He low-crawled to the concealment of an abandoned car sitting up on blocks at the curb, its wheels long since stolen. He paused to catch his breath and let his eyes adjust. After the near complete darkness of the sewer, even the moonlight was enough to make him squint.
He looked around. He was on a side street behind the station, on the edge of one of the derelict neighborhoods. It was an area that transitioned into factories and a railroad yard in the distance, seemingly defunct. Torres had not heard any trains during the course of the evening. Once upon a time the area had obviously been a thriving place of industry, but the factories had long been deserted and were almost entirely gutted. The streets were dotted with rusted automobile bodies that had been stripped of all useful parts and fabrics.
Sharp scrabbling sounds from the storm drain made Torres head for a three story structure across the street. The sign on the crumbling brick frontage said it had once been an ice house. Torres, huffing from his exertions, turned through the open door into a huge room where rusting refrigeration pipes still clung to the ceiling and hung precariously over a bare floor of rotting timbers.
He looked around cautiously, and then heard another sound coming from the street, like claws skittering on asphalt. A staircase sagged in one corner and he ran to it. He forced himself to move with caution up the stairs that swayed under his weight. The second floor was much like the first except here the overhead pipes had fallen and lay in a rusting tangle of metal jutting out in all directions. Torres moved deeper into the room and faded into the darkness. He found a vantage point and drew his pistol.
Hissing and low-pitched growls arose from the first floor. How in the hell did they track me? Torres wondered. They obviously had a sophisticated sense of smell. He’d been hoping he smelled enough like one of them now that they would ignore him. No such luck. He cursed himself for wishful thinking. A luminous glow streamed up the staircase, growing brighter and larger by the moment.
Torres backed away to put a pile of machinery between himself and the stairs. Suddenly a dozen of the creatures burst up the stairwell, eyes blazing with inhuman fury. The room bloomed with wavering light and the creatures crashed wildly through the tangle of junk searching for Torres. Their fierce animal screams rose to fever pitch when they discovered him and they rushed him in a mass, slashing with their claws.
Torres fired quickly, aiming for their eyes, dispatching the first two who reached him. He fired twice more and two more foes dropped. Retreating, using blocks of rusting machinery and piles of pipes for defense, Torres exacted a heavy toll.
He fought with strategy, utilizing every advantage he could. When his gun clicked empty, he drew his knife. He wove and threaded his way through the formidable obstructions—restricting the creatures in reaching him to no more than one or two at a time. The low ceiling prevented them from taking flight. He had taken away their speed and mobility. The odds had improved.
Chopping, thrusting, and stabbing at them with a fixed expression of grim resolve, Torres dealt with his attackers. He aimed for their eyes, as a rule, the most vulnerable spot on their bodies. He danced out of the way of the slashing claws and parried the stinging tails like a swordsman as he sliced and hacked. When he was finished, a dozen carcasses littered the dusty floor.
Torres stood at the top of the stairs covered in shit, blood, and sweat. He leaned against the wall until he regained his breath. The stab wound in his side was giving him fits, but he filed it away with his other pains and tried to ignore it as best he could. He lingered at the top of the stairs to see if any more of the creatures were coming. When none did, he thought to himself, A dozen of them. They were out on patrol—like a squad.
He quickly returned to the first floor, pausing in the doorway of the old icehouse to scan the street. Dry weeds pushed up through cracks and breaks in the crumbling sidewalk under his feet. Several blocks distant, he could hear the sound of Tiffany’s voice calling for help. Then it was decision time: try to rescue her or save his own skin?
Del Toro Drive
2:57 A.M
Angelo Lopez and Juan Garcia were not happy men. Contract killers in charge of eliminating the dreaded Rattlesnake Torres, Lopez and Garcia had collected their three gunmen and waited near the border in Juarez for the call. When it came, the information from their snitch had been blurted out in a breathless rush, with a lot of hysterical babbling thrown in for no extra charge. Something about the bus taking a detour and stopping at a police station someplace on Concorde Street off of Del Toro Drive.
