“The not-breathing-deep part is easy,” she said. “This is really gross.”
“Did I ever tell you I worked trash and dead animal pickup? One of the many glamorous jobs I’ve held in Morganville. Not everybody can be a rock star or a mad scientist vampire assistant. Somebody has to clean up the crap. In my case, literally.”
The lights were on in the plant, but they seemed dim and discolored somehow, and they flickered from time to time. The electrical grid wasn’t too stable, Claire guessed, or else the place was running on emergency power. She felt for the small LED flash that she’d clipped to the belt loop of her jeans—still there. It wasn’t super bright, but it would help. Eve had brought some monster aluminum-cased thing that could double for a baseball bat, of course; she’d also blinged it up with Swarovski crystals, but that was just Eve. Always finding a fun use for the glue gun that nature never intended.
There were stairs going up and down. “Second floor,” Shane said, and she nodded. They went up fast but quietly, and as they reached the landing of the second floor, Claire heard something that sounded like a distant gush of water through pipes, and then the lights just … failed. Then they struggled back on, flickering badly.
“Not good,” Shane said. “Come on. This way.”
The hallway was long, straight, and uncomplicated, except that the pipes running overhead had developed leaks … some slow drips, some silvery (or brown) streams of water that had created thick pools on the floor. The smell was stronger here. Right, Claire thought. Avoid brown water at all costs. Not that the apparently clear water would be safer; it was just less disgusting.
“Hang back,” Shane said, and unhooked the nozzle from the pack on his back. He thumbed the ignition switch on the side, and the blue pilot flame wicked on, hissing slightly. “Fire in the hole!”
And he unleashed an incredibly dense stream of flame that rolled over the puddles, steaming them into a boil. When he took his finger off the trigger and the flames died, Claire blinked to bring her eyes back to pre-flamethrower focus, and looked for any sign of the draug.
Nothing. The way seemed clear.
“Go!” she said, and ran forward. Shane matched her. He had the nozzle still at the ready and the pilot light burning, but they didn’t need it after all; apart from splashes, the pools of water didn’t produce any evil beings, grab at their feet, or do anything at all. They raced breathless to the end of the hall, and Claire pointed at a panel of switches marked with red signs on their right. MANUAL VALVE SHUTOFF CONTROL, it read. USE ONLY IN AUTHORIZED EMERGENCY.
“I think this qualifies,” Shane said. The valves were covered with glass panels, but there was a handy little hammer hanging from a chain, and he used it to shatter all of the panes, one after another. “You start from that end. I’ll take this one.”
That was an okay plan until Claire tried to turn the valve—it was big, heavy, and, most important, hadn’t been moved (probably) since they’d stuck the glass over it in the 1950s. She tried, but it just wasn’t happening. Shane was managing his first one, with difficulty, but Shane had about ten times her upper-body strength.
She threaded her shotgun through the spokes on the valve and used it as a lever, careful to keep her hands far away from the trigger mechanism. With a deep, metallic groan that vibrated up through the floor, the valve started to turn. As it spun, it got a little easier, and she tightened it off, took the shotgun out, and moved to the next one.
“Claire,” Shane said.
“Almost got it!” She gritted her teeth and threw her shoulders into it, and the second valve squealed as rust flaked free.
“Claire!”
She looked up this time, and saw that he was facing away from her, down the hallway. The expression on his face … she didn’t want to look.
But she had to.
The draug were approaching in utter silence, gliding through the metal halls like ghosts. Identical men, all gray and indistinguishable and yet so very wrong, rippling and boneless.
There must have been twenty of them coming their way.
“Get behind me,” Shane said.
“I’m not done!” She threw herself into moving the valve again, the last one, and more rust flaked as the metal screamed and turned, inch by grudging inch. Her hands slipped, slick with sweat, and then Shane was shouldering her aside and grabbing the makeshift lever of the shotgun and applying his own strength to it. It turned another half circle, and jammed tight.
“That’s it, we’re boned,” he said, and pulled the shotgun out to hand it to her. She almost dropped it, but got it under control and pointed it at the approaching draug. Tight into her shoulder. She was already badly bruised there, but a few more hematomas were a small price to pay. She looked silently at Shane, and he stepped forward, gripping the nozzle of the flamethrower. He pressed the ignition button, and when the blue flame leaped into life, he grinned fiercely.
“I love this job,” he said, and he probably would have added something else to that, something witty and funny, but before he could, the draug closest to him flung out its hand, which stretched impossibly far and turned into water, clear and formless, and hit the nozzle with a wet, sizzling slap.
It drowned out the ignition flame.
Shane looked down, shocked, and hit the button again. Then again. He got a clicking sound, but no pilot light.
“Fuck,” he whispered, but he didn’t waste time on regrets; he just holstered the nozzle and grabbed the shotgun from the rig on his back. “Claire, stairs. Now.”
She was already on it. Over her shoulder was the dim light of an exit sign, with the reassuring figure of a little stick man walking down steps. She backed up toward it and it looked clear … but the hallway had looked clear when they’d come that way, too. The draug were more than nasty—they were clever. Really clever.
She kicked the door open, and saw nothing. Again. No choice, really; the draug were steadily advancing toward them now, and Shane was saving his shotgun blasts to make them count. Between the two of them they could take out maybe half of the draug that were facing them. Retreat was the only option.
“Come on!” she shouted, and plunged down the first six steps. At the halfway point, where the stairs turned, she looked back. Shane had backed through the door, and now he unloaded one ear-shattering blast from his shotgun, jumped in, and slammed the door. Then he hit the quick-release button on the flamethrower. Its heavy weight clanged to the metal floor, and he grabbed the loose nozzle and jammed it through the door handle to hold it shut. It wouldn’t stop the draug for long, if it stopped them at all, but he’d done what he could.
He was coming down toward her when she heard the sound … like water through pipes, but different this time. Closer. Echoing.
And she saw the wave flood down the steps from the next floor up, thick and murky.
It hit Shane in the back and knocked him off his feet. Then, instead of continuing to fall down the steps as gravity demanded, it just … stopped, formed a thick, trembling bubble, and consumed him.
He floated in the liquid, as if it had more density than real water. He was thrashing, but he couldn’t get leverage.
“No!” Claire screamed, and lifted her shotgun, but there was nothing she could do; firing at it was firing at him, and she couldn’t, couldn’t.
More fluid rushed down the steps toward her, and she saw his face through the distorted lens of the liquid drowning him, saw the fear and the rage and the horror, and she saw him say something. Maybe it was her name.
Maybe it was just run.
She ran.
The liquid snaked after her, more like tentacles than a wave now, grabbing and reaching for her as she flung herself forward and around the corner of the stairwell. Shane wasn’t in the way now, and she fired wildly up at the thing. The noise slammed her like a physical blow, and the hammer of the shotgun hit her shoulder with brutal force. She hardly felt it, because the real pain was inside, where she was screaming Shane’s name.