by Pamela Fryer
“Where does the transfer tube go?”
Her sanity was being stretched, threatening to snap. What the heck was a transfer tube?
“Over here,” he said when he saw she didn’t understand. He started into the darkness.
Not good. “Look, I don’t know where anything goes in this place. I’ve never been here before.”
He kept walking. She should just leave. What would he do? Arrest her?
The day had turned too weird for words, and she wished she could click her heels together three times and wake up at home. Hanging out in a dungeon with a strange man was last on her list of favorite things to do. A gorgeous face and a Mr. Universe body didn’t make him trustworthy. Ted Bundy had been good-looking too.
She realized he had stopped and was looking down into a hole in the floor. She took a few steps in his direction. “You mean the pipe? It goes to the sewer, probably.”
He had the silver gizmo in his hand again, but it looked different now. He’d unfolded two panels, making the unit three times as large. Blue gridlines glowed on the display, marred by a strange red outline and a blurry green dot.
“I have to go,” she repeated. “I have to alert the authorities about Emily.”
That got his attention. He looked up and started toward her with such purpose she shrank back.
“The body must be destroyed.”
“That’s for the family to decide.”
Jager marched past her. “It is contagious.”
Was that why he’d said not to touch it? He could have been more convincing if that were the case. She looked down at her hand. Had she gotten something nasty on herself?
Flames erupted with a roar. Brooke gasped. He was burning Emily’s body!
“Stop! Are you crazy? You can’t do that!” She ran over, needing to put out the fire but not knowing how. She looked around for something to smother the flames with, but before she could, he grabbed her around the waist and swung her away.
She thrashed free and darted away from him, aiming the Taser before she even realized she’d drawn it.
“You don’t have permission to touch me!”
He raised both hands in surrender. “I am sorry. I was only trying to protect you.”
“I don’t need your protection, got it?” She looked him over. “I want to see some ID.”
“What is eye-dee?”
A smartass. Definitely a MIB.
She looked back to where Emily’s body had been. A burst of sparks popped into the air. There was nothing left except a burning shoe.
“Identification,” she snapped. She ought to shock him just to twist his balls. The FBI was not the top of the food chain. She would report this to someone with authority who would put his ass through the wringer, and leave it to them to break the news to poor Emily’s family.
“Do you have identification?” he countered.
“I’m not the one setting fire to bodies I might have killed.”
“I did not kill the Earth female.”
Brooke looked at the spot on the floor that used to be Emily’s body. She hoped he was telling the truth, if only so she wasn’t standing in the same room with a psychotic killer. And what the hell did he mean by Earth female?
The Taser yanked out of her hand. She blinked and realized it was in Jager’s meaty paw, yet he hadn’t moved an inch closer.
“How did you—”
“Please do not point weapons at me.” He scowled as he turned it in his hand, examining it as though he’d never seen such a thing. He probably hadn’t. The model wasn’t even on the market yet.
He turned it sideways and activated the trigger. The contacts soared past his face, trailed by their ultra-thin wires. He jerked in surprise.
“What function does this perform?” he asked, again with genuine sincerity in his tone.
She still had the .45 in her shoulder holster, but Brooke didn’t draw. There was no such thing as threatening a man with a gun. If she needed it, it would be drawn and fired in the same breath. Jager was either an arrogant government jerk-off, or an escaped nutcase. But either way, she wasn’t sure killing him was necessary, just yet.
“It’s a prototype. I paid twelve hundred dollars for that thing, and you just broke it.”
“Was that not supposed to happen?”
She blasted an angry sigh through her nostrils. “May I have it back, please?” She held out her hand and drew a deep breath.
Jager Tolon had this chance to prove if he was a threat or not.
He offered it. She inched closer and reached to take it. She pressed the recoil and the wires retracted. The contacts didn’t appear to have been damaged when they fell to the floor, but she still scowled at him anyway.
