The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) (38 page)

He took a flashlight from his belt, flicked
it on, and shone the beam between the bars.

Electric fear soldered Danièle to the
spot.

Ten feet down, a horrible mutant face stared
up at them.

“What the fuck?” Drill Sergeant said,
aligning the pistol with the flashlight, so they both pointed into
the hole. “
Don’t fucking move!
”

Danièle sensed movement and spun to see
Zolan burst from behind the door and swing his bone-weapon like a
baseball bat at Drill Sergeant’s head. Drill Sergeant turned just
as the end of the femur cracked against his temple. He collapsed
like a sack of flour. Danièle made to run, but Zolan pulled her
against him and clamped his hand over her mouth.

“Don’t make a sound,” he whispered into her
ear.

I stared at the ground in front of me,
fighting to remain conscious. My vision was blurring and my ears
were ringing and every part of my body ached for rest, from the
soles of my feet to the pads of my fingertips. But I wouldn’t let
myself pass out. Not here, not on the floor. I wanted to get to the
hospital first, get looked over by a doctor, be told I didn’t have
any kind of traumatic brain injury. The latter worried me more than
I cared to admit. I’d been knocked out cold by blunt force trauma
twice. I could be suffering intracranial pressure, or cerebral
bleeding—or something serious enough to turn me into a vegetable or
prevent me from ever waking again.

Also, I needed to be around for Katja. The
next few hours were going to be terrifying for her. She was going
to come into contact with more people than she had seen in her
entire life, while being inundated by sights and sounds and smell
she wouldn’t recognize or understand. She would likely be
interrogated and locked up, perhaps even verbally abused and
threatened.

And when our story was eventually verified,
something that could take days, what then? Where would she be
taken? Would she be dropped off at some almshouse and left to fend
for herself? No, I decided. This wasn’t the middle ages. She’d
likely end up at an intermediate care facility or care house or
whatever they were called nowadays—those places where people with
physical or mental disabilities went. And…well, maybe that wouldn’t
be as bad as it sounded. After all, it couldn’t be any worse than
what she’d endured living with Hanns and the rest of her extended
family. Also, there’d be care workers to help get her up to date
with the world, help integrate her into society.

In fact, could it be that my earlier doom
and gloom outlook for her future was misguided? Could she indeed
live a full life? I recalled the look on her face when she saw the
wax casts of the injured soldiers’ faces: wonder and hope. I had
not considered reconstructive surgery for her before, but could
that be a feasible option? Medical technology has come a long way
in a short time. Doctors have performed complete face transplants.
Wasn’t it possible then they could provide her some sort of
artificial nose and lips? And the financial cost? Well, maybe there
could be a silver lining to the inevitable media whirlwind. Surely
when people learned what she had been through, donations would pour
in. Plastic surgeons might even offer to work on her pro bono; the
publicity and prestige if successful would be priceless.

This was all speculation, of course, but
there was one thing I knew for certain: I was not going to abandon
Katja. I would be a brother to her. I would be there for her every
step of the way—

Someone on the other side of the door began
whistling, a sad, windy melody.

One of the guards called, “
Qui est
là?
”

“
Je m’appelle Monsier Lenoir
,” a
voice floated back. “
Je suis le portier.
”

“
Le portier?
” The guards exchanged
glances.

Moments later the door opened and an old man
in drab work clothes appeared pushing a mop protruding from a
yellow bucket on wheels.

Zolan!

“That’s him!” I said. “He’s the one who
attacked us!”

The guard closest to me yelled at me to shut
up, but both he and his pal placed their hands on the butts of
their holstered pistols.

“That’s him!” I repeated, staring up at
them. Then: “Katja, tell them! Tell them who that is.”

“
Cest mon pѐre
,” she said in a small
voice.

The guards seemed baffled. “
Votre
pѐre?
” one said.

She nodded.

They approached Zolan, speaking to him,
giving orders. Zolan spoke back and held up his hands.

“Don’t listen to him!” I shouted. “Whatever
he’s saying, he’s lying!”

One of the guards yelled at me to shut up
again, while the other resumed conversing with Zolan. I didn’t know
what Zolan was up to, but my carrying on like a raving lunatic
wasn’t helping any.

“Katja,” I said quietly, looking at her.
“We’re going to have to run.”

“Run? Where?”

I jerked my head in the opposite direction
of Zolan and the guards. “Through that door.”

“What’s happening?”

