Cry For Tomorrow (16 page)

I was about to thank the boy for his help when another of the black things sprang at us, reaching its claws for the smaller child. I grabbed little Jon with my free hand and spun him to one side even as I kicked the creature in the chest. I nearly puked when my foot sank several inches into the black mass before it encountered enough resistance to throw off the creature’s attack.

“Stay out of the way!” I ordered the little boy a little sharper than I meant when I dropped him into a pile of old leaves that had collected against the wall of the building.

With both hands free now, I used them to grip the hilt of the sword and bring it around to slice into the neck of the creature scrambling back to snap at my leg. The blade slid through its body like a knife through a bowl of thick pudding. This time the head was neatly separated from the short neck and the two sections of the creature were left twitching on the ground in a small pool of thick, black blood.

I wanted to look away but my curiosity won, drawing my eyes to the corpse of the slain creature. Its head and fore-quarters lay to one side of the narrow sidewalk and the other lay a few feet away. On closer examination the creature resembled a hairless rat—except for the jaws filled with double rows of jagged teeth.

“Hey! What are you kids doing out here, don’t you know it’s not safe?” demanded the police officer as he staggered toward the open hatch of his vehicle. “An-and thanks for the heads up,” he stammered as he reached for his radio. Placing his back against the security of the hover-craft, he quickly punched up the codes that put him into contact with his home base.

“This is Officer Casey, I have encountered a swarm of tar-babies and need rodent-control units at the Mid-Town Zoo
stat
!” he ordered tersely. “I repeat, back-up units requested immediately.” Returning the radio unit to its cradle, he reached behind his seat and withdrew, not another of the energy-tasers normally used by the police, but what appeared to be a sawed-off shotgun and a box of shells.

He quickly slipped a handful of shells into the breach and raised the rifle. “
Get down!
” he ordered as he swung the barrel around, pointing it toward Carl and the small swarm of ghouls that he was stabbing with his sword in an attempt to keep them from overwhelming him.

Startled by the sudden shout, Carl took his eyes off the snarling little monsters stalking him and looked up. “Damn!” he growled as he threw himself sideways and to the ground.

The shotgun pellets ripped large holes in the black, gel-like flesh of the tar-babies and left them floundering on the ground, squealing in pain. Carl rolled to his feet and cast an angry, sick look at the policeman.

“Hey man, don’t you know they don’t die when you wound them like that?” he snarled as he began cutting the heads from the grievously wounded creatures.

The policeman lowered his rifle and stared at Carl in surprise. He’d taken a step in his direction when there was a deep rumble from the ground beneath us.

“Quake!” someone yelled.

The buildings shook and the trees showered us with leaves and small limbs as the pavement of the parking lot began to disintegrate. In moments the grey concrete resembled a giant jigsaw puzzle and we were slipping in the bands of the thick black tar leaking between the pieces. Even the nasty little tar-babies were forced to dance frantically from one chunk of paving to the next to keep from sinking into the ooze.

“Everyone head for the buildings and the higher ground beyond,” shouted the police officer. Abandoning his sinking hover-craft, he turned and ran for the entrance. The floating chunks of pavement bobbed and slid under his weight but he was nearly to the ticket booth when the slab of concrete he’d jumped to flipped, and dumped him into the tar. He was sucked under the black ooze before anyone could return to help him.

Little Jon’s arms were wrapped tightly around my waist, his face buried in my jacket. If I’d thought there was someone else to save me, I would have done the same. “Come on, Jon, let’s get out of here.” I grabbed the little boy’s hand and dragged him between two of the buildings and toward the archway leading into the zoo. I could only hope that the quake was not affecting the higher ground beyond it.

I threw a quick look over my shoulder to be sure that the others were close behind. Jennie had Merry by the hand and was only a couple of strides behind me as was Kelly. I didn’t see Carl until we were all huddled together on a small grassy area. He was already there and searching for a safe path out.

When Kelly spotted him, she looked up at me and shook her head in disgust. “Nice of your boyfriend to slow down and help us all out of there, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, it was,” I agreed sarcastically.

