by Mark Frost
Brooke and Nick weren’t in the vestibule where they’d left them.
“Nick!” Will shouted.
“Over here!” Nick answered.
They ran to the room on the far right, dragging Ajay with them. Nick and Brooke stood in the open doorway, looking at the panel beside the big steel doors. Lights flashed intensely; the whole room was humming from some kind of machinery behind the doors.
“Dude, it’s not a freezer—”
“What?” Will could hardly think straight.
“It’s an elevator,” said Brooke.
Will looked up; the whole wall was starting to vibrate, the sounds getting louder.
“And it’s coming down,” said Nick.
Will took Brooke aside, grabbed her hands, and put them on Ajay’s shoulders. He was moaning slightly and still hadn’t opened his eyes.
“Help him,” said Will urgently. “We won’t get out of here in time if he can’t move.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“He’s in shock. I can’t explain now, and I’ll try to help, just do it.”
Brooke nodded, closed her eyes, held on to Ajay, and concentrated. Will went to work at the same time, pushing a thought picture at Ajay: The room with the tanks. Nothing in them. Empty.
Ajay slumped forward. Will and Elise caught him. Ajay opened his eyes a moment later. He looked himself again, but confused and still wobbly on his feet.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You blacked out for a second,” said Will.
“How odd,” said Ajay calmly. “I don’t remember—”
“Time to go, pal,” said Will.
Will glanced back again. The steel doors and the entire wall around it were rattling now, as whatever was descending down the shaft dropped closer to them.
“By all means, we’d best vamoose, then,” said Ajay.
Elise and Brooke took him by the arms to steady him and they ran toward the exit. As he followed, Will saw that Nick had wandered over near the door to the tank room.
“Nick!” shouted Will.
“But I heard something in here—”
“Not NOW!” shouted Will and Elise in unison.
Nick hurried after them, the last one out the steel door they’d entered through.
“Close every door behind us,” said Will.
Nick slammed it shut. Will thrust in the right key from the ring and turned it. They followed the others back through the operating theater and then out the entrance to the hospital section, Will stopping to lock each door he’d opened behind them.
As he pulled the key from the steel door labeled 19, a tremendous thud shook the entire building: The elevator had landed.
“They’re here,” said Will. “Hurry!”
They hurtled back through the paneled corridors, even Ajay keeping pace, running without prompting now. They were in such a panic Brooke and Ajay ran past the door they’d used to enter the building; Will whistled at them, and they spun back and followed the others outside.
“Head back up to the ledge where we came in,” said Will, pointing. “Get behind those rocks. Keep quiet, stay off the comm system, and no flashlights.”
Nick led the way and Will brought up the rear, glancing back at the building, looking for signs of pursuit. He saw bright flashes of light coming from the back of the hospital and wondered if they’d used another way to get outside. When they were halfway back up the rocky path to the ledge, the whole cave around the building filled with an overhead canopy of light. Will looked up and realized they’d fired a flare.
They scrambled behind the rocks on the ledge and took shelter, just as the light billowed and spread throughout the chamber, bright enough to cast moving shadows.
“Stay low,” whispered Will. “When I give the word, head back to the stone platform.”
“And hope it goes up,” said Nick.
“Remember it won’t move unless all five of us are on it.”
“Who is it, Will?” asked Elise. “Who’s down there?”
“I’ll hang back a second and find out,” said Will. “Go now, Ajay with Elise, then Nick with Brooke. Stay off the walkies unless you hear from me.”
Will watched the building as Ajay and Elise scampered up the path and through the carved passage leading to the bone room.
“Don’t be late,” said Nick, patting Will on the shoulder.
Brooke squeezed Will’s hand and hurried off with Nick. Will picked out his binoculars, scanned both sides of the building, then trained them on the lit-up reception room.
Four men burst into the room, guns drawn. Dark Windbreakers and hats: the Black Caps. Will felt something vibrate in his pocket. He took out the pair of black dice; they were vibrating wildly with some kind of internal energy. A moment later a fifth man appeared in the reception area. He wasn’t wearing a cap and his bald head gleamed in the amber light.
It was Hobbes. And he looked furious.
At his direction, the others searched the room quickly and efficiently. Hobbes moved to the window, staring out at the cave, and spoke into a microphone fastened to his collar.
For the briefest moment Hobbes glanced up toward the ledge. Will ducked out of sight and lowered the glasses. With his head down, he summoned up his Grid, waited for the light from the flare overhead to fade, then glanced over the rocks again.
He picked up about fifteen heat signatures spreading out from either side of the building, slowly and methodically scouring the grounds. Will looked back at Hobbes in the window.
The moment he raised his head, the aura of heat around Hobbes, five times stronger than any of the others, flared up around him in a corona of fiery red and orange. He raised his right arm, holding something in his hand and pointing it in Will’s direction.
Which led Will to ask himself, Can Hobbes see me like I can see him?
The answer came quickly: Hobbes burst right through the window, shattering the glass, and started running toward the ledge, barking instructions. Will shut down his Grid, turned, and ran up the path to the passage.
