Cemetery Dance

by Douglas Preston

  “When what comes in?”

  “You’ll know. It doesn’t seem to feel pain, fear, anything. It looks like a man, at first… but it’s not fully human. It’s fast and determined as hell. I’ll spotlight it for you. If you hesitate, we’re dead.”

  She swallowed, nodded, checked her handgun.

  Tucking the flashlight into his pocket, he took up position behind a large marble tomb and motioned Hayward to take up a position behind the adjacent one. Then they waited. For a minute, all he heard was Hayward’s rapid breathing; a faint whimpering from one of the protesters; the hammering of his heart in his chest. Then it came again: the pattering of bare feet against wet stone. It seemed farther away now. A low groan echoed through the cavernous space, long and drawn out, yet freighted with a hungry urgency: aaaaaahhhhuuuuu…

  From the darkness behind them, D’Agosta heard the whimpering of the protester rise, grow panicky.

  “Quiet!” he whispered.

  The pattering of feet stopped. D’Agosta felt his heart quicken. He reached into his pocket for the flashlight. As he did so, his hand closed over the medallion of Saint Michael, patron saint of policemen. His mother had given it to him when he first joined the force. Every morning he slipped it into his pocket almost without thought. Even though he hadn’t prayed in probably half a dozen years and hadn’t been to church for even longer, he heard himself begin to pray now: God, Who knows us to be set in the midst of great perils…

  Aaaaaiiihhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu came the groan, nearer now.

  … We beg you, Lord, banish the deadly power of the evil one. Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle…

  At the far end of the vaulted space something moved in the fetid dark. A low, creeping form—shadow against shadow—slunk between the farthest set of tombs. D’Agosta pulled the flashlight from his pocket. “Ready?” he whispered.

  Hayward trained her weapon ahead in a two-handed combat grip.

  D’Agosta aimed the flashlight toward the distant archway and switched it on.

  There it was, caught in the beam: pale, crouching, the palm of one hand splayed flat on the stone floor before it, the other gripping its side, where the rags were stained by a growing spread of crimson. Its one good eye rolled wildly toward the light; the other was ruined and black with hemorrhaged blood, leaking fluid. Its lower jaw sagged loosely, swinging with each movement, and a heavy rope of saliva hung from its dark and swollen tongue. It was scratched and filthy and bleeding. But its injuries did nothing to slow it down or decrease its sense of terrible purpose. With another hungry groan it leapt toward the light.

  Whang! went Hayward’s gun. Whang! Whang!

  D’Agosta switched off the light to reduce their chances of being targeted. His ears rang from the explosions and the ragged scream of the protesters behind them.

  The sounds of the gunshots rolled away in the underground passageways, and silence resumed.

  “My God,” Hayward breathed. “My God.”

  “Did you get it?”

  “I think so.”

  D’Agosta crouched down, listening intently, waiting for the ringing in his ears to die away. Over his shoulder, the screams subsided into racking sobs. Then there was no other noise save Hayward’s gasps of breath.

  Had she killed it?

  He waited another minute, then another. Then he turned on the light and shined it around the spaces ahead. Nothing.

  Dead or alive, this was enemy territory and they had to keep moving. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  D’Agosta scooped up the two protesters, got them on their feet. Moving rapidly, they traversed the forest of tombs and reached the archway in the far wall. He cast the hooded light around the nearby floor. A few drops of fresh blood and nothing else. Stepping beneath the archway, he beckoned them to follow him into the large storeroom beyond.

  “Careful,” he whispered. “There’s a deep pit in the center of the room. Keep to the walls.”

  As they began to make their way through the heaps of moldering leather-bound books and ancient decomposing furniture, there was a sharp hiss from one side. D’Agosta turned, raising the light, just as the thing shot out of the darkness, leaping toward them, muddy mouth wide, broken black nails raised to rend and tear. Hayward brought up her gun but it was on her in a flash, sending her crashing to the floor and the gun spinning across the room. Heedless of the pain in his shattered forearm, D’Agosta leapt onto the creature, slugging it repeatedly. It ignored his blows and tightened its grip around the neck of the struggling Hayward, all the while barking with bloodthirsty pleasure: Aihu! Aihu! Aihu!

