Rogers pointed. “Is she dead, or what?”
Minaberry shook his head. “She’s just unconscious.”
“You want to try your pheromone lure, doctor?”
“I’d rather use it on that bitch that kicked me in the testes,” Minaberry conceded, then looked down at the unconscious woman. “But she’s right here, so let’s do it.”
He produced a small glass bottle from the pocket of his lab coat. He pulled the stopper and took an eye dropper full of clear liquid from the bottle and let two small drops fall on her face.
She awakened quickly, with a moaning sound in her throat, wiping her face. She sat up and looked around bewildered. “What’s going on? What are you doing? Who are you? Where…?”
“Here.” Minaberry gestured for the soldier to help her to her feet while he pushed the crate from in front of the door. “She’s still dazed. Get her outside before she comes to her senses.”
He opened the door and the soldier shoved her out. She stumbled and then held up a hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the floodlights. Rogers and the two soldiers joined Minaberry at the window to observe.
Minaberry had his pocket tape recorder out and was talking into it. “Subject is in direct lighting. She should be untouchable.” He glanced at his wristwatch and noted the time. “We shall see if the pull of the pheromone is stronger than their aversion to light.”
Sewer pipe
1:15 A.M.
They liked the darkness, the cool air of the sewer pipe.
When the floodlights snapped on, they had scattered like roaches, seeking temporary shelter wherever it could be found, escaping into the darkness of the vacant houses surrounding the station, hiding in basements, fruit cellars, and sewers.
Storm drains permitted easy access to creatures capable of flattening their body to the width of their head. They clogged the pipes fanning out from the old police station, huddled together irritably, fidgeting and growling, tails curled around their bodies like boa constrictors.
Then something caught their attention and brought a hushed preternatural silence. Something was crawling through the pipe, coming toward them. Something that smelled of blood.
1:20 A.M.
At first Torres thought the disgusting odor came from the sewer pipe.
It smelled like he was crawling through someone’s intestines, and if you thought about what a sewer line contained, that was pretty close to the truth. He was covered in slime. There was barely enough room for him to maneuver. The roof of the pipe was an inch above his head. This was the worst. He could get stuck in here and die slowly, of dehydration and starvation, gradually going mad. He imagined the rats stripping the desiccated flesh from his bones.
His mind took him back to Vietnam. He saw more old friends: Jamie Oakes, Darren James, and Dick Ziembeck. Jamie died in the siege of Con Thien; Ziembeck killed himself in a rented room in Seattle, the needle still hanging from his arm; and Darren James, the badass Marine sniper, died in 1981 of six different types of cancers that ate his liver, brain, and kidneys. And now Rattlesnake Torres was crawling through another tunnel, looking to kill or be killed.
His life had come full circle.
He caught a whiff of something putrid and fishy. Damn, what an awful stink. Then he froze, recognizing the stench, so bad it could drive a man insane, a rotten, decaying, swampy smell. They were in the pipe. They were in the fucking pipe!
With intense effort he managed to slide his gun hand up past his shoulders, wiggling like a worm. Adjusting his grip, he got the weapon out in front of him. He had to push himself forward, an inch at a time. His eyes were as adjusted to the gloom as they would get. He saw nothing. The smell was mighty strong, though.
He strained to hear. Nothing. Then, the faintest rustle, a slight displacement of the air, and he knew they were coming.
He inched forward and then felt a breeze on his cheek. Craning his head to the side he saw the entrance to another pipe. There was a tight corner where the pipe twisted, branching away to the side. There was a hint of light and fresh air whispering from somewhere. He must’ve made it to the main storm drains under the street.
He hurriedly crawled forward to the new entry. He almost couldn’t make the turn, but he just managed to do it, twisting at the waist, pushing with his legs. He wriggled around the corner. The pipe widened out until he could crawl on his hands and knees.
He paused and wiped the sweat from his eyes. Damn, it was good to have more room to move—but that fishy stink was worse in here, stronger. He’d come the wrong way.
Station Nineteen
1:25 A.M.
Tiffany didn’t know where she was. She only knew her head hurt. She felt dizzy and sick to her stomach. She was standing uncertainly at the top of the stone steps leading to the station. This didn’t make sense. It was dark. It was not time for her to be going to work. She was in a dream. That was it. She had to be dreaming.
She turned and looked out at the brightly lit parking lot. Floodlights created a solid wall of white, beyond which there was nothing but the silhouette of a large trailer truck and beyond that, a black void.
Surreal.
Minaberry and Rogers watched from the window as Tiffany took a stumbling step down the first stair, then paused and turned to look at the entrance to the station. She looked uncertain about what to do, where to go. She raised her hand to her head and rubbed her jaw, then climbed back up and made for the front door.
Minaberry poked his head out the broken window and hissed, “The light! Go toward the light!”
She stopped, confused. “This is my dream,” she mumbled. “Fuck off.”
««—»»
Mootz had his face pressed against the bars of the holding cell, straining to see down the hall. It was no use. He couldn’t see into the vestibule. He could only hear Minaberry urging someone to go into the light.
“What are they doing?” he muttered, moving to plop down on the bunk next to Vega and the kid.
