Theresa leaned over and examined the keyhole beneath the red elevator button. It wasn’t for no ordinary key. It was for one of them special round keys like opened a soft drink machine. Who had a key that fit? Darth Vader, maybe? And how could she talk/con him into letting her borrow it for just a little while?
“There are other elevators in the atrium,” Becca said.
“Them’s for guests. Don’t none of them go all the way to the top. This is the only one that does.”
Becca pointed to a lighted exit sign above a nearby door. “There are stairs,” she said.
“Haul these rats up sixteen flights—?”
“No, ride an elevator as high as it goes and then take the stairs.”
Theresa pushed the wheeled laundry hamper into the elevator and looked out the glass wall in the back into the atrium of the building as it ascended to the sixteenth floor. The door swished open and she and Becca hurried through hallways to the back of the building, where they found the keyed service elevator beside an exit sign and a stairway door. Inside the stairwell, they found steps leading down on the left. But a door on their right barred the way to the stairs leading upward. A red sign on it proclaimed Employees Only. It was a heavy metal fire door. Theresa tried the knob. It was locked.
“Theresa, help me take my tail off,” Becca said. Theresa turned to see her twisted around trying to get to the spot where the forked tail was affixed to the fabric of the red tights. “I can’t bend it.” She indicated her mashed finger with a black nail.
Theresa lifted the tail, found two big safety pins that held it to the red tights, unhooked it and dropped the tail on the floor. She gave the pins to Becca, who promptly bent the pointed ends out straight, dropped to her knees in front of the door, stuck the pointed ends of both pins into the lock and began moving them around.
“Spend time on the street and you learn all kinds of useful life hacks.”
Theresa didn’t have no idea what a life hack was.
Becca had her ear close to the doorknob, listenin’. “A deadbolt would be hard to pick with something as flimsy as these pins, but a doorknob…” She continued to wiggle the pins around in the lock. “I’d have frozen to death in Buffalo in a blizzard once if I—”
There was a little clicking sound and Becca turned the knob.
Theresa stood and held the door open while Becca went back out into the hallway and shoved the rolling laundry cart into the stairwell. Each of them grabbed a bag full of rats out of it and started up the concrete steps.
Them rats was heavier than you’d think they’d be. They was big ’uns, some of them was way bigger than cats. Musta been well fed. Theresa didn’t let herself wonder what they ate when they wasn’t having her for dinner.
They come to another landing, then another flight of stairs, and at the top was another door marked Employees Only. But it led into the building on the seventeenth floor and the stairs continued to climb. They was goin’ all the way to the top.
By the time they got to the next landing, where the stairs switched back and led higher still, Theresa was panting and her head was spinning.
Lord, if you’s planning on giving me a heart attack, right now might not be the best time to do it.
“Hold up, Theresa,” Becca said. “I need to catch my breath.”
Shoot, that girl hadn’t even broke a sweat. It was Theresa’s breath she was worried about.
“Set your sack down and…” This time it was Becca trying to do the distractin’. She wasn’t no babbler like Theresa was, though, and struggled to come up with something to say. “Uh…tell me how balloon drops work,” she finally blurted out.
Theresa held onto her bag and squared her shoulders. “I can walk and chew gum at the same time, child,” she said and slowly lifted her foot up onto the step in front of her. “For a balloon drop they stretch a big ole net…across that roof opening…and toss balloons down into it,” she said.
Up onto the step. She lifted her foot to the next one.
“Them balloons…is filled with air…not helium…so they won’t float.”
Another step up. And another.
“The switch in the ’lectronics room releases one side of the net and…”
The metal door at the top of the steps came into view. Becca dropped her rat sack on the steps and hurried past Theresa to it.
God, you wouldn’t let this one be locked, too, would you?
Becca tried the knob, then dropped to her knees and went to work with the safety pins while Theresa ponderously climbed the final steps, noting at the top that the nearby service elevator didn’t require a key here on the top floor. Figured. How long would that monster wait before he set off his bomb? She’d read that they was a big awards ceremony—when they’d give out a whole bunch of plaques along with the gold-plated manhole cover—and that each one of the candidates was going to speak for five minutes. She’d never yet heard a political candidate speak for only five minutes. Whitworth would have to wait at least until his turn to speak was over. She hoped he came dead last.
