“Are you kidding me? He has to be close to empty, out of rounds, and he's almost had his throat ripped out! Did you see how fast they are? What the hell are they?”
“Demons. Lower forms. It's part of the ritual. Yes, they are quite fast. Time in Hell and time on this plane do not function in accordance with the same laws.”
“You're insane!”
Now she regretted having handed over her pistol. She'd surrendered it minutes earlier, seeing little choice in the matter unless she wanted to simply shoot him, which didn't seem to offer any real advantage. The monitors provided a feed from the silo, where Hatcher was, and she desperately wanted to be able to watch, at least. To know what was happening, to find a way to help him. She could see the outline of the pistol beneath the uniform top, pressing out from the small of his back. If she could grab it back from him and shoot now, there was a very good chance she would. Watching this unfold with him refusing to try to stop it was too much to bear.
She looked at Vivian. “And you! You're part of this! Are you just going to let him be killed like this?”
“We're counting on him to prevail. He has to. You have to understand—”
“Yeah, yeah, it's all part of the plan. Well, screw your plan. Open the damn door!”
Calvin shook his head apologetically. “I couldn't if I wanted to. Not from here.”
Amy scanned the room, eyes flitting, mind unable to focus on anything but Hatcher's safety. The place was packed with computer equipment, towers and laptops and drives stacked against the wall. Most, if not all of it looking like it had come from that raid. This was a control center, she realized. Just like the one where the escape hatch was. Only this one was hidden. A secret. And fully functional.
Whatever the plan was, she couldn't demand answers right now. Not with what she saw on the screens. There wasn't any time.
Something had to be done. She stared at the screen. Hatcher on that platform, waiting for the next attack. Right on the other side of the friggin' door.
“Wait a second,” she said. “Not from here?”
Calvin turned to look at her. “What?”
“You said, not from here. From where, then? Where can you open it?”
“Ms Wright...”
Right then, she knew. He couldn't open it remotely, but it could still be physically opened from the outside. She turned and ran over to the hidden entrance. There was a handle on the back of the cabinet, now flush with the wall, the cabinet having rolled back into place where it concealed the entrance, and she pulled it. The cabinet slid back, and she heard Calvin yelling at her to stop. She sensed motion, him moving to intercept her, so she threw herself through the opening, almost bouncing off the wall, stumbling into the adjacent room. She started to run, was almost to the door when she realized Calvin wasn't following. At that same moment, she also realized the significance of Calvin still having her pistol. She stopped at the end of the conference table, looking back over the room, part of her mind making her pause even as her legs were impelling her to sprint, the knowledge that every second, every fraction of a second, was crucial humming and prodding her to move! Move! Move! But something was holding her back.
Then she remembered.
Chapter 38
Four rounds. One in the chamber, three in the magazine.
Hatcher kept reminding himself of that, keying himself to not waste a shot. Two each.
The creatures were not exactly working as a team, but each was definitely aware of the other. They could have both leaped and descended on him by now, and he knew if they did there would be no way to survive it, not with the unnatural speed they possessed, but they hadn't. A survival instinct, he assumed. Not afraid to die, not even particularly concerned about being killed, but not programmed to sacrifice themselves to destroy their target.
But this stand-off was not going to last long, that much he knew. He could feel it, like tiny ripples in the tension. Something was about to give. One of them was going to make a move any second now.
“What the Hell are you thinking, Bartlett?” Hatcher yelled, eyes still volleying from one creature to the other. The one to his left was climbing a pipe using motions that were impossibly slow, limbs moving like a sloth's, crystalline eyes locked on him, unblinking. It was even with him, maybe ten feet from the platform. The one to his right was higher, hanging from the grate of a retractable catwalk, swinging gently, ready to pounce. That one was another female, breasts stretched long and thin, tentacling out through tears in her blouse.
“You have two more,” Sahara said, as if he didn't know. “I'd advise you to pay attention to the task at hand.”