Their informant had run off and let the phone dangle, by the sounds of it, and then they heard a lot of noises that they didn’t understand: a car engine revving and a bunch of weird squawking clamor. They were going to get Arturo Vega to explain those noises to them before they chopped him up and fed him to their fighting dogs.
All of the assassins were in a foul mood. It had taken them a very long time to find Del Toro Drive. None of them knew their way around the city. They were hired hitters from Mexico City. They didn’t know El Paso from a hole in the ground. They still hadn’t found Concorde Street.
“Dios mio,” worried Lopez, wiping sweat from his porcine face. He had small piggy eyes, more chins than a Hong Kong phone book, and a pencil-thin moustache that did nothing for his already slightly perverted looks. “If we mess this up, El Jefe will have our balls.”
“We have plenty of time,” guaranteed Garcia from behind the wheel. He was as smooth and handsome as his cousin was sweaty and ugly. “We will be done by five a.m. No problem.”
Privately, he was concerned. They needed to get the deed done and get back across the border. Where in the hell was this place?
They drove through bombed-out neighborhoods where weeds flourished, some as high as four feet, and dry and brittle as candied glass from the recent heat wave. The buildings they passed were just peeling walls scaled with decay and burned-out, gutted interiors. The sky above was streaked with shooting stars. The meteor showers had begun afresh.
In the backseat, their three companions sat silent and implacable. They were short, powerfully built men in dark chinos and guayabera shirts, with hard, expressionless eyes. Nacho, Ricardo, and Rudy. Each man held a sound-suppressed MAC-10 submachine gun in his lap.
A street sign loomed from the road ahead, caught in the glare of their headlights. There it was: Concorde Street.
Buena Vista
3:12 A.M.
Torres knew it was crazy. Why was he going back for her? He didn’t even like her. He was out of ammunition for the Glock and armed only with his knife, not even a real knife, a shank, something he whipped up in the machine shop at Smithville. This was suicide. He debated the question silently as he crawled through the weeds toward the sound of Tiffany’s voice. It was coming from the houses to the north of the station.
He couldn’t believe how foolish he was acting when he caught sight of the police station. He’d made it out, gotten away, and now here he was, back on some half-assed mission of mercy. Christ, why not go back inside and save everyone in there too? This was madness. He was no hero. He was a contract killer with a price on his head and also a wanted fugitive, now that he’d escaped from custody.
He flattened himself on the ground and poked his head up to study the parking lot through the scrim of weeds. He saw the truck. The lights were out. It was quiet and dark, only the moonlight shedding a hollow glow over the front of the building. No sign of the creatures. What were they up to? No sign of the men from the truck. What were they up to? What in the hell was going on around here tonight?
Station Nineteen
3:15 A.M.
Love didn’t know how much more of the pleading voice from outside he could bear to listen to. It rasped his nerves like a file. He was not the type of man to leave a damsel in distress. Being locked up like an animal in a cage also drove him nuts. Endless passive waiting was not his style.
They put Mootz under the bunk on the floor and covered him with a blanket. Juanita
had moved to the bunk. She didn’t want to be near the bloodstain on the wall where Mootz had been sitting. Vega slumped next to her, inscrutable as ever. The kid paced back and forth until Love made him sit down.
“What are we gonna do?” the kid whispered to the lieutenant when he settled down next to him with his back to the wall, carefully avoiding the crimson stains. Minaberry lounged in the doorway. He wouldn’t come any farther into the hall, wary of the broken window.
“I am thinking,” was all Love would say.
“The only reason they don’t waste us now is they can’t spare the bullets,” the kid went on, making sure that Minaberry didn’t hear. “In the morning, when they see them things are gone, they gonna grease us for sure. You heard the man.”
“I know,” grumbled Love.
His mind still found it hard to accept the rather alarming fact that government agents could be so casual about killing American citizens. These men acted as if taking a life was no more than blowing out a candle.
