“Let’s go,” I say, turning to Steven.
“That’s it?” He looks aghast. “Your friend is about to become one of them, and you’re all, ‘Let’s go?’ How can you be so—”
I slap him. Hard. I don’t know if it knocks some sense into him, or out of him, but it shuts him up. “When you’ve seen your friends come back from the dead, talked to their severed head after it’s been transplanted onto a thousand-year-old body, or watched someone you know sacrifice themselves—then you can bitch about my response to it. Until then, you can shut the fuck up.”
A glimmer of blue light catches my attention. The little bastard is thinking about Tasing me. “Let me make this clear for you. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. And if you’re against us, you’re with them. And if you’re with them…”
Jakob brings the point home by pumping his shotgun.
“You people are insane,” Steven says.
I’ve got a thousand quips lined up, most of which insult his masculinity or make me look crazier, but I keep them to myself. Silence is the best kind of intimidation.
Steven sighs. His shoulders slouch. “Fine.”
Willem opens the door slowly and peeks into the plush hallway on the other side. Wall-to-wall blue Oriental rug stretches down the hall, which is lit by recessed lighting in the ceiling. A few blood-streaked handprints mar the yellowish walls and the railings that stretch down the hall, but the space is empty, which begs the question, Where is everyone? This place should be swarming.
No one has an answer, so we push forward into the hall. When the door closes behind us, the pressure changes and the music we heard earlier comes through more clearly. It’s a mix of horns and an up-tempo beat, like a combination of big band music and salsa.
Steven stops, straightening. He recognized the music before but forgot about it when fatty-bo-batty showed up.
“The cabaret!” he says with a gasp. “They must be okay!”
He rushes past Willem and sprints down the hall.
“Steven!” I hiss at him, afraid to yell and draw attention. But there’s no stopping the man. He passes ten open doors and two hallways without incident before turning right.
Willem, Jakob, and I stand still. We share glances at each other.
“Should we leave him?” I ask.
“He’s not giving us much of a choice,” Willem says.
“We might need him,” Jakob says.
I can’t fathom a reason why we’d need Steven beyond his being our guide, but even that might not be necessary. “I remember his instructions for reaching the second deck, and those are everywhere.” I point to a black plastic diagram of the ship mounted at the intersection ahead of us with a big YOU ARE HERE posted toward the front of the ship.
Jakob gives a slow nod. “We might need to find a keycard.”
Right. Damn keycards. “Fine. Let’s get him. But if he runs again, I’m letting him go.”
Jakob just continues his nod.
A closer look at the large map reveals that the hall we’re in abuts the showroom. I point at it. “That’s where the music is coming from. So who’s putting on a show?”
As is often the case, no one has an answer to the question. The answer lies fifty feet ahead, down a hall to the right, and then what? The map isn’t that detailed.
“Let’s go,” Willem says, taking the lead. As he walks ahead of me, my eyes are drawn to the big ax slung over his shoulder. None of us have had to use our melee weapons yet, but we’ve got to be getting close. No time to count rounds, though. It’ll be pretty obvious when I run out of ammo.
Jakob must have been thinking along the same lines because I hear him reloading the shotgun behind me. Five shells go in. “That’s all of them,” he announces.
We round the corner and face a nearly identical-looking hallway. No wonder there are maps everywhere. The only difference between this hall and the last is a set of double doors at the end and a small glassed-in ticket booth embedded in the wall. A velvet rope that had hung between two brass poles now lies on the floor, possibly unclipped by Steven. One of the double doors is slowly closing. A loud salsa beat booms from the opening.
I rush forward, ignoring Jakob’s and Willem’s hushed complaints. Just as the air cylinder slowing the door’s progress gives up the fight, my hand stops it from slamming shut. I open it slowly as the Latin beat washes over me. I’m not sure the slamming door would have been heard over the din coming from the showroom, but I didn’t want to risk it. I kick down the doorstop and let go slowly. The door remains open.
