by Seth Patrick
At first it seemed to Jonah that the water had simply been drained and the pool filled with the dead, many half consumed, the way the young man in the rec room had been, others with their throats torn out, limbs wrenched off, blood and bone and brain on show. Closest to them were the uniformed bodies of a dozen dead security guards.
‘The Baseline security team,’ said Sly. ‘Probably the first to be killed.’
More corpses lay in heaps around the edge of the far wall. For a moment, Jonah thought one of those bodies was dressed in the black uniform of Andreas’s inner circle, one of his acolytes; he wondered if the victims had managed to claim one of their attacker’s lives, at least. A small victory, he thought, but impressive, given what they’d been up against. Then the lighting grew enough for them to see by, briefly, and he realized he’d been wrong. Even that small victory had been an illusion.
They walked in. Kendrick knelt by the side of the pool. He reached out and tugged at the arm of the nearest body, then used his foot to carefully push it away. Underneath, the swirling bloody water was black in the torchlight.
‘How many?’ said Sly, casting her light over the surface, the bodies bobbing gently now that Kendrick had disturbed them.
Kendrick stayed silent, walking over to the far side of the pool.
‘There,’ said Jonah, pointing at one of the floating bodies, feeling his legs weaken. He’d seen her in the brief flashes from the pulsing lights and, for a moment, wasn’t sure, but Sly aimed her flashlight and he knew. ‘Stephanie Graves,’ he said. Her face was bloody and blank. He felt tears pricking. ‘She was a friend,’ he said.
‘The head of research,’ said Sly, and Jonah nodded.
Kendrick came over. ‘I’d guess we’re looking at a hundred corpses,’ he said, thoughtful. ‘Jonah, do you recognize any revivers?’
Jonah felt cold. ‘Why?’
Kendrick indicated the bodies. ‘Half the people are still missing, that’s all. So tell me if you recognize any revivers.’
Jonah held his hand out to Sly and she gave him her flashlight. He steeled himself and started to look at the faces, but no others were familiar. ‘They wouldn’t be . . . they wouldn’t be part of this.’
‘I’d known Rico for fifteen years,’ said Kendrick. ‘I trusted him with my life. I wouldn’t be surprised what Andreas could convince people of. They killed off everyone they didn’t need. If that didn’t include the revivers, then we can be sure they’re helping him.’
Jonah said nothing.
‘We need to keep going,’ said Sly. She and Kendrick started walking along the side of the pool, heading for the plant room.
Jonah managed to follow, but only slowly; unease was swamping him, and he was unable to hold back from shining the flashlight on each face, looking for people he knew, looking for Stacy Oakdale and for Jason Shepperton, looking for faces he’d recognize from national and international conferences. Feeling more and more apprehensive, he wondered if what Kendrick had said might be true.
The pulse and flicker of the weak lighting in the darkness was oppressive now; alongside it was the continuing sensation that had first struck him just before they entered the rec room. Then, he had thought it felt like a revival just before the surge; now, it felt more like a doorway opening up, and a massing of power of some kind, beginning to slip out of the gap. He was sensing the process Andreas had started, he thought – the rise, Andreas reclaiming his lost strength.
But the unease he felt was more than this, more than all of this, and he suddenly recognized that what loomed most of all in his mind was the sense of—
He stopped.
The sense of something there, with them. The sense of being watched.
‘Kendrick . . .’ he whispered, trying to move towards them but finding himself frozen. His whisper was too quiet, his throat tight as he realized just how strong the sense of presence was.
‘Kendrick,’ he said again, louder, more urgently. ‘Sly.’
They stopped walking and turned, Kendrick’s flashlight beam dazzling him. ‘What?’ said Kendrick.
‘Something’s in here.’
‘What do you—?’ Kendrick began, but then his expression changed, and his eye line shifted higher. Looking right above Jonah’s head.
56
Jonah turned his head slowly. He saw it – just a few feet behind, towering above him, the darkness glistening in the torchlight. As he looked, the regular pulsing of the power supply peaked again, fluorescent flashes marking the creature’s silhouette and revealing its size: larger even than those that had come for Tess.
