Shadow Dragon (31 page)

CHAPTER 72

Kyle lifted Carrie in his arms and carried her into the emergency room. She seemed so light, almost frail.

As soon as the nurse at the reception desk saw him, she called for help. The two technicians who had just wheeled Lewis in came rushing back out with a second gurney.

“Was she shot too?” one of the techs asked.

“I … I don’t think so,” Kyle said, but he wasn’t sure. There was so much blood it was impossible to tell. It had all happened so fast that he hadn’t even thought about that. Before he could look, the techs were over her, checking her vitals and rolling her off through the automatic doors.

Numb, Kyle stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do.

He reached for his cell phone but stopped. His hands and clothing were covered with blood.

“There’s a restroom over there,” the receptionist offered. “When you’re done, I’ll need to get some information from you.”

“Yeah, okay,” Kyle said and nodded.

The restroom was unisex, with enough room for a person in a wheelchair to maneuver within. Kyle engaged the lock on the door. Leaning over the sink, he looked in the mirror. He was shocked by his own reflection. He had a two-day beard growth, and his eyes appeared sunken, with dark circles beneath them.

Without waiting to clean up, he pulled out his phone and called the sheriff’s department. The sheriff said that he would get Clayton and a forensics team over to the motel immediately and that he was on his way to the hospital.

Kyle called Seattle next. It was after six, but as expected, SAC Geddes was still in the office.

“Andrews, what are you doing calling me?” she asked. “You guys come up with something?”

“No, I’m … it’s … Lewis has been shot.”

“What? Jesus Christ, what the hell happened? Is he all right?”

“I don’t know. We just got to the hospital,” Kyle said.

“What the hell happened?” she asked again.

Kyle began to explain what had happened when he had gone to Carrie’s room.

“Wait a minute,” she interrupted. “You went to the room alone?”

“Yes,” Kyle said. “Lewis was in the car. Someone inside was attacking Carrie. He hit me and took off. I tried to warn Lewis, but—”

“Damn it! I knew it was a bad idea. I should have never let Lewis talk me into it.” It was as if she was talking to herself. She didn’t even seem to care that Kyle was listening—or maybe she wanted him to hear it.

“All right,” she sighed heavily. “Have the sheriff set up guards inside the ER or outside their rooms if they’re checked into one. They’re not to let anybody in unless it’s a doctor, and then only with an officer present. Got it?”

“Yeah, got it,” Kyle replied.

“All right. I’ll get a pair of agents there just as soon as I can, but it probably won’t be before morning.”

“The sheriff and I can handle it until then,” Kyle assured her.

“You don’t do anything. You’ve already fucked up enough for one day. Where’s Agent Marasco?”

Kyle flinched at the comment. “I don’t know,” he said. “He’s been gone all afternoon.”

“All right. I’ll call him. Don’t do anything until he gets there. And Andrews,” she added, “the boys in Denver found Charlie Wiesman dead on his sofa. Said it was made to look like a heroin overdose, but his computer’s hard drive had been wiped. Someone’s serious about covering this up, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to do so. So stay put and watch your ass. You understand?”

“Yeah, I got it.” Kyle replied.

“All right. I’ll get Joan to call Lewis’s wife and let her know—”

“No,” Kyle interrupted. Joan Thompson was the other victim specialist in Seattle. “I’ll call her.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I should do it.”

“All right,” she said. “And call me the minute you know anything more about Lewis.”

“I will,” Kyle said and then hung up. It was obvious that Geddes didn’t think he could handle the situation. He knew that as soon as the other agents arrived, he would be relieved of his duties … and probably his job.

Kyle sighed. Maybe she was right.

He washed his hands in the sink. He scrubbed and scrubbed with water so hot it scalded. Even then it wouldn’t all come off.

When he stepped out of the restroom, an elderly woman from housekeeping was cleaning up the blood on the waiting room floor. The strong smell of ammonia filled the room. Outside, a man was mopping the drive.

Kyle gave the receptionist the information she needed for Lewis and as much as he could on Carrie. He asked if there was any word on Lewis’s condition.

“No, sir, not yet. He’s been taken into surgery. It may be a while. There’s a waiting room down the hall to your right that’s a little more comfortable if you’d like to wait there.”

Kyle nodded. “What about Ms. Daniels?”

“There didn’t seem to be any serious injuries, but the doctor wants to keep her overnight for observation. I’ll let you know as soon as she’s checked into a room.”

“She needs to be in a private room,” Kyle said. “Let me know before she’s transferred. We’ll be posting officers outside her room for security.”