Love had never believed in any of the wild conspiracy theories floating around in the cultural ether in the late ’80s. He didn’t believe the moon landing was a hoax, or that the CIA, the Mafia, the Cubans, and the Freemasons had conspired to kill JFK. He didn’t believe in UFOs, or Aliens, or Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster. Now he wasn’t so sure.
There was no telling what Uncle Sam’s boys were up to these days. Just this summer the big news was the so-called “Iran-Contra Affair” hearings in Washington which were catapulting a little known Lieutenant Colonel by the name of Oliver North into the spotlight.
Another patriot like Agent Rogers, Love mused. Doing what he thinks is best for the country, regardless of the rule of law.
“How can you just stand there and listen to that woman beg for help?” he called to Minaberry.
“Easy,” the pale doctor answered. “I want to live.”
“You better hope I don’t get out of this cell,” Love told him.
“Not much chance of that happening,” Minaberry said smugly. He walked a few steps, did some deep knee bends, stretching his legs, and then returned to his spot by the door.
Griffith’s voice came from the front, “There’s a car coming.”
Buena Vista
3:20 A.M.
From his vantage point, Torres saw a blue 1981 Cadillac El Dorado slowly cruise by the front of the station. It was the first car that had passed that way all night, and it was going very slowly, as if the passengers were scoping out the building.
The sound of Tiffany’s voice suddenly stopped. Torres was puzzled. That didn’t make any sense. If she wanted to be saved, why did she fall silent when help had arrived? She hadn’t been cut off. No yelp of pain or terror. She just stopped calling out.
Something was not right. Torres could feel it, some animal instinct that warned him from making any further moves. He stayed on his belly in the tall weeds.
Torres had determined that the cries for help were coming from a abandoned house to his left about twenty yards. He gasped when he saw the creatures come spilling out from the doorway. They’d been in there all along! A chill crawled up his spine like an icy tarantula as he contemplated how close he’d been to going into the house. Then the implications of what that meant sank in.
Had they set a trap?
Had they kept her captive in there so she would lure the others with her cries for help? The Cong used to do that. They’d injure a man, cripple him savagely, and leave him as bait. The sound of a wounded comrade was not something that most soldiers could, or would, ignore. When the soldiers came to rescue their pal, the Cong would ambush them and wipe them out.
His mind reeled. These things were smarter than he thought. Once again, he had underestimated them. He sank into the weeds and watched as a tide of monsters flowed toward the station from the condemned neighborhood.
Concorde Street
3:21 A.M.
Lopez pointed through the windshield with a quivering hand.
The front walkway looked like a scene from the apocalypse: a blackened forest of dead palm trees, gnarled limbs pointing accusingly at the sky like skeletal fingers, and the surrounding lawn a charred moonscape.
“Look at that.” His voice was tense with nervousness. The smoldering, biting smell of smoke was still sharp and fresh. “Something nasty happened here earlier.”
“Probably just kids with fireworks set the lawn on fire,” said Garcia. He was growing convinced that the station was closed. If Vega had lied to them about what happened to Torres and sent them on a wild goose chase, the informant’s death would not be quick—or pleasant.
The others craned their heads as they slowly drove by the front of the station. The building was silent, darkened windows revealing nothing. “The place looks deserted,” Garcia commented. “The lights are out.”
“There was a sign posted back there,” said Lopez.
“What did it say?”
“I am not sure. My English isn’t so good.”
“We will make another pass.”
“Yeah, we have to check this place out, I guess, no matter what, eh?” commented Lopez. “But it doesn’t look like anyone is here.”
They rolled the heavy car slowly around the corner to the other side of the building, saw the sally port entrance and the bus.
“Wait,” said Lopez. “This has to be it. See? There’s the chain bus.”
Garcia swung the car around in a wide loop. The parking lot came into view with the Nova smashed into the unmarked patrol car and the big trailer truck sitting in a circle of broken glass.
