The two boys stepped inside. The room was smaller than the sump pump room. It was about the same size as the first room they’d explored, the one with the stacks of metal folding chairs, maybe ten feet wide by ten feet deep. It was filled with stuff – mostly cardboard boxes. They were piled high against walls and around the room.
“What a mess,” Justin said.
Andrew picked up one box, looked inside, and then tossed it aside. “Empty,” he said. He picked up another and then discarded it too. “Really? They just kept a bunch of empty old boxes down here?” He walked farther into the room, over to where boxes were piled as high as Andrew was tall. He gave the boxes a kick. Several of them toppled over.
The two boys laughed and Justin came over to give another stack of boxes a kick that ended with similar results.
Then Andrew stomped an empty box that had fallen by his feet, crunching it flat.
Justin followed suit.
Both boys laughed again and then sighed, their excitement rapidly fading.
Andrew shined his light around the room, looking for other forms of entertainment but finding none. “Well, I guess that’s it for in here. Maybe we should go check out that other hallway.”
“Yeah…okay,” Justin agreed. “Or maybe we should find your brother first.”
Suddenly a box fell from its perch atop a nearby stack. Andrew moved to stomp it with a foot. “That’ll teach you!” he sneered at the crumpled box.
Suddenly a hand reached from between two undisturbed stacks of boxes and latched onto Andrew’s coat sleeve. Andrew screeched in terror, yanking away from the hand and stumbling backwards, falling into other empty boxes.
Because Andrew had been holding the flashlight, Justin hadn’t seen what had frightened his friend. He hurried over to assist the fallen boy, but Andrew was already scrambling to his feet. Still clutching his light, he shined it at the wall of boxes that was quickly pushed down to reveal two biters – one male, one female. The male had the tattered remains of a name embroidered on his blue work attire. It read, “Victor”.
* * *
Charla came back down the stairs and crossed the tower’s lower level to plunk down in her office chair beside Chris. He could tell by her demeanor and body language that things had not gone well with Wendell.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Didn’t mean to get you into trouble. It just felt so good,” he rolled his eyes at the thought of Charla’s magic fingers.
She shook her head. “It’s not your fault,” she huffed out a long sigh. “Wendell is just…well, Wendell. For being so smart, he acts awfully stupid sometimes.”
“You can’t blame him in a way. He sees us spending so much time together, and then with you giving me a massage and all, he’s bound to put two-and-two together.”
“Yeah, but the problem is, his two-and-two comes out to five.”
Chris gave a soft laugh and then patted Charla’s knee. “Don’t know what to tell you,” he said sympathetically. “I was never very good at relationships myself. Always kind of left it to the other person to do all the work, and I don’t think they appreciated that. All I can say is, don’t make the same mistake I usually did. Don’t clam up. Talk to Wendell. Tell him what you need to tell him to let him off this hook he’s on.”
“You think?” Charla looked at him with squinty eyes. “What could it hurt now?” Chris shrugged. “At least it will get the wary stares we’ve been receiving from the others off us. Being honest will give Wendell his answer. Everyone will finally have the answer to the question they’ve been debating whenever we aren’t in the room.”
“Yeah, but then what will they talk about? We’ll be killing the only good gossip in the tower,” she smirked at him.
“We owe it to Wendell…and ourselves at this point. I’m tired of pretending. I just want it to be out there. Let the others do with it as they will.”
Suddenly there was a soft noise from somewhere inside the tower.
“You hear that?” Charla glanced at Chris with a frown.
Chris nodded. “Yeah. It’s weird…it’s almost like it came from under us.”
“That’s what I thought,” Charla agreed, looking down at the floor.
“Tower settling?” Chris shrugged with a raised eyebrow.
“Who knows?” Charla shook her head. “Sometimes there are some weird echoes in this place. Might have been something from upstairs or even outside.”
“I guess,” Chris frowned, sounding less than confident in Charla’s assessment.