“Jager Tolon,” she repeated. If he wasn’t going to show her ID, she could at least tell someone his name.
He nodded.
Right. It was probably an alias.
“What may I call you?”
A tart reply crossed her mind, but she held her tongue. “Brooke Weaver.”
“What is your role here?”
He hadn’t figured this out already? “I’m looking for Sara Brown.” She repeated herself slowly, as if talking to a child.
“What is your function within Earth’s society?”
Damn. When did I become Alice in Horrorland? She holstered the Taser. “Um, I’m gonna go now.”
“I require your assistance.” He turned and headed back toward the pipe, as if her acquiescence was a given. Definitely an FBI man. She watched his long stride, admiring the broad stretch of his shoulders and the neat cut of his triceps. Short cut hair added to the appeal. Call her crazy, but she loved the military look.
A ball of ice dropped into her stomach when she realized what he wanted. “I am not going down there.”
The night had turned eerily familiar. She pushed the memory out of her mind—a dreadful memory of another night, just like this one. It had begun routinely enough, but that night she’d turned from a police officer into a hunted animal, chased into the sewer system by men who had turned from coworkers to killers. Dawn had come before she’d found safety.
Jesus. Do I have any good memories of this town? Technically it had been Portland, but compared to New York, Ridgemont felt exactly the same.
“No, no way,” she repeated.
“It is your fault the creature got away,” he growled in return.
So the Company Man was capable of losing his cool. Her brows crawled up. “My fault?” Unbelievable. “How do you figure that?”
“When you discharged your weapon at it, it recoiled and my pulse missed.” He sent a scowling glance at her holstered gun. “Your bullets will not kill it.”
“Then you don’t need me.” And screw you, it was not my fault. “How did that thing find its way here, anyway?”
He had that Palm Pilot unfolded again. He ignored her question. “There is a human down there with it.”
Another human? Sara.
Against her better judgment, she walked over and looked at his device. A squiggly red figure moved in time with a green dot over bright blue gridlines. The screen was cloudy with gray smears.
“I will soon lose detection because it is underground. I must follow it. There appears to be a network of transfer tubes and if I lose detection, it will escape me.”
She stared into the hole. Sweat formed an icy crust on her skin. She heard little of what he said, other than that a person was down there.
It could be Sara.
It probably was. Although...she had no idea if Sara was even among the three women who’d escaped the raid.
But Sara hadn’t been on either of the buses.
God, was she really considering going down into a sewer pipe with a strange man the size of Paul Bunyan? A strange man who had just barbecued a dead body, disarmed her from across the room, and spoke like he was from another planet? A strange man with perfectly straight teeth, chiseled cheekbones, and dreamy eyes that said “Not only do I know ho
w to please a woman, but I enjoy it”?
Holy Hell, she’d been alone too long. She was paranoid and horny. A dangerous combination.
Jager Tolon snapped the screen’s extra flaps closed, tucked it into his thigh pocket, and started down the steel rungs into the pipe.
Chapter Four
“Wait a minute!”
Darkness swallowed him in seconds. Brooke ran to get her flashlight, put the end of it in her mouth, and stepped onto the first steel rung. As she eased into the pipe, one of the rungs creaked under her foot. It was probably rusted near through.
This was a bad idea. Bad idea number six.
She angled her head around to point the flashlight at him. All she saw was a glimpse of one of his hands leaving a rung somewhere below her.
There was a splash as his boots hit water. She heard a chirp-whine, and light flooded the pipe.
Brooke hopped off the last rung onto a dry ledge running the length of a long, curved tunnel. Jager had to bend over to stand. He ran a few steps through the wet channel, and then hopped up onto the narrow ledge. All that beautiful light went with him.
“Wait!” She trained her flashlight on him. He was a human wall of broad back, narrow hips, and firm buttocks. She had to jog in careful little steps to keep up with him. He, on the other hand, seemed completely at ease with long, loping strides, even though he had to bend sideways to keep from dragging his head along the cruddy, brick ceiling of the antiquated sewer tunnel.
