F. Paul Wilson - Nightworld

"I don't know," she said, wrinkling her brow. "It just came to me."

"Well, thanks, Vicks," Jack said, rolling it up into a tube. "I'll add it to my Victoria Westphalen collection."

She beamed and flashed him that smile. "Because it's going to be worth a lot when I'm famous, right?"

"You got it kid. You're going to help me retire."

Jack gave her a kiss and a hug, then another quick kiss for Gia.

"I'll be back later."

Gia gave his hand a squeeze of thanks, then he was out on the street, walking west.

As he headed up 58th, Mr. Veilleur's final words of the afternoon echoed in his head.

Do not go out after dark, especially near that hole.

Why the hell not? The warning was like a waving red flag. And since he'd have to pass the Park on his way to Julio's…

The area around the Sheep Meadow looked deserted compared to this afternoon. The party was over.

Maybe it was the smell.

Jack caught his first whiff of it as he passed the Plaza. Something rotten, putrid. He wasn't the only one. The hotel guests emerging from their cabs and limos, or strolling down the steps from the entrances, wrinkled their noses as it struck them. He'd thought maybe a nearby sewer had backed up, but the odor had grown stronger as he entered the Park.

And here in the Sheep Meadow it was thick.

Banks of floodlights lit the hole and the surrounding area like home plate at Yankee Stadium. As he watched he thought he saw something like a pigeon fly up from the hole, darting through the light and into the darkness beyond. But it moved awfully fast for a pigeon.

Jack spotted a middle-aged woman crossing the grassy buffer zone between officialdom and the hoi poloi; he moved laterally to intercept her.

"Is that stink coming from the hole?" he said as she ducked under the barricade. The answer was obvious but it was a good opener.

She wore a plastic badge that flopped around as she walked. Her first name looked like Margaret; he couldn't make out her last but he caught the words "Health" and "Department" above it. Her tan slacks and blue blazer had a distinctly masculine cut.

"It's not coming from me."

Ooh, a friendly one.

"I hope not. Smells like something crawled into my nose and died."

She smiled. "That pretty well captures it."

"Seriously," Jack said, matching her stride as she headed toward the street. "When did it start? There was a downdraft into the hole last night."

She glanced sideways at him. "How'd you know about that?"

"I was here when it opened."

"We already have plenty of witnesses. If you want to make a statement—"

"I'm just curious about the stink."

"Oh. Well, the downdraft became an updraft shortly after sunset. We started noticing the odor about an hour later. It's almost unbearable at the edge."

"I thought I saw something fly out of there a few moments ago."

Margaret nodded. "There's been a few. We're toying with the idea of trying to net one, but we've got other concerns at the moment. We think they might be birds that flew in during the day. Maybe the smell is driving them out. But don't worry. The smell's not toxic."

"That's hard to believe."

"Believe it. We've checked it out eight ways from—"

Screams and shouts rose from behind them. They both turned. Jack saw a flock of bird-like things swarming in the air over the hole. No…not just swarming—swooping and diving at the people working along the perimeter.

"Oh, my God!" Margaret said and started running back toward the hole.

Jack kept pace. He wanted to get a closer look—but not too close. Those birds appeared to be going crazy, like something out of the Hitchcock movie.

Only they weren't birds. Jack realized that when they got to within fifty yards of the hole.

"Whoa!" he said, grabbing Margaret's arm. "I don't like the looks of this."

She pulled away.

"My reports! All my test data! They'll be ruined!"

Jack slowed his pace and hung back as she ran off toward one of the control tents. He stood in the shadows and tried to identify those things filling the air…more like insects than birds. They must have come out of the hole. He sure as hell hadn't seen anything like them around New York. Two kinds darting around on dragonfly wings, some with big, pendulous translucent sacks like water balloons filled with clear jello, looking too heavy and ungainly for flight, others that were mostly mouth, little more than giant, fanged jaws attached to lobster-sized, wasp-waisted bodies. Both had strips of neon-like dots along their flanks. They looked like those weird deep-sea fish that show up every so often in National Geographic, the ones from miles down where the sun never shines. Only these were right here in Central Park. And they were flying.

Screams of pain and terror drew his attention from the air to ground level. Suddenly everything was red in the false daylight of the lamps. Jack dropped to a frozen crouch when he saw what was happening along the periphery of the hole. The things weren't just buzzing the people stationed there, they were on the attack. People were scattering in all directions, swatting at the air like picnickers who'd disturbed a hornets' nest. But hornets would have been a blessing. The jawed things were like air-borne piranhas, swooping in, sinking their teeth into an arm, a leg, a neck, an abdomen, ripping a mouthful of flesh free, and then darting away. Blood spurted in all directions from a hundred wounds.

Amid the melee Jack saw a bald headed man go down kicking and screaming under a dozen jaw-things; a second dozen joined the first, and then more until they covered him like ants on a piece of candy. Instinctively, Jack stepped forward to help him, then stepped back. There was nothing he could do. He watched helplessly as the man's screaming and kicking stopped, but the feeding went on.

Jack turned, ready to head for the street, when he noticed a bloated, distorted, vaguely human shape stumbling through the shadows in his direction. It gave off hoarse, high-pitched, muffled noises as it approached, its arms outstretched, reaching for him. At first Jack thought it was another sort of monstrosity from the hole, but as it drew nearer he realized there was something familiar about the swatches of tan fabric visible on its legs.

The horror slammed into Jack like a truck. Margaret—from the Health Department. But what—?

The other things from the hole, the ones with the jello sacks—she was covered with them. Wings humming, sacks pulsating, a good thirty or forty of the creatures clung to every part of her body. Jack leapt to her side and began tearing at the things, grabbing them by their wings and ripping them off, starting with the pair that clung to her face. Her scream of agony tore through the night and Jack stared in horror at the bloody ruin of her face. There wasn't much left of it. It looked melted, or corroded by acid. Her cheeks were eaten away, so deeply on the right that Jack spotted the exposed white of a tooth poking through.

He stepped back and looked at the two creatures squirming and writhing in his grasp, raking at his hands with their tiny claws. Their sacks were no longer clear. They were red—with Margaret's blood. He hurled them to the ground and stomped on them, rupturing their sacks. Crimson mucous exploded, smoking where it splattered his pants and sneakers, eating through the fabric and bubbling the rubber. Jack danced away from the mess and turned back to Margaret.

She was gone. He looked around. She couldn't have got far. Then he saw her, a still form face-down on the grass. He crouched beside her. As he reached toward her, one of the sack things lifted off her back, leaving a bloody patch of exposed ribs, denuded of flesh and muscle, and fluttered toward Jack. He tried to bat it away but it latched onto his forearm like a lump of epoxy glue. And the pain! Scalding—like boiling acid poured on his skin. It took Jack by surprise and he shouted with the sudden agony. He ripped it off his arm and as it came free he felt a layer of his skin peel away.