Nightworld

THE NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE

Hank wasn't sure if he was awake or dreaming. He seemed to be awake. He was aware of noises around him, of a stale, sour odor, of growing light beyond his eyelids, but he could not get those eyelids to move. And he could feel nothing. For all he knew, he no longer had a body. Where was he? What—?

And then he remembered. The millipedes…their queen…a scream bubbled up in his throat but died stillborn. How can you scream when you can't open your mouth?

No. That had been a dream. It had all been a dream—the holes, the flying horrors, storing up the food, deserted by Carol, the rest stop, the trooper, the gun, the bullet, the millipedes—a long, horrible nightmare. But finally it was at an end. He was waking up now.

If he could just open his eyes he'd see the familiar cracks in the ceiling of their bedroom. And then he'd be free of the nightmare. He'd be able to move then, to reach out an arm and touch Carol.

The eyes. They were the key. He concentrated on the lids, focusing all his will, all his energy into them. And slowly they began to move. He didn't feel the motion but he saw a knife-slit streak of light open across his eyes, pale light, like the glow on the horizon at the approach of dawn.

Encouraged, he doubled his efforts. Light widened around the horizon as the edges of his lids stretched the gummy substance that bound them, then burst through as they broke apart. Not the blaze of the rising sun, but a wan, diffuse sort of light. He forced his lids to separate further and the light began to take form through the narrow opening, breaking down into shapes and color. Vague shapes. A paucity of color. Mostly grays. His pupils constricted, bringing the images into sharper focus.

He was looking down along a body. His own body, lying in bed, naked atop the sheets. Hazy, but he knew his own body. Thank God, it had all been a dream. He tried to turn his head to the left, toward the light, but it wouldn't move. Why couldn't he move? He was awake now. He should be able to move. He slid his eyeballs leftward. The bedroom window was over there somewhere. If he could just—

Wait…the walls—rounded. The ceiling—convex. Concrete. Concrete everywhere. And the light. It came from above. He forced his eyelids open another millimeter. No window—the light was coming through a grate in the concrete ceiling.

The stillborn scream from a moment ago came alive again and rammed up against his throat, pounding at his larynx, crying to be free.

This wasn't the bedroom. It was the pipe—the drainage pipe! It hadn't been a dream. It was real. Real!

Hank fought the panic, beat it down, and tried to think. He was still alive. He had to remember that. He was still alive and it was daytime. The things from the holes were quiet in the daylight hours. They hid from the light. He had to think, had to plan. He'd always been good at planning.

He shifted his eyes down to his body. His vision was clearer now. He saw the gentle tidal rise and fall of his sparsely haired chest, and further down, on his belly, he spotted the bloody wound where the queen millipede had spiked him and injected him with her poison. The neurotoxin was still working, obviously, paralyzing his voluntary muscles while it let his heart and lungs go on moving. But it didn't have complete control of him. He'd managed to open his eyes, hadn't he? He could move his eyeballs, couldn't he? What else could he move?

He pulled his gaze away from his abdominal wound and searched for his hands. They lay flopped out on either side, palms up. He checked out his lower limbs. They were intact, slightly spread with the toes angled outward. He could have been a sun bather. His body was the picture of relaxation…the relaxation of complete paralysis. He returned his gaze to his arm and followed it down to the hand. If he could move a finger—

And then he noticed the webbing. It was all around him, running in all directions, crisscrossed like gauze. It curved away from each arm and leg like heavy-duty spiderweb and ran out to the wall of the drain pipe where it melted into a glob of some sticky looking gelatin smeared on the concrete. He looked down as much as his slit perspective would permit and realized that he wasn't lying in the pipe, he was suspended in it. From the horizontal lie of his body he guessed that he was resting on a hammock of web across the diameter of the pipe.

Hank marveled at the coolness of his mind as it analyzed his position. He was trapped—not only paralyzed, but effectively and securely bound in position. The web hammock, however, was not entirely without its advantages. Long, uninterrupted contact with the cold concrete would have made it difficult for his body to maintain its temperature; the webbing also kept him out of the water, thereby preventing his flesh from breaking down in the constant moisture.

So in a very real sense he was high and dry, but also bound, gagged, and paralyzed.

Hung up like a side of beef.

That last thought impacted with the force of a sledgehammer. That was it! He was food! They'd shot him full of preservatives and stored him away alive so he wouldn't decompose. So when pickings got slim above ground, they could come down here and devour him at their leisure.

He willed down the rising panic. Panic wouldn't help here. They'd already paralyzed his body. Allowing fear to paralyze his mind would only make matters worse. But that one cold hard fact battered relentlessly at his defenses.

I'm food!

That rogue cop lieutenant would get a good laugh out of that: The hoarder becomes the hoard. Even Carol would probably appreciate the irony.

But I'm alive, he told himself. And I can beat these bugs.

He knew their pattern. They'd probably stay dormant all day and crawl up to the surface to hunt during the dark hours. That was when he'd get free.

But first he had to regain control of his body. He already controlled his eyeballs and eyelids. Next was his hands. If he was to get free he'd need them the most. A finger. He'd start with the pointer on his right hand, concentrate all his will and energy into that one digit until he got it to move. Then he'd proceed to the next, and the next, until he could make a fist. Then he'd switch to his left.

He glared at his index finger, narrowing his vision, his entire world to that single digit, channeling all his power into it.

And then it moved.

Or had it? The twitch had been almost imperceptible, so slight it might have been a trick of the light. Or wishful thinking.

But it had moved. He had to hold onto that thought. It had moved. He was regaining control. He was going to get out of here.

With climbing spirits, he redoubled his concentration on the reluctant digit.