Becca continued to work on the door; Theresa continued to fidget.
“I bent the pin on the first door,” Becca said without moving her ear from the knob. Now I can’t seem to—”
The knob clicked and then turned. Becca got to her feet and eased the door inward. She stuck her head in and looked around. Then she reached down and picked up her rat sack and stepped through the doorway with Theresa on her heels, closing the door as she entered.
They could see no one. No lights were on in the cavernous room, an empty attic-like space between the ceiling of the Balloon Ballroom below and the roof of the building. But light shone up through the mountain of balloons lying on the netting stretched across the gigantic opening extending the whole length and width of the room. There was a ten-foot-wide catwalk between the opening and the walls, and the rails around the catwalk formed a bowl into which workers had placed thousands of colored balloons. From above, red, orange, blue and green light flickered from the neon balloons at the four corners of the outside of the building, visible because the domed roof of the building had been rolled back tonight to reveal open sky above. Only there was no sky. There was just that odd gray fog, turning the neon balloons into colorful blurs.
“Theresa…do you see it?” Becca’s voice was small and hushed. “The fog. Do you see how it’s coming up from below?”
“No, sugar, I don’t see that part. I just see the fog.”
“It’s coming up through the pile of balloons and leaking out into the world, dirty mist, ugly gray vapor. It’s so…cold.” She hugged her arms to her body and began to shake.
Theresa picked up her rat sack. “You go around that side and I’ll go around this way,” she said. “Toss them rats out into the balloons spaced out even as you can ’cause we want to give everybody an equal opportunity to get a dead rat dropped on they heads.”
But as Theresa walked along the railing, pitching rats out into the pile of balloons like she was throwing feed to chickens, the fear grew in her belly. She’d told that Darth Vader fella them things was rubber rats—and he’d believed it ’thout a second’s hesitation! What if all them people down below thought they was rubber rats, too, that it was part of the Halloween festivities—balloons and rubber rats?
What if they thought it was a joke and nobody got scared?
What if nobody left?
They’d all die. She and Becca would die right along with ’em.
Sebastian could see nothing but fuzzy white blurs of lights in the dense fog as the barge began to pass into the outer suburbs of Cincinnati. He pulled the burner cell phone from his pocket, the old flip-top kind, and checked to make sure the number was already dialed in. When he caught first sight of the target, he would call the number and let it ring one time. It would be set to vibrate, of course, and that instant of vibration in his pocket would tell the Boss that he had exactly nine minutes to get out of the top floor of the building.
Getting to his knees, Sebastian lifted the missile launcher onto his right shoulder. When he lowered his face to the sight, the blurry shoreline leapt into focus. Few details, but the outlines of buildings, trees and cars were plainly visible where looking through the fog had revealed nothing but blur.
He had fired a Javelin twice before, so he knew what to expect. There would be a blast of fire out the back of the launcher as it propelled the missile twenty feet or so out into the air, where the propulsion unit on the missile itself would fire and the guidance system would direct the payload to the target.
Sebastian had scouted the target several times. The phalanx of doors along the ballroom walls that opened into the gigantic lobby/atrium were fire doors set in steel casings. The two small doors for staff at the back of the ballroom were not. The steel-casing doors would likely hold, containing the blast so that inside the ballroom the damage would be catastrophic.
When the ballroom exploded, Sebastian’s job would be done and his operatives’ jobs would begin. After the blast, the Boss would send out a wordless group text. The incoming text would vibrate in the pocket phones of one operative on each team. That would be their signal to “fire at will” on the targets that’d been picked out.
Sebastian’s falling domino would knock over other dominos in California, New York, Illinois and Louisiana. He couldn’t imagine what the total death toll might be. The parade in Los Angeles boasted half a million spectators, the Halloween celebration in New York City billed itself as the biggest block party in the world. The buildings close around the blast sites would concentrate the explosive power and make them more deadly.
He watched the lighted buildings glide by in the gloom, visible only through the Javelin sight.
Then the Bank of Ohio building burst into view! He tensed, shifting his weight a little because kneeling with the heavy weapon on his shoulder had cut the circulation to his right leg and he couldn’t feel his right—
There!
