Pandemonium (15 page)

Half the distance to the building, the stairs ended at a small terrace. The guards’ flashlights illuminated a heavy ten-foot-wide steel hatch to their right. It was set in a rock face that reached ninety feet up to the cavern’s ceiling, which was bearded with stalactites.

“OK,” whispered Maxim to his men, reaching his arms out to them. He had bounded up the stairs without a pause for nearly a hundred yards. He was a powerhouse of a man, Geoffrey realized as he caught his breath. Maxim pressed close, addressing them like a quarterback in a huddle. “Geoffrey, I want you to identify any animals you see.”

Geoffrey nodded. “OK.”

“Be ready for anything!” Maxim stressed.

A guard who was even bigger than Maxim, a giant, opened the huge door. The other four went in first. Maxim pushed Geoffrey in as the giant guard shoved the heavy door closed behind them.

They stood on a metal landing inside a tall cylinder faceted with purple crystals. The crystals shimmered on the walls hundreds of feet into the dark above them like a gigantic geode. The air felt sauna hot and dry inside the vertical chamber.

A phalanx of seven massive aluminum pipes rose from the bottomless shadow below. Fifty feet above, the enormous steam culverts elbowed together into a tunnel cut through the glittering wall of the crystal chimney.

A short flight of steel stairs before them joined a catwalk that ringed the column of dry steam pipes. On the far side, Geoffrey could see a stairway zigzagging from the catwalk up the wall to a corridor on the left, which presumably led to the power plant. The men’s flashlights illuminated electrical conduits running up the side of the huge steam ducts. Thick cords had been patched into the conduits, joining a cable plugged into a heavy-duty yellow switch that lay on the catwalk connected to a car battery between the reaching arms of two men who were obviously dead.

Geoffrey’s eyes followed the guard’s jerking flashlights over the catwalk and saw that at least a dozen corpses were strewn across it. The empty drape of their clothing outlined skeletons. Their hands were chalk drawings of bone dust. They wore the same bulletproof vests and black uniforms worn by Maxim’s other guards, who jabbed their weapons everywhere now as they peered into the shadows.

“When did those men die?” Geoffrey asked.

Maxim raised a finger and whispered back. “Three nights ago.”

Geoffrey’s blood froze. “What is going on?”

Maxim yelled, “
Now!
Punch that fucking button!”

One of the guards darted down the metal stairs and tripped over one of the bodies lying there, falling noisily onto the catwalk that circled the steam ducts. The racket echoed up and down the shaft around them.

Geoffrey glanced up into the towering well above. Like pixie dust shaken off the walls, a phosphorescent storm swirled and descended like a living funnel cloud gathering. He hit his host’s broad arm and pointed. “Look!”

“What is it?” Maxim said.

“I don’t know. But it’s coming!”

Maxim roared,
“Hurry!”

Geoffrey saw the horde of glowing green creatures swirling down the shaft flare brighter at the sound of Maxim’s voice. A distinctive hum grew, a wheezing, ringing buzz that paralyzed him; it was a sound he could never forget. He tried to convince himself he could only be imagining it.

The guard untangled himself from an electrical cable looped around his foot as the other guards yelled at him.

They all heard the screaming swarm descending.

“Keep going!”
Maxim shouted.

The man dived for the switch on the catwalk below. On the other side of the switch, glowing creatures emerged from the hairy skull of one of the corpses and shot straight into the man’s eyes and mouth.

The men above heard his gurgling scream as it was cut short.

Geoffrey recognized the milky flow pouring down the walls as tiny Frisbees launched out of it at the convulsing man on the catwalk and the man reached out his arms toward the detonator, his hands falling inches short.

“No!”
Maxim yelled, and he started down the steps, but Geoffrey and his chief guard pulled him with enough strength to hold him back as the horde closed in. Two guards began opening the hatch behind them.

Geoffrey pushed Maxim through the hatch and leaped after him as the guards closed it behind them.

Even through the steel door, they could hear the wheezing drone that filled the well inside. The hulking guard stood with his back to the sealed hatch, talking through his walkie-talkie while directing the others to get Maxim back to the car.

“No!”
Maxim shouted, and he dived at the door again as his four guards restrained him.