  Suddenly the storeroom filled with a violent orange light. D’Agosta turned toward it; Bossong stood in the opposite doorway, a huge burning torch held high in one hand. His face was bloodied but he had lost none of his forbidding, almost regal bearing.

  “Arrêt!” he cried, his deep voice reverberating through the subterranean chamber.

  The creature paused to look up, cringing, jaundiced eye lolling.

  D’Agosta noticed that Hayward’s gun was lying mere inches from the community leader’s feet. He made a move toward it but Bossong immediately swept it up and pointed it at them.

  “Bossong!” D’Agosta cried. “Call it off!”

  The leader of the Ville said nothing, aiming the gun at them.

  “Is this what your religion is about? This monster?”

  “That monster”—Bossong spat out the word—“is our protector.”

  “And this is how he protects? By trying to kill a police officer acting in the line of duty?”

  Bossong looked from D’Agosta, to the zombii, to Hayward, and back to D’Agosta.

  “She did nothing! Call it off!”

  “She invaded our community, defiled our church.”

  “She came here to rescue me, rescue these others.” D’Agosta stared at the leader. “I’ve always thought you were just a blood-thirsty cultist, killing animals for some perverse, fucked-up pleasure. Come on, Bossong—prove me wrong. Now’s your chance. Show me you’re something more. That your religion is something more.”

  For a moment, Bossong remained motionless. Then he drew himself up to his full height. He turned toward the zombii. “C’est suffice!” he cried. “N’est-ce envoi pas!”

  The thing made an inarticulate slurping groan. Saliva boiled in its throat as it stared upward at the priest. Its hold on Hayward’s throat loosened and she wriggled free, coughing and gasping. D’Agosta pulled her to her feet and together they backed away.

  “This must stop!” Bossong said. “The violence must end.”

  The man-thing jerked and twitched in an agony of indecision. It looked from Hayward to Bossong and back again. As D’Agosta watched, he saw a mad hunger flood over it again. It crouched, leapt at Hayward.

  The gunshot was deafening in the enclosed space. The creature, caught midair, spun around, then dropped to the floor. With a howl of pain and bestial rage it rose to its hands and knees, blood pouring from a second wound in its side, and began shambling—faster and faster, with a horrible new purpose—toward Bossong. The next bullet hit it in the gut and it buckled forward, gurgling horribly. Unbelievably it tried to rise once again, blood spurting from its wounds and from its yawning mouth, but the third bullet caught it in the chest and it fell again to the ground, rolling, shaking, and jerking uncontrollably. D’Agosta tried to catch it, but it was too late: writhing and groaning hideously, the thing half toppled, half spasmed over the edge of the well. It let out a wet gargling shriek that—after a dreadfully long second—ended in a faint splash.

  Slowly, Bossong lowered the smoking gun. “So it ends as it began,” he said. “In darkness.”

  84

  Esteban stepped inside the cell and paused. Which one first? But he was not one to agonize over a decision, and he stepped over the girl’s body and strode up to the bloody form of the FBI agent. He in particular deserved to die. But of course, Esteban thought, smiling wryl
y, he’s already dead, or mostly so. It was going to be a mess, and the sound of the pistol in the confined space would leave his ears ringing. He ran through the steps he’d have to follow as he reloaded the magazine. He’d have to bury his own clothes with the bodies and guns—no problems there. Blood was impossible to eradicate these days, what with the powerful chemical tools now at the disposal of crime-scene investigators; but the cellar room itself could be walled up with nothing to show it had ever existed. All the bodies could go in here. Perhaps in the coming days there would be people snooping around here, looking for the FBI agent. He may have even told someone where he was going. But there was no clue he had ever arrived: no car, no boat, nothing.

  He slapped the magazine in, racked a round into the chamber, and raised the gun with one hand, the other training the flashlight carefully on the still form.

