Love backed up a few steps to make sure nothing could get between him and the door. He had already used up all eight of his shotgun shells. No time to reload. He slung the weapon over his shoulder, drew his .357, and kept shooting. He had to keep them off Martell. He pivoted and blasted a saliva-drooling face that lunged at him from the yucca bushes near the steps. He needed to keep them away from the front door too.
From inside the station, they watched the Chrysler slew around in a squeal of burning rubber and come barreling out of the parking lot.
“He made it!” cried Tiffany, tears of joy streaming down her face. “He made it! Here he comes!” In her hysteria she hadn’t noticed that Martell had been left behind.
“Oh kid, I knew you could do it,” Mootz laughed. “You’re a hero, dude!” He turned excitedly to Torres and Juanita. “This kid has huge balls. He is a hero!”
The car turned and raced down the street. “Here he comes” Tiffany called expectantly. “Get ready!”
They watched as the car sped past the station without even slowing down. The headlights vanished as it zoomed off down the road with the engine racing.
“What is he doing?” wailed Tiffany. “Where is he going?”
Mootz let loose a flurry of obscenities. “That dirty little bastard! He left us! That rotten, cowardly piece of shit left us here to die!”
“That’s the way it goes,” Torres said. “One minute you’re a hero and the next you’re a piece of shit.”
He held out his hand to Juanita. She didn’t hesitate to give the Glock to him. He popped the magazine, locked the slide back, and checked the chamber. It was clear and clean. He thumbed the slide release and the slab of metal slammed forward. He reinserted the mag and racked the slide to chamber a round. Rattlesnake Torres with a gun in his hand was like Popeye on a whole case of spinach.
Outside, Martell was sprinting across the parking lot, dodging the squalling shapes flying like missiles through the air above his head. The stench of them alone was almost overpowering as mobs of them threatened to close in and tear him apart.
He was ten steps from the front entrance, where Love was shouting encouragement and cracking off shots with his revolver, when he turned to look back at the creatures, fear etched on his face. His feet tangled together and he faltered and went down.
Then it was too late.
A pile of snarling fiends fell on him, ripping and rending. He raised an arm to ward off the first blow and lost the arm to the elbow. He stared at the spurting stump in shock. Then two clawed hands clamped his head, steadying him. A fang-filled mouth yawned open and moved forward to suck out his eyes. His screams were awful. Then they abruptly ceased, which was somehow worse.
Love knew the game was up. He retreated to the door and banged on it with the heel of his hand. It opened instantly and he tumbled inside. “Get something to block this door!” he bawled.
Mootz and Torres were already dragging over one of the crates lining the hallway. As they pushed it against the front door, a scaly fist punched through the window, and a flailing hand scrabbled inside, digging long furrows in the wood, scratching, reaching, trying to grab. Mootz and Torres had to hold the crate against the door with both hands. Torres couldn’t reach the Glock, tucked inside his jumpsuit.
Love feverishly dug into his pockets for fresh shotgun shells and found only four. “Christ!” he groaned helplessly. He slid the last shells into the magazine and worked the pump to chamber a round. “Get back!”
Mootz and Torres jumped away and Love placed the barrel inches from the face framed in the window. He pulled the trigger, the barrel sprouted flame, and the creature’s head popped like a balloon, sending up a fountain of blood and pulped brains.
And just as suddenly as it began, the attack stopped. No dwindling down or fading away. The creatures simply retreated as a group, as if a signal had been sent. It reminded Love of ants, a swarm of ants. One minute they were crawling all over and the next they were gone.
It grew quiet. The silence hung heavy after the cacophony of just moments before. Only the sound of everyone’s heavy breathing and Tiffany’s sobbing could be heard. Cordite laced the air with an acrid bite. Everyone’s ears rang.
Love broke the spell by moving to the counter and placing the shotgun down and plucking his .357 from its holster and quickly reloading it with shaking hands. He was on his final speed loader, his last six shots.
