by JE Gurley
“You,” I said. “My Guardian Angel.”
He smiled. “Simmons.”
“Why are you here, Simmons?” I looked around to see if he was alone.
“Same reason as you.”
“I thought you people wanted a live creature,” I snapped, “A pet Chupacabra for your collection.”
He shrugged. “My people probably do. I’m here on my own, trying to end this thing. Enough girls have died.”
His answer was unexpected. I nodded. “My thoughts exactly. I heard shots. You?”
“Some of them. Your friends came looking for you. One didn’t make it.”
I winced. “McNeil?”
He shook his head and I sighed with relief. “No, he’s okay for now. A second one has a bad fever from the creature’s talons. I left the pair of them in a storage room with an electrified gate. It should hold for a while.”
Knowing how persistent the creature was, I had my doubts. Then his words filtered through my concern.
“Two? What about Joria?”
His scowl spoke volumes. “The Alvarez woman seems to have vanished.”
I shook my head slowly. “Someday I’ll learn about women. We had better hurry.”
The lights in the tunnel suddenly flared, and then faded entirely. The crackle of electricity reverberated down the tunnel. I activated a glow stick. A rifle shot followed; then a series of rapid pistol shots; then the air grew still.
“The fans are shutting down,” I said as I noticed their constant whir slowing.
Simmons peered down the tunnel. I could see his concern in the pale amber light of the glow stick. “It’s going to get pretty sticky down here soon.” He looked back at me. “We have to get out of here.”
I shook my head. “I’m not leaving until I kill the creature.”
“Don’t be silly. One of your friends is dying. He needs medical attention soon.” He looked at me and frowned. “You don’t look too good yourself.”
I waved him off. “I have a fever, too, but I’m so stuffed with antibiotics, I can shake it off for a while longer. I need to finish what I started.”
He grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me hard. “Think straight, man. We have to get your friends out of here. The creature will still be trapped. We can come back for it. In an hour, it will be 120 degrees in here.”
I realized he was right. My fever had muddled my reasoning, focusing on killing the creature without considering the consequences. We had to get McNeil and the other man to safety. Even if Simmons’ people took over, they least would take the creature out of circulation. I knew it was selfish, but I wanted the satisfaction of killing it with my own hands.
“I want in on the kill,” I said. “Promise me.”
He stared into my eyes and nodded. “Okay.”
“Let’s go to the others.”
****
We found McNeil in the storage room sitting against the wall with the .357 on his lap. He had placed the half-demolished gate across the opening and the flashlight shone out into the tunnel. He looked up at us in relief and slowly rose to his feet. His face was pale beneath the dirt smudges and he appeared to have aged ten years. He looked tired, very tired. A second man, Walmsley, lay on the table, coughing and moaning with fever. There was nothing we could do for him except get him back to safety.
“I see you’re still alive,” McNeil said as I walked up.
I smiled. “I’m hard to kill.”
His face became suddenly hard, his eyes tormented. “I didn’t believe you. You told me about this creature, but I didn’t really believe you. Now Sid Johnson is dead. His scream will haunt me for the rest of my life. He was my friend. I know his wife and daughter. What do I say to them? How do I explain what happened?”
I understood his bewilderment. I didn’t have any good advice for him. “I’ve never found an easy way to tell loved ones about a death. No matter how you say it, it’s going to hurt. Telling them he died for a good cause means nothing to them. Just don’t take on all the blame. It’s too heavy a burden. There’s blame enough to go around.”
He looked at Simmons and then back at me. “We lost your girlfriend.”
Simmons snorted derisively.
“I think we may have parted ways,” I replied.
McNeil shook his head. “I didn’t trust her.” He winced and clutched his chest.
“You okay?” I asked concerned.
“Mild heart attack, I think. Weak ticker. I’ll make it. Walmsley’s in worse shape than I am.”
I admired McNeil’s aplomb. “Don’t kid me, old man. You pushed your limit.”