The distant rumble of an approaching flitter made us look in the direction of the parking lot that was mostly concealed behind the buildings now.

“I’ll bet those are the cops coming to back up the guy that got killed,” Carl decided. “Maybe they can get us out of here.” He’d jumped from the solid ground we’d taken refuge on to a solid looking chunk of concrete before we could stop him.

Jen and I exchanged worried looks. We really didn’t want
help
from the police or anybody else right now. We both released breaths of relief when Carl returned to us without shouting to whoever was piloting the flitter.

“Not a police cruiser,” he gasped breathlessly. “A-agency! What did you two do?” he glared at us.

“Jen, we’ve got to get out of here! What if they’re looking for us?”

“You’re right, we can’t stay here.” Grabbing Merry’s hand, Jen and I began walking along the path that would take us deeper into the park.

“It looks like the ground in the main part of the park is safe,” Jen said hopefully.

The ground had stopped shaking under us now, and silence, as thick and intimidating as doom, surrounded us. Nervous and afraid of what kind of creatures might still inhabit the old zoo, we all kept our eyes on the thick growth of brush that had taken over every possible space between the pathways that wound between the animal compounds.

“Which way should we go?” gasped Kelly when we reached an intersection of four pathways.

Before I could give her an answer, Carl lost patience with our lack of action and pushed past me. Pointing to a half-rusted sign, declaring SERPENTARIUM / EXIT, he said, “You told us that the street leading to the trestle is to our right? Then if we take this path and head for the side exit, we should be able to reach it without returning to what’s left of that parking lot.”

Without waiting for my answer, he jogged ahead, following the cracked remains of a walkway winding between tufts of tall pampas grass and overgrown bushes that might once have been a flowering landscape.

Jen and I exchanged glances and shrugged our shoulders. “Guess he’s right,” I said as I pushed aside the drooping fronds of a fern and followed.

Several times there were rustlings of something moving around in the underbrush and when we passed a low wall, crumbling with age, something
hissed
at us from the shadows of a large briar patch, but nothing felt bold enough to step from hiding or openly pursued us.

We caught up to Carl at the entrance to a large building that straddled our path. A pair of doors covered in heavy wire mesh was locked with a rusty but effective padlock looped between the door handles. He slammed his shoulder against one of the doors and fell back, cursing. “Damn! Figures that the only thing not completely rotted through in this place is this damned lock.” He rattled the gate in frustration.

“Here, let me try, maybe I can open it.” I passed the small hand I was clasping into Kelly’s before reaching for the padlock.

Carl grumbled and shook his head irritably. “And just what are you going to do, tear it off with your bare hands?”

I could only stare at him. Shaking off the cold shiver running up my spine I stepped around him.
Had I really ever found this man attractive?
Surely there had been something more to him beneath this façade of male macho, but if there ever had been I could no longer see it. Glaring up at him, I managed to rasp a few terse words of warning, “You really need to take a step back if you don’t want to get shocked.”

Pulling the sleeve of my jacket down to protect my hand, I took a firm grip of the lock and released a small burst of electricity. I quickly released the handful of hot, rusty metal, letting it crumble to the ground before jerking the door open. I really did not need to hear anything else out of his mouth.

“Oh, yeah, right, just another one of your special little tricks,” Carl grumbled sarcastically under his breath, “just like the one that got us all into this mess.”

“What did you say?” Kelly demanded as she came to a stop in front of him and glared up into his puffy face.

“It was nothing, little sister, nothing at all,” Carl returned in his usual unpleasant grumble, but he did take a couple of steps back.

“I guess it wasn’t,” smirked Kelly as she followed the rest of the kids into the old serpentarium.

I stopped a few feet inside the doorway and stared around at the interior of the long, narrow building. Light from a series of skylights overhead allowed me to see just enough of my surroundings to make out the path leading between rows of glass enclosures along one outer wall to our left and a garden of dead plants on the opposite wall.

“What was in these glass cases?” queried Jon as he tapped his fingers against the front of one.