Downstairs, Andrew and Justin were bolting out the door of basement room number three. They went tearing into the hallway, Justin leading the way. But it wasn’t long before the young boy’s fear overcame his feet, his urge to escape causing him to stumble just before the junction where the two hallways intersected near the stairs. Andrew’s legs hit his friend’s midsection as Justin lay sprawled in the hallway. He sailed overtop Justin, his flashlight landing, still on, and rolling away down the short hallway to their left.
Victor was right behind them, followed immediately by Cheryl. Their insatiable lust for these delicious-looking young drove them wild with bloodlust. Victor reached for the first of their two prey – the smallest of the two. But he didn’t care what size the meal. He’d take anything at this point.
He reached down and grabbed the small creature. Hearing it screech in shock made Victor feel good. He was glad to be so close to food, glad to take some revenge for the toll these creatures had exacted on his herd, glad finally to be able to provide for the other creature – the only creature – who had remained by his side. She was right behind him now. Even in the darkness, he could sense her presence. But Victor’s thoughts were torn asunder by a sudden and searing pain that radiated through his injured arm. The tiny creature that Victor had snatched up and was preparing to sink his teeth into had hit him in his injured arm during its attempt to escape. Victor involuntarily recoiled, stumbling back into Cheryl.
Andrew scrambled on hands and knees over to where his flashlight had come to a rest just inside the other hallway. Then he stood. Justin was right there with him. Both boys instantly realized that the two biters who had followed them now blocked their way back upstairs. They were cornered.
“Come on!” Andrew turned and darted down the hallway. Justin was right behind him.
The hallway continued for about 15 feet before it met with the tower’s east wall. There was only one closed door to their right. Andrew didn’t hesitate. There was no other option. He flung the door open and ducked inside, hoping to find something that might help them either hide from or fight the biters behind them. Closing the door, he looked for a lock on its inside, but there was none. Therefore, he turned to frantically scan the room with his light. It was a large room. Andrew estimated it at about the same size as the sump pit room. There was a massive, cylindrical, steel structure in the center of the room with pipes leading from it up through the ceiling.
That was it. That was all there was inside the room – nothing else, nothing that would help them with the biters they could now hear snarling and snapping in the hallway behind them.
Andrew shined his light over the massive steel structure. He could feel Justin beside him, gripping his arm, trembling. He recognized the object as a boiler from pictures he’d seen of large ships and locomotives in a book that his father had bought him for his tenth birthday. There had been a smaller version in their home’s basement back in Brookfield, but they’d never used it because it had long ago been replaced by a gas-fed furnace.
The front of the boiler had a vented door. Andrew hurried over, lifted its latch, and opened it. The opening looked just big enough for them to fit through.
“Come on,” he hissed to Justin behind him. “Inside.”
He didn’t have to tell Justin twice. The boy was up to the front of the boiler and wiggling inside in seconds. Andrew quickly squeezed in behind him. It appeared that the innards of the boiler had been removed, which helped make room f
or the boys.
As Andrew reached out to pull the boiler door shut, its cold steel edge was yanked free from his hand, and he heard the snarling and snapping of the biters outside. He jerked his hand back and scooted as far into the boiler as he could, pressing himself up against its cold metal. He felt Justin shivering behind him. Suddenly he could smell the stink of biter breath and hear the snapping of teeth as he illuminated Victor’s head thrust inside the boiler door. He used his flashlight to whack at the snarling face just feet from where they sheltered, but then thought better of it, not wanting to damage the only light source they had or risk a bite to his hand. Instead, he scooted around so that he could kick with his booted feet. After a few well-placed shots to the face, the biter’s head disappeared. It was replaced by an arm that reached and groped for them blindly but that the boys managed to avoid.
Andrew shined his light around the inside of the cylindrical steel sarcophagus. A broken piece of pipe lay on the bottom of the boiler and Andrew picked it up, giving Victor’s arm a few good whacks.
“Help!” cried Justin. “Hellllp!”
