They flew for an hour or more. Midnight found them far beyond any stretch of country with which Dave was familiar. He peered out at the ground below them every now and then. Sometimes he saw the fat snaking lanes of a well-lit freeway cutting through the primordial dark. More often, when they crossed the road net, they flew over poorly lit one- or two-lane blacktop. Once or twice he picked out small freestanding buildings, sometimes lit with neon. Gas stations or general stores, something like that, Dave thought. He’d grown tired after eating, tired to the point of slurring his words and struggling to keep his eyes open at times. Heath hadn’t lost interest in anything he had to say, but he decided that Hooper needed to be “properly debriefed,” and he didn’t want to “contaminate” that process in the helicopter, and so he let his man catch a little shut-eye.
Dave fought to stay awake mostly because he dreaded falling asleep, fearful of what might chase him through his dreams, but he needn’t have worried. The food brought on a warm and heavy lassitude, and despite his best efforts and the roar of the engine and rotors, the motion of the helicopter periodically put him under. When he passed out, he slept heavily, without nightmares or waking terrors. It was just like flying out to the rig, sleeping off a party. He did experience a moment of profound disorientation upon being jolted awake as they touched down on the tarmac in the darkness. The hookers, the chopper flight out to the platform, everything—the memories all came at him too fast, and he had trouble placing himself in time and space. He rubbed the stubble on his face as the pilot shut down the engine. It felt like the only real thing in the world.
“Where are we?” he asked, feeling dizzy. He also was thirsty from the chocolate milk. Dairy did that to him, and he regretted not sticking to Coke.
“A training area,” Heath said. “Off the books. You can’t find it on Google if you try. At least not for now. If you come with me, Mr. Hooper, I will get you bedded down for a few hours. You need some real rest. You have a busy day tomorrow, and I have reports to file. Many reports and a few letters to write, I’m afraid.”
Dave didn’t like the sound of that. He’d had to write a couple of those letters. They sucked.
“Hey, good luck, man,” Allen said, taking his hand in a firm grip. The chief’s eyes looked troubled by the earlier violent insanity, but it was the first genuine goodwill Dave had felt from anybody all day, and he appreciated the gesture.
“Thanks for the chocolate bars,” he said, yawning and feeling a little embarrassed by it. “I think you might have saved my life, chief. Seriously.”
“Meh,” Allen said. “That was some nasty business tonight, man. You totally saved our hides. That thing had us dead.”
Not everyone’s, Dave thought before stumbling as he increased his pace to catch up with Heath, who had forged ahead. He left Chief Allen looking a little bereft and lonesome in the deep gloom of the night. For some sort of secret military base—that was what a restricted facility was, wasn’t it?—his surroundings looked like any number of mining camps or depots he’d been through over the years: prefab huts, shipping containers, warehouses, vehicle parks, and security fencing. A light drizzle fell from low clouds, probably the far edge of the storm that had been closing in on New Orleans as they left.
There didn’t appear to be much activity in this part of the base, but then, it was late at night and Dave had no idea how big the place was. The one-legged special-ops guy led him up a muddy path to a demountable hut in which Dave could see lights burning. Dude moved well for a cripple. You wouldn’t have known from the way he carried himself that he was part cyborg down there. Heath had said something about an airfield, but aside from the helicopter pad there was no sign of a runway anywhere nearby. By then, however, he was too tired and out of it to care. The exhaustion that had nailed him in the car had rolled back in like a very high tide. The lunacy of the day felt long distant, unreal. He wanted a hot shower and a soft bed. Or even an army cot. And what would be best of all would be crawling into that cot and waking up in the morning to discover he really was in some motel somewhere, fucked off his skull on drugs.
He knew that wasn’t going to happen, though. As much as he felt like he was sleepwalking, this was real. He’d seen two men die a few hours ago. Then he’d killed whatever had killed them. The Longreach—that was real, too. As distant and abstract as it felt. All of it. He stifled a yawn and nearly tripped himself dragging his feet up the stairs. His head was reeling.
