“End.” The dragon watched me with his huge black eyes. “You can gain the measure of a man by the nature of the friends he keeps. I have studied all of the ICMHP attendees. The courage of this fair maiden friend of yours speaks volumes about your character, Mr. Pitt. I’m certain she will succeed in this endeavor.”
“Calling her a maiden might be a stretch, but yeah, Holly will get the job done, no matter what.”
“If it is not presumptuous of me, I know that you have some other members of your stalwart company out there, and I would be willing to send this same message to them as well.”
I’d heard that some of the Las Vegas team had stayed up north just in case anything else popped up in the aftermath of the spider problem. “That would be great.”
“Very well. I will do so. There is one last order of business, Mr. Pitt. A subject that I am most loath to broach. We have already established that the nature of our current adversary is a mystery, but another question remains. What, or rather, who, woke it up? Display original images.”
The screens changed, and now all of them were showing different still pictures, and though they were all different images, from diverse times and places, they were all of the same subject. Some were carved in stone, others were scratched in the dirt, a few were spray painted like graffiti, and one was scrawled in blood on the other side of crime scene tape. My throat was suddenly dry. It was the mysterious symbol first shown to me by my father, since seen by Hunters around the world, and most recently on the ceiling of the containment unit at Dugway.
“You know about this?”
The dragon nodded his head, and it was like having a car jangled above you by a crane. “Of course I do. Word had reached me from many sources about his sign appearing again. I’m afraid the time of his return is upon us.”
The dragon collected information along with antiques. If Management could teach me about this new threat, then there would be no reason to involve my dad…“Give me a name and an address and we can start arranging his funeral.”
“He has many names, none of which you would have heard. He comes from an age before this one, when dragonkind were still young on the face of the Earth. His faction in the eternal war has been silent for a very long time. They are enemies to the Old Ones, but that does not make him a friend to you, quite the contrary, in fact. He will remake this world and it will spell your end. The presence of these signs was another motivating factor for the organization of ICMHP, for though there is much I do not care for about the human world, its continued existence provides me a measure of comfort and amusement, and thus I would prefer not to see it destroyed. I would very much like to see him stopped.”
I got off the ancient chair and made it a few halting steps toward the screens. “It’s real, isn’t it? The pattern that we discovered. There’s an invasion going on.”
“These are but the opening moves of the game. He has come forth briefly before, to test the waters, if you will, but each time before he found the world not yet ready, and returned to his slumber. However, this time feels different to me. If this is the case, then the invasion will come soon enough, and believe me, you will know. What we are seeing now is a testing of man’s defenses. There are many things that are buried deep in the world or far beneath the sea, dead but dreaming. He is waking them one by one, setting them free, all in order to watch how man reacts. I believe it was no accident that this latest creature has beset us here today.” The dragon regarded me for a long time. “You Hunters are being tested. Pray to your God of light and ask that you do not fall short. I would do the same, if my gods were still alive.” Management gave a melancholy sigh.
“I want to know everything you know about—” There was a sudden wailing noise and all of the monitors flashed red. “What’s happening?”
“Hmmm…” Management swiveled his head back to the monitors. “Every alarm in the facility has gone off.” He growled low in his mighty chest and made a series of clicks with his forked tongue. The computer system understood the dragon language, and all the monitors began to flick rapidly between different scenes, far faster than my eyes could track. About half of them turned to rapidly scrolling text. Management seemed to have no trouble devouring all of the input simultaneously. “Interesting. The exterior views are showing extreme weather conditions. There is monitoring equipment atop my hotel. It indicates that we are experiencing a hurricane. From the humans’ reactions, there seems to be a disturbance upon the roof.”
“Julie’s up there!”
“Your mate, yes. Congratulations on your new egg. The elevator has been unlocked.” I ran for it, leaping over priceless trash. Management called after me. “We will continue this talk later. Make haste, Mr. Pitt. Destiny awaits you.”
