Creepers

61

"How do we get out?"

The voice startled Balenger, almost making him pull the trigger. It belonged to a man struggling through the current toward them. The figure wore goggles. He had bulging pockets that weighed him down. Tattoos covered his face.

"I tried the tunnel door!" Tod shouted. "The bastard really did weld it shut! I tried every other door and shutter I could find! We're trapped!"

"We'll use the crowbar! We'll try to wedge a door open!"

The instant Balenger stepped into the current, it almost knocked him over. Twenty feet to his right, a waterfall cascaded.

"This whole damned place is about to come down," Tod said.

"Get rid of the coins. If you fall, they'll hold you under the water."

"Then I'd better not fall."

Balenger saw a chair rush by, carrying a rat. He dodged the chair, only to stagger from Vinnie's weight. Amanda grabbed him, holding him up. They waded past a pillar, where rats teemed on a jumble of furniture.

"What happened to him?" Tod said.

"His legs got burned. Ronnie blew the detonators."

"I'd love to shove a detonator down his throat if I ever get my hands on-" Tod gaped in shock.

"What's the matter?"

"A body just floated past. A woman. The woman I saw in the corridor."

Blond hair disappeared in the current. Balenger was sickened by the thought that it could be any of the other corpses that Ronnie hid in the building. Or maybe it's Diane, he thought.

Objects spattered the water. The roar in the lobby was sufficiently loud that Balenger realized only belatedly that a shotgun had gone off behind him. Fighting the current, he reached a pillar, taking cover behind the furniture caught against it.

"Amanda!"

"Here! Behind you!"

"Where's Tod?"

"There!"

She pointed toward a neighboring pillar.

Balenger gave Vinnie to Amanda, drew his pistol, and peered around the furniture jammed against the pillar. The wreckage of the main staircase faced him. Piled next to it was the twisted debris of the balconies that had collapsed, providing a warren of places in which Ronnie could hide.

Leaning as far out as he dared, Balenger thought he saw movement beneath a tangle of railings. Only two rounds left, he thought. Need to be sure. As the water kept rising, he shifted back behind the furniture and the pillar. Pellets tore a chunk from a table next to him. Hiding, he didn't see the muzzle flash.

Eager for a better sense of Ronnie's location, Balenger took the walkie-talkie from his knapsack. "The rain will eventually put out the fire," he said into it. "You can't possibly destroy all the evidence."

He turned the walkie-talkie to a minimum volume and strained to listen for Ronnie's voice across the way. But the roar of the waterfall made it difficult to distinguish any other sound.

Useless to Balenger, Ronnie's voice came from the walkie-talkie. "The fire and the rain will destroy fingerprints. The rest of the evidence can't be linked to me. No one, except you, knows I come here. The police will think intruders did this."

Balenger cocked his head, focusing on Ronnie's voice. He was almost certain that it came from the right, from a pocket in the tangle of railings. Get him to say more.

Ronnie puzzled him by readily talking. "It's just as well the city's forcing me to go. The floods were never this destructive. When a storm came, it used to be all I needed to do was purge the swimming pool. Then the water from the storm would fill it again. The overflow drains would handle the rest."

Yes, definitely from that tangle of railings, Balenger thought. But why is he talking so much? Is he trying to bait me again? Is he shifting his position, hoping I'll waste another shot?

"Do you know the word 'exponential'?" the voice asked.

Balenger decided he had to answer, to encourage Ronnie to keep talking. He spoke into the walkie-talkie. "In the military, I understood it to mean something like a rapidly increasing series of attacks." Immediately, he again reduced the volume.

"Something like that," the voice said across the way.

From the same place. On the right. Among the wreckage. If I don't shoot, will he decide I'm out of ammunition? Balenger wondered. Will he take the risk of coming for me? Can I bait him?

"That's what happened to this hotel. Exponential attacks," the voice said. "By the way, you sound cold."

Balenger did indeed feel cold, shivering in the frigid water.

