Midnight's Lair

  Chris crawled onto the edge of the hole. As she positioned herself to jump, she stared past Hank - a look of revulsion on her face. Then she glanced down, and leaped. She entered the water with a small splash. Her eyes went wide and she gritted her teeth.

  'Nippy, huh?'

  'Gawd.' She waded to him, moving stiffly.

  'You okay?'

  She responded with a stiff nod.

  'You want the baby or the lantern?'

  'Baby,' she gasped.

  Hank passed it to her. She nuzzled the infant against her cheek. It made quiet cooing sounds.

  She stayed at Hank's side as he waded back to the boat.

  'That piece of wood there,' he said. 'Looks like they used it for a torch. See the clothes? Must've been at least two men in the boat. And those women.'

  'And Darcy,' Chris muttered. 'She would've been with them.'

  'Maybe not.'

  'She's the leader.'

  'She might've stayed behind. But even if she was here… whoever belongs to the second set of clothes must've gotten away. Probably others did, too.' He lifted the lantern off its seat. 'The whole group might've been here.'

  'It takes two boats to hold everyone.'

  'Well, the other boat doesn't seem to be around. Maybe the rest of them got away in the second boat.'

  'Maybe.' Chris sounded doubtful.

  'Wonder where the oars are,' he said.

  'Aren't any,' Chris told him. 'Spikes in the walls. When I was on the tour yesterday, Darcy stood up and… pulled the boat from spike to spike.'

  'Weird.'

  'It's how they do it.'

  'Why don't you climb aboard, I'll push.'

  'Don't you think…? Quicker if we walk.'

  'Probably, but…'

  'Let's hurry.'

  'Yeah.'

  They walked, staying close to the side of the boat so Chris wouldn't have to pass near the bodies. Hank would've liked to take a look at them and see how they were killed, but he refrained for Chris's sake. Besides, she was right. They had to hurry. Every second might count.

  Someone, he was sure, had come through the hole in Ely's Wall and murdered at least three of those who had approached in the boat.

  Someone, perhaps, who had lived in that strange nest with the girl he'd killed.

  He thought about how she had attacked him for no reason. With a weapon of bone and razor blades.

  He thought about her teeth, filed to points.

  Some kind of savage.

  What the hell was she doing there?

  Did others live in that place?

  Was one of them responsible for the hideous display of human remains they'd found along the banks of the stream?

  How many are there?

  Where are they now?

  He heard only the sounds of his breathing, Chris's breathing, quiet gurgles and coos from the baby, the soft sloshing sounds of their own movement through the lake.

  He wished he did hear others.

  Savages coming toward them out of the darkness.

  Let them attack.

  At least I'd know they're here and not chasing down Paula somewhere.

  'I'm scared, Hank.'

  'Yeah, me too.' He put a hand on her back.

  'What if Darcy and Paula…?'

  'I'm sure they're all right.' Sure I am, he thought. He was only sure of his hope. He knew that hope wasn't enough. You hope for the best, you hope against the worst, but what he'd learned during two tours in Vietnam was that the worst could happen and often it pushed beyond the boundaries of what he had hoped against, pushed into the black territories of the unthinkable.

  But hope was all he had, so he clung to it.

  'Even if they were here,' he said, 'it doesn't mean… How many people were on the tour?'

  'Thirty or forty, I guess.'

  'That many couldn't have been… And we've only seen three bodies.'

  'So far,' Chris said.

  Seconds later, as if to shrink the hope, they found another body. Chris saw it first, gasped and flinched back.

  This body didn't float. It hung spread-eagled in the lake a couple of feet below the surface. Like the two women, its long hair was spread out, drifting around its head like a strange seaweed.

  'A man,' Hank said. Stepping in front of Chris, he reached down into the water and grabbed the man's hair. It felt thick and greasy. He lifted. As the head came up dripping, he turned the face toward him.

  One glimpse, and Hank knew that this was not a man from the tour.