Heath pulled back a screen door and thumbed a combination into the keypad of the sturdier metal door behind it. The lock disengaged, and light spilled out as he pushed on the handle.
“Through here,” he said. Dave wasn’t expecting what he found inside. A nurse was sitting at a desk doing paperwork under a hooded lamp; behind her half a dozen or so beds were occupied by men and women Dave recognized as his coworkers from the Longreach. Well, one woman, anyway: Charlene Disch from the flight ops center. She was asleep, probably sedated given the way her face was twitching and small moans were escaping from between her lips. Every once in a while she’d start kicking and shivering before settling back down again to a low-level snore.
In the cot next to hers lay Vince Martinelli, so big that he spilled over the sides and his feet dangled in space off the end. And in the cot after Vince he thought he recognized J2. His spirits lifted a little.
“Try not to wake them,” said the nurse. “They’ve had a tough time of it. The last of the debriefs wrapped up only two hours ago. I had to fill them full of Ambien to get them all down.”
“Who you got here?” Dave asked, keeping his voice low, fighting back exhaustion but needing to know. He’d been trying to get a line on his guys all day, and this was the first real proof he had that any of them had made it out in one piece. It was also the first evidence he had of his not being an A-Class fuckup. His people got out alive. These ones anyway.
Nurse Hubbard wore the same digital jungle camouflage fatigues as Allen. A cup of coffee steamed under her desk lamp, illuminating a blizzard of forms, records, and notes. She searched around in the confusion of papers for a moment, the bags under her eyes showing the weight of her day at Camp Mysteryland. She found what she was looking for, a clipboard, and with a glance to Captain Heath for the okay, she handed it to Dave.
There was a list of names on it, all of them people Dave knew.
“These are the people you said were missing,” Dave said as he read the names, blinking once or twice to clear his vision, which was still blurred with weariness.
“They’re not missing anymore,” Captain Heath said. “I apologize for the confusion. We’ve had our own troubles trying to sort things out in the chaos. In any case, here they are.”
Dave’s temper flared at the obvious attempt to wave away the deception.
Heath put his hand on Dave’s shoulder, almost a fatherly gesture, which was odd, since he was sure he had a couple of years on the captain, but it was the most human thing he had seen the guy do since they’d met.
“I need you to know that we are trying to be forthright and completely up front with you. I am pathologically honest by nature,” Heath said. “It’s a weakness of mine.”
“It doesn’t seem to have hurt your career,” Dave said.
“It has, more than you would know,” Heath said. “When we have information we can share with you, we will do so. I hope you will do the same with us.”
He means it, Dave thought. But meaning something and making it happen? Two different things. Especially with the fucking warheads. His brother had taught him that. In a way, Heath reminded him of Marty Grbac. Just as Allen had. Or maybe he was just looking for reminders of his friend when there were none to be found. Physically they couldn’t have been more different: a huge Polack meat locker and an African-American whipcord pulled tight enough to snap if you plucked him the wrong way. But Marty had been a perpetually earnest born-again Boy Scout, and Dave suspected that Heath might be a member of that happy-clapping congregation, too.
He tried to call up a memory of Marty offering a prayer before every meal. Marty making the sign of the cross every time he climbed into a helicopter. Marty boring everyone senseless with exciting new engine parts for his motorcycle that he’d scored on eBay. Anything to drive away the image of the Hunn sucking on him as if he were an oversized frozen tequila pop. The image, the fatigue, and the stress of the day finally pulled Dave’s plug. He staggered forward, crashing into Hubbard’s desk, nearly knocking over her mug of coffee. The room swirled and swam around him, and he felt Captain Heath grab him by the elbow, half carrying and half pushing him toward one of the cots. The scuffed linoleum floor pitched and yawed underfoot as though they were at sea. He felt himself falling down the face of a great black wave. Crying out. But the wave closed over him before he knew what he was trying to say.