"You'll soon have muscle cramps. You won't be able to defend yourself."

"You've got the same problem."

"No," the voice said. "I'm high and dry."

"Hey! Ronnie!" Tod yelled from the neighboring pillar, surprising Balenger. "I'll make a deal with you!"

"What possible deal could you make?"

"I can't hear you!" Tod yelled. "I don't have a walkie-talkie!"

Good, make Ronnie shout, Balenger thought. Help me be certain where he is.

"You don't have anything to bargain with!" Ronnie said.

Now the voice seemed to come from a different location. Again, the chaos of noises in the lobby made it difficult for Balenger to judge where Ronnie hid.

"Sure, I do. I'll help you get the others. If I do that, will you let me go?" Tod yelled. "You don't need to be afraid of me."

"I'm afraid of no one."

"I'm not a threat. All I want is to get out of here. I don't have a reason to go to the cops. Not with these coins."

"Ah, yes, the coins."

Balenger's legs were numb. He wondered if he'd be able to move when the time came.

"If I help you get them, do we have a deal?" Tod asked.

"Help is always welcome."

"But do we have a damned deal?"

"I can always use a friend."

What the hell is Tod up to? Balenger wondered. He watched Tod pull something from the water: a long railing that floated by.

"Get ready!" Tod shouted. "Here they come!"

In dismay, Balenger watched Tod poke the railing at the tangle of furniture he, Amanda, and Vinnie hid behind. A table shifted. A chair moved. Tod poked harder. As the wreckage was about to drift away and expose him, Balenger didn't see any choice except to use one of his last two bullets on Tod.

He aimed.

In response, Tod let go of the railing and splashed through the water, taking cover behind a section of stairs jammed against the pillar. Abruptly, something leapt from the wreckage and made him scream. It struck his head, wrapping around his face, claws raking his cheeks and neck. White. With three hind legs. The cat. As blood spurted from his neck, Tod stumbled blindly in the water. Weighed by the coins, desperate to pull the animal from his face, he staggered from the pillar, wailing.

His chest erupted from a shotgun blast. The coins in his pockets provided so much resistance that instead of jerking backward, Tod sank to his knees. He toppled sideways, his face disappearing. In the swirl, the cat surfaced.

Balenger heard wood scraping. The chair Tod had pushed broke free. The table came with it, releasing other debris. All of it swept around the pillar. Balenger holstered his gun. When he turned to help Amanda keep a grip on Vinnie, he lost his footing. Something banged into his legs. He went under. Holding his breath, he struggled to the surface and managed a glimpse of Amanda and Vinnie as the current took all three of them. He thought he heard a shotgun. Then the water shoved him under, thrusting him through the lobby.

He had the sense of cascading down stairs, of streaming along a corridor, of speeding through parted doors. He grabbed for something, anything, to stop him, but all his fingers clutched was a chunk of wood. Fighting to the surface again, he saw Amanda and Vinnie ahead of him. He sucked in air and saw a blur of tiled walls. The swimming pool area.

The current tugged him through an open door. He slammed against a gigantic metal storage tank. The utility room.

He strained to breathe. "Amanda!"

"Here!"

The flood was above his waist. Shivering violently, he swam toward her. "Vinnie? Where's-"

Facedown, Vinnie floated away. Balenger and Amanda grabbed him, bracing his head above water. Vinnie coughed. Around them, the surface was covered by panicked rats squealing to reach pipes and claw their way up. The white cat struggled past. Light-colored objects surged by, and Balenger realized he was seeing hair. The blond hair on Ronnie's victims.

Something in his mind seemed to tilt. He feared he had gone insane.

"Need to get out, or we'll drown." Amanda's voice quavered.

Balenger couldn't bring himself to tell her that even if they managed to fight their way back up to the lobby, their chilled muscles would render them helpless in the water, unable to prevent Ronnie from shooting them.

