Douglas Preston - Relic

Cuthbert stood up, reached over toward the Director, and plucked the .357 from Wright’s belt. He checked the bullets, then tucked it into his own belt.

“Return that at once!” Wright demanded.

Cuthbert said nothing.

“You’re a bully, Ian. You’ve always been a bully, a small-minded, jealous bully. First thing Monday morning, I’m going to fire you. In fact, you’re fired now.” Wright stood up unsteadily. “Fired, you hear me?”

Cuthbert was standing at the front door of the laboratory, listening.

“What is it?” Rickman asked in alarm. Cuthbert held his hand up sharply.

Silence.

At length, Cuthbert turned away from the door. “I thought I heard a noise,” he said. He looked toward Rickman. “Lavinia? Could you come here a moment?”

“What is it?” she asked, breathless.

Cuthbert drew her aside. “Hand me the torch,” he said. “Now, listen. I don’t want to alarm you. But should something happen—”

“What do you mean?” she interrupted, her voice breaking.

[370] “Whatever it was that’s been killing people is still loose. I’m not sure we’re safe in here.”

“But the door! Winston said it was two inches thick—”

“I know. Maybe everything will be fine. But those doors to the exhibition were even thicker than that, and I’d like to take a few precautions. Help me move this table up against the door.” He turned toward the Director.

Wright looked up vaguely. “Fired! Clean out your desk by five o’clock Monday.”

Cuthbert pulled Wright to his feet, and sat him in a nearby chair. With Rickman’s help, Cuthbert positioned the table in front of the oak door of the laboratory.

“That will slow it down, anyway,” he said, dusting off his jacket. “Enough for me to get in a few good shots, with luck. At the first sign of trouble, I want you to go through that back door into the Dinosaur Hall and hide. With the security gates down, there’s no other way into the Hall. At least that will put two doors between you and whatever’s out there.” Cuthbert looked around again restlessly. “In the meantime, let’s try to break this window. At least then maybe someone will be able to hear us yelling.”

Wright laughed. “You can’t break the window, you can’t, you can’t. It’s high-impact glass.”

Cuthbert hunted around the lab, finally locating a short piece of angle iron. When he swung it vertically through the bars, it bounced off the glass and was knocked out of his hands.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered, rubbing his palms together. “We could shoot out the window,” he speculated. “Do you have any more bullets hidden away?”

“I’m not talking to you anymore,” Wright retorted.

Cuthbert opened the filing cabinet and started fumbling in the dark. “Nothing,” he said at last. “We can’t waste bullets on that window. I’ve only got five shots in here.”

[371] “Nothing, nothing, nothing. Didn’t King Lear say that?”

Cuthbert sighed heavily and sat down. Silence filled the room once again, save only the wind and rain, and the distant roll of thunder.

Pendergast lowered the radio and turned toward Margo. “D’Agosta’s in trouble. We’ve got to move fast.”

“Leave me behind,” said Frock quietly. “I’m just going to slow you down.”

“A gallant gesture,” Pendergast told him. “But we need your brains.”

He moved slowly out into the hall, sweeping his light in both directions. Then he signaled all clear. They moved down the hall, Margo pushing the wheelchair before her as quickly as possible.

As they threaded their way, Frock would occasionally whisper a few words of direction. Pendergast stopped at every intersection, gun drawn. Frequently, he halted to listen and smell the air. After a few minutes, he took the chair’s handlebars from an unprotesting Margo. Then they rounded a corner, and the door of the Secure Area stood before them.

For the hundredth time, Margo prayed silently that her plan would work; that she wasn’t simply condemning all of them—including the group trapped in the subbasement—to a horrible death.

“Third on the right!” Frock called as they moved inside the Secure Area. “Margo, do you remember the combination?”

She dialed, pulled the lever, and the door swung open. Pendergast strode over and knelt beside the smaller crate.

“Wait,” said Margo.

Pendergast stopped, eyebrows raised quizzically.

“Don’t let the smell of it get onto you,” she said. “Bundle the fibers in your jacket.”

Pendergast hesitated.

[372] “Here,” Frock said. “Use my handkerchief to remove them.”

Pendergast inspected it. “Well,” he said ruefully, “if the Professor here can donate a hundred-dollar handkerchief, I suppose I can donate my jacket.” He took the radio and notebook, stuffed them into the waistband of his pants, then removed his suit jacket.

“Since when did FBI agents start wearing handtailored Armani suits?” Margo asked jokingly.

“Since when did graduate students in ethnopharmacology start appreciating them?” Pendergast replied, spreading the jacket carefully on the floor. Then, gingerly, he scooped out several fistfuls of fiber and laid them carefully across his open jacket. Finally, he stuffed the handkerchief into one of the sleeves, folded the garment, and tied the sleeves together.

“We’ll need a rope to drag it with,” said Margo.

“I see some packing cord around the far crate,” Frock pointed out.

Pendergast tied the jacket and fashioned a harness, then dragged the bundle across the floor.

“Seems to be snug,” he said. “Pity, though, that they haven’t dusted these floors in a while.” He turned to Margo. “Will this leave enough of a scent for the creature to follow?”

Frock nodded vigorously. “The Extrapolator estimates the creature’s sense of smell to be exponentially keener than ours. It was able to trace the crates to this vault, remember.”

“And you’re sure the—er—meals it’s already had this evening won’t satiate it?”

“Mr. Pendergast, the human hormone is a poor substitute. We believe the beast lives for this plant.” Frock nodded again. “If it smells an abundance of fibers, it will track them down.”

“Let’s get started, then,” said Pendergast. He lifted the bundle gingerly. “The alternate access to the subbasement is several hundred yards from here. If you’re [373] right, we’re at our most vulnerable from now on. The creature will home in on us.”

Pushing the wheelchair, Margo followed the agent into the corridor. He shut the door, then the three moved quickly down the hall, back into the silence of the Old Basement.

= 53 =

D’Agosta moved forward, crouching low in the water, his revolver nosing ahead into the inky darkness. He had turned off his flashlight to avoid betraying his position. The water flowed briskly between his thighs, its smell of algae and lime mixing with the fetid reek of the creature.

“Bailey, you up there?” he whispered into the gloom.

“Yeah,” came Bailey’s voice. “I’m waiting at the first fork.”

“You’ve got more rounds than I. If we drive off this motherfucker, I want you to stand guard while I go behind and try shooting off the lock.”

“Roger.”

D’Agosta started toward Bailey, his legs numbing in the frigid water. Suddenly, there was a confusion of sounds in the blackness ahead of him: a soft splash, then another, much closer. Bailey’s shotgun went off twice, and several people in the group behind him started whimpering.

[375] “Jesus!” he heard Bailey yell, then there was a low crunching noise and Bailey screamed and D’Agosta felt thrashing in the water ahead of him.