at the front door of the laboratory, listening.

  “What is it?” Rickman asked in alarm. Cuthbert held his hand up sharply.

  Silence.

  At length, Cuthbert turned away from the door. “I thought I heard a noise,” he said. He looked toward Rickman. “Lavinia? Could you come here a moment?”

  “What is it?” she asked, breathless.

  Cuthbert drew her aside. “Hand me the torch,” he said. “Now, listen. I don’t want to alarm you. But should something happen—”

  “What do you mean?” she interrupted, her voice breaking.

  “Whatever it was that’s been killing people is still loose. I’m not sure we’re safe in here.”

  “But the door! Winston said it was two inches thick—”

  “I know. Maybe everything will be fine. But those doors to the exhibition were even thicker than that, and I’d like to take a few precautions. Help me move this table up against the door.” He turned toward the Director.

  Wright looked up vaguely. “Fired! Clean out your desk by five o’clock Monday.”

  Cuthbert pulled Wright to his feet, and sat him in a nearby chair. With Rickman’s help, Cuthbert positioned the table in front of the oak door of the laboratory.

  “That will slow it down, anyway,” he said, dusting off his jacket. “Enough for me to get in a few good shots, with luck. At the first sign of trouble, I want you to go through that back door into the Dinosaur Hall and hide. With the security gates down, there’s no other way into the Hall. At least that will put two doors between you and whatever’s out there.” Cuthbert looked around again restlessly. “In the meantime, let’s try to break this window. At least then maybe someone will be able to hear us yelling.”

  Wright laughed. “You can’t break the window, you can’t, you can’t. It’s high-impact glass.”

  Cuthbert hunted around the lab, finally locating a short piece of angle iron. When he swung it vertically through the bars, it bounced off the glass and was knocked out of his hands.

  “Bloody hell,” he muttered, rubbing his palms together. “We could shoot out the window,” he speculated. “Do you have any more bullets hidden away?”

  “I’m not talking to you anymore,” Wright retorted.

  Cuthbert opened the filing cabinet and started fumbling in the dark. “Nothing,” he said at last. “We can’t waste bullets on that window. I’ve only got five shots in here.”

  “Nothing, nothing, nothing. Didn’t King Lear say that?”

  Cuthbert sighed heavily and sat down. Silence filled the room once again, save only the wind and rain, and the distant roll of thunder.

  * * *

  Pendergast lowered the radio and turned toward Margo. “D’Agosta’s in trouble. We’ve got to move fast.”

  “Leave me behind,” said Frock quietly. “I’m just going to slow you down.”

  “A gallant gesture,” Pendergast told him. “But we need your brains.”

  He moved slowly out into the hall, sweeping his light in both directions. Then he signaled all clear. They moved down the hall, Margo pushing the wheelchair before her as quickly as possible.

  As they threaded their way, Frock would occasionally whisper a few words of direction. Pendergast stopped at every intersection, gun drawn. Frequently, he halted to listen and smell the air. After a few minutes, he took the chair’s handlebars from an unprotesting Margo. Then they rounded a corner, and the door of the Secure Area stood before them.

  For the hundredth time, Margo prayed silently that her plan would work; that she wasn’t simply condemning all of them—including the group trapped in the subbasement—to a horrible death.

  “Third on the right!” Frock called as they moved inside the Secure Area. “Margo, do you remember the combination?”

  She dialed, pulled the lever, and the door swung open. Pendergast strode over and knelt beside the smaller crate.

  “Wait,” said Margo.

  Pendergast stopped, eyebrows raised quizzically.

  “Don’t let the smell of it get onto you,” she said. “Bundle the fibers in your jacket.”

  Pendergast hesitated.

  “Here,” Frock said. “Use my handkerchief to remove them.”

  Pendergast inspected it. “Well,” he said ruefully, “if the Professor here can donate a hundred-dollar handkerchief, I suppose I can donate my jacket.” He took the radio and notebook, stuffed them into the waistband of his pants, then removed his suit jacket.

  “Since when did FBI agents start wearing hand-tailored Armani suits?” Margo asked jokingly.

  “Since when did graduate students in ethnopharmacology start appreciating them?” Pendergast replied, spreading the jacket carefully on the floor. Then, gingerly, he scooped out several fistfuls of fiber and laid them carefully across his open jacket. Finally, he stuffed the handkerchief into one of the sleeves, folded the garment, and tied the sleeves together.

  “We’ll need a rope to drag it with,” said Margo.

  “I see some packing cord around the far crate,” Frock pointed out.

  Pendergast tied the jacket and fashioned a harness, then dragged the bundle across the floor.

