Blood Lust: A Supernatural Horror (50 page)

McNeil nodded.
He had known where the cave in had occurred by the smell of the dust.
As they walked along, he could not fight the feeling
someone (Or something, he corrected himself) was watching them
. The space between his shoulder blades itched. He fought the impulse to scratch.

“Keep an eye out,” he warned.

He looked at his companions. Walmsley,
a
seasoned hunter, scanned the walls and ceilings as he went along
. Johnson, an assistant station manager, less at home in the woods or a tunnel, looked frightened. His eyes
were on
the walls and ceiling too, but
it was obvious his concern was
the possibility of another
cave-in
.
The light in
Johnson’s
hand trembled slightly.
McNeil
wondered if he should send
Johnson
and Joria Alvarez
back topside, but that would mean backtracking
and he felt a sense of urgency
.
He doubted Joria would agree to go anyway.

Walmsley
’s
light caught
the edge of
a hole in the wall
and floor
.
It looked fresh.
Shining
a
light inside, McNeil
saw
see the hole led to a narrow sinkhole. He and Walmsley traded meaningful glances. Could Hardin have disappeared down this rabbit hole?

“This whole area must be undermined by caverns and faults,” Johnson
whined
, h
is voice pitched higher than
its usual grating tone
.
He looked
longingly back
the
direction
they had come.
“Maybe we should go back?”

McNeil studied Johnson’s
worried
face.
He knew Johnson was no coward but many people could not cope with confined spaces.
He had seen it happen too often in rookie
S
andhogs
.
“Not until we find Hardin.
These tunnels have
held
for
sixty
years.
They’ll
hold a few hours longer.”

He could tell Johnson
was
un
satisfied
with
his decision
by the
way
Johnson
turned away and shuffled his feet.
Cleary, Walmsley was another sort altogether.
A born Sandhog,
Walmsley
had no fear of tunnels or tight places.
Joria ignored the hole. Her attention was focused down the tunnel. She stared into the darkness with an eagerness that
worried him. Sure, she was a beautiful woman, but he wondered what Hardin saw in her. He thought a detective should be a better judge of character.

“If you hold my feet, I’ll shimmy down a ways and see what I can find,”
Walmsley
suggested
.

McNeil considered Walmsley’s proposal and wished he had thought to bring rope.
“No, that might be too risky. We’ll keep looking.”
He
pulled out the
walkie-talkie
. “I’ll try to reach him again.”
He pressed the mic key. “McNeil to Hardin. Do you read me Hardin? Just key the mic if you can hear me.”

Except for
a burst of
static,
the walkie-talkie remained disturbingly silent
. “Damn
walkie-talkie
,” he cursed and shoved it
angrily
back in his pocket. He hoped it was just the
walkie-talkie
. He did
n’t
want to think about Hardin under a few tons of rock or trapped down that rabbit hole they had passed.

Walmsley
suddenly lurched to a stop
and waved for silence. McNeil listened but could hear nothing
. H
e knew Walmsley’s ears were sharper than his
fifty-six year old ears
were
. “What is it?” he whispered.

Walmsley glanced at him before returning his stony gaze down the tunnel. “Something’s coming
.”

2
7

Entering the subway system through the Bay
Station
entrance
at six a.m.,
Clad
Simmons
had
encountered few passengers. It was still a bit early for the morning rush hour. He mingled with the few construction workers
headed to their jobs
and late shifters headed home
scattered about the platform
; then quietly slipped away
, walking
along the tracks
down the tunnel
until he reached the first of the metal doors McNeil had described. Before he went through
the connecting tunnel
,
he
checked his equipment
–
a
powerful flashlight,
a .357 Magnum with armor piercing rounds
to replace his
less powerful
.45
and, just in case, one of the collapsible stun sticks
.
It was hardly an arsenal, but he felt confident
.

The smell in the old tunnel was overpowering and the stale musty air oppressive. He walked as silently as his large frame would allow, watching for the creature
.
Twice
,
he started at
sudden
sounds, but saw nothing. He imagined the tunnel was rife with vermin and bats, both of which he
detested
.
He knew he was at the dead end of the tunnel
, abandoned when the work crews had encountered a cavern system and faults
that
made further digging impossible. He
trudged
down
the tunnel
until he reached
the main ventilator shaft connecting both tunnel systems to the main airshaft
to the surface
.
The massive fan blades moved many cubic feet of stale air per minute, making the air around it a little easier to breathe.
He spotted the
wooden ladder and
trap door in the ceiling. It looked too small for the creature
but it would provide him an emergency way out.
He hoped there would be so such emergency.