Fuzzy red, orange, green and blue orbs suddenly materialized, glowing like bright marbles inside a cotton ball. Through the sight they were clear. Balloons.
Without moving the launcher off his shoulder, he reached his left hand into his right breast pocket, retrieved the phone and flipped it open. He punched “call,” heard the phone ring once, killed the call and hurled the phone out into the river. Then he started the timer on his wristwatch.
The Boss’s meter was now running. When the digital readout on Sebastian’s watch blinked 00:00 precisely nine minutes from now, he would fire. If the Boss wasn’t safely out of harm’s way by then…that was not Sebastian’s problem. He’d already collected his fee—in solid gold bars.
Crock had somehow gotten it into his head that he might just make it out of this alive.
Riiiiiiight.
After all, he didn’t fold when bloody, dismembered, rotting burned/shot/strangled corpses were paraded in front of him; he’d stood up to the freak show in the Efreet’s Carnival of Monstrosities.
Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and see the aberrations of nature gathered from the jungles of Borneo to the slopes of the Himalayas. Hur-ray, hur-ray, hur-ray.
But he couldn’t hear the blame and accusations—the lies hurled at him. He wouldn’t collapse under an intolerable burden of guilt, shame and remorse. He’d found a way out. He was going to make it.
Then he’d ticked off the Smoke that Spoke. Note to self: never yank a tail that might have a dragon attached to the other end.
He’d made a smart remark and the world had exploded. The cavern he thought was reality—hard, stone reality—dissolved in an instant and was replaced by a scene from hell. Literally. A sea of flames washed up against a charred, desolate beach not twenty feet away, and stretched out as far as he could see beneath a sky of molten tar. Creatures from the worst animated horror show Hollywood had ever produced climbed over the burnt rocks and ashy boulders on the shore, swarms of them like locusts, big and small, each an individual abomination—all of them vicious and angry, attacking each other, brawling in tangles of rage.
The air was no longer the constant-temperature cool of a cave. It was hot and dry and the stench was…staggering, overwhelming. Was this what Theresa could smell when a demon came near? It was the reek of rot and decay, excrement and vomit and moldering corpses, all mixed up with the singed hair stink that had emanated on sultry summer days from the back door of the crematorium down the street from his grandmother’s house. The air was somehow thick, too, like it wasn’t air at all but some substance more like water—the squalid water of a pigsty or the stagnant pool where the bloated corpse of a dead dog floated.
Then the cloud was gone, and the thick air was no longer why he was having trouble breathing. He couldn’t pull air into his lungs because what he saw hammered the air out of him. The horror of it filled his head with a boiling black ugliness that burned away thought and desire, past, present and future. Purpose and intent turned to ash. Who Charles Crocker had been when he stepped into that cavern popped out of existence like a fly hitting an electric bug killer; his mind was consumed by that lone image.
The creature obscured by the boiling black clouds—that had lurked unseen in the pillar of smoke in the painting in Bishop’s office—stepped into the light. Towering fifty feet above them, a monster stood in the inferno of the burning red sea. It was the color of the flames that licked off its body—black and red and orange. The muscles bulging from its arms, shoulders and chest were so enormous they stretched taut the scaly, scorched red-yellow skin that glistened with a thin sheen of—not sweat, it was red. Blood? Fire danced on the razor tips of claws—there were too many fingers, eight, ten, maybe more. Horns grew out of its head, six sets of them: four from the sides and back and two black curling ones on top, their tips as sharp as ice picks. Two more huge horns like a bull’s, except bright red, protruded from either side of its forehead. Its ears were large and pendulous with dangling gold earrings gleaming in the flickering light. When it unfurled its black bat wings, they rose twenty feet above it to form a canopy lined with dagger-sharp spikes. Flames leapt from the edges of the wings like tongues of fire off the charred remains of a log. Below the wings, a tail twitched back and forth, flinging thick green venom from the sharpened spike that stuck out from a scorpion stinger as big around as a basketball.
One hand clutched a scimitar that glowed red hot, as if it’d just been yanked from a forge. The other arm ended in a stump below the elbow.