She pointed her flashlight into the trench. It was filled with sediment and mossy slime. It took a few minutes to realize she was seeing fresh punctures in the gooey slick. Mutant spider tracks. Drag marks swirled beside them, like giant brushstrokes. The spider had been dragging something behind it.
This I did not want to see.
She aimed the flashlight at Jager’s boots. It was better to focus on his feet to keep her own steps steady on the ledge and her mind firmly entrenched in reality. But even his footwear was unusual, with a strange-looking tread she had never seen before and no visible laces.
He stopped abruptly. She hadn’t seen him retrieve his Palm Pilot, but he had it in his hand again, unfolded.
“This isn’t safe. We could get lost down here.” She angled around him to see the display. She lost her balance on the narrow ledge and stepped into the muck. She slipped, went down on a knee, and planted one hand wrist deep. “Ah, Jesus. Yuck.”
He reached toward her. She held her breath, and then took his hand with her clean one. She flung the goo off the other hand. It spattered against the far wall.
He’d stopped at a branching pipe. The corridor widened here; it was another divergence that joined the one they were in. Water flowed through it. The main corridor would probably continue widening, joined by other pipes until they reached the waste treatment plant.
His screen was blank. He turned, aiming it up the new corridor.
“This is crazy. We shouldn’t be down here.” She aimed her flashlight back the way they’d come. The light it gave off was almost non-existent compared to his...whatever that apparatus was. “I’m going back.”
“Please, do not leave. You will not be safe alone.”
She looked at him, and aimed her flashlight at his face. He appeared sincere, but then again, so had Ted Bundy.
So had Richard, the killer she’d almost married.
“Please, Brooke Weaver. Let us arrange a bargain. I will help you find your Sara Brown if you guide me.” His voice was deep and convincing. It belonged in the bedroom. Jager Tolon had no problem getting dates, she was sure. What was more, he wasn’t cocky about it.
“I can’t guide you,” she protested. “I don’t know where the pipes go.” Yet at the same time, she couldn’t convince her feet to turn around and leave him.
He’d had her at “You will not be safe alone.”
“If I do not kill the Tetra, the result to your planet will be catastrophic. During her reproductive period, she will lay a clutch of eggs every thirty-six hours. Each clutch will consist of at least one new queen. She, in turn, will lay her own eggs. In one month’s time, human life will be threatened. In three months’ time, all living creatures on Earth will be overrun.”
And now he’d lost her. He was talking like he wasn’t from Earth. He was a loony, plain and simple.
The worst night of her life was repeating itself. Only tonight, she was prepared. The only problem was, even though she knew she had to escape this situation before it got any worse, she wasn’t exactly sure how. She still had her gun, but she couldn’t bring herself to shoot him just because he was a nut bag. He hadn’t actually tried to harm her...yet.
She still had the Taser. But would it bring down a gorilla his size? The butt of her flashlight over the back of his skull would surely only piss him off.
“Brooke Weaver?”
Her money was on the Taser. She stepped back onto the ledge behind him. “Well, okay, I—” She drew it and squeezed the trigger. The contacts hit him in the upper arm. The pistol buzzed. He jerked, and went down. The contacts released and retracted into the barrel.
God, he was sexy even when he collapsed, like a graceful movie star in an action movie. He sprawled backward across the narrow ledge and slipped over into the trench, having the good fortune to fall onto a relatively firm mound of dry mud only inches from where she’d planted her hand.
The silver thing he’d been holding landed a foot away. Its glorious light faded as it sank face-down into the muck.
And then Brooke heard it—the whimper of a frightened girl, somewhere farther up the branching pipe.
