Nightwalk 2 Page 12

  This place was actually a tombstone. A monument to occasions lost. It was a doomed memorial for the parties and lives that would never be celebrated by the people murdered in the neighborhood behind us… and a festively decorated mausoleum through which I would lead a band of ghosts who didn’t even know they were dead.

  I had never felt lonelier in my life.

  “Hey,” Mickey’s whisper cut through my broodings, “see anything?”

  “No,” I recovered and answered. “Nothing yet. But let’s make sure.”

  I moved across the store, pausing twice to look down the two aisles of the free-standing shelves. I had to be careful with the torch since we were indoors and I didn’t care to test how fireproof the ceiling tiles were. Mickey shadowed me the whole way, machete at the ready. Only after I reached the far wall and could see down the last aisle did I start to relax. It looked like this time we had gotten lucky. Nothing horrendous lay in wait to rip us to shreds.

  Then I reached over and rapped the wall with my knuckles. This time I received no reassuringly hollow thump.

  “Crap, a firewall,” I exhaled, and then allowed myself to relax just a tad. “But on the bright side it looks like the room is clear.”

  “What about the back room?”

  “The back room?” I glanced back at her in mild surprise. “Were you planning on going into the back room? Since we’re dealing with a firewall, we’re gonna need everybody up to the front of the store so they can be ready to move when I start shooting windows out.”

  “Maybe so, but I’ve noticed a lot of the things doing the killing tonight are things we didn’t know were there. I get nervous about the idea of leaving any of those lying around.”

  “Good point.”

  “But now that we know the store is clear, we can bring Justin in and have more backup on this side. In a minute we can go back past the hole and snag him on our way by.”

  “Works for me,” I conceded, now impressed. “You sure you shouldn’t be running this show?”

  “Why? You intend to stop listening to suggestions?”

  “Not from you. That’s for damn sure.”

  “Then it’s your plan, and your show. I mainly wanted to see if you would be the one to come in here, or if you would send Justin in with his gun instead. Since you’re willing to put your own ass on the line for your plans, I have a little more faith in where you’re coming from.”

  “That’s your criteria?” I gave her a disbelieving look. “You know, there are lots of idiots out there who carry out their own bad plans.”

  “Oh, I already liked the plan. I just wanted a better feel for the planner. So, what is it you do, Mr. Garrett?”

  “I write mystery novels.”

  “You mean like ‘Murder She Wrote’?”

  “More like Phillip Marlow.”

  “Oh. I guess that explains the hat. Anything else?”

  “I’ve already had my daily ration of shit about the hat,” I groaned. “And no, nothing else. What do you do?”

  “Social worker. Mainly trying to intercept teens heading in the wrong direction and point them in the right one.”

  “And here I thought all social workers were hippie chicks running around all doe-eyed and singing Kumbaya. You don’t exactly fit the model.”

  “Before that I was an MP in Iraq.”

  “Really? Waitaminute, so why is Justin carrying the gun?”

  “It’s his gun.”

  “Oh, I suppose that makes sense.”

  “We thought so too.”

  “And you didn’t own one of your own?”

  “I did when I was an MP. I’m a social worker now, remember?”

  “Oh,” I replied, then suddenly realization hit. “Ah! And I’m guessing that’s where you met your young Viking friend.”

  “Yeah, he came through my office a few years back. Good kid, bad company, old story. These days he’s living above my garage while going to a trade school to learn fuel injection engines. And sometimes he helps me out by talking with kids from a perspective nearer their own.”

  Mickey and I moved back through the store and toward the hole as we talked. Sweat ran off both of us. My torch made the already stifling heat in the room even worse, but it was a price we gladly paid for the light.

  Justin must have seen the glow of my torch getting brighter because as soon as we rounded into the first aisle he stuck his head out of the hole and addressed us.

  “So is it clear?”

  “So far so good,” I replied. “We’re going to check the back in a second and have you tag along.”