Love sat next to Juanita on the floor, back to the wall. Mootz saw him looking at their surroundings glumly, and he said, “A lot different from this side of the bars, ain’t it?”
“Never thought I’d have to find out,” Love answered.
He glanced at the kid sitting on the bunk and thought about chiding him for abandoning them, then thought better of it. Mootz might make an issue of it, and Love had enough to worry about. He didn’t want to have to whip anybody’s ass tonight. Not if they were human, anyway. He glanced through the bars at the body of Sergeant Hammerstrom on the bunk in the next cell. Then it occurred to him: Hammerstrom had the other set of keys. The keys that would unlock the cell door!
He was over at the bars, reaching through, when the others crowded up behind him. “What are you doing?” asked Juanita.
“The extra set of keys to this cell are hanging on the sergeant’s belt,” he grunted, straining to reach. It was no use. He couldn’t get to the sergeants body. The cells were designed so the prisoners could not touch each other through the bars. It was for their own safety.
“We have to MacGyver something up to snag those keys,” Mootz said, turning to search the cell. There was damned little to work with. A mattress, a mildewed pillow flattened with age, and nothing else.
Sewer Pipe
1:30 A.M.
Torres willed himself into stillness.
He melted his body into the walls of the storm drain. He lay motionless and silent in the dark, knowing that he couldn’t dampen his smell, but attempting to control the wild beating of his heart. He checked the Glock one last time, found with pleasure that it was fully loaded. He had seventeen shots. Seventeen chances to make it out of the tunnel alive. He would make each bullet count.
He smelled them first, as he imagined they smelled him too, before they saw him. He raised his pistol and fired at the first reeking figure that poked its head around the corner. The shot punctured a bulbous eyeball and it exploded luminous gunk, like the inside of a glow stick.
Another head appeared and he shot it through the eye as well, splashing more incandescent goo. Those shimmering eyes made great targets in the dark and at this distance he couldn’t miss. He fired again and another body collected at the bend in the pipe where the storm drain connected to the lines from the station. Fourteen shots left…
Station Nineteen
1:35 A.M.
From the window, Minaberry cocked his ear. “Listen,” he said, holding up a bony hand. “Do you hear that?”
“What?” asked Rogers.
“Sounded like gunfire.”
“It’s the Fourth of July, remember?”
“Oh, yes!” Minaberry chuckled and wagged his head. “I forgot. Just fireworks.”
««—»»
Tiffany pushed on the door but it wouldn’t open. What a weird dream. She was at work but she couldn’t get into the building. And someone kept telling her to walk toward the light, repeating it over and over in an urgent voice like that little lady from the Poltergeist movie. Tiffany knew what “walk into the light” meant and she was damned if she was ready for that.
She angrily kicked the door. The pain shooting up her leg woke her up and brought her back to reality. She whipped her head around wildly, taking in the empty parking lot, the big truck sitting there like some metal dinosaur pouring light upon her. She screamed, then, high and hysterical and unrelenting.
“Let me in!” She pounded on the door. “Let me in goddamn you! What the hell is going on? What are you doing? What are you doing to me? Let me in!”
Inside, Minaberry glanced at his watch and made a notation into his recorder. “Interesting.” His voice was tinged with curiosity. “Ten minutes since the pheromone was applied.” He frowned as she continued to beat on the door. “We may have to let her back in and deal with her ourselves.” He was growing tired of listening to her screams.
Beside him, Rogers said nothing.
Sewer Pipe
1:37 A.M.
Torres was down to his last eight shots.
The smell of gun powder was everywhere in the tunnel. A pile of bodies blocked the pipe. He wiped the stinging sweat from his eyes with his free hand and rubbed it on his grimy orange jumpsuit. His mouth was dry. He wished he had a drink of water.
He kept his weapon trained on the entrance to the storm drain. They seemed to have stopped coming. He shifted the Glock in his grip and waited.
Silence.
Then, very faintly, he could hear a woman screaming.
Station Nineteen
1:38 A.M.
Tiffany stood at the top of the steps and bawled obscenities. Her eyes were two holes poked in a snow bank, her face white with fury. She looked up into the sky and yelled, “Come and get me, then! I can’t stand it anymore!” She suddenly broke into a run, dashing down the steps, legs pumping madly. She headed for the truck, straight toward the lights.
She skidded to a halt in front of the metal grille of the enormous vehicle. Searching around crazily, she snatched up a good-sized rock and hurled it at the nearest light panel. It shattered like an ice sculpture, crashing to the pavement in a clamorous explosion of breaking glass.
From inside the station, Minaberry drew back from the window in alarm. “Oh, Jesus!” He grabbed Rogers by the elbow. “Stop her!”
Rogers jerked his arm from the skinny man’s grasp and then plucked his radio from his belt. He got an earful of static. “What the hell is wrong with the radios?” he asked. Outside, another glass panel burst in a tinkling crash.
Creature Corps Operations Center
1:39 A.M.
The technician’s name was John Andersen. He was a level-headed man from Minnesota, gray-haired, close to retirement, and he was freaking out. They’d lost two light panels on the left side and now the crazy woman was running to the other side of the truck, no doubt planning to destroy the remaining panels. Didn’t she understand that the lights were the only thing keeping her alive? Was she insane?