  The blow came from behind, a stunning crack to the back of his head, and then something was on top of him like a monkey, two claw-like hands tearing into his face, one finger snagging the rim of the orbit and then digging into the eye socket, prying at the eyeball itself. He screamed at the explosion of pain, whirling about, trying to fling off his attacker, grappling at it with one hand, the gun in the other hand firing wildly with a tremendous series of booms. The flashlight fell to the ground with a crash and blackness swallowed them.

  For a moment his mind, reeling with surprise and pain, staggered in incomprehension. Then he realized: it was the girl. He yelled, bucking and shaking, his free hand flailing blindly at her, but the girl’s tight, digging grip didn’t slacken and he felt his eyeball pop out of its socket with a wet, sucking sound, the horror and pain such that for a moment he lost all capability for rational thought.

  He fell to the ground with a roar, the heavy blow finally loosening her grasp, but as he rolled and tried to bring the gun around he realized there was a second person fighting him now—surely the FBI agent—and the gun was roughly kicked from his grasp. He punched wildly, broke free, and scrambled to his feet and ran, slamming hard against the wall, then feeling desperately along it while the gasps of his assailants seemed to come from everywhere around him.

  … The door! He stumbled through it and ran out into the blackness, dazed and disoriented, careening off props and walls and doorways like a pinball, losing his bearings in his pain and panic, crashing and scrambling among the forest of junk in an effort to get away. The girl and the FBI agent—how had they both survived? But as soon as the question occurred to him he knew the answer—and cursed his monumental, colossal stupidity. As he ran, he felt his eyeball—free, hanging by the optical nerve—bouncing with every movement in a swinging arc of pain.

  The Browning! He’d forgotten about the second gun. Digging into his waistband, he pulled it out, turned, and fired back in the direction of his pursuers. A moment later his shot was answered by the boom of the Colt and the smack of a heavy-caliber bullet ripping through a prop next to his ear, spraying him with splinters.

  Jesus, that was close. He turned and ran, scrambling frantically among the old sets, trying to reorient himself. He could hear their fumbling pursuit. To fire on them again in the dark was only to make himself a target.

  He crashed into something and realized he had gotten turned around, somehow, in his desperate attempt to escape. Where the hell was he? What prop was this? A massive plaster wall—the outline of blocks… was it the castle turret? Yes, it had to be! He shoved the gun back into his waistband and scrambled up to the battlements, feeling his way along. A little farther, just a little… The battlement ended and he jumped down to the other side, landing on what felt like a ramp. What was this? He’d expected to find himself by the faux-stone sarcophagus of the Egyptian pharaoh Raneb, but this was something else entirely. Had he gone the other way? His mind reeled as yet again he tried to orient himself amid the endless props, his mind reeling from the pain. He crawled up the ramp, stumbled and fell, and lay on a wooden platform, heaving. Maybe if he just lay there, absolutely silently, they wouldn’t find him. But no, that was stupid. They would find him, find him and… He had to get out, get to where he could fight them. Or run.

  He could hear them in the blackness, moving along the battlements, searching for him.

  The sudden reversal of his hopes left him stunned with grief and pain. He had to face it: running was now the only option left to him. Mexico, perhaps; or Indonesia, maybe Somalia. But first he had to get out of this black prison, get his eye attended to. He sat up, feeling a hanging rope brush against his face, grasped it and began to hoist himself up—but then the rope suddenly gave way and he heard a strange rushing sound from above, and then a split second later he realized what he had done, what rope he had pulled, but it was too late and his world abruptly ended with a short sharp shock.

  Nora heard a scratching sound, followed by a hiss, and then a wavering yellow light appeared. Pendergast was holding a twisted piece of newspaper, one end afire. The open casing of a bullet lay on the cement floor, from which he had extracted the cordite to start the fire.

  “Come and look,” he said weakly.

  Pendergast held out his hand and Nora took it. She was a mass of pain; all the ribs in her back seemed broken from the force of the gunshots; her concussed head throbbed. Pendergast’s bulletproof vest, which the agent had passed her in the darkness of the cell, was an unfamiliar weight beneath her hospital gown. She came around an old section of a medieval castle wall and there, in front of her, was a guillotine, blade down, a body sprawled on the platform; and in the tumbrel below, a fresh head. The head of her captor, one eye wide open in surprise, the other horribly mangled, dangling by a ropy nerve.