He explored
an abandoned room
filled with rusty tools, a rotting wooden table and benches for meals, a few metal lockers and a
dust
-covered
electrical
panel
with frayed wires and
rat chewed wires
.
A red light indicated that at least one breaker was live, probably for the few remaining functional lights that dotted the tunnel.
The room seemed a good place
in which to
wait.
He
concealed himself in
a
n upright
wooden tool
chest
about six feet high and four feet
wide
. It was
tight,
hot and confining, but
strategic cracks in the door
provided a go
o
d view out the door and
into
the tunnel. A few electric lights still functioned, allowing a limited view
of the immediate vicinity
.
An upturned crate provided a seat. He figured the creature could smell him if it got close enough, but if that happened, he intended to put as many rounds into its head as he could.
He hoped n
ot even it could survive armor piercing rounds to the brain.
He settled down to wait, something
at
which he excelled
.

His job entailed a lot of waiting. The worst were the stakeouts watching houses
demanding
hours or even days of sitting
in a car, sitting beside a window of a nearby house, or
perching
in a child’s tree house for two days, as he had once been forced to do.
It took patience
and perseverance
.

Simmons
had learned patience
and perseverance
in Iraq in
2002. His Ranger recon squad
assigned
to Fallujah to locate a suspected arms depot had
encountered
superior enemy fire.
Simmons
held his men in the highest regard
, so it required no deep deliberation, no soul searching on his part to lead the enemy away from their position, allowing them the opportunity to escape with the information they had obtained. He had been wounded and captured.
His captors tortured him daily, using
picana
electric prods on his
arms, legs and testicles
, dunking his head under water until his lungs burst and good old beating
s
with fists and wooden clubs
.
He held out his arms. Yes, his cell had been
a closet
just a little wider than his present hiding place,
no room i
n which to lie down.
He had waited crouched,
naked,
knees tucked under his chin
between his beatings.
He surveyed his tool shed
hiding place
and shuddered with
ancient
memories.

Each morning
his captors
had
dragged him
from his c
loset
to his place of torture, a room on the second floor of an
aba
ndoned
school overlooking the main street. Twice, he watched American troops prowling the city but he could not call out
to them
.
For
ten
days
,
he endured
his captor’s
questions
and
the inevitable
beatings
that followed
when he refused to answer
. He
concentrated on surviving
. He knew his men were searching for him.
He knew either his men or death would find him before he divulged vital information
to his captors
.

One morning his
mute
patience paid off.
As they prepared to remove him from his chair, he feigned passing out
, not difficult to do as they fed him only sporadically
. As they loosened his bonds, he
suddenly
jerked upright and butted one torturer
in the stomach with his head
and raced for the
open
window, sailing through it chair and all.
His landing broke a
bone in his arm
but it freed him from his chair. He ran.
They fired at him, alerting nearby American troops who
promptly
came to his rescue.
Patience was one of Clad Simmons
strongest
virtues.

A couple of hours later, he heard clanging as McNeil’s crew locked and secured the metal doors, sealing him and Hardin inside
with the creature
. Twenty minutes after that, he watched Hardin enter the room and look around.
He held his breath as Hardin walked toward the toolbox but turned and left.
He noticed the sawed off elephant gun Hardin carried and almost laughed
aloud
.
The man was certainly innovative.

Simmons
remained in his hiding place until he heard what was assuredly Hardin
firing his
elephant gun
,
followed by
the
low rumble
of a cave-in
that shook the walls
and floors
and threatened to topple his hiding place
.
He flung open the door and fell out on his hands and knees
. To his amazement, the ceiling did not collapse, but clouds of d
ust drawn by the fans filled the tunnel.
Un
able to see more than a few inches,
Simmons
hugged the wall. He felt more than saw the creature sweep past him, swirling
the dust
in its wake. He froze
, tried to become part of the wall
. He waited several minutes but the creature did not attack. It had not seen or smelled him.
He continued past the fans until he found a small alcove
and crouched
,
waiting
.
He heard a few more shots, then silence. He hoped the creature had not gotten Hardin.