For a dismaying instant, Amanda's lovely cheeks and blond hair made him think he was looking at…

"Diane?"

"What did you call me?"

He took her arm and worked to guide her and Vinnie toward the swimming pool. But he managed only one step before the relentless current pushed them back against the metal tank.

Cold. So cold.

Balenger's hands felt stiff.

The water rose to his sternum.

Finally found her. Can't let her die. Damn it, how do we get out? If that bastard hadn't welded the door shut…

Letting the current pull him from the tank, he waded toward the door. The welds, he thought. Maybe they're not strong. Maybe I can use the crowbar to break them.

With all this water pushing against the door? Tons of it? Even if the door wasn't welded shut, I could never get it open.

Welds. Something jogged his memory. Something important that he couldn't quite identify. Something…

Balenger remembered that when Ronnie appeared on the surveillance monitor, when he motioned toward the pipe he'd welded across the door, there was a welder's tank to the left of the door. Now Balenger waded in that direction. Praying that Ronnie hadn't moved the tank, he groped in the water but couldn't find it. He groped lower, his awkward fingers brushing curved metal.

He almost shouted with hope as he straightened, but there was a lot he had to do before hope was justified. The water was almost above the pipe across the door. There was a gap behind the pipe. He pulled the crowbar from his knapsack and jammed the sharp end into the gap. He braced the crowbar vertically, its hook at the top of the door.

Again, he groped in the water. Groaning from the weight, he lifted the tank and used its straps to attach it to the crowbar, suspending it above the water. He took the plastic explosive from the knapsack and wedged it between the tank and the door. He yanked the roll of duct tape from his knapsack and secured the tank's rod so the nozzle was pointed at the middle of the tank. Next, he taped the lever on the rod's handle in the open position. Gas escaped. When he clicked the tank's igniter, the torch flamed, burning into the tank.

The water pushed at him as he fought to return to Amanda and Vinnie. He was reminded of nightmares in which he struggled to hurry somewhere but his legs were trapped. Seeing the reflection of the torch behind him, he pressed his shoes against the floor and urged his legs forward through the deepening water. Breathing furiously, he rounded the storage tank. The force of the water pressed Amanda and Vinnie against it.

"Close your eyes! Cover your ears!" he shouted.

Amanda didn't hesitate.

"Vinnie, can you hear me? Close your eyes! Cover your ears!"

Stupefied by his pain, the morphine, and the cold, Vinnie pressed his hands against his ears.

Balenger did the same. The water was at his chest. The torch, he thought. How long will it take to burn into the tank? One, two, three, four. It should have exploded by now. Seven, eight, nine. Did the tank fall into the water? Did the water rise high enough to put out the torch? Thirteen, fourteen.

The world became loud and bright. Even with his eyes closed and his hands over his ears, Balenger felt deafened and blinded. A force lifted him at the same time it seemed to suck the life from him. Weightless, he couldn't breathe. He dropped, pressure squeezing him. Up and down, right and left, these suddenly no longer had meaning. As chaos propelled him, he struck something, gasped, inhaled water, and continued speeding forward.

I'm in the tunnel, he realized. The door blew open. The water's flooding into… The chaos spun and tossed him. Banging against a wall, he inhaled more water and found that his face was above the surface. The green-tinted roof of the tunnel sped over him. Rats surrounded him. Two were on his chest.

He saw a swiftly approaching corner. His shoes rammed into it. The flood twisted him, propelling him down the continuation of the tunnel. Underwater again, he banged against a wall and strained not to breathe. At once, the feeling of weightlessness returned. He arced into a wide space, arms flying.

An impact jolted him. He rolled, stopping on his back, and struggled to clear his lungs as water sprayed behind him. Rats scrambled over him.

Boards. Somehow boards were above him. He lay on wet sand. A broken, rusted grate was next to him.

My God, he realized, the force of the water rammed the screen off a drain tunnel. It threw me onto the beach. I'm under the boardwalk.