The receptionist’s eyes widened. “Oh. Yes, sir.”

“Thanks,” Kyle said.

He went outside. The car was still running, steam billowing from the exhaust before disappearing into the cold night air. He pulled into a spot facing away from the hospital and sat there for a moment, dreading what he had to do next. The wind moaned as it swirled through the hole in the windshield. The snow fell in fat, wet flakes that stuck to the glass, gradually obscuring the view. Blurry, yellow-white halos ringing the parking lot lights slowly disappeared behind the thickening mantle.

Shivers wracked his body. He turned up the heater but left the defroster off, preferring the privacy the snow offered.

He took a deep breath, and then pulled out his cell phone to call Rochelle.

CHAPTER 73

When Busey came to, he knew he wasn’t in Kansas anymore. He knew, in fact, that he was in Montana, but it took him a few moments longer to figure out just how he had come to be where he was now, which was completely in the dark. His neck was stiff and sore, and his head was pounding. He reached up and felt his throat, which was badly abraded and sensitive to even the slightest pressure. He remembered his display going crazy just before he was struck from behind, and he seemed to remember the sensation of choking, but everything else was a blank. He
did
remember the briefing about the creature and its lethal tail, and he realized he was lucky to still have his head at all.

His helmet was gone, which made it impossible to see in the dark without the night-vision visor, but he could tell enough to know he was in some sort of cave or cavern. There were no stars overhead and no frigid winds blowing across his face. From somewhere far away, he thought he could hear the slow
plink … plink … plink
of dripping water. He reached back for his pack and flinched from the pain that wracked his entire body. His left leg was pinned beneath him in an awkward position that told him it had suffered a serious break. He tried to roll over, and the shooting pain in his right ankle told him that it was broken as well.

A strange clattering sound like that of sticks and twigs being dislodged accompanied his movements. The ground beneath him was spongy and wet. The entire place was permeated with the smell of limestone, but the overriding odor that burned in his nostrils was the scent of ammonia mixed with the sickening, rotten smell of what he assumed was a dead animal.

Gingerly, he managed to work his pack free from beneath himself, and he dug about blindly within it until he managed to put his hands on several of the flares and the transponders. He almost laughed out loud with relief. Even without his helmet and its built-in locator, there was still a good chance that Ainsworth and the others would be able to pick up the signal from the transponders and rescue him.

He shoved all but one of the flares into a pocket on the leg of his suit and then snapped off the end of the other one. A dazzling, blue-white light sprang to life, hissing and crackling. He tossed it a few feet away to illuminate as much as the area around him as possible. He squinted, momentarily blinded by the sudden light. As his eyes adjusted, he began to take stock of his situation.

As he had expected, he in was in some sort of cavern. He could make out the rough stone surface some fifteen feet away, which rose above his head. He was in the center of the room lying on top of a mound of stones and branches, decaying leaves, and pine needles, all of which was covered with a layer of putrid, black sludge. But then he saw more.

Bones.

What he had thought were sticks were bones in most cases. There were shattered tibia and fibula and femurs, exposed pieces of crushed rib cages, fractured and broken skulls, antlers and horns and claws and teeth and countless other shards and splinters too small to identify. There were black clumps of matted fur and wool and hair, the remains of dogs and goats and deer.

And humans.

He nearly puked at the sight of a severed arm, its bloated, purple flesh covered with writhing maggots. A silver wedding band was still on the ring finger. He tried to push himself away, sending paralyzing currents of pain shooting up his leg and throughout his body.

He rolled over to take the weight off his left leg, and with his arms and his right knee, he began clawing and scrabbling across the pile of bones and feces, desperately struggling to escape the carnage, but everywhere he looked, death and decay awaited him.

Grunting and groaning and verging on panic, he crawled across the mound. In spite of the cold, sweat poured down his face, burning his eyes, but he didn’t dare try to wipe it away. His hands were covered with the putrid muck. At one point, he wondered if he had already died and gone to hell, fated to crawl across this hideous landscape for all eternity.

His hand came down on something hard and cold. He recoiled, but when he looked at it, he was amazed to find an old M16 with a severed strap lying amid the ruins. The large bayonet was still attached. Buoyed by his luck or perhaps divine intervention, he pulled it from the slime and used it to help lever himself across the floor. He checked the cartridge. It was empty. But at least the bayonet might provide him with some measure of defense until the others could reach him.

