Creepers

"From infected fleas?"

"As long as you follow the recommended precautions, you needn't worry. None of us has ever gotten sick from plague."

"What did you get sick from?"

"Once I was in a tu

10

Balenger braced himself, focusing his light on a rusted metal door.

Rick pressed down on a lever that formed the door's handle. Nothing happened.

He tried again, straining, but got the same result. "Locked. Maybe rusted in place."

"Professor?" Vi

"This is always the moment I dislike," the elderly man said. "Until now, we've merely been trespassing. When we look for ways to infiltrate a building, I love it when we find a board that's fallen from a hole in a wall: a place to squeeze through. Nothing's been altered. Nothing's been destroyed. But now we're about to do something more serious. Breaking and entering. Assuming we can in fact enter. I'd very much like to see what's inside, but I can't encourage any of you to break the law. It has to be your choice."

"Count me in," Vi

"You're sure?"

"My life isn't that exciting. I'll never forgive myself if I miss this chance."

"Cora? Rick?"

"In."

Conklin looked at Balenger, keeping his light away from Balenger's eyes. "Perhaps you shouldn't continue. You have no obligation to us."

"Yeah." Balenger made himself shrug. "But the hell of it is, when I was a kid, I always found a way to get into places where I wasn't supposed to go. You've got me wondering what's on the other side of that door."

Rick took a crowbar from his knapsack and drove it into a rusted area between the door and the jamb. The impact rumbled along the tu

Balenger entered cautiously, his light sca

"Carlisle kept updating the infrastructure," the professor explained. "This is from the 1960s."

Aiming his headlamp, Rick sca

Balenger searched behind the boilers.

"A door's over here." Vi

"Hey, guys!" Cora yelled.

They turned, their lights swiveling.

"Maybe this is one of those Venus-Mars things, but that's really going to bother me." Cora aimed her light toward the open door and the tu

Vi

"Now let's see what's beyond the other door," the professor said.

They crossed the utility room. After Rick tugged the next door open, they stood spellbound, their lights revealing something that rippled.

"Amazing," Balenger said after a moment, cold humidity drifting over him.

Vi

"For heaven's sake, they didn't empty it." Cora stepped closer.

The reflection of their lights shimmered across their faces.

"But after all these years, wouldn't the water have evaporated?" Rick asked.

Something plopped on Balenger's hard hat. Worried about bats, he jerked his light toward the ceiling, but all he saw were beads of moisture. Another drop splashed on him.

"As long as the doors seal the area, there's no place for the evaporation to go," the professor said. "The water's trapped in here. Feel how humid the air is."

"Dank is more like it," Balenger said.

Cora shivered. "Cold."

What they stared at was the hotel's swimming pool. To their astonishment, it still contained water, green from algae growing in it.

And it rippled.

Vi

"Something's in the water," Cora said.

"Probably an animal that heard us coming and jumped in to hide," Conklin said.

"But what kind?"

The algae kept rippling.

"A muskrat perhaps."

"What's the difference between a rat and a muskrat?"

"A muskrat is bigger."

"Just what I needed to hear."

Rick found a slimy pole on the floor. It had a net at the end: a pool skimmer. "I could poke around in the water and see what I catch."

"You mean what drags you in," Cora said.

Vi

"No, I'm serious," Cora said. "This door was closed. So is the one on the other side of the pool." Her light streaked across the scum and indicated the other door. "So how did that thing-whatever it is-get in here?"

Lights flashed in all directions, searching for another entrance.

"Rats can work their way into almost any place," the professor said. "They're determined and tough enough to chew through concrete blocks."

"And what in God's name is this stuff?" Balenger pointed toward what resembled a white carpet on a wall.

"Mold," Cora said.

The scummy water rippled again.

"Rick, let me know when you find the creature from the green lagoon."

"You're leaving?"

"I've run into enough rats for one night. I'm a historian, not a biologist. If I stay here longer, I'll grow moss."

While Cora rounded the pool, Vi

Rick pressed against a rusted metal plate on one of them. With the now familiar squeak and scrape, the door yielded.

11

They entered a cobwebbed corridor in which a door on each side had a tarnished plaque with the word GENTLEMEN engraved on one and LADIES on the other. Farther along was a dusty counter behind which rubber sandals were scattered.

"When people abandon a house, they usually take everything with them. It's their stuff, and they want to keep it," Rick told Balenger. "But when it comes to closing a hospital, a factory, a department store, an office building, or a hotel, everybody's in charge, and nobody is. It's assumed that somebody else will take care of the final details, but it often doesn't happen."

They passed elevator doors whose metal was rusted. Stairs led up.

Conklin pointed. "Take a close look at the stairs."

"Marble," Vi

At the top, they came to another pair of swinging doors.

"Looks like mahogany," Cora said. "A sturdy wood. Even so, these doors are rotting." She indicated a crumbling area at the bottom of each.

When she pushed at the doors, they didn't budge.

"There's no lock," Rick said, puzzled. "Something on the other side must be jamming them." He used his knife to pry one of the doors in his direction.