"Help me get this thing working, damn you!" shouted Crane.
BANG!
Darryl felt himself jump at the noise, before realizing that it was just the heavy steel door smacking into the frame, propelled by the deadly wind. He turned back to Crane. "Slow down, Doc," he said. "We'll get it up and running again."
Crane threw a disgusted look at Darryl. "You know nothing," he almost spat. He turned back to yanking roughly at Wade, pulling the corpse loose with that awful crackling sound. Then: "If we don't get the lights back on, you will think – we all will think – that we've died and gone to hell."
TUNNEL
The door was open. In all Paul's time at The Loon, he had never seen the door that connected the staff area to the prison proper simply hanging open that way. It wasn't right – was just plain wrong, in fact – and the inky darkness that lay beyond it made shivers crawl up Paul's spine like tiny insects. Even though the electromagnetic seals were off, the door should still be closed.
He heard someone take in a breath behind him. It must have been Marty, because Jorge muttered something in Spanish before starting forward into the darkness, his flashlight beam and a few tiny pinlights the only illumination in the dark space.
"You coming, man?" asked Jorge.
Paul shook his head. "Where's Hip-Hop?" he said. "And Jacky?"
Jorge shrugged, clearly trying for a look of jaded nonchalance and just as clearly failing. Paul looked at Marty, who was still standing slightly behind him, the dour-faced man's own flashlight illuminating the hollows of his cheeks and giving him a cadaverous appearance.
Paul pulled out his walkie-talkie. "Hip-Hop?" he said into the device. "Jacky?" No response to either.
"Could their walkie-talkies be out, man?" asked Jorge.
Paul shook his head. "No. Something's wrong." Then he took a deep breath and added, "We have to check out the prison."
"Wait," said Jorge. "Something's wrong and we're going in there? Are you nuts, man?"
"Why are you worried?" asked Paul. "You've got the guns and the flashlights."
And he stepped into the tunnel.
HUNGRY
It is in a different room now.
The monster's bedroom. Its personal area.
It's angry. Angry and happy and amazed and frightened.
And hungry. Hungry most of all.
Food, it thinks. Food food food foodfoodfoodfood....
HELL
Leann was starting to long for the good old days – when all she had to contend with was the prospect of unchaining Steiger for a romp around the prison area. She knew the man was insane, but also knew he was trying to appear somewhat normal in the hopes that he would be let out. Predictable.
By contrast, this night had been anything but predictable. The storm had been expected, sure, but even she had been troubled by its ferocity. Then there was the power outage. Then the second power outage – the one that she had never seen before; had been assured was impossible.
And then Crane, the imperturbable force of nature, looking like a kid who has just seen a monster under his bed.
What next? she wondered.
As if in answer, the wind outside – the sound was ever-present, but still she noticed it the same as she noticed her own heartbeat, thumping loudly in her ears – hit the walls like a huge sledge, a muffled thud that hammered through the reception area where she and Jeff "kept watch" with drawn tranks.
Both of them jerked around, pointing their guns at the blank wall beside them.
She felt foolish, even as she did so, but couldn't help herself.
"Wind," muttered Jeff, and chuckled nervously.
Leann allowed herself a tight grin. "Ain't we just a couple of -" she began.
And then hell burst loose from its moorings and came to visit the earth.
The door to Crane's office, the door to what Leann thought – what she knew – was an empty office burst open suddenly. The heavy wood that she knew was reinforced with a small sheet of steel shattered like a game of pick-up-stix dropped by an infant, wood and bits of metal almost exploding inward.
She whipped around, training her flashlight at the door, but before she could get a glimpse of what was behind it, something...spurted...out at her.
She had a moment.
A single, terrifying moment to see the thing. It looked like a piece of wet steak, raw and dripping, but at the same time it also seemed eerily loose and fluid. The thing shot out and hit her hand, the one that held the flashlight, engulfing it.
Leann felt a hiss and before her brain registered what was happening she smelled charring flesh. She screamed.
The pseudopod retracted just as quickly as it had emerged, pulling back into the black, dank thing she had glimpsed beyond the doorway.
Leann didn't notice. She was cradling her arm. Her arm that a moment ago had ended in a hand with a flashlight, and now ended in a melted and dripping black and red nub.
She inhaled and screamed again, pain coursing through her in waves.
She heard Jeff curse and heard/felt the sound of a dart being shot with a dry thwip, and then the thing in Crane's office barked, sounding almost like a dog. Jeff screamed a shout of mindless terror, then drew his nightstick and rushed the thing.
The pinlights cast just enough light left for Leann to glimpse what happened, just enough for her to know that she was no longer in the real world: somehow a nightmare had escaped from some deranged mind and been made flesh, and had drawn her into its surreal and terrifying realm.
She saw Jeff rush forward, sanity clearly gone from him in an instant.
The thing in Crane's office waited, a gelatinous black shape that in spite of its loose outlines reminded her of something familiar.
Jeff ran.
The thing didn't move.