  “Seems to be snug,” he said. “Pity, though, that they haven’t dusted these floors in a while.” He turned to Margo. “Will this leave enough of a scent for the creature to follow?”

  Frock nodded vigorously. “The Extrapolator estimates the creature’s sense of smell to
be exponentially keener than ours. It was able to trace the crates to this vault, remember.”

  “And you’re sure the—er—meals it’s already had this evening won’t satiate it?”

  “Mr. Pendergast, the human hormone is a poor substitute. We believe the beast lives for this plant.” Frock nodded again. “If it smells an abundance of fibers, it will track them down.”

  “Let’s get started, then,” said Pendergast. He lifted the bundle gingerly. “The alternate access to the subbasement is several hundred yards from here. If you’re right, we’re at our most vulnerable from now on. The creature will home in on us.”

  Pushing the wheelchair, Margo followed the agent into the corridor. He shut the door, then the three moved quickly down the hall, back into the silence of the Old Basement.

  53

  D’Agosta moved forward, crouching low in the water, his revolver nosing ahead into the inky darkness. He had turned off his flashlight to avoid betraying his position. The water flowed briskly between his thighs, its smell of algae and lime mixing with the fetid reek of the creature.

  “Bailey, you up there?” he whispered into the gloom.

  “Yeah,” came Bailey’s voice. “I’m waiting at the first fork.”

  “You’ve got more rounds than I. If we drive off this motherfucker, I want you to stand guard while I go behind and try shooting off the lock.”

  “Roger.”

  D’Agosta started toward Bailey, his legs numbing in the frigid water. Suddenly, there was a confusion of sounds in the blackness ahead of him: a soft splash, then another, much closer. Bailey’s shotgun went off twice, and several people in the group behind him started whimpering.

  “Jesus!” he heard Bailey yell, then there was a low crunching noise and Bailey screamed and D’Agosta felt thrashing in the water ahead of him.

  “Bailey!” he cried out, but all he could hear was the gurgle of running water. He pulled out his flashlight and shined it up the tunnel. Nothing.

  “Bailey!”

  Several people were crying behind him now and somebody was screaming hysterically.

  “Shut up!” D’Agosta pleaded. “I have to listen!”

  The screams were abruptly muffled. He played the light ahead, off the walls and ceiling, but he could see nothing. Bailey had vanished, and the smell had receded once again. Maybe Bailey had hit the fucker. Or maybe it had just temporarily retreated from the noise of the shotgun. He shone the flashlight downward, and noticed the water flowing red around his legs. A torn shred of NYPD regulation blue cloth floated by.

  “I need help up here!” he hissed over his shoulder.

  Smithback was suddenly at his side.

  “Point this flashlight down the passage,” D’Agosta told him.

  D’Agosta probed the stone floor with his fingers. The water, he noticed, seemed to be a little higher: as he bent forward, reaching down, it grazed his chest. Something floated by beneath his nose, a piece of Bailey, and he had to turn away for a moment.

  There was no shotgun to be found.

  “Smithback,” he said, “I’m going back to shoot off the lock. We can’t backtrack any farther with that thing waiting for us. Feel around in this water for a shotgun. If you see anything, or smell anything, shout.”

  “You’re leaving me here alone?” Smithback asked a little unsteadily.

  “You’ve got the flashlight. It’ll just be for a minute. Can you do it?”

  “I’ll try.”

  D’Agosta grasped Smithback’s shoulder briefly, then started back. For a journalist, the guy had guts.

  A hand tugged at him as he waded through the group. “Please tell us what’s happening,” a feminine voice sobbed.

  He gently shook her off. D’Agosta could hear the Mayor talking soothingly to her. Maybe he’d vote for the old bastard next time.

  “Everyone get back,” he said, and positioned himself in front of the door. He knew he should stand well back from the door to avoid potential ricochets. But it was a thick lock, and he’d have a hard time aiming in the dark.

  He moved to within a few feet of the door, placed the barrel of the .38 near the lock, and fired. When the smoke cleared, he found a clean hole in the lock’s center. The lock held fast.

  “Fuck it,” he muttered, placing the muzzle of the revolver directly against the hasp and firing again. Now the lock was gone. He heaved his weight against the door.

  “Give me a hand here!” he called out.

  Immediately, several people began throwing themselves against it. The rusty hinges gave way with a loud screech, and water gushed through the opening.

  “Smithback! Find anything?”

  “I got his flashlight!” came the disembodied voice.

  “Good boy. Now come on back!”

  As D’Agosta moved through the door, he noticed an iron D ring on the other side as well. He stood back and ushered the group through, counting. Thirty-seven. Bailey was gone. Smithback brought up the rear.