Shots came and Jonah could see the bullets pass through: ineffective, but enough to take the creature’s attention away from him. He dived to the side and, as he did, he saw Sly charging towards it, her run stalling as she saw that her gun was useless.
The shadow strode ahead and reached for her. More gunfire ripped through its flesh, from Kendrick this time; little more than a mosquito bite to it, but the creature turned to him now, hurling Sly hard into the wall beside Jonah. She fell to the floor, out cold.
The shadow took purposeful steps in Kendrick’s direction. Jonah could see that it was enjoying its game. It wants you to run, Kendrick, thought Jonah. It wants to take its time.
Kendrick was backing away, still holding his flashlight, pointing it at the creature that was coming for him, gun raised but holding fire. A gun could get the creature’s attention, but nothing more. With the sunlight they’d created in the safe house they’d stood a chance, delaying the creatures, causing them pain, and perhaps – if the sight of the creature that had taken Tess was anything to go by – perhaps, given enough time, they could kill them.
But not here, in the dark.
Kendrick turned to run and the creature lunged; its dark claw wrapped around his neck, and it lifted him until they were face to face. It let out a hiss and threw him across the floor, back towards the pool entrance.
Jonah thought of the explosive charges he carried, the simple priming action, the easy remote trigger. Given the effect of the inferno Kendrick had engineered before, it was possible that the explosion could hurt this creature, but it would be sure to kill Kendrick. These creatures might be vulnerable to sunshine, but everything Jonah had was more likely to hurt the living.
The living.
As the thought came, the lighting flashed and he saw, at the far end of the pool, a man in dark clothes crouching almost out of sight behind stacked plastic chairs, watching the creature as it closed in on Kendrick again; his face was gleeful and blood-soaked, and Jonah instantly thought of the corpse in black he thought he’d seen lying among the bodies. The one that had gone by the time the lights flashed again.
Not a corpse.
Anger filled Jonah’s veins. As darkness enfolded him again he started to run, leaving the flashlight on the floor. He only had a few seconds of cover before the lighting would pulse again and betray him, but he knew what he had to do.
He couldn’t hurt the creature, but by God he could hurt its host.
He ran along the side of the pool in almost total darkness but he didn’t have the luxury of caution. His hand went to the gun Kendrick had given him. He released the safety and started to raise it as the power surged again. The lighting flickered and his eyes sought his target, but there was nobody there; the man had moved, and that meant he’d seen Jonah coming. Unless something else had seen him . . .
Jonah stopped and turned his head to see the huge silhouette at the far side of the pool turn to look at him. He sensed movement nearby and spun as the man came at him from the corner of the room, too fast, too close, bearing down with a look of rage on his face, and a look of entitlement, of sheer outrage at the gall of someone trying to put an end to his entertainment. The shock almost made Jonah drop the gun even as he brought it up and pulled the trigger and saw the man’s forehead blossom red. All in an instant, yet still enough time for Jonah to grasp how necessary and simple the action was, one that would surely haunt him always: killing
someone, face to face.
And enough time to realize how much momentum the man was bringing with him.
He collided with Jonah and clung to him as he fell, on the point of death. Jonah fell back with the weight of the dying man on him, and he knew what he was falling into.
The pool.
He landed on a lifeless wet body, the lights fading again. For an instant Jonah didn’t move, overwhelmed by the proximity of the man he’d just shot, the man still clinging to him, warm blood gushing from his forehead onto Jonah’s chest.
The hands of the man spasmed, then released. Jonah pushed him off, trembling.
Then he could feel the body under him giving way to one side, in a slow betrayal. He was suddenly aware of how heavy the belt of ordnance felt, how heavy his boots and clothing were.
The lights pulsed on again, momentarily; just enough for him to see that the side of the pool was well beyond his reach. Just enough for him to see what it was he was slipping into. ‘No,’ he said aloud, reaching out and trying to grip hold of the dead surrounding him, but he felt the bloody water soak through his clothes, the gap he was slipping into widening until the inevitable happened.
He went under.
