Lehane started down the wide staircase. He moved sideways, against the flocked wallpaper, sweaty hand on the butt of the Glock. The embalming room was downstairs and to the right, past six empty wooden caskets Pinker used as samples to peddle his wares.
The lobby was dark and the front door was wide open.
How did he get out of the body bag so quickly? Lehane thought. Or is it the one from outside? He whispered into his mouthpiece. "Sitrep. At least one bogey inside. Anyone comes up, challenge. Password is 'football.'"
"Got it. Be careful."
Lehane felt an oppressive anxiety overtake him; it tightened his chest and shortened his breath. He'd been afraid plenty of times, even learned to thrive on the sensation, but this was different. Their enemy was an unknown species from another reality, something strong enough to conquer death. For the first time he allowed himself to wonder if the team could make it out alive. The idea of having to sacrifice Sandy Hammer tore him up.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and risked a quick peek. The display coffins were all that stood between Lehane and the door into the embalming room. He slung the grenade launcher around behind his back, raised the Glock, spun around the corner.
That part of the room was empty.
From the back doorway came a scraping, thumping sound that echoed against the polished, stainless steel. It was followed by a primitive, rasping grunt and a metallic slither as what had once been Dr. Benjamin Feldman struggled to unzip the body bag from inside.
Lehane crouched low. Swiveling his head back and forth between the open doorway and the entrance to the embalming room, he made his way rapidly across the room and stopped with his back to the southern wall. He tucked the Glock away again and loaded one of the white phosphorus grenades into the launcher.
In the other room, the young physician's body fell off the embalming table and onto the linoleum flooring with a loud, wet thump. Something fought against heavy plastic and broke free.
The creature moved through the gloom as if struggling to gain control of the rigid, dead flesh. It emitted sounds, hideous sounds that made Lehane wince. His skin rippled and writhed with disgust. He took a deep breath, released it, took a second and held half. He whirled with the launcher held high.
The Bhuta was standing by the body bag, perhaps fifteen feet away. The eyes looked like poached eggs. It was grinning when it spoke.
"So, Mr. Lehane." It hissed with a high, flatulent sound like escaping gas. "We meet again."
Of course, the corpse was naked; pallid skin festooned with nauseating floral display of brown and black bruises and bright red blotches. The brutal wounds inflicted by the Bhuta prior to death had been examined in detail by forensics and were obscenely open to the night air.
Lehane raised the grenade launcher. "You are Ali Basra."
"We are Bhuta."
"Why do you want to kill me?"
The corpse giggled. "Why not?"
"You have stalked me for months. I would like to know why."
The creature moved the right leg, almost fell over. Lehane tightened his finger on the trigger. "Don't," he said. "Stay there."
"What will you do? I merely live on, like a cockroach."
"Then I'll kill you again."
"How?"
"I will destroy you with fire."
Lehane watched carefully. The Bhuta paused, rattled by his statement. Lehane realized that the monster's intellect was both present and not. Perhaps Ali Basra was only partly in control of this new body. He wondered if the Bhuta had less and less control with each new one, so that its real power depended upon the number of corpses it occupied at any one time.
"Human," the thing said. "Death comes for you."
It stumbled forward. Lehane stepped back from the doorway, shielding much of his body from the coming blast. He closed his eyes and tightened his finger on the trigger. The room exploded. The explosion knocked Lehane to his knees, half-blinded him. The creature shrieked like tsunami winds; a choir of raging screams that scrambled higher and higher up the musical scale.
Lehane loaded the second grenade. He stuck the barrel around the corner and fired again. A stench reached his nostrils. He didn't have to look to know the room was now a mass of melting or scorched metal, plastic and flesh. His ears were ringing. He opened his eyes and started back toward the staircase.
"Coming up," he called. "Football."
At the foot of the stairs there came a knocking. Lehane paused briefly, puzzled. He looked around, but the lobby seemed deserted. From the middle of the lobby, Lehane could see into the embalming room, and nothing was left of the corpse but ashes and smoke.