* * * * *
Brooke considered taking Jager’s flashlight, but that would be both unfair and cruel. After all, the creature did exist; she’d seen it with her own eyes. She couldn’t leave him totally blind. She fished his unit out of the mud, wiped off the face, and placed it in his limp fingers. Twin spots of blood stained his arm at each contact point, but the new model Taser had been designed to leave superficial wounds. As long as he cleaned them, he’d be fine.
She set off at a jog up the narrow corridor, saying a private thanks to Ridgemont’s Public Utilities Department for the wide pipelines and their elevated walkways.
Jager’s story had sounded completely unbelievable, and Brooke snorted as she realized that’s because it was.
He didn’t know she had been a police officer. He was some sort of government agent who thought she was a plain old gullible citizen. He’d spun that outrageous tale to cover up the fact that Uncle Sam had dumped something toxic in some helpless Third World country and it resulted in the mutated spider.
Men from outer space? How naive did he think she was? An FBI agent would have access to all the fancy gizmos he’d been showing off. He was playing her for a fool, probably to bring a good story home to his arrogant fellow MIBs.
Brooke’s step faltered as she experienced two ounces of guilt. She had just shocked an FBI agent. The Taser was a dangerous weapon. If used on the wrong person, it could induce a heart attack.
She paused and considered going back. Finding Sara was a priority that sat above all others, except leaving a man behind to die. Jager Tolon didn’t look like a man with a weak heart, but still...
Another whimper sounded, just ahead of her. The tunnel wound around a bend. She should have taken Jager’s flashlight and left hers. That would have served him right, and she’d be in a much better position right now.
Brooke started ahead, now at a cautious pace. A rat squeaked on the platform ahead of her. She nudged it into the trench with her toe. Water ran steadily here, and that awful stench was back. It had been here all along, she realized, but now it was powerful.
She drew her Taser again. If bullets didn’t hurt the mutant spider, maybe a good jolt of electricity would. She crouched low and inched her way forward.
As she followed the curve of the tunnel, a shadowy figure came into view about twenty feet ahead. The LED flashlight was next to useless. Brooke inched cl
oser. It was a girl, sitting on the narrow walk but slumped over, with her feet in the water. She wasn’t moving.
The stench was overpowering. That creature was nearby, she knew it.
“Sara?” Brooke crept closer. Damn this weak flashlight. Note to self: buy a better flashlight.
The girl moved. Relief rushed through Brooke. Thank God, she was alive.
She finally got close enough to see. The girl was a brunette. It wasn’t Sara.
Scrabbling sounds came from behind. Brooke dove for the girl and flattened them both along the narrow walk. Something clamped onto her leg.
Brooke screamed. She was lifted into the air, yanked backward, and dragged down the wet tunnel. She thrashed, trying to pull free. Her other foot connected with something meaty and her trapped leg was released. She rolled over and looked down. God, the creature was hideous, like the mutated offspring of a tarantula and a cockroach. It seemed bigger than before.
Bone-snapping mandibles spread wide and the creature issued one of its grating shrieks, a deafening, unnatural sound that drowned out her own screams. Brooke scrambled to her hands and knees and tried to run. It seized her leg again and dragged her back down the trench.
She still had the Taser clamped in her hand. She hooked her free foot, kicked herself over, and fired. The contacts sank into its hairy hide. She kept her finger tight on the trigger, but the weapon had a failsafe; it would only surge for six seconds.
It was enough. The creature released her and scuttled away, up the wall and over her head, clinging like Spiderman. It came down the far side to take another run at her. She tried to scream again and realized she’d been screaming.
Two bright orange bursts sailed over her. One glanced off the creature’s hide with a sizzle. The second rocketed into the pipe. The spider changed direction and scurried off into the tunnel so fast it was just a blur.
The smell of burnt meat filled her nostrils. Burnt rotted meat.
Brooke was lying in the stream of foul water. Jager reached her by the time she’d rolled over and pushed to her hands and knees.
“Are you harmed?”
She shook her head. Dirty, wet hair stuck to her face. “That thing...it tried to drag me off!”