  Bushy eyebrows. A heavy black beard. Skin so white it may never have been touched by sunlight. Pointed teeth.

  When Hank was a boy, his father used to frighten him with tales of the Wild Man of Borneo. He'd loved the stories and begged for more, though sometimes the Wild Man stalked him through nightmares.

  Staring at the face of this dead savage, Hank felt as if he'd slid back into his childhood.

  Shivers crawled up his back.

  'The Wild Man of Borneo,' he muttered. 'In the flesh.'

  'It's one of them?' Chris asked in a small, high voice.

  'Just like the girl.' He plunged the head down into the water and pushed. The body glided away, feet first. Hank rubbed his hand on the leg of his warm-up pants. When he finished, it still seemed coated with an oily film.

  They started walking again.

  He kept his hand underwater, kept rubbing it on his leg.

  He wished he had a bar of soap.

  Forget about it, he told himself. So the guy had dirty hair. Real big deal. You were up to your wrists in a dead girl's guts ten or fifteen minutes ago.

  But this. Such a little thing.

  Like finding a stranger's hair in your soup.

  'I wonder how many others…' Chris said. She was looking around.

  Won't even see the ones submerged like that guy, Hank thought. Not till we're right on top of them.

  Those with enough water in their lungs would stay below the surface, he knew, until they started to decompose and the trapped gasses popped their bloated carcasses to the top.

  'At least he was on the right side,' Hank said.

  'They might be all around us,' she whispered.

  'The more like him, the better.'

  'It's… almost worse than the other place.'

  Hank knew she meant the madman's gallery. She was right. There, you could see the things.

  And there, it had never crossed Hank's mind that one of the corpses might be his own daughter.

  She could be here.

  No!

  She's fine. Darcy's fine. Others had been killed, not our girls. The horror stops there. It has to.

  Hank, like Chris, scanned the surface of the lake.

  And then, near the far reach of the lantern's glow, he saw the dull gleam of a square-cornered boat. A few steps more, and a dock came into view.

  Chris moaned.

  She saw it, too - another body. This one lying flat on the floor of the dock.

  Cold dread seized Hank.

  They waded closer.

  A woman's body. Naked. Torn up.

  Faceless in the distance and dim light.

  She seemed taller, thinner than Paula, but…

  Clothing lay scattered beside her.

  A white sweater and blouse and kilt? A blue uniform?

  He just couldn't see!

  Chris began to weep.

  Hank lunged forward, leaning into the chest-high water, trying to run. The water pressed against him like hands holding him off. But he waded closer and closer, leaving Chris behind.

  The clothing.

  Those were blue slacks in a pile beside the body's hip.

  Not Paula's kilt. But pants like Darcy's.

  Oh God, no!

  'Chris, stay back!'

  'What?'

  He trudged past the bow of the boat, rammed the lantern down on the dock, and thrust himself out of the water. On hands and knees, he crawled to the side of the corpse. The flesh gaped with deep
wounds as if chunks had been chewed out. The left arm had been torn from its socket and partly devoured.

  The face was intact.

  A face frozen in a rictus of horror.

  A face that had never been beautiful - not like Chris, not like Chris's daughter must be.

  And it was the face of a woman who must have been pushing forty.

  Hank let out a long, trembling sigh.

  He looked over his shoulder. Chris was yards away, a dim shape in the faint glow that reached her from the lantern.

  Hank was pleased; she'd done as he asked and stayed put.

  'It's all right,' he said.

  It's all right? The woman's dead. They ate at her. And it's all right?

  'Not one of our girls,' he explained.

  Chris nodded and started forward. Not wanting her to see how the body had been ravaged, Hank slid the severed arm against its side. He covered the body from the waist down with the slacks, then spread the blouse over the torso. He didn't try to hide the face.

  Crawling to the edge of the dock, he reached down. Chris handed the baby to him. From the slow sound of its breathing, he guessed it was asleep. He marvelled that the child could sleep through a situation like this.

  Lucky kid, he thought. Doesn't have the foggiest idea what's going on.

