Castle hesitated. "You're dead, Pops. There's only one way I can help, now."
When the Bhuta saw him reach for the grenade, it ordered what had been Pops to rush forward. The corpse did, one hip swinging out of the socket, the left shoulder at a ludicrous angle, the arm flattened like a cut of steak. Castle fired without thinking and put six hollow-point shells into the thing, but Pops did not slow down. The bullets seemed to pass through his corpse like wind through torn fabric. Castle dropped the gun.
Pops kept coming, a long string of bloody drool sliding from the right side of his shattered mouth. Castle backed up, groping for one of the grenades. Pops closed the distance. Castle stepped back one last time, but just as he raised the grenade and prepared to pull the pin his boot came down on a small pile of shattered bricks and splintered boards from the gazebo. He fell backwards into the debris, one hand still on the grenade and the other on the pin. His head struck concrete.
Castle blacked out.
"God damn it, he's down, Jeff!" Sandy, from up above, went on to release a scream of rage, frustration and terror.
Inside the lobby, Lehane saw that Castle had fallen and noted the way his head landed on the asphalt, just beyond the right front wheel. He weighed a run for the grenades. He wouldn't make it in time. There were more in the box upstairs, but the idea of such a weapon falling into the hands of the Bhuta made him shudder. He steeled himself to run for the cab. Maybe he could manage to take Pops out and save Castle, if he moved quickly enough...
Outside in the night, Mike Castle opened his bleary eyes and saw what had been Pops Keltner leaning down over him. He felt the string of drool as it stroked his face like mucous. Castle could not feel the lower half of his body. "Don't," he said, mildly. "Pops, please don't."
The corpse cocked its head and said, "We are Bhuta." Then the teeth came down to clamp Castle on the nose. They bit hard and began to grind…
…Lehane was out on the porch, crouching low, trying to come around the front of the cab with several yards to spare, hoping to get a clean head shot. He heard Castle shriek in a high, wailing soprano and the hopelessness of the sound made his stomach go hollow again…
Mike Castle could move his hands, though. As Pops gnawed at his face, Castle pulled the pin on the first grenade, then the second…
…Just as Lehane approached the truck a gigantic explosion knocked him flat. Castle and Pops vanished into a spray of white-molten fire. For several long minutes, Lehane lay in the parking lot, on his back; stunned and unable to see. His ears emitted a high, mosquito-like humming noise. He checked his fingers and toes, noticed that he had a nosebleed, managed to sit up.
He was alone.
There was virtually nothing remaining of the pair who had been struggling moments before, no trace of anything the Bhuta could animate. Lehane shook his head, cringed. He struggled to his feet and looked around. The parking lot was empty. He craned his sore neck to look at the upstairs window. It was standing open, but Sandy was no longer stationed there.
There is at least one more out here, Lehane told himself, get your ass in gear and get moving.
He groaned and stretched his back. Everything popped and snapped. Lehane forced himself across the sizzling parking lot and back up the porch steps. He went into the lobby, closed and locked the doors behind him. He spoke into his neck microphone.
"Whiz?"
There was no reply. Lehane removed the black plastic headset. It was cracked in several places and the tiny microphone was no longer attached. He dropped it to the floor and stumbled across the lobby and over to the landing. He paused.
Lehane went back to retrieve the grenade launcher and slipped it over his shoulder before moving back towards the stairs. He had to make it to the computer to report their situation, as well as complete the arrangements for the destruction of the little ghost town, but all he wanted to do was lay the hell down and sleep. He called out again.
"Football. It's me. Sandy?"
His own voice sounded feeble or far away, so Lehane wasn't even sure he'd spoken above a whisper. His ears were settling down a bit, but still ringing. He leaned on the wall and fought his way up the stairs. He paused on the landing and suffered a bout of nausea and dizziness. Lehane bent over double and retched for a minute. The world rolled like an earthquake. He had a mild concussion.
When his stomach had settled down, he moved on into the computer room. The console sat empty. Sandy was gone.