"Boss, you okay?" It was Whiz and Sandy, speaking almost simultaneously on the headset. "It's time for Pops to check in."
Lehane started to respond but the knocking reoccurred; a low and insistent thudding that assumed a rhythmic pattern. He eased the empty grenade launcher behind his back, left it dangling from the strap, freed the Glock and held it in both hands. His mouth went dry. Where the hell is that coming from? His eyes scanned the shadowy room, seeking the source. Seconds later his gut told him the answer.
At the end of the row of samples and nearest the wide-open double doors, a large, mahogany coffin yawned open. From yards away, Lehane stood upon on his toes to peek over the edge. The interior was plush and white. It was clearly empty. He released a small sigh of relief.
And then he heard the laughter.
It was a shrill, girlish giggle, actually; not the sound one would expect a man to make, but then this was no longer a man. Beyond the coffin, the corpse somehow managed to force itself upright by leaning against the southern wall of the lobby, even with one torn forearm consisting only of splintered bone and a gaping hollow in the massacred chest.
Guri still held the M14 in his good hand, pointed directly up at the ceiling. The lower part of the jaw hung at an odd angle, as if held in place only by the twine of shredded tendons.
Lehane felt his energy wane. His legs turned to stone. He still held the Glock in both hands, automatically brought it up to the center of that damaged chest, but the action felt small and futile. How do you kill what can't be killed…?
"We meet again," Guri said. Another small giggle followed the statement. "Soon you will join us."
Lehane watched his hands tremble. He processed his options rapidly, came to a decision. First, notify the team. "I don't know if I can shoot you, Guri," he said. The sharp intake of breath in the headset told him the others had heard and understood.
The creature squinted, as if at a difficult math problem. "Not Guri," it said after a long moment. "We are Bhuta."
Lehane forced himself to accentuate the tremor in his hands, so that he was visibly shaking, perhaps too badly to fire. He lowered the Glock. "I can't do it this, Guri. I can't."
The Guri-thing laughed, but instead of coming towards him it lowered the sights of the powerful M14 as if to shoot. Before it could fire, Lehane feinted to his right, back at the staircase, and then sprinted for the front porch. The Bhuta reacted, far more quickly than Lehane expected. By the time he reached the front doorway, the frame next to his left arm was exploding into splinters. One tracer round set the wood on fire.
Lehane rolled out onto the porch. "Pops, Guri has turned. Take him."
"Guri?" Was Pops thrown off by that heartbreaking order? When the Bhuta came after Lehane, Pops didn't shoot.
Lehane threw himself over the porch railing and onto the dry grass. He fired three times, slowing Guri down. Meanwhile, his mind took in the angle. The porch roof was blocking the Pop's line of sight. Up on the wooden steps, Guri aimed and fired. Tracer rounds lit up the night and burned the grass as Lehane bobbed and weaved and made for the driveway.
"Now, Pops!"
Guri stumbled a bit on the front steps, and moved down onto the asphalt, into the open. "Shall we play, Lehane?" The inhuman voice was mocking and defiant.
Then Pops fired and the top of the creature's skull disappeare
d in a spray of grey and crimson. Guri dropped the M14 instantly, fell to his knees. Deprived of sight and proper motor control, the Bhuta groped around like a man in a suddenly darkened room. Pops took another shot, clearly an attempt to sever the head completely. Lehane fired three more shots at the neck, and then it simply fell apart. What had been Guri became a writhing, mindless stinking mass of vandalized tissue and bone. Lehane prayed the energy would eventually evaporate from the infected flesh, as it seemed to have done with the dead cowgirl.
"Pops," Lehane barked, "can you get down here?"
"On my way."
"Okay, maintain silence and watch your ass." Lehane was already running back into the building. "It knows where you are, now. Let us know when you want cover."
…At that moment, Donald Pinker sat huddled in the pigsty, hands over his ears, with an empty metal bucket in his lap. The sudden eruption of gunfire and fiery explosions had terrified and paralyzed him. He vomited into the bucket and rocked as he heard Mr. Jeffrey scream orders to his people.
