Phantoms Part 31

As Bryce ripped open one package, Jenny tore the third bright yellow container to shreds and extracted the screwdriver from it.

"I'm a doctor. I stay."

"He's beyond any doctor's help," Bryce said, frantically tearing open the second package.

"Maybe not. If you thought there wasn't a chance, you wouldn't be trying to get him out of there."

"d.a.m.n it, Jenny!"

He was worried about her, but he knew he wouldn't be able to persuade her to leave if she had already made up her mind to stay.

He took the third screwdriver from her, shouldered past General Copperfield, and returned to the door.

He couldn't remove the door's hinge pins. It swung into the locker, so the hinges were on the inside.

But the lever-action handle fitted through a large cover plate behind which lay the lock mechanism. The plate was fastened to the face of the door by four screws. Bryce hunkered down in front of it, selected the most suitable screwdriver, and removed the first screw, letting it drop to the floor.

Harker's screaming stopped.

The ensuing silence was almost worse than the screams.

Bryce removed the second, third, and fourth screws.

There was still no sound from Sergeant Harker.

When the cover plate was loose, Bryce slid it along the handle, pulled it free, and discarded it. He squinted at the guts of the lock, probed at the mechanism with the screwdriver. In response, ragged bits of torn metal popped out of the lock; other pieces rattled down through a hollow s.p.a.ce in the interior of the door. The lock had been thoroughly mangled from within the door. He found the manual release slot in the shaft of the latch bolt, slid the screwdriver through it, pulled to the right. The spring seemed to have been badly bent or sprung, for there was very little play left in it. Nevertheless, he drew the bolt back far enough to bring it out of the hole in the jamb, then pushed inward. Something clicked; the door started to swing open.

Everyone, including Bryce, backed out of the way.

The door's own weight contributed sufficiently to its momentum, so that it continued to swing slowly, slowly inward.

Private Pascalli was covering it with his submachine gun, and Bryce drew his own handgun, as did Copperfield, although Sergeant Harker had conclusively proved that such weapons were useless.

The door swung all the way open.

Bryce expected something to rush out at them. Nothing did.

Looking through the doorway and across the locker, he could see that the outer door was open, too, which it definitely hadn't been when Harker had gone inside a couple of minutes ago. Beyond it lay the sun-splashed alleyway.

Copperfield ordered Pascalli and Fodor to secure the locker. They went through the door fast, one turning to the left, the other to the right, out of sight.

In a few seconds, Pascalli returned. "It's all clear, sir."

Copperfield went into the locker, and Bryce followed.

Harker's submachine gun was on the floor.

Sergeant Harker was hanging from the ceiling meat rack, next to a side of beef-hanging on an enormous, wickedly pointed, two-p.r.o.nged meat hook that had been driven through his chest.

Bryce's stomach heaved. He started to turn away from the hanging man-and then realized it wasn't really Harker. It was only the sergeant's decontamination suit and helmet, hanging slack, empty. The tough vinyl fabric was slashed. The Plexiglas faceplate was broken and torn half out of the rubber gasket into which it had been firmly set. Harker had been pulled from the suit before it had been impaled.

But where was Harker?

Gone.

Another one. Just gone.

Pascalli and Fodor were out on the loading platform, looking up and down the alleyway.

"All that screaming," Jenny said, stepping up beside Bryce, "yet there's no blood on the floor or on the suit."

Tal Whitman scooped up several expended sh.e.l.l casings that had been spat out by the submachine gun; scores of them littered the floor. The bra.s.s casings gleamed in his open palm. "Lots of these, but I don't see many slugs. Looks like the sergeant hit what he was shooting at. Must've scored at least a hundred hits. Maybe two hundred. How many rounds are in one of those big magazines, General?"

Copperfield stared at the s.h.i.+ny casings but didn't answer.

Pascalli and Fodor came back in from the loading platform, and Pascalli said, "There's no sign of him out there, sir. You want us to search farther along the alley?"

Before Copperfield could respond, Bryce said, "General, you've got to write off Sergeant Harker, painful as that might be. He's dead. Don't hold out any hope for him. Death is what this is all about. Death. Not hostage-taking. Not terrorism. Not nerve gas. There's nothing halfway about this. We're playing for all the marbles. I don't know exactly what the h.e.l.l's out there or where it came from, but I do know that it's Death personified. Death is out there in some form we can't even imagine yet, driven by some purpose we might never understand. The moth that killed Stu Wargle-that wasn't even the true appearance of this thing. I feel it. The moth was like the reanimation of Wargle's body, when he went after Lisa in the restroom: It was a bit of misdirection ... sleight-of-hand."