“You can’t go in there, chief!” said the guard who stood against the hatch.

With his mind still scrambled by what he had just witnessed, Geoffrey thought he could see a strange luminescence behind the guard standing before the hatch. As he reasoned that it must be a trick of light, perhaps emanating from the guard’s flashlight, a glowing replica of the door peeled away, arching over the guard. “Watch out!” Geoffrey shouted.

The guard looked up and screamed as a luminous creature wrapped around his back and shoulders like a cape.

“Get it off me!” the giant man wailed, trying to move, but the animal stuck to his back like taffy, gluing him against the door.

They all backed away and Maxim pointed at Geoffrey. “Tell me what it is, damn it!”

Geoffrey yelled, “I don’t know!”

The screaming guard heaved back and forth, stuck to the door as a white blob like the head of an enormous slug enveloped his face and its translucent flesh turned crimson.

The other guards opened fire with their machine guns, riddling the man’s body until he crumpled forward, peeling away from the hatch. His back was cloaked by a glistening mass. Then suddenly, his headless torso rose and in place of his head was a pale, amorphous lump with huge black eyes. His arms reached toward them.

“Jesus—!” Geoffrey gasped.

The guards fired dozens of rounds at it, filling the cave with cacophonous echoes until the apparition finally fell again.

Geoffrey waved them off and crept forward to look at what was left.

“Tell me what it is!” Maxim shouted.

“It’s got suction cups on the bottom,” Geoffrey said, shaking his head, incredulous. “I think it’s a freaking octopus.…” He looked at Maxim in astonishment.

“It’s not from Henders Island?” Maxim asked.

Geoffrey looked at him. “What?”

“How did it do that to him?” asked one guard.

“It possessed him,” answered another. “Like a devil!”

“It
is
the Devil,” said another.

“Shut up, you idiots!” Maxim ordered. “Geoffrey?”

Geoffrey looked down at the squirming flesh that was ruptured by exit wounds on the man’s back and limbs. The mollusk’s mass had seemed to grab hold of the man’s arms and legs like an external musculature and, with beaklike suction cups, vise-gripped his bones at the hips, knees, ankles, shoulders, elbows, and wrists. “It’s using him like a puppet,” Geoffrey muttered in awe.

The giant muscle contracted on the guard’s back, and the dead man’s arms and legs jerked into a crouching position before them as Geoffrey jumped back with the others. The mollusk’s amorphous head looked at them with glistening black eyes, foaming red blood from its loose mouth.

“Look!” Another guard pointed at the wall beside them.

Three more ovals the size of men slid down the rock face toward them, blending into the rock as they moved.

“More!” Geoffrey said.

The distant sound of breaking glass echoed in the cavern.

The guards turned and bolted down the stairs toward the cars waiting below as Geoffrey pushed Maxim after them.

As they descended, Geoffrey saw a green swarm below flooding over the road toward the vehicles. Up the street, he could see it pouring like a firefall out of a window in the warehouse. He knew, as he looked at the cloud of creatures and heard their whining buzz, that nothing he had seen in Pandemonium glowed this particular shade of green. And there was nothing else that made this sound. Geoffrey heard slaps behind him on the stairs and glanced over his shoulder.

The ghostly octopus was actually using the guard’s body to stumble and lunge down the stairs behind them now.

The green cloud of bugs on the road ahead split about eighty yards to their right, one half flying up over the smooth slope toward the dimly lit windows of the power plant, the other heading straight for the cars below.

“What are
those
?” The guard in front of Maxim pointed at shimmering creatures springing in thirty-foot leaps ahead of the swarm rushing down the road.

“Rats,” Geoffrey hissed, dumbfounded.

“They don’t look like rats!” another guard said.

“
Henders
rats,” Geoffrey muttered.

As they headed toward the bottom of the stairs, he realized the guards ahead of them would make it to the limo in time to avoid the wave of predators, but he and Maxim would not.

Maxim looked over his shoulder and saw the shambling ghost-octopus picking up speed as it perfected its method of locomoting, pulling itself forward with the guard’s arms and using his torso like a gruesome sled as it accelerated down the stairs behind Geoffrey. Ten yards from the street, the man-puppet pounced and Maxim pushed Geoffrey down.

