by John Inman
“Careful,” Jonas said. “We’re at the end. Here’s the staircase leading down.”
Gauging the edge of the first step with the toe of his boot since he couldn’t really see it, Terry followed Jonas down the filthy stairway.
As they descended, the stench grew stronger. The mewlings louder.
Terry reached out and clutched at Jonas’s jacket again. His heart was a jackhammer, and he imagined he could hear Jonas’s heart jackhammering too. Together they were as noisy as a construction crew digging up a street. Gently he gnawed on his lower lip, careful not to break the skin.
Jesus, what the hell are we doing here?
At their backs, a sudden noise exploded around them. It sounded like the slapping of great fists and a gigantic rustle of stiff crepe, all at the same time. Clutching at each other, they ducked their heads.
Figuring that wasn’t good enough, Terry dragged Jonas flat to the catwalk floor and covered his body with his own. Reaching up, he pulled both their face masks down as a swarm of creatures swept over them from behind. Close, too close, they battered the air above their heads. Broad wingtips fluttered against them, swatting them like velvet hands. It took Terry a long, terrifying moment to realize they weren’t being attacked. Rather the creatures were swooping low and brushing against them as they passed before disappearing down the same stairwell he and Jonas were about to descend. Spatters of red from their latest kill flew from their wingtips with every downstroke, speckling the visor in front of Terry’s eyes with the blood from whichever poor human they had recently feasted upon.
Both men lay still as death until the cloud of creatures swept past. They soared by so closely, Terry could feel the wind from their wings at the back of his neck, where neither the helmet nor his jacket collar covered him. When the last beast thundered past to dip below the floor of the catwalk, following the staircase into the shadows below, Terry at long last raised his head.
Jonas rolled over beneath him and pushed both their face masks up. His eyes were as big as saucers, and to Terry’s amazement, Jonas was grinning like a kid. “This is the place,” he said. “It has to be. We’ve found the fucking nest!”
Terry’s voice was fluttery and weak from the pounding of his heart. “Are we positive?”
Just as Terry knew he would, Jonas shook his head and frowned. “Well, no. We have to go deeper to make sure.”
Terry groaned. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
He dropped his head to Jonas’s chest and listened to Jonas gasping for breath for a while, sick of hearing himself do it. His chest muscles were starting to ache from trying to keep his galloping heart corralled inside his body. He wondered if he was about to have a stroke. But then even that fear left him, because he had too many other things to worry about. The renewed stench of rotted flesh and putrescent blood rose up over them once more, stirred by the flapping of all the blood-soaked wings that had recently passed over.
“They were coated with blood,” Terry said, made breathless again thinking about it. “They had just made a kill.”
Jonas nodded. “I know. You have spots of blood all over you. So do I.” He reached over and ran a gloved fingertip along the ribbed metal of the catwalk. He held the blood-smeared finger up as evidence. “See? It’s everywhere.”
“Then how come they don’t attack us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s no longer fresh enough to attract them.”
Terry swallowed hard before rolling off Jonas and helping him to his feet. They turned to face the stairwell down which the beasts had descended. Both men aimed their guns directly into the darkness in front of them. Two metallic clicks proved their safeties were off.
“Close your mask again,” Terry breathed, determined to take control of his fear. “I’ve got the shotgun. Let me go first. Don’t use any lights. Stay close.”
He waited until Jonas took a fistful of his jacket to anchor them together before carefully stepping forward. Leading the way this time. Letting Jonas cower behind him for a change.
The stairwell opened up in front of him like a lightless maw. Far below he could once again hear the chittering of what they assumed to be the young of these horrible creatures. Reaching behind him to clutch Jonas’s arm and keep him near, Terry began descending the rusty stairs one step at a time. In the darkness, their footsteps were deafening.
Terry hesitated, but behind him Jonas whispered, “Don’t stop. Keep going.”
Nodding silently, Terry continued descending, the shotgun heavy in his arms. It was Jonas’s courage that kept him going, not his own. And Terry damn well knew it.