57
His descent was rapid. With the tainted water and the bodies covering the surface, no light could reach him. He was in absolute darkness. He had a momentary image of the bottom of the pool vanishing, an unlimited fall into the vast depths of a blood-drowned hell.
Then his feet touched the bottom. There was still a part of his mind able to think, and it told him to step towards the side, arms outstretched, hoping his disorientation wasn’t leaving him striding out into the centre of the pool. The moment his fingers touched tile he crouched and kicked hard, sending himself back up; his arms collided with one of the corpses above him and stole most of his impetus. He managed to push it aside and scrabble for the edge of the pool, but his weight took him back down without his head emerging for even one desperate breath.
His lungs were agony. He waited for the bottom again, for another chance, and as he sank he looked up. He saw the blood-dimmed beam of a flashlight on the surface and kicked hard again, seeing the gap to aim for and bursting from the water, getting a firm hold on the side this time, taking air into his lungs. Hands were pulling at him, helping him out of the water until he was lying at the side, coughing, the bright beam of a flashlight in his face.
It was Sly, groggy and out of breath. ‘The thing just vanished,’ she said. ‘It just vanished. Where’s Kendrick?’
Jonah sat up. ‘Across there,’ he managed, indicating the other side of the pool area. Sly swept the light along, but there was no sign of him. They shared a look. She shone the light over the corpses on the surface of the pool as they slowly bobbed in the disturbed water.
‘I don’t think he went in,’ said Jonah, but Sly was running along the pool edge. Jonah followed.
‘No,’ said Sly, trying to see where Kendrick might have fallen in, just in case there was . . .
Jonah heard a groan from nearby, behind the rolled-up pool cover. ‘He’s over there,’ he said. Sly hurried across, kneeling beside the fallen man. ‘Boss?’ Sly said. ‘Come on! Wake up!’ She slapped Kendrick’s cheek with her palm. ‘Hey!’
Kendrick moaned. ‘Quit hitting me,’ he said, dazed.
‘Damn,’ said Sly. ‘Don’t scare me like that.’
Jonah heard a noise from across the pool, and flinched before he realized what it was. ‘One of the radios,’ he said.
The lights flickered into brief life again and Jonah got his bearings. ‘I see it,’ he said. ‘And Kendrick’s flashlight. I’ll fetch them.’ He started walking.
‘Watch your step,’ said Sly.
The dropped flashlight was on the way to where he’d seen the radio; he picked up the light, and as he walked he took in the full scene of butchery. He thought of the man who’d unleashed his shadow on them and wondered if he’d been left as a guard here. It didn’t seem likely; there was supposedly nothing to guard against. Maybe the man had simply been asleep here when they’d entered. And who could blame him? thought Jonah. He’d had a busy day, after all.
He reached the radio and started to head back to Sly. ‘For Christ’s sake, somebody tell us what’s happening,’ said Annabel. There was considerable interference to the signal, but he could still make her out.
‘We were attacked,’ said Jonah. ‘One of Andreas’s people. We, uh, dealt with him.’ In the light of the torch he was holding, Jonah saw that the water dripping from him was leaving a red stream draining back into the pool. He knew that some of that blood could have come from the head of the man he’d just killed.
‘You all OK?’ asked Annabel.
‘Yes,’ said Jonah. ‘Sly and Kendrick – you two are virtually indestructible, right?’ He shone the flashlight across the pool. Sly was working on what seemed like a deep cut on Kendrick’s forearm, but Kendrick was opening and closing the fingers of his hand to test function.
‘Cracked my skull some when it threw me that last time,’ Kendrick said. ‘But I think I’ll be fine.’
‘We’re OK here, Annabel,’ said Jonah. He paused before adding: ‘What about you two?’
‘Peachy,’ croaked Never’s voice. There was a distance to it, though. One that was more than just physical.
‘Yeah,’ said Annabel, far from convincing. ‘We’re good.’
‘I’ll get back to you in a minute or so, OK?’ said Jonah. ‘We need to regroup a little.’
‘OK.’
