Nightwalk 2 Read online

  She stepped around the bench and approached him, holding the solitary flower in her hand. In her gray poncho she had a sober, almost priestly demeanor. When she reached us, she stopped right in front of Lupe, and I swear her eyes were shiny with unshed tears.

  “I know it hurts,” she whispered, “but you must be brave… valiente… brave for Lucy.”

  I could see her concentrate as she fought to pull up whatever she knew of Spanish. Like me she had most likely picked up a few words here and there, fortified by whatever she could remember from high school Spanish class. But that was almost beside the point compared to the emotion and meaning she somehow conveyed.

  “Lupe,” she continued. “Lucy needs dignity now… dignidad. Comprende dignidad?

  He swallowed and nodded hesitantly, as if understanding her were the last thing he wanted to do.

  Then she gently laid the flower on Lucy’s chest and, never losing eye contact with Lupe, retreated back to the bench. Once there, she laid her hand on the end where the flowers had been arranged.

  “This is dignity,” she said softly. “Este es dignidad… for Lucy. Este es bueno.”

  Honestly, I think she had him when she laid the flower on the poor girl’s body, but it was at these words he took the first reluctant step toward her. The agony in his eyes broke my heart. He was about to do what he had probably promised her he never would… leave her behind.

  And I had been asking him to do it in a dirty back alley.

  Crap.

  Sometimes I can be so dense it makes me cringe.

  Lupe approached the bench as if it were an executioner’s block. I suppose in a way it was. He stopped before it, looking from Darla, to it, and back to Darla again.

  “It’s okay.” She rested a hand on his shoulder. “This is what she would want. Es bueno Lucy… querria… esto. Lay her here, and say a prayer for her.” She then steepled her hands as if in prayer. “Say a prayer for Lucy. Two minutes. Dos momentos. Then we must go.”

  She backed away, and left Lupe to his task… and his grief. I guess he must have understood her, for he carefully lay Lucy’s body on the bench and then knelt beside her still form.

  Seeing the young man’s shoulders shake made me once again want to murder the assuredly late Roger Chandra. His one-man quest for paradise had ended in a deadly Hell for thousands.

  Darla walked up beside me, but faced the other way and gazed down the alien cavern that had once been Coventry Boulevard.

  “There you go,” she spoke in a flat voice, still staring away from us. “His hands are empty.”

  Her tone surprised me. She sounded almost like she had done something distasteful.

  “Darla,” I asked in mild confusion, “what’s the matter? You did good. You were right in everything you said, and you’ve improved both his and our chances to get out of here alive. That was brilliant.”

  She snorted as if I had said something dumb.

  “Look, you’ve got your man,” she grumbled. “Just give it another sixty seconds, then walk over there and stand by him. Don’t say a word. And when he looks at you, you still don’t talk. Just hand him Tommy’s knife. Got it?”

  “Okaaay…”

  What the hell was wrong with her? I was being positive and complimenting her on a job well done, and she acted like she had just done something she wanted to forget.

  But time grew ever shorter, and I had more pressing matters to deal with than trying to figure out Darla’s moods. We still had about three hundred yards to go, and an obstacle course of creatures and fences to sneak through.

  It was time to get on with it.

  I fished Tommy’s hunting knife from the duffel bag and looked at the thing.

  It was a wickedly lethal weapon. It had a razor edge, and I reminded myself I now held the tool of a serial killer that had already been used at least once tonight… and two years ago it had been used to commit an act even worse. Maybe I had erased that from history, but in my mind it had still happened and this had been the weapon doing the cutting.

  I knew it was nothing more than a shaped piece of steel, but I could almost feel the evil radiating like heat from the thing. I damn sure didn’t want to use it.

  So I did as Darla advised, and moved up to stand by Lupe. He could obviously tell I waited there, and after another ten or fifteen seconds of prayer he raised his head to look at me.

  I met his pain-filled eyes, and without a word I flipped the blade over in my hand and offered it to him handle first. I couldn’t think of anything to say anyway.

  I think the gesture surprised him. He probably didn’t know I had been carrying a spare weapon.

  He looked at the knife, then up at me, and finally back at the knife again. Then he carefully took the handle and examined the blade for himself. He held the deadly thing up in the light of my flare, causing it to gleam in the crimson rays.

  And as he did, I saw something move in alongside the grief in his eyes. Something dark, hard, and unyielding. Lupe studied the blade a few seconds longer before raising his still teary gaze to meet mine. He squared his jaw and nodded up at me as if we had shared some unspoken message.

  Personally, I had no idea what the message might have been. I just became uncomfortably aware I had given the knife of a psychopath to a man who might very well feel inclined to settle scores with whatever crossed our path.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  But that didn’t come anywhere close to heading my list of problems at the moment. I worried more about the time lost in simply trying to cross a street… and we hadn’t even finished crossing it yet.

  “Come on,” I gestured for him and the others to follow, “let’s get out of here. I’ll take point. Darla, you bring up the rear with your shotgun.”

  “Like hell!”

  Naturally.

  What had I been thinking? Cooperation and compliance were things that happened to people like Ed or Mickey. And I was simply too tired and sore to start another argument.

