‘Actually, I was thinking more a kiss for good luck, but whatever.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘You know I have a clean shot at your balls from here, right?’
He tutted. ‘Fine, or we can spoon—whatever. Just no under-the-sweater stuff. I’m not that kind of girl, Eliza.’
The grate came away with hardly any effort at all, Jake tossing it to the floor with a clatter. He peered inside. It was very dark—and dusty, too. He wondered if there were rats. They say that a person is never more than five feet away from a rat at any given moment, but surely that had to be twice as true down here—and in Manhattan, too, no less. Christ, there could be an army of them in there.
He cleared his throat. ‘So, full disclosure, if I were to turn back right now, would you think less of me?’
‘Would you please just get in the vent already?’
He sighed.
Well—worth a try.
To his surprise, it was a lot roomier inside the vent than he’d imagined it would be. He could bend his arms, and turn his head, and if he really tried probably spin over onto his back, too—not that he was about to do that anytime soon, or anything. Because rats.
He turned to look back at Eliza, her face just visible through the hole. ‘Hey, Eliza, check it out—I am so Die Hard right now.’
‘Uh-huh. Keep going, cowboy. Hurry up and let me out. This broom closet smells like old people.’
He returned his gaze to the front and began wiggling his way forward like a worm, having to bend his body in a very unflattering fashion in order to gain any real momentum. Dust plumed in front of his face with every frantic worm-shuffle, his movements upsetting it—though, granted, not nearly as much as he’d been expecting. Hardly much at all, in fact. So that was a nice surprise.
After only a couple moments, he reached the first turn in the ventilation’s system and spun a hard right, his legs burning, eyes itching from the dust. He tried not to think about rats again, how they were capable of biting through solid steel, how their own biology actively encouraged them to bite and gnaw at everything in sight, lest their teeth grow through the top of their mouths and into their brains—something he’d read about online somewhere, though still wasn’t entirely sure if it was true or not.
After what felt like a very long time, he finally reached the corridor.
He kicked the grate off with a jerk of his feet, feeling blessedly cool air rush against his face as he wiggled his way through the hole and back down into the corridor.
He landed on his butt, hard enough to send a jolt of pain shooting through his butt-bone, scarily close to the remains of one of the guards and all that accompanying blood.
He pushed himself up, rubbing at his wounded cheeks a moment, before hurrying across to the closet.
‘Okay—I’m here,’ he shouted through the door. ‘But it’s still locked. And I don’t see a key.’
‘Try one of the guards. One of them is bound to have one.’
How did I just know she was going to say that?
He turned and began tentatively sifting through pockets, grimacing at the knowledge he was effectively stealing from the dead.
After several minutes of painful searching, he eventually found it in the pants pocket of the very last guard he checked, affixed to a large ring boasting several other keys of whose purpose he did not know, but that looked vaguely important. Hell, he was surprised they even still used keys down here. He hurried to the closet again.
The door came open with a soft creak.
He held out his hands. ‘Ta-da!’
Eliza smiled, looking genuinely impressed. ‘Nice work, Jake!’ She stepped out of the closet and looked around a moment before turning back to him. ‘Okay, now, before we do anything else, we’re going to need to find out the situation in there—’ she pointed toward the end of the corridor, to the door Moss and Coleman had disappeared through, ‘—make sure we’re not walking into a potential slaughter.’
Jake nodded. Those were always bad news.
‘This way.’
She turned and led him across the hall to the checkpoint; a small, booth-like structure, that had what Jake knew instinctively to be bullet-proof glass, yet, oddly, no door—which just seemed like a massive oversight, if you asked him. Inside was a desk, upon which a bank of monitors lay.
They rushed to the first one and bent low.
‘Okay, so this is us, here—’ said Eliza, pointing at the little screen. And she was right. Jake could see the booth, a pair of legs sprawled on the floor by the door, what he knew instinctively to be belonging to one of the guards.
He let his eyes fall to the next screen.
‘Holy crap-snacks,’ he whispered.