Chapter 18
The elevator that had seemed so fast earlier now felt like riding a lethargic turtle. “Come on. Come on. Come on.” With my wife possibly in danger, the elevator could have been going fifty and I’d still be ticked. The unmarked super-basement floors zipped by and the digital counter began showing numbers again. I readied Abomination and pulled the charging handle back a bit to confirm that I had a round chambered.
Management spoke over the intercom. “Mr. Pitt. Something peculiar is happening. My secondary lines into the building are failing. They are being severed. It is as if—”
The lights went out.
“Management?” Nothing.
The elevator stopped moving. “Shit.” The background hum of machinery died. The elevator creaked and whined as it settled. It was pitch black in the car. Turning on the eyeball-melting flashlight mounted on Abomination in this tiny space would’ve blinded me, which was why I kept a little crook-neck LED flashlight jammed through some of the MOLLE straps on my armor. I flicked it on. There was nothing to see, but the light helped me stay calm.
It was stupid, but I tried the buttons anyway and got nothing. I was trapped in a stupid elevator while my wife was at the top, probably in danger. I kicked a furious dent into the wall and shouted something incoherent.
Other than the creaking of the elevator and my breathing, the car was quiet. My flashlight gave me a little bit of light. I realized that the temperature was dropping. Not again.
“Have you found her?”
The sound made me jump. The Asian kid that I’d originally taken for a rival Hunter had appeared out of nowhere and was standing in the opposite corner of the elevator car. “Don’t do that!”
He just looked at me funny. “For some reason, you’re the only one I can talk to easily.”
“Just another perk of being me,” I muttered.
“Everybody else, I have to shout and then bad things happen.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure. He’s getting stronger. He’s touching us to the other place, where the demons dream…It’s not a very good place at all. He was born here, you know…” That sounded just lovely. He changed the subject. “You promised to help. Have you found her yet?”
With the kid, science experiment, entity, whatever the hell he was right there, it kept getting colder. As if fueling his presence required sucking all of the energy out of the space. Within seconds the temperature was similar to being shoved into a walk-in freezer. I began to shiver uncontrollably. “I need to know who she is.”
“The names are gone. They took them from me. All I can see is her face.” He was desperate, but growing angry. “They took them, they erased what they could, and smashed everything else. My head…It’s filled with splinters.”
The more agitated he got, the more the temperature seemed to drop. My face was going numb. “I want to help you, but I need more information. I need something to work with.”
“You’re out of time!” he shouted. Face red, veins standing out in his neck, he lashed out with one fist, only to have it pass cleanly through the elevator wall as if it wasn’t even there. He jerked his hand back in surprise. Seemingly stunned, he stared at his hand in disbelief. “How—What is this pla
ce?”
“Las Vegas, Nevada. Planet Earth.”
“Are you real?” he asked me. “Are you alive?”
My teeth were chattering. “I am.” You, I’m not so sure about.
He shook his head as if to clear it. “No more tricks. You’re probably with them. You bastards clouded my mind with your drugs and machines. I’m sick of walking around in a fog. You stole my life. You tricked me, and I’m not putting up with it anymore.”
“I’m not with them.” I wasn’t even sure who them was, probably the scientists that had started this mess. “Calm down. I want to help.”
“That’s what they said last time. I took their tests. I did everything they asked me to, and all I got was tortured for it, and they just sit there in their lab coats writing notes on a clipboard while I begged for mercy. You listen and you listen good, buddy. You’re going to give her back to me, and we’re getting out of here. You do it, or I’ll stop holding him back. I swear. Find her or you’ll all pay.”
Supernatural entity or not, I didn’t put up with anybody’s drama. “Listen to me. I don’t know the people that hurt you. I want to help. Give me something to work with. I need a name, a place, something. And I can’t do jack until we beat the Nachtmar and get out of here. You need to help me so that I can help you. That was your body buried in that containment unit, wasn’t it?”
