Night Terror (33 page)

55

AUDREY WAS CERTAIN
she’d heard something. She was wedged in close to Richard in Zach’s cell, in the farthest corner of the underground complex. She’d found the breaker for the ventilation system, shut it down, and stuffed blankets and sheets in the vents. Then she’d half-dragged, half-carried Richard down the hall and shoved loose clothing beneath the door. She hoped they were deep enough to survive the firestorm above them if they waited it out.

“It’s just the noise of the fire,” she said, trying to keep Richard alert, but he kept nodding in and out of consciousness. “Hang on. We’re going to be all right.” She’d snagged a flashlight off Merle’s workbench just before the lights went out for the last time. Now she rested it on the floor and tried to make Richard more comfortable on his blanket.

“She kidnapped Zach,” she said, not knowing if he was hearing her. “All these years, I thought it was my mother that did those things. I even thought that maybe I was somehow responsible for some of it. But now…” She shook her head. “Mother took Zach to keep Tara from getting him. In her own way, she was trying to protect him.” She cocked her head. “Did you hear something?”

Richard half-opened his eyes and looked at her groggily “What did it sound like?”

“I thought I heard someone shouting. Maybe it’s help. Listen.”

A sound that might have been a voice teased at her ears. “There. Did you hear that?”

Richard shook his head. “Just the fire.”

She tucked the blanket tighter around his shoulders and he tried to smile with his eyes closed. She held his hand and noticed how cool it felt. When he opened his eyes again, she told him to hold on. She wasn’t going to lose
him
, not after losing Zach
again.

“You found him, Aud,” whispered Richard. “You really found him.”

“He’s gone,” she said. Her chest tightened but she refused to break down now, when Richard needed her.

Richard’s eyes clouded, but he fought to stay with her. “You found him once,” he said. “You can find him again.”

She wanted to believe that. But could she? Would she survive to find him? She felt no sense of Zach at all now. The wonderful feeling of being able to reach out with her mind and touch him, had disappeared. She tried to put herself back into a self-induced trance, slowing her breathing, relaxing her body. But something kept intruding. A tapping noise. Like coins falling in a cup. And then, far off, whispered voices…

“Listen,” she said, easing out from under Richard and placing her ear against the door. “It sounds like someone’s calling for help. What if it’s Zach? What if she left him?” But she knew that was too good to be true. Tara thought everyone in the basement was dead by now. There was no reason to leave Zach. Not when she wanted to experiment on him.

Richard closed his eyes and Audrey couldn’t tell if he was nodding off or concentrating.

Two pops sounded. Like firecrackers. Then she heard the faint cries again.

“Someone’s down here,” said Audrey, ripping out the rags that she had laboriously stuffed under the door.

Virgil’s skull felt like someone had crawled inside it with a sledgehammer and now they were trying to pound their way out through his forehead. He had dented the heavy door with his boots and he was pretty sure a couple of his toes were broken. Finally, he’d shot through the lock, but
someone had packed something heavy up against the inside of the door, and the best he and Cooder could manage was to wedge it open an inch, just enough to get a breath of air, but not nearly enough to save them from the heat that was turning the tiny room into an oven. Already Virgil could feel the skin on the back of his neck starting to blister and his lungs felt as though they had been belt-sanded. He kept slapping at his hair to make sure it wasn’t alight.

“Let’s try one more run at it,” he said, urging Cooder on. Cooder gave him a long, suffering look but backed away the eight feet to the far wall, preparing for their charge. Shoulder to shoulder they struck the door at full tilt, but all they got for their trouble were aching shoulders.

“We’re finished,” said Virgil, leaning heavily against the door frame, staring up at the hole over their heads that now looked like the bottom of a giant campfire.

Cooder shook his head.

“You got an idea?” said Virgil.

“She’s coming.”

“Who?”

“The woman.”

The sound of metal dragging across carpet alerted Virgil, and he shoved hard on the door, gratified to feel it give a little.