As Jonah approached them, Kendrick began to stand, helped by Sly. ‘So, Jonah,’ Kendrick said. ‘While we got distracted, you saved us all. Just how the hell did you pull that one off?’
Jonah shrugged, trying to be casual about it, trying not to think of the muzzle-flash lighting up the face of the man he shot; the lights around the pool flashed bright for a moment, as if to mock him. ‘The creatures need a host. Take away the host, and—’ He stopped, staring; Kendrick’s face took on a look of utter horror, reflecting the one that was written all over his own.
Sly looked from Jonah to Kendrick and back again. ‘What, Jonah?’ she said. ‘Jesus Christ, what is it?’
Kendrick had every right to be scared, because it was his shoulder that Jonah was staring at. His shoulder, and the dark glistening shape clinging to it.
58
It needs a host, Jonah thought, and it used the nearest person.
‘It’s impossible,’ said Kendrick, pale and terrified, looking at his own shoulder but seeing nothing. ‘When the host dies, they die.’
Sly was holding the flashlight for him, the bright flickering from the lights in the pool area still coming every ten seconds or so.
On Kendrick’s shoulder the shadow was writhing. One of its fingers seemed to have gained purchase, and the others were testing the flesh. As Jonah watched, a second seemed to seek out a vulnerable place and sink down.
‘You’re sure it’s there?’ Sly said to Jonah, unable to see it for herself.
‘Trust me,’ said Jonah. ‘It’s there.’
‘Tell me what it’s doing,’ said Kendrick.
It’s managed to attach, thought Jonah. And now it’s working its way in. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘How can we get it off him?’ said Sly.
‘I don’t know.’ He moved his hand a little closer to it and observed the creature back away slightly. It was wary of him, just as all the shadows he’d encountered had been. He couldn’t bring himself to move his hand much closer, though, the vision of glinting teeth clear in his mind.
Then he recalled what Kendrick had said. ‘When the host dies, they die? What made you think that? You’d seen it vanish when the host fell unconscious, but if . . .’
Jonah stopped. Kendrick said nothing. Jonah saw an ill mix of evasion and defiance written on his sweat-slicked face. ‘Jesus,’ said Jonah. ‘Silva. Your team killed Silva.’
‘We had to know,’ said Kendrick, but he didn
’t meet Jonah’s eyes.
‘You ordered them to kill him.’ It fell into place in Jonah’s mind. ‘You lied to me.’
‘Of course I lied,’ sneered Kendrick. ‘We had to know. We couldn’t risk keeping him much longer, and nothing they did to him was making him talk.’
‘They killed him, and thought it had died?’
‘Every time it came loose from Silva it was visible,’ said Kendrick. ‘So they expected to see it once Silva was dead, and see what happened to it. It didn’t appear. They assumed it had died with the host.’
‘But it hadn’t,’ said Jonah.
‘Oh God,’ said Sly. ‘Was that how they were traced? Did it take one of the team?’
Kendrick glared at her, stunned. ‘I don’t believe that. Every one of them was committed, fearless. They’d die before that.’
The implications were ominous. ‘Don’t you get it?’ said Jonah. ‘That was how they found us. It wasn’t Tess’s presence that gave away the safe house. Silva’s shadow took one of your team. It took one as a new host. Resistance to torture didn’t matter a damn because there was no need to torture the information out of them. They volunteered it.’
From the fear on Sly’s face Jonah thought she knew where this was going. She nodded, and picked up the line of reasoning. ‘Sure, whichever one of them it was, they knew the decoy addresses they could give if they were under pressure, but instead they gave the real locations they knew. Andreas’s people just worked through them until they found us.’
‘No,’ said Kendrick. ‘No.’ He sounded even more desperate. He looked at Sly, pleading. The shadow writhed; the second finger to have gained a foothold suddenly flicked out, whipping around before returning to Kendrick’s flesh and probing again. The man’s demeanour scared Jonah. Here was someone who had stood face to face with the devil and chosen to fight, a man whose sense of outrage at Andreas’s betrayal had allowed him to suffer through torture without capitulating. And now he’d been reduced to a shivering husk at the thought of this external taint, this contaminant.