“Body? I’m right here. I don’t get what you’re saying.”
This was infuriating. I was arguing with a delusional dead guy, while Julie was in danger. “You said they stuck you with hundreds of needles and filled you with drugs to keep the nightmare asleep. I found the room with all the needles. You’ve been—” I caught myself before I said dead. That probably wouldn’t go over well. “—asleep for a long time. This woman I’m supposed to find, I don’t even know if she’s still around.”
“Why wouldn’t she be? How long have I been sleeping?”
“You’ve been buried for over sixty years.” The kid just stared at me as I rattled off today’s date. “I’m sorry.”
Conflicting expressions clouded his features, shock, disbelief, grief, all in short order, but then he settled on angry denial. “I’m done being lied to. Find her or else I’ll let him have his way.” He took a step back through the wall and disappeared from view.
I swear, the dead never listen to reason.
The elevator and the air were still. The temperature slowly crept back above freezing. There was some creaking of cables above. I hit the emergency call button, but it was still dead. I waited a few seconds, hoping the emergency power would kick on, but it didn’t. I really didn’t have time for this. The last thing I’d seen on the digital display had been L2, only one floor off of where we’d set up shop. If I was lucky I’d stopped near the door and somebody might hear me. So I slammed Abomination’s butt stock against the door and shouted for help.
Several tries of that nonsense and I was getting really pissed off, so I slung my shotgun around my back and drew my kukri. The curved, nineteen inch, Himalayan Chitilangi was thick enough to make a decent crowbar. I jammed the tip into the junction of the doors and started prying. It took me a few seconds to get it leveraged apart. No matter how hard I shoved, I could only get it open a few inches before it got stuck. There had to be some sort of safety latch I couldn’t get to.
Through the crack, I could see there was nothing but a blank shaft in front of me. I’d stopped between floors. Now I was really angry. “Oh, come on!” I angled my little light up through the crack and could see what I thought was the doors of the next floor just over the roof. “Nothing can ever be simple.”
I smashed the plastic roof sheeting out of the way. There was an access panel in the top of the car. It might have been locked, but I swung the kukri so hard that when the hatch broke open I didn’t notice. We heavyset guys aren’t known for our vertical leap, but I used the handrail as a step, and after a couple of tries caught the lip of the roof, and, grunting and swearing, pulled myself through.
“Stupid dead guys. Never easy…Bitch bitch bitch. Find her. Whatever. Get me a friggin’ address, asshole.”
The elevator shaft stretched impenetrable black above. My little light only made a dent in it. The cables were greasy and rang with a strange pitch as I bumped them and they bumped each other. The doors for the lobby began at about the height of my waist. I wedged in my kukri and started pushing them apart.
The metal was icy to the touch. Clang. Jerking my head up, I stared into the darkness. Something had moved up there. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. The rhythmic pings of the elevator cables changed and they began to jiggle violently. Clang. Clang. Drops of cold water fell out of the black to splatter me and my surroundings like a sluggish rain.
I could either bring Abomination around and turn on the big light to see what was descending, or I could get these doors open and get out of here right the hell now. There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver or defend myself, so prying took top priority. I poked my knife through the crack and threw my weight against the kukri’s hilt. The doors began to slide. The shaft doors didn’t seem nearly as hard to move.
Clang. Clang. Clang. Screeeeech.
It was getting closer. There were new sounds, small tings of impact, and the raspy scrape as something pushed against the walls of the shaft. A fat blob of cold water struck my head and rolled down my cheek. Instinct made me look up. Something blacker than the darkness of the shaft moved, glistening, above.
Its shape was so alien, so baffling, so unfathomable, that for a split second I could do nothing but gawk and try to comprehend. It reminded me of pulling weeds and looking at the hairy roots beneath, partially obscured in wet dirt, only these millions of roots and tufts were wiggling. It filled the entire shaft and was gradually descending, now only two floors above. In the middle of the mass was a single, awful, circular mouth, filled with row after row of blunt white teeth, stretching up inside like a tunnel until it disappeared into the thing’s interior.