“Is everyone okay?” he asked, snapping shut the cylinder.
Before anyone could answer, the sound of glass breaking upstairs jerked everyone’s attention to the stairs at the end of the hall. Simultaneously, from the back near the holding cells, came a tremendous pounding on the door that Love had bolted shut.
“They’re trying to flank us,” Torres hissed, moving to the back. For the first time Love noticed that he had the Glock. He didn’t say anything. What was there to say? He hustled his way to the stairs with the shotgun out in front of him, ready to blast anything that disturbed the barricade. He’d worry about Torres later.
Torres watched the back door bounce on its hinges as powerful blows kept up a rhythmic hammering. With each blow, dust fell from the ceiling and cracks began to appear in the plaster walls. Mootz was at his elbow, eyes red-rimmed and worried.
“Oh crap, man,” Mootz jabbered. “They’re gonna get in here.”
His head whipped around at the sound of more glass breaking. It was coming from the captain’s office. Tiffany and Juanita began screaming. Vega crawled under Juanita’s desk, leaving a track of blood like a slug trailing mucus.
Mootz skidded down the hall to the captain’s office and peeked inside. He saw a green figure with spikes on its back tearing through the venetian blinds. The creature already had one leg over the sill, its clawed foot touching the floor.
“Lieutenant! In here!”
Love was there in an instant, elbowing Mootz aside. He scanned the room in a flash. He saw the creature shifting its weight to climb the rest of the way through the window. A grasping claw knocked over the empty water dispenser against the wall and it clattered to the floor. Love swung the riot gun to the creature, aimed at a spot between the iridescent eyes, and squeezed the trigger. The shotgun kicked against his shoulder. The monster flew backward out the window, crying like a burning eagle.
Love glanced at the desk and knew something about it was important. The desk…the desk with its padlocked box sitting atop it with two shotguns inside!
He pivoted, aimed at the box on the desk, and used his last shot to blast off the lock. He rushed over and ripped off the lid, in the same motion tossing his empty shotgun to Mootz, who caught it with a surprised, “Whoa!”
Love reached in and pulled out one of the Remingtons. He flicked the safety off and checked the mag. It was fully loaded.
“Thank god for small miracles,” he breathed. Turning, he moved past Mootz and called, “Torres, get in here quick!”
The pounding on the back door had not stopped. Something was back there beating the hell out of that door.
Torres appeared and he smiled when he saw the other shotgun in the box. The smile disappeared quickly when he heard the sound of the unattended door in the back splintering and slamming open.
Mootz moved out of the captain’s office first and he was the first to see the creature coming around the corner. Tiffany and Juanita screamed when it crossed into the vestibule, moving like a lion stalking a gazelle, slowly, deliberately, tail poised high, head swinging from side to side, insectoid eyes scanning the room. It saw Mootz and fixed its shimmering gaze upon him, the spines on its back pulsing.
Mootz planted his feet, raised the shotgun. “Die, you stinking goatsucker!” He pulled the trigger.
Click!
He had not checked his weapon. He had no idea he was holding an unloaded gun. In the split second that was left to him, Mootz cursed his rotten luck. Of all the ways to die!
The creature came at him, filling his vision, the last thing he would ever se
e: a gaping mouth with rows of sharp teeth ready to tear his soft flesh like paper.
And then a thunderclap from behind him and the beast fell down, leaking blood. Another deafening explosion and the beast skidded backward on the floor, leaving a grotesque smear on the tiles. It didn’t move after that. Mootz turned around and saw Torres, smoke still curling from the barrel of his twelve-gauge.
“You are my freakin’ hero, Torres!” Mootz gushed.
Torres smirked at him. “In five minutes I’ll be a piece of shit again.” He brushed past and disappeared down the hall.
Love was still at the bottom of the stairs, listening to the noise of things moving around upstairs: thumping, bumping, hissing, and the unnerving sound of doors rattling on their hinges. Were the damned things trying the door handles? Did they even have opposable thumbs? Love tried to remember, but couldn’t recall. “Hey, Mootz!” he yelled.