“Hellllp!” Andrew joined in, hoping their combined effort might be enough to alert someone upstairs. But then he remembered just how thick the tower’s floors were.
The biters seemed to have backed off for the moment, but they still lurked outside, obviously searching for another way to get to the boys.
Suddenly the boiler reverberated. Flakes of rusty metal rained down around the boys, making them cough and cutting off their cries for help. Another heavy thud jarred the boiler violently and Andrew heard the sound of cracking metal.
The biter outside was obviously trying to break through the last barrier between him and dinner. Another jarring impact resulted in a louder crack. Andrew shined his light over to the side of the boiler that was absorbing these impacts and detected a small hole in the rusty metal. Another impact widened that hole by an inch or more.
More dust and debris filtered down around the boys, getting into their eyes and cutting off their attempted cries for help.
If they didn’t somehow communicate with the adults above them, oblivious to their plight, Andrew knew they had no hope of escape.
CHAPTER 18
Chris and Charla had sat together in silence for several minutes after Charla had returned from upstairs.
“Why don’t we just tell them?” Chris said eventually.
“Really?” Charla looked at him, surprised.
Chris shrugged. “Why not? I think we owe it to everybody at this point…especially Wendell.”
“If you’re comfortable with it,” Charla took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It might make things tough. I just don’t want…”
She paused as Chris held up a finger, frowning. “You hear that?” he cocked his head to the side, listening.
Charla frowned, listening as well, then shook her head. “Hear what?” she whispered.
“I thought I heard a banging sound somewhere.”
Charla shook her head. “I don’t think my hearing has been up to par after that firefight with the biters. I might have done some permanent damage. I know that Michael and Ms. Mary gave us all ear protection, but I didn’t have time to get it in place very good before the biters were swarming everywhere and everyone was firing away with their guns.”
Chris nodded. “Wait…there it is again. It’s almost like a metallic sound, like pipes rattling. But there shouldn’t be anything going through the pipes inside this tower to make sounds like that.”
He rose from his chair. Still listening, he followed the sound toward the office.
Charla got up and followed him. “I hear it now too,” she nodded. “It sounds like it’s coming from over there,” she pointed toward one wall of the office. “But I don’t see any pipes that would be making that sort of sound,” she gazed around the room and then up at the ceiling.
“Yeah, me neither,” Chris shook his head, turning on his flashlight to help illuminate the dim light filtering inside the office.
Charla followed his beam’s path over to the tower office’s west wall and knelt, touching the floor with a hand.
“Bring your light closer,” she motioned to him.
“Sure,” he walked over to kneel next to her, illuminating the spot on the floor beside Charla. “Hmm,” he ran his fingers over several round metal discs on the floor that were each several inches wide. “Looks like there used to be a radiator here,” he traced his finger around a rectangular pattern etched onto the floor surrounding the metal discs. “They must have capped the pipes when they switched over to furnace heat. But that means there must be a basement in the tower.”
Suddenly the metal discs in the floor rattled with a soft reverberation.
“What the heck?” Chris breathed aloud, looking over at Charla.
“What could be moving them?” she asked.
Chris shook his head and stood. “Don’t know. But I think we should find out. Question is, where the heck is the basement in this place?”
“I know, right? I’ve never seen a door or an access or anything,” Charla rose too. “Maybe it’s outside.”
“Maybe,” Chris wandered around the office, inspecting. He shined his light on the bookcase, now pushed out at an angle several feet from the wall. “Never realized this bookcase was moveable,” he walked over to it. “Always thought it was built in.” He peeked around it, “Ah ha!” he waved Charla over. “Look,” he shined his light behind the shelving unit.
“Oh,” Charla breathed, seeing the door behind it. “Bingo!”
“I’m gonna check it out. You stay up here on watch,” he said.
“No way. You’re not going exploring without me. I want to see what’s down there too.”
“But we can’t abandon our post. Someone has to stay here on watch.”