Pinker liked Mr. Jeffrey and wanted to do something, help somehow, but all he could do was rock and puke, rock and puke and cover his ears. Finally he jumped to his feet and ran, screaming, back down the mountain. He was fine for the first half-mile or so, but then he tripped over a log and sailed ten feet into a large rock that cracked his skull like a walnut. Moments later, safe and alone in his precious mountain woods, Donald Pinker stopped breathing altogether, thankfully well before one of the Bhuta could reach him…
…Meanwhile, Pops gripped his rifle in both hands and ran for cover. He opted to slide down the hill feet first. Since the enemy already knew his location, Pops figured speed was more important than stealth. On the way up the mountain he'd made note of several chute-like dirt trenches, probably caused by runoff from the snow. Whenever possible, he threw his body into one and rode it straight down like a man on a snowboard. The mortuary lights were a beacon to him, the route to salvation. He was moving too rapidly to know if he'd been followed.
Perhaps thirty yards above the grounds he used his arms and legs to brake. Pops lay still in a mass of dried roots and tumbleweed and listened to the surrounding night. He listened carefully, tried to spot where insects and the high desert's other nocturnal inhabitants had fallen silent.
Pops ran a map of the area through his mind. He decided to crawl sideways, away from the mortuary and toward the abandoned mines to the north and west; then move in from above the ghost town, through the garden and ultimately past the gazebo to the front door. Hopefully the Bhuta would assume his trajectory would continue to be in a straight line. It would be out of position when he sprinted for the house.
He thought of whispering his plan to the others, but had no idea where the enemy was, or how acute its hearing might be; so Pops moved stealthily through the dirt, away from the mortuary and toward the abandoned mines. He kept the lights firmly in his line of sight.
When he reached the dirt path above the garden, Pops paused to listen again. The insects between his position and the mortuary had resumed their endless chanting. The immediate area was safe. He whispered into the throat mike: "ETA four minutes, from garden to the west, request covering fire."
"Have a safe trip," Whiz replied.
Pops moved himself again, as quietly as possible. He came to the end of the undergrowth behind the west garden, went flat and peeked out.
The vegetable patch was empty, row upon row lined with string. Beyond it sat the tall cornfield, which he knew to be more than twenty feet long. Passing through it was bound to make a great deal of noise, so Pops figured to take it on a dead run. Some corn moved in a slight breeze and he felt his skin prickle. He waited.
And suddenly an engine started up to his left, down below in the ghost town. Puzzled, Pops considered asking Lehane if there was a secondary operation he knew nothing about, but within seconds he realized that the sound was coming up the driveway. Pops heard the dull groan of shifting gears.
He got to his feet, spun in a circle with the rifle at his side. Saw nothing. Pops instantly knew it would be a footrace. He bolted across the vegetable garden, hopping over lines of twine like a football player through tires, and crashed into the cornfield. "I'm coming in!"
The sky above rained fractured light as tracer rounds began to ricochet off the cement and explode into the darkness. Pops kept the rifle crossed and his knees high. He came crashing through the dry stalks of corn like a maddened elephant, even as the gears shifted again and the huge truck closed the gap.
Pops found himself out of the field, in the frigid midnight air, but lit up like a singer in a concert hall; the tracer rounds were all crashing to his left, at the foot of the driveway coming up from the ghost town. The semi was moving rapidly his way and the team was sending round after round into the vehicle, desperate to slow it down. The thick hood was already peppered with holes.
One of the front tires went flat. Pops was going to make it, knew he was going to make it. He passed the gazebo, keeping the fragile structure between his body and the approaching truck. He feinted as if entering the gazebo and then went for the open front doors.
The truck ran effortlessly through the gazebo and closed the gap. Some of the wood and plaster remained stuck to the front fender.
Pops Keltner felt the whole world slow and move sideways. It seemed like he had plenty of time to choose between three options, to reverse direction and head back into the cornfield, drop flat and hope that the truck roll would over him or continue on and try to outrun it.
