The vent!
Another thump from outside. Faster together now as Steiger hit the door harder and harder, screaming Becky's name over and over and laughing hideously all the while.
Rachel helped Becky up onto the desk, then stood on it herself. She grabbed the letter opener from where she had kept it in her sleeve and wedged it into the crack she had earlier pried loose in the desk.
Now the letter opener was where she wanted. She hoped her little trap worked.
She jumped up on the desk beside her daughter and started pulling at the catches around the vent. She bloodied most of her fingers in her haste, the dull throb of her pulse in her torn digits serving as a grim counterpoint to the door's shaking and shuddering.
Slam!
One catch loose.
Slam!
Another.
Slam-slam. And now the wood around the door was beginning to sliver, the chair wedged under the doorway beginning to shake.
Another catch. One left to go.
Whump!
The door handle shook, the door was about to explode into pieces.
Last catch, and she pulled the vent free, lifting Rachel up into the dark crawlspace.
CRUNCH!
The unmistakable sound of breaking wood. One more shot and Steiger would be inside.
She lifted herself up, straining to pull herself into the vent crawlspace, feeling Becky's little fingers pulling at hers.
SMASH! The door crumpled and Steiger, pushed forward by his own momentum, fell over the kindling that had once been a chair and a door. Rachel glanced down and saw as if in slow motion as Steiger tripped, almost fell. Righted himself.
Tripped again.
And shrieked as he stumbled full speed into the desk...and impaled his thigh on the letter opener that had been sticking out and pointed at the door.
He looked up at Rachel. They locked eyes, and then she looked away and pulled herself up with a surge of adrenalized energy.
Behind her, Steiger laughed again, and she heard the metallic clack of the letter-opener falling to the desk.
“I'll kill you for that, bitch,” said Steiger cheerfully.
TENDRILS
Paul rushed across the third floor catwalk, not daring to look back, hearing all too clearly the sounds of the beast behind, hot on his heels. Paul looked around for something, anything to use. Nothing. The monster was right behind him. He glanced back in time to see a pseudopod shoot out at him, a viscous tendril that ended in sharp-edged, snapping teeth that reminded Paul of a piranha.
He darted to the side, and the pseudopod barely missed him.
The inmates were screaming, cheering, yelling, as though they were at a football game and the monster on the third floor were their mascot.
Paul saw that the creature was gaining on him; that he would never make it to the stairs.
He threw himself reflexively to one side, again narrowly missing a bite by an external mouth that didn't grow from the beast's body so much as burst forth from it in a whiplike motion. Breath rasping, heart pounding, he threw himself through one of the open cell doors, too panicked to think much about the fact that the iron bars had failed to protect the cell's previous resident. He was acting instinctively.
Still on autopilot, Paul pulled the cell door shut behind him. The monster hit the bars with a splat. Paul instantly jumped as far back as he could and narrowly avoided another toothed tendril ripping his throat out. He fled to the rear of the cell, the tendril snaking after him, feeling the smooth door of the inner cell behind him. Nowhere to go, no time to open the inner cell door. He closed his eyes and waited for the beast to spear him like a bug on a collector's display.
But it didn't happen. He opened his eyes, and saw a tendril mere inches away, tiny teeth snapping hungrily. The tendril was joined by another, and then another, but all of them came up just short. Apparently the beast couldn't extend itself out more than a few feet.
Paul sighed in relief.
The relief was short-lived. Panic returned as the monster pressed itself against the bars, pushing through them like butter around a hot knife.
Paul had only one way to go: he ran into the inner cell and shut the door behind him.
But he knew the beast would get in.
SUBTERFUGE
Rachel felt the tips of Steiger's fingers touch her leg as she pulled herself into the shaft. But apparently his wounded leg wasn't able to jump up quickly enough to catch her, for he didn't try again, giving Rachel the precious seconds she needed to scramble into the tight ventilation duct.
Becky was still there, waiting for her mother. "What do we do, Mommy?" asked the little girl. She had somehow managed to keep her Emergency Pack on her back and Mr. Snuggles in one hand through the whole escapade, and now had her cheek practically buried in the bear's soft fur.
"Crawl," said Rachel, and pushed her daughter ahead of her, crawling through the darkness of the duct. Moving by feel, she soon found herself in a T-intersection, with a branch to the right and one to the left. Rachel pulled off one of Becky's shoes and threw it into the left side, then turned right with her daughter.
She hoped the subterfuge was enough; that it would fool Steiger if he came after them. When he came.
SPIDER
Steiger pulled himself up and into the duct, ignoring the pain in his leg.
This was turning out to be far more fun than he had anticipated. He could practically feel the beautiful girl in his hands, could almost hear her whispering love to him, for he knew that all people secretly loved him, desired him, wanted to be with him forever, even if the only way to stay with him forever was to die at his hands. It was a kind of immortality, he realized with a start, for where else would each of his victims been able to live for so long if not in the hallowed recesses of his own mind?
He could tell which way the two girls had gone by the sounds above him when he was pulling himself up the second time, and used the flashlight he had taken from one of the dead guards to illuminate his path.