  “Oh my God…” She put a hand over her mouth.

  “Look well,” said Pendergast. “That’s the man who was responsible for the murder of your husband and Caitlyn Kidd. The man who killed Colin Fearing and Martin Wartek, and who tried to kill you and me.”

  She gasped. “Why?”

  “An almost perfectly choreographed—or should I say storyboarded—drama. We will know the final reason why when we locate a certain document.” His voice was so low, so whispery, she could barely make it out. “Right now, we need to call an ambulance. When… when you are done here.”

  Staring at the scene of horror, she realized that she did, in fact, feel a certain grim catharsis through the curtain of pain. She turned away.

  “Seen enough?”

  She nodded. “We have to get out of here. You’re bleeding—badly.”

  “Esteban’s third bullet missed my vest. I believe it has punctured my left lung.” He coughed; flecks of blood came from his mouth.

  Using the taper as a light, they slowly, painfully, made their way through the basement, up the stairs, across the shadowy lawn, and to the mansion. There, in the darkened living room, Pendergast helped Nora onto a sofa, then picked up the phone and dialed 911.

  And then he collapsed unconscious to the floor, where he lay motionless in a spreading pool of his own blood.

  85

  With the coming of night, the seventh floor of North Shore University Hospital had grown quiet. The squeaking of wheelchairs and gurneys, the chimes and announcements from the speakers at the nurses’ station, had almost ceased. Yet still there were the sounds that never stopped: the hiss of respirators, the faint snores and murmurs, the bleating and beeping of vital-sign monitors.

  D’Agosta heard none of it. He sat where he had remained for the last eighteen hours: beside the lone bed in the private room. His eyes were on the floor, and he alternately clenched and un-clenched his good hand.

  Out of the corner of his eye he noticed movement. Nora Kelly stood framed in the doorway. Her head was bandaged, and beneath her hospital gown her ribs were taped and padded. She walked up to the foot of the bed.

  “How is he?” she asked.

  “Same.” He sighed. “And you?”

  “Much better.” She hesitated. “And what about you? How are you doing?”

  D’Agost
a shook his bowed head.

  “Lieutenant, I want to thank you. For your support through it all. For believing me. For everything.”

  D’Agosta felt his face burn. “I did nothing.”

  “You did everything. Really.” He felt her hand on his shoulder, and then she was gone.

  When next he looked up, another two hours had passed. And this time it was Laura Hayward who was standing in the doorway. Seeing him, she came over quickly, kissed him lightly, took the chair beside him.

  “You need to eat something,” she said. “You can’t just sit here forever.”

  “Not hungry,” he replied.

  She bent closer. “Vinnie, I don’t like seeing you like this. When Pendergast called me, told me you’d gone into the basement of the Ville, I…” She paused, took his hand. “I suddenly realized I simply couldn’t face losing you for good. Listen. You just can’t keep blaming yourself.”

  “I was too pissed off. If I’d kept my anger under control, he wouldn’t have been shot. That’s the truth and you know it.”

  “No, I don’t know it. Who knows what might have happened if things went a different way? It’s the uncertainty of law enforcement—we all live with it. And anyway, you heard the doctors: the crisis has passed. Pendergast lost a lot of blood, but he’s going to pull through.”

  There was a faint movement from the bed. Both D’Agosta and Hayward looked over. Agent Pendergast was regarding them through half-closed eyes. He was paler than D’Agosta had ever seen him—as pale as death—and his limbs, always slender, had assumed an almost spectral gauntness.

  The FBI agent simply looked back at them for a moment, the heavy-lidded silver eyes unblinking. For a dreadful moment, D’Agosta feared he was dead. But then Pendergast’s lips moved. The two bent closer in order to hear.

  “I’m glad to see you both looking well,” he said.

  “You, too,” D’Agosta replied, trying to smile. “How are you?”