Paul stopped dead in the doorway.
"Steiger's gone," said Marty in a hushed whisper.
"Oh, no," whispered Paul, as the older guard turned away and was violently sick all over the inner wall.
No Steiger, but the place was a horror. Something Paul knew he would remember as long as he lived.
Hip-Hop and Jacky lay almost neatly atop one another. Hip-Hop's throat had been torn out, probably with bare hands, Paul guessed from the state of the wound. Blood – the same blood that had dripped down onto Jorge – trickled lazily out of the wound.
Jacky was worse. Much worse. He had myriad blood dots all over him, and Paul couldn't even guess what had done that to him until his gaze rose high enough to take in Jacky's face.
His mouth was torn apart, ripped open to expose teeth and the interior of the man's mouth and nasal cavity. His cheeks were punctured as well, and the eyes...they were the worst. Both of them had been put out, and a key stood upright in one of the sockets, jammed through into the man's brain. Paul hoped that that had been the first thing to happen to him, but judging from the arterial spray that coated the walls like some modern art – modern art that no doubt would have sold for millions to the most fashionable art houses – it looked more likely that Jacky had been alive for some time before Steiger either put him out of his misery or he simply ran out of blood and died.
"Madre de Díos," whispered Jorge from the doorway, crossing himself as he followed that up with a sibilant "sálvanos."
PUNISHMENT
Crane and Sandy were still pulling on the door with knuckles white from the exertion, even though there had been no more movement; apparently the nightmarish incarnation from hell had given up.
Or was, at least, being silent for the moment.
"What was that?" screamed Sandy, hysteria clearly audible in her voice. "What happened to Darryl, what was that thing?"
Before Crane could answer – could tell her to shut up and let him think – the frightened woman's walkie-talkie activated. Wiseman's voice crackled through: "Sorry to bother everyone," said Wiseman, "but we have a Code Three."
"Shit," murmured Crane. What had happened? What was happening? Things had been going so well, and now he was guessing that Steiger had gotten out, since that had been his orders to Hip-Hop and Wade. Worse, though, infinitely worse, was the evil that was prowling outside the shack.
"Where?" came Mitchell's disembodied voice.
Sandy started laughing, a low, whining laugh that Crane hated. He couldn't think, and right now he needed to think. There was a way out, but he didn't want to let go of the door. What if...it...was just waiting for that to happen? Before today he would not have credited his creation with any kind of sentience. But after seeing the words, after being hunted like this, Crane knew that at least some of his assumptions had been dangerously incorrect.
Sandy was still whining and laughing at the same time, even as Paul said, "We don't know where." Then, a moment later, he confirmed Crane's thoughts by saying, "It's Steiger. Hip-Hop and Jacky are down."
Finally, Crane arrived at a solution. It had taken him nearly fifteen seconds: desperately slow. He knew that the beast would be hungry, would be needing food. And while it might hate Crane, it would need to have sustenance even more direly. So Crane would provide that, and would use the distraction to get away.
He grabbed the walkie-talkie off of Sandy's belt.
"Wiseman," he said. "This is Crane. We're about to have real problems."
He could hear the amazed expression Wiseman must be wearing clearly in his voice. "Did you hear me? Jacky and Hip-Hop are dead."
"I don't give a shit!" screamed Crane, spittle flying madly from his lips. "Bring whoever's left and -"
WHAM!
The door suddenly pulled outward, yanking out of his too-loose grasp. He leapt out the door and pulled it shut again, this time alone as Sandy ran shrieking to the generator, huddling next to Wade's body.
The door jittered, but Crane held it firm as Sandy cried feebly, clearly out of her mind with terror.
"Doc? Doc?" said Wiseman through the walkie-talkie. "You still there?"
Crane punched the send button on the walkie-talkie. He glanced at Sandy, who was still weeping under a steady rain of snow from the hole that Wade had punched in the ceiling. "I'm here," he said. "Now you get here. Bring whoever's left and...."
Crane's voice trailed off. Still watching Sandy, he saw the gentle cascade of snow that had been falling down on her cut off suddenly. Crane looked up and saw the thing dropping on her, the beast falling onto the young woman. She dropped her flashlight at the same time, and the light spun into a corner, sending funhouse shadows left and right in a terrifying strobe.
Sandy screamed, a long, wet scream. Then the scream was replaced by the even more terrifying noise of feeding.
Crane watched the dark shadow of the monster that was now before him, transfixed in spite of himself. It covered Sandy's body like a flowing shroud, a deadly tapestry made of mercury that was ever-changing. Then the rational part of Crane's mind took over, goading him into movement.
In the corner of the room was a broom closet. Crane ran for it, sprinting near to his feeding creation in an effort to escape. He threw open the door to the closet, and there it was: the stairway that was built into the bottom of the closet, the stairs that led down to safety, albeit of a temporary kind. This was how Wade was to have brought Steiger back into the institute, had the night gone as planned.
Crane stepped onto the first step, trying to ignore the smacking, guttural sounds of feeding behind him, trying to ignore the sudden absence of sound from Sandy.
Then he turned to look. Just one more time, just as Lot's wife had done when fleeing Sodom. And like Lot's wife, Crane was immediately punished for his curiosity.