  “Sure,” he shrugged, “but you guys might want to wait a sec. The doc wants to talk to Mickey about moving the wounded, and your girlfriend is about to have a conniption about you being gone so long. I offered to go looking for you, but she almost went mental at the idea.”

  Oh, great. Now what?

  And she’s not my girlfriend, my honest side objected. She’s a neurotic, gold-digging narcissist who I accidently rescued from a psychopathic Boy Scout, and then took under my wing because I’m a time-travelling mystery writer from the future with a guilt complex.

  Yeah, try running that one past a desperate group of survivors looking to you for solutions.

  “Okay,” I sighed, giving Mickey a pained look. “I’ll go find out what’s up with Darla.”

  “While you’re at it, see what Doc wants and I’ll take Justin with me. We’ll go ahead and assume the worst and block the door to the back room. It’s faster, and since the Rex is back there, there’s no point in messing with it anyway.”

  Sure, why not? Send the guy who isn’t the people person to deal with personnel issues and let the social worker go block the door. But I grudgingly admitted to myself she was right. With the clock being a factor, having the “co-leaders” handle separate problems was the smart way to go about it. Besides, me dealing with the doctor made a lot more sense than Mickey dealing with Darla.

  “Sounds good,” I grumbled. “Just don’t take any chances. If you even think you hear something back there, you call me before getting near the door.”

  “Will do.”

  Justin crawled out into our room and took the torch from me as I hunched over and moved in. Not wanting to waste time, I made a gesture at Darla to wait and then walked over to the doctor. She folded her arms and watched me go by with a baleful expression.

  “Doc? Justin says you needed to talk to somebody about moving the wounded?”

  The slender, white-haired man rose to meet me from where he knelt by the Hispanic girl. The big candle now sat on the floor between the two prone women, illuminating this side of the room much better than the back. I tried not to look at the other girl, not wishing to see the grotesquery tonight’s madness had performed on her.

  “I gather you’re the one making the decisions now, Mr. Garrett?”

  Yeah, right.

  “No, Doc. Circumstances are making the decisions. I’m just trying to figure out how to make those decisions work. So, what’s up?”

  He gave me a grim look, and then turned to gesture at the two girls on the floor.

  “I guess I’ll get straight to it then,” he sighed. “Neither one of those girls is up to travelling. It will kill the girl who has been shot outright, and most likely the other as well.”

  Crap.

  “And what would be their odds if they were not moved?” I asked, as if that were an option.

  He winced and turned back to me with a sober look.

  “Miss Baca will likely die within the hour. Miss Taylor also seems to be in great distress, although I have never seen anything like her condition before so I can’t make predictions with as much confidence. But to be honest, I think she is failing as well.”

  “Then there is no decision,” I stated in a flat voice. “We take them with us, and hope for the best. If they die, then we leave them and move on.”

  He nodded as if expecting no other answer. I suppose he already knew I had none other t
o give. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if he could see through my tough act and knew how sick it made me to say that.

  As I gazed down at them, I also wondered if these girl’s faces would join the others staring at me from the darkness in my sleep. It didn’t seem fair, but I had a feeling they would.

  “I’ll do what I can to prepare them for travel.” He gave me a gentle squeeze on the shoulder. “You never know what might matter. You should go try and ease the mind of the lady who arrived with you. She started to get most distraught at your absence.”

  “Right.”

  I turned away with glum resignation and trudged toward the rear of the store where my other appointment waited. Darla had retreated farther back into the gloom. She now glowered at me from the side of the cutting table where we had conferred before.

  “What’s wrong, Darla?” I asked as diplomatically as possible. “Justin and the doctor both said you started getting a little antsy a few minutes back.”

  Apparently, I didn’t deliver my effort at diplomacy smoothly enough.

  “What the hell took so long?!” she hissed.

  “I had to make sure the store was clear.”

