Most of them were bullet holes, of course, automatic weapons had stitched back and forth across the room in every direction during the fight.
There were three holes, though, that weren't right. He'd noticed them immediately when he'd come up here before-he'd mentioned them to McComb; they weren't right.
For one thing, they were far too big for bullet holes-each was as big as a man's head.
Each was about eye level for Schaefer-he figured that would be just above head height for most people, including the gang members who had died here. Nobody was going to be throwing punches that high up.
If someone had picked up a man, raised him over his head like a wrestler doing an airplane spin, and then rammed him against the wall . . .
No. These holes punched right through the wall. Do that with a man's head, and when you pull him back out, he'll be a bloody mess, and probably dead. The bodies, mangled as they were, hadn't shown that particular sort of injury-Schaefer had managed to read the autopsy reports before McComb made them vanish.
Some kind of weapon? Something like a mace?
No. The holes were wrong for that. For one thing . . .
Schaefer stepped back out into the corridor and around into the next room, where the hole came out, and looked at it.
Then he turned and looked at the far wall.
There was another hole there; he'd thought, when he'd looked through from the other side, that he'd seen one.
And yes, the two lined up-but the second, smaller hole was below the first one.
That meant- that whatever had made them had been angled downward.
Schaefer strode back to the bigger room, the room where the massacre had taken place. He looked through the opening, judged the angle, tried to guess where the killer had stood, and then estimated the height of whatever had made that hole.
It looked to him as if some son of a bitch must have been wearing a cannon on his hat, and had neatly collected the cannonballs when he was done.
Or did McComb have those cannonballs locked away somewhere? Schaefer wouldn't put it past him.
He reached out and touched the edge of the hole.
It was charred. That wasn't just powder burns or soot; whatever it was that had punched the hole had charred the lath for a good half inch around the opening. That had been something hot. A bullet wouldn't do that, nor would a cannonball.
Incendiaries of some kind?
But then why was the building still standing?
This was something different, something
strange.
Schaefer remembered that last conversation with Dutch, remembered some things Dutch had said that he hadn't mentioned to Rasche in the car, about how a good enough hunter wouldn't want to bother hunting anything as stupid as a mere animal.
He remembered Dutch talking about weapons such a hunter might use, stuff that didn't exist yet anywhere on earth, so far as Schaefer knew. He'd thought Dutch was just rambling drunkenly.
He didn't think so anymore.
If the killers had a weapon that would punch holes through walls like this, maybe they had the other things Dutch had talked about-perfect camouflage that made them effectively invisible, something that protected them from bullets.
Schaefer began to see why the army, or whoever General Philips worked for, might be involved.
He began to feel something else, as well, something he had felt before, something he'd been feeling off and on for days, but never as strongly as this. It was a prickly feeling of something indefinably wrong, a feeling like something brushing the hairs at the back of his neck.
He remembered Dutch asking if he'd ever wondered what it felt like to be hunted. Right now Schaefer thought he knew exactly how it felt.
He turned; the room was empty.
He looked through the hole, and the room on the other side was empty, as well.
He stepped slowly away from the wall and turned a full 360 degrees, ending up facing the hole again.
He didn't see anything-but the light was poor.
And a good hunter used camouflage. The prey wasn't supposed to see him.
And these hunters might have perfect camouflage.
He started to turn again-and all of a sudden it was there, just at arm's length.
Schaefer knew this was the killer, or at least one of the killers, and that he couldn't afford to play nice. He snatched at his automatic and pulled it from its holster as he said, "Figured you might show up. I could feel you. Can't say I'm that impress-"
He was talking to distract it, but it wasn't working; he was in the middle of a word, his pistol halfway drawn, when a huge yellowish fist slammed across his jaw and sent him reeling backward.
The pistol flew to one side, and Schaefer's mouth filled with blood; the lower teeth on one side suddenly all felt loose. Blood spurted from his nose.