Someone was shaking his shoulder. It wasn’t the first time Dave had experienced that sensation of rocking back and forth in his flesh while dope and booze sloshed around in his head. So deep was his slumber that the sounds that reached him were akin to someone shouting at him from above the water. It sort of reminded him of someone’s wife screaming at the top of her lungs while he went down on her in a hot tub. That had been in a company compound in Saudi Arabia. She wasn’t his wife, of course.
The rocking continued, back and forth. For once, blessedly, there was no tightening band of iron wrapped around his poor skull, no asshole pounding away to a bass beat with a sledge inside his brain. He felt remarkably clean, disgustingly healthy, and even a little blissed out.
“Dave!”
It must be important. The rig is on fire, or is it the roof? We don’t need no water, Mom; let the motherfucker burn.
“What?” the muffled man’s voice said. “Wake up, Dave.”
He recognized the voice as Vince Martinelli, and he came awake as abruptly as light flooding a darkened bedroom when you flicked the switch. There was no grogginess or confused dislocation. The transition from deep sleep to wakefulness was instant. He remembered all but falling into the hut some time ago—he had no idea how many hours, or minutes, had passed—and then Vince was shaking him and saying his name. There was nothing in between. Just a void.
He opened his eyes and blinked the crust of sleep from them. It was morning. He could tell by the quality of the light in the room. It was different, natural. He was still dressed in the Eddie Bauer gear Allen had given him back at the hospital, but somebody had undone his belt and taken off his shoes. The ever-thoughtful Heath, perhaps, or maybe that nurse. She’d been a little bit into him, he thought.
“Vince, hey, you okay?”
Vince was leaning right over his cot. He looked terrible, with raccoon eyes and pouchy, sagging flesh hanging from his face. Juliette Jamieson hovered around behind the second shift boss, regarding Dave with a deeply anxious expression. He knew that look. That was the look people gave him when they expected him to Sort This Shit Out.
Dave was tempted to run for the door.
“Oh, thank God,” Vince said in a voice that seemed to have lost most of its power. “I thought you were gone, man. I’ve been trying to wake you, but you wouldn’t wake up. Like you was in some sorta coma or something.”
“I’m fine,” Dave assured him, sitting up and swinging his feet over the side of the camp bed. In fact, he felt better than fine. He felt as though he’d just smashed out the most awesome gym session of his life, as though he could walk out into the street and bench-press a few cars. And then he remembered Lieutenant Dent flying across the room yesterday. He stood up, but carefully, making sure not to lay even a finger on his friend.
His pants were loose. He took the belt in one, two more notches, gently. A quick glance around the room told him they were alone.
J2 edged around Vince. She looked as though she didn’t want to be overheard.
“Dave,” she said in a stage whisper. “I think we’re prisoners here. They’re not letting us go. My ma will be havin’ kittens by now.”
“Be cool, J2,” he said in as reassuring a voice as he could. “I came in last night under my own steam. Guy brought me in, Captain Heath, he was kind of a puckered ass, but he was okay. They got their reasons for all the security, I guess. And, er, where are the others?” Dave asked when he noticed that the rest of the cots were empty. “I think I saw Charlene in here last night. And a couple of other guys from the Longreach. But I crashed out.”
Vince looked over his shoulder as though he feared he, too, was being watched. “I know. I’ve been trying to wake you for half an hour. I coulda lit a fire under your ass, Dave, and you’da slept through it.”
“So where are they? Did Heath take them?”
Vince Martinelli nodded gravely. “The scary black dude? Him and some other guys. They were all armed, Dave. Not rough with it or anything but acting like they’d shoot us if we gave them any trouble.”
J2 nodded in agreement, her eyes wide and fearful. She hadn’t been out on the rig long enough to see what was happening down on the lower decks, but she’d probably heard plenty about it while she shuttled the casualties to the other platforms and back to shore. After last night Dave wasn’t very surprised that they’d put a bag on her and any other firsthand witnesses. Made denying the truth and the madness of it a little easier, he supposed. Funny. On TV when the secret government conspiracy spooled up, you were always rooting for the rogue agent or the investigative reporter or whoever to bust the thing wide open. But having seen what he’d seen in the last twenty-four hours, Dave wasn’t convinced he was with Mulder and Scully on this. Annie, he knew, would freak the fuck out. Multiply her reaction about 350-million-fold and you’d have the likely response of the American populace.
