Bloodless

by Douglas Preston

  Betts rounded on the muscleman and accused him of being a pussy. They could make do on their own, he said disdainfully; the Steadicam had its own light, and Betts himself could carry the other equipment. If she wished, Gannon could hang back at the opening to the tunnel with the others; Betts and Moller would go ahead, with just the Steadicam.

  The DP reluctantly agreed to this.

  As they broke down the current set and everyone moved to the rear of the lower level of the tomb, where the mouth of the tunnel lay, Wellstone saw yet another opportunity and seized it. He began creeping down the slimy steps, one at a time, keeping out of sight by pressing himself against the darkness of the far wall. The air grew closer and more vile with every step he took.

  Near the base of the steps, he found a hiding spot behind a crypt that had been shattered to pieces, the remains of its huge lid leaning out into the stairway. He knelt behind the lid and peered through the viewfinder of his camera. It was a perfect vantage point. From here, he could see everything, shoot everything, his powerful telephoto bringing the action ever so close.

  57

  AT THE APPOINTED HOUR, Senator Drayton climbed down from his bus, which had been driven onto the lawn and parked behind the Confederate monument. With aides before and behind him and his wife at his side, he walked around to the front, mounted the stairs, and strode onto the temporary stage, just as the band struck up “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” He checked the chunky Rolex Presidential on his wrist: nine o’clock precisely. A roar greeted his ears: a medley of clapping, horns, whistles, and noisemakers. He drank it in for a moment, then raised both arms, flashing the victory sign with each hand. The people seated on the great lawn rose up in their thousands as if with one mind, cheering, while the crowds standing in the rear and to either side went equally wild.

  He smiled and waved as the noise went on and on, the seconds stretching into minutes. He felt that indescribable thrill course through him: a feeling better than sex, better than a shot of the finest bourbon—the electricity of victory, of admiration, of power. How could he lose with this outpouring of support? His pathetic opponent could never pull together a crowd like this, even before Drayton’s hackers and disinformation wonks had gone to work on him.

  The only obstacle in his path to re-election was this damned murder investigation. Pickett, his old “friend,” had really failed him, assigning that asshole FBI agent and his sidekick to the case. They hadn’t done jack shit, and—as if to rub his face in it—they’d gone off to Washington State the night before, after he’d given them specific instructions…and a specific warning. And that Commander Delaplane was no better, just spinning her wheels, a waste of space if ever there was one.

  He waved as the cheering continued. If everything was going well, then why did he feel this tickle of apprehension? Because he not only wanted to win this election; he needed to. The new Jekyll Island sewage treatment plant was going out for bids, and there was a lot of money to be made in kickbacks. Not kickbacks, he reminded himself—legal campaign contributions, made by those bidding on the work. Kickback was practically a moribund concept—thanks to the Supreme Court, it was 100 percent legal for those who wanted to give in return for “constituent service”—as long as there was no quid pro quo. And there would never be a quid pro quo, because nobody had to say or write anything. It was all just understood, in the secret, unspoken language of politics. But even unspoken, it was as old as the hills: you scratch my back, I scratch yours.

  His mind drifted back to that rogue FBI agent, Pendergast, and his partner, Coldmoon. Especially Coldmoon. After re-election, with Pickett out of the way, he was going to make a special project out of that sucker. He was going to bring the full power of his office down on that smartass, insect or not. Coldmoon would be sorry he ever shot off his smart mouth. Drayton would send him packing to the nearest reservation. And he would deal with Pendergast, too, put that southern undertaker of an agent out to pasture in Alaska or North Dakota, where he would freeze his ass off for the rest of his career.

  These thoughts ran through his mind as he continued waving at the crowd. God, he hoped those sons of bitches in the press area were getting this. Invincible, that was the word that now came to mind. His people loved him.

  The cheering finally trailed off as the governor of Georgia took the podium to introduce him. The man heaped on the honors and praises, one fine phrase after another rolling off his tongue. It was a perfect speech, short, elegant, and to the point—and then the governor yielded the podium to him.