As I had hoped, he rose to the challenge. “Old man? I’ll be your better at twice your age.”
“Okay, but I don’t want to have to carry you out of here on my back. Someone needs to handle this. Mind you, it’s got the kick of a crazed mule on steroids.” I handed him the elephant gun.
Simmons smiled, aware of what I was doing. “Let’s make a stretcher out of one of these boards.” He began prying a loose plank from the wall. I helped.
Carrying Walmsley’s considerable weight on a wooden board was difficult and tiring but we made it to the ventilator tunnel. I went up first while McNeil stood guard. Looking into McNeil’s weary eyes, I saw bitterness I believed he directed towards Joria. I think he would have shot Joria if he had seen her. I wasn’t sure I would stop him. Her desertion was the Jingo block that toppled the tower. I felt betrayed and used. I guess I had it coming. I had wasted two good marriages because I hadn’t let them into my life, instead keeping them neatly shelved to play with when my detective work was over. With Joria, I had attempted to correct my past mistakes, ignoring my instinct and my doubts about her that had arisen until they overwhelmed me.
“Hey!” Simmons snapped, breaking my reverie. “A little help?”
Simmons stared up at me as he handed Walmsley’s limp body up to me. I struggled to pull him through the opening even with Simmons pushing from beneath. When we all made it up, I shut the trap door. I didn’t think the creature could follow through the small opening but I wasn’t certain. It was resourceful and had made a fool of me more than once. If there had been a lock, I would have sealed it so Joria couldn’t escape either. There were a few things I wanted to say to her.
In the airshaft, McNeil used his walkie-talkie, which now worked this close to the surface and I watched appreciatively as the bucket dropped toward us. We rode it upwards with me half expecting the creature to follow. Once we reached the surface, one of McNeil’s men called an ambulance for Walmsley. I urged McNeil to go to the hospital too, but he steadfastly refused to leave until I did. I gave up arguing, lay back on the ground and rested in the early afternoon sun, suddenly aware of how tired I was, partly due to my rapidly growing fever. Ten minutes later, an ambulance arrived. I watched the attendants load Walmsley’s almost comatose body into the back. I tried McNeil one more time, this time playing on his loyalty.
“You need to go with Walmsley,” I suggested.
“I’ll be fine,” he said.
“They’ll screw around with him for too long trying to decide what’s wrong with him. You need to explain what happened to him, get him on antibiotics.”
He looked at Walmsley and relented. “I suppose I’d better.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good.”
“What about you. You look like death warmed over.”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “You take care of your friend.”
McNeil reluctantly followed the EMT into the back of the ambulance. He looked back at me before climbing in.
“You’re going back down there, aren’t you?”
“I have to. Joria’s there. The creature’s still there.”
“The air down will be like breathing in an oven pretty soon. Don’t dawdle.”
“I won’t.”
“Kill it.”
The ambulance driver took one look at me and tried to force me into the ambulance as well. I fought him off.
He eyed me suspiciously, but seeing I was not leaving, he reluctantly pulled out an ampoule of Lincomycin and filled a syringe. The needle stung as he sank it into my arm. When he was done, he picked up a couple of bottles of water from a bin in the ambulance.
“You need to rehydrate yourself.”
I nodded as he handed them to me, opened on and downed half of its. The water was warm but felt good going down my parched throat.
Simmons walked up. I tossed him the second bottle. He took a long swig and stuck the bottle in his pocket. “If we’re going back in, we had better do it before Section One gets here. They’re bound to find out what we’re up to as soon as they receive the report of Walmsley’s fever. They watch out for that sort of thing.”
I watched the ambulance leave with Walmsley and McNeil, hoping they both made it, McNeil because I liked him and Walmsley because he was McNeil’s friend. I looked at Simmons and grinned. “Then they’re going to be awfully pissed.”