“I’d have to guess at an assortment of snakes and reptiles. It looks like they were all released a very long time ago, at least, I hope so” I couldn’t help a small shudder. I really did not like snakes at all. I brushed against the dried frond of a large fern and jumped nervously when the motion set off a series of rustling and hissing. If the assortment of labels that I could read along the bed were any indication, these dried husks were the remains of what had once been beautiful, exotic plants.

“What was that?” gasped Merry as she tightened her grasp on Jennie’s shirt tail.

“It’s okay. It wa-was just dead leaves and stuff,” Jennie tried to reassure her. “Hey!” She jumped sideways, dragging the little girl with her to avoid a slurping puddle of black goop that had suddenly appeared in the path.

“What’s going on?” grumbled Carl as one of his feet sank into the path. He leaped into the bed of dried plants and stared back along the path.

“I don’t know, but everybody get off the path. Now!” I dragged little Jon and the dog into the old flower bed with me and was backing toward the outer wall when it suddenly began melting like a wax figure too long in the sun.

“Watch out,” I warned the others. “Something’s wrong with the walls.”

“What are we going to do?” cried Kelly as she moved closer to me to avoid the small splashes of black tar that were popping from the surface of the sludge that was beginning to fill the path.

“Stay up here and just keep on moving,” I instructed nervously.

We were in sight of the exit door at the end of the building when Dusty began barking hysterically at the rustling plants in the pathway ahead.

“Can’t you make that damned mutt shut its face?” growled Carl. “Damn! What are those?” He jumped back barely in time to avoid a head-on collision with a pair of large grey phantoms rising from the depths of the plants.

Moaning like haunts from an old B-rated horror film, the wraiths rose into the air and swooped, passing mere inches above our heads before phasing through the glass walls of the old aquariums and back again. Bobbing about the building like escaped hot-air balloons, they soared between us humans, sometimes even brushing against us as they passed by in the manner of big cats, or maybe sharks, tasting prospective victims.

Barking excitedly, Dusty leaped into the air, managing to snag one of the phantoms by a dangling foot as it swooped past her.

Trapped, the wraith turned back and drove its faceless head at the dog. A sound reminiscent of rotten fruit striking a solid surface startled Dusty into releasing her hold.
Yipping
in surprise, she jumped in the air to avoid the phantom and slammed into my knees.

Gasping in pain and completely off-balance from the sudden impact, I tumbled over the top of the large dog. I barely had the presence of mind to release my grip on little Jon’s hand to keep him from being dragged into the pile-up as well.

I was still scrambling to regain my feet when I heard his frightened call.

“Halie! Help me!”
he called again.

Grabbing hold of a support post for balance, I jerked myself the rest of the way to my feet as my eyes frantically searched for the child. I finally spotted him several yards
away where he must have run to escape the phantom, and stepped into the black tar of the pathway.

“Jennie! Grab him!” I
shouted hysterically.
But no, Jennie was too far away.

“I can’t.” Jennie lunged, but her hand fell short. A large bubble of tar erupted around the child and burst with a loud
pop!
And little Jon disappeared from sight.

Kelly and Merry screamed and huddled together, sobbing.

“
No!
Damn it,
no!”
Sobbing, I collapsed at the edge of the path. I could hear Jennie crying softly where she lay in the flower bed, her arm still extended over the place Jon had sunk. The phantoms swooped madly, moaning hysterically, as if they, too, mourned the loss of the small boy.

When the cold dampness of the ground finally penetrated my despair I pulled myself to my feet and numbly made my way to Jennie’s side to help her up.

“Damn, hell of a thing,” growled Carl as he moved toward us. “Come on, girls, there’s nothing else you can do here.”

“He-he’s right, Jen,” I said softly. I reached down and took my friend by the shoulders and was pulling her to her feet when the thick bed of tar at our side suddenly exploded upwards in a great spout of tar-covered phantoms.

We lurched backwards, staring, as the dripping tar exposed the forms of two large wraiths and-one small boy.

The phantoms floated toward us and dropped the kicking, sputtering child in our laps before retreating a few yards away where they hovered expectantly.