He landed on his hands and knees, facing away from the thing that loomed over him, outlined against the gaping hole in the wall.
"Lucky punch," he said.
It wasn't human. It stood on two legs and was shaped more or less like a man, but it was too big, and too fast. As he knelt, half-dazed for a fraction of a second, he saw its feet in their heavy silver sandals, saw the four toes with their curving black talons. He started to turn and saw the grayish-yellow legs, the gleaming metal greaves, the black netting that covered its body.
This was the hunter Dutch had talked about, it had to be-the thing that had killed Dutch's squad.
It wasn't any gang of terrorists that had done these killings-it was this, this monster, this hunter, whatever it was.
But it didn't matter what it was, or what it looked like; he had to take it down. This killer had invaded his city, his turf. This thing had attacked him. It was big and strong and fast, it had him down, but he had to beat it.
He couldn't afford the time to look at it, not when it was as fast as it was.
Schaefer threw his weight forward onto his hands and dove a boot upward at the thing's belly-and if he fell short and caught it in the crotch, he wouldn't mind that, either.
He didn't catch it anywhere; a clawed hand caught him, instead. Black talons locked around his ankle before his foot had covered half the distance he had intended, and the glow of the streetlights outside sparkled off jagged-edged blades that projected from the complicated band of gadgetry on the thing's wrist.
Before Schaefer could even begin to twist, to struggle, to try to escape, the thing picked him up by that one leg and flung him away.
It moved impossibly fast, but with casual ease and grace, as if this was nothing for it, as- if it wasn't even trying.
Then Schaefer slammed into the wall and stopped noticing details; he heard plaster and lath crunch on impact, and for a millisecond or so he hoped that he hadn't heard any of his bones breaking.
Then his head snapped back and hit an exposed stud, and he wasn't able to hope anything.
He tried not to pass out, tried to force himself back to full alertness. He was on the floor, looking up through a haze, and he saw those yellowish claws reaching for him, that blank thing that wasn't a face looking down at him .. . .
It wasn't a face. It was metal. The thing was wearing some kind of mask.
Then its fingers, or claws, whichever they were, closed on Schaefer's bruised jaw and wrenched his head sideways, exposing his neck, turning his eyes away so that he couldn't see anymore, and Schaefer tried to force defiance out through the blood in his throat.
"Asshole," he said as he tried to bring himself to fight, force his hands to strike at the thing.
Then something bit into his flesh below his left ear, and Schaefer screamed, not so much at the pain it hurt like hell, like three hot knives had just punched into his neck-but he could handle pain. He screamed at the violation. The thing wasn't killing him, it was doing something else.
"What the hell . . . ," he gasped as the thing stood up and stepped back, ". . . did you do . . ."
Schaefer's hand closed on a broken
two-by-four, and his anger gave him strength.
". . . to me!" he shouted as he came up swinging.
The blow of the two-by-four caught the thing on the side of its head, and the mask wrenched to one side. It reached up to straighten it, but Schaefer was there first, following up his attack.
The crooked mask, or helmet, or whatever it was, was blocking the thing's vision. It was blinded.
If he could keep it blinded, he might have a chance.
He grabbed for the metal mask and got both thumbs under the edge.
The thing reached up and ripped him away, but his grip held, and the mask tore free as well.
Something sparked, and Schaefer heard a hiss like escaping gas, but he didn't have time to worry about that; he was falling backward, toward the hole in the wall where the windows had once been.
The mask was in his hands, and he was staring at a face straight out of a nightmare, a huge mottled face framed in black snakelike locks, a face with great baleful eyes and a fang-rimmed mouth that worked in layers, like that of some unspeakable deep-sea horror.
The fangs flexed, as if reaching for him.
Schaefer landed on his feet this time, caught his balance by slamming the mask against the floor with a ringing clang, and stared at his foe.
