by Ty Drago
Steiger had undoubtedly gone off to restore power to the building. My EMP had popped its circuit breakers. We had two minutes, maybe three, before the Corpse mad scientist reset them and the juice came back on. When it did, the current running through the walls and floor of this room would wake up all those hungry little things.
I had to get the Burgermeister out of there before that happened.
“Can you get across the room?” I asked, pointing at the door through which Steiger had gone.
“Think so,” he replied, sounding unhappy. Then, as I watched, he started sloshing through the chest-deep mass of sleeping maggots, making sad little retching noises with each step.
Sticking my pocketknife between my teeth with its flashlight pointing ahead, I began scuttling along the pipe. Straddling it as I was, I had to pull myself along with my hands and kind of jerk my hips forward to follow. It was slow — way slower than I would have liked — but it worked.
By the time we both reached the far wall, however, it was plain as day that neither of us could reach the door frame, much less the knob.
“Now what?” the Burgermeister asked me. His broad face looked a little green in the light from my pocketknife. I didn't blame him, being pretty sure I was wearing the same color.
Notice that he asked me: “Now what?”
Somehow or other, I've gotten this rep for — I don't know — improvising? For not just making it up as I go, but for making it up good. I'm not really sure how I earned that reputation, especially since whatever I wind up doing usually lands me neck deep in trouble.
Sometimes — like now — literally.
Anyway, that's me. Will Ritter: Idea Man.
I looked at the door. Then I looked at the Burgermeister standing below it. Then I looked at the door again.
“Put up your hands,” I said.
“What?”
I sighed. “Put your hands up over your head, palms up. In a second, I gonna jump off this pipe and try to hit your hands with my feet. When I do ... I mean the second I do ... I want you to throw me straight up. I'll try to grab the door.”
“You mean ... fling you again?” He did his best to grin.
“Just shut up and do it.”
Carefully, I twisted my body and got my sneakered feet under me. The pipe was thick, but it wasn't all that thick, and balancing on it was like balancing on a river log — except, thankfully, the pipe wasn't rolling. “Ready?”
Below me, Dave nodded. “Ready!”
I held my breath, took aim, said a silent little prayer, and jumped.
The Burgermeister monstrous palms found my feet. An instant later, my body hurtled straight up and I managed to catch the bottom of the door jam. At first, my grip failed, and I almost fell back into the maggot pit. But I scrambled with my sneakers at the wall below the door and finally managed to hoist myself high enough to get one hand around the door knob.
I turned it.
Locked.
Figures.
With a moan, I let my full weight dangle from one hand while my other took the pocketknife from between my teeth. “Gotta shut off the flashlight to use the lock pick!” I called down. “It's gonna get dark again.”
“Jeez ...” Dave muttered.
“I know,” I groaned. Then, before my already weakening arm snapped off at the shoulder, I braced my sneakers against the bottom of the door jamb as best I could and hit the 1 button on my pocketknife. Fresh darkness swallowed us up as the pocketknife's unlikely flashlight gave way to its even more unlikely lock pick. Then I went to work on the knob's keyhole, going by feel alone.
Seconds — precious seconds — ticked by. At any moment, I expected the room's lights to come back on and for Dave to start screaming as the maggots bore into him from all sides, eating him alive. More than once, I had to banish that image from my mind. The horror of it only slowed me down.
“Dude.” Dave called from the darkness below. “Listen ... I don't mean to complain, but I'm totally skeeved down here. Any chance you could ... you know ... hurry up?”
And here I thought I had all night!
Finally, I heard the click as the lock surrendered. I turned the knob and pushed the door open, scrambling ungracefully over the threshold, half-baked from exhaustion.
Jeez, I just wanted to lay there. Everything that had gone down during this long night of monsters — from the moment Helene, the Burgermeister and I had run into the twins, Michael and Robert, was finally catching up with me.
I was crashing.
Except I didn't have time to crash.