Slowly, step by quavering step, he descended the catwalk stairs. The man Terry loved clutched the back of his jacket, dragging along in his wake, stuck to him like glue.
The noises and the smells grew stronger as they descended. And so did Terry’s sense of loss.
He knew—he absolutely knew—they would never be able to leave this place. Their love for each other would die right here in this stinking darkness.
It was that certainty that fed his anger.
And it was his anger that kept him going now. Not his eagerness to prove himself.
“Let’s finish this,” he hissed into the shadows. He almost smiled, feeling Jonas edge closer to his back, his fingers still grappling at Terry’s coattail, hanging on for dear life, getting as close as he could get without crawling up Terry’s ass and disappearing altogether.
After what seemed like hours but was really only seconds, they reached a landing on the staircase where the steps turned to descend in another direction. The moment they stepped out onto the landing, the noises below fell mute. Suddenly, they were bombarded with silence.
Jonas hooked his chin on Terry’s shoulder and whispered in his ear, “They know we’re here.”
Terry nodded to show he had heard. There was a fist gripping his throat. The fist was fear. He didn’t bother trying to speak because he knew he wouldn’t be able to make a sound even if he tried.
A moment later, with Jonas still pressed close to his back, Terry continued descending the catwalk stairway down toward the second floor.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
JONAS’S SALIVA glands were working overtime. The farther they descended, the fouler the reek became. The last thing he wanted to do was throw up. Hurling would make too much noise. But the stench was almost unbearable. There was the added concern that if he barfed inside his helmet he would probably drown in it. Lovely.
Even worse than the smell was the continuing silence that had fallen around them. He imagined hordes of creatures somewhere down below, crouched in anticipation, waiting for the two humans to draw closer. Claws scrabbling at concrete, itching to attack. Bloody, sharp-toothed jaws salivating, gulping in anticipation, eager to rend and shred and tear, aching to consume the delicious warm blood and quivering flesh of their one and only prey. Man.
Jonas tried to shake these thoughts away. It wasn’t easy, but having Terry at his side helped him maintain his courage. Or at least maintain the appearance of courage.
While he would never get used to the stench of this place—or the unearthly silence either—his eyes had at least grown accustomed to the dark. The shadows were still frightening, but they no longer blinded him. He knew he could see movement now, if movement occurred, and that would give him time to react. If not to save himself, at least to fight back. Blow a few of the fuckers out of the air with his tiny .38. Assuming he could hit them.
More and more he longed for the comfort of Terry’s bigass shotgun. Or better yet, Terry’s bigass arms holding him naked and safe in their bed, far away from this stinking hellhole and these goddamn monsters.
Side by side with Terry now, Jonas stepped off the staircase and found himself on another catwalk. From where they stood, it appeared this catwalk was different from the last. This one was not a single pathway across the building but meandered off in every direction. A metal maze of turnings and dead ends, all set at right angles. Down b
elow he could see a warren of offices, cubicled off with movable head-high panels. Desks, chairs, file cabinets: it was all there. Everything but computers. Jonas realized that when this business was up and running—back in the ’70s, was it?—computers weren’t the norm for office equipment.
He and Terry gazed out over the maze of catwalks, and at the same time checked out the warren of offices down below. Still freaked out by the silence… and the fact that down here, deeper inside the building than they had ever been before, the stench of death was almost unbearable. They had the visors lowered on their helmets, but it did little to alleviate the smell. They still avoided touching the catwalk’s handrails. The bleached-out remains of creature feces were splattered everywhere. It was down below too, smeared over desktops and puddled in pools of white dust on the office floors.
But of the creatures who made them there was no sign.
“There!” Terry whispered, pointing straight ahead. And Jonas saw it. Another catwalk stairwell leading downward. Past the floor of offices below to the ground floor beneath. To where the creatures must be hiding. Where they lived, perhaps. Where they did whatever they did while they waited for the enticing aroma of human blood to stir them to action, exploding them skyward in hungry, furious swarms, out through the shattered windows above to where some unsuspecting human was bleeding. Ringing the dinner bell. Just for them.
