by Hopkin, Ben
It called to him. It sang to him. It seduced him. But comfort? Never.
This was the perfect place. The culmination of all his efforts. All roads, light and dark, had led him to this crossroads.
Time to put the Plan in motion.
The pawns had been set and were arranged in the most strategic of configurations, readied for their sacrifices. The rook had been neutralized, the queen disposed of. And the knight was on his way. Such a clever knight. Such a delightful challenge. And he took delight in so little these days.
Darkness. Silence. But for the breathing…
Darkness.
It would not do, would it, for the Lord of Heaven to gaze upon his Plan? To see the culmination of his war with God. No, not war. Not that.
It was only necessity that had driven him here. Only what was necessary. Surely that was clear?
He pulled the strap down more tightly, securing the form of the tiny girl to the altar.
God approved of sacrifices.
Didn’t He?
CHAPTER 16
Darc took the last step down into Seattle’s Underground. The beams of Trey’s and his flashlights lanced through the absolute darkness, picking up the dancing motes of dust stirred by their arrival. The floating specks gave a feeling of near solidity to the rays of light, making their intrusion into the black almost a violation. If they were to turn those lights off, they would be unable to view their uplifted digits centimeters from their faces.
This wasn’t the Underground that tourists saw, with much more light and somewhat Disney-fied. This was far away from that other part of Seattle, in terms of both physical location as well as the atmosphere it contained within its tunnels.
This was the Underground where even the rodents didn’t dare to tread. It was a barren wasteland. A fossilized relic from an earlier time. There was no life here. This was the place where hope came to die and be buried, never again to see the light of day.
There were no skylights to dot the concrete ceilings, giving its denizens moments of relief from the all-encompassing darkness here below. There were no beautification projects. No regular patrolling by Seattle’s finest. Here, chaos and decay ruled.
The foundations of the streets above them pressed down, their weight and presence a physical club that was continually held over their heads. At times, noise from above would creep down below, the sound waves sliding their way through sewage drains or manholes and then bouncing around from hard surface to hard surface, only to wind up here, where they eventually died. Like everything else here.
A smell of earth and stagnancy invaded Darc’s nostrils. The feel of the air was cool and damp and smelled of death. It caressed his face, entering into his clothing, sapping his body’s natural warmth.
The buildings on either side of them slipped away from their rays of light as if they were ashamed, seeking only to sink farther back into the depths of the dark and their own obscurity. They crouched on the other side of the beams of light, animals waiting only for an opening in which to attack the intruders who had dared bring illumination to this darkest of all pits.
Now the questions remained. Where to go next? What to do?
Darc looked inward to the tracks of light and logic and still encountered mostly anarchy. There had been enough clues to lead them here, but there was no indication of where they should move next. Darc was running blind in a place where running blind could easily be the death of him, his partner, and every uniformed officer who had followed them down into their likely tomb.
The presence of the seven policemen behind him was like the weight of seven separate anvils pressing on different parts of his mind. Risking lives was not new to Darc. There had been many times when he had knowingly led men into danger. But in each of those circumstances, Darc had been able to process with pinpoint accuracy the likelihood of injury and death. Then it was a simple matter of weighing the outcomes in the balance.
Here, there was only a blank nothingness where the percentages should be. It was theoretically possible that every man here would make it out alive and in perfect health. But Darc knew better, even without the glowing certainty of numbers and logic. None of them would make it out unscathed. At this point, with what he knew of the killer, Darc was not sure that any of them would make it out alive.
And yet here he was, leading a group of fellow law enforcement professionals straight into what he knew might be a death trap. A good portion of that was due to the escalation factor of the killer’s operations. They had followed a geometric pattern, not an arithmetic one. The deaths were growing exponentially. The killer had to be stopped. That was true.
But there was another part of Darc that he was only now beginning to discover. The deaths had always been numbers, nothing more, nothing less. If the potential loss of life in the rescue operation were more than the expected number of deaths caused by the killer, Darc would have argued against the operation. At least, that would have been the case a couple of weeks ago.
Now, he was not so confident in that hard-numbers assessment. It would make no logical sense to risk an entire group of police officers to save the life of one little girl. But Darc was no longer sure of what his answer would be if it came down to just that. In fact, that might be exactly what he was doing right at this very moment.
Trey broke the near silence by kicking a loose pebble at the nearest building, an old barbershop, from the looks of the white-and-red pole out front. The stone pinged off of the only intact glass window, leaving a mark but not actually shattering the pane. He huffed out his apparent frustration.
“Who builds a freaking city on top of another one?”
Darc suspected this might be one of the questions Trey referred to as “rhetorical,” but he could not be completely sure. More often than not, he got it wrong. What Trey thought of as his reticence to answer questions was an assumption that Trey already knew the answer and was attempting humor. Darc did not understand most of Trey’s attempts at humor. Better to play this one safe and answer the question.
“With all the fire damage, it was easier to start over.”
“Dude. This is one messed-up way to ‘start over.’ Wouldn’t it have made more sense to raze the old stuff? Your house burns down, you don’t go building on top of what’s left.”
