Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

The kids were mocking him.

In a burst of anger and humiliation, Tad kicked the side of the Scalder. The steel wall let out a hollow boom that rolled and echoed back into the unseen vastness of the plant.

“Get out here!”

Tad took one breath, then another. And then, quickly, he ducked through the plastic flaps covering the entrance to the Scalder, careful not to bang his skull on the hooks that dangled from the line overhead. As he licked his flashlight around the insides of the metal box, he got a peripheral glimpse of a figure scrambling along the conveyor belt and out the slot in the far wall. It looked surprisingly big and ungainly: probably the overlapping image of two running boys. But there was nothing ungainly about the speed at which the image scurried away from him. In the blackness just beyond vision, the shape leapt from the line; there was a thump, then the quick patter of feet running toward the rear of the plant.

“Stop!” Tad cried.

He ran around the Scalder and took up the pursuit, the yellow pool of his flashlight bobbing ahead of him. The dark form bypassed the Plucker and went shooting up an emergency ladder toward the Evisceration Area, running along the elevated platform and disappearing behind a thick cluster of hydraulic hoses.

“Stop, damn you!” Tad yelled into the darkness. He climbed the ladder, gun now drawn, and charged down the metal catwalk.

As he passed the cluster of hoses something flashed in his field of vision and he felt a terrific blow to his forearm. He yelled out in surprise and pain. The flashlight flew out of his hand and went crashing to the floor, skidding and rolling off the elevated platform. There was a loud clunk as it hit the concrete floor, a rattle of glass, and then darkness.

From outside came the wail of wind, the patter of hailstones against the roof.

Tad crouched, service piece pointed into the darkness, a pain shooting up and down his left forearm. Christ, his arm hurt. He couldn’t clench his fist or move his fingers, and the pain just seemed to grow and grow, until his whole arm felt like it was on fire.

The son of a bitch had broken his arm. Broken it badly. With a single blow. Tad stifled a sob, clenched his jaw.

He listened intently, but there was no sound except the storm raging beyond the cinderblock walls.

This is no fucking kid.

The anger he’d felt, the humiliation, was gone. The pain and the sudden darkness had taken care of that. Now all Tad wanted to do was get out.

He strained to see in the blackness, tried to remember which way to go. The plant was huge, and without light it would be very difficult to find the exit. Maybe he should stay here, silent and unmoving, until the power returned?

No. He couldn’t stay here. He had to move, to run, somewhere. Anywhere.

Get away. Just get away.

He rose to his feet and, gun drawn, his broken arm dangling, tried to feel his way with his feet back to the ladder, scarcely daring to breathe, terrified that at any moment another blow might come out of the darkness. One step, three, five . . .

In the blackness, his elbow bumped into something.

With his gun hand, he reached out gingerly, touched a surface that felt rough and scaly. Was it the high-pressure hoses? But it didn’t feel like a hose. It felt like something else.

But there was nothing else that should feel like that; not up here in the Evisceration Area.

He bit his lip, suppressed a sob of terror.

It was the blackness that was making him act this way. He wasn’t used to utter blackness. If he fired his gun, maybe he could see long enough to orient himself. One shot toward the roof wouldn’t hurt anything.

He raised his piece and fired upward.

The brief flash revealed a figure, standing next to him, looking at him, smiling. The image was so unexpected, so strange and horrifying, that Tad could not even scream.

But the figure screamed for him: a hoarse, guttural ululation of surprise and anger at the gunshot.

Tad ran. He found the ladder and half fell, half scrambled down it, banging his knees cruelly against the metal rungs. He got tangled near the bottom and fell crashing to the floor, on top of his broken arm. And now he found he could scream, in both pain and terror. But at least he was back on the main floor of the plant. He scrambled to his feet, nauseous from pain and sobbing with terror, ran, tripped again, scrambled back to his feet. And that was when he realized his piece was still clutched desperately in his hand. He could use it, and he would use it. He reached back and fired, once, twice, blindly—and each time, the muzzle flashes revealing that the thing was scuttling toward him, pink mouth yawning wide, arms outstretched.

Muh!

He had to aim the gun, aim it, not just fire wildly. Two more rounds, and each flash showed it coming closer, closer. Tad scrambled backwards, still screaming, and fired twice more, his hand shaking wildly.

Muh! Muh!

It was almost on him. He couldn’t miss now. He aimed point-blank, pulled.

The hammer fell on an empty cylinder. He fumbled for his extra clip, but a second terrible blow struck him in the gut and he fell, unable to breathe, the gun skittering away across the floor. A third blow, this one to his gun arm. He found his wind, thrashing desperately, screaming and kicking, trying to slide himself backwards, but it was impossible with both his arms unusable.

Muh! Muh! Muh!

Tad shrieked again and twisted wildly away, sliding on his back, kicking in the direction of the sound.

And then the thing caught his flailing leg. Tad felt a terrible pressure on his ankle, then a sudden give, accompanied by the snap of bone. His bone.

A moment later, a huge weight pressed down on his chest and something rough and hard gripped his face. There was a smell of earth, and mold, and something fainter but far worse. For a moment it seemed as if the grasp would be gentle, comforting, reassuring.

But then it tightened with a terrible, unforgiving pressure. And then, with ferocious speed, his entire face was twisted in the direction of the floor.

There was a grinding click; a burst of fire at the base of his neck; and then the terrible darkness became bright, so very, very bright . . .

Fifty-Three

C orrie lay in the putrid dark. In this terrible and disorienting blackness, it was impossible to tell how much time had passed since he had left. An hour? A day? It seemed like forever. Her whole body ached, and her neck was sore from where he had squeezed it.

And yet he had not killed her. No: he’d meant to torture her instead. And yet torture didn’t seem to be quite the right word. It was almost as if he was toying with her, playing with her, in some horrible, inexplicable way . . .

But guessing about the killer was pointless. There was no way she could understand something so alien, so broken, so foreign to her own experience. She reminded herself that nobody was going to rescue her way back in this cave system. Nobody knew she was there. If she were to live, she had to do something herself. She had to do it before he came back.

She struggled once again to loosen the cords, succeeding only in chafing and tearing her wrists. The ropes had been tied wet and the knots were as hard as walnuts.

. . . When would he come back? The thought sent a wave of panic through her.

Corrie, get a grip.

She lay still a moment, focusing on her breathing. Then, slowly, with her hands tied behind her, she half crawled, half rolled over the sloping floor of the cave, exploring. The floor was relatively smooth here, but now and then she noticed rough rocks projecting in clusters from the floor of the cave. She stopped to feel one formation more closely with her fingers. Crystals, maybe.