  The cheering began all over again as he waited, waved a little, waited some more, waved again, and finally cleared his throat to signal the beginning of his speech. He heard, in the far distance, some catcalls and jeers, but they were faint. He’d made it clear to his advance team that those bastards were to be kept well at bay, and none too gently, either.

  “My fellow Georgians,” he began, the towers of speakers echoing his voice back from the buildings surrounding the park. “Now is the time of decision. Now is the time of firmness. Now is the time of…” He went on and on, reading his speech from the teleprompter, although he’d practiced it so many times he had it memorized. He paused at particularly well-turned points to allow more cheering and applause, the audience obliging every time.

  This was fine. So very, very fine. His enemies and detractors could eat shit and die—with support like this, there was no way he was going to lose this election.

  58

  AS THEY LEFT THE library, Coldmoon felt a slight buzz from the Lagavulin—or was it from the mind-bending concept of a machine that had, somehow, opened a hole in the universe? The idea was absurd, impossible…but since he’d first partnered with Pendergast, the absurd and impossible seemed to have grown commonplace. The world according to Pendergast, he realized, was a far stranger place than he’d ever imagined.

  As they entered the foyer of the hotel, Coldmoon noticed a television blaring in a lounge area. On its screen was Drayton, standing live on an elevated stage, thrusting his finger into the air and bellowing to a roaring crowd.

  “Look at that wasichu,” snorted Coldmoon as they passed. And then he halted. “Hold on a minute.”

  “That so many of you have braved the crime wave to come out tonight is a testament to your courage and conviction—”

  Now Pendergast and Constance paused.

  “—I have been dismayed by the FBI’s inability to solve these crimes, but I can assure you in my role as senator—”

  “Hey,” Coldmoon said. “He’s talking about us.”

  “—In the face of their ineffectiveness, I am bringing all state and local resources to bear in catching the monstrous criminal or criminals behind these savage killings—”

  “He’s blaming us, the jackoff!”

  “Not just us, my dear friend, but ADC Pickett, who it seems has been shielding us from the senator’s wrath all this time—and whose career will suffer for it.”

  After listening a moment longer, Pendergast and Constance continued on, and Coldmoon hurried after them. There was nobody behind the desk, and they slipped past toward the offices beyond.

  “What are we going to do about it?” Coldmoon asked.

  “Does the FBI involve itself in politics?” asked Pendergast as they reached the door to the cellar.

  “It’s not supposed to.”

  “You have your answer.”

  The door to the basement was locked. Pendergast slipped a little tool out of his pocket, and with a brief twist of his wrist, the door swung open.

  They descended into the gloom. At the bottom of the stairs, Pendergast paused to remove his jacket. “You might want to check your sidearm, Agent Coldmoon.”

  “Right.”

  Pendergast took the Les Baer from his shoulder holster, ejected the magazine, checked it, palmed it back in. Coldmoon wasn’t sure why this precaution was necessary just to examine a machine in the basement, but he made sure his Browning had a round in the chamber. He noticed th
at Constance, not to be outdone, had slid her stiletto out of one sleeve: a vicious little device, he thought as he watched the thin, wicked blade spring out at lightning speed. She knew how to use it, too; he’d seen some demonstrations that he’d just as soon forget. Noticing his stare, she gave him a wry wink, then slid the blade home.

  “This way,” she said, taking the lead. She led them past Ellerby’s trading office and deeper into the basement, heading away from the central corridor and making for an area that was roped off and marked STRUCTURALLY UNSOUND.

  “One way to deter attention,” drawled Pendergast as they passed by it.

  Just as it was growing too dark to see well, Constance touched a light switch and some naked bulbs came on ahead, casting baleful shadows. There was a strange, almost industrial smell in the air, Coldmoon noticed, like burnt rubber. Dead insects crunched under their feet as they walked. Constance led them past a double row of old storerooms, wooden doors splitting from dry rot.

  “Did Miss Frost give you such precise directions, or are you just a modern-day Natty Bumppo?” Coldmoon asked.