  Probably thinks Chris is its mother.

  Chris boosted herself up and scrambled onto the dock. She looked at the corpse. She sniffed and wiped her eyes. 'Why did you cover her?'

  'She's… partly eaten.'

  'They ate her?'

  'Must've worked on her for a while. And I think… too much was gone for one person to have done it. I'd guess there must've been a few of them.'

  'Aw, Jesus.'

  'In a way, it's looking better.'

  'How can you say that? They…'

  'That guy on the other side of the wall, he hadn't been dead very long. An hour at the most. Then, some kind of struggle took place here at the lake. That used up some time. Then, those bastards didn't go straight after the survivors. (If there were survivors, he thought.) They stuck around for a while and had themselves a meal. So they probably don't have much of a headstart on us.'

  'You think we might have a chance of catching up with them?'

  'We might,' he said, though that was almost too much to hope for.

  He picked up the lantern. They got to their feet and started walking quickly up the dock.

  'Another thing in our favour,' Hank said. 'They probably don't have any light, and we do. That means they won't be able to move as fast as…'

  He went silent.

  Out of the darkness ahead came faint, human voices shouting and screaming.

  We're too late!

  ***

  Darcy trotted through the black, one hand on Greg's bare shoulder, the other hand gliding along the metal bar of the railing.

  The belt around her midriff was starting to slip. Before they left the dock, Greg had wrapped her with the belt to secure her folded handkerchief against her wound. She had argued against taking the time necessary to apply the makeshift bandage, but he had insisted.

  'If you lose so much blood you pass out on me,' he told her, 'it'll slow us down even more - I'd have to pick you up and carry you.'

  'It's not bleeding that much.'

  'We aren't going anywhere until you're patched up.'

  'Okay,' she said.

  And so, standing on the dock in the utter darkness, Darcy opened her windbreaker and took off her belt. She dug her sodden handkerchief out of the front pocket of her pants and gave it to Greg. She felt his fingers gently exploring her skin. Winced as he touched an edge of the wound.

  'We've already lost so much time,' she whispered.

  'A couple more minutes won't make that much difference.'

  'Might make all the difference.'

  'Face it, Darcy, we're not going to catch up with them.' He placed the handkerchief against her wound. 'Hold that.' She did. She gave the belt to him. 'They've got too much of a headstart,' he said. 'They'll reach the others before we're even halfway there. And when they realize how many they've got to contend with, they probably won't attack at all. They might just watch for a while, or they might turn back. And run into us.'

  'We've gotta go after them.'

  'I know.'

  'So many are already dead.'

  The belt encircled her body, just below her breasts. Greg touched her fingers. 'Got it,' he whispered. Then he tightened the belt. It closed around her like a tourniquet and she hissed at the pressure on her raw flesh. 'If it's too loose, it won't do any good.'

  Darcy nodded and then realized how foolish it was to nod in such a darkness. 'It's okay.'

  She felt for him and found his shoulders and pulled him against her. In an instant, his cold skin turned warm where it met her chest and breasts and belly. She felt the rise and fall of his chest, and beating of his heart. Greg stroked her hair.

  If we go, Darcy thought, he might be killed.

  'If we can't overtake the savages,' she said as she held him, 'at least we might be able to call out and warn the others that they're coming. If we're even too late for that, we can join in the fight.'

  'You've done enough fighting,' Greg told her.

  'We might save lives. Even if we save just one…' But what if it costs Greg his life?

  Maybe we shouldn't go.

  'Whatever we do,' Greg said, 'there's no point in staying here.' He eased away from her. For just a moment, his hands moved lightly over her breasts. Then they found the sides of her face. He drew her forward, kissed the side of her nose, then her mouth.

  'Ready?' he asked.

  'Yeah.'

  Darcy heard a quiet snap. 'What was that?' she asked.

  'Elastic. I took the bone out of my shorts.'

  She laughed and couldn't believe she was laughing. 'You actually… had that thing in your underwear?'