  “It’s not a big store,” she fired back. “You should have been able to see the whole thing from the other side of the hole.”

  “I needed to check the aisles. There are some deadly things out there small enough to hide behind a counter. You know that.”

  “Yeah? Well, next time I’m going with you.”

  “But I got the impression you didn’t want to go.” I stared at her in surprise. “Besides, Justin offered to go after us for you and he said you got funny about that, too.”

  “Oh sure! Then it would have been all three of you over there, with both pistols and no reason to slow down. We made a deal, and I’ve been keeping my part of it. I even got these people moving for you… assuming it was ALL these people you were really interested in.”

  “Huh?” I now rubbed my temples. “Okay Darla, you might want to run that by me again because I’m tired and not following your dialect of crazy so well at the moment.”

  “God, you piss me off!”

  “It’s a gift,” I sighed. “Now you were saying?”

  But I didn’t get a chance to find out what her problem was right then…

  …because that’s when everything went to hell, and the dying began.”

  Chapter Six: Running With Ghosts

  “IT HURTS! OH JESUS, IT HUUURRRRRRTTTTSSSS!!”

  The scream ripped through the gloom-shrouded store, causing both me and Darla to whirl and face toward the front.

  Something crashed, but somebody must have kicked the candle can over because the light suddenly went crazy, making it impossible to tell what was happening on that end of the store. It must have been on its side and rolling. What light I could see flickered badly, and veered wildly in every direction. Another crash sounded among the multiple thuds of what I assumed to be bolts of cloth hitting the floor. I could only tell the chaos continued to intensify.

  “IT HUUURRRRTTTSSSS!!!”

  “Let go! Dammit, let gourrrrfffff…..”

  ”Monstruo! Madre de dios! Monstruo! Monstruo!”

  I don’t speak Spanish, but I had an ugly feeling I knew what “Monstruo” meant. Whatever was going on up front, it wasn’t good.

  Not knowing what else to do, I drew my gun again and started easing forward.

  “Are you stupid?” Darla snapped. “What the hell are you doing?!”

  Now that was really beginning to annoy me. I still didn’t think it reflected the proper attitude towards one’s benefactor, and besides, she hadn’t known me long enough to be questioning my stupid moves.

  “Get to the hole!” I ordered, but kept my eyes forward as I tried to make out something useful ahead of me. “Get to the hole and go in the other store! It’s already clear. And make sure the kid goes, too! Tell Mickey and Justin to stay over there. I’ll cover you two. Now get out of here!”

  Somebody must have kicked the candle in the ruckus up front again because the light spun crazily once more. Thankfully, I caught a flash of Darla fleeing toward the hole so I didn’t have to worry about her anymore. Now I could focus my attention on identifying and dealing with the threat ahead.

  “Mantente alejado! Monstruo!”

  “HELP ME! IT HURRRTSSS!!”

  Then the screamer made a choking sound and a strange trilling joined the shouts and thumps from the darkness.

  Yeah, that settled it.

  Gun or no gun, I didn’t intend on taking another step without being able to clearly see what I approached. I reached back and pulled the last fifteen-minute flare from the side pocket of my backpack and struck it alight. I hadn’t wanted to use these things indoors due to the fumes, but circumstances demanded otherwise.

  It was a good thing I did, because my gun would have been of limited use against the horror revealed before me.

  The girl with the grotesque swellings had … sprouted.

  The swellings all along her left side had burst open into bloody, ropelike tentacles. Some had shot up and found purchase in the ceiling, pulling her upright until she hung about a foot off the floor. The other appendages had grabbed the wall and shelves on that side, making her body look like a disfigured spider in a half web. The left side of her face was now a writhing mass that had apparently snatched the doctor by the head and now held him tightly against her.

  The fact he no longer jerked or struggled told me all I needed to know there. Attempting a rescue would be a waste of time.

  But that wasn’t true on another front.

