Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) (41 page)

“Radio beacon. I’m homing in on a signal from the English coast. We’re not headed for England, but it’s on the way.”

“Where are we—good God!”

Bill had glanced off to his right at what had looked like a lone cloud in an empty sky. It wasn’t the cloud that had startled him, but what was under it.

Joe was leaning over his shoulder, squinting into the darkness.

“Shee-it! What the hell is that?”

Far to the south, a huge pillar had risen from the sea. It was made of some grayish substance that gleamed dully in the moonlight and streamed with lightninglike flickers of phosphorescence. Bill guessed it was hundreds of feet across and thousands of feet—maybe
miles
—high. Its top disappeared into the dark cloud growing above it.

So alien, so Cyclopean in size, the sight gave him a crawling feeling in his gut.

Joe must have felt it too. His voice was hushed.

“Almost looks like it’s holding up the sky.”

“Do we have enough fuel to maybe—?”

“No way, José!” Joe straightened in his seat and checked his instruments. “Even if we had plenty to spare, I wouldn’t get a foot closer to that thing than I absolutely had to. And I don’t gotta get no closer than I am now, thank-you-very-much.”

As they continued east, Bill’s eyes remained fixed on the giant column. The dark gray cloud above it continued to grow, and as it grew it began to sink around the column, eventually obscuring it from view.

“I’ll be damned!” Joe said. Bill turned in his seat and found him pointing north. “There’s another one!”

Bill wished the moon were brighter so he could get a better look at it.

And then the moon went out for a second.

“What was that?” Joe said.

Bill’s mouth was suddenly dry. “Something big.”

“Yeah? How big?”

“Very big. A body two hundred feet across and square miles of wing.”

Joe glanced at him with raised eyebrows, then scanned the night.

“I see it,” he said after a moment. “Or rather I don’t see the stars where it’s cruising. It’s—shee-
it
! It’s coming this way!”

Joe threw the Gulfstream into a screaming dive that jammed Bill back into his seat. And then the world got darker as something swooped through the air where they had been only seconds before. The jet bucked and rocked in the backwash from the monstrous wings. Bill craned his neck back and forth looking for the behemoth as Joe continued the dive. He saw it, off to the south, banking around, coming back to make another run at them.

“Never seen nothin’ so goddamned big in my life!”

And still he held the jet into the dive. The black water was looming terrifyingly close.

“Joe, aren’t you getting kind of low?”

“Not near low enough yet.”

And still they dove. Not till Bill was ready to shout with terror and hold his breath for a plunge into the sea did Joe level off. They raced along at fifty feet above the surface.

“You see it?”

Bill twisted around. “Yeah. I can see its right wing. It’s on our tail, coming up fast. Oh,
God
it’s coming fast!”

“Tell me when it’s almost on us. Don’t tell me too soon—and f’God’s sake don’t tell me too late. Just wait’ll you think its about to chomp us, then give a shout.”

It didn’t take long. The thing was moving faster than the Gulfstream. Bill barely had time to wonder how something so big could move so fast when suddenly it was upon them.

“Now, Joe! Now! NOW!”

Abruptly the Gulfstream banked a sharp left, rocking Bill against his safety belt. And suddenly the ocean exploded with white.

The leviathan was gone.

“Wh-what happened?”

“It hit the water,” Joe said, grinning. “Simple aerodynamics, boy. You want to make a sharp turn in flight, you’ve gotta bank. You bank at this altitude with wings that size, the downside one’s gonna catch the surface. And then it’s cartwheel time. Fuck you, Rodan.”

Bill figured that thing could have eaten Rodan for breakfast. He leaned back in the seat and wanted to vomit. But he swallowed hard and held out his hand to Joe.

“You are one hell of a pilot.”

Joe slapped his palm. “I don’t argue that.”

“When’s day?”

Joe glanced at his watch. “Not for a long while. Still some daylight left back home, I’d guess. Though not much.”

WFPW-FM

FREDDY: It’s 5:15, folks. Twenty minutes to sundown.

JO: Yeah. Everybody inside. Get inside NOW.

New Jersey Turnpike

Hank didn’t know how long he’d been phasing in and out of consciousness, but eventually he felt strong enough to move. His head felt three times its normal size and throbbed viciously, but he forced it off the pavement to look around. The movement triggered an explosion of pain through the left side of his skull as the world spun around him. He choked back the bile that surged into his throat, squeezed his eyes shut, and held still. And while he held still, he tried to remember what had happened.

He recalled loading the van, driving down the turnpike, turning in for gas—

Oh, Lord. The Kicker State Trooper. The pistol. The shot.

Hank reached up and gingerly touched the left side of his head. A deep wet gash above his ear there, clots and soft crusts all up and down the side of his head and neck.

But he was alive. The bullet had glanced off his skull and plowed a deep furrow through his scalp. He was weak, sick, dizzy, hurting like he’d never hurt before, but he was alive.

Hank opened his eyes again. He was looking down. A puddle of coagulated blood had pooled on the pavement a few inches below his nose. He pushed himself farther up, pulled his knees under him, then straightened. The vertigo took him for another twirling ride, but when it stopped he took his bearings.