It was a fact that was hammered home when the floor on which I lay suddenly started vibrating — that funny hum, more felt than heard, that signals electricity running through heavy duty commercial wires.
The building's main circuit breaker had just been reset. That meant we had seconds before Steiger or one of his cronies flipped the right switch and turned the juice back on in the maggot pit.
No. Not “we”. Dave's got seconds.
I jumped to my feet and pulled off my jacket. Then, holding it by one sleeve, I dropped the rest of it over the lip of the threshold. “Grab it!” I cried. “Quick! Now!”
The Burgermeister didn't hesitate. As I braced my feet against either side of the door jam, I felt the weight of him — so much of it! — pull on my coat.
“Can't get up!” I heard him exclaim.
“Walk the wall!” I reminded him. We were both members of the Sharyn Jefferson's Angels Crew, the Undertaker's combat team. We get trained for stuff, all kinds of stuff, including rope climbing. “Use your feet! Go horizontal!”
“I'm trying!”
“Dave!” I screamed — yep, definitely screamed — “You don't have time to 'try'! Do it!”
“Thanks, Yoda,” he mumbled. But he did it. The weight was terrible, and it threatened to pull both my arms out by their roots and snap my spine in half. But he did it. I saw his head first, its mop of blonde hair matted with sweat, his eyes wild with only half-controlled panic. Then one meaty hand let go of my coat and grabbed the lip of the frame.
That's when the lights came on.
Instantly, sound rose from the pit — a sickening scratching noise that's difficult to describe in words. Imagine sandpaper on wood, only times a thousand, or maybe a million.
Then, just as the Burgermeister threw himself through the doorway and nearly crushed me under his bulk, he let out a yell of awful pain. Like a shot he was on his feet again, clawing at his leg.
One Super Maggot — just one — had managed to latch onto jeans when the power came back on. And it was boring in, eating right through the denim and into the thick calf muscle beneath.
“Get it out!” the big boy screamed.
I fumbled for the dog whistle, before remembering that it had fallen out of my mouth. It was somewhere in there, buried under the squirming bodies of all those hungry larvae. So instead I stood and shoved Dave with all my strength. Taken off guard and off balance, he toppled liked a felled tree, hitting the floor hard enough to make it shake. Then I knelt heavily on his leg, pressing down with my knees to keep it steady while my fingers fumbled for the maggot.
I snagged it just in time, maybe a second before it would have bored completely down and out of sight beneath his jeans and into his flesh. Pinching it between my thumb and forefinger, I pulled.
When I’d done this to myself, back on the school bus, the creature had come out easily — if disgustingly. But that maggot had been sleeping, thanks to Helene and the dog whistle. This one was wide awake, and it didn’t want to come out.
I tugged. Nothing happened. I tugged again.
The Burgermeister shrieked.
What if I break it in half? What if part of it gets stuck in his leg!
But what choice did I have?
I pulled harder, doing my best to pull straight out and not at an angle.
And, finally, out it came.
The creature squirmed wildly between by fingers, its tiny legs wiggling and its mouth sna
pping open and closed. As I watched, horrified, it managed to twist itself around and clamp that mouth down on the back of my hand. Pain raced up my arm, white hot and searing.
I pivoted and slammed my hand against the nearby wall, feeling the creature’s body flatten, its innards splashing across my skin.
I wretched a little, but my stomach stayed put. But that was probably just because there was nothing in it.
“Jeez …” I heard Dave mutter.
“Yeah,” I said.
I climbed off of him and helped him up. “Tough night,” he added, standing.
“Yeah,” I said again.
Sparing a moment, I peered through the open doorway and down into the pit. Then I immediately looked away.
It was the stuff of nightmares.
The room we were in was empty and much smaller than the pit, little more than a stubby corridor. Not counting the one we’d come through, there were two doors, both unmarked.
“Now what?” the Burgermeister asked again.
Instead of answering, I shoved him a second time.
