Douglas Preston - Crimson Shore

Forcing his mind back to the issue at hand, he leapt up and raced through the dank corridors, again following the main path, heedless now of the noise that he made. After several twists and turns he arrived at a wide passage leading to a large, ponderously decorated, pentagonal room, lit by candles and dominated by an altar. He stopped, peering around with his silvery eyes. A ropy tangle of flesh and bone lay on the altar. It was so distorted it took Pendergast a moment to realize the tangle had once been human. A muscle was still twitching: a neurological artifact. The man was very recently dead. But where was the killer who had just completed this work of death and dismemberment?

He spun around, Les Baer in hand, flicking his light into the darker alcoves as he moved across the altar room; but even before his light had reached the final alcove, the figure he had earlier seen assault Mourdock — naked, bestial, yellow — exploded out of a dark corner. Pendergast swung the handgun around and squeezed off a round, but the figure did a curious, cringing flip that avoided the shot while at the same time striking a blow at Pendergast with one foot, smashing the weapon out of his hand. Pendergast half turned to absorb the blow and dealt the man-creature a sharp punch to the midriff as he rotated past, tail lashing him across the face. Pendergast rolled, braced, then crouched, pulling a modified Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife with a short fixed blade from its strap on one calf, but the creature took advantage of the movement to come back at him low, then leap at him with a growl. They fell to the ground, the creature on top of him; Pendergast tried to stick him with the knife but the brute seized the blade in a massive hand and tried to wrest it from his hand, gripping the steel, blood running freely. Forced to drop the flashlight, struggling to keep his attention on the fight at hand while holding his new, fresh concern at bay, Pendergast tried to work the blade through the clutching fingers. The flashlight rolled against the wall, still casting a feeble light. As they struggled over the knife, the stinking demon opened his muzzle and, with broken black teeth, seized the corner of Pendergast’s ear and bit through it with a crunch of cartilage. The action momentarily relieved Pendergast of the pinning weight of the beast, and he kneed him in the chest with a sound of cracking ribs; with a roar the demon tore the knife out of Pendergast’s hands, severing several of his own fingers in doing so, then lowered his head and attempted to ram Pendergast up against the wall. But Pendergast slipped sideways, more nimble than any bullfighter, and the demon rammed himself against the stone even as Pendergast rotated behind him and leapt back.

He swiftly cast about for the gun; it lay on the far side of the demon, but the knife was closer, just to his right. He darted for it and the demon, instead of trying to block him as he’d anticipated, brought his massive foot down on the flashlight with a crunch. Blackness descended.

Knife now once again in hand, Pendergast rolled twice over the floor and rose up, but the attacker had anticipated the move and came crashing into his side. Twisting hard, Pendergast slashed at him with the knife, its blade sinking deep into flesh. The demon howled in pain and smacked the knife out of Pendergast’s hand while temporarily backing off. Pendergast used the respite to make a fast retreat back down the approach corridor and into the maze of still-darker tunnels beyond. Groping madly ahead, his hand made contact with stone and he moved at a run, far faster than was safe, feeling ahead along the damp wall, having no idea where he was going.

All he knew for certain was that he had been overmastered, and that — if his fears were correct — the creature was now the least of his worries.

It was textbook. As Rivera gazed out on the scene, it appeared just as in all the disaster and terrorist drills they had done dozens of times back in Lawrence and Boston. The entire town was essentially being treated as a crime scene, with MRAPs securing all points of ingress and egress, the medics clustered around the motionless bodies, the ambulances quietly coming and going, the SWAT team members engaged in patrol, questioning the unhurt victims, and surveillance in place on the chance the killer returned. It was the very picture of purposeful activity. An increasingly restive crowd of reporters and vans were being held back at the Metacomet Bridge, and they would have to be appeased soon or they would really go nuts. The airspace had been temporarily restricted over the town, but television choppers hovered over the marshes and circled about just outside the restricted zone, ready to rush in as soon as they were cleared.

The additional men, the strangely comforting routine, had helped take some of the edge off Rivera’s undercurrent of tension — not to say anxiety — over just how strange this situation was. Despite everything, they were no closer to understanding what had actually happened, identifying the killer, or understanding his motive. If any of the witnesses were to be believed, it was a monstrous, humanoid creature, naked, filthy, with a snout and tail, that moved as fast as a wolf and dismembered its victims with massive, tearing hands.

Right.

Except that they had found countless size 16 footprints — bare — throughout the town, inside the homes that had been invaded, many printed in blood. One killer. Not a crazy mob, not a riot, not a rampaging gang of terrorists. Just one killer seemed to have done all this. As for witness descriptions of that killer, Rivera chalked a fair amount of that up to hysteria and terror. But not all of it. Some crazy, large, and undoubtedly costumed killer had rampaged through town. But who he was, why he had done it, where he had come from, and where he had gone were mysteries yet to be solved.

One killer. Rivera’s nerves spiked again.

There had been a crucial development: one bright-eyed officer had noted a security camera in front of a clothing store that the killer must have passed several times. The camera was recording 24/7, and it was low-light capable. Best of all, it switched to battery backup during a power failure. Rivera’s team had broken into the store and collected the digital footage, and they were now processing it at the mobile command center. The footage was overly dark due to the lack of ambient light, but it was currently being enhanced, and it was supposed to be ready... he checked his watch... now.

Until he could see that footage, Rivera simply refused to speculate on how a single individual, barefoot no less, could have perpetrated all this death and destruction. This was something completely outside his experience, and he needed to reserve judgment... at least until he had seen that footage with his own eyes.

He raised his radio. “Gil?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Is that footage ready?”

“Um, well, sort of, but I gotta tell you—”

“Don’t tell me anything. I want to see it fresh, without any preconceptions.”

“Right, sir.”

Gil didn’t sound his usual cocky self. Rivera hung up the radio and walked toward the command center: a mobile container set atop a tractor-trailer rig. He mounted the steps and entered to find things strangely silent. It didn’t take ESP to sense that the level of tension in the room was through the roof.

“What do you have?” he asked.

A number of edgy glances were exchanged. Gil, the video operator, nodded toward a screen. “This is the feed from the store camera. It was dark, but all the digital information was there, waiting to come out. It covers the area in front of the store, the sidewalk and part of the street. It caught the, the perp both coming and going down the street. Time stamp’s in the lower-right corner. The first segment starts at 21:23, and the next at 22:04.”