It was the lunch hall—only now it was packed with people. It was the remainder of HQ’s workforce, those who hadn’t been horrifically murdered. They were all crowded up around the doors, pushing up against it like they were trying to force it open. Among them he could see all the Tainted Goose’s cooks and waiters, the men and women in question pushing right up alongside them.
‘They trapped them in there,’ he heard himself whisper.
He shook his head. It just didn’t make sense—kill all these guys, but lock the others away? Surely it would have been simpler just to shoot them all and be done with it—not that he was complaining, or anything. But still. Why? Why would they—?
He gasped as understanding dawned.
The Hell-beasts—they were going to be hungry when they broke through from the other side, weren’t they? Probably going to want a snack. What better place to store potential food than in a lunch hall?
He scoffed bitter laughter.
It was a goddamn demon-buffet. All you can eat. Seconds welcomed.
He let his eyes fall to the next screen, this one showing the main corridor which ran throughout HQ—like the checkpoint, also riddled with bodies. Blood stained the walls and floor, so much of it, smeared in places like somebody had tried to paint with the stuff.
‘Jake!’
He looked down to where Eliza was pointing.
Oh, crap.
It was Moss and Coleman. They were walking up a corridor lined with doors, guns raised, completely unaware of the half a dozen or so men and women waiting just around the corner ahead of them, each boasting more of those unnecessarily large guns.
It was a trap—and they were walking right into it.
Jake gasped. ‘What do we do?!’
‘I… I don’t know.’
‘Quick—think! There has to be a—’
He saw it as he said it; a little microphone, poking up out of a plate in the desk’s side, not unlike the ones they had in grocery stores.
He thumbed the button.
MOSS! COLEMAN! STOP! IT’S A TRAP! THEY’RE RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!
He watched on the screen as Moss and Coleman stopped dead in their tracks, guns flying up instinctively. They cast furtive looks around them—
And that was when the first of the Believers pounced.
They launched themselves around the corner, guns raised, already popping off shots—a man and a woman, each with brilliant blonde hair, like a couple of Arian assassins.
Moss and Coleman dived for cover, barely managing to scramble back to the bend in time to avoid catching bullets.
Jake let out a long breath.
Close. That was too close…
He became aware of sudden movement beside him.
‘Quick!’ cried Eliza. ‘We have to get over there!’
Before he could say or do anything, she suddenly turned and launched herself through the doorway, shoes slapping as she barreled up the corridor, gun raised high.
Jake took a breath.
Then he booked it after her.
VOGEL IS STILL A JERK. ALSO, MONSTERS
Thunder—that was Jake’s first thought as he emerged into the corridor.
He could hear it ringing not only in his ears, but also in his soul, each boom so loud it was like it t
ouched some deep, inner part of him, one that appreciated life and sought to protect and nurture it in all its various forms. Strange; he didn’t know you could get thunder inside a building—especially one located two-hundred feet underground. Of course, he also didn’t know “demons” existed until two days ago, either. He didn’t know a lot of things, apparently.
As it would turn out, it wasn’t thunder making those awful crashes, as Inner Jake had already worked out several minutes ago.
Gunfire—but not little pops, like from a pistol. These were loud, deafening booms, booms that shook the walls and made Jake’s stomach twinge with every fired round. Every part of him wanted to run away from that sound—there was just something so primal about it, so very heavy with the promise of death it was all he could do not to just turn-tail on the spot and flee for the hills. And yet, for whatever reason, his feet wouldn’t stop propelling him forward. It was like they held some sort of urgent death-wish. Inner Jake was not impressed.
He caught up with the others about halfway down the corridor, at a T-junction now peppered with bullet holes—although, given the size of them, “peppered” was probably the wrong word.
‘Hey!’ he shouted, his hands over his ears. He just didn’t know what else to say. ‘How’s it going?’
‘How do you think?’ shouted Coleman. He popped his arm around the wall and cracked off another shot, apparently unperturbed by all the tinnitus he was probably bringing upon himself—him, and everybody else.