“Wait a minute!” a woman screamed.

“Audrey?!” he shouted. “Is that you? We’ve got to get out of here!”

“I’m trying to move the desk! I barely got it into place by myself. Hold on!”

As Audrey struggled to drag the heavy desk back, Cooder and Virgil put their weight into it again. The door finally screeched open and the charbroiled pair fell through into the corridor, gasping for breath.

“Is anyone else out there?” asked Audrey, peering past them at the flames that were starting to catch on the upper stair treads.

Virgil shook his head.

“Zach was here,” she said. “Just like I told you.” The pain in her eyes slashed him like a knife.

Virgil figured now was not a good time to stop to say he was sorry. “Where’s he now?”

“Tara’s got him.”

Virgil glanced back through the door as the flames danced down another two treads. He kicked the door shut.

“I barricaded us in to keep the smoke from getting down here and to conserve oxygen,” said Audrey. “I was afraid a beam or some of the masonry might collapse down into that little room and bust the door open.”

“Good idea,” said Virgil, helping Cooder shove the desk back into place after Audrey stuffed rags under the door again. With the door closed, the hallway was once more bathed in darkness broken only by the flashlight’s glow. Audrey pointed it at the floor.

“Richard’s been shot in the chest,” she said, scurrying back down the hall.

Virgil and Cooder followed close on her tail. Virgil glanced at Martha’s body lying on the floor of the sitting room as they passed it.

“Tara shot her too,” said Audrey, stopping. “She’s dead.”

“You sure?”

Audrey nodded. But Virgil dropped down beside Martha anyway, sliding his fingers onto her throat. He glanced at Audrey and shook his head. She shrugged.

She led them up the hall to the room where Richard now lay unconscious on his blanket. Virgil knelt beside Richard and pulled aside the bloody shirt Audrey had used for a bandage. He shook Richard gently and Richard came around again, enough to recognize him.

“You’re going to be all right,” said Virgil. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of here.”

Virgil glanced at Audrey and she gave him a brief, tentative smile as he gently tightened the shirt back around Richard’s chest.

“The bleeding has about stopped,” said Virgil. “You did the right thing, plugging the hole like that.”

“He’s not going into shock, is he?”

Virgil glanced at Richard. He
might
be. But they’d done everything for him they could right now, and there was nothing to be gained by worrying Audrey. “Not yet. But we need to get out of here and soon. You looked for another way out?”

Audrey shook her head. “There isn’t one. Just the stairs you came down. But the firemen will find us, right?”

Virgil’s expression said as much as his words. “Not for a while. The fire trucks will be hosing this one down all night. Then it could be a few days before the fire marshal really gets to investigating, and even then he might not find us down here for a week. The remains of the barn will collapse over the hole up there. Audrey, I’m afraid we’re buried.” He grabbed her by the shoulders when she started to sag. But there was steel in her eyes.

“Our car’s out front,” she said. “Your car must be out there. Won’t they be looking for us?”

“Oh, they’ll be looking all right. But even so, it could take days. They’ll be careful, sifting through the ashes. They’ll most likely assume we’re dead, so they’ll be looking for evidence, not survivors.” He glanced around the room. “I don’t feel the heat so much here just yet. I think we’re safe for the moment.” He had no idea of just how hot it might get in the basement. Maybe the surrounding soil would keep it at least liveable. Maybe not. But he didn’t think it would do any good for Audrey to think about that either. One problem at a time. “The trouble is oxygen. The fire is sucking it out and now all of us are using it too. I don’t know how long we can stay down here. You absolutely certain there’s no other way out?”

“Pretty sure,” said Audrey. “I found this cell where they kept Zach, another bedroom, a bathroom, a storage room, a workroom, and the room you saw. But no other exit.”

“Show me the workroom,” said Virgil, following Audrey two doors down. The one door on the other side of the corridor was closed. “What’s in there?” asked Virgil, pointing.