  “All right, let’s shut this thing!” D’Agosta yelled.

  Against the heavy flow of the water, the door groaned slowly shut.

  “Smithback! Shine one of the lights here. Maybe we can find a way to bar this door.”

  He looked at it for a second. If they could jam a piece of metal through the D ring, it just might hold. He turned to the group. “I need something, anything, made of metal!” he called. “Does anyone have a piece of metal we can use to bar this door?”

  The Mayor passed quickly through the group, then came up to D’Agosta, thrusting a small collection of metal items into his hands. As Smithback held the light, D’Agosta inspected the pins, necklaces, combs. “There’s nothing here,” he muttered.

  They heard a sudden splashing on the other side of the door, and a deep grunt. A stench filtered through the low slats in the door. A soft thump and a brief squeal of hinges, and the door was pushed ajar.

  “Christ! You there, help me shut this door!”

  As before, people flung themselves against the door, forcing it shut. There was a rattle and then a louder boom as the thing met their force, then pushed them back. The door creaked open farther.

  At D’Agosta’s shout, others joined the effort.

  “Keep pushing!”

  Another roar; then a tremendous thump heaved everyone back once again. The door groaned under the opposing weights, but continued to open, first six inches, then a foot. The stench became intolerable. Watching the door inch its way from the frame, D’Agosta saw three long talons snake their way around the edge. The shape felt along the door, then swiped forward, the talons alternately sheathing and unsheathing.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” D’Agosta heard the Mayor say, quite matter-of-factly. Somebody else began chanting a prayer in a strange singsong. D’Agosta placed the barrel of the gun near the monstrosity and fired once. There was a terrible roar and the shape vanished into churning water.

  “The flashlight!” Smithback cried. “It’ll fit perfectly! Shove it into the ring!”

  “That’ll leave us with just one light,” D’Agosta panted.

  “Got a better idea?”

  “No,” D’Agosta said under his breath. Then, louder: “Everybody, push!”

  With a final heave they slammed the door back into its iron frame, and Smithback shoved the flashlight through the D ring. It slid through easily, its flared end coming to rest against the metal hasp. As D’Agosta caught his breath, they heard another, sudden crash and the door shuddered, but held firm.

  “Run, people!” cried D’Agosta. “Run!” They thrashed through the roiling water, falling and sliding. D’Agosta, buffeted from behind, fell face first into the rushing water. He rose and continued forward, trying to ignore the monster’s roaring and pounding—he did not think he could hear it and remain sane. He willed himself to think about the flashlight instead. It was a good, heavy police-issue flashlight. It would hold. He hoped to God it would hold. The group stopped at the second fork in the tunnel, crying and s
hivering. Time to radio Pendergast and get the fuck out of this maze, D’Agosta thought. He clapped his hand to his radio holster, and with a shock realized it was empty.

  * * *

  Coffey stood inside the forward security station, staring moodily at a monitor. He was unable to reach either Pendergast or D’Agosta. Inside the perimeter, Garcia in Security Command and Waters in the Computer Room were still responding. Had everybody else been killed? When he thought of the Mayor dead, and the headlines that were sure to follow, a hollow feeling grew in his stomach.

  An acetylene torch, flickering near the silver expanse of the metal security door at the east end of the Rotunda, cast ghostly shadows across the tall ceiling. The acrid smell of molten steel filled the air. The Rotunda had grown strangely quiet. Field amputations were still taking place by the security door, but all the other guests had left for home or area hospitals. The journalists had finally been contained behind police barriers. Mobile intensive care units were set up on nearby side streets and medevacs were standing by.

  The SWAT team commander came over, buckling an ammo belt over his black fatigues. “We’re ready,” he said.

  Coffey nodded. “Give me a tactical.”

  The leader pushed a bank of emergency phones aside and unfolded a sheet.

  “Our spotter will be leading us by radio. He’s got the detailed diagrams from this station. Phase One: We’re punching a hole through the roof, here, and dropping to the fifth floor. According to the specs of the security system, this door here will blow with one charge. That gives us access to the next cell. Then we proceed down to this props storage room on the fourth floor. It’s right above the Hall of the Heavens. There’s a trapdoor in the floor that Maintenance uses for cleaning and servicing the chandelier. We’ll lower our men and haul the wounded up in sling chairs. Phase Two: Rescue those in the subbasement, the Mayor and the large group with him. Phase Three: Search for those who may be elsewhere within the perimeter. I understand that people are trapped in the Computer Room and Security Command. The Museum Director, Ian Cuthbert, and a woman as yet unidentified may have gone upstairs. And don’t you have agents of your own within the perimeter, sir? The man from the New Orleans field office—”