That prompted Bartlett to tug on her robe, say something to her Hatcher couldn't hear. Perhaps an admonition of some kind, but he didn't have the luxury of trying to figure it out. Even wasting the momentary glance, reacting to Sahara's words, quickly seemed like a mistake.
The creature to his right dropped onto the platform. Hatcher fired, but the thing was too fast, ducking and lunging beneath the bullet in one invisible motion. Before Hatcher could pull his weapon down to fire another shot, the thing was smashing into him, talons digging into his gun arm near the wrist. He fell back onto the platform with the thing on top of him, grinning down at him, strands of thick saliva roping down onto his face. His gun arm was pinned out to the side. His other arm hovered above him, locked in the vice grip of those talons. She cocked her head as she peered into his eyes, rolled it from one side to the other, like she was trying to decide whether to rip out his throat or take a bite out of his face.
She was lighter than he was. If he could bridge onto his shoulders, get her to try to compensate the other way, he might able to power her off with a sudden shift. Basic jujitsu. He started to twist, to push.
The other creature landed on the platform with a thud. Almost before the sound reached his ears, Hatcher felt it grab his legs, claws raking into his calves. It yanked them flat and crawled on top, sniffing up his thigh to his crotch and hissing.
The thing straddling his torso rose, those quartz eyes glistening wide, that mouth brandishing even more teeth. It had won, was taking a moment to savor it. It stretched its jaws. It reared back its head.
Hatcher braced himself, coiled his muscles for one final effort, one final push, knowing it wouldn't be enough.
Then the creature's lower jaw exploded, half its throat tearing away in a spray of red. Hatcher closed his eyes as blood rained down on him, one ear instantly numb and ringing. He felt the weight of the thing disappear, knocked off of him to the side, felt the blood rush back into his hands. The creature bounced against the rail and slid down, gurgling.
Hatcher turned his head and blinked in time to see Amy in the now open access way, holding a shotgun, smoke creeping out of a barrel. He had no chance to blink a second time before the creature that was on his legs bounced off of him and flew forward with a snarl, another move too fast to track. One millisecond it was Amy standing there, the next the creature was between them, holding the barrel of the shotgun and pointing it away. Amy stunned, no way for her to have expected it.
It yanked the shotgun from her arms, and spread the claws of one hand. An angry, screeching noise escaped its throat, the howl of a bobcat, and Amy gasped.
Two shots rang out, another double-tap, both punching into the back of its head. The second knocked off a section of skull cap. The creature collapsed, limp. Hatcher let out a breath, lowering the pistol, and rattled his head a few times, trying to clear the fog. He'd fired without even thinking, the reality that both those shots were planted within inches of Amy's face, and that he hadn't even paused to consider it, adding to the rubbery weight of his limbs as he sank back down to the grating of the platform.
“Hatcher? Oh my God, baby... are you okay?”
He felt her next to him, touching him uncertainly. “Oh, Jesus, those gashes are so deep.”
&nbs
p; “I'm fine,” he said, swallowing. He pulled a foot beneath him, put a hand on her shoulder as she helped him stand. “Fit as a fiddle.”
Amy glanced around the silo, eyes darting. She looked down toward the bottom, toward where Bartlett and Sahara and others in robes stood around the boy on the platform. Down toward the stewing blood.
“We need to get you the Hell out of here.”
Hatcher nodded. He felt some strength returning, the void left by the adrenaline drain slowly replenishing. He felt his legs under him and started to move as she took his hand and gave it a pull.
Claws on his ankle, locking down. Hatcher looked, saw the creature Amy had shot holding on to him. Crystalline eyes burning with hate, glaring from a deformed head missing its lower half.
He pointed the pistol and fired into its eye, jacking its skull back. Amy yelped. He turned the Sig in his hand to view it. The slide was locked back. Empty. Last round, put to good use.
“C'mon,” Amy said, tugging on his hand. “We'll get the police. There are things you need to know.”
Hatcher took a step, stopped. His arm pulled taut, causing Amy to stop, too.