“The bathroom.”

Virgil passed by her into the workroom. Audrey stood in the doorway.

“Tara has Zach,” Audrey reminded him. “She’s going to kill him.”

“Why would she want to do that?” asked Virgil, wondering if she was going to confirm his theory about Tara’s research.

“She wants to experiment on him.”

Virgil closed his eyes, nodding.

“She thinks Zach has some kind of supernatural powers,” said Audrey. “And she believes she can enhance them. She’ll kill him. Just like she killed my sister and brother.”

“I thought your mother did something to your sister and brother.”

Audrey shook her head. “I did too. But it was Tara. I never
remembered
it before.”

Virgil rubbed sweat off his brow with the back of his sleeve.

“All right. Well, we have to find a way out.”

“How?” said Audrey.

“The obvious way would be to dig.”

“The walls and ceiling are concrete and they’re lined with lead,” said Audrey.

“What?” said Virgil, glancing around. He hadn’t paid any attention to the walls before. But the walls and ceiling in the little workroom seemed normal enough, painted a uniform shade of beige. He recalled Charlie telling him that Martha Remont’s cellar had been lead-lined. “Why lead?”

“I think my mother thought it would keep Tara away.”

“But it didn’t work.”

“Obviously not.”

“Not much here,” said Virgil, glancing at the worktable and shelves. He eyed the woodworking tools and small table with a vise attached to the side. “And mostly power tools. That’s not going to help us much.”

“Shine the light over here,” said Audrey, shoving aside a wooden crate. Virgil’s flashlight illuminated a row of metal ducts radiating off a single flue that dropped down through the ceiling. A large fan system was wired directly into the breaker panel.

“Did you do that?” said Virgil, pointing toward the blankets plugging the vents.

Audrey nodded. “Richard had me shut off the breaker to the fan. The ventilation system was sucking smoke down here.”

Virgil glanced at the dead lightbulb overhead, feeling a faint ray of hope. If they could use the power drill and circular saw,
that
might help. “Did you trip them all?”

“No,” said Audrey. “The power went out right after that.”

The hope faded.

Cooder hefted a small sledgehammer with a short handle and pulled a wide-bladed chisel off the wall.

“Whatcha gonna do with that?” said Virgil.

“Dig,” said Cooder, nodding up toward the ceiling.

“Case you didn’t hear anyone mention it,” said Virgil, “there’s a burning building right on top of us.”

Virgil watched that roll around inside Cooder’s skull. Audrey looked at Cooder, then Virgil. Virgil shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“Not in the bathroom,” said Cooder.

“Huh?” said Virgil, blinking.

“Feel the ceiling,” said Cooder.

Virgil reached up and placed his hand against the lead. It was warm, a lot warmer than a cellar wall or ceiling had any right to be. There was a fire directly over their heads.

“Not in the other room,” said Cooder again.

“How do you know that?” asked Virgil.

Cooder shrugged “The door’s cooler there.”

Virgil glanced at Audrey.

“Maybe,” said Audrey. “You get kind of lost down here. But I think the cellar follows the outline of the house above. Maybe the bathroom was added on later?”

“Maybe,” muttered Virgil, trying to orient himself. If the house
was
right over their heads here, then the bath across the hall might be out from under the fire, somewhere in the vicinity of the driveway. He found a household hammer and a short steel crowbar, and Cooder led the way back across the hall. Sure enough, the door did feel cooler. Virgil shoved it in, surprised to find a set of stairs leading up half a floor to the bathroom.

“Merle probably raised the bathroom so he didn’t have to put in a sewage pump to get the waste to flow to the septic system,” he said.

Audrey shook her head, not understanding.

“Sewage flows downhill,” said Virgil. “Plumbers’ll tell you it’s a pain to install a pump. Someone like Merle probably wouldn’t know how. With any luck, the bathroom isn’t much deeper underground than the regular house basement. Come on.”