A rock thumped off the front windshield, cracking it.
“Get out there and stop her!” he screamed. No one moved, so he jumped out of his seat and punched the button on a nearby console that activated the automatic doors.
“Come on!” he called over his shoulder, heading toward the back of the truck as the doors slid open. “We’ve got to stop her before—” Andersen’s eyes widened and the rest of his words trailed away.
A creature stood in the doorway, teeth bared, open mouth trailing long strands of saliva, and behind it waited more. A lot more. Andersen’s last thoughts were, absurdly, of his pension—and how he would never live to collect it.
Then the creatures were inside the truck, slashing, tearing, and biting. Screeching shrilly, they ripped men apart, utterly crazed. This was no longer about feeding—this was butchery.
The remaining lights on the truck winked out. The sudden darkness was like a black curtain being drawn across the front of the station. The sounds of men screaming from inside the truck floated across the night air.
Sewer Pipe
1:40 A.M.
Torres waited. He listened to the sounds of the creatures angrily squawking from behind the blockage of bodies at the curve in the tunnel. They almost sounded as if they were arguing. One screeched louder than the others, there was a chorus of angry hissing, and then the noises died down. He heard them crawling away. Their sounds slowly disappeared.
He almost moved then. But he did not.
These things were tricky. They weren’t feral; they were cunning. They reminded him of the enemy he’d faced twenty years ago. Smart, devious, deadly, the Vietcong were a formidable foe. So were these creatures.
The dark pressed on him like a coffin lid. His muscles stiffened and began to ache. He wanted nothing more than to get out of there, but something told him to wait, that same inner voice that had kept him alive all those years ago in those tunnels on the other side of the world, was telling him, You move and you die.
He heard a muffled crashing sound, like a bunch of glass breaking. He wondered what it meant.
Parking Lot
1:41 A.M
Tiffany cheered in triumph when the remaining lights on the big truck snapped off and the parking lot was plunged into darkness. She was making so much noise that she couldn’t hear the screams coming from inside the truck.
Her yells of victory were cut short by a tidal wave of monsters flowing out of the back of the vehicle, heading right toward her. She turned to run and found a solid wall of growling green faces, eyes alight, with mouths open and hungry. She screamed again as talons sank into her shoulders and jerked her into the sky.
Station Nineteen
1:41 A.M.
Rogers pointed his pistol out the broken window and fired. An onrushing shape collapsed in the parched grass in front of the station. Beside him, the men with the flamethrowers pulled their .45s and fired as well, pistols barking like angry dogs. Still the creatures came at them, rushing up the steps in a seething mass and dive-bombing through the air like crazed kamikaze pilots.
Rogers fired again. Another beast flopped down. Minaberry leaned against the wall next to him with his eyes closed. He was mouthing silent prayers to a god he didn’t really believe in during his more rational, less danger-filled moments. He’d never seen so many of the creatures in one place before.
One of the soldiers sparked his flamethrower to life and the tide of monsters came to a screeching halt as flames shot out the window and bathed the front ranks in jellied fire. A horrendous smell, the worst so far, filled the air, making everyone choke. Inhuman screams split the night and the mob fell back like a wave breaking on the shore. The soldier fanned the flamethrower across the front of the building, torching palm trees and yucca plants and monsters alike. The creatures leapt into the air to avoid the splash of fire as the flames licked the dry brown grass and whooshed up the blackening trunks of the palm trees, curling and melting the fronds. The front yard jumped with orange light, a sudden flickering bla
ze, trailing thick smoke.
The creatures retreated, fading across the empty lots on either side of the station, melting into the shadows, disappearing into the darkness. When the smoke finally cleared, the parking lot was empty.
Sewer Pipe
1:50 A.M.
Torres sensed the creature in the dark.
Torres admired its stealth. It moved slowly, nothing forced or hurried, keeping its head down to hide the glow of its iridescent eyes. It had come forward, slithering past the barricade of carcasses, under the noise of the other creatures, covered by their animated screeching. It now moved swiftly and silently, hunting him.
Torres could hardly believe it. They had sent an assassin after him. An inhuman assassin hunting a human one. Okay, Torres thought grimly. I’ve played this game too. He drew his knife and waited.
Then the darkness moved, the faintest blur, and Torres smelled the dead fish stink of the beast as it closed the remaining space between them. At the last second the creature’s face lifted, the jaws opened, exposing dagger-like fangs and a long forked tongue.
Torres lunged and struck with his blade, aiming for one of the eyes. He felt it pop. His knife sank through to the hilt and a warm glowing liquid oozed over his hand. An inhuman squeal resonated throughout the tunnel. The creature twisted. Its tail whipped at Torres and he jerked aside to avoid the barbed stinger. The creature thrashed and Torres pushed the blade deeper, penetrating into the brain cavity. He was entwined with the beast, wrapped around it, his arms and legs held tight. He could feel its enormous strength as it bucked and screamed beneath him. Torres yanked out the knife and stabbed wildly at the screeching face until at last it fell limp and silent.
Siege of Station 19 Page 9