Douglas Preston - Reliquary

Pendergast stopped and took several breaths of the cleansing oxygen. The entire hut had been constructed of human skulls, anterior sides facing outward. Ragged holes yawned through their backs, glowing eerily green in his goggles. He counted the skulls from floor to roof, then did a rough estimation of the diameter; a quick calculation told him that the circular wall of the hut was formed of roughly four hundred and fifty skulls. Hair and scalp fragments showed that most, if not all, of the skulls were fresh.

Pendergast circled to the front of the hut, then waited outside the entrance for several minutes, motionless. The tracks ended here—thousands of them—in a mad jumble of prints around the opening. Above it, he could see three ideographs, painted in some dark liquid:

There was no sound, no movement. Taking a deep breath, he crouched, then spun toward the inside.

The hut was deserted. Ceremonial clay goblets, at least a hundred or more, had been placed on the floor along the inside wall. Outside the entrance stood a simple stone offering table, perhaps four feet high and two in diameter. It was surrounded with a fence made out of what appeared to be human long-bones, lashed with rawhide. Some odd-looking metal parts had been arranged on the table and covered with rotting flowers, as if part of a shrine. Pendergast picked up one of the parts and examined it in surprise. It was a flat piece of metal with a worn rubber handle. The other, equally mundane items provided no further clues. He slipped a few of the smallest into his pocket.

Suddenly, a flash of white registered in his goggles. Quickly, he dropped to a kneeling position behind the table. All seemed quiet, and he wondered if he had been mistaken. Occasionally the goggles could be fooled by thermal layers in the air.

But there it was again: a shape, human—or nearly—loping through the archway from the platform beyond, a white blob leaving an infrared track on his field of view. It appeared to be clutching something to its chest as it ran toward him.

In the thick dark, Pendergast silently raised his gun in one hand, his flash apparatus in the other, and waited.

= 40 =

MARGO SAT BACK in the flimsy institutional chair, massaging her temples lightly with her fingertips. After Frock’s departure, the meeting had quickly degenerated into disagreement. Horlocker left the room for several minutes to speak privately with the mayor. He returned with a city engineer named Hausmann. Now, Jack Masters, head of NYPD’s Tactical Response Unit, was also on the phone. But so far they had made little progress toward any course of action.

“Look,” came the voice of Masters, tinny and distorted, through the speakerphone. “It’s taken my people almost half an hour just to verify the existence of these Astor Tunnels. How can we insert a team?”

“Send several teams, then,” Horlocker snapped. “Try different entrance points. Use a wave approach, so we know at least one team will make penetration.”

“Sir, you can’t even tell me the number or condition of the, well, whatever you call them. And the terrain is unfamiliar. The tunnel system beneath Manhattan is so complex, my men would be compromised. There are too many unknowns, too many ambush points.”

“There’s always the Bottleneck,” said Hausmann, the City Engineer, chewing fretfully on the end of his pen.

“The what?” Horlocker replied.

“The Bottleneck,” said the engineer. “All the piping in that quadrant has to go through a single large blast hole, maybe three hundred feet down. The Astor Tunnels are below that somewhere.”

“There you go,” Horlocker said into the speakerphone. “We could seal it off and proceed from there. Right?”

There was a pause. “I suppose so, sir.”

“So we could trap them.”

“Maybe.” Masters sounded dubious even through the speakerphone. “But what then? We couldn’t lay siege. And we couldn’t very well go in and root them out. It would be a stalemate. We need more time to grid the route.”

Margo glanced at D’Agosta, looking on disgustedly. It was what he’d been recommending from the beginning.

Horlocker pounded on the table. “Goddammit, we don’t have time! I’ve got the governor and the mayor breathing down my neck. They’ve authorized me to take any action necessary to stop these killings. And I plan to do just that.”

Now that Horlocker had made up his mind, his determination, his impatience, was remarkable. Margo wondered just what it was the mayor had said in their telephone conversation that had so put the fear of God into the Police Chief.

Hausmann, the engineer, removed his pen from his mouth long enough to speak. “How can we be sure these creatures live in the Astor Tunnels, anyway? I mean, underground Manhattan’s a large place.”

Horlocker turned toward Margo. She cleared her throat, aware of being put on the spot.

“From what I understand,” she said, “there are a lot of underground homeless throughout the tunnels. If there were a concentration of these creatures elsewhere, the homeless would know about it. Like we said earlier, there’s no reason to doubt the word of this Mephisto. Besides, if the creatures have any of the characteristics of the Mbwun beast, they’ll shun light. The deeper their nest, the better. Of course,” she added quickly, “Pendergast’s report will—”

“Thank you,” Horlocker said, stepping hard on her final words. “Okay, Masters? You’ve got the brief.”

The door swung open suddenly, the squeaking of rubber wheels announcing Frock’s return. Margo looked up slowly, almost afraid to see the expression on the old scientist’s face.

“I think I owe everyone here an apology,” he said simply, wheeling up to the table. “As I went through the Museum’s halls just now, I did my best to look at things objectively. And on reflection, I’m afraid I may well have been wrong. It’s difficult to admit it, even to myself. But I suppose the theory advanced by Margo best fits the facts.” He turned toward Margo. “Please forgive me, my dear. I’m a tiresome old man, overly fond of his pet theories. Especially when it comes to evolution.” He smiled wanly.

“How noble,” Horlocker said. “But leave the soul-searching for later.”

“We need better maps,” the voice of Masters continued, “and more information about the hostiles’ habits.”

“Damn it!” Horlocker cried. “Aren’t you hearing me? We don’t have time for a geological survey here! Waxie, what’s your take on this?”

There was a silence.

Frock eyed Waxie, who was staring out the window as if hoping to see the much-needed answer spray painted across Central Park’s Great Lawn. The Captain frowned, but no words came.

“The first two victims,” Frock said, still eyeing Waxie, “appear to have been washed out in a storm.”

“So they were nice and clean when we found them,” Horlocker growled. “Good. So what?”

“The gnaw marks on these victims don’t show signs of hurried work,” Frock continued. “It would appear the creatures had plenty of time to do their work unmolested. That would imply the bodies were near, or perhaps in, their lair at the time the marks were made. There are numerous analogs in nature.”

“Yeah?”

“If a few victims can be flooded out by a storm, what would it take to flood the lair itself?”

“That’s it!” Waxie cried, turning from the window in triumph. “We’ll drown the bastards!”

“That’s crazy,” said D’Agosta.

“No, it isn’t,” Waxie said, pointing excitedly out the window. “The Reservoir’s got to drain out through the storm system, right? And when the storm drains get overloaded, doesn’t the overflow go into the Astor Tunnels? Wasn’t that why you said they were abandoned?”