Until Jeff raised his stick.
Then the thing...broke was the word her mind coughed up. It split like a Venus flytrap and Jeff ran right into the middle of it, which snapped shut around the guard.
Jeff shrieked.
And so did Leann. She screamed and screamed and screamed and was still screaming when Jeff stopped abruptly, still screaming when the thing started moving again, still screaming when it came to her.
And then she stopped.
Forever.
OUT
Marty's and Jorge's flashlights cut the darkness of the prison like electric knives. Right. Left. Right. They illuminated little in the immensity of the prison, however, serving more to highlight the gloom that surrounded them and Paul than to dispel it.
Paul was right behind them, glad that Jorge had moved into point position: it had goaded Marty into following, and Paul had a feeling that they would need the flashlights. Because something was very, very wrong.
The door to the tunnel had been open. So had the door on the other side of the tunnel, the door to the prison. Things were going bad.
Paul had little time to muse on that thought, however, because he suddenly slipped. He cried out, his arms flapping like a hummingbird on speed as he tried to right himself, finally succumbing to gravity and pitching forward...straight into Jorge's arms.
"You okay, man?" said Jorge. "There's better ways to show me you love me, you know."
Paul ignored the man's humor. Something new had just developed. "Shine the flashlight there, will you?" he said, pointing at the dark spot where he had just slipped.
Jorge and Marty both aimed their beams at the spot.
A small pool of dark liquid reflected the light.
"Is that what I think it is?" whispered Jorge.
"It ain't Strawberry Quick, " said Marty. His flashlight whipped back to the other guard's face. "Let's blow, man, let's cheese it."
"What about Hip-Hop and the newbie?" responded Jorge in an almost detached voice, as though he were discussing nothing more than the answer to a surprisingly difficult crossword puzzle. But Paul could see that the guard's hands were shaking, and knew he was going into stress-induced shock.
> "I don't think they give a shit, man," said Marty, looking pointedly at the blood.
"Paul?" said Jorge, the single word conveying to Paul a wealth of confusion and fear.
Paul thought for a quick moment. He didn't like the idea of staying in this place.
Unfortunately, he liked the idea of leaving even less. "We stay," he said. "Marty, lock the tunnel door manually." Marty moved to comply, and as he did, Paul said, "We stick together, checking each cell one floor at a time. Someone's out, and I'd rather keep him in here with us."
"Then lock him in, man," said Jorge. "Let's just lock him in here and get the hell out of this place."
"And what if he got into the other building? What if Hip-Hop or Jacky are in here, wounded?" said Paul. He swallowed dryly, then added, "We have to find out."
GENERATOR
Crane was still searching for a way to fix the generator, to turn the thing on.
Sandy looked at Darryl, and shared a look of dubious concern with him. This was not at all the way either of them was accustomed to seeing the doctor act.
"This wasn't supposed to happen," Crane was murmuring. "This wasn't supposed to happen, oh, God, why did this happen?"
Sandy finally stepped forward, spying something that gave her a tingling hope that this night might not end up in the toilet after all; that maybe she and Darryl could go back and continue their conversation, perhaps even – and she flushed to think of it – find a quiet, empty room somewhere and let nature take its course.
"Here," she said, pointing at a circuit breaker that had been flipped off by Wade's foot. "Looks like he fell – I mean, looks like something hit the cutoff."
She flicked the switch. The generator gasped, slowly cycling up.
Crane almost sobbed in relief, and the sound scared Sandy worse than anything else that had occurred on this strangest of nights.
What the hell was the man so afraid of?
POWER
The only thing that kept Mitchell from falling completely apart in the darkness was the fact that Paul – a man whom Mitchell admired and always wanted to impress – had asked him to watch out for the women. That and the fact that Jorge would ride him mercilessly until the end of time if he ever discovered the big man's secret fear of the dark.
So he sat still and kept his mouth shut – as he usually did – until he noticed how tightly the little girl was clutching at her little bear, how both mother and daughter kept eying the closed door nearby as though expecting a monster or worse to jump out at them at any moment.
He wasn't the most frightened person in the room, he realized. So he opened his mouth and did something extremely rare for him: tried to start a conversation.
"What's your name?" he said to the little girl.
Then a low hum interrupted the conversation, killed it completely in a drowning flood of relief as the overhead light came back on.
"Hell yeah," murmured Mitchell, and stared at the light like it was the finger of a just and righteous God come to save them all from this mess.
He was still staring – and so didn't notice – when Rachel took a silver letter-opener off the desk nearby and slid it into her sleeve.
ONLINE
"Screw you, man," said Marty. " I ain't going in there!"
Paul opened his mouth to plead with the man again. He couldn't blame Marty, not really. They were all terrified, he knew. But before Paul could say anything, there was a deep clicking noise that sounded throughout the cavernous prison. The lights went back on.
Marty seemed to gain strength from the light; Paul was reminded of watching old Popeye cartoons
(with Sammy)
as a child, and thought about the cartoon sailor eating his spinach and growing suddenly strong. That was what Marty looked like in the light.