“Just give me a second,” Charla said. “I’ll run upstairs and grab Wendell to fill in for me.”
“Okay,” Chris nodded as Charla hurried off. He stood listening to a combination of Charla’s fading footsteps and the continued rattle of piping coming from somewhere below him.
* * *
Charla found Wendell sulking in the dark, two floors above them.
“Hey,” she said, winded from her brief run. Her condition made her realize that she needed to start working out again. Being stuck first inside her condo, and then inside the tower over the long winter, hadn’t exactly given her the opportunity for a great exercise regimen.
“What do you want?” Wendell huffed, his air a combination of vitriol and despair.
“Listen,” Charla sighed. “I don’t have time to explain. But what you saw downstairs between Chris and me is not what you think. And right now, I need your help. Something weird is going on downstairs and…”
“Damn right something weird is going on. My wife is massaging another man. I’d say that’s pretty damn weird…at least from my perspective.”
Charla’s shoulders slumped and her head tilted back in exasperation. “Please, Wendell. I’ll explain. But later. Right now, I need your help. I want…”
“I don’t think that you can explain,” Wendell eyed her stonily.
Charla let out a huff and turned. “Fine. You know what? I don’t have time for this right now. Either help me, or don’t, it’s up to you.”
She paused, waiting for a response. Getting none, she turned and stormed back downstairs.
As Charla and Wendell had their brief conversation, Chris waited impatiently downstairs. One floor below him, Andrew was using his flashlight to beat against the top of the boiler. Gone was his concern for the condition of the light. He could hear its dull thudding reverberating through some tubes that ran from the boiler top up into the ceiling.
Meanwhile, the hole that Victor was knocking in the side of the boiler continued to widen. It had grown so large in fact that Victor was now using his one good hand to rip large chunks of rusted metal away from around the hole that was now nearing a foot in diamet
er. Another few inches and he’d be able to reach inside far enough to latch onto one of his prey and drag it from within.
Justin was crying, scooted into the far corner of the empty boiler. Andrew was pressed up against him, beating away furiously on the boiler top. And as the amount of debris raining down from the boiler’s top began to diminish, the boys found it much easier to breathe. This in turn allowed them to start calling for help again. And with the biter outside just inches from being able to get at them, they screamed for all their little lungs were worth.
Upstairs, Chris moved to the door behind the bookshelf and tried the knob. It turned, and the door opened. At almost the same instant, he heard the boys’ cries issue from below for help.
“Shit!” he hissed, drawing his pistol and entering the basement stairwell. He shined his light down the stairs, gun aimed out in front of him.
The screams from below continued. They sounded like cries from young boys. But Chris couldn’t imagine that the Blender kids had somehow found their way downstairs when he had only discovered the place moments ago himself. Then he remembered the spots he managed to find as a bored kid and reconsidered.
Chris hurried down the stairs, visions of all the different sorts of trouble the boys could have gotten into flashing through his mind as he went.
The stairwell entered a hallway, which he followed for a brief distance until it split with another hallway to his right. The boys’ cries led him down this hallway to an open door. He could tell the boys were close by the sound of their calls for help, yet their voices sounded muffled. He wondered if they had fallen into something and become trapped – an old well or pit, or some other long-unused portion of the tower.
As he entered the room, his light illuminated two biters, one of whom, a large male, was beating on the side of an aged boiler. The other, a younger woman, charged at Chris the moment he entered the room. She flung herself upon him with surprising speed, hitting him in the midsection so forcefully that he stumbled and fell backwards onto the floor. The biter landed atop him. And even though Chris retained his weapon in one hand, his flashlight in the other, neither was of any use. He was forced to use both forearms to hold the female biter’s head up and away from him to keep its gnashing teeth from ripping into his throat. The biter’s head kept plunging down toward him, snapping at his face, his throat, the sides of his neck – anywhere it saw exposed flesh.
The Last Bastion [Book 3] Page 19
