Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) (47 page)

Nick stood blinking in the light. Thin, and paler than ever, he didn’t look well. And he’d crawled back into himself.

Bill scanned the ground, looking for the shards Nick had said he’d seen. It was like river-bottom here, fist-sized stones jumbling down a gentle slope to a sluggish stream. He looked up to his right at the mountains soaring behind the keep. This gorge was probably all water in early spring when the snows melted. Half a century had passed since the sword blade had shattered here. How could anything be left? How could they hope to find the remnants even if any still existed?

“Well, Nick? Where are they?”

Nick said nothing, only stared ahead.

Desperate, Bill knelt and picked among the stones and gravel. This was impossible. He’d never find anything this way.

He straightened up and brushed off his hands. Earlier, in the dark, Nick had said he’d seen the pieces, glowing “with bright blue fire.”

Maybe he could see them only at night.

“Damn!”

He’d risked their lives rushing to get here so he could return to Ploiesti as soon as possible and start their homeward journey in the light. Now he was going to have to wait until dark.

He turned and aimed a kick at the tower’s granite-block hem. The keep, a dark, brooding, lithic presence looming over him, took no notice.

Bill led Nick back inside the tower to a gloom as deep and dark as his spirits. The delay meant it would be Wednesday before he got back to Carol. He wondered how she was doing.

The Horror Channel’s Drive-In Theatre—Special All-Day Edition

Eaten Alive
(1976) New World

Day of the Nightmare
(1965) Herts-Lion

Nightwing
(1979) Columbia

Raw Meat
(1972) AIP

The Devils of Darkness
(1965) 20th Century Fox

Tentacles
(1977) AIP

Phase IV
(1974) Paramount

It! The Terror from Beyond Space
(1958) United Artists

They Came from Beyond Space
(1967) Amicus

The Last Days of Planet Earth
(1974) Toho

The Flesh Eaters
(1964) CDA

They Came from Within
(1975) TransAmerica

The Earth Dies Screaming
(1964) Lippert/20th Century Fox

New Jersey Turnpike

Hank wasn’t sure if he was awake or dreaming. He seemed to be awake. He was aware of noises around him, of a stale, sour odor, of growing light beyond his eyelids, but he could not get those eyelids to move. And he could
feel
nothing. For all he knew, he no longer had a body. Where was he? What—?

And then he remembered. The millipedes … their queen … a scream bubbled up in his throat but died stillborn. How can you scream when you can’t open your mouth?

No. That had been a dream. It had all been a dream—the holes, the flying horrors, the rest stop, the trooper, the gun, the bullet, the millipedes—a long, horrible nightmare. But finally at an end. He was waking up now.

If he could just open his eyes he’d see the familiar ceiling of his bedroom. And then he’d be free of the nightmare. He’d be able to move then.

The eyes. They were the key. He concentrated on the lids, focusing all his will, all his energy into them. And slowly they began to move. He didn’t feel the motion but saw a knife-slit streak appear, pale light, like the glow on the horizon at the approach of dawn.

Encouraged, he doubled his efforts. Light widened around the horizon as the edges of his lids stretched the gummy substance that bound them, then burst through as they broke apart. Not the blaze of the rising sun, but a wan, diffuse sort of light. He forced his lids to separate further and the light began to take form through the narrow opening, breaking down into shapes and color. Vague shapes. A paucity of color. Mostly grays. His pupils constricted, bringing the images into sharper focus.

He was looking down along a body. His own body, lying in bed, naked atop the sheets. Hazy, but he knew his own body. Thank God, it had all been a dream. He tried to turn his head to the left, toward the light, but it wouldn’t move. Why couldn’t he move? He was awake now. He should be able to move. He slid his eyeballs leftward. The bedroom window was over there somewhere. If he could just—

Wait … the walls—rounded. The ceiling—convex. Concrete. Concrete everywhere. And the light. It came from above. He forced his eyelids open another millimeter. No window—the light filtered through a grate in the concrete ceiling.

The stillborn scream from a moment ago came alive again and rammed up against his throat, pounding at his larynx, crying to be free.

This wasn’t the bedroom. He was in the pipe—the drainage pipe! It hadn’t been a dream. It was real.
Real!

Hank fought the panic, beat it down, and tried to think. He was still alive. He had to remember that. Still alive and it was daytime. The things from the holes were quiet in the daylight hours. They hid from the light. He had to think, had to plan. He’d always been good at planning.