For a moment he could dimly see Sandy's outline in the folds of the beast, silent, ululating quietly in the waves of its body. But he felt safe for a moment: his creation was occupied by its food.
But the moment was only that, for in the next instant a tendril spurted from the gross shadow. The thing leapt through the air, striking Crane's forehead, knocking him down. Crane almost pitched down the stairs, but fell forward instead. He felt at his forehead, felt a gout of blood welling out of a circular hole, then his fingers scraped on something hard and unyielding and slightly porous.
My skull, he thought. The thing burned down to my skull.
A part of his mind thought how very extraordinary that was, but in the next second that part of him hid away in the deep recesses of a brain wracked with terror as another tendril came out. This one slithered and skittered across the floor like a sea snake through the depths, twining around Crane's leg.
The thing constricted, and Crane opened his mouth to scream as he felt his leg ripping off just below the knee.
INTERRUPTION
Rachel tried to hide Becky's face in the folds of her jacket, tried to cover her daughter's ears with her hands in a fruitless attempt to block the awful sound of the woman's scream that came out of the walkie-talkie the giant Mitchell was holding like a toy in his hands. But she knew her daughter was hearing it; could tell by the way the little girl was clenched tight as a fist in her arms.
Almost worse than the scream, though, was the other noise. The noise that sounded familiar and yet not. Like laughter, if the person laughing lived in a deep hole, full of echoes and the evil of thousands of lost souls.
Rachel let out a little peep then as the door to the room slammed open. She saw Mitchell spin around and drop into a wrestler's pose, huge hands outstretched like vise grips to protect them. But the big man dropped his hands when he saw that it was the two guards who had helped put the bed away: Vincent and Donald. Two men for whom she had felt little in the way of affection, who were in turn rude and taciturn as they put the bed where she had asked them to put it.
Now, however, neither looked rude or tough or even particularly brave.
A long moment of silenc
e, broken only by the sound of screaming coming from the three men's walkie-talkies. Then Vincent whispered, "What the hell is going on?"
FOREVER
Crane shrieked as another tendril covered his remaining foot, and felt the sizzle and knew what was happening and was powerless to stop it even though he knew what was happening and how could this be happening but it was. The monster's tendril withdrew, and Crane screamed anew as he saw what was left of his foot: a melted stump, fleshy and grotesque.
The monster moved its entire body then, leaving behind the spot where it had enveloped Sandy, nothing left of the woman but an acid-scarred floor. It hunched up, its fluid mass doubling in on itself.
And then it sprung onto Crane.
And Crane screamed. And screamed and screamed and screamed forever, and knew that the monster was keeping its promise.
TRAUMA
Paul, Jorge, and Marty listened for a moment as the horrid screams continued on their radios, then Paul felt himself run instinctively for the tunnel door. Jorge and Marty followed him, hot on his heels as he barreled into the door...and almost broke his shoulder when the steel door failed to yield.
"Shit!" he shouted. "The seals are back on." He should have realized it before running: with the generators back on, all the electromagnetic prison seals had re-engaged. He entered his code and swiped his card in a series of short, static movements.
Crane's screams, so clear and horrifying on the walkie-talkies a moment before, suddenly went dead, replaced by an odd, wet sound. Like a leathery tentacle being scraped across a rough-hewn surface. Paul couldn't place the sound, but it frightened him almost as much as the screams had.
"Dr. Crane?" he shouted into his walkie-talkie. "Dr. Crane? Crane!"
No answer.
"What the hell do we do now, man?" asked Jorge.
"We go find him," answered Paul. He led the two other men down the dark tunnel, running to the door that led to the staff facility. As he ran, Paul yelled into the walkie-talkie, "Mitchell, we have a Code Three. Two men down, Crane's situation unknown. Who's with you now?"
Mitchell's voice crackled through the walkie-talkie. "Donald, Vincent, the little girl, and her mom. What about you?"
"I've got Jorge and Marty with me. Stay where you are and don't let anything through that door."
"Gotcha, boss."
"Jeff? Leann?" called Paul into the walkie-talkie. No answer. "Jeff and Leann, do you read?" he said. "Darryl? Sandy?" Nothing. He called the big man again. "Mitchell, we're going to the generator shack. Check in with us every ten. You read?"
"Ten-four," said Mitchell.
"And tell Becky to watch out for Mr. Huggles for me."
"And tell my sister to stay put while we're gone or I'll tell on her," added Jorge, clearly following Paul's lead and trying to keep things light enough that they would hopefully not further traumatize the young mother or her daughter.
But Paul knew, even as he was speaking, even as Jorge spoke, that both of them were failing. He was failing a child again.
Just like Sammy.
SCRATCHES
Vincent couldn't look at that goddam Mickey Mouse light the brat was holding in her hands. Thing looked like a goddam skull with ears, and Vincent couldn't handle looking at the creepy bit of "fun" paraphernalia for even one more instant. Dim emergency lights once more glowed at the corners of the room, but their weak luminescence did nothing to brighten his mood.
He felt something gnawing around the edges of his mind, a dark thing, dredged up from the depths of all that he was and all that he feared he might be.