“Yes!” Garcia nodded eagerly. “There is Vega’s orange car.”
As he spoke he finally noticed the strangeness of the scene. Vega’s car was crashed into a nondescript brown sedan that had to be an unmarked police car. Why was Vega playing demolition derby with the cops? And why were those great big light panels hanging off that truck on those robotic metal arms? He’d never seen anything like that before. The lights were all smashed to pieces. Who had done that? And why? And where was everybody?
“Just what the hell is going on here?” he had time to ask.
And then he had no time at all.
Suddenly, a screeching figure dropped from the sky and landed next to the car. Lopez wet himself when he saw it. One of the men in the back got his submachine gun up and let loose with a quick blast of automatic fire. The beast toppled, to be instantly replaced by another. They were suddenly all over the parking lot, coming in waves, tails undulating like angry scorpions, eyes blazing. They came on foot and in the air, as thick as a colony of bats.
Garcia jammed his foot down on the gas pedal and the car shot forward, crushing the monsters in its path. He plowed into the mob, moving through it. The creatures were all over the car, grabbing, hanging on, and shoving their drooling faces through the open windows.
Garcia couldn’t see out the windshield. He shouted to the men in the back and Rudy brought up his submachine gun and aimed it out the front. He fired quickly, blasting a snarling creature on the windshield. The body twitched and rolled off the car. More monsters scrambled up on the hood. Rudy shot them off, blasting holes through the windshield, chipping away at it until it collapsed like crushed ice into the laps of Lopez and Garcia.
Lopez lay slumped in the passenger seat with the angry welt from a barbed stinger showing on his neck. His eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the roof. The other men kept firing, clearing the car of bodies. Glass broke out of the back window. Garcia drove wildly, tearing down the street, racing across the parking lot in a blind panic.
A clawed arm made it through the window and slashed at Garcia, gouging a ragged furrow in his cheek, slicing through his left eye. He screamed in flaring agony. The car swerved as he lost control. The caddy jumped a parking berm, and then something appeared in the headlights, something massive and metallic. It was the truck. They were headed right for its huge metal grille.
Ricardo leapt over the backseat and grabbed t
he wheel from Garcia, who had both hands to his bloody face and was screaming like a small child, high and shrill, and standing on the gas pedal, legs locked, body rigid with pain. Ricardo wrenched the wheel and the caddy narrowly missed the truck. The El Dorado sideswiped the trailer, crushing two creatures against the side, and then rolled to a stop against the line of yucca plants at the back of the parking lot.
In the back seat, Nacho was suddenly yanked through the window so fast that his MAC-10 caught on the door handle, and both his weapon and the fingers of the hand clutching it tore off in a spray of blood. The gun and the severed digits bounced off the backseat and plopped on the floor.
Claws pulled Garcia from the driver’s seat and he disappeared under a pile of snapping teeth. The two remaining assassins fell out of the car, weapons jumping in their hands as they spit bullets and fought to keep the swarming hordes at bay.
Ricardo tried to break away and head for the station. He made it no more than ten steps from the car when he was snatched up and ripped apart in mid air. His guts fell with a ropy splash to the pavement, followed by the bloody husk of his body.
Rudy used his fallen comrade’s death to make his escape. While a mob was falling on Ricardo’s body, lapping up the blood with their long tongues like dogs at a watering hole, the assassin leapt over the wall of yucca plants and ran for his life toward the abandoned houses of Buena Vista.
Station Nineteen
3:21 A.M.
Just as Rogers was about to head down the hall to join Griffith at the front door, his attention was drawn to the bathroom by loud scrabbling noises. He stopped in the doorway and peered in and saw nothing. But he located the sound. It was coming from the hole in the floor of the toilet stall. From outside, there suddenly came the sound of automatic weapons firing. Rogers hesitated. Then another thump and scrape from the hole brought his attention back to the toilet stall.
Siege of Station 19 Page 11