The headlights seemed gigantic, now. The driver mockingly honked the horn.
Pops waited until the last second, went flat in the driveway and covered his head with both hands. He would have been fine, actually, but the debris stuck to the fender chose that moment to slip under the flattened tire. The truck bounced up in the air, the corpse driving it momentarily lost control of the wheel and the vehicle slid to the right.
It passed over Pops, murdering him with two loud and gruesome thumps, and finally came to rest near the front porch, radiator belching steam.
THIRTY-FOUR
Inside the mortuary lobby, Lehane watched helplessly. Six feet away, Mike Castle lowered his weapon and sat down heavily on the floor, stunned by the loss of his friend. Sandy allowed herself a brief sob into the headset, but rapidly pulled it together again. Lehane spoke, sotto voice: "People, if we can't get this job done and make it out of here, we may need to call fire down on our own position."
"Christ, Jeff…" Whiz was clearly shocked. "I can't do that."
"You will do what I say. Now get both Charlie and Enrique on a conference line and see what their money and contacts can do, like maybe get us a AH 64 Apache or two with full missile capability. This whole town might need to disappear before morning."
"What's it doing?" Castle had shaded his eyes and was peering through the window. His features were contorted with anger. "That goddamned shit eater is pulling Pops back under the truck."
"It's going to take him," Lehane said, grimly. "He must still be alive."
Castle growled like an angry bear. The big man whirled and ran across the room and up the stairs before Lehane could intervene. "Whiz, when you get through have Enrique open the checkbook and let Charlie to spend the money."
"On it."
"Sandy, what's Castle up to?"
"I'm getting some phosphorous grenades," Castle shouted from upstairs. "That son of a bitch isn't going to mess with Pops. No fucking way."
"Sandy, where is the bogey out back?"
"He moved away, down the hill again," she said, quickly. "Then he either stopped or I lost him."
Lehane wondered aloud. "Could it have been Pinker? Maybe the dumb bastard came back to feed his livestock."
"Maybe. Jeff, our bad guy out front is so close to poor Pops I can't tell the difference. No, wait—he is moving off, now. Heading south, away from the truck."
Castle crashed back down the stairs with a grenade in one hand and a
nother, plus the Magnum, hooked on his belt. He also had a pint of whiskey. He downed a large gulp and marched wide-eyed toward the front entrance. Lehane got to his feet and pulled his own weapon.
"Sit down, Mike. That is an order."
"I won't let it fuck with Pops," Castle said. In the stark shadows he looked like a Viking berserker. "Give me cover."
"It's already moving away from Pops. It's probably somewhere on the grass. You're too late."
"Okay, then I'm gonna get two birds with one stone. Pops would want me to. I'm going out there, so back off unless you plan on shooting me yourself."
After a moment, Lehane slipped out of the launcher and offered it butt first. Mike Castle shook his head and grinned. "I'm gonna be way too close for that."
"Don't get killed, Mike. There are only three of us left."
"Yeah, and we can't duplicate ourselves, but it can." Castle strode to the doorway. "And I'm going to stop it from turning Pops into one of those things. I'll take the trucker out and shorten our odds in the process."
He's going either way. Lehane nodded, got ready. "Sandy, get to the front window right now. We need to give Castle some covering fire."
He heard her footsteps as she crossed the wooden floor upstairs and took her position. Lehane took a deep breath and waited. Castle took one last pull on the bottle and threw it out into the yard. He smiled, screamed like a rebel soldier and raced outside. Lehane and Sandy fired to his left and right as he approached the stalled truck. Castle ran around the hissing column of steam coming from the front engine. He pulled one of the grenades and turned the corner just in time to see Pops, mangled and flattened in the left hip and shoulder, struggle to his feet and lean against the cab. His camouflaged ghillie hung around him in tattered rags.
"Help me," Pops whimpered, miserably. "I'm hurt."
Daemon: Night of the Daemon Page 25