Soon he came to a T-intersection. He looked to the right and saw nothing. Then to the left. There! His beam illuminated a child's shoe, clearly lost in a mad rush to escape destiny. But destiny could not be escaped.
He turned left, crawling happily toward Rachel. Toward Becky.
A moment later, however, he stopped as another cobweb draped coldly across his face. He savored it for a moment, then crawled a few more steps, then stopped once more.
How could there be a cobweb across this space? he wondered. If Becky and her mother came through here, wouldn't they already have dislodged and destroyed the web?
He realized that he had been duped, but was not angry. Far from it. "Clever girls," he said. "Clever, clever girls, almost fooled me." He smiled as he spoke, enjoying this game of cat and mouse intensely.
He couldn't turn around – the duct was too narrow – but he backed up until he reached the T-intersection, then turned until he could take the right branch. He felt his pants grow wet as he crawled over his own blood which was still leaking from the deep wound in his leg.
Still smiling, he began to hum.
The itsy bitsy spider went up the waterspout.
This was turning into such a fine game of hide and seek. Such clever, clever girls. They deserved to be rewarded for their excellent playing. And he intended to see they got their reward at his hands.
FLAME
Paul moved away from the door as something pushed through the crack. It moved like an oil slick, rippling and folding in on itself. Paul watched in horror, facing his own doom, then suddenly realized that in his panic he had utterly forgotten something:
The Molotov cocktail.
One of them was still down on the first floor, near the guard station. The other, however, he still held in his hand. Indeed, as soon as he realized this he also felt the severe cramp that came with holding onto something too long and too hard, and realized also that he had had the weapon the whole time, and never thought once to use it.
He pulled out Jorge's cigarette lighter and flicked it, lighting the strip of cloth that was jammed into the end of the beer bottle.
The beast was entirely inside now, and starting to rise, its boneless mass nevertheless cohesive enough to provide a similitude of upright posture. As soon as Paul lit the Molotov, a bloodless split – a mouth with razor teeth – burst open in the beast's side, and the thing screamed in pain. The light was hurting it, just as Crane said it would. And just as Crane had predicted, the thing was now looking decidedly angry.
Now or never, thought Paul, and threw the Molotov. Fire skittered across the beast's skin as the chemicals in the bottle lit and set fire to the thing. It went crazy, screaming and thrashing around the cell, Paul barely managing to avoid it in the cramped space.
The monster's pained movements took it to the back of the cell. Paul rushed to the door. Unlocked it and flew out, leaving the monster in a room of fire. As he closed the door he could see the thing moving slower, more sluggishly, as though...perhaps...it were dying.
He closed the door to the outer cell. Locked it. Then he ran.
PRETENDING
Becky pushed ahead as fast as she could. She was scared – terrified, even – but she knew Mommy was relying on her to be strong and brave, so she just clamped her mouth shut like she did when Daddy was Being Bad and kept moving. They passed lots of tunnels, but didn't turn down any of them, just crawling straight ahead for a while.
Then she felt something soft and furry scuttle over her hand and realized that a mouse or a rat was in here. She opened her mouth and automatically screamed. Not even screamed, really, just a little yip like a dog would make, but she felt Mommy get tense behind her and knew that she had made a mistake. The bad man was following them, she knew. Now he could hear where they had gone.
He would be closer now.
Mommy pushed her on, and soon she came to a dead end. In front of her was only empty space, and she couldn't help screaming a little again as she put a hand down into nothing but air.
"Shhhh," whispered Mommy. "What is it?"
"There's nothing, no floor," whispered Becky.
"What?" Mommy maneuvered her way past Becky, then said, "Honey, there's a ladder here that goes up and down. I know you can't see it, but we have to get on it."
Becky nodded and tried to be brave. She knew she wasn't brave like Mr. Huggles or Uncle Jorge or Mommy or Paul. But she could pretend.
Sometimes pretending was all you could do.
BEAST
The inmates' screaming and ranting on the second level was almost deafening, and their grasping arms reached for him as Paul ran past, trying to grab him, to get him, to kill him. He jerked away from one viselike set of hands when an inhuman wail sounded through the prison, so loud that even the manic prisoners quieted for a brief moment.
Paul looked up and saw a dark shape, black on black in the darkness of the prison, falling from the third. It landed – no longer covered in flame but smoking and sizzling with traces of the Molotov cocktail still burning on its skin – on the second floor gangplank in front of Paul. It hissed from a half dozen mouths that opened up on the side of its body, then the beast threw itself at Paul. He dodged, and the beast slammed into the cell behind him.
The cell's inmate, Bloodhound, grabbed the beast and started biting its flesh. Paul was awestruck at the sheer lunacy of the picture, but only for a moment. Then the beast suddenly shifted, and the part of its body that Bloodhound had been biting opened like a tote bag, peeling back and then flapping up again to envelope Bloodhound's head.