“What is it?”
For a moment, Hatcher said nothing. He stood still, letting his eyes unfocus so his mind could. “Do you feel that?”
She gave him a quizzical look, then cast anxious glances below. She yanked at his arm again. “Hatcher, we really need to get out of here. Now.”
“There,” he said, definitely sensing it this time. Just as he'd felt a moment earlier, an electrical charge in the air, running over his skin. Only this time he could trace it to the flooring, ground shifting beneath him, the rolling pitch of a ship at sea. He looked around. Not just the space beneath his feet, the entire facility. “Don't tell me you didn't feel that.”
The walls of the silo were starting to undulate in waves, everything taking on a liquid aspect, distant objects in a desert, shuddering and blurring.
“What?” she said, tracing his line of sight. “What is it? Hatcher? Hatch—” And then she was gone.
Chapter 39
The first thing that struck him, even before he could try to make sense of Amy disappearing, of her simply blinking out, as if she'd never really been there, was the silence.
The world had gone mute, the sudden deadness fracturing his concentration, monopolizing his attention, obliterating all other thoughts. Everything he'd been hearing — the bubbling splash of blood, the hum of electricity, the drone of distant mechanisms, ambient noises of every type — ceased. Even the ringing in his eardrums, the peal resulting from being battered by gunshots, abruptly cut out. No pulsing in his ears from the pounding heart he could feel beating in his chest, no internal scraping of respiration in or out as he labored still to catch his breath. The absence of sound was complete.
Not just the absence of sound, he thought, though unsure where the idea came from. The sound of absence. His absence. The still hush of the grave.
Amy hadn't disappeared. He had.
He threw looks in every direction, trying to orient himself. He was no longer in the silo, at least, not as far as he could tell. He was on a ledge at the entrance to a tunnel of some kind, its interior sections buried in layers of shadow. Odd angles of dim light played off the earthen walls at varying intervals, winding into the distance. Behind him, a yawning chasm gaped above and below, plunging into darkness. The faint glow of the tunnel was all he had to see by.
The pistol was still in his hand, slide still locked back. He peered into the lightless depths and tossed it. He didn't bother to listen.
He stepped into the tunnel.
It snaked forward, an expanse of unspooling gloom, navigable only by those dim pockets of odd luminescence. He moved from one to the next noiselessly, each silent footfall creating a phantom echo in his head like an auditory hallucination.
After a few hundred yards, the tunnel curved sharply to the left and emptied into a pale white corridor, stretching out in opposition directions to each side. Florescent lights bathed every surface in a stark, unnatural shade of white. It was a hallway, cheap industrial vinyl flooring, dingy plaster walls, textured ceiling panels. One of the overhead tube bulbs flickered sporadically.
There were doors every ten feet or so, lining both sides. Plain, institutional slabs, same dingy white as the walls, metal kickplates at the bottom. The hall stretched into the distance to each side, the lights simply disappearing at some far-off point each way, though it was unclear whether the hallway continued beyond those points or not.
Hatcher looked at the doors. His lips parted, his intent to comment to himself about this being someone's idea of a game show, a demonic Let's Make A Deal For Your Soul, but he caught himself, felt a chill crawl over his scalp and down his neck.
What if he had no voice?
He took a breath and squeezed his eyes, tried to brush the thought off. Of all things, losing his voice seemed like an unusual one to creep him out. Especially after what he just went through, what he was currently facing. But it did, so he forced himself not to think about it, pushing away the little bits of imagery his mind was trying to conjure, notions of something coming out of his mouth other than words, of sounds being released that were not his, speech belonging to things as yet unimagined, giving life to things unimaginable. Of trying to scream and having the silence shattered by nothing but laughter.
Stop it.
He stepped toward the closest door. The hinges were visible, meaning it opened outward, so he turned the knob and pulled.