The offices down below seemed to have been quickly abandoned. Or perhaps it was the destruction of empty decades that had thrown them into such chaos. Chairs were overturned. File cabinets had sprung open, spilling pages and pages of paperwork. A lot of puddles were sprinkled about from rain that had blown through the shattered windows above.
Here on the second floor, Jonas could see nothing of the beasts. But he knew they were here, waiting farther down. Cowering for the moment. Or maybe snickering in apprehension. Eager for the stupid humans to draw closer. But how long would they really wait? What would it take to send them shrieking into the air to come tearing at them, mouths gaping, talons extended, their deathly reek leading the way?
Jonas didn’t know how long he had been standing there, his imagination getting the better of him. He didn’t move until Terry gripped his arm and whispered softly, “Keep going. We’re almost there.”
And Jonas nodded.
On rubbery legs, he took the lead once again, approaching the stairwell that descended to the floor below. The first floor. He wondered what he would find there. More offices? More overturned chairs and leaking file cabinets? Papers scattered everywhere, drenched and stained with rainwater and filth like what was on the second floor? He was such a bundle of nerves, he had to constantly remind himself to keep his finger off the trigger of the .38 so as not to blow his own foot off. And oh, wouldn’t the creatures come then!
A hand at his back urged him gently forward. Comforted by the fact that Terry was there, and in just as much danger as he was, Jonas took the first step down the second stairwell.
He turned at the landing, as he had on the stairwell above, but this time as he approached the second maze of catwalks, he knew things were different. There were no offices below. Only a single reception area that stood opposite the front doors leading out onto the street. That reception area appeared more for show than actual purpose. Behind the reception desk were steel doors leading into the building’s interior. Signs could still be read on the doors: Do Not Enter. Do Not Enter.
Edging farther along the catwalk, this one roofed by the floor of the offices above except where the stairwell broke through, Jonas saw the beginnings of what he knew was the source of all the trouble. He didn’t know how he knew it; he just did. Terry stepped beside him and pulled him down to his knees, and together they peered down through the mesh of the catwalk floor to study the vast factory floor below. Behind the tiny reception area and the steel doors, the first floor was one vast open space.
It would almost have looked abandoned but for the scurrying of creatures in the shadowy corners. Barely seen, they lurked behind deep vats and labyrinths of stainless steel pipelines that twisted off in every direction. Great valves and wheels and dials and levers were scattered along the pipes. Some of the creatures hung upside down from the gears and tubing, batlike but unbatlike too, gripping the protuberances with the claws that extended from the underside of their wings.
As Jonas knelt above watching, he saw countless eyes, beady and black and cold, staring back. Around the eyes, still hidden in shadow, the bodies of the creatures writhed and shifted in the darkness. Clouds of fat flies buzzed around the creatures, drawn to their stench, feeding off their filth. Halfheartedly, the creatures snapped at them when they came too close.
“Why don’t they attack us?” Jonas hissed.
“Remember the dead one we saw? Its nose was huge, but its eyes were tiny. I bet they are almost blind. That’s why they only attack at the smell of blood. Human blood. They know we’re here because they can hear us a little, but they won’t know if we are food as long as we aren’t bleeding.”
Jonas shivered, thinking about it. It was speculation, of course, but it made sense—as much as any of this did. Then he looked around more closely.
Of the mewling young, he suddenly realized, there was no sign.
Jonas froze. From a distance across the factory floor, back in the depths of the building where he could not see without moving farther along the catwalk, he heard a loud thump. Then an echoing metallic bong. In his mind’s eye, Jonas imagined a heavy body—a body far larger than the creatures they had seen—bumping against one of the huge copper vats scattered around down below. This noise scared him more than all the other noises combined. Because this noise sounded big. Too big.
“What was that?” Terry cringed at his side, his lips pressed close to Jonas’s ear so his voice wouldn’t carry.