Dashing through the hole in the wall, Will switched on his flashlight, then powered up to the hill of bones and sped along the path. He spotted flashlights darting around ahead, and within moments caught up to Nick and Brooke, moving so fast he sped ten feet past them before he could put on the brakes.
“They’re coming,” he said, circling back.
They both ran faster and he did what he could to help them through the uncertain footing. Glancing back, Will didn’t see any lights behind them yet. They reached Ajay and Elise moments later, just as they climbed onto the stone platform.
“Get on, fast,” said Will. “Lights off.”
Nick lifted Brooke up onto the platform. Will ran the last few paces and jumped up after her. Nick leaped up after him with a single springing bounce, and as his weight hit the platform, they felt it jolt, heard the rattle of chains, and the platform began to ascend.
“Stay low,” said Will. “Don’t say a word. Hobbes is back there, with a squad of Caps.”
Everyone but Nick exchanged worried glances.
“Hey, we’re good,” said Nick, unconcerned. “How are they going to follow us up here?”
“Maybe they have others up there already, waiting for us,” said Ajay.
“Mr. Optimism,” said Nick.
“Maybe they know how to work this thing,” said Brooke.
Will shushed them. The platform had risen about fifteen feet when they saw the first flashlight beams crisscross the far end of the bone cave. Will found himself next to Elise; she stared down at the advancing lights with a dark and dangerous look in her eye.
“I want to blow it up,” she said coldly. “I want to rip this whole place apart. All of it.”
Will turned to all of them, cold and determined. “If
we’re right and the Other Team is behind this, all we’ve seen is one small slice of what they are. Keep that in the front of your mind. In case we ever need to be reminded why we have to stop them.”
Elise gripped Will’s arm, fingers digging into him, and locked on to him, her eyes staring deep into his. Words from her mind, amplified by fierce emotion, seared into his: I am making you a promise, right now. And you’d better do the same for me.
Will nodded. Whatever you want.
For what they did to those wretched souls back there? We are going to find who’s behind this and we are going to hurt them.
“Promise,” said Will.
They didn’t spot individual beams of light moving toward them down the path in the chamber until just before the platform passed up through the floor of the cathedral. Just then Will saw a bright burst of light from the person leading the way—Hobbes, he assumed.
“Jump off, fast,” said Will. “Get outside and wait for us. Ajay, I need something from your pack. Nick, stay with me.”
Will pulled the can of lighter fluid and a lighter from Ajay’s pack.
“You’re sure you don’t want to use my hatchet?” asked Ajay, offering the handle.
“Dude, enough with the hatchet already,” said Nick.
“Go!” said Will.
They stood and jumped to the ground as the platform came level with the cathedral floor. Ajay and the girls ran down the aisle toward the opening they’d come in through.
“Tear up your shirt,” said Will. “Make a torch out of it.”
Will sprayed the stone platform with lighter fluid while Nick tore off his undershirt and knotted it up. As Will expected, moments later the platform began to descend. Will sprayed fluid on the rags, then flicked on the lighter. He waited for the platform to drop a third of the way, then lit the undershirt and dropped it down onto the platform. The platform erupted into flames.
“Suck on that, Hobbes,” said Nick, looking down after that.
They hurried outside to join the others, waiting on the plaza in front of the cathedral.
“The good news is we set the platform on fire,” said Nick.
“The bad news is it’s going down again,” said Will. “Let’s move.”
They ran out of the cathedral. That moaning wind had kicked up again, now whistling through the ruins, much stronger than before, whipping around the spindly limbs of the four sparkling bare jewel-like trees at the base of the stairs.
As they hurried down the long broad steps in front of the cathedral, the trees bent down toward them, more flexible than any tree should be. What followed happened so fast that Will barely had time to register it. With loud crackling sounds from the thick tangle of their boughs, individual branches snaked out from the trees toward each of them, unfurling and extending like cables at lightning speed.
“Look out!” Will shouted.
One of them shot in front of Ajay, tripping him as he ran, and as he hurtled forward another branch gripped him by the arm, then a third wrapped around his ankle, catching him before he hit the ground and raising him into the air.
Other branches shot toward the rest of them. Will put on a burst of speed and outran a cluster of the things grasping after him. He heard a strange snapping sound, looked down, and realized the ends of the branches had openings—he didn’t know what else to call them but mouths—lined with rows of vicious black teeth.
Hearing Will’s warning, Brooke dodged a thick branch that shot toward her knees; then she dove and rolled out of the way of another. Will pulled her out of the trees’ reach.
To their left, a branch caught Elise by the arm, spinning her around, but she broke free, and when two more whipped in around her waist, jaws about to bite, she let out a short, lethal burst of sound that shattered them like glass.
Nick tumbled over the arms reaching for him, then saw the branches that had snared Ajay, lifting him into the air and drawing him backward toward the stairs. Nick ran straight at the nearest ones, jumped up, and ran along the branches toward Ajay. When he reached him, Nick became a furious blur of feet and hands, fending off the branches that kept trying to grab him while he snapped the ones wrapping themselves around Ajay. For every two he broke, another one snaked in, but he was finally able to snatch Ajay with one hand and toss him to the ground.