"A phantom," Tal said, using the word that Copperfield had introduced with somewhat different meaning.

"A phantom, yes," Bryce said. "We haven't yet encountered the real enemy. It's something that just plain likes to kill. It can kill quickly and silently, the way it took Jake Johnson. But it killed Harker more slowly, hurting him real bad, making him scream. Because it wanted us to hear those screams. Harker's murder was sort of like what you said about T-139: It was a demoralizer. This thing didn't carry Sergeant Harker away. It got him, General. It got him. Don't risk the lives of more men searching for a corpse."

Copperfield was silent for a moment. Then he said, "But the voice we heard. It was your man, Jake Johnson."

"No," Bryce said. "I don't think it really was Jake. It sounded like him, but now I'm beginning to suspect we're up against something that's a terrific mimic."

"Mimic?" Copperfield said.

Jenny looked at Bryce. "Those animal sounds on the telephone."

"Yeah. The cats, dogs, birds, rattlesnakes, the crying child ... It was almost like a performance. As if it were bragging: 'Hey, look what I can do; look how clever I am.' Jake Johnson's voice was just one more impersonation in its repertoire."

"What are you proposing?" Copperfield asked. "Something supernatural?"

"No. This is real."

"Then what? Put a name to it," Copperfield demanded.

"I can't, d.a.m.n it," Bryce said. "Maybe it's a natural mutation or even something that came out of a genetic engineering lab somewhere. You know anything about that, General? Maybe the army's got an entire G.o.dd.a.m.ned division of geneticists creating biological fighting machines, man-made monsters designed to slaughter and terrorize, creatures st.i.tched together from the DNA of half a dozen animals. Take some of the genetic structure of the tarantula and combine it with some of the genetic structure of the crocodile, the cobra, the wasp, maybe even the grizzly bear, and then insert the genes for human intelligence just for the h.e.l.l of it. Put it all in a test tube; incubate it; nurture it. What would you get? What would it look like? Do I sound like a raving lunatic for even proposing such a thing? Frankenstein with a modern twist? Have they actually gone that far with recombinant DNA research? Maybe I shouldn't even have ruled out the supernatural. What I'm trying to say, General, is that it could be anything. That's why I can't put a name to it. Let your imagination run wild, General. No matter what hideous thing you conjure up, we can't rule it out. We're dealing with the unknown, and the unknown encompa.s.ses all our nightmares."

Copperfield stared at him, then looked up at Sergeant Harker's suit and helmet which hung from the meat hook. He turned to Pascalli and Fodor. "We won't search the alley. The sheriff is probably right. Sergeant Harker is lost, and there's nothing we can do for him."

For the fourth time since Copperfield had arrived in town, Bryce said, "Do you still think it looks as if we're dealing with just a simple incident of CBW?"

"Chemical or biological agents might be involved," Copperfield said. "As you observed, we can't rule out anything. But it's not a simple case. You're right about that, Sheriff. I'm sorry for suggesting you were only hallucinating and-"

"Apology accepted," Bryce said.

"Any theories?" Jenny asked.

"Well," Copperfield said, "I want to start the first autopsy and pathology tests right away. Maybe we won't find a disease or a nerve gas, but we still might find something that'll give us a clue."

"You'd better do that, sir," Tal said. "Because I have a hunch that time is running out."

25.

Questions Corporal Billy Velazquez, one of General Copperfield's support troops, climbed down through the manhole, into the storm drain. Although he hadn't exerted himself, he was breathing hard. Because he was scared.

What had happened to Sergeant Harker?

The others had come back, looking stunned. Old man Copperfield said Harker was dead. He said they weren't quite sure what had killed Sarge, but they intended to find out. Man, that was bulls.h.i.+t. They must know what killed him. They just didn' t want to say. That was typical of the bra.s.s, making secrets of everything.

The ladder descended through a short section of vertical pipe, then into the main horizontal drain. Billy reached the bottom. His booted feet made hard, flat sounds when they struck the concrete floor.

The tunnel wasn't high enough to allow him to stand erect. He crouched slightly and swept his flashlight around.

Gray concrete walls. Telephone and power company pipes. A little moisture. Some fungus here and there. Nothing else.

Billy stepped away from the ladder as Ron Peake, another member of the support squad, came down into the drain.

Why hadn't they at least brought Harker's body back with them when they'd returned from Gilmartin's Market?

Billy kept s.h.i.+ning his flashlight around and glancing nervously behind him.

Why had old Iron a.s.s Copperfield kept stressing the need to be watchful and careful down here?

Sir, what're we supposed to be on the lookout for? Billy had asked.