“Just run. Don’t look back. Okay?”

She nodded.

I moved from my knees into a crouch. Katja
did the same.

“
Hé!
” one of the
guards shouted. “
Arrêtez!
”

He started toward us. The other hesitated,
then followed.

Zolan withdrew a pistol from beneath his
shirt.

“Watch out!”

My warning was drowned out by the ensuing
gunshot. The report rang through the hallway.

“Go!” I shouted to Katja, and we turned and
ran.

A second shot sounded. A guard screamed. A
third shot, and the screaming stopped.

Katja and I crashed through the wooden door
and kept running.

Danièle sat in the corner of the small room,
a foul-tasting rag stuffed into her mouth, her hands still cuffed
behind her back. Four zombie-men huddled together by the door while
others continued to climb from the hole.

She almost wished Zolan had killed her along
with Drill Sergeant. The fact he didn’t meant he had other plans
for her. These were not hard to fathom. He would take her back to
his lair in the catacombs, only there would be no pretenses this
time. He would imprison her, and he would rape her. She would
become his go-to fuck. This knowledge filled her with a bottomless
despair, a state of doom. She couldn’t go back. She couldn’t go
through that.

Her only chance, she knew, was for the two
remaining guards, or for Will, to stop him. This was possible, but
Zolan now had Drill Sergeant’s pistol—and the element of surprise.
Danièle didn’t know what his plan was, but he had changed into a
janitor’s uniform hanging on the back of the door and left with a
mop and yellow bucket.

Did he really think this disguise would fool
Will and Katja? Or did they not matter to him? Did he merely want
only to get close enough to the guards to shoot them?

The last of the zombie-men emerged from the
hole, seven in total. They stood shoulder to shoulder in the
cramped space, ill at ease, restive, no doubt uncomfortable in the
unfamiliar environment. Their collective stench was overpowering,
making Danièle’s eyes water.

Then one of them—the first one out of the
hole, the one Zolan had called Jörg—tapped his bone-weapon against
the door. He listened, then rattled the handle. He continued
rattling it more and more aggressively until the push-button lock
popped. He jumped backward, startling the others. Some moaned, some
looked about wildly, but for the most part they remained quiet.

Jörg rattled the handle a final time, and
the door clicked open. He grunted with satisfaction, stuck his nose
to the crack, and made sniffing noises. He paused, sniffed, paused.
Then he pushed the door farther open, wincing at the light. He
glanced over at Danièle, his eyes calculating.

Apparently his curiosity trumped his
obedience to Zolan, and he left the room.

The rest of the mob barked and groaned and
bumped one another in what was either confusion or fear or both.
Then one worked up the courage and left as well. Then another, and
another, until Danièle was by herself.

She scrambled quickly to the fallen soldier
and found the handcuff key in a belt keeper between the holster and
baton. She stuck the key in the handcuff’s keyhole and fiddled with
it until the shackle jaw slid open. She brought her hands in front
of her and unlocked the second cuff. Then she tore the rag from her
mouth and sucked back air—just as a gunshot rang out.

Katja and I dashed back into the museum
proper, but there was no place to hide, no place to run. I heard
the door bang open behind us and knew Zolan would be right on our
heels. We turned one corner after another and ended up in the
church Danièle had mentioned. The nave was capped by a sculpted
ceiling and a cupola decorated with a fresco. A giant baldachin
with distinctive twisted columns rose above the altar and a
nativity scene.

“There!” I said, pointing down the left
transept to a pair of giant doors.

We ran toward them, our feet slapping on the
marble floor.

For a moment Zolan had feared Will and Katja
would escape into the gardens to the east of the museum and reach
the military hospital, but instead they fled toward the adjoining
church, the main doors of which would undoubtedly be locked at this
hour.

He slowed to a fast walk with the SIG Pro
held out in front of him and told himself this was all going to
work out after all. In a few minutes he would be back in the
catacombs with Will, Danièle, Katja, and the dead military guard in
the custodial closet. Investigators would find the two men he’d
shot, but that would be all. Suspicion would shift to the missing
guard, yet there would be little to go on, and the case would go
cold.

Safely underground once more, Zolan would
not make the same mistake twice. He would kill Will immediately and
then Danièle after he had his way with her, then he would finish
what was long overdue. He would kill the rest of them: Jörg, Karl,
Odo…Katja. It would break his heart to do so, but the time had come
to end the insanity he had become a party to.