“Duck!” the Russian growled, and he crouched with Geoffrey against the stairs as the ghost sailed over them, shooting white tendrils from its head that stuck on the nearest guard’s back like gooey ropes. The flying chimera reeled the tendrils in, soaring over their heads and into the guard’s back, knocking him into the guard ahead.

All three rolled together down the stairs, landing in a balled heap beside Maxim’s limo.

“Wait!” Maxim whispered. He held Geoffrey back, watching.

Maxim’s men writhed below as the swarm arrived and struck into them on the street below.

“You said this worked on Henders Island,” Maxim said. “You were right, my friend!”

Geoffrey watched as the screaming men were bombarded by the voracious wave of glowing creatures. The mollusk manipulating the headless guard peeled off from his body as it was attacked, and it shot thick goo-ropes through the strange locusts that descended upon it. Animals the size of giant rats launched down the road and dived into the pile. Columns of white bugs streamed down the road,
rolling
toward the writhing heap with wide, long legs like shock absorbers, and flung themselves into the frenzy like discuses.

Maxim waved. “Come on!”

Geoffrey vomited as he saw him jump to the left side of the stairs and slide down the smooth surface, braking with his feet. In another instant, Geoffrey was following him, his heart pounding like an engine. The feeding animals raised an unholy din as they feasted on the street zooming toward them.

Maxim hit the street by the limo with Geoffrey landing right behind him. They darted away from the slaughter, around the front of the car, and opened the door on the far side, jumping in and slamming the door behind them.

“Go, Boris!”

The driver gunned the limo backwards over the pile of bodies. Then they pealed down the street, looking through the rearview mirror as glowing bugs splattered on the rear window. Illuminated by the headlights, two bodies ensnarled in the glue-ropes were still stuck to the vehicle. The creatures that had been heading for the feeding frenzy now turned and chased them in the other direction as they dragged the men’s corpses.

“Turn off the lights!” Geoffrey yelled. “And for God’s sake, don’t slow down!”

Maxim translated to Boris, who immediately complied.

The swarm chasing them only gathered. “Try to shake that off of us!” Geoffrey shouted. “We’re leading them on!”

Maxim fired a translation in real time at Boris, who wheelbarrowed down the road in reverse, swerving from side to side as he tried to tear away the grisly lure.

The stampede followed them, thinning as clusters stopped to feed on cast-off pieces of their bait and the road kill crushed under their run-flat tires. As they approached the warehouse where they had issued, a flow of creatures came at them from the front as well, spilling over the skyroof, until they finally reached the source and passed under the shattered window through which the cataract of creatures had sprung.

“They’re breeding in that warehouse,” Geoffrey said. “These things look like … God damn it,
tell
me I’m imagining things, Maxim!”

“You are imagining things,” Maxim repeated with shameful obedience.

Backing around the corner, the driver spun the limo, its tires chirping over the cobblestones, and he shifted into forward, accelerating down the final stretch.

“Have them close the hatch as soon as we get through,” Geoffrey said.

Maxim looked dazed.

“Maxim!” Geoffrey shouted angrily.

“Get us through, Boris!” Maxim pushed a button on his phone. “I will call ahead.”

“I need to see!” the driver shouted, switching on the headlights.

The road ahead was clear, but in the rearview mirror, Geoffrey saw that they were still dragging a stringer of body parts. A flying wedge of predators followed it. Farther back, a group of much larger animals appeared, moving over the others in giant leaps. “Get that off us!” Geoffrey screamed. “We’re still dragging bait! Get it the fuck
off us
, Boris!”

The driver fishtailed the limo, and the rear tires finally tore away the sticky ropes. Geoffrey watched the horde descend on the train of carnage as it dropped behind them on the road. The limo squealed around the last corner and charged through the opened gate just as the guards were closing it.

Boris pulled the limo to a screeching stop in front of the hospital.

Miraculously, nothing appeared to have made it through the gate.

“Garage, Boris!” Maxim ordered, banging twice on the partition.

“Yes, boss.”

The car flew around the corner of the hospital to the right onto a side road. They turned right again down a driveway to the building’s basement. The driver pressed a remote attached to the visor, and a steel garage door opened. They drove in, and the driver closed the door behind them.