His brain exploded from the roar. Piercing shrieks, caustic screams, a mind-rattling eruption of overlapping, painful sounds. Limbs breaking, flesh tearing, teeth gnashing. He shut the door, falling against it, his body heavy from the sudden toll on his nerves. The door had only been opened a second, but that had been long enough to catch a glimpse of something, somethings, on the other side. A vast, endless expanse of misery. Twisted, deformed things, flitting about, half there, half not, souls in a madhouse, ghosts in an asylum.
Sweet Jesus.
He stepped back, regained his composure. Moved to the next door, reached for the knob. Steeled himself, then opened it.
The interior of a rustic structure. The inside of a barn, perhaps. Night. An orange fire glowing in a blacksmith's fire pot. Heavy, metal tools spread out on a wooden table, ends pooling red. Vices and tongs and hammers. A man in a smiley-face mask and a leather apron standing over a woman lying face down on a board, sawing her head off. A semi-circle of children in ragged clothes gazed up from the rough ground, watching. He finished removing her head, holding it by a dark clump of hair, and raised his face, looking directly at Hatcher. The children all swiveled their heads in unison to see, dozens of cold eyes finding his simultaneously. One reached across and dug its fingers behind its chin and pulled the skin off its face, revealing a smiley face beneath. The others started to do the same, faces peeling back—
Hatcher shut the door, pressed his weight against it.
He glanced to his left. The hall was extending out, growing, one section of light flickering to life at a time, endlessly telescoping into the distance as the black rectangle of darkness at the end receded until it became too small to see. A straight-line corridor, doors on each side, stretching into infinity.
It was a different matter to his right. Only one additional section of light seemed to have turned on, revealing the end of the hallway. It terminated at a door. A more substantial one than the others. Bigger. Wooden planks banded together, bolts the size of a fist. A coat of deep red paint covering all of it.
Hatcher moved toward it, thinking, not exactly subtle.
No knob or handle or latch. No visible hinges. He stood in front of it for several seconds, looking it over, before putting a hand against it. The first push was gentle, a test. The second, a bit firmer. On the third he pushed against it with most of his weight.
The door swung so quickly it seemed to disappear. Hatcher found himself stumbling across the threshold, taking several steps to recover his balance.
It was night here, too. He was outside. A giant fire bristled and throbbed about a hundred feet away, in the center of a village. There were people surrounding it, scores of them, all naked or in the process of stripping off their remaining clothes. On their heads sat ornate cowls of wicker meant to mimic horns and ears and tangles of serpents.
Next to the fire, a full-sized cross, complete with a man nailed to it. The cross was right-side up, but the man was inverted, his legs pulled apart into a split and nailed to the crossbeam, his hands pulled together below his head, nailed to the post through the wrists. The cross was set on a low platform with wagon-style wheels.
A hum of music, voices chanting, filled the air. The people around the fire were dancing. Freestyle gyrations, breasts swaying jubilantly, penises bouncing with abandon. Many were carrying pikes with heads impaled atop them. Hatcher recognized at least one of those heads – the man who'd led him down to meet Amy at the fence. Cory.
In the cast-off light of the fire, Hatcher recognized the small huts, the hovels of rough sandy plaster, the carefully contrived primitive look, the winding paths up the hillside.
Armageddon, USA.
The chiming of some clock or bell, and a few of the dancers let out a whoop, prancing closer to the cross. With some effort, they managed to move the platform, wheeling it nearer to the fire. The angle allowed Hatcher a better view of the man, and though it took him a moment he saw it was Jonah. He was screaming, his voice barely audible over the chanting and the groans of the dancers and the crackling of the bonfire.
A woman capered her way from one end of the fire to the other, twirling and skipping. Her bare olive skin glistened in the firelight, her dark hair keeping time on her back. Her headdress gave her cat's eyes, edges pointing out far beyond her head. But even masked there was something familiar about her, something Hatcher recognized. She bent down behind the cross and hoisted a jug. She spun with it, circling back to the front, then began to pour it over the base of the center post, splashing it onto Jonah's declined head.
The Angel of the Abyss Page 32