Doors line the opposite side of the wide hall beyond, one every fifteen feet. The door farthest from us on the left is wide open. Beyond the open door, the hallway angles to the right, destination unknown.
I point to the open door and then head for it, gun leading the way. The soft rug and blasting salsa music make my approach silent. Mimicking Talbot’s breech technique, I take a quick peek through the door. The room isn’t a room. It’s a box seat. The chairs are gilded with gold paint and upholstered with maroon velvet. This is where the rich and introverts sit. Steven’s standing just a few feet in front of me.
I move forward slowly and tap Steven’s shoulder with the barrel of my gun. He turns with a start but manages to not squeal or wave his hands about.
He’s got a big manicured smile on his face. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
Wonderful? I step up next to him and take in the showroom. I can barely see the heads of the audience below, but the bright light blooming from the stage reveals the tops of their heads. It’s a full house. Well, except for the box seats. We seem to be the only ones with a privileged view of the show.
There are dancers onstage, all dressed in outfits matching Steven’s, kicking their legs and strutting their stuff. The music—a recording synced with the frantic light show—blares. I can feel the bass kicking my chest. If I liked this sort of thing, I’d say they’re doing a pretty good job. But I don’t, so I focus on answering the nagging question repeating in my head in time with the beat. What. The. Fuck?
Steven grips my arm. “Isn’t it marvelous?” The only thing that keeps me from slapping him again is the fear of being found out, and even taking that into consideration, it’s a close call. Someone really needs to beat the perpetual optimism out of him before he gets himself killed.
Steven gasps and his grip tightens as he whispers, “Shamaya!”
Too late.
The woman in question twirls onto the stage, where she’s surrounded by the female dancers. While she spins in one direction, kicking out her leg with each twirl, the ring of women twirl around her in the other direction. The choreography and timing are all perfect.
Steven gazes at the woman. He’s clearly smitten with her, which is surprising because I’d pegged him as batting for the other team.
“The show must go on,” he whispers.
No, actually, it doesn’t. And it shouldn’t be.
The music reaches a crescendo. The lights focus on the dancers, who suddenly stop, frozen in place with near-impossible precision. And then, as one, they bow. The show has ended, and some part of my brain knows the audience is about to erupt into uproarious cheers and clapping, but only one person does—the idiot standing right next to me.
36
Steven’s clapping slowly fades along with this smile as he realizes his error. A loud shuffling sound rises from below as the audience of three hundred collectively shifts to get a look at Steven and me. I quickly motion for Willem and Jakob to step back, hoping they won’t be seen. But it’s too late for me. I can feel six hundred eyes staring at me.
No, more than six hundred. There is no doubt in my mind that everyone in the audience is already Draugar. That means there are actually tens of thousands of eyes looking at me, but they might as well be one giant eye. The collective sees me. The Queen sees me.
The women onstage stand up straight, arms slack by their sides.
“Shamaya,” Steven says, and I sense h
e’s about to take action.
“Look at her eyes,” I say. “It’s not her.”
With the dance complete and the well-lit dancers looking straight at me, it’s now easy to see their white eyes.
“She’s dead,” I say.
With a quivering lip, he relents. “Okay…” He looks at me. “Okay.”
I’m about to drag Steven out of the box and bolt, when a voice stops me. “Jane? Jane, is that you?”
It’s a woman’s voice. I recognize it but can’t place it without a face. A woman steps up from the front row and climbs the steps onto the stage. She turns my way and puts a hand over her eyes. The shadow cast by her hand hides her face, but mine is still clearly visible. “It is you! How have you been?”
How have I been?
The woman places her hands on her hips, revealing her face—Diane Simmons. The captain of Greenpeace’s Arctic Rainbow.
“Diane?” I say. I really had no intention in engaging in conversation, but I’m caught off guard by her appearance and natural demeanor.
“She’s got white eyes, too,” Steven points out.