As before, I put all my weight behind that shove and, as before, I caught him off guard. He went stumbling back against the wall and dropped onto his butt. Angry as I was, I couldn’t help being a little proud of myself. Knocking Dave Burger over was a feat, kind of like tackling a rhino.
“Hey!” he yelped, though I noticed he had the good sense to yelp quietly, under his breath. “What was that for?”
“Flinging me!” I said, glaring at him.
“I was trying to save your life!” he exclaimed, again in a hoarse whisper. “You're welcome, by the way!”
“I hit my EMP!”
“Yeah ... well I didn't know you were going to do that, did I? Besides, I thought that remote control thingy of his was supposed to be 'shielded' or something!”
“You can shield a gadget, but you can't shield a whole building!” I snapped back. “Now stop changing the subject!” I stared at him as he climbed angrily to his feet. He was twice my size, but the days when that would have intimidated me were long gone. “So, since we were both gonna die, you decided to go all selfless and throw me out of harm's way. Is that it?”
“Well ... yeah!”
I shoved him again. But this time he was ready for it and didn’t move an inch.
“Quit it!” he growled.
“Listen up, Burger,” I told him, ignoring his anger and getting up right into face. “Nobody ... and I mean nobody ... gets to die for me! Not ever again!”
“What? Why not?”
I didn't answer. I didn't have to. It took him a few seconds, but he got it.
“Tara,” Dave said.
Tara Monroe had been an Undertaker, one of the first I'd ever met, back on the day when I found out that there really were monsters in the world. She'd been a friendly face and, while I hadn't known her well, what I had known I'd liked. Then the Corpses had attacked and Tara had come to my rescue.
She'd died to give me a chance to escape.
Her face visited my dreams every night. It probably always would.
I poked the Burgermeister’s barrel chest with my twig of a finger. “I don't want to spend the rest of my life looking at your ugly puss every time I close my eyes. So don't you dare pull a stunt like that again! I'd rather die with you than survive you ... got it?”
He blinked at me.
“Got it?” I said again.
He actually flinched. “Yeah! Sure. Next time I won’t save your skinny ass, okay?”
“Save my skinny ass all you want!” I shot back. “God knows Helene does! Just don't die while you're doing it!”
“Got it.”
“Good.”
We looked at each other. Then we looked away. In similar circumstances, Helene might have hugged me. Thank God, he didn't.
“So,” he said. “Um ... now what?”
You know: I think I'm going to get him a t-shirt that says that.
I selected the door directly opposite the maggot pit. It was a fire door, solid steel and heavily built. It looked newly installed and opened away from us. There was no knob, just one of those thick horizontal panic bars that you have to push on. No point pressing my ear to the thick metal; I’d hear nothing. So, with Dave close beside me, I pushed on the bar and, as gently and noiselessly as possible, nudged the big door open — just an inch or two.
I heard children crying.
The Burgermeister and I swapped looks. Then I opened the door wide.
Beyond it stood an enormous garage, big enough to hold half-a-dozen school buses. The ceiling was high, three stories at least, its cement floor painted a shiny, institutional gray. The doors, located at the far end of the enormous room, stood wide open. Through them, I could see angry flames rising from the parking lot. Interestingly, I saw no fire engines, no flashing police or emergency lights.
Apparently, nobody had called 911.
“What do you think happened?” Dave whispered at my side.
I replied with a smile, “Helene happened.”
She’d promised a diversion and she'd delivered — hardcore. My best guess? She’d soaked some rags in gasoline, shoved them down into the tanks of a few of the Corpses' cars in the parking lot, lit them up, and ran.
Those were the explosions we'd heard back in the alley.
A really solid move. True, Steiger hadn't been fooled. He'd still managed to be on hand when the Burgermeister and I slipped in the backdoor. But his cronies had clearly bought it. A whole mob of them, maybe as many as fifty, had gathered just inside the big garage doors. A few fought the flames; I could hear the gush of fire extinguishers though, from what I could tell, they weren’t making too much progress.