Those mouth parts moved again, the outermost ring of fangs opening like some ghastly flower, an inner membrane vibrating, and the thing spoke.
"Trick or treat," it said in a voice Schaefer knew, in Carr's voice, amplified to deafening volume.
Then it came at him again, and even Schaefer knew better than to charge the thing or to stand his ground; he took a step backward, trying to dodge, and his foot landed on something hard, something that shouldn't have been there, something that went out from under him, and as he tumbled backward out the hole in the building's wall he realized that he'd tripped over his own dropped pistol.
And then he was out the window and falling, falling head-first toward the street five stories below
* * *
9
Cops in New York tend to get used to things, Detective Rasche thought. There isn't much that can faze a person after a few years on the city payroll.
The muggers, the everyday crazies, the street people, they were nothing; even the civilians were used to them. Cops got to handle stuff civilians never thought about.
Like the time some live wire tied a cow to the chairman of Federal Beef and pitched 'em both off the Chrysler Building. It was supposed to be some sort of protest against fattening up beef with antibiotics, but when that Jersey had pancaked onto Lexington Avenue, all anyone cared about was cleaning up the mess.
City sanitation must have gone through a dozen mops, but they didn't care-it meant free steaks for Christmas. Sure, it was a mess, but they dealt with it.
It was just part of the job. When weird stuff went down, you couldn't let it get to you. You just had to learn to deal with it.
When the real crazies were running loose, you couldn't let it throw you, couldn't waste time getting upset; you just had to deal with it before it got too far out of hand, and worry about what the hell it all meant later.
And when you hear a yell and you look up to see your partner come flying backward out of the fifth floor of an abandoned building, arms flailing, looking for something, anything, that would break his fall, you don't waste your time wondering how it happened, you deal with it.
Rasche had been standing out on the sidewalk, wiping sweat from the back of his neck, trying not to smell the garbage, wondering how long Schaefer was going to be in there, thinking that he wasn't going to find anything and that was going to make him madder than ever-and Schaefer had sailed out through that hole Carr and Lamb and the others had blown in the wall, shouting Rasche's name.
Rasche's mind kicked into high, and he was thinking three or four things at once the instant he saw Schaefer, up there in the sky, catching the light from the streetlamps so that he seemed to glow against the night sky.
There had been someone in there, one of the killers, which was crazy why would anyone come back here?
But it had to be one of the killers; who else could it be?
Maybe it was a guard the feds had posted, but why would a guard throw Schaefer out of the building?
For that matter, who the hell could throw Schaefer out of the building?
And in any case, Rasche thought, he had to do something right now if he didn't want to see his partner splatter on the sidewalk. This wasn't exactly the Chrysler Building, but a five-story fall was more than enough to kill a man.
As Schaefer fell he grabbed for an old wire that stretched across the alley at third-floor height. Rasche watched as he caught it, but couldn't hold on-the old phone line, Rasche thought, this building-was old enough it wouldn't have always been buried, and they'd never cleared the old one away.
Even as he saw Schaefer reaching for the wire, Rasche was moving, he had already grabbed up garbage bags with both hands; now he heaved them under Schaefer, then snatched up two more, thanking God for the latest garbage strike.
He had a third pair in his hands when Schaefer hit, but wasn't in time to use them.
Black plastic exploded with a gigantic pop, and half-rotted garbage sprayed everywhere; Schaefer slammed through the trash onto the pavement.
Rasche dropped the last two bags and ran to Schaefer's side, calling, "Schaef! Jesus! Are you all right"
Schaefer was obviously not all right, but he was breathing, sort of-and he was still conscious.
"Just dandy," Schaefer wheezed, spraying blood with each word.
Rasche didn't stay to argue; he ran for the radio in Schaefer's car.
Two minutes later he was back at Schaefer's side, leaning over. Schaefer was unconscious, but Rasche said, "Hang on, the ambulance is coming, hang on."
He looked up anxiously, and when he looked back, Schaefer's eyes were wide open again.