His left hand came down on something soft and leathery like a rotten melon, and he pulled away in horror, afraid of finding a severed head, its sightless eyes staring back at him. Instead, he found it was an oblong, gourdlike thing slightly larger than a football. It was split open down its length, as if something had exploded from within. A strange, yellowish puss oozed from it, as if a dozen rotten eggs had been cracked and poured inside.

Something moved in front of him. The flare behind him was beginning to die, filling the cavern with flickering shadows and making it difficult to see. He pulled out another flare, snapped the end from it, and tossed it before him.

A hideous, reptilian-looking creature about two feet tall stood before him, mewling and snapping. Its long snout, which was lined with hundreds of tiny, razor-sharp teeth, was covered in blood. It flared its wings open and shook them and hissed in warning before it turned back to bury its teeth in the ripped-open underbelly of what had once been a dog.

Busey snapped.

As he shoved himself forward, he screamed at the monster. “Get away from him. Leave him alone!”

The creature turned to face him, flapped its wings, and snapped angrily. Busey stabbed the thing with the bayonet, driving it through its belly and out its back. It screeched in agony, its tail writhing and twisting about wildly. Busey stabbed it again and again until the thing finally stopped moving. The only sound left to be heard was Busey’s ragged, grunting breathing as he drove the bayonet into the mangled carcass again and again until at last, shaking and sobbing, he collapsed.

A rustling came from above. When he looked up into the darkened recesses of the cavern, Busey could just make out the shape of something large and black against the ceiling.

Then he realized something. There was more than one. There were two. No, there were three of them barely discernable amid the shadows in the flickering light. But during their briefing, they had been told that only one of the creatures had survived the plane crash.

And he knew they had made a terrible mistake. They had assumed there was only one of the creatures. But they were wrong. Somehow, it had managed to reproduce. Now there were as many as two or three generations of the things ravaging the wilderness and slowly spreading outward as their need for food increased during the harsh winter months. It also explained why he hadn’t been killed right away. He must have been attacked by one of the offspring without the titanium blade on its tail.

One of the shadows on the ceiling moved again. Its leathery wings fluttered, as if it were just coming awake. He had to get out of there—fast. He began crawling across the pile, struggling to reach the side of the cavern, where he hoped to find a connecting tunnel or at least a lowlying overhang to hide beneath until help arrived.

Then he remembered the transponders. He looked behind him, where his pack still lay atop the pile of bones and guano some twenty feet away. He looked up at the ceiling. Nothing moved.

He looked at his pack again. It was almost directly beneath the creatures. He had no choice but to go back. Without the transponder signal, the others would never find him, and he knew he wouldn’t survive the night if they didn’t.

He began working his way back, making every effort to be as silent as possible. He would cautiously scrape and slide forward and then pause to look at the ceiling before he repeated the process. Each time he looked up, he was certain he could perceive more movement among the shadows than he had previously. Sweat poured from him. His body shook with exhaustion. The pain in his leg was so overwhelming he nearly puked.

When he put his hands on his pack, he almost cried out in relief. He switched on one of the transponders, and a barely perceptible, high-pitched whistle filled his ears as the unit powered up.

Above him, there was movement again. He wasn’t sure if it had anything to do with the transponder, but he left it where it was in the hope that it might serve as a decoy. As quickly as possible, while still trying to be quiet, he began clawing his way back across the grotesque landscape, inch by agonizing inch.

The flapping of wings above him broke the silence and stirred the air within the cavern. He froze. Slowly, he turned his head just enough to look to the ceiling.

A pair of malevolent, yellow eyes stared back at him.

It spread its wings and then dropped toward him. Busey rolled and brought up the rifle. The beast slammed into him, impaling itself on the bayonet. It screeched furiously, an ear-piercing wail that echoed throughout in the cavern. It snapped at him, razor-sharp teeth mere inches from his face. Claws tore and ripped at his midsection as it sought to disembowel him.

Busey screamed and rammed the bayonet farther into the beast’s belly. The thing clamped down on his arm with its long snout, tearing through the protective suit and into his flesh. He ripped the bayonet sideways with all his strength. Gouts of thick, black blood erupted from the creature, slathering his arms and chest. Its grip on his arm loosened as its entrails spilled out.

With a final, mewling cry, it collapsed on top of him, its last few breaths blowing hot across his face. He gagged from the putrid stench.

He shoved the monster off to the side and began working to pull the bayonet free, but his hands were slick with blood, which prevented him from getting a good enough grip.

There was movement above.

He stopped and looked up.

And had just enough time to raise his arms in a futile act of defense as the shadows fell upon him.