Paul screamed then as the thing pulled away with a crack and left Bloodhound's decapitated body behind. Paul shrieked again, backing away from the beast as fast as he could, when he slipped on something – blood, or perhaps the acid from the beast's earlier feedings. Whatever it was, Paul hit the railing with the small of his back, felt his world go topsy-turvy as he tipped back and then, so slowly it didn't seem real, fell over the edge of the gangplank.
He landed in a heap on the first floor, screaming as his ankle twisted below him. But he was up in a flash anyway, limping quickly over to the first cell he had opened and scooping up the second Molotov cocktail from the floor where he had stupidly left it. He headed to the tunnel...
And the beast landed in front of him. Snarling.
Even in the almost-dark of the prison, Paul could see the thing, really see it for the first time, and felt a kind of terror he had never experienced before. The thing was opaque, shifting, flowing, its semi-transparent skin allowing a view of alien organs within its body. Body parts from recent feedings – Bloodhound's head among them – could be seen in various stages of digestion within its now huge mass.
Paul stopped, his escape cut off. The beast laughed, a terrible, horrifying laugh, and the inmates were abruptly silent.
There was something in here that was even worse than them.
DOWN
Rachel reached out in the dark and grabbed hold of Becky, helping the little girl climb blindly out onto the ladder. "Okay, honey, we'll go down the ladder and get out of here, and we'll find Dr. Wiseman, okay?"
She felt rather than saw Becky's nod, and the little girl shifted carefully over to the ladder.
Then it happened.
A light flared, and Steiger was suddenly on top of her, grappling with her on the ladder.
Below her, Becky screamed.
"Go!" screamed Rachel. "Get away, Becky!"
"Yes," shouted Steiger, and laughed his strange, hyena laugh. "It's so much more fun when I get to chase you!"
DRENCHED
Paul watched death approach, and it was a hideous thing. The monster was still burning, pale blue flames dancing along it in ever shallower tides, then disappearing.
The Molotov hadn't killed it; had only made it angry. Paul felt despair take hold of him as the monster reared back to and then began its final rush.
Then, without thinking, Paul suddenly ripped the rag from the beer bottle...and poured the flammable liquid inside all over himself. He flicked Jorge's lighter, holding the flame out in front of his hands, which dripped with cleaning solution.
The monster stopped only inches away from him.
Standoff.
PUNCHED
Becky climbed down the ladder as fast as she could, small hands and feet moving unsurely in the dark, trying not to think of her mommy above her, struggling with the maniac.
She heard something, a strange "whoosh" and looked up to see the bad man - Steiger - punch her mother in the stomach. Her mother doubled over and made a throw-up sound, then Steiger shoved her away, back into the ventilation shaft, and began crawling down.
After Becky.
TORCH
Paul watched the cigarette lighter's tiny flame, careful not to set himself on fire, then slowly started backing toward the nearby monitor station.
The beast sprouted a dozen eyes of varying sizes and colors, watching Paul carefully, and stepping forward – or slithering forward, it didn't seem to have any legs – as Paul stepped back.
"Yeah," said Paul, hoping that the thing understood him, that enough of the inmate it had once been was there to render his speech comprehensible to it. "I know what you're thinking. You survived one fire already. But it hurt. Would you survive a human torch in your stomach?"
GRAVITY
Rachel felt the wind blast out of her; felt Steiger cast her away like a broken toy, and for a terrible moment was sure he had broken something inside her.
Then she heard Becky scream. "Mommy!"
The sound caused courage to well up within her, and new strength possessed her. She rocketed down the ladder after Steiger, a tigress protecting her cub. She didn't try anything fancy: there was too little space in the vertical shaft. She just dropped onto him as hard as she could.
One of the lunatic's hands popped off the ladder and now it was his turn to have the wind knocked out of him.
The hand falling away from the ladder gav
e her an idea. Rachel looked down and saw Becky. And below that...nothing. She couldn't see the bottom of the shaft. It went down to the first level, and below.
All the way to the basement, she thought.
"Go, Becky, go as fast as you can," she screamed, then locked her legs around Steiger's waist in a macabre parody of love-making. Then she grabbed the arm Steiger was still holding onto the ladder with. She bounced up and down, trying to loosen his grip. She felt a lurch, knew that what she was doing was working, and knocked into him again, crying at the same time, "Lean to the side, Becky, lean away!"
And then she felt a lurch as Steiger lost his grip and fell, fell, fell, and she was falling, too, and praying to God and the Holy Virgin and the saints that they wouldn't hit Becky, that she would have moved to the side and they would miss hitting her, hitting her poor little girl.
Her prayer worked. She felt herself fly past Becky, who was crying, and then felt something even better as she and Steiger twisted as they fell, still locked together in her dangerous embrace. Steiger was falling headfirst now, and she felt his head thud-thump on several of the rungs, then he went suddenly rigid and then loose and she knew he was unconscious.
Then his leg must have caught on something, because she heard a sharp, brittle crack. Suddenly Steiger was hanging upside down from something – the ladder most likely – and gravity yanked Rachel out of his grasp and she left him behind.
And kept falling.
ANTS
The inmates were still watching in silence as Paul continued the standoff. Either the beast heard him and understood, or it was too afraid of fire to move.
The Loon Page 24