But it was the face. The face…
Where its eyes should be were sockets with fire in the center, blazing up off unseen eyeballs. Or maybe it had no eyes, maybe it saw with flames. Its features were irregular and boney, with nubs on one cheek and a jagged slash that bled flames down the other. The look on the face was utter loathing. The thing hated. No, it didn’t merely hate. It was hate. It wasn’t filled with evil, it was made of evil. It was a life form devoid of all goodness in the grip of a rage so pure it consumed the ugly features. It twisted and contorted them in such maniacal intensity the body could not contain it and the creature threw its head back and opened a mouth full of three rows of broken, jagged teeth curved inward. And it roared.
Even through his deaf ears, Crock heard the roar—with his bones and his skin and his blood. The roar was more than sound, it was a single corrupt thing that would have shattered glass, clear and horrible beyond description. It was the sound of pure, consummate evil, and to hear it was to die.
Crock’s legs folded out from under him and he dropped to his knees, unable to look away from the horror and knowing that every second he continued to look at it, to see it, to countenance its presence in reality stripped him of some essential element of his humanity that he’d never recover.
There was another sound, too, closer—a whining, moaning groan of fear and submission. He could hear it clearly because he was making it.
Jack had fallen to his knees at some point, too, and was rocking back and forth, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Lyla” had transformed into a hideous creature with a lizard’s face and red eyes. And Jack was mouthing her name, mourning the loss of his wife again as if she’d just jumped out a window a hundred stories high and plunged in her red dress to her death.
Only the angel was unmoved by the spectacle. Andi clutched her, arms around her waist, trying to bury her face in her side. But the creature leaned toward Andi, halted only five feet away, and said something Crock couldn’t hear. The little girl peeked out at it. Then slowly lifted her face, so pale it reflected the glow of the monster as if she had a sunburn.
She shook her head. Back and forth.
The monster said something else and Andi screamed, “Nooooo!” a cry of raw, jagged desolation, and then she slid down the angel’s body to the floor and lay there sobbing.
“Noooooo!”
There was no mistaking Andi’s voice this time! Daniel’s little girl was in danger, in pain. She needed her daddy!
Daniel seldom swore, but he cursed then, yanking on the rope wrapped around the stalagmite on the other side of the chasm to pull out all the slack. Like there was slack! It was too short and all the pulling in the world wasn’t going to stretch it out far enough.
He began to cry, not sob. It hurt far too bad for something as simple and cleansing as tears. His body merely shook slightly, his face a mask of grief, and tears streamed down his face.
He sank to his knees on the cavern floor.
God, please. Help me.
He spoke the words aloud, without enough volume to echo, but there was a soft repetition of the sound off the surfaces in the cavern all the same.
Help. Help. Help.
Then silence.
He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of—
His shirt.
He didn’t stop to unbutton it, just yanked it open, sending buttons pinging off the floor and nearby stalagmites like ricocheting bullets. He ripped it off his body and with shaking hands tied one of the long sleeves to the end of the piece of rope, then stretched the rope tight across the chasm, wrapped the shirt around the stalagmite on this side and tied the other sleeve to the rope.
There was not enough fabric for anything but simple square knots. He tied three of them and pulled the knots as tight as he could, then sat for a moment, looking at what he’d done. Could his simple cotton shirt hold his weight without ripping? Would the knots hold?
There was only one way to find out.
He stepped to the edge of the crevice next to the rope, sat down and dangled his feet into the hole. Yeah, he could hand-over-hand it…macho style…if his grip held. No, it’d be safer to shinny across the expanse of open air dangling beneath the rope, holding on with his hands and locking his feet together above the rope.
It took him a few moments to figure out how to get into the right position. Then he kicked off his shoes and they vanished soundlessly into the black chasm.
After that, he didn’t hesitate. Straddling the rope, he inched out onto it, gradually letting it hold his weight. He looked back over his shoulder. The knots had pulled tight but were holding. Then he lowered himself beneath the rope and began to inch across it to the other side.
Air lifted out of the crevice beneath him, the cold breath of a tomb. A breeze ruffled his hair, and it occurred to him that there might be a way out of the caves down there at the bottom, not that Billy Ray or Jeff were in any condition to find the opening.
Daniel was halfway across the chasm, right in the middle, when the knots he’d tied in his shirt let go.