  “I prefer the moniker of ‘Deerslayer,’ thank you,” Constance retorted.

  Ahead, their path was blocked by a shabby door. Constance opened it to reveal a large storeroom. It was, or appeared to be, a graveyard of old hotel furniture. Most everything was covered in moldering sheets, tears here and there exposing the bones of discarded armoires and bedposts. Constance led them through the cluttered space, which ended in a large wardrobe pushed up against the far wall. Constance tried the wardrobe’s doors. They were locked.

  “Aloysius?” she said, stepping back.

  Once again, Pendergast applied his lock-picking set. The doors swung open obediently, revealing rows of old clothes.

  “Perhaps our friend Ellerby was a fan of C. S. Lewis?” asked Pendergast drily.

  Constance stepped in and, sweeping aside the hangers, revealed a half-height panel. “If so, here’s Narnia.” She drew it back, exposing a dark hole.

  “I’ll go first,” said Pendergast.

  He ducked through, and they followed. A moment of blackness, and then Pendergast switched on a light to reveal a modestly sized room, more than half taken up by a machine that sat against the rear wall. Coldmoon stared at it, unsure what to think. Machine didn’t do it justice, nor did contraption. He’d never seen anything like it. It appeared to be a fusion of two large pieces of apparatus, wired together. The first was a device with a dazzling array of finely machined brass gears, wheels, knobs, dials, chain belts, and springs, almost like the inner workings of a gigantic clock. This was connected via thick bundles of wires to an untidy rack of computer equipment—motherboards, disk drives, keyboards, and monitors, bolted into place in a seemingly haphazard way. Two brilliantly polished stainless steel wands with copper bulbs attached protruded from opposite ends of the machine and pointed to each other at ninety-degree angles.

  “How…how do you turn that baby on?” Coldmoon asked. “I don’t see any switch.”

  Pendergast moved toward it gingerly and examined the fantastical device in silence, moving from one end to the other, peering at it with glittering eyes. He took out a penlight and began probing its innards.

  Coldmoon breathed in deeply, then forced himself to look away and examine the rest of the room. There was a small metal table on the wall opposite the machine, with a chair and a cheap lamp. Sitting on the table was an ordinary laptop, next to a disorganized stack of papers and a notebook. A nearby wastebasket was filled to overflowing with balled-up paper.

  The room itself was half-ruined. A brick wall to the left of the machine had a large hole bashed through it, broken bricks strewn about as if hit with a wrecking ball. Beyond, a black hole yawned. Several deep grooves raked the wall surrounding the opening, and it was splattered with what appeared to be the same strange lubricant or grease that they’d found on the bodies of the bloodless dead. The floor was littered with debris—wires, tubes, broken glass, plastic. And it was covered with more dead insects, most heavily in the spot under the single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. They weren’t moths, as Coldmoon initially thought. Perhaps they were dragonflies. But as he looked closer, he saw this, too, was incorrect: although the dead insects had wings like dragonflies’, these were attached to bodies that more closely resembled hornets’.

  Coldmoon walked over to the broken wall. Beyond lay what appeared to be an old coal tunnel. Lumps of coal were still scattered on the stone floor amid puddles of water, and the walls and ceiling were whitened with lime.

  A faint whisper of fabric, and Coldmoon realized that Constance was now standing beside him. “I imagine this is how the creature escaped the building.”

  Coldmoon blinked once, twice. “Creature?”

  “Yes. The one plaguing Savannah.”

  “This is just too strange.”

  She turned her violet eyes on him and quoted. “‘Not only is the universe stranger than we suppose, it is stranger than we can suppose.’”

  “And whose deathless pearl of wisdom was that?”

  “Heisenberg, some say.”

  “You mean the guy in Breaking Bad?”

  Constance issued a low, mirthless laugh.

  Coldmoon stared at the machine, shaking his head. “That’s the most insane-looking thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “I imagine,” Constance replied, “that the true insanity will start once Aloysius determines how to turn it on.”