"I slipped," he said. "On a banana peel." He coughed out a mouthful of blood. "You hear me? Wasn't anyone up there. I slipped. It was an accident!"
Rasche nodded.
"I hear you, man. It was an accident." He noticed for the first time that Schaefer was clutching something in one hand, something strange. "What the hell is this?" he asked, reaching for it.
Schaefer released the mask and gasped out, "I stole . . . the son of a bitch's hat . . . ."
Then he was out again.
Rasche looked at the "hat."
It could be a mask or helmet of some sort, all right, but if so, it was too big for anyone but a giant. It was metal, with a smooth, dull finish; inside Rasche could see gadgetry. There were little tubes along the sides, and oddly shaped plastic fittings here and there on the inside. The eyeholes were not open, but covered by multicolored lenses of some kind.
Rasche couldn't imagine what the hell the thing was for; the closest guess he could come up with was that it was some kind of high-tech night-vision equipment, but even that didn't seem very likely.
Whatever it was, Schaefer wouldn't be able to hang on to it in the hospital, but somehow Rasche didn't think he'd just want it turned over to McComb and the gang.
If the feds got it, it would probably wind up in a warehouse somewhere, right next to the Ark of the Covenant.
Rasche didn't know what the thing was, or what use it might be, but he didn't think it would do anyone any good locked in a drawer somewhere.
He wrapped the mask in his jacket, and when the ambulance arrived a moment later, he had it tucked securely under his arm. It stayed there as Rasche watched the paramedics strap Schaefer to the stretcher and load him aboard the ambulance.
Even McComb would have trouble believing Schaefer had slipped and fallen out a window, but that was what Schaefer had said his story was, and Rasche would stick to it. He'd seen the look in Schaefer's eyes. He'd seen what Schaefer had looked like when he'd gone charging in there.
Whatever the hell was going on, Schaefer intended to deal with it, and Rasche was sure th
at Schaefer didn't give a damn what McComb or Philips or anyone else-including Rasche-had to say about it.
McComb might try to stop him, but Rasche knew better. You couldn't stop Schaefer when he got set onto something, not without killing him, and no one had ever yet managed to kill him. The best thing to do was to help him when you could, and stay out of the way the rest of the time.
Philips couldn't stop him, McComb couldn't stop him, and whoever just threw him out of the building couldn't stop him, not without killing him.
Rasche didn't think Philips or McComb was ready to kill Schaefer over this; he wasn't so sure about whoever was in the building.
He'd stashed the mask and was back at Schaefer's side when the ambulance pulled up.
The crew wouldn't make any guesses about whether Schaefer would live, or whether anything was broken. "No offense," one of them said, "but we don't need any malpractice suits, so we just do our jobs and keep our mouths shut."
They wouldn't let him ride in the ambulance with Schaefer, so when it pulled away, lights flashing, Rasche looked around, thinking.
He could go up in that building, looking for whatever "banana peel" Schaefer had slipped on, up there in the room where Lamb and the others had died, where the bodies had dripped blood in graceful spirals across the plaster dust-the room he'd had nightmares about.
Schaefer's pistol was missing, and he should look for that, too.
Rasche didn't like to think of himself as a coward; hell, he knew he wasn't a coward, not really. All the same, he wasn't about to go into that building again alone. Maybe if he had some serious backup-but how could he call for backup when his partner had slipped and fallen?
He should do something, when your partner was beaten, you were supposed to do something, but he just couldn't.
Besides, he had to know what was happening to Schaefer. How badly was he hurt?
He stopped at a pay phone to call Shari and tell her enough to keep her from worrying too much; then he headed for the hospital in Schaefer's car.
They told him they didn't think Schaefer was going to die right away, though they wouldn't put it in writing, and no, he couldn't see the patient, but he could wait if he wanted, and there was some paperwork he could take care of . . .
Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Predator 01 Page 6