Puzzled, Lehane went by the flickering monitors and into the front room, thinking she had impulsively gone back to her post by the window. Sandy was not there, either. He was still dazed by the explosion, but now a different kind of fear shot through his body.
Lehane heard her voice at that moment. "Stop it."
He grabbed his Glock and spun around like man with a fever, but Sandy was not in the room behind him.
"Put me down."
Lehane realized that she was speaking into her headset. The voice was coming from the computer console. He lost another minute trying to figure out how to turn up the volume.
"Where are you taking me?" Sandy asked. Her voice sounded remarkably calm. "We're not in the garden any more. Are you taking me up the mountain?"
She's giving us her situation and location. Lehane sat down in the chair. "Whiz, can you hear me?"
"Jesus, I thought you were dead, until you got up and started walking again, and then I wondered…Well, you know."
"I know. Where is Sandy?"
"The Bhuta took her. I saw it on the monitor, but there was nothing I could do. It must have climbed up the truck and gotten in through the window. I watched him club her on the head and carry her out."
"What did he look like?"
"Like some big trucker dude. He was wearing a cowboy shirt."
"Okay, and Sandy is leaving verbal clues. Where do you figure they are now?"
"I saw him take her across the parking lot and into the garden to the north. That's where our cameras stop. Since then she has said something specific every few minutes to help us track her. Right now, I'd make her about a quarter of a mile away, straight up the slope and pretty near the mines."
As if on cue, Sandy spoke again. "I don't want go down into that silver mine, okay? Let's talk this over."
"That's it," Whiz said, excitedly. "She must mean the first of the abandoned mines, on that rise up above the ghost town."
"I remember. The tourist attraction. Do you have any word on those choppers?"
Whiz leaned closer to the camera. On the computer monitor, his head ballooned in an oddly comic way.
"Inside of an hour, we will be able to cremate the entire town. But how are you two going to get out?"
"I don't know yet." Lehane wiped his brow. "Whiz, why didn't it just go ahead and kill her?"
"He wants you to follow."
"Looks that way, and maybe get to a safe place at the same time."
Lehane rubbed his neck and quickly drank a bottle of water. His head felt a bit better. He gathered up the grenade launcher, the Calico and his Glock 9. He checked them over carefully, slapped a fresh load into the nine-millimeter and grabbed four grenades. He put two in each of his front pockets.
He looked around, found a large flashlight, checked the batteries and leaned over the console so he could look directly into the camera.
"Okay, I'm going after her. Turn the outside lights off." Lehane checked his watch. "Whiz, let me repeat, if we're not out in the parking lot waving by one thirty, torch the town."
"Oh, Christ."
"Whiz, we have no other choice. One thirty on the dot, and that's an order."
"I know." Whiz Ligotti was hurting. He swallowed and then nodded with affection and respect.
"Boss? God speed."
THIRTY-FIVE
Outside in the darkness, the night was brisk and cold and the air smelled of cordite, blistered metal, fresh blood and badly scorched meat. Jeff Lehane jogged through the gloom, across the empty parking lot filled with bod
ies and slipped into the safety of the garden. He stayed low and started moving both north and west, toward the abandoned mines. Above him, the full moon finally stopped hiding coyly behind the thin, cotton gauze of clouds and flooded the high desert with clear, white light. The timing could not have been better.
He risked one look back over his shoulder. The exterior floods were off, so the glow from lamps in the upstairs office made it look like someone was still inside. It wasn't much, but better than nothing. Satisfied, he stayed low and moved as quietly as possible through the vegetable plants. He jogged up into the pine trees toward the old silver mine. He tried to pace himself because much of the run would be uphill, and he still felt weak.
Why has it kept her alive? The question tormented Lehane as he moved through the tree line and into the pine grove. According to the files, Ali Basra was rumored to have been so sadistic as to masturbate during the torture of Iraqi dissidents. Perhaps the Bhuta merely wanted to inflict as much emotional pain as possible before moving on to Enrique.