Copperfield had said, Anything. Everything. I don't know if there's any danger or not. And even if there is, I don't know exactly what to tell you to look for. Just be d.a.m.ned cautious. And if anything moves down there, no matter how innocent it looks, even if it's just a mouse, get your a.s.ses out of there fast.

Now what the h.e.l.l kind of answer was that?

Jesus.

It gave him the creeps.

Billy wished he'd had a chance to talk to Pascalli or Fodor. They weren't the d.a.m.ned bra.s.s. They would give him the whole story about Harker-if he ever got a chance to ask them about it.

Ron Peake reached the bottom of the ladder. He looked anxiously at Billy.

Velazquez directed the flashlight all the way around them in order to show the other man there was nothing to worry about.

Ron switched on his own flash and smiled self-consciously, embarra.s.sed by his jumpiness.

The men above began to feed a power cable through the open manhole. It led back to the two mobile laboratories, which were parked a few yards from the entrance to the drain.

Ron took the end of the cable, and Billy, shuffling forward in a crouch, led the way east. On the street above, the other men paid out more cable into the drain.

This tunnel should intersect an equally large or perhaps larger conduit under the main street, Skyline Road. At that point there ought to be a power company junction box where several strands of the town's electrical web were joined together. As Billy proceeded with all the caution that Copperfield had suggested, he played the beam of his flashlight over the walls of the tunnel, looking for the power company's insignia.

The junction box was on the left, five or six feet this side of the intersection of the two conduits. Billy walked past it, to the Skyline Road drain, leaned out into the pa.s.sageway, and pointed his light to the right and to the left, making sure there was nothing lurking around. The Skyline Road pipe was the same size as the one in which he now stood, but it followed the slope of the street above it, plunging down the mountainside. There was nothing in sight.

Looking downhill, into the dwindling gray bore of the tunnel, Billy Velazquez was reminded of a story he'd read years ago in a horror comic. He'd forgotten the t.i.tle of it. The tale was about a bank robber who killed two people during a holdup and then, fleeing police, slipped into the city's storm drain system. The villain had taken a downward-sloping tunnel, figuring it would lead to the river, but where it had led, instead, was to h.e.l.l. That was what the Skyline Road drain looked like as it fell down, down, down: a road to h.e.l.l.

Billy turned to peer uphill again, wondering if it would look like a road to Heaven. But it looked the same both ways. Up or down, it looked like a road to h.e.l.l.

What had happened to Sergeant Harker?

Would the same thing happen to everyone, sooner or later?

Even to William Luis Velazquez, who had always been so sure (until now) that he would live forever?

His mouth was suddenly dry.

He turned his head inside his helmet and put his parched lips on the nipple of the nutrient tube. He sucked on it, drawing a sweet, cool, carbohydrate-packed, vitamin-and-mineral-rich fluid into his mouth. What he wanted was a beer. But until he could get out of this suit, the nutrient solution was the only thing available. He carried a forty-eight-hour supply-if he didn't take more than two ounces an hour.

Turning away from the road to h.e.l.l, he went to the junction box. Ron Peake was at work already. Moving efficiently despite their bulky decon suits and the cramped quarters, they tapped into the power supply.

The unit had brought its own generator, but it would be used only if the more convenient munic.i.p.al power were lost.

In a few minutes, Velazquez and Peake were finished. Billy used his suit-to-suit radio to call up to the surface. "General, we've made the tap. You should have power now, sir."

The response came at once: "We do. Now get your a.s.ses out of there on the double!"

"Yes, sir," Billy said.

Then he heard ... something.

Rustling.

Panting.

And Ron Peake grabbed Billy's shoulder. Pointed. Past him. Back toward the Skyline drain.

Billy whirled around, crouched down even farther, and shone his flashlight out into the intersection, where Peake's flash was focused.

Animals were streaming down the Skyline Road tunnel. Dozens upon dozens. Dogs. White and gray and black and brown and rust-red and golden, dogs of all sizes and descriptions: mostly mutts but also beagles, toy poodles, full-size poodles, German shepherds, spaniels, two Great Danes, a couple of Airedales, a schnauzer, a pair of coal-black Dobermans with brown-trimmed muzzles. And there were cats, too. Big and small. Lean cats and fat cats. Black and calico and white and yellow and ring-tailed and brown and spotted and striped and gray cats. None of the dogs barked or growled. None of the cats meowed or hissed. The only sounds were their panting and the soft padding and sc.r.a.ping of their paws on the concrete. The animals poured down through the drain with a curious intensity, all of them looking straight ahead, none of them even glancing into the intersecting drain, where Billy and Peake stood.

"What're they doing down here?" Billy wanted to know. "How'd they get here?"

From the street above, Copperfield radioed down: "What's wrong, Velazquez?"