I noticed Walmsley’s hunting knife tucked into Simmons’ belt as he pulled out his .357 and reloaded it. “What are we waiting on?” he said.
30
Ella Ramirez and Steve Capaldi hid behind a clump of trees and watched Hardin, Dr. Alvarez woman and a group of men as they removed the steel grate from an airshaft above the subway line. She recognized the older, cigar smoking man from previous interviews as Oliver McNeil, manager of the Metro Area Rapid Transit. Capaldi’s camera was whirring softly as he filmed the group from between two low-lying branches.
News that Hardin had returned from his vacation and had found three more dead bodies in his condominium had both horrified and pleased her. Either Hardin had failed to kill the creature or another one had taken its place. Either way, the story was no longer dead. Their attempts to locate Hardin afterwards had failed. It had been a stroke of providence that while driving from the monastery after filming some stock footage of the ruins for her proposed special, Hardin passed them headed toward the monastery. They turned around and followed, waiting across the road. His visit was brief. Following him back to a cheap motel near the airport, they learned that the mysterious Dr. Alvarez was with him. Her face had graced the airwaves and stared out from the front pages of newspapers for days, sought by the authorities as a ‘person of interest’.
“We have to follow them,” she said after the group disappeared into the shaft. “They’re up to something and I’m sure it has to do with the creature.”
After reaching the opening, Ella stared down into the dizzy depths and swallowed hard. The thought of descending made her hands clammy.
Capaldi smiled and waved his hand. “After you.”
She looked at Capaldi and smiled wanly. “Okay.”
She was glad she had worn pants as she began the long descent down the ladder. Halfway down, she stopped to rest. Her arms and shoulders ached and her hands grew numb from gripping the steel rungs so tightly.
“Hurry it up, Ella,” Capaldi chided. “I’m carrying a video camera in one hand. How do you think I feel?”
She silently cursed Capaldi, steeled herself for the descent and continued. Once she reached the bottom, she wished she had worn boots instead of running shoes as she crunched into piles of animal bones and some unidentifiable stuff. At least she was off the ladder. They followed the shaft to the subway tunnel and spotted a walkway alongside the tracks. Trailing Hardin’s group but staying far enough back to avoid detection, they watched as Hardin entered a steel door. She was puzzled when McNeil and the others closed and barred the door behind him.
“What are they doing?” she whispered. “They’re sealing him in.”
“The door leads to the old subway tunnel that was abandoned about half a century ago because of cave-ins. I read an article about it in the morgue once. The creature must be in there.” Capaldi laughed. “The dude’s got some cajones, eh? I knew jarheads like him Iraq.”
She stared in awe at her cameraman. “You did research in the old morgue files? I didn’t think you ever read anything but comic books.”
“Well, I was dating Julie, the librarian at the time. I was killing time until she got off work.”
Two of the men continued down the tunnel along the walkway, while McNeil, Alvarez and the other two men headed back towards them.
“Let’s hide,” she cautioned. Capaldi led her to a small alcove where the shadows would hide them. The group passed by without noticing them in the darkness.
“Should we follow Hardin?” Capaldi asked.
Ella thought about wandering around in an old tunnel with the creature lurking somewhere and shuddered. “No. I wonder what Dr. Alvarez is doing here? Let’s follow her.” At the edge of the airshaft tunnel, they watched the four ascend the ladder, and then, to Ramirez’s horror, began to replace the grate. Tears formed in her eyes as the bright spark of the welder sealed them in. She began to panic, wanting to call out to them to stop. Capaldi placed his hand on her shoulder gently.
“Don’t worry. We can get out through the other end. It’s only a few miles down the line.”
She knew it was more like ten miles but Capaldi’s soothing voice calmed her. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Let’s see what the other two are doing,” he suggested.
