Creepers

59

The wind threatened to suck air from his lungs as he worked his way toward the ventilation pipe. With each step, he feared that his foot would again break the surface. Drenched, he studied rain-swept puddles, deciding that the roof would be weakest where water collected. But the next spongy section he encountered was in a raised area that turned out to be a blister. He stepped back and veered around it.

A crack of lightning struck the tip of the pyramid. It reminded him of an artillery shell exploding. Despite his urge to run, he forced himself to be cautious. Rain obscured the pipe. He looped the rope over it and pulled, again testing. Designed for mountain climbing, the rope had a standard length of 150 feet, reduced now to 75 because it was doubled. Although thin and lightweight, it was exceptionally strong, its polyester sheath protecting a core of silk fibers.

Earlier, Rick had questioned him about his familiarity with heights and rope. Needing an innocent explanation, Balenger had responded that he was a rock climber. In truth, he knew about heights and rope because of his Ranger training. He knotted the rope about four feet from its tips. The knot would warn him when he was almost at the end. He dropped the doubled rope off the roof. Straddling it, he pulled it up behind him, over his right hip. He looped it across his chest, over his left shoulder, and down his back, making sure the rope was cushioned by his jacket and wouldn't cut into his neck. He used his left hand to grip the forward part of the rope while his right gripped the section behind and below him. The arrangement allowed his body to act as a brake.

Somewhere, somehow, he'd lost his gloves. As a consequence, he risked rope burns on his hands. Straining to be optimistic, he told himself that the gloves would have been slippery in the rain, that under the circumstances exposed skin was safer.

Right. Be positive. Look on the bright side.

In green-tinted darkness.

It keeps getting worse, he thought. Yet his emotions puzzled him. The Gulf War syndrome from his tour of duty in Desert Storm was suddenly so distant a memory that it seemed not to have happened. The post-traumatic stress disorder from his near-beheading no longer weighed on him. After the hell of the previous six hours, after so many deaths, after discovering the corpse of his beloved wife, a grim rage overtook him. It was so expansive and powerful that it left no room for fear. Vinnie depended on him. The woman who resembled his wife depended on him. They mattered. Punishing Ronnie. That mattered.

He tested the rope one final time, then stepped backward off the roof. Swaying in chaos, he eased the rope through his right hand behind him while his left hand gripped the forward section. The rope slid around his body. With his shoes pushing against the wall, he walked horizontally backward and downward, approaching the crater in the patio below.

The rope jerked. Had the pipe bent? Friction burning his cold fingers, he eased more rope through his right hand. The rope jerked again. Don't think about it. Keep going. Keep thinking about Amanda and Vinnie. Through rain-streaked goggles, he saw that the surviving edge of the patio was just below him. A moment later, he set down on it, holding the rope around him so he wouldn't drop if the remainder of the patio gave way.

He was braced against a closed, rusted shutter on the sixth level. There was no way inside. To re-enter the hotel, to get to Ronnie, he needed to descend farther. Into the crater of a room on the fifth level. His soaked clothes weighing on him, he walked to the edge of the crater and leaned back, settling into it. Without a wall to brace his feet against, he grimaced from the strain of lowering himself, the rope biting into his hip, chest, and shoulder. Now the moisture falling around him was thicker, not only rain but also water accumulating on the roof. It poured over him. Below, he saw a canopied bed, a bureau, a Victorian table, the basic arrangement he'd found in most of the other rooms. The middle of the floor was another crater, water crashing farther down.

He kicked his legs. The motion started a pendulum effect that he increased by kicking several more times. Swinging, he neared the remainder of the floor across from him, kicked again, and suddenly his breath was taken away as he dropped. The pipe's breaking, he thought. He jerked to a stop.

The rope constricted his chest. Still breathless, he exhaled through his mouth and inhaled through his nostrils, trying for a calming rhythm. Staring up, he saw that the reason the rope had dropped was that it had dug into the crater's edge and broken away a portion of the roof. Six feet of ceiling had crumbled. That was how far he had fallen. Now he hung below the hole, dangling into a fourth-level room. He tried to pull himself up, to lift his legs over the edge.

But the rim of this crater now began to disintegrate. As the floor gave way, he sank lower, dangling farther into the fourth-level room. Water fell past him. Then a chair. It brushed past his jacket sleeve.

Jesus, the whole ceiling's collapsing. The furniture's going to-

The table plummeted past him. The bureau tilted toward the widening hole. The bed slid in his direction.

Staring down, he saw that the door to the fourth-level room was open. Nearly all the floor was gone, the entire contents having cascaded, hitting subsequent floors and crashing through. At once, Balenger understood that this was the room from which he'd rescued Vinnie after Vinnie dropped.

More of the crater's rim collapsed. The rope dropped him another two feet. With a woosh, the bureau hurtled past. The bed slid nearer. He worked down along the rope. At the same time, he swung his body. His right hand touched the knot that warned him he was near the rope's end. As he swung again, the pressure of the rope made that section of the ceiling give way. The bed plunged toward him. His pendulum's arc sped him toward the open door. His fingers clawed, snagging the jamb. He tightened his grip on the door frame. The bed swooped past him.

The rope held him prisoner, tugging him backward into the chasm while he fought to pull himself around the doorjamb. The bed crashed far below. His right hand released the rope and joined his left hand clinging to the side of the open door. He pulled himself farther through. Although soft, the balcony's floor held. He took another step. Another.

Unwrapping the rope from his hip and shoulder, he freed the knot and tugged one end, trying to pull it down. It snagged on something. Worried that his effort would stress the weak floor, he took a step farther back, then tugged again. The rope refused to budge.