  As if on cue, a honeyed voice rang out. “I do believe I’ve found the switch.”

  59

  PAVEL SEEMED WILLING TO go into the back tunnel in the tomb with Betts and Moller. Gannon gave him the go-ahead, hugely relieved that she didn’t have to follow. She set up lights at the entrance to the tunnel, but they didn’t penetrate the darkness beyond very well, because the tunnel took a gradual turn to the right. She decided it didn’t matter: the Steadicam had a light on it and that would be enough for Pavel to get his footage. The main thing was that she wanted them to hurry up and get the footage and then get the hell out. She hoped to God that Moller wasn’t going to linger.

  Through her monitor, she watched what Pavel was shooting. Moller was walking forward slowly, in the front, by himself. He had laid aside the dowsing stick and was now proceeding with the Percipience Camera alone, ready to take pictures of the spiritual turbulence. The uneven clay walls of the tunnel, scored and scarred as if by a rake, flashed in and out of sight as they were caught by the Steadicam’s illumination. It occurred to her that it looked like a gigantic burrow. This was unbelievably dramatic and frightening—even terrifying. She was frightened. At the same time, she told herself this was killer footage. Betts and Moller and their producers were going to make a fortune, and it would surely drive her own career forward, even into feature film territory. Being a director of horror movies had been her life’s ambition ever since she saw the gorgeous original version of The Haunting as a little girl.

  She was a little sorry Pavel was using the Steadicam; it didn’t quite offer the handheld effect she thought would be perfect. But it was too late to change now. If Betts insisted on a second take, she’d swap out the Steadicam for Craig’s shoulder rig—but this was one scene she prayed would get done in a single take. She was encouraged to see that Betts and Moller were up to their ankles in mud, and she doubted if even those two would want to do it again. Moller should just take his damn pictures of spectral disturbances or whatever and then they could get the hell out. God, she was looking forward to getting a breath of fresh air; it was like being under a foul, moist blanket. The smell of burnt rubber was now being overlaid with the stink of a locker room…or something even worse.

  She shook this away and focused on her harness monitor. What the hell were those little glowing spots?

  “Two, see if you can zoom in on some of those glowing spots when you get closer,” she said into the headset.

  “No problemo,” came the answer.

  Moller proceeded slow
ly down the tunnel, his shoes making an audible sucking sound with every step. He stopped, raised his camera, took a picture, and another. Then he continued with great care, raising each foot and placing it ahead. As he made the gradual turn in the tunnel, a sprinkling of the glowing splotches came into view.

  “Pavel, tighten on those spots, please,” she said.

  The camera zoomed in on the cluster.

  “What the hell is that?” Gannon said, more to herself than anyone else. They looked like dripping blobs of goo, or maybe fungal growths, a sort of dirty greenish color, grading to a blue in the interior.

  Pavel had just finished getting some good, close footage of the nasty sludge, or whatever it was, when there came a grunt of surprise from Moller. The Steadicam swung around and Gannon could see Moller raising his camera to photograph ahead into the murky darkness. Gannon could see something in front of him, a looming shape. For a moment she was horrified, and then she realized it must be some awful trick Betts had set up in advance: two large, slitted, bloodred eyes, glowing in the dark. What the fuck? No wonder Betts had been so eager to go down the tunnel, to encounter this mockup or dummy. This was too much. He should have warned them. Boss or not, she was going to have his balls for breakfast.

  The eyes blinked—double sets of lids, the inner horizontal, the outer vertical. The dim crimson orbs vanished, then reappeared. With a sound like the rustling of dead leaves, the eyes approached.

  “What the fuck?” Pavel said. The Steadicam swung on its mount, then grew level again, as he began to back up.

  Even from her position at the mouth of the tunnel, Gannon felt a movement of warm, stinking air across her face. A sound followed, a wheezing hiss like a torn bellows being compressed. A shape materialized into the light of the camera.

  Gannon stared in her monitor. No way was this some mechanical contraption rigged up by Betts. This was real.

  Pavel continued to back up, slowly, one step at a time.