He shifted his eyes down to his body. His vision was clearer now. He saw the gentle tidal rise and fall of his hairy chest, and farther down, on his belly, he spotted the bloody wound where the queen millipede had spiked him and injected him with her poison. The neurotoxin was still in effect, obviously, paralyzing his voluntary muscles while it let his heart and lungs go on working. But it didn’t have complete control. He’d managed to open his eyes, hadn’t he? He could move his eyeballs, couldn’t he? What else could he move?

He pulled his gaze away from his abdominal wound and searched for his hands. They lay flopped out on either side, palms up. He checked out his legs. They were intact, slightly spread with the toes angled outward. He could have been a sunbather. His body was the picture of relaxation … the relaxation of complete paralysis. He returned his gaze to his arm and followed it down to the hand. If he could move a finger—

And then he noticed the webbing—surrounding him, running in all directions, crisscrossed like gauze. It curved away from each arm and leg like heavy-duty spiderweb and ran out to the wall of the drainpipe where it melted into a glob of some sticky-looking gelatin smeared on the concrete. He looked down as much as his slit perspective would permit and realized that he wasn’t lying in the pipe, he was
suspended
in it. From the horizontal lie of his body he guessed that he was resting on a hammock of web across the diameter.

Hank marveled at the coolness of his mind as it analyzed his position. He was trapped—not only paralyzed, but effectively and securely bound in position. The web hammock, however, was not entirely without its advantages. Long, uninterrupted contact with the cold concrete would have made it difficult for his body to maintain its temperature; the webbing also kept him out of the water, thereby preventing his flesh from breaking down in the constant moisture.

So in a very real sense he was high and dry, but also bound, gagged, and paralyzed.

Reminded him of his days as a slaughterhouse worker. Here he was, hung up like a side of—

Beef.

That last thought impacted with the force of a sledgehammer. That was it! He was food! They’d shot him full of preservatives and stored him away alive so he wouldn’t decompose. So when pickings got slim above, they could come down here and devour him at their leisure.

He willed down the rising panic. Panic wouldn’t help here. They’d already paralyzed his body. Allowing fear to paralyze his mind would only make matters worse. But that one cold hard fact battered relentlessly at his defenses.

I’m food!

But I’m alive. I came up from nothing, I wrote
Kick!
and I started the Kicker Evolution. I can beat these bugs.

He knew their pattern. They’d probably stay dormant all day and crawl up to the surface to hunt during the dark hours. That was when he’d get free.

But first he had to regain control of his body. He already controlled his eyeballs and eyelids. Next—his hands. If he was to get free he’d need them the most. A finger. He’d start with the pointer on his right hand, concentrate all his will and energy into that one digit until he got it to move. Then he’d proceed to the next, and the next, until he could make a fist. Then he’d switch to his left.

He glared at his index finger, narrowing his vision, his entire world to that single digit, channeling all his power into it.

And then it moved.

Or had it? The twitch had been almost imperceptible, so slight it might have been a trick of the light. Or wishful thinking.

But it
had
moved. He had to hold on to that thought. It
had
moved. He was regaining control. He was going to get out of here.

With climbing spirits, he redoubled his concentration on the reluctant digit.

WFAN-AM

Monroe Village, Long Island

Alan rolled his wheelchair along the network of cement paths that encircled Toad Hall, heading from the backyard to the front. Off to his left, to the west, he saw smoke rising over the trees. Not near smoke, not from the Shore Drive neighborhood, but farther away. From downtown Monroe, most likely. He’d heard stories of roving gangs, looting, burning, raping. They hadn’t shown up out here, but perhaps that was simply a matter of time.

Strange how things had worked out. He’d always imagined that if the world ever descended into anarchic nihilism, the violence and chaos and mob madness would occur at night, screams and flames hurtling into a dark, unseeing sky. But given the current situation, human violence was confined to the daylight hours. The night was reserved for
un
human violence.

Alan turned from the smoke and inspected Toad Hall. The old mansion had absorbed another merciless pummeling last night, but like the valiant, indomitable champion she was, she remained on her feet.

Her injuries were accumulating at an alarming rate, however. Her flanks were cut and bruised and splintered, her scalp showed through where her shingles had been torn up. She could still open her eyes to the dwindling daylight, though. Most of them, at least.