When the convict appeared at the end of the hall he angrily held up the empty shotgun. “Thanks for almost getting me killed!” he grumbled. “What did you give me an unloaded gun for?”
Love shrugged his shoulders helplessly. It had all happened so fast, he hadn’t had time to warn Mootz that his shotgun was empty. “Here.” Love ejected two shells from his own weapon and gave them to him.
Mootz looked at them like they were cat turds. “Sure you can spare them?” He slid them into the tube and worked the slide to chamber the first shell.
“Watch the stairs,” Love told him and then strode off to find Torres. He also wanted to examine the dead creature in the hallway, to look at its hands. Tiffany and Juanita were coaxing Vega out from under the desk when Love passed them. He knelt in the vestibule and poked at the dead creature with the barrel of the Remington.
“God,” he gasped, holding one hand to his nose. The smell was unbearable.
He pried an arm loose from under the carcass and looked at it closely. He counted four fingers and an opposable thumb, a freakishly human-like hand. Except the fingers were long, twice the length of a man’s, and they ended in talons that would not have looked out of place on a falcon…or a dragon. He shuddered. What in the hell were these things?
In the back he found Torres examining the busted door. It was split down the middle like an overloaded plastic bag. Jagged wooden splinters hung in long strands.
“Thought this thing would’ve held,” the killer said, tapping it with the butt of the shotgun. “It’s a pretty firm door.” He was right. It was old growth timber, solid oak, and three inches thick, antique, probably worth money. The big door had been installed in the 1930s when wood and iron were still used extensively in the construction of Art Deco buildings.
Love craned his head to see down the hallway. The holding cells were on the left. He could see the bodies of Shit-bag and Sergeant Hammerstrom in the nearest one and the broken window on the right, gaping like a missing tooth in a grinning skull face.
“We can’t keep them out back here,” Torres told him, gesturing at the window. “We’d better use some more of those crates in the other hall and block this doorway to create another choke point.”
“We are running out of ammunition,” Love answered. “If those things decide to take this place in a rush, we won’t stand a chance.”
Torres shrugged. “Maybe the kid went for help.”
“You really believe that?”
“No.”
“Me neither.” Love slung the shotgun over his shoulder. “I don’t know this station or even this area at all. I was transferred over here temporarily—just for tonight.”
“Talk to Juanita,” Torres suggested. “Maybe she can tell us something that might be useful.”
“First let’s block this door.”
Del Toro Drive
Ten miles west of Station Nineteen
12:17 A.M.
The kid slammed on the brakes when he saw the roadblock and the red Chrysler fishtailed and threatened to careen out-of-control. He cursed and fought with the wheel. The car swung from one side of the road to the other before straightening out, brakes locked, and tires screaming in protest. He finally got the car stopped a scant few yards from the line of police cars blocking Del Toro Drive.
Cops wearing the brown uniforms of the Sheriff’s Department were pouring around the sides of the barricade, shouting for him to put up his hands. They all had guns and all of them were pointing in his direction.
“Damned red car,” the kid muttered, raising his hands. “I told them: red cars are bad luck.”
Rough hands reached through the broken window and hauled him out, not even bothering to open the door. The kid was slammed face down on the ground, his hands jerked behind him and cuffed, and then he was lifted to his feet. Before he could protest, someone threw a coat over his head. He felt himself being shoved along. Someone’s hands were on him, holding the coat in place over his head, guiding him, moving forward, and then he was going up a ramp, a steel ramp like the loading ramp of a big truck. He felt hands patting him down, and then the jacket was removed and he blinked in the sudden light.
He was inside what appeared to be a large truck trailer that had been converted into a high-tech command center. People in white lab coats were seated at consoles, monitoring banks of equipment. The kid saw flickering video screens, oscilloscopes, digital displays, banks of computers lining both sides of the trailer. He felt the cool breeze of air conditioning. It looked like Mission Control at NASA.