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “Look. There’s some weird shit going down. Out on the platform …” He paused, looking at his knuckles, which had healed so perfectly that you never would have imagined he’d taken all the skin off them pounding a monster’s skull into street pizza late last night. “Here as well.”
Dave struggled to push down the feeling of vertigo that wanted to seize him.
Vince Martinelli heaved himself up slowly from where he was crouched at the edge of the bed. He stood a few inches taller than Dave and had to lean forward to speak to him when he lowered his voice. “You’re fuckin’ telling me, Dave? I was there. I saw it all. I was there before you got to the platform. I saw what happened to Marty and the others. And then you … I mean, what the fuck, man? What was that thing? And those other things? With the claws? And you? Everyone else went up against those things is dead or busy dying right now. But you …”
“Vince told me, Dave. He told me what you did out there,” said J2. “You’re a hero.”
No. Dave was a freak and an accident and maybe contaminated with some sort of toxic monster goo that was fucking his shit right up; that was what Dave was. He wanted to wave her away, but Vince had taken hold of his arms and dug his fingers in, shaking him a little, as if the truth might fall out. Recalling what had happened at the hospital, Dave gently placed a hand on one thick forearm and eased it away.
“I don’t know, guys,” he said. “I remember everything pretty well, up until the moment I hit that thing with Marty’s splittin’ maul. After that, it’s all a blank till I woke up in the hospital.”
He didn’t share with J2 and Vince his strange, newly acquired knowledge of the Hunn and its Fangr attendants. The navy guys had let him tell his insane story. And they’d dealt with one of those things up close and nasty personal. It had killed two of them, and they’d driven through the night with the corpse of the splatter-headed fucker roped down to the roof of their SUV. That was the sort of thing that had to make a guy receptive to a little weirder than usual storytelling. But he didn’t think Vince was ready to roll with that level of crazy. Because truth to tell and sure as hell, Dave Hooper wasn’t.
“You saw what happened, Vince,” he said, leaning forward and joining their conspiratorial circle. “You tell me what the fuck that was about. Last thing I remember from the Longreach is swinging on that … animal, whatever. And then I wake up in the hospital. A couple of hours later I’m here. I haven’t even checked in with the office yet. They probably think I’m still out on the rig.”
Martinelli eased himself down onto the cot, which creaked under his heavy frame. He moved like an old man with ground glass in his joints. J2 took up a perch on the cot across from them.
“I’m sorry, Dave, I’m really sorry, man,” Vince said, shaking his head in distress. “I tried to follow you in there. I really tried … But …”
Juliette patted him on the arm. “You did fine, Vince. You got us off the rig. That was better than most of them. You helped get Dave out.”
Dave gave him a very light fist bump on the shoulder.
“My man! There you go.”
But Vince wasn’t about to shake off his blue funk.
“I fucking wimped it, man. You … you rocked those fucking freaks. I just—”
Dave cut him off as gently as he could.
“Hey, be cool, Vince. I was there, remember? You don’t have to apologize to me. Most of the guys on that rig were clawing each other’s eyes out to get away from those things. I saw you stiff-arm a couple of them off J2’s chopper, remember? But you manned up and did the job, buddy.”
The second shift boss had his head in his hands and looked as though he was trying to fold himself into a small ball of grief. An impossible task, given his size. Dave laid a hand on his shoulder again and squeezed, but very, very gently. J2 patted his arm and cooed meaningless nothings like a mother soothing the many hurts of a small boy. When Vince Martinelli looked up, his eyes were red-rimmed and watery.
Dave paid him off with a level stare.
“Tell me what happened, Vince. I need to know. Come on.”
Vince took in a deep breath and gathered himself. He tried to speak, but instead he choked up a little, coughing to cover it. Another breath, and he sat up straight. J2 patted him on the back. It really did remind Dave of dealing with a child.