Green metal bins on either side—garbage Dumpsters. Framed between them he could see the rest stop gas pumps a hundred or so feet away. Deserted now. No phony attendants waving cars forward. To his left was the stuccoed side of a building. The restaurants: Bob’s Big Boy, Roy Rogers, TCBY.

They must have dragged him over here out of sight and left him for dead while waiting for the next hapless traveler.

Clenching his teeth against the pain and nausea, he pulled himself to his feet and peered over the Dumpsters. The whole rest stop was deserted. Beyond the pumps the turnpike stood quiet and empty. The cars he’d seen parked over here earlier were gone now.

So was his van.

Hank wanted to scream. Robbed. By Kicker cops, no less. What the fuck? His own followers out during the day were as bad as the inhuman ones that ruled the night.

Night!
He glanced at the sky, at the horizon. Shit, it was getting dark. In a few minutes those horrors would start flying and crawling from their holes. He couldn’t be caught out in the open.

He hobbled to the door on the near flank of the restaurants. Locked. He made his way around to the front entrance. The glass double doors were chained shut from the inside. He peered through. A shambles within. It looked as if the place had been ransacked and looted before it had been locked up. No matter. He wasn’t worried about food now. All he wanted was shelter.

He looked around in the failing light for something to break the glass—a rock, a garbage can, anything. He found a heavy, stuccoed trash receptacle nearby but no way could he lift it.

Near panic now, he circled the rest stop, desperate to find a way in. He was halfway around the back when something whizzed by his head, its jaws grinding as it passed. Then another. He couldn’t see them in the dusky light but he didn’t have to. Chew wasps. Here already. Must be a hole nearby.

In a low crouch he ran for the Dumpsters on the far side of the building. Maybe he could hide in one of them—crawl inside and pull the top down over him. Maybe he’d even find some scraps of food among the refuse.

When he reached the Dumpsters he hoisted himself up the side of the first but found its hinged top gone. Same with the other. Now what?

As he eased himself back down his toe caught in a slot in the pavement. A storm drain. His foot rested on a rusty grate, square, a couple of feet on each side. No problem getting through if he could pull it free.

Try it! he thought, bending and yanking on the grate.

Another bug whistled by—close enough to ruffle his hair. A spearhead.

Ignoring the throbbing in his skull that crescendoed toward agony with the effort, he poured all of what little strength he had left into the task. The metal squeaked and moved a quarter inch, then half an inch, then screeched free of its seat. Hank pushed it aside and slid through the opening into the darkness below. Four feet down, his feet landed in a puddle. No problem. Not even an inch deep. He reached up and slid the grate back over the opening. When it clanked into its seat, he slumped into a crouch and looked up at the sky.

Dark up there, but still lighter than down here. As he watched a lonely star break through the dispersing haze, a huge belly fly plopped onto the grate directly over him and tried to squeeze through. Its acid sack strained against the openings, bulged into the slots, but it was too wide. Buzzing angrily, it lifted off and flew away.

He should have been relieved, happy he’d found a safe haven. Instead he found himself sobbing. Why not? None of his Kickers around to see. He was alone, hurt—still bleeding a little—cold, tired, hungry, no food, no money, no ride, and now he was hiding in a storm drain with dirty, stagnant water soaking through his sneakers. He’d gone from King of the World to bottom.

He forced a laugh that echoed eerily up and down the length of the drain. If nothing else, he could soothe himself with the knowledge that things couldn’t get worse.

Something splashed off to his right.

Hank froze and listened. What was that, oh shit, what was that? A rat? Or something worse—something much, much worse?

He eased his feet out of the water and inched them up the far side of the pipe until he spanned its diameter. If anything was moving through the water, it would pass under him. He peered into the darkness to his right, straining ears and eyes for some sign of life.

Nothing there.

But from his left came a furtive scurrying, moving closer … countless tiny clicks and scratches as something—no, some
things
!—with thousands of feet slithered toward him along the concrete wall of the drain.

More splashing from the right, bolder now,
lots
of splashes, hurried, anxious, eager, avid, frantic splashes coming faster, racing toward him. The storm drain was suddenly
alive
with sound and movement, all converging on him.

Hank whimpered with terror and dropped his feet back into the water as he slammed his palms against the grate above and levered it up from its seat. But before it came free a pair of tonglike pincers vised around his right ankle. He shouted his terror and agony but kept pushing. Another set lanced into his left calf. His feet were pulled from under him and he tumbled to his knees in the stagnant water.

And then in the faint light through the grate he saw them. Huge, pincer-mouthed millipede creatures, like the one he’d seen wriggling from Drexler’s throat in the lobby. The pipe was acrawl with them, five, six, eight, ten feet long. The nearest ones raised their heads toward him, their pincers clicking. Hank slapped at them, trying to bat them away, but they darted past his defenses and latched onto him, digging the ice-pick points of their mandibles into his arms and shoulders. The pain and horror were too much. His scream echoed up and down the hungry pipe as he was dragged onto his back. His arms were pulled above his head and his legs yanked straight as he was positioned along the length of the pipe. Cold water soaked his clothes and ran along his spine. And then more of the things leapt upon him, all over him, their countless clawed feet scratching him, their pincers ripping at his clothing, tearing through the protective layers like so much tissue paper until every last shred had been stripped away and he lay cold and wet and naked, stretched out like a heretic on the rack.