I hobbled up the stairs, leaning on the railing to steady myself. The lighter was burning my hand, and the blue flame was fading. My backpack lay on the ground, right where I’d left it to switch the pistol for the speargun. I dug down in it and found the spare flashlight.
I swept the beam across the cavernous room. It looked like a tornado had hit it. Prit was curled up right where I’d left him, unscathed. Suddenly, my heart sank. The chair I’d tied my cat to was upside down. Lucullus had disappeared.
I shook Prit’s trembling body. The Ukrainian shrugged me off, muttering gibberish in Russian. He couldn’t take the stress any longer. I draped one of his arms around my shoulders and helped him stand up. My mind was racing. I couldn’t leave without Lucullus, of course, but finding the cat with Prit in tow would be really difficult. I had to find a safe place to leave him while I looked for my cat. Then I’d come back for him, and we’d get the hell out of that hospital.
I spotted a huge, heavy, carved wooden door at one end of the room. Its intricate engravings and huge brass handles looked like something from a Rococo mansion, not a supermodern hospital that was all angles and straight lines.
Intrigued, I nudged the door carefully with my foot. It was locked, but a heavy old key dangled from the keyhole. After a couple of noisy turns, the lock opened and the door swung open wide.
Soft light filtered through tall, narrow windows, covering the floor with green, blue, and red dots. At one end was a small nave with a double row of wooden benches on each side and an altar on a raised platform. Above that was a large wooden cross, hanging on thick steel cables. We were in the hospital chapel. It was too ironic.
I let Prit collapse on to one of the pews. I was exhausted, so I rested for a second, then prowled around the chapel, peering into every dark corner, making sure we didn’t have any company. I braced myself and then kicked open a confessional. The disgusting image of an undead priest leaping out terrified me. But I breathed a sigh of relief. There was nothing in it or the adjoining sacristy.
Out of a little closet built into the wall, I grabbed a couple of stoles worn to celebrate mass. I draped them over Prit, who’d fallen into a deep, restless sleep. Bundled up in those warm robes, the Ukrainian made a strange picture. I shook him by the shoulders. I needed twenty seconds of his attention. He stretched, a lost, glazed look in his eyes. A tremor shook his left hand uncontrollably.
“Prit, I need you to listen for a minute. I have to leave you alone for a while. Lucullus has disappeared, and I have to find him. Understand?”
The Ukrainian nodded without saying a word. He was almost catatonic. I tucked the stoles around him and wiped his forehead. I unclipped the canteen, which had gotten dented up in my fall, gave him a sip, and set it beside him.
I had to sit there for a good twenty minutes till my legs stopped shaking. The twenty minutes turned into almost an hour. Every time I thought about going back out the door, an uncontrollable panic screwed my feet to the floor with the force of a hydraulic drill. I knew I had to control that fear. I was a goner if I let panic get the best of me. And Prit along with me.
For a moment, I weighed the idea of abandoning Lucullus to his fate, but I discarded the idea faster than it took to write that. Lucullus was not just my pet and constant companion. That cat was the last link to my former life. If I lost him, I’d lose part of my soul. The memory of that life would scatter like sand in the wind. I had to find Lucullus. The poor guy must be scared shitless, hiding under a pile of trash.
As I stood up, my knee cracked ominously. That wasn’t a good sign. I was beaten up worse than I thought. I’d take the speargun, the remaining two spears, and the pistol with the seven rounds we had left. I took the flashlight, too. Enough light was filtering into the chapel so that Prit could see without it.
Prit sank back into a restless sleep as I ventured back out of the large room in the dark. I closed the chapel door behind me. Those massive, heavy oak doors were probably the most solid ones in the entire hospital. It was the safest place to leave my friend. I studied the huge key in the lock. Then I gave the key a couple of turns and hung it around my neck. I’d be back in a few minutes, I thought.
I didn’t have the faintest idea where to start looking for Lucullus. He must have been scared to death by the fight. He probably took shelter in some quiet corner. At home, during a storm, he’d burrow into the back of the linen closet until the worst had passed. I realized that finding my cat in that vast hospital with thousands of dark corners could be a desperate mission, made worse because my frightened cat might not want to be found.
I had to try. I know it sounds crazy. He’s just a cat, but I felt a moral obligation to find him. After all the time we’d spent together, losing him would break my heart. Anyone with a pet understands what I’m saying. Whispering his name, I crossed the room till I came to another very steep stairway, heading deeper into the darkness.
I shone the flashlight on the ground. A huge puddle of water spilled down the stairs. The steady dripping echoed everywhere in the dark.
A couple of drops fell on my head, startling me. I looked up at the ceiling. Seven or eight stories above my head was a huge skylight that had originally flooded those stairs with light. I was standing on a staircase that connected all the floors. Liters of rainwater filtered through that shattered skylight and trickled down the stairs, soaking everything.
Again I felt a gust of wind whipping across my face. My heart sank when I realized the wind was blowing from the broken skylight. That was not a way out. I was starting to think I’d never find a way out.
A soft whine, faint but unmistakable, pulled me out of those bitter thoughts. My ears perked up. There it was again. It sounded like a crying child—or a meowing cat. It was coming from the bottom of the stairs, which were shrouded in shadows.
I cursed under my breath. The hospital basement was the last place I wanted to go. For some reason that escaped me, Lucullus had hidden there. I had no choice. I screwed my courage and started down the stairs.
ENTRY 83
April 22, 3:30 p.m.
The pool of water at the foot of the stairs spread out like a lake. I stood on one of the last steps on “dry land” and scanned the area with the flashlight. Its beam lit up the water that stretched out to the end of the dark hallway. Rainwater had poured in through the broken skylight and accumulated down there. Iridescent oil spots and some empty boxes floated in the water like swimmers on a pond.
It was highly unlikely Lucullus had gone down there. Aside from the deep-seated hatred all cats have for water, there was no way my Lucullus would have deigned to stick his aristocratic paws into this dark, murky pond.
I started to head back up the stairs. Then I heard that whine again, and I froze. The sound had been faint at the top of the stairs; now it was crystal clear. It was a cat’s meow. MY cat’s meow. My Lucullus. I was 100 percent sure. After two years listening to that furry playboy yowl at the neighborhood cats night after night, I knew his voice.
The meow quivered with fear. It sounded like it was coming from directly across that dark expanse of water. It was growing weaker, as if he were going in the opposite direction. I had no time to consider how Lucullus got across that little lake. I descended the remaining steps to ground level.
The water was up to my waist. Part of my brain told me that a cat wouldn’t go through that lake on his own. Something or someone was dragging Lucullus along. Normally fear would’ve made me head back the way I came. But another part of my brain turned a deaf ear.