Lehane felt his head begin to throb, so he paused for a moment and went down on one knee to rest. High above the mountains, the spring moonlight pierced the green canopy with wide beams like shards of broken crystal. The fresh earth smelled fertile, the pine trees of sap. To the east an owl hooted sensuously. Lehane reckoned the silver mine to be less than an eighth of a mile up the slope. Eisenhower ran through his mind again, and a smile creased his dirty face. This time he had no plans at all.
He was up and moving again within a minute. His legs began to tremble from the awkward, uphill slant of the mountain. Lehane burst through the undergrowth and out onto the old logging road. He stepped back into the brush and took stock of his surroundings.
The humble, dirt road leading to the mine was deserted. Lehane considered his options. If he crossed the road, went up into the next copse of trees and down to the mine from above, he was less likely to be spotted, but still faced with a clumsy move getting down to the entrance of the mine. If he walked straight down the road, he'd be there in no time, but without the element of surprise.
Lehane decided to follow the road from the southern side. He stayed around five yards into the thick branches and dead brush, doing his best to be quiet and still make time. The Guri thing had raised a weapon, which meant the Bhuta was fully capable of using a firearm.
His feet moved rapidly through the forest carpeting, and despite his best efforts, Lehane knew he was telegraphing his arrival. When he arrived at the mine, he sank down in the brush again.
The empty silver mine looked like an old movie set. It had a gaudy, weather-beaten structure tacked to the entrance, with faux gold lettering and weather-beaten fake windows. The mouth was empty, enveloped in toothless shadow that felt both alive and malevolent. Lehane watched for a while then slid both the Calico with tracer rounds and the grenade launcher behind his back. He chambered a round in the Glock nine and stepped out into the open.
Nothing happened. Lehane crouched, crossed the road a bit to the left of the opening. He found a small gold plaque on a wooden post that declared the location was an "Official Historical Location of Old Nevada." A plastic container held copies of a map to the mine.
Lehane secured a map. He squatted in the bright moonlight, trying to get a feel for the place.
The first thing that struck him was that there was no other way in or out. The initial section of the mine was a long, sloping chamber around three yards wide and nearly seventy feet deep. At the bottom of the slope there was a fork and paths leading to two chambers. The one on the east side, his left going in, led to a dead end and an exhibit covering some miners who'd died in a collapse back in 1888. The one on the right slanted deeper still, and emptied out into an underground chamber over one hundred feet beneath the earth. Another fork led to two more chambers, both of them sealed on the other end.
Go down there and you're not likely to come out again.
Lehane considered rolling the grenades into the chambers and collapsing the mine, but if there was the slightest chance Sandy was still alive...
He put the loaded grenade launcher in a small crevice near the entrance and left it there. Lehane suddenly felt a deep sense of loneliness, for without the headset there was no way to contact Whiz. Sandy could already be dead. He simply had no current information. He moved around, faced the opening.
Someone had placed small electric foot lights at varied intervals along the route down to the exhibit. They were weak, but better than nothing.
He committed the map to memory and closed his eyes to let them adjust. After a couple of interminable minutes he brought up the flashlight and walked a few yards down into the mineshaft.
Lehane scowled as his nostrils were assailed by a sharp, acrid odor not unlike stale cat urine. He played the flashlight along the hard dirt floor of the mine, looking for signs. One set of boot prints seemed fresh and abnormally deep, as they would be if a man were carrying Sandy.
He followed the trail down, down into the bowels of the earth. The air pressed on his eardrums like wads of damp cotton. Soon, despite a bit of assistance from the fading footlights, he was squinting.
Something dark and feathery rustled in the timbers above his head. Lehane saw a steadily increasing number of guano piles along the floor. The mine was home to a large colony of bats. At rapid intervals, he also heard the high-pitched squeaking of rats.
Lehane came to the first fork. Oddly, the boot tracks now seemed to lead in both directions. Lehane knelt and felt the ground. Down this deep, the rocky earth was oddly devoid of moisture. It no longer held tracks. The Bhuta had probably gone down the left fork and doubled back after finding it sealed.
Probably.