  I could see the young Hispanic man, Lupe, on the other side of the twisting creature. He stood in the front corner, just outside the reach of the flailing tentacles, clutching the white wrapped figure of Lucy protectively to his chest. He tried once to move down the wall to get around the thing but a tentacle lashed out and barely missed him. The monster had him effectively cornered.

  “Ayuadame! Ayuadame, por favor!”

  I didn’t need to speak Spanish to understand that one. Fortunately, I had an idea, albeit a dangerous one. I just hoped I could get across to him what he needed to do.

  Taking quick aim, I shot out the lower panel of the glass window nearest him.

  “Go outside!” I pointed at the empty window, then at the hole I cut in the wall. “Go out and around to the front of the other store!”

  At first he looked confused, but then I saw understanding dawn the second time I repeated the gesture. He ducked out through the shattered opening. Now I needed to get back to the others to get the second phase of this retreat underway.

  I turned to leave, but I didn’t make it. Something wrapped itself around my ankle and jerked me to the ground.

  Oh shit! It had me!

  I twisted over onto my back and opened up at the hanging figure with my gun. Fire blasted from the barrel and I know I hit several times because I actually saw pieces of flesh blown off from the monstrosity. I could only pray the girl herself was truly dead. Despite the damage, the creature’s grip didn’t slacken. The bloody cord wrapping my ankle jerked and I started to slide toward the horror.

  I knew right then my gun couldn’t drop this monster.

  That left only one other alternative.

  I tossed the Coonan behind me, then clawed at Tommy’s duffel bag. I had to move fast. My hands fumbled and slipped on a bottle inside, and I cursed in desperation as the creature dragged me closer. I saw two more tentacles slither across the floor in my direction and knew time was up.

  I yanked the Molotov cocktail out of the bag, lit it with the flare, and threw the bottle all in one motion.

  The results were spectacular.

  The bottle shattered against a free-standing shelf right beside the thing and fire went everywhere.

  The monster’s physiology must have been different than its host, because its side of the woman’s body went up like a torch. A piercing shriek cut through the firelit gl
oom. Tentacles whipped and thrashed, knocking more merchandise off the shelves.

  Sitting up, I pushed the flare against the tentacle holding my ankle. I hoped the heat would make it let go, or maybe it would let go anyway in its death throes.

  Instead the effort resulted in me suddenly having my ankle wrapped in a burning tentacle. Not exactly an intended consequence. I yelled and flailed my leg, trying to shake myself free.

  Fortunately the appendage pulled loose after a few kicks, leaving me to slap at my scorched sock. A couple of charred pieces of cloth fell free and I could tell my ankle had been burned. It had already started to hurt like hell. I hoped the injury wasn’t serious, but tonight I just couldn’t let it be an issue.

  I pulled myself to my feet and limped over to pick up my gun.

  A look back at the monster revealed it had now become a column of fire. It burned with furious intensity… along with the carpet…

  …the nearby shelf…

  …the bolts of cloth piled around it…

  …ummmmmm.

  Oh, dear.

  I hustled back to the hole in the wall and pushed through the alarmed faces hovering on the other side.

  “What’s happened?” Mickey demanded.

  “Monster popped from the girl and killed the doctor,” I blurted out as I stumbled toward the front of the party store. “I got Lupe out the front, then I killed the monster… then I sorta set the building on fire.”

  Yeah, that went over pretty much as expected.

  “You did what?!” Darla yelled, trailing along behind me.

  “I used a Molotov cocktail to kill the monster, okay?”

  “In a fabric store?”

  “Well gee, Darla, the inconsiderate bastard refused to step outside and make its attempt to murder me in the parking lot!”

  By that time I had reached the front of the store where Lupe knocked frantically on the windows. Motioning for him to move aside, I aimed the Coonan at the panel nearest the firewall and blew the glass out. The pane shattered with a satisfying crash.

  I was now definitely in the mood to shoot things.