  'Right in there with the other bone.'

  'Uh.'

  'Let's move.'

  Her laughter died.

  Greg led the way, Darcy keeping a hand on his shoulder.

  Somehow, they managed to walk the length of the dock without falling into the lake. When the concrete walkway was under their feet, he guided Darcy to the left until they reached the railing. With its metal bar to follow, Greg picked up speed.

  'Faster,' Darcy said.

  Soon, they were jogging through the total darkness.

  The belt remained in place until she began breathing hard. Each time she exhaled, it slipped down a bit. Now, it hung around her waist and she felt warm trickles of blood sliding down her belly.

  It won't kill me, she thought.

  We must be at least halfway there.

  Halfway.

  'Greg?'

  He stopped.

  'Let's try yelling. We're close enough, they ought to be able to hear us if we yell out a warning.'

  'You think so?'

  'Sound carries a long way in here.'

  'All right. But it'll give away our position. As soon as we do it, let's get off the walkway. Don't want those…'

  'Yeeeeah!' The far-off cry of a woman.

  Other voices too faint to distinguish.

  Then, 'Let go of me! What do you want?'

  A chill spread up Darcy's back.

  'I didn't think they'd really do it,' Greg whispered.

  Someone screamed.

  The black air shook with shouts and screams.

  ***

  Katie started to cry.

  'What's happening?' Jean whispered in a frantic voice.

  'An attack,' Wayne whispered. 'Some kind of… I don't know.'

  He heard growls, gasps, thuds, even laughter. And the crying of his daughter.

  The three of them had sat there and kept silent until a few moments ago, as if, like Wayne, Katie and Jean understood that the silence was their protection, a shelter that hid them from the invaders. Now, the girl's crying threatened to give them away.

&nbs
p; 'Katie,' he said. 'Don't. Shhhh. Please, honey.'

  If they hear us, they'll get us!

  Who? Who's doing this?

  When it began (a minute ago? five minutes? seemed to be going on forever) he'd thought it was a joke -someone taking advantage of the darkness to throw a fright into a girlfriend or wife. Then someone cried out, 'Oh sweet Jesus, he's dead!’ and Wayne knew it wasn't pretend. In seconds, he was engulfed by cries of alarm and pain.

  It'll stop soon, he'd told himself.

  It'll just fade out and end, like the Los Angeles earthquake when he was a grad student there back in 1972. When the earthquake hit, he'd known he was going to die, but he'd done nothing, just sat there on his bed, and it had gone away.

  It'll be like that. If we just sit real still and don't make a sound, it'll stop and we'll be all right.

  But it wasn't fading. It was swelling, growing, getting worse.

  Wayne felt as if he'd been sucked into the plot of one of his own grim novels.

  And thought, those are books. What is this shit!

  She's got to stop crying!

  Reaching into the dark, he touched Katie and she yelped. 'It's all right, honey,' he whispered. He stroked the side of her face, reached beyond her and felt Jean. The girl must be sitting on her mother's lap, just as she'd been before the fires in the elevators died. 'Don't worry. Nothing…'

  'Don't let them kill us, Daddy.'

  What can I do? he thought. I'm a goddamn writer. I'm no Chuck Norris.

  A fucking wimp.

  'Daddy.'

  'Lie down and keep quiet and don't move,' he said. 'Both of you. Jean, get on top of her.'

  Then he twisted himself around, turning straight into an explosion of blood that slapped his face and stung his eyes and filled his mouth.

  Got the fat lady, he thought.

  They're close. Fucking close. We're next!

  The blood kept spraying his face. He crawled into it. His hands met the woman's thick calves. Her legs were still crossed, but jumping as if she'd been plugged into a socket. Wayne slapped a hand down on her dress. Found the handbag. Hissed and ducked aside as a thread of fire streaked down his ear and cheek. But kept the handbag and tore it open and dug inside and grabbed the matchbook.

  With palsied fingers, he plucked out a match and struck it.

  For an instant, there was a bloom of light.