Jake turned to Eliza, who was crouched down just behind him, fussing with her gun. ‘So how long do these things usually last, anyway?’
She squinted up at him.
‘I SAID SO HOW LONG DO THESE THINGS USUALLY LAST, ANYWAY,’ he repeated.
She blinked. ‘Oh—well, that depends! Got to wait for one of them to get reckless and lunge out!’
‘WHAT? WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY DO THAT?!’ It just seemed so unnecessary—not to mention dangerous.
She shrugged. ‘Who knows? But it’s the weirdest thing—look, here goes one now!’
Jake watched from just around the corner as, right on cue, one of the shooters—this guy tall, with shaggy, dark hair like a dog—launched himself into the corridor, feet spread shoulder-width apart, gun pointed toward them.
‘DIE!’ he shouted, very loudly—just announcing himself, really.
Moss immediately dropped him, picking him off with a flick of his gun.
The guy fell slowly to the floor, his face contorted in an expression of what can only be described as “dumb surprise”,as if the guy hadn’t just been asking to get shot throwing himself in front of all those bullets like that.
Jake blinked, stunned.
Okay, now this is just getting ridiculous…
Coleman turned back. ‘All right, everybody. We’ve got them on the run—time to move.’
Jake wondered exactly how one random bad guy lunging into the line of fire constituted as them “being on the run”, but whatever. He’d never understand gun-fights, he decided.
They pressed forward up the corridor, guns still trained high, Jake expecting more suicidal cultists to start launching themselves into their bullets again, though none did.
‘Where’d they all go?’ he asked, stepping tentatively around the corner. Apart from the few bodies lining the floor, they were all gone.
Coleman frowned. ‘Retreated, probably—no doubt on their way to command as we speak.’ He looked round at them, his face serious. ‘We have to stop them before they get there.’
Jake rolled his eyes.
Well, duh…
‘But—how are we supposed to get there?’ said Eliza. ‘If I know Vogel, they’ll have bodies posted at every intersection between here and control. No way we’ll be getting there through the front. And besides, we don’t even know how many of them there are. There could be hundreds of them.’
Coleman was silent a moment as he pondered this. He grunted. ‘Follow me.’
They began to move again, run-walking up the corridor with their guns out, Jake for the first time realizing how unnecessarily long the corridor was. They headed through a door, another, through the administration wing, then—
They emerged into the interrogation room all in a rush, the four of them almost crashing into each other as they bounded through the door.
Jake looked around, gasping. It was the same interrogation room he had found himself in upon first awakening, in what now felt like millennia ago. Same lone chair, same thick, glass walls. He had come full-circle, apparently. The snake had eaten its own tail, or however that saying went.
From the other side of the glass, Vogel grinned.
‘Vogel!’ hissed Coleman. He raised his gun on instinct, then slowly lowered it again—the glass was bulletproof.
Vogel’s smiled broadened. His hand was still a bloody mess, what remained of his fingers now hidden behind what looked to be an old washcloth. ‘Yes, yes. Hello, to you too, my dear Coleman.’ He looked around at the others and offered a curt nod. ‘Everybody. Glad you could make it. As you can see, we’re almost ready to begin—’ He gestured behind him down into the control room, where dozens of men in suits sat fussing at computers. Those that weren’t stood patiently before the Door, staring up at it, their faces enrapt in holy wonder.
They were opening the Hell-door.
Jake stared. Even though he already knew what their end goal was, now that he was here, oblivion but mere moments away, the absurdity of what Vogel and his gang were attempting came crashing down on him like a rogue tidal wave. Because it was absurd—there was simply no good outcome. Not for them, or the rest of the human population. So they open the Hell-door—what then? Did they think the “demons” or whatever would just bow down to them?
‘But—why?’ he heard himself ask. ‘Why would you want to bring about the end of the world? Can’t you see how crazy this is?’
From the other side of the glass, Vogel blinked. ‘End of the—?’ He laughed. ‘Jake, my boy! We do not wish to end the world—we want to unite it!’