I slammed my body against the kukri. The door opened a few inches. I tossed my knife through, got my hands on both sides and shoved as hard as I possibly could. The doors slid open and I clambered through. It was dark here too. Rolling across the floor, I crashed into a set of legs. Thankfully, they were attached to a living human being. “It’s coming!” I shouted.
A flashlight beam stabbed me in the eyes. “Z?” Milo Anderson asked. “What’s coming?”
“Damn if I know,” I gasped. Milo set his AR-10 against the wall and used his free hand to help me up. As my light came around, it illuminated a plastic bottle in Milo’s hand. It was filled with gray powder. I pointed. “Explosive?”
“Yeah. Cooper made Tannerite. Why—”
I snatched it from him. Tannerite is the common name for a simple explosive made from a mixture of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder. For the ammonium nitrate he’d probably stolen fertilizer from the grounds crew. The aluminum powder, I had no idea. But it would go boom, and a one-liter soda bottle was a decent sized boom, and best of all, it could be set off with the energy of a high-velocity rifle round. Abomination’s buckshot was too slow, but a .308 would do nicely. I picked up Milo’s rifle and thumbed on the flashlight. “Gonna borrow this.
I stuck the muzzle of his rifle into the shaft, risked a peek, and saw the dangling wet root monster still gradually oozing its way down. Milo stuck his head around the corner and exclaimed, “Grinder!”
“Friend of yours?”
“No.” Milo reached out, took the bottle back, and hurled it at the monster. The explosive struck the roots, but before gravity could bounce it back, half a dozen of the tendrils lashed out with blinding speed and encircled the bottle. It automatically slithered the bottle toward its mouth hole. The rows of teeth inside began to rotate hungrily against each other. The sound was like nails on chalkboard on triple speed. Milo pulled back and stuck his fingers in his ears. “Blast it!”
The AR-10 had an Aimpoint sight on it. The shot was
easy. The angle was not. I fired once and the bullet slammed into the earthy mass right next to the bottle with a splash of black mud. The second round hit the Tannerite square.
The explosive wasn’t very big, but in the enclosed space it was brutal. There was a terrible blast that struck me as I fell. It was like getting smacked in the face with a bat.
There was no shrapnel, and the shockwave alone usually wasn’t too bad unless you were close enough for it to damage your internal organs. That was all good to know academically, but like I said, bat to the face. So I lay there for a moment, blinking stupidly. Milo’s rifle was at my side, the brilliant beam of the flashlight still shining into the shaft as gray smoke came rolling out. Black gobbets of meat and heavy white teeth fell through the smoke to collect on the elevator’s roof.
“Z! Z! Are you okay?” Milo had taken hold of the drag straps on my armor was attempting to lift me, which was tough since I was twice his size.
“Fine.” My head was swimming. I was going to be hating life later. One of my electronic earpieces had shorted out. I smacked it a few times, but it was toast.
Milo took up his rifle, went through the smoke, and shined it up the shaft. There was an awful squeal and the cables shook as the creature climbed back up. Milo fired several rounds after it but then it was out of sight. “Hate those things!” Dizzy, I struggled to my feet. Milo caught my arm. “Grinders are gross.”
“A what?”
He mistook my ignorance for deafness. “Grinder!” he shouted in my ear. “They burrow under houses, creep up through the floor, and suck folks out of their beds. That’s why I refuse to sleep in basements. The name comes from that rotary mouth-hole thingy. It’s like death by a thousand Dremel tools. Grinds bones right into pulp.”
I didn’t even want to know which poor bastard was unlucky enough to have that nasty thing sucked out of their memory. I shook my aching head. That was twice today that I’d been too close to an improvised explosive device.