Creepers

Vi

Cora stroked Rick's face. His eyes were unfocused. His chest heaved, continuing to whistle.

Balenger looked over his shoulder toward the medical room. "Help me get him on the exam table-"

Together, he, Amanda, and Cora lifted him. Rick moaned. Cora pressed his shoulders down to keep him from rolling off the table.

Amanda propped the flashlight on the counter. "We'll need more light. I'll get the candles from Vi

Balenger used his knife to cut open Rick's Windbreaker, sweater, and shirt. As Amanda and Vi

"The spike's all the way through," Balenger said.

"Hang on, baby," Cora told Rick, stroking his brow. "Hang on."

But Rick didn't seem to hear.

"If I take out the spike, he might hemorrhage worse than he is now. But if I don't…"

Rick's groan communicated his agony.

"Can't we at least help him with the pain?" Cora begged. "The morphine."

"No. It'll kill him," Balenger said.

"Surely just a little-"

"Morphine depresses heart rate and blood pressure." Balenger felt Rick's wrist. "I can hardly find a pulse as it is."

"Pull the spike out. Use duct tape to stop the bleeding the way you did with the professor."

Balenger couldn't think of an alternative. "See if there's rubbing alcohol in that cabinet."

Vi

"Wait," Balenger said.

"But-"

"Never mind," Balenger said.

Rick's lung stopped wheezing. His chest became still.

"No," Cora said. Frantic, she stared into Rick's eyes, searching for a sign of consciousness. She opened his mouth and breathed into it. In horror, she stopped when the air whistled past the spike in his chest.

"Twice." She sobbed. "Oh, baby. Oh, Jesus, twice." Weeping uncontrollably, she held Rick's head against her chest. "Twice."

Amanda put an arm around her.

Thunder rumbled. In its aftermath, they heard the crackle of static. Balenger frowned toward his equipment belt and then toward Vi

More static.

"What the-" Vi

It came from the remaining two walkie-talkies. Balenger's mind swirled. With a sense that he shifted deeper into madness, he raised his unit to his mouth and pressed the transmit button.

50

"You took a walkie-talkie from one of the men you killed," Balenger said.

"As you'll learn, I'm resourceful." The voice was smooth, calm, neutral, in the tenor range, its pronunciation precise, with a hint of an elitist accent. It made Amanda jerk a hand to her mouth. "Your friend didn't drop all the way to the lobby. I found him in a pile of wreckage two levels down. He actually had the strength to help me put him in the elevator. Remarkable. How is he progressing?"

"He isn't," Balenger said into the walkie-talkie.

"Ah," the voice said.

Static.

"You're violating my home," the voice said.

"It's not as if you had any No Trespassing signs around the place. The only good thing is, if we hadn't come in, we never would have been able to rescue Amanda."

Cora raised her tear-streaked face from Rick's body.

"Amanda has no need of being rescued," the voice said. "I treat her with the greatest respect. Many women would envy her."

"Except for being molested."

"I never touched her that way ever." For the first time, the voice contained a hint of emotion. "If she told you I did, she lied."

Balenger frowned. He remembered several puzzled questions Vi

"What about your other girlfriends?" Balenger asked into the walkie-talkie. "What are their names? Iris, Alice, Vivian." Abruptly, something about the list troubled him. The names. Something about the names. But so much was happening, he didn't have time to figure out what bothered him.

"I've been honored with an abundance of female companionship."

"Is that one of them dead in the downstairs corridor?"

Static.

Dreading the answer, Balenger forced himself to ask, "What did you do with my wife?"

Static.

"If you surrender, I promise you won't feel pain," the voice said.

Abruptly, Cora grabbed the walkie-talkie. Furious, she yelled into it, "You prick, I promise you something." Pacing angrily in front of the medicine cabinet, she shouted, "When I get my hands on you, I'll-"

The floor exploded.

Balenger lurched back. Wood disintegrated at Cora's feet. As a shotgun roared from below, blood sprayed from Cora's abdomen. Another roar slammed her against the medicine cabinet, shattering glass. A third blast. A fourth, more wood erupting from the floor, buckshot tearing Cora open.

She dropped to her knees, agonized surprise contorting her face. She toppled to the gaping floor, her blood spreading, dripping through the holes. A candle fell with her, but her blood extinguished it.

The startling moment lengthened. As the smell of burnt gunpowder drifted up through the holes, Balenger's reflexes took control. He tugged Amanda and Vi

From below, through the holes in the floor, Balenger heard a shotgun being reloaded. Cora's headlamp lay on the floor. He stretched to reach it, then gave it to Amanda. He raised a finger to his lips, urging her and Vi

He reached the bedroom, his headlamp crisscrossing the darkness. Something else was wrong. Tod. Where was… The last Balenger remembered, Tod was groaning on the floor, holding his head where Balenger struck him with the pistol. Now Balenger turned and sca

As Balenger looked at Vi

Balenger tugged Vi

The lights converged on the library's trapdoor, which to Balenger's surprise was open. Tod must have hurried down the staircase while Ro

Balenger locked the trapdoor and moved softly into the kitchen. He drew his pistol and aimed toward the trapdoor there. Vi