“Pioneer Park. Tidelands,” Darc said, his attention still largely on looking for patterns and new lines of logic. There had to be something here. Trey’s sudden lack of movement caused Darc to return his attention to his partner. Trey stood with his hip cocked, giving Darc an intense look that Trey called a “glare.” It seemed closer to what Darc would think was pain, but Trey was the emotional expert.
“Seriously, Darc. You have got to stop with the cryptic crap. It’s just annoying.”
One of the other policemen, an Officer Brantley, piped up. “I know what he’s talking about.”
Trey muttered to himself while kicking another pebble at the walls that surrounded them. “Of course you do. Someone always does. Not that the someone is ever me.”
Officer Brantley bulled ahead, not seeming to take notice of Trey’s mutterings or mood. His accent betrayed him as having left Chicago for Seattle. Darc noticed the closed-off a sound, as well as the hard, retroflex r. Apparently, Brantley had studied up on his Seattle history when he decided to make the move.
“See, Pioneer Park was always getting flooded ‘cause it was so low. It was just filled-in swamp, basically. So when the fire happened, they figured they’d just kill two birds with one stone. Make everything higher up, you know?” Darc’s partner just glared at the officer, until Brantley finally fired back. “What? My dad was a city planner. He used to show me weird stuff from cities all over the place.”
“Whatever.” Trey’s tone was unusually caustic. “I just want to know what our killer is doing down here.”
But Darc had no attention left to spare on this conversation. Every part of his mind was locked in a struggle to turn the shapes of buildings, random markings on w
indows, or even pieces of splintered wood into symbols. To no avail.
A faint whooshing sound came from a distance down the subterranean walkway. Darc stopped, his sudden lack of movement alerting his partner. Trey held up a hand to the rest of the group.
“Quiet!”
Everyone went rigid, the group noise dying down to nothing but some labored breathing. Darc put the probability at 83 percent that it was asthma from the dust they had all kicked up.
And then they heard it. A scraping. A hissing.
Something was coming.
* * *
She heard the sound.
Psssssssssssst.
Like someone was trying to get her attention in church. Or like her bicycle tire when she ran over that piece of glass. Daddy had taken the tube out of the tire and put it in a bucket filled with water. The hole had made bubbles so he’d know how to make the tire better.
The sound made her happy. That was kinda weird, ‘cause she knew the sound was bad. The meanie man was smiling, so it must be bad. A trap, maybe. Like those dumb ole snakes.
She was still happy, though.
She was happy ‘cause if there was a trap that made a noise like that, a noise that made Meanie smile, then that meant the tall man was on his way. And if the tall man was on his way, then everything was going to be okay.
So she was sad that something bad was going to happen, but she was glad that the man with the gold badge was going to be here soon. And he was super-smart. He wouldn’t let the bad thing keep him from coming.
Sometimes grown-ups didn’t always do what they said. One time Mommy had promised, promised, that she was going to get ice cream, but she forgot. Daddy said that sometimes that happened.
But the tall man wasn’t like other grown-ups. He didn’t talk to her in a high, fakey voice like her teacher. He didn’t say one thing and mean something else, like when Daddy said maybe they would go to Disneyland.
When he said something, he meant it.
He had saved her from the snakes.
He would save her from this, too.
And maybe even find Popeye for her. That would be great. She really missed Popeye. She even missed when he would get sassy with her. If he came back, she wouldn’t get mad at him for that ever, ever again.
She wiggled around on the table, trying not to breathe too fast. When she breathed too fast, it made the beeping start going faster and made her nervous. She looked at the numbers on the thingy behind her head. They were upside down, but they said 20:46, 20:45, 20:44.
That didn’t seem like a very long time.
Less than a SpongeBob Square Pants.
But it was okay. He would get here. He would save her.
She knew it.
* * *
The hissing was getting louder. Much louder. Trey stifled a moan and looked down at his feet, lifting up each foot, searching for hidden reptiles. He was more than a little bit relieved when he didn’t find anything there. Snakes. He just couldn’t handle more snakes.
A gust of wind stirred the dirt and debris at Trey’s feet. It ruffled his hair. That was more than a little bit weird. Trey felt his face scrunch up in confusion. He thought back to his mom’s telling him that if he kept making a certain expression, his face was going to stick that way. He consciously tried to smooth out the muscles of his forehead. This face couldn’t be pretty.
But there was what felt like a more important concern at the moment…
“How could there be wind down—?”
In unison, Darc and Trey shone their flashlights ahead in the gloom. A huge ball of roiling white rushed toward them. Okay. Trey had no idea what the freak that was, but he wasn’t waiting around to find out. Trey screamed at the entire group.
“Go for cover!”
Darc’s hands pushed against him as his partner shoved him bodily toward the entrance to an old bank. Turning his head to see the remainder of the cops with them, Trey watched as they divided into two main splinter groups, three heading to an old-time saloon, two into what looked to be a general store right next door. Two lagged behind, seeming to be unsure of what was going on.
