Creepers

Balenger was aware of switching from "I" to "you." The psychiatrist called it disassociation. His voice shook.

His heart beat so fast, pressure swelled the veins in his neck. "So now you know I'm not a cop."

"Do we? How did you and the professor get together?"

"I told you I took a course from him." Balenger's clothes were soaked with sweat. "When you live a waking nightmare, how do you get away from the world? Iraq. It's everywhere. How do you get away from fucking Iraq? The past. All I wanted to do was escape into the past. My psychiatrist thought it would help to read old novels, books that made me feel I was in the past. I tried Dickens. I tried Tolstoy. I tried Alexandre Dumas. But that chapter in The Count of Monte Cristo, where the hero's in a sack and gets thrown over a wall into the ocean, was too much like reality to me. So I started reading history books. Biographies about Benjamin Franklin and Wordsworth and the founding of the House of Rothschild. I didn't give a shit about Franklin or Wordsworth or the House of Rothschild, but it was in the safe, unthreatening past. Anything before the twentieth century. Big fat books that almost gave me a hernia. The thicker, the better. The more details, the better. Footnotes. How I love footnotes. The only modern novels I read were by Jack Fi

A faint rumble shifted through the building.

"Sack over your head, huh?" Tod asked.

Balenger nodded.

"All that time in darkness," Mack added.

"Yes."

"And you made yourself go through those tu

"A couple of times," Balenger said flatly.

The rumble sounded again.

"You're tough."

"I don't think so."

"Sure, you are. You saved Big Ears over there. You saved the professor."

But God help me, I couldn't save Rick, Balenger thought.

"Yeah, a hero," Tod said.

The rumble was a little louder.

"But if you try to be a hero again…" Tod raised the pistol, aimed at Balenger, and fired.

38

The bullet snapped past Balenger's head. He felt the shock of air it displaced, heard it slam into the wall behind him.

"Jesus!" Vi

"It didn't come anywhere close," Tod said.

"My ears!" Mack put his hands over them. "For God's sake, why didn't you warn me? They're ringing like crazy!"

So were Balenger's, but not so much that he didn't hear another rumble.

"Don't try to be a hero," Tod said. "Otherwise, that 'now' thing you talked about won't last much longer.

"All I want is to walk out of here."

"We'll see how this goes. So far you've been useless. Where's the vault?"

"What's that noise?" Mack asked.

"The ringing in your ears."

"No," JD said. "I heard it, too. A rumble."

"Thunder," Balenger said.

They stared toward the ceiling.

"Thunder?" Vi

No answer.

"Professor?" Vi

"The crowbar!" Tod warned, aiming. "Put it down before you come near us!"

Vi

Vi

Conklin's eyes remained closed.

"You told us-"

"I lied," Conklin said wearily.

"What?"

"Next week, the salvagers are coming. I needed all of you to help me scout the building tonight." Conklin breathed. "Tomorrow night, after we showed Frank how to get into the building and into the vault…" Conklin took another breath. "He was supposed to return and take as many coins as he could carry. Tonight and tomorrow night. That's when it needed to happen."

"You prick."

"I estimated that we'd be out of here before the storm arrived." The professor's bearded face was ravaged with regret. "Apparently I was wrong."

"What's the big deal about a storm?" JD wanted to know.

"Getting out of here," Vi

"Right now, you've got bigger problems than worrying about a flooded tu

"Yeah," Mack said, putting a hand on Cora's shoulder. "We'll just have to find ways to pass the time."

She was on the floor now, sitting bent forward with her arms around her raised knees and her head braced on them. She didn't seem aware of Mack's touch.

"Leave her alone," Vi

"Make me."

Balenger tried to distract them. "The vault."

"Your great idea didn't work out, smart guy," Tod said. "The wall on that side sounds hollow, too. If this stuff about the vault and the gold coins turns out to be bullshit…"

Balenger examined the holes in the wall. He went over and peered into the dark bedroom, then studied the doorjamb and the space between the rooms. "Looks like five inches wide. Bob, are you sure the diary didn't say it was a wall safe?"

"A vault," the professor murmured through his pain. "That was what Carlisle always called it."

"Then we're wasting our time on this wall. It's too narrow." Balenger stared at the long living room wall, at the metal shutters and the metal door between them. "No room for the vault there, either."

He tugged open the closet door and saw coats and suits, all in a style that suggested the 1930s. Their smell was nauseating. He yanked the garments off a wooden rod and hurled them across the living room, then entered the closet and pounded on the wall.

"Normal. That leaves the far bedroom wall, or maybe the bathroom."

"Careful, hero," Tod said.

"I'll need light in the bedroom." Balenger picked up the crowbar. "Vi

With an angry look toward Mack, whose hand remained on Cora's shoulder, Vi

So did the bed, but Balenger hardly noticed as he and Vi

"Black and red," Tod said. "Who did Danata think he was, the Prince of Darkness?"

"I'm sure all the men he shot believed it," Balenger said.

Vi

As Balenger swung the crowbar against the wall, he heard Vi

He started back toward the living room.

"Drop the crowbar!" Tod warned from the doorway.

Throwing it onto a chair, Balenger entered the living room.