A lean, wolfish man with cold blue eyes dressed like one of the Blues Brothers in a dark suit, white shirt, black tie, turned in a swivel chair.
“And what do we have here?” the man asked, sizing up the kid, taking note of his orange prison jumpsuit. “A prison break?”
“I,” the kid stammered. “I, uh…”
The man smiled, pleased by the kid’s discomfiture. “I am Special Agent Rogers,” he said, his voice as friendly as frostbite. His accent was East Coast, maybe Boston, or Baltimore. “Tell me everything that has happened to you since the sun went down.”
When the kid had finished, Rogers asked, “How far is this station nineteen?”
“A couple of miles…” the kid murmured. He was feeling rather overwhelmed. These guys didn’t seem surprised to hear about monsters flying around and shredding people into cole slaw. He had not expected them to believe him.
“You are coming with us,” Rogers told him. “We have to rescue your friends.”
Oh boy, the kid thought. Won’t they be surprised. He nodded weakly. “Okay.”
“Saddle up!” Rogers barked to the waiting crew. “We are moving out!” The truck’s engine turned over and rumbled to life.
Station Nineteen
12:30 A.M.
Love had Torres help him drag the stinking reptilian carcass into the back but the stench lingered in the vestibule, a wet, swampy smell, like an animal that had died in its own nest.
Tiffany and Juanita sat on the floor of their office with their backs against the front counter, hands covering their noses. Vega sprawled at Juanita’s desk with his mangled legs up on a chair. Mootz still guarded the stairs.
“Juanita,” Love asked when he and Torres returned. “Are any of those houses behind the station inhabited?”
“No,” she said with regret. “They were boarded up and condemned a few years ago. No one lives there now except sometimes drug addicts and the homeless camp there.”
“What about the neighborhoods on the other side?”
She shook her head. “There was a fire. The whole subdivision burned. It has been condemned too. This whole area is like that, Lieutenant. That’s why the station was being moved.”
He nodded in silent agreement, pursing his lips. “Yeah. Okay.” He let himself slide to the floor next to the women. It grew very quiet. Time passed slowly.
“What are they waiting for?” Tiffany suddenly blurted after the prolonged silence had become too much for her to bear. Her eyes roamed the room in free-floating dread. “Why don’t they just get
it over with?”
Torres frowned at her. “Freeze on that shit.” The steel in his voice made her sit up and stare at him. Torres shot her a look of fire. “I have been in far worse situations than this,” he said hotly. “Put on your big girl panties and deal with it.”
She stared at him, her mouth trembling. She took in a long stuttering breathe, chest heaving. Then she began bawling. The noise of it filled the room. Everyone looked unhappily at Torres. He stood up slowly.
“I’ll take over from Mootz at the stairs.” He walked off.
Juanita set the pistol down and wrapped her arms around the blonde woman’s shoulders, rocking her like an infant.
“It is going to be okay. You’ll see.”
Devil’s Triangle
12:45 A.M
The rolling laboratory followed a police escort, blowing through intersections, bubble lights flashing, sirens blaring, even though there was no traffic in that part of the city. It was the outskirts of crack-town on the Fourth of July: everyone was inside banging rocks in joyous celebration. The trashed streets were windblown and empty.
The Sheriff’s men knew of station nineteen, the old “Alamo” over on Concorde Street in the Devil’s Triangle. A real shit hole. They put on a show, lights and sirens and squealing tires, and swore they’d get the federal boys over there double-quick.
The kid was pushed into a chair and ignored. He stayed still, keeping his mouth shut, and his eyes and ears open. He strained to hear what some of the lab rats were talking about as they talked softly to each other. He only caught snatches of their conversation.
“…each generation is markedly different than the last.”
“Yes, it is absolutely amazing. They’ve shown quite an extraordinary ability to adapt. They are always changing, always adjusting, always evolving. After all, the first generation had no wings.”
Siege of Station 19 Page 7
