Relic

He turned around, knelt down by the mouth of the pipe, and began helping the bedraggled group out, directing them off to the side, warning them not to stray too far into the dark.

One at a time, people emerged and spread out against [434] the wall, feeling their way gingerly, collapsing in exhaustion. The room was quiet except for the sound of ragged breathing.

Finally, Smithback heard the voice of D’Agosta coming through the pipe. “Christ, what is that reek?” he muttered to Smithback. “That damned flashlight finally gave out. So I dropped it into the water. Okay, people,” he said in a louder voice, standing up, “I want you to count off.” The sound of dripping water started Smithback’s heart racing until he realized it was simply D’Agosta, wringing out his sodden jacket.

One by one, in tired voices, the group gave their names. “Good,” D’Agosta said. “Now to figure out where we are. We may need to look for higher ground, in case the water continues to rise.”

“I’d like to look for higher ground anyway,” came a voice from the darkness. “It stinks in here something awful.”

“It’ll be tough without light,” Smithback said. “We’ll need to go single file.”

“I’ve got a lighter,” one voice said. “Shall I see if it still works?”

“Careful,” said someone else. “Smells like methane, if you ask me.”

Smithback winced as a wavering yellow flame illuminated the chamber.

“Oh, Jesus!” somebody screamed.

The chamber was suddenly plunged into darkness again as the hand holding the lighter involuntarily jerked away—but not before Smithback got a single, devastating image of what lay around him.

Margo strained ahead in the dimness, slowly moving the flashlight around the hall, trying to keep from deliberately spotlighting the beast as it crouched at the corner, observing them.

“Not yet,” Pendergast murmured. “Wait until it shows itself fully.”

[435] The creature seemed to pause for an eternity, unmoving, as silent and motionless as a stone gargoyle. Margo could see small red eyes watching her in the gloom. Every now and then the eyes disappeared, then reappeared, as the creature blinked.

The creature took another step, then froze again as if making up its mind, its low, powerful frame tensed and ready.

Then it started forward, coming down the hall toward them with a strange, terrifying lope.

“Now!” cried Pendergast.

Margo reached up and fumbled for the miner’s helmet, and the hall was suddenly bathed in light. Almost immediately she heard a deafening WHANG! as Pendergast’s powerful handgun barked next to her. The creature stopped briefly, and Margo could see it squinting, shaking its head against the light. It bent back as if to bite its haunch where the bullet had passed. Margo felt her mind receding from the reality: the low, pale head, horribly elongated, the crease of Pendergast’s bullet a white stripe above the eyes; the powerful forequarters, covered with dense fur and ending in long, rending talons; the lower rear haunches, wrinkled skin descending to five-clawed toes. Its fur was matted with crusted blood, and fresh blood shone on the scales of the hindquarters.

WHANG! The creature’s right foreleg was yanked behind it, and Margo heard a terrible roar of rage. It spun back to face them and sprang forward, ropes of saliva swinging madly from its jaws.

WHANG! went the gun—a miss—and the creature kept coming, accelerating with horrible deliberation.

WHANG!

She saw, as if in slow motion, the left hind leg jerk back, and the creature falter slightly. But it recovered, and, with a renewed howl, coarse hair bristling high on its haunches, it came for them again.

WHANG! went the gun, but the creature did not slow, and at that point Margo realized with great clarity that [436] their plan had failed, that there was time for only one more shot and that the creature’s charge could not be stopped. “Pendergast!” she cried, stumbling backward, her miner’s light tilting crazily upward, scrambling away from the red eyes that stared straight into her own with a terrifyingly comprehensible blend of rage, lust, and triumph.

Garcia sat on the floor, ears straining, wondering if the voice he’d heard was real—if there was somebody else out there, trapped in this nightmare—or whether it had just been a trick of his overheated brain.

Suddenly, a very different sound boomed outside the door; then there was another, and another.

He scrambled to his feet. It couldn’t be true. He fumbled with the radio.

“Do you hear that?” a voice behind him said.

Then the sound came again, twice; then, a short silence; then again.

“I swear to God, somebody’s shooting in the hall!” Garcia cried.

There was a long, dreadful silence. “It’s stopped,” said Garcia in a whisper.

“Did they get it? Did they get it?” Waters whimpered.

The silence stretched on. Garcia clutched the shotgun, its pump and trigger guard slick from sweat. Five or six shots, that’s all he’d heard. And the creature had killed a heavily armed SWAT team.

“Did they get it?” Waters asked again.

Garcia listened intently, but could hear nothing from the hall. This was the worst of all: the brief raising, then sudden dashing, of his hopes. He waited.

There was a rattling at the door. “No,” whispered Garcia. “It’s back.”

= 61 =

“Hand me that lighter!” D’Agosta barked. Smithback, falling blindly backward, saw the sudden spark of the flint and instinctively covered his eyes.

“Oh, Christ—” he heard D’Agosta groan. Then Smithback jerked as he felt something clutch his shoulder and drag him to his feet.

“Listen, Smithback,” the voice of D’Agosta hissed in his ear, “you can’t crap out on me now. I need you to help me keep these people together.”

Smithback gagged as he forced his eyes open. The dirt floor ahead of him was awash in bones: small, large, some broken and brittle, others with gristle still clinging to their knobby ends.

“Not twigs,” Smithback said, over and over again under his breath. “No, no, not twigs.” The light flicked out again, D’Agosta conserving its flame.

Another yellow flash, and Smithback looked wildly around. What he had kicked aside was the remains of a dog—a terrier, by the looks of it—glassy, staring eyes, [438] light fur, small brown teats descending in ordered rows to the torn-out belly. Scattered around the floor were other carcasses: cats, rats, other creatures too thoroughly mauled or too long dead to be recognizable. Behind him, someone was screaming relentlessly.

The light went out, then reappeared, farther ahead now as D’Agosta moved forward. “Smithback, come with me,” came his voice. “Everybody, stare straight ahead. Let’s go.” As Smithback slowly placed one foot in front of the other, looking down just enough to avoid stepping on the loathesomeness beneath, something registered in his peripheral vision. He turned his head toward the wall to his right.

A pipe or duct had once run along the wall at shoulder height, but it had long since collapsed, its remains lying broken on the floor, half buried in offal. The heavy metal supports for the ductwork remained bolted to the wall, projecting outward like tines. Hung on the supports were a variety of human corpses, their forms seeming to waver in the dull glow of the flame. Smithback saw, but did not immediately comprehend, that all of the corpses had been decapitated. Scattered on the floor along the wall beneath were small ruined objects that he knew must be heads.

The bodies farthest from him had hung there the longest; they seemed more skeleton than flesh. He turned away, but not before his brain processed the final horror: on the meaty wrist of the nearest corpse was an unusual watch in the shape of a sundial. Moriarty’s watch.