“I can see that,” I whisper back.
“I’m impressed you made it this far,” she says. “But I’m glad you did.”
Unlike Steven, Diane really does bat for the other team. She’s smart, funny, and most guys find her attractive, but she’s got more love for whales than she does for the less fair sex. Me, on the other hand…She had more than eyes for me. She had hands, too. I could have slapped her with a sexual harassment suit, but I couldn’t bring myself to damage Greenpeace’s reputation. Not because of the whales, but because it would have affected a lot of friends. So I took care of things Jane Harper style. Just a single broken finger, and we came to an understanding. Even managed to work together afterward. And when she spoke to me, all of her poorly concealed attraction was absent.
Now, that tinge of longing has returned to her voice, along with some not so subtle words. “I missed you, babe. Why don’t you come down here?”
“Thanks,” I say. “I’ll pass.”
She shrugs. “Heard about that mess in the Arctic. Did you really do all those awful things I’ve heard about?”
I squint at her. “What did you hear?”
“Jane,” Willem whispers from behind. “We should go.”
I casually extend my index finger, indicating that I want a minute. The wise thing would be to run and not stop, but I’ve got a feeling about something.
“All those poor people, dead. Murdered.” She frowns. “You killed them, didn’t you? Thousands of them.”
And there’s the switch. We’re no longer talking about people. We’re talking about the parasites. If they value each and every parasite with the same worth that humans place on each other, I’m probably viewed with the same level of abhorrence as Adolf Hitler. I not only killed thousands of them, but I also killed the Queen.
“You don’t need to reply,” she says. “We remember.” I sense a shift in her gaze. “We don’t remember him, though.”
The cabaret dancers onstage reach out to Steven in unison. “Why don’t you come join us onstage? Lead the next act.”
Steven follows my lead and stays silent. It’s a good thing, too, because he’s only got one more strike—and then I’ll shove a parasite down his throat so I don’t feel guilty when I put a bullet in his head.
“No? Too bad,” Diane says. The dancers lower their arms, frown, and cock their heads to the side. “I’ve been trying to understand your culture. The memory is there, experienced by thousands, but seeing things for myself provides a true experience. I must admit, I find your species confusing.”
She raises a hand, indicating the stage. “This…spectacle is—what would Jenny say? Effing horrible.”
She’s at least 150 feet away. It’s a hard shot, but there’s no wind and she’s out in the open. When the time comes, I’m going to take off her head. Not because she’s taunting me, but because I know now that she’s the Queen.
There’s no hesitation in the way she speaks. She says, “I,” not “we.” The hive mind might think as one, but the Queen is the core, the force that binds a million different tiny minds into one entity. The problem is that once the host is dead, the Queen can leave and take up residence in any of the hundreds of people in the showroom.
“Have you come to fulfill your promise, Queen Harper?” Diane asks. “The offer still stands.” But she doesn’t wait for an answer. “No, of course not. You’re here to kill me. That’s what Malik tells me, anyway,” she says.
I hear motion behind me, and Willem whispering, “Father, no.”
Truth is, hearing Malik’s name has me on edge, too. The only silver lining is that Malik was taken before I came up with our suicide mission. Doesn’t seem likely that we’ll get to see it through, but we’ll still be hard to predict.
Diane turns toward the audience. “Malik, why don’t you come out here where Jane can see you?”
Dear God, no.
When Malik appears onstage, his loping walk has been replaced with a prance. He’s walking on his toes, like a ballerina. He’s still dressed in his coveralls and cold-weather jacket. His steel-toed work boots thump across the stage. His hair is as shaggy as ever, and his beard looks like a fuzzy pom-pom below his chin. But the personality of the big fisherman is nowhere to be seen.
Which makes my next act a hell of a lot easier.