They followed as the two remaining men closed and sealed the remaining door. Their task completed, the two hurried down the line toward Bay Station. Ramirez collapsed on a concrete block. She usually jogged two miles every morning, at least when she wasn’t chasing down a lead on a story, but this was farther than she had ever walked in her life and it had taken them two hours. She was exhausted, sweaty and hungry. Her dogged determination had gotten her some meaty stories in the past but she was having doubts about the wisdom of pursuing Hardin in his quest to kill the Midnight Monster. Then she recalled the horror stories of what other reporters had endured for their stories and knew she could stick it out. She was in her prime and headed for the top. A little blood, sweat and tears wouldn’t hurt her. They would just have to be careful. Besides, she was not about to call it quits unless Capaldi did.
“What time is it?” Capaldi asked.
In response to his question, her stomach rumbled. “Lunch time.” She checked her watch. “Almost noon. We’ve been down here almost three hours. I need to eat.”
“There are chips in the van.”
“Hmph! It’s closer to the Bay Street Station. There’s a hot dog vendor just outside.”
Capaldi hefted his camera. “You’re buying.”
* * * *
After pigging out on two hot dogs and a soda, Ella washed up as best she could in the women’s lavatory. Rested, satiated and free of the filthy subway tunnel, the last thing she wanted to do was to go back in after Hardin, but he was the heart of her story. She felt certain that when they found him, they would find the Midnight Monster. She looked at Capaldi on the bench beside her, leaning against the wall and dozing, one hand resting protectively on his precious camcorder.
“We have to go back.”
Capaldi peeked at her through one half-opened eye. “You sure?”
“Of course I’m not sure!” she snapped. “Talk me out of it, Steve. It’s a stupid idea.”
“But you want to go back anyway.”
She sighed. How could she explain it to him? “I have to. It’s the story I want. I’m tired of this town. I want something more.”
Capaldi’s face broke into a grin. “You deserve your chance. I’ll come with you. If it’s not on film, it’s not a story.”
She felt bad about dragging Capaldi with her, but she needed him. It wouldn’t be the first time they had faced danger together, but even during a police shoot out or a raging apartment fire, she hadn’t hadn’t felt as frightened or as vulnerable as she did now. She had seen the creature in action and she knew what it was capable of.
&nb
sp; “Let’s go.”
It took all her courage to re-enter the subway tunnel. She had deliberately walked slowly from the station, secretly hoping it would all be over before they got there. Standing in front of the closed steel door, she tried not to dwell on what lay beyond it. Capaldi removed the steel bar and swung the door open. To her, the door creaked just like a door from a horror movie.
“Do we shut it behind us?” he asked.
The idea of shutting herself in seemed ludicrous, but Hardin must have had his reasons.
“I suppose we had better.”
Capaldi led the way down the dark tunnel using the lights of the video camera. She almost screamed when a cobweb brushed across her face. She slapped it away angrily. The air in the tunnel was hot and musty. It grew hotter when they entered the old subway line.
“Look at that,” Capaldi called out as he panned the camera to a mound of dirt and debris. “Looks like a cave in.”
She had a sinking feeling. “Could Hardin be under it?”
“Nah,” Capaldi answered to her relief. “I see footprints leading down the tunnel.”
The air was thick with dust. She pulled out a red scarf and wrapped it around her head and across her nose and mouth like a Muslim hijab, leaving only her eyes exposed. She eyed the section of collapsed ceiling with distrust. Two of her secret horrors were drowning or smothering to death.
“Let’s follow them,” she suggested.
After walking a mile down the tunnel, she spotted a faint light ahead.
“Turn off your lights,” she told Capaldi. “I see someone at the edge of the light. Quietly,” she warned.
As they crept closer, her heart began to thunder in her chest so loudly she was afraid the person near the light would hear it. It pounded harder when she realized there were two figures, a woman and something much bigger.
“The creature and Dr. Alvarez,” she hissed quietly. “What’s she doing down here?”
“Why hasn’t the thing killed her?” Capaldi questioned. “It looks like she’s having a conversation with it.”