Other hard, bony, hairy sensations followed as the jointed legs closed around his head and neck in a constricting embrace, the beaked mouth coming down in a swift stabbing bite that gouged a four-inch piece from his scalp clean through to the bone.
Too late for screams or even terrified croaks. Richards was devoured alive. Not having eaten for some time the blue-speckled spider, grown to a span of some three feet across, finished off the head and sucked out the brains before wrapping the remainder of its unfinished meal in silk for a later repast.
The carpeted staircase felt mushy underfoot. Wayne Daventry shivered, imagining he was treading on Jello. It made him think of a lab culture with a myriad of bacteria multiplying, thriving, expanding.
He shook his head, dismissing the unpleasant fancy.
The air was close and stifling, his shirt sticking to his back--what he wouldn't give for a long, cold, bracing shower! Funny how he hadn't given a thought to sex in over a week. Before then it had hardly ever (be honest, never) been out of his mind. Fear was a great passion-killer. Self-preservation left the sexual drive way, way behind, killed it stone dead.
He came onto the landing of the fourth floor, and as he squelched past the four elevators stuck his hand out and thumbed the sensor-touch buttons in their corroded metal plates, a childish habit he hadn't outgrown.
Wayne stopped in midstride as the last set of doors slid open. Dan was right, there was still power somewhere in the building. He shone his flashlight inside the elevator and recoiled. Gleaming whitely in the cone of light was a pile of bones, the skeletons of three, maybe four, people. Hard to tell exactly. Shreds of clothing were wrapped around some of the bones, a shirt collar, a cuff. Wayne sucked in a breath and bent forward as a glint of gold caught his eye. A jewel sparkled like a lighthouse beam. He took a step nearer, seeing rings, bracelets, necklaces, and watches among the clutter. And on the small finger of one of the skeletons was a diamond ring that flared like a miniature sun, throwing off dazzling highlights.
Wayne placed one foot on the floor of the car, testing it gingerly. A cable above him creaked and there was a dry sticklike rattle, but the car itself was rock steady. Down on one knee, the flashlight held in his left hand, he picked out the jewelry without touching the bones. As the diamond ring came off so did the finger, falling with a bony clatter.
That sound seemed to echo in the shaft above his head and for one dreadful heart-pounding moment he thought the cable was about to snap and plunge him seventy feet into the basement. Indeed the car swayed fractionally, but held firm, and Wayne hurried on with his plundering, his parted lips dry and hot.
Behind him he heard a soft heavy plop and a harsh rasping as of scales being rubbed together, and swinging around, the flashlight slippery in his hand, he stared with bulging eyes at what lay coiled on the floor of the car. The rattlesnake was a monster. Its dark green and gray body was as thick as a man's waist, the massive spade-shaped head raised up and swaying to and fro, the eyes glinting like icy diamond chips. Its bony tail blurred and in the confined space the rattle was ear-splitting.
Clutching a fistful of rings, bracelets, and watches Wayne staggered back and crashed against the rear wall, scattering the bones.
Now he understood. The skeletons--of course. The giant reptile lived in the warm dark recesses of the elevator shaft and whenever it was disturbed slithered down from its lair onto the roof of the car and dropped through the open trapdoor . . . and he had disturbed it for gold. For worthless metal. For glittering trinkets that wouldn't buy a mouthful of food, a sip of water, or a single gulp of pure air.
The elongated eyes in the swaying head watched him unblinkingly.
The brain computed the distance across the floor of the car to the millimeter. The tongue flicked out, tasting the air for his body smell. Then the neck drew back upon itself like a tightly coiled spring and the deafening rattling sound suddenly ceased.
Mumbling a silent prayer, Wayne Daventry saw nothing, it was so fast. The first strike was good, a deep clean double bite with both fangs in the side of his neck. It shook its prey twice in a violent threshing movement and then coiled back upon itself. The tongue flicked out as it contemplated its dead victim and after a moment reared and slid upward through the trapdoor, the silent rattle vanishing into darkness.
For two days nonstop and well into the third it rained torrentially. They slung sheets on the balconies and collected the rainwater in every kind of receptable that didn't leak. Pete Kosinski tested it as best he could and said that it was drinkable, though he couldn't account for any impurity it might contain, nor whether in the long term it might prove harmful.
The fifth floor came to resemble a refugee camp.
By careful rationing Chase reckoned that the food would last them nearly two weeks--thirteen days to be exact. They had enough water for drinking even if they had to go without washing. All things considered they couldn't complain. They hadn't seen the gunship again, probably because of the bad weather, and despite his private fears he came to realize that making contact with it was their only hope.
To the north of the city was hostile territory, overrun by tribes and wandering crazies who wouldn't hestitate to kill either for gain or just for the sheer hell of it. South of Vegas was jungle, which said it all. But the Californian border was less than thirty miles away--was that a possible sanctuary? They had heard rumors about concentration camps, hundreds of square miles surrounded by death-ray fences where people were herded in by the thousands. Uneasily, Chase connected such stories with the black gunship. Supposing there was a major war going on somewhere--maybe right here--that they knew nothing about?
He could imagine the scenario well enough: the government in "Washington" (wherever that was now) overthrown by a military coup, the armed forces split two, three, six different ways, the scramble for those geographic areas least affected by the deteriorating climate, the usual power play by the pros and antis, the hawks and doves, clubbing one another into the ground and grabbing what they could.
Yes, he could see it all too clearly. Here and now, though, there were more personal and far more immediate concerns--Jo's condition for one.
Ruth was blunt about it. "She's got five days. Then she'll either lose that leg or her life."
"Does she know it's gangrene?"
"1 haven't told her, but Jo isn't stupid." Ruth sat on the end of the bed and looked at Chase lying propped up on pillows. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks marked by deep vertical lines above his tangled beard. Despite the use of protective cream his forehead and the bridge of his nose were badly blistered. "If she doesn't know now she'll know in a day or two when the wound starts to suppurate. And the smell will leave no one in any doubt."
"Five days," Chase said, staring at the wall opposite. "What can we do in five days? Where can we go?" He thumped the bed impotently.
"Take it easy, love." Ruth took his fist in both hands and pried open the stiff fingers. "You've done everything you could. The responsibility isn't yours alone--not anymore. It's ours, everyone's."
Chase was hardly listening. He could see Wayne Daventry, poor kid, his head bloated to three times its normal size. Eyes like buttons in a padded cushion of blue-black leather. It was obvious what had killed him from the bite marks. But the width of that bite! That thing must be of a monstrous size, and there might be more than one--perhaps the building was infested with them.
And what about that computer technician, Richards--where had he disappeared to? He'd been with them on the third floor, and then . . . gone.