I raise my handgun, look down the sight, and squeeze the trigger until all the rounds are spent. Four bullets zing across the open space of the showroom. The first catches a dancer in the knee and sends her to the stage floor without even an expression of pain. The second shot finds only wood. But the third shot catches Malik in the chest, and the fourth shot finds my intended target—his head.
The big man drops to the stage in a heap, falling at Queen Diane’s feet. Without a word, she crouches down by Malik’s body. She reaches out to his mouth, props it open, and then inserts her hand. A writhing column of white rises from his mouth, covering her arm and rising to her shoulder. When it reaches her mouth, she opens it and allows the mass of homeless parasites to enter the refuge of her body. When the parasitical rescue mission is complete, she stands and says, “Still have that fiery temper, I see.”
“Fuck you,” I say, no longer able to stay silent. “I am going to kill you. Every last one of you wriggling little bastards.”
She grins like she knows better, and I nearly draw my second pistol. But it would be a waste of bullets. I shot Malik to set him free. I owed him that much. Shooting Diane won’t kill the Queen, and Diane can wait a little longer for her freedom. Doesn’t stop me from returning a verbal volley of my own, though. “You’re insignificant. Lower life-forms. Incapable of surviving without hosts. You’re weak. Pitiful. And I’m going to stomp each one of you little shits to paste beneath my foot.”
Diane opens her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. “And when I find you—and I swear to God in heaven that I will find you—I’m going to wrap my hands around your wriggling limp body and squeeze until your brains spray from your beady black eyes and your guts burst from your tiny little mouth. You remember that, too, don’t you? When I killed your sister.”
Her face contorts like she’s about to retch her rescued brethren all over the stage. The noise that emanates from below is something resembling a scream, but it sounds a little more like a roar.
I shout over it. “And when I’m done with you, I’m going to find sister number three and make it a triple play. You’re never going to find the host.”
When those last two words leave my mouth, the screaming stops. The showroom goes silent, aside from Steven’s rapid-paced breathing. The lights come on, burning my eyes. The first thing I see is the resplendent decor. It’s a facade, but all of the red and gold makes the place look like an authentic Victorian-era opera house.
The audience, however, is the stuff of nightmares.
Not only are they white-eyed Draugr. Not only are
they staring directly at me. Not only are their voices rising as one into an ear-splitting screech. But they’re also children. Each and every one of them. The youngest is maybe three. The oldest perhaps a tweenager.
“They’re kids,” Steven says. “They’re all kids.” He slowly backs away from the edge of the box, shaking his head. Not one pair of white eyes tracks his movements.
I stay rooted in place, looking at all the little faces staring up at me. In the war of offenses between species, the Draugar have just crossed the line. Not just because they turned the children, but because I’m not sure if I can kill a kid, even if it’s not really a kid anymore. Not up close and personal, anyway. I don’t think my psyche could recover from that. That said, I still have no trouble sinking the ship. The kids deserve to be set free, and billions more are at risk if we don’t stop them here and now.
As one, the children scream, launch themselves from their seats, and charge toward the exits at the rear of the showroom. Their feet echo like thunder, rolling through the showroom. I take one last look at Diane and find her staring at me, blank-faced and white-eyed like one of the aliens in They Live.
Where’s Rowdy Roddy Piper when you need him? I think, and then run from the box.
Back in the hall, Willem stands at the far end by the door, holding it open. “C’mon,” he shouts. His eyes go wide. “Hurry!”
I can hear them before I see them. The rumble of three hundred small feet grows loud behind me. I glance back when I reach the door and see a writhing wall of child-size Draugar closing the distance. Willem slams the door closed behind us, and Jakob is already waiting with one of the brass poles used to hold the velvet cord. He slides it through the door handles, just as the horde pushes on the other side. The doors flex and creak, but hold. Had the mob been adult Draugar, the result might have been different.
We’ve turned to flee down the hall when a new sound pricks my ears. It’s barely discernible above the pounding on the door—the electric whir of a motorized cart.
Talbot’s mission of revenge ended in failure.
The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) Page 19