The rest of them were just helplessly watching their cars burn.
That left this end of the garage mostly, but not completely, deserted. Set against the back wall, maybe twenty feet from where we stood, was a big cage —a “pen” was how the twins had described it — forty feet long and twenty feet wide.
And it was filled with kids.
There were dozens of them, all ten or twelve years old, a mix of boys and girls of different races and hair colors. Every single one of them looked tired, under fed, and scared so badly that they'd hit that empty place you get to when the scariness goes on too long. Each of them had been kidnapped, stolen by Steiger for his experiments, and each had eventually found out that you can only scream for so long.
Now they looked at us through the chicken wire that sealed their prison, not speaking, not daring to hope.
Steiger, I thought. You … are … so … dead.
Dave announced, “Let's get 'em outta there.” He started toward the pen, but I put a hand on his forearm to stop him — a gesture that only worked because he let it.
“Hold up,” I whispered. “Look.”
He looked, and saw what I saw.
A single deader stood beside the pen. He was a Type Two or early Type Three — his stolen body just starting to bloat. He’d obviously been ordered to stay behind and guard the kids, though all his attention was fixed on the fires raging outside the far end of the garage. He stood absolutely motionless — inhumanly still. They do that sometimes when their attention was diverted.
Most of his face was in shadow, but I could tell it wasn’t Steiger.
Where is Steiger?
“Oh,” the Burgermeister said. “Okay … let’s take him out and then get the kids.”
“If he has time to cry out, we’re hosed,” I pointed out.
He nodded. “I got this.”
Then, moving quietly for such a big kid — Angel training — Dave stalked the Corpse, coming at him from his left flank. As he did, I watched the kids in the pen watch him. If one of them so much as whimpered the wrong way, the deader might turn around. But none did.
Dave came up behind the Corpse and, in one quick movement, wrapped his huge hands around the deader’s head, one under his chin, the other across his forehead.
The Bur
germeister twisted.
I didn’t hear the neck snap; I was too far away.
The deader made no sound. He simply stiffened and then slumped. Dave caught him, hoisted the limp body over his shoulder and then hurried back to where I stood in the open doorway.
“Coming through,” he whispered as I stepped aside. He quickly crossed the small room in a few steps and dumped the deader across the threshold on the far side.
The scratching sound that rose from the Super Maggot pit got suddenly louder — more urgent. The Burgermeister had just rung the dinner bell.
Dave was a champion neck snapper. But the problem with that tactic was that Corpses, when they found themselves trapped in helpless, neck-broken, bodies, always used their telepathic distress call to summon aid. By feeding the Corpse guard to Steiger’s “pets”, Dave had guaranteed that the body would be gone in under a minute and the Malum within exposed and forever destroyed a few seconds after that — his silent yelp for help cut short. It was a good move —
— if it worked.
I watched the crowd of deaders at the far end of the garage. A few had turned our way, probably responding to the brief distress call. But, within a second or two, they all turned back. Apparently the fire in the parking lot was more interesting than a brief telepathic bleat from a lowly guard.
“Nice,” I said, when Dave returned to my side.
“Thanks!” he replied with a grin. “Now let’s get the kids.”
“And take them ... where?” I asked.
He opened his mouth to reply, but then stopped, seeing the same problem that I did. My original idea had been to lead the kids quietly back out the way we'd come in, with the Corpses too busy with Helene's diversion to notice. Well, her diversion had been perfect, having given us a great big window of time.
Except backtracking meant someone getting ourselves and all these kids across the maggot pit.
Not a chance.
“So … what do we do?” Dave demanded.
“I'm thinking,” I told him. Once again: Will Ritter, Idea Dude.
“There's a lot of them,” the Burgermeister said. “Way more'n I figured. We're gonna need something big to —” He suddenly stopped mid-sentence.
I asked, “What?” He wore an expression I’d never seen before.