Marty strode into the prison, which was still dim but much less frightening now that the generator was back online. "You guys gonna help, or what?" he said.
NOW
Crane leaned against the generator in relief, barely noticing the snow that was whipping in through the open hole in the roof of the shack. He looked around; saw Sandy looking at him nervously, then saw Darryl standing in front of the open door, and behind him...
Crane sighed as he realized that the outside lights were back on. They could get back to the institute; the night could still be salvaged.
The lights were back on.
"There you go, Doc," said Darryl in a comforting tone – one which Crane would later have to punish him for. "Lights'll be all the way back up in a second. Everything's gonna be just -"
He didn't get to complete his sentence – something darted out of the snow, too fast to see any real details, and grabbed the big man from behind. It yanked Darryl easily out the door, and two dark shapes were visible in the storm for an instant before the snow and fury outside swallowed them both whole. A moment later the screaming wind was drowned out by a much more powerful scream of fatal pain.
It cut off suddenly.
And was replaced by a laugh. That horrible, ear-splitting laugh that Crane had heard earlier. The beast.
Crane leapt across the tiny room, yanking the door shut. Sandy shrieked. "Where did he – what happened to him?" she demanded.
Crane leaned against the closed door, perspiring, catching his breath. "What was -" began Sandy, but her voice cut off as the door started to open. Crane whipped around, pulling it shut again before the thing outside could get in.
The door pulled open an inch. Crane was resisting as hard as he could. It opened another inch.
"Help!" he shouted.
Sandy ran over to him. She, too, held the door, but even with both of them pulling as they could, the door inched open. They strained, but suddenly it was there. A dark strand of flesh, glistening and damp, curled around the edge of the door. Crane cringed away, but the thing bulged, and suddenly an eye opened on the end of the tendril. It blinked moistly, then swiveled to Crane.
He shrieked and shrank as far from it as he could while still pulling at the door. But it was no use. The horrifying thing followed him.
It touched his ear. Crane screamed.
Then the ropy flesh jerked out of the shack, the door slamming shut behind it.
"My ear! My God, my ear!" Crane shouted, feeling at the outside of the appendage and – surprisingly – finding it intact.
"What the hell was that?" demanded Sandy. "What the hell was that and what the hell happened to Darryl?"
Crane was not inclined to respond, but before he got a chance to ignore her, something knocked wetly on the door.
Crane felt Sandy brace against the feeble-seeming steel door, and felt himself go rigid as well.
Nothing happened.
"Think it gave up?" asked Sandy.
Then there was a hissing noise, just as there had been in the lab earlier that day, and then crude letters appeared on the door, burnt through from the other side:
RuN
"It's playing with us," Crane told Sandy, feeling his stomach drop through the ground below as he said so.
As if to confirm his words, more letters appeared through the steel behind them:
i wiLL KiL aLL of You
nOW
BLOOD
Jorge felt like he was stuck in the world's spookiest haunted house.
Truth be told, the prison area always had and probably always would give him the willies. But now, with the lights dimmer than usual, and with the inmates that were still in their cells gazing out at him, Paul, and Marty as they did a visual check on each cell to make sure no one had gotten out, the place was more than just creepy. It was downright terrifying.
They moved quickly from cell to cell, Jorge in the lead sometimes, sometimes Marty. Paul always stayed in the rear, since he had no trank and no flashlight. But he was the one who had the cell numbers of the residents memorized in that brainy head of his, so it was fair. Someone had to be in charge, and Jorge trusted Paul to do it...even if that meant he got to stay in the back.
And of course, he thought dryly, who says that someone's gonna pop out at us from in front?
All three of them stayed within eyesight of each other, never more than ten feet apart, quickly going through the first floor. Everyone present and accounted for.
"Everybody's where they should be on this floor, man," said Jorge. "I don't know if -" but then he cut off with a startled "What the?" as something slick and wet dripped down his forehead.
He touched himself and drew back a hand covered in blood; thought for a panicked moment he must have been cut somehow before he realized it wasn't his.
It was dripping down from the catwalk above.
CELL
Paul was running up the nearby stairs to the second floor almost before Jorge even noticed what was dripping down on him from above. A muffled "Díos mío" told him that Jorge and Marty were close behind.
Paul was on the second floor by that time, rushing to a thin line of blood that was coming from one of the cells.
The wrong cell. The absolute worst cell. Channing or Foster or even Bloodhound would have been preferable as escapees.
But no, this was cell two twenty three.
Steiger's cell.
Paul checked the light that indicated whether the cell was locked. Green. He nodded to Marty, who used his keys to unlock the outer cell. Paul stood back and let Marty enter, Jorge covering him with his trank.
Marty looked in the porthole. Gasped. Unlocked the outer door and entered without a word.
Paul darted ahead of Jorge, terrified that Steiger might come flying out of the cell, but more terrified at the thought of letting Marty face the monster alone.
The Loon Page 17