“I could hear that thing in there with you. In the lounge. I could hear it … eating and, I dunno … laughing?”
Hooper confirmed that with a somber nod.
“Yeah, I thought so, too. Go on.”
“I knew … I knew what was around that corner, Dave. And I let you go, ’cause I just, I couldn’t.”
He appeared to slump forward a little again and lifted his head only when J2 patted his enormous suntanned neck and said quietly, “Come on, Vince.”
“It’s all right, man,” Dave added. “We’re out of it now. Keep going. The navy guy, Heath, he told me you saw it all.”
He shook his head. Emphatically.
“No. Not all of it. It took me a while to get my shit together. But I did. When I heard you cussing the thing out. You called it a motherfucker. Do you remember?”
He didn’t and shook his head.
“I seen you pick up Marty’s splitting maul. Not that I thought it’d do much good against those fucking devil things. But I knew you had it. And I could hear you cursing out that thing. And it was sort of laughing or chuckling, and anyway, I got moving again. I picked up some crowbar that was lying there. Thought maybe if I got a lucky hit in, you know? Or maybe I could just swing it and drag you back out.”
Dave encouraged him to keep going. The Hunn would have killed Vince just as surely as it had killed Marty. He knew that but kept it to himself. Let Vince keep a shred of dignity for himself. Probably wouldn’t do to let him know just how close he’d come to being devil food, too.
“Anyways, I come around the corner just as you charged at the big one. It was sitting there. Honest to fucking God, Dave, I’d swear that thing was laughing at you. Like when Marty laughed at that college boy who called him out in Houston that time. You remember that. Fucking Marty.”
Dave remembered. Bible thumper or not, it wasn’t a good idea to upset Marty Grbac. “Sure. Go on.”
“So you started swinging that thing, and there’s not much headroom in there, so you took out some roof tiles and an aluminum strut. Fucking plaster dust and shit everywhere. But that big ape’s not laughing no more. It’s looking sort of shocked and then really fuckin’ pissed at you and …”
A spasm passed across Vince’s face. Like he needed to throw up.
“It took off Marty’s arm then. You remember that?”
J2 was looking a little the worse for the telling of it, too.
Dave remembered the moment. An unpleasant memory he’d be a long time leaving behind.
“And it’s waving Marty’s arm around like one of them conductors at the opera.”
Vince was caught up in the telling of it now. And the more he spoke, the more came back to Dave as recovered memory.
“Those nasty little scissor-hand fuckers that come up the rig first; they were starting to move then, but they were too late.”
He smiled, but without any joy.
“You got that thing right in the snout. Or that hole where it shoulda had a snout. It was looking up at you, fucking fangs everywhere, but it was too slow. Like you get late on Thanksgiving, you know … when you’ve eaten and drunk too much.”
“Yeah. I know that one,” Dave said, and as he said it he knew it to be true in this case, too.
Urgon Htoth Ur Hunn had feasted well. Too well. The Hunn had found himself bloated and blood drunk just when he encountered a calfling with the horns to glory itself in …
Dave shook his head, trying to throw off the … memory … someone or something else’s memory, like a spider that had crawled into his hair.
He was convinced now that he was not just recalling the encounter as he remembered but as …
(Urgon Htoth Ur Hunn)
… as this fucking Urgon thing did.
“What happened?” he asked, not really wanting to know but needing to.
“You killed it, Dave. Smashed its fucking coconut. And there was this … I dunno … like a flash or something. And I went down. Man, I was vomiting and spinning out, and … and it was like the worst fucking hangover I ever had, back in the day. But it passed quick. I got up.”
Vince looked him in the eye as though seeing Dave for the first time. J2 was staring at him in the same way. Perhaps she was scratching him off her long list of totally un-wedding-worthy assholes.
“You were down, man. I thought you were dead.” The shift boss shook his head slowly. “But it was dead. The monster. And all its little monster friends, too. They got a few licks on you, but they were gone, too. Like they died of shock or some shit.”