"Where are the others?" he said, his eyes ranging through their ranks. "What happened to Gheorghe? And Ion? And Michael and Nicolae?"
Bill lifted his head and counted. Only eight of the dozen villagers who'd gone out with him had made it back. He went to the door and looked out. Four torches burned smokily on the stones of the gorge. The men who had carried them were nowhere in sight. Behind him, the survivors began to weep and he felt his own throat tighten. Four brave men had sacrificed themselves so a stranger could dig up some chunks of old metal.
Bill looked down at the fragments in his hand, then again at the four sputtering torches.
These had damn well better be worth it.
Outside, something huge and black dragged its enormous weight over the rubble of the gorge.
Bill was ready to go. The two metal shards were settled deep in his pocket, Nick was strapped into the passenger seat, and the villagers had nailed a board across the land-rover's broken rear window. Bill hoped it blocked the bugs half as well as it blocked his rear view.
"I don't want to go."
Bill glanced at Nick and was shocked to see tears running down his cheeks.
"Nick…?"
"I like it here. I feel…better here. Please let me stay."
"Nick, I can't leave you here. I've got to go back and we may need you back home. But once this is all over, I'll bring you back."
He sobbed. "Do you promise, Father Bill?"
Bill felt a sob building in his own throat. He gripped Nick's hand.
"Yeah, Nicky. I promise."
He felt miserable but hid it as he waved to Alexandra and the others.
"Tell them I'll be back," he told the old man in German. "After this is all over, after the holes are closed and the monsters are gone, I'll be back. And I'll tell the world of the bravery of your people."
Alexandra waved but did not smile. There were tears in his eyes. Bill shared his grief, not only for the dead but for Alexandra's little community. A village atrophying and dying as was his could not afford to lose four of its most vital men.
"I'll be back," he said again. "I won't forget you."
And he meant it. If he survived this, if he was alive to do so, he'd be back.
He threw the vehicle into first, and started out the gate onto the causeway. The bugs swarmed around him. He was halfway across when the headlights picked up the first tentacle. It lay stretched lengthwise along the planks and lifted its tapered tip at Bill's approach, as if watching him, or catching his scent.
Bill stopped and squinted into the darkness as other tentacles pushed forward to join the first. Soon the causeway was acrawl with them. He found the high-beam button on the floor to the left of the clutch and kicked it.
Bill gasped and instinctively pressed himself back in his seat when he saw what waited at the far end of the causeway. The light from his high-beams reflected off a huge, smooth, featureless, glistening black mass, thirty feet high and at least a hundred feet across. He looked for eyes or a mouth but could find none. Just slimy-looking blackness. A huge slug-like creature with tentacles.
And those tentacles were reaching for him, stretching closer.
Bill looked for a way out, a way to get around it, but its massive bulk blocked the end of the causeway. Even if he could run the land-rover over the tentacles, he'd end up against the immovable wall of the thing's flank.
The tip of one of the tentacles suddenly appeared at the end of the hood. It coiled around the hood ornament and pulled. Bill shifted into reverse and backed up a dozen feet. The tentacles inched after him.
I'm trapped, dammit! Trapped until morning!
He pounded the steering wheel in impotent rage and undiluted frustration. He had the shards that he'd come for and he couldn't get them