In answer, Jonas shook his head. Rising silently to his feet, he tugged Terry up beside him. “Let’s go find out,” he muttered, much to his own surprise.
With Terry’s hand firmly clenched in his, he took a step across the catwalk floor in the direction of the sound. Then he took another step. The catwalk squeaked and rattled beneath him, but he kept going, never shifting his gaze from the creatures in their pools of shadow below.
“Careful,” Terry breathed in his ear.
Jonas released Terry’s hand but stayed close to his side. The noxious odor around them was almost blinding. They crept forward, guns at the ready.
The factory floor below, other than the sealed-off reception area, was not divided into cubicles like the floor above. Here it was a vast hodgepodge of copper vats and assembly belts. Laboratory equipment was scattered across tabletops as far as the eye could see. Glass vials lay shattered on the floor. Everything was covered in cobwebs and dust. It was here where the acidic, chemical smells arose. Jonas breathed through his mouth to dispel the stench. Yet still, beneath it all, the reek of rotting flesh hovered over everything.
“Look out!” Terry cried.
In that instant, a mass of winged creatures exploded from the laboratory floor, swirling upward, their furious cries piercing Jonas’s ears. Startled and wracked with sudden terror, he crumpled to his knees and threw his arms over his head. Terry was there too, hunkered down at his side, his strong arms holding Jonas close while they waited for the maelstrom of living, screaming creatures to disperse after rising up through the catwalk stairwell he and Terry had just descended. Seconds later, all sound of their passing ceased, and Jonas knew they had exited the building through the third-floor windows far above their heads.
The moment the creatures were gone and the turmoil over, Jonas sucked in a lungful of air, trying to calm himself. Only then did he realize how long he had been holding his breath. He turned to Terry, whose arms still circled him. Through their face masks, they studied each other’s reactions, and in unspoken agreement, they rose up together on kitten-weak legs and looked around.
“They’re gone,” Terry said.
“Not all of
them,” Jonas answered back. He leaned over the catwalk railing and pointed downward at the factory floor below. In a maze of great copper vats and cauldrons, half of which had been overturned, he had spotted movement. A chill climbed up his back when he realized what it was.
There amid the vats and shattered equipment, the floor was writhing. No, not the floor. But a mass of mewling creatures intertwined upon the floor.
“It’s their young,” Jonas whispered, his voice brittle with fear.
Terry leaned in beside him. They stared down over the railing, shoulders touching, once again forgetting to breathe.
The organisms below were smaller than the other creatures they had seen. Undeveloped, perhaps. Barely past the embryo stage. White, like fat maggots, with rudimentary wings. Their tiny cries were sharp little yips of sound. They battered at one another with undeveloped wings, tore at one another with tiny claws, fighting for the food Jonas suddenly saw strewn among them. Chunks of bloody flesh, red ropes of intestine and lumps of offal. All human, no doubt. Torn from the bodies of living victims. The younglings fought one another for every bite. And during the fights, when blood was drawn from a sibling, they would turn on the sibling as well. Furious, unstoppable. The ravenous cries of the attacking infants caused Jonas’s heart to clench.
Terry pointed off to the side of the writhing beasts. There, in the shadows on the edge of the mass of young, stood what seemed to be sentinels. Full-grown creatures, still bloodied from their last kill. They were herding the young, keeping them in an enclosed space between the overturned vats. Occasionally, they would reach in, pluck one of the young from the mass, and fling it to the back where, Jonas suddenly realized, something lingered.
Something large. Larger than anything they had seen so far.
“Oh my God,” Terry whispered. Among the overturned vats and scattered lab equipment, barely visible in the shadows, a great wing flexed and shuddered as if stretching away the kinks. The single wing was more than eight feet long. Onyx flesh and brown fur over a huge framework of bone and sinew. At the inner end of the wing, also hidden in shadow, he spotted a plump belly coated with brown hair and smeared with filth. Blood, feces, and among it all, a smear of something white and jellylike.