And then it was too late for them to figure out anything ever again. The white cloud wrapped around them, turning them instantly into sparkling copies of the men who had stood there only seconds earlier. Before being swallowed up completely in the cloud of whatever-the-freak-that-was, they looked almost like marble statues with impossibly detailed features, stuck in stone forever.
Trey was not prepared for this. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it sure as hell wasn’t anywhere close to what was going on out there. He released a puff of air that steamed around him like one of those space-cloud thingies. Nebula.
He realized the randomness of his thoughts was in direct proportion to his confusion and panic. He shook his head at what he was seeing, hardly able to credit what his eyes were telling him.
“What…? How…?”
“Liquid nitrogen,” Darc answered, his tone as cold as the cloud outside.
Trey remembered the one science class where he’d actually paid attention in high school. His teacher had brought in a thermos full of liquid nitrogen. He’d spilled it on the floor and showed them how it sizzled like a drop of water in a hot pan. He’d stuck a fully bloomed rose into the substance for a couple of seconds and then shattered it on the table.
Okay. So he now knew what it was. He still had no idea why in the world it would be out there.
“But what’s—?”
“The frozen wasteland…” Darc’s voice trailed off as he seemed to follow some pattern Trey couldn’t see in the icy cloud. He had that thousand-yard stare that said he was doing some kind of mental magic inside his head.
The window in front of them frosted over completely in a matter of seconds, the cold beating even through the solid wall between them and the deadly whiteness. Hoarfrost crept across the floor toward where Darc and Trey were now rapidly backing away, covering up a chair they had passed just moments earlier.
The cold was hunting them.
And they had nowhere to run.
* * *
Officer Manuel Ramirez was claustrophobic. He had never shared this with anyone on the force, ‘cause…well, it was hard enough being the only Latino in the precinct. Didn’t have to give most guys an excuse to razz someone different. Put something like this in front of them, and it would be like seagulls all over rotting garbage. A messy free-for-all.
He was used to not fitting in. He was the only one from his barrio who had made it to college. And then for him to go to the police academy? That had not gone over well with the chulos in the SP. For a while he had worried that he’d have to make his parents and younger sister move in with him to keep them from getting harassed.
At least his fellow officers were pretty good guys. There was even one of them, Murray, whom he would hang out with from time to time, go grab a beer together after work and stuff. But every once in a while, when they’d go down to SP for a bust, one of the guys would start to say something, then look at Ramirez and shut his trap. Didn’t take a genius to figure that one out.
But now here they were, underground, for hell’s sake, and Ramirez had been doing everything he could not to hyperventilate. That was, up until about ten seconds ago. Somehow, after running away from the cloud that had frozen Johansen and Singh in place, the ceiling pressing down on Ramirez seemed like the least of his worries.
They were inside now, and safe. Even if Ramirez was pretty sure the low-hanging roof was about to cave in on him. He took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself, rested his hand on the bar of the old saloon. Cabrón. That counter was cold. He jerked his hand back up, looking at his palm in the glow of his companion’s flashlights. It was red and raw. It looked like he had actually pulled off a layer or two of skin. Man.
Glancing at the mirror on the other side of the bar, Ramirez could see that crystals were forming on the surface of the glass, frosting over his own image within i
t. Whatever was in that cloud was still reaching them somehow.
Ramirez went to back up, but his foot seemed rooted in place, like he had stepped in a pool of superglue or something. Maybe the floor had rotted and he had stepped into a crack? He pulled and tugged, but there was no getting it freed. Turning as best as he could to the other two cops, he did what he could to keep the panic out of his voice.
“Help!”
Murray was the first one at his side, grabbing him under the shoulders and giving a strong pull. Still nothing. The other officer, Nguyen, yanked one of Ramirez’s arms over his shoulder to give him more leverage, motioning to Murray to do the same on the other side. After a count of three, both of them pulled as hard as they could.
This time, it worked. Ramirez was free. Time to get as far away from the front door of this place as possible. Pivoting on his heel, Ramirez went to plant his other foot and tumbled to the floor. He had somehow managed to miss the ground with his shoe. How the hell had that happened?
Glancing down, there was something weird about the perspective. In the dim light, it looked like his leg was much shorter than it should be.
And then Murray shone his flashlight on Ramirez’s leg and the screaming started. It took Ramirez several moments to realize the cries were ripped from his own throat.
Where his foot had been was just a jagged stump.
Back where he had been standing before, a shoe and a sock stood watching him, splintered flesh and bone jutting out from where the sock had fallen down around the ankle. His ankle.
Murray backed away, mumbling to himself. “Oh, mierda. Oh, man.”
Still screaming, his throat raw, Ramirez went to push himself up from the ground, only to find that he was stuck once more. This time, it was his hands and the undersides of his legs.
He could feel nothing but deadness where his limbs should be. The dead feeling continued to creep up his body as both the other officers retreated even further. Ramirez couldn’t even see them now, and his torso refused to twist around to track their progress.