It was madness.
And then it was no longer gnawing around the edges, but was instead inside him, in his center, devouring him whole.
Vincent started scratching his arm. And scratched it until, unnoticed in the darkness, he began bleeding.
And then he kept scratching.
WADE
Finished for the moment, it turns back to the other body, the one across the machine. The machine hums and coughs. Making sounds it doesn't like. It throws itself across the machine, and batters at it until it dies.
Then turns back to the other corpse. It is wearing a tag that says "Wade" and the thing wonders if it ever knew Wade in its first life.
Then thought disappears as the beast creates within itself the acid it needs to feed. It envelopes the body like a huge single-celled organism.
And eats.
Hunger is gone.
For now.
VERTEBRAE
Marty Furtak did not care for Wiseman. Didn't hate – didn't loathe – him the way that Vincent did, but didn't like him. Still, he had to admit that he was glad Wiseman was in charge as he followed him and Jorge down the tunnel. He had kept a level head, hadn't made fun of Marty when he puked his guts out all over the wall of Steiger's cell, and near as Marty could tell now, he was doing everything more or less right.
So he was just as happy to be following Wiseman as anything else right now.
Not that Marty was happy at the moment. Just he couldn't think of any place in The Loon that might be better than here. Sounded like Leann, Darryl, Sandy, and Jeff were all gone, which meant that Steiger must have gotten out to the generator shack and creamed them and probably Crane as well. So here was as good a spot as any. As safe a spot as any.
That assessment changed a moment later, when the emergency lights once again went off.
Marty skidded to a halt. "What the f -" he started to say, but Wiseman cut him off with a curt gesture.
"Generator must be down again," he said.
"What could do that, man?" said Jorge.
"Steiger," Wiseman answered simply.
"And we're going out there, man?" said Jorge incredulously. "What're you thinking?"
Marty nodded his agreement. But Wiseman just glared and said, "We don't know what's going on. People might be hurt. We have to help them."
Jorge shook his head, then nodded his reluctant assent. Marty followed suit, though he had no intention of following Wiseman out into the misery that no doubt awaited anyone who set foot outside. He would ditch them somehow, the first chance he got.
And soon he had his chance. Wiseman had to manually unlock the far door of the tunnel to get into the staff portion of The Loon. He held it open long enough for Jorge to run through, who in turn held it for Marty.
"Go," said Marty. "I'll lock this thing down and then catch up." He didn't add the second part of his sentence, "Like hell I will," out loud, but he thought it hard enough he felt sure that Jorge or Wiseman must have heard it.
Still, they bought it, nodding curtly and continuing their run through the reception area, hitting the door to the outside at a fast clip, unlocking it and gone before Marty had even turned around.
He noticed what they hadn't: the torn-up door to Crane's office, the lack of any security staff in the room.
"Screw it," he said to himself. Wiseman could figure it all out when – if – he came back. That was what they paid smart folks for, anyway: to figure things out.
Marty turned to the door, which he had let go for an instant to survey his surroundings. The door was almost shut now, and he reached forward to grab it.
And it swung open with a vicious displacement of air, catching Marty flat on the nose. He heard his nose break, but felt no pain, only fear, for as he fell down he saw the last person he had expected step through the open door.
Steiger caught him as he fell, caught him around the neck.
A swift jerk, and Marty felt his neck crack in several places. He immediately went numb from the neck down, and then felt himself light-headed and realized that Steiger must have broken his neck high enough that his body was no longer able to breathe.
And that was the last thought he had before the numbness crept up to his head, enveloped him, and he felt himself fall into the inky black of death.
BECKY
Steiger propped Marty's lifeless body up against the wall, searching through it for keys, weapons,
anything that might aid him in his escape and in his greater quest to restore balance to the universe. He put the guard's belt on, along with its walkie-talkie and other accoutrements. Then he paused a moment, words that he had heard when Paul, Jorge, and Marty rushed past his hiding spot in the dark tunnel burning into his mind with the radiant heat of possibility.
"Who," he asked the sightless corpse of the ill-mannered guard, "is Becky?"
Becky sounded like a young girl.
Steiger smiled. If he could not go to his victims, it seemed the universe was bringing his victims to him.
BLOOD
Jorge followed Paul as the two men battled through the hellish storm outside. Jorge sank into a snow drift up to his knees, and felt Paul grab him under the armpits and help him extricate himself from the snow that was both soft and strangely unyielding at the same time.
Jorge yelled, "Thanks!" and Paul nodded.
It was then that Jorge noticed....
"Where's Marty?" he shouted.
He saw Paul look around and the other man's face furrow in disgust. Paul leaned in close enough that Jorge felt the doctor's breath on his cheek when he yelled, "Probably forgot to tie his shoe or something equally critical."
Jorge grinned and rolled his eyes.
"Up to us then?"
"Guess so," answered Paul.
"Any idea how we find our way to the shack?"
"Not a clue!" shouted Paul. The wind was so thick with snow and sleet that they could barely see each other. "Walk until we get to a wall, then follow it until we can see the shack."
"How we getting back?"
"Same thing in reverse."
The Loon Page 18