Ajay rolled out of the way of another branch. Brooke and Elise pulled him out of its reach. Will stomped on it, pinning it to the ground and Elise shattered it with a deadly burst of sound. Ajay pulled out his hatchet, but nothing attacked him, so he spun in place wielding it.
Nick kept fighting, but the remaining branches focused in on him now and more kept slithering his way. He held his own but Will knew he wouldn’t last much longer against their superior numbers.
Will ran back toward them, shouting, waving his arms, until the onslaught about to envelop Nick turned their attention toward him. He picked up speed, dodging, weaving, and jumping, in range but eluding every attempt to grab him, as one branch after another slithered after him.
“Keep going!” Will shouted back at the others. “To the gates!”
With their focus elsewhere, Nick shattered the last few branches snaking around him, then ran right at the thickest branch and up it; he pushed off and somersaulted back, landing on his feet and bounding out of range. Will saw him land safely and dodged two more assaulting limbs. He turned, dug in, and sprinted, almost instantly outrunning the last snaking branches.
He hooked up with Nick and they set off after the others, using their flashlights bobbing up ahead in the dark as a beacon.
“You okay?” asked Will.
Nick, winded, nodded as they ran. “Freakin’ trees, man.”
“Those weren’t trees. They’re some kind of watchdogs from the Never-Was.”
“I don’t give a rat’s bee-hind what they were … I am so coming back down here … with a chainsaw.”
As they neared the gates where the others were waiting, another flare shot up into the air from somewhere behind them, lighting up the dead city around them, creating ghostly, threatening shadows in every corner.
“Crap, they made it up on the platform,” said Nick, glancing back.
Will slipped his pack off his shoulder. “Head for the stairs. That flare we left at the base should still be burning.”
“And what will you be doing?”
“I’ll slow them down, but I need you to get ahead of me,” said Will.
“I’m not leaving you alone, dude, forget it.”
“Nick, you know I can catch up to you. The others need you right now more than I do. Give me a couple of flares, then get moving.”
Will slowed as Nick handed him two of his last three flares and reluctantly ran on ahead. Will tucked the flares in the back of his belt, pulled his binoculars, and trained them on the far end of the city. Under the light from the flare, he saw movement on the steps of the cathedral. Then a bright flash of light shot up into the sky and pinwheeled out in every direction.
The light revealed Hobbes standing on the broad stairs on the far side of the square, surrounded by a large group of Black Caps. The light issued from something he held in his outstretched palm. It was so blindingly bright Will couldn’t see its source, but it conformed to the shape of a cube.
Beams of light from the cube wheeled above them and then focused down on the four hideous trees, creating dazzling patterns as they flashed through their crystalline hides. The beams penetrated the glass, then circulated down through the branches into the ground. Bright flashes shot up from the earth, breaking through cracks around their trunks, and all four of the trees bent their branches down, pressed against the ground to create leverage, and with straining effort yanked their roots—immense thickets of wild growth, gnarled and twisted and dark—right out of the ground.
“Not good,” said Will.
The mome
nt the creatures freed themselves, Hobbes pointed the cube in the direction of the gates. The beams shot out toward Will, glancing off the fallen gates, and he realized Hobbes was painting a target for the things he’d let loose.
A cube. Like the dice Dave gave me. And the same shape as one of the empty forms they’d seen in the metallic cylinder.
All four trees gathered themselves up, re-forming into huge spheres fifteen feet high, and began rolling toward Will’s position, picking up speed, like gigantic nightmarish tumbleweed.
“Hey, Dave,” whispered Will, gripping the dice and the falcon in his pocket for luck. “Wherever you are, now would be an excellent time to send help.”
Will stowed the glasses and sprinted out of the gates. In the distance ahead he could vaguely make out the red glow of the flare they’d left at the base of the huge staircase. He ramped up his speed and carved a winding, S-shaped path back and forth through the thick dust, kicking and churning it off the ground. Will soon raised a choking cloud that hung in the air behind him, as high as the ancient walls. He kept up the pattern, extending the cloud away from the gates, building it thicker and taller, all the while staying ahead of it so he could see and breathe.
The long stairway came into view ahead, and he could just make out his friends gathered by the flare. Will switched on his comm system and spoke into the mic.
“Get up the stairs. I’ll meet you at the top,” he said.
“You okay?” asked Nick.
“Yes. But hurry.”
When he saw the red flare begin bobbing and rising up the stairs, Will darted left, away from his friends. He reached into his pack and took out the can of lighter fluid.
Will heard the things before he saw them. A grinding, spinning sound like an immense pack of cyclists wheeling out of the cloud a hundred yards behind him. Then, one after another, the immense rolling trees broke out of the dust, heading toward him, not fooled by his change of direction. Like other creatures he’d encountered from the Never-Was, they seemed able to track him by scent. He knew he was faster and more agile but there were four of these things, all bigger than monster trucks. He needed to execute his plan perfectly.