Lehane could not risk being wrong, although his strong hunch was that the Bhuta would never allow itself to be trapped in a dead end tunnel. Ali Basra was surely aware that RPG's and Willie Peters could seal him in forever.
But if Lehane turned right, and it emerged that he'd guessed incorrectly, he'd be vulnerable from the rear. That was not acceptable.
He placed the Calico rifle against the timbers holding the joint in the wall. He tip toed along the dead-end shaft, in search of the exhibit honoring fallen miners from the 1800's. He stayed as low as possible. The mine seemed filled with loose rocks and the crooked, splintering timbers here and there didn't inspire confidence.
Eventually he sensed the opening to his left and right. He paused and listened intently for any breathing or movement. Lehane brought up the Glock, stepped into the cavern and turned on the flashlight.
The far wall was covered with a montage of old photographs and handwritten letters preserved under glass. Another plaque on a concrete base detailed the collapse of the mine and listed the names of the dead. He ran the beam of light along the ceiling above him to be certain there was no hiding place.
The room was empty.
Satisfied, Lehane backed out into the tunnel. He turned and moved as rapidly as possible back the other way. Was Sandy still alive, was she dead—or even worse, one of the Bhuta? He felt his gut tightening in anticipation, started to work out a scheme in his mind, but wondered if gunfire would instantly bring the whole mine down, rendering plans obsolete. Again.
Lehane came to the fork. The Calico rifle with tracer rounds was where he had left it. He made some changes in weaponry, steeled himself, visualized the map in his mind and took the other path into the chuckling black.
This larger, deeper section of the old mine slanted quickly downwards at an angle sharp enough to affect his balance. The mounds of bat guano got smaller, the squealing increased. Eventually Lehane realized this part of the cave had become the kingdom of the rats. He used the flashlight sparingly and counted his steps. The map had stated the depth as a little over one hundred feet below the entrance. Lehane stopped at eighty, knowing the moment of truth had arrived.
He slid down the wall; checked the Glock by feel, running his fingers through a routine he'd perfected years ago. He list
ened, and once his own breathing had calmed, could hear the faint echo of someone else's; someone not trying to be quiet…
Sandy.
Lehane got to his feet. "Ali Basra, I need to talk."
That arid, raspy chuckle. "I too have this need."
"May I come closer?"
"But of course."
Lehane walked slowly down the slope. "By the way, I wouldn't fire down here. We'll all end up buried under ten tons of rock." He kept counting steps, and at one hundred and two the space widened.
"Jeff, stop." It was Sandy, and she sounded close. Lehane placed her in his mind, across the small open area and a bit to his right. He used the flashlight, and found them instantly.
The Bhuta had a decaying arm wrapped around her throat. Sandy looked wan and was perspiring heavily. Lehane could see the face over her right shoulder. The grinning body the creature occupied was that of a large and well-muscled man wearing a filthy, multi-colored cowboy shirt.
"Such a delicate situation," the Bhuta said, softly, "is it not, Jeff?" The monster's tone was intimate and nuanced by just a trace of an Iraqi accent. It wriggled crooked fingers with long and yellowing nails that had kept on growing. "One scratch from my fingernail, or perhaps a lingering kiss, and the young lady will cross over."
"You are Ali Basra, aren't you?"
"Ali Basra?" The thing kept that wide, skeletal grin. "Well, among others, yes. Strictly speaking, we are legion, just as the Bible said."
"You're a daemon."
Sandy's eyes were wide, her breathing rapid and short. Her nose kept wrinkling at the persistent stench of dried excrement and decay. "Jeff, don't come closer, whatever you do."
The Bhuta spoke again. "We are pleased you decided to join us. I was not certain you would come down here after this woman, Jeff. After all, you let your wife die in Las Vegas."
He raised the Glock. The beast trailed one sharp fingernail across Sandy's exposed throat and giggled. "Go ahead, and the next body we inhabit shall be hers."
Lehane studied the mottled visage before him. It was clear the Bhuta was enjoying the moment, and an opportunity to play sadistic games. He lowered the light as if feeling defeated. "What do you want from me?"
Daemon: Night of the Daemon Page 26