‘By slaughtering billions of people?’ Call him crazy, but that just seemed pretty counterproductive.
‘We live in an incomplete state, Jake. The world as you know it is but a mere shadow of its former self, of a time when both Hell and Earth were once one. And it was paradise, Jake. No pain. No suffering. Just oneness—can you imagine? No more war. No more famine, or poverty, or disease.’ He paused as a shadow fell over his face. ‘But alas, just like Adam and Eve, we too were banished from the Garden. What was once paradise became fragmented, split into two, like two flawed halves of a single, glorious coin. And until that coin is whole again, Jake, the human race will continue to suffer.’
He smiled again, and Jake was unsurprised to see the guy was now crying—not just crying, but weeping. It occurred to Jake the guy was absolutely insane.
Suddenly, a klaxon sounded from somewhere above their heads. Red warning lights swept the room, as from somewhere above them a robotic woman’s voice urgently declared:
WARNING! GATEWAY’S STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY HAS BEEN COMPROMISED! ALL PERSONNEL REPORT TO THE COMMAND CENTER IMMEDIATELY. I REPEAT. GATEWAY’S STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY HAS BEEN COMPROMISED! ALL PERSONNEL…
‘This is it, Jake,’ Vogel continued, tears racing down his cheeks. ‘You are about to witness the birth of a new era. The Singularity will cleanse us all in its holy judgment. And Man will finally be reborn.’
Coleman stepped forward. ‘Do you really think we’re just going to stand by and watch you start the apocalypse, Vogel?’ He scoffed. ‘You’re even crazier than I thought.’
Vogel shook his head. ‘Actually, no—which is why I’ve made other arrangements for the four of you.’ Before anyone could ask exactly what it was he was talking about, he reached into his jacket and pulled out the contraption from before.
He hit the button.
Coleman’s eyes suddenly went very wide. ‘What have you done…’
‘You cannot be al
lowed to stop us, Coleman—or any of you, for that matter,’ Vogel went on. ‘The Singularity will continue ahead as planned. I’m afraid this is how it has to be.’
There was a noise from behind them in the corridor. A shrieking sound, audible even over the blare of the alarm, followed by several more shrieks, all equally as terrible.
Eliza’s face went white. ‘He’s opened the holding cells!’
Jake gasped.
All those monsters, let loose inside HQ. Christ, this was turning into the worst day ever.
‘Now, I’m afraid I must say goodbye,’ Vogel continued. ‘I suspect we will not be seeing each other again.’ He made to leave, then suddenly turned back. ‘If it’s any consolation, just know that your sacrifices will not have been in vain.’
‘You sonofabitch!’ cried Coleman. He made to bring the gun up, but Eliza stopped him.
‘No—it’ll just ricochet!’
Vogel watched this display with a smile. He tutted. ‘Goodbye, all. Die well.’ And with that he turned and left, waltzing casually down the catwalk steps to join the others all gathered around by the Door, patiently waiting for what was sure to be certain death.
Coleman immediately rushed to the door, began pulling on it with all his might. But of course, it was locked. He kicked angrily at it instead. ‘Damn you, Vogel!’
‘I can hear them!’ shouted Eliza, standing by the door leading back into the corridor from which they had entered. ‘They’re getting closer!’ As if on cue, there was another terrible shriek, followed by a nerve-jangling crash, as of something large toppling over. ‘They’re almost here!’
Jake stared through the glass, watching as rivets all along the Hell-door’s edges began to turn, saw the hydraulic locks sliding over, one by one. Steam plumed as pressure was released, the Door preparing to open—for what was, if Jake remembered rightly, the first time in almost a hundred years. Forget the corridor; soon, they’d be swarming with the things.
He turned to Coleman, eyes wide. ‘What do we do? How do we shut it down?’
Coleman pointed toward the large console in the room’s center, filled with buttons and switches. ‘The emergency override—but it’s no good. We’re stuck in here.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s over, Jake. They’ve won.’
We Hunt the Night: (Tales from the Supernatural Frontline) (Imperium Book 1) Page 12