  “Or,’ I sighed, “everybody just sort yourselves out however suits you.”

  We shambled the rest of the way across Coventry Boulevard in a disorganized mess.

  And of course, right as we reached the curb on the other side, the world fell out from under us.

  Chapter Nine: Gods and Insects

  It was two years ago all over again.

  Reality suddenly went…wrong…and seemed to drop from beneath our feet. Somewhere on a level unseen, the universe had opened wide and tried to swallow the world whole. Vertigo caused the gorge to rise in my throat. I stumbled to my left and barely managed to stay on my feet.

  Then came an awful plunge so pronounced I feared we would all leave the ground. For a brief moment, everything threatened to become unhinged. I honestly had the sick premonition of all of us becoming unmoored and falling into the sky.

  And just like two years ago, the landing wasn’t gentle either.

  The cosmos rocked as if it had struck bottom, but then seemed to tumble and skid in an uncontrolled slide into a deeper abyss. The very fabric of reality groaned under the stress.

  This time I did fall, landing on my hands and knees. I fought not to retch as existence itself reeled around me. The previous “events” may have been two years ago for me, but I had no doubt this distortion was the worst one yet. I clung to the earth as if the sense of falling truly reflected the situation. The feeling intensified and I began to wonder if maybe this one would kill us all before any monster had a chance.

  But then, just as I feared I might lose consciousness, something yanked the whole thing to a stop.

  I can’t describe it any other way.

  Imagine being a child on a sled careening downhill, and just as all hope seems lost a large adult reaches out and pulls the sled to a halt as it goes by. It’s not a gentle ending, but by then you’re just happy it’s over.

  “What the hell?” I gasped, still fighting not to retch. “This is still happening? I thought we were through with t
hose!”

  “You mean you don’t know?” Darla panted nearby. “I thought you were from the future.”

  “It’s not that simple, Darla. I was gone and out of this by now. The other me is somewhere between the south overpass and the Interstate. Ever since we ran into the fabric store I’ve been as in the dark on what’s going to happen as you guys.”

  “Oh great,” she groaned. “I really didn’t need to hear that.”

  “You asked.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  It was all said halfheartedly because I don’t think either one of us had recovered enough for real spite. We were far too busy trying to keep last night’s dinner down. Personally, between the injuries, the exhaustion, and now the queasiness, I was starting to have a hard time finding the willpower to get up.

  “Uh oh, this doesn’t look good,” David’s worried voice intruded into my misery.

  Which I took as my cue to get the hell up.

  I staggered to my feet, gun in one hand and flare in the other. It wasn’t exactly graceful. My legs wobbled and I had to take a wider stance to keep from falling. But once I had reached my feet I could see what had alarmed the poor kid.

  Things had changed.

  And not for the better.

  Now a low fog hugged the earth. I had not noticed it while kneeling down due to being sick and disoriented. Now that I stood above it, I could see it carpeted the ground in a dense white blanket stretching out into the darkness surrounding us. Not normal mist, but more like the kind of fog you expect when you put dry ice in water. The stuff appeared about knee deep, and thick as curdled cream.

  The whole feel of the night had changed as well. It had intensified, as if the primeval atmosphere had taken on a life and sentience of its own. The night now harbored a presence—had almost become a presence—and that presence filled the darkness around us with a feral malignancy that threatened to take form any second.

  As if to underscore the menace, something large, black, and featuring rippling arrays of bioluminescent dots, shambled across Coventry Boulevard to the east of us. It was almost a block away, well outside the range of my flare, and fortunately seemed to be heading south. The beast’s slouching outline made little sense against the backdrop of the glowing moss tunnel.. Even so, I had no desire for a closer look. The beast uttered a low sound, something like a damaged foghorn, before disappearing into the school grounds down the street.

  “What the hell?” Darla wondered aloud. “What was that? And how can there be a fog like this when it is so stinking hot?”

  It’s Chandra’s machine, I responded in my head. The bastard’s machine is actually still running after all! And now it just crammed some more dimensions into the mix… which means the rules have likely changed again, and we’ve probably got a whole new set of nasties to deal with on top of it.

  Of course, I didn’t say any of it aloud. Knowing about the existence of Chandra and his machine would do the others no good. Hell, it would probably get them jailed or killed if they somehow managed to get out of here alive. The rest wouldn’t do their morale any favors either.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I replied with a lot more stoutness than I felt. “It’s not going our way, and our goal hasn’t changed. We’re in the homestretch so let’s stay focused.”

  Fishing a torch out of the duffel bag, I lit it with my flare and handed it over to Lupe. Then I handed the bag over to Darla, who took it with a surly grumble.

  “There’s not much left in it,” I said to forestall any objections. “Just a few torches and one more Molotov cocktail. This way if something eats me, you guys won’t be stuck without light like last time.”

  I intended the final bit as an indirect way of saying she should have been carrying the bag for a while now. I suppose I could have given it to Lupe, but if things got rough he would be fighting with a knife and needing all the mobility he could get. Besides, I wanted Darla to carry something.

  With our portage duties now sorted out, I took point and led us into the Rocketwash.

  The Rocketwash was a combination diner/carwash where the well-heeled denizens of Coventry Woods could pay way too much for a hamburger platter while sitting in air-conditioned comfort as their cars got washed, waxed, and otherwise cleaned by auspiciously attractive young employees. I confess, me and my classic Mustang may have paid the place a visit or two.

  Flanked by long carports on both sides, it was a study in chrome, glass, and bright red steel all wrapped in a 1950’s Futurism style. Its upsweeping roof was crowned with a ringed planet, like the prow decoration on a star-faring galleon.

  Tonight it emerged from the darkness like a seaweed-draped derelict risen from the fog-shrouded depths. Or at least what we could see of it.

  The carport flanking our side of the diner stood covered in the same alien vegetation, further limiting our view of the main building. Vines dotted with sickly yellow pustules hung like curtains down the entire length of the structure.

  We would have to push through or walk all the way up near the highway to go around the front of the thing. I had no intention of doing the latter because we would be leaving the shelter of the trees, not to mention exposing ourselves to the possible gaze of the Rex again. Even if it was behind Madre Mona’s, it could see over the building if it raised its head.

  Trying to go around back of the place would mean going deeper down Coventry Boulevard, with no guarantee of an opening in the vegetation at the end anyway. Not to mention, something big and ugly had just crossed the road down there. I didn’t want to risk a closer look at that thing.

  Therefore, we were going through.

  Confronted with a tangled wall of vines, I would have preferred using my machete to hack through, but I had let Mickey walk off with it. After cutting her loose from us like I did, I just hadn’t had the heart to ask for it back. Now I bleakly wondered if every act of decency I committed was doomed to bite me in the ass… but then reminded myself that only held true with the rules in force tonight.

  Speaking of those rules, standing around wasting precious time navel-gazing counted as a big no-no, too.

  I used the hand with the flare to nudge the hanging vines aside. They were slightly sticky and I prayed they weren’t coated with anything poisonous or otherwise harmful. Then I eased my way through the gap.

  Since this whole thing had started after midnight, the long carport stretched empty in both directions. Empty of cars, at least.

  But not empty of life.

  A web of vines snaked across the ceiling above me. And those vines crawled with activity. Large, pale bugs, shaped like bloated ticks about the size of my hand, skittered along the vegetation. Other creatures that looked sort of like red hybrids of centipedes and scorpions randomly attacked and ate these things, while their brethren ignored the slaughter and continued on their way. It was a vicious food chain going on right above my head.

  Although the carport stood about ten feet tall, I still felt the strong urge to crouch. This was exacerbated by the occasional “splotch!” of some bug losing its grip on the creepers during a fight and falling to its death on the asphalt below. I would have paid real money for an umbrella right then.

  The ground wasn’t a lot better.

  More vines, or more likely roots, snaked and crisscrossed over the parking lot. There weren’t as many as on the ceiling of the carport, and they were spaced much farther apart, but the ones on the ground were thick as tree trunks. Not to mention they were the only thing that stuck up enough to be visible in the low fog. This resulted in creating the appearance of mist filled pools between them, and giving the whole scene a swamp-like ambience in the light of my flare.

  We would need to watch our step in this place.

  “C’mon,” I softly called back through the curtain, “but watch your heads and your feet. It’s nasty in here.”

  Darla came through after me. She balked at the sight of the wildlife above her, and I had to gently tug her thro
ugh the rest of the way.

  “Oh god,” she whispered, “are you sure about this? This place is crawling with vermin.”

  “I know, Darla. But our only other choices are to go back down Coventry Boulevard, and follow Timberline where Mickey and Justin went, or go out on the highway which is open to both the T-rex and the sky. I wasn’t kidding about us not wanting to be around those two, and I really don’t feel like tempting fate with the Rex again either. I think the big bastard has a grudge against me.”

  “Everybody has a grudge against you,” she growled as she moved past. “That’s like your superpower or something.”

  “Aw, shucks. I love you, too.”

  “Shut up.”

  With those pleasantries out of the way, I turned my attention to the other two.

  David crept in next, clutching the baby to his chest. Honestly, it surprised me how tolerant the kid was of being saddled with the job. He hadn’t whined or complained, and had showed impressive patience with his role. Hell, the fact he wasn’t curled up in a fetal position somewhere meant the boy must have something going for him. Still, his face had become drawn and his eyes now held the hollow look of a child who has seen things even an adult shouldn’t witness.

  “How are you hanging in there, kiddo?”

  He nodded, but without saying a word. I guess it meant he was okay.

  Lupe brought up the rear with the torch and knife at the ready. His eyes were alert but his face a closed book. Seeing Tommy’s blade in the hands of another expressionless young man didn’t exactly make for a happy feeling in my stomach, but I tried to take comfort in the idea our rearguard was now armed and paying attention to the world around him.

  “Okay guys.” I faced our tiny group. “Here’s how we’re going to do this. I’m going to make a quick dash over to the cover of the eaves on the main building. If I make it there alive, all of you will come over together. Then we go around the front of the building and do it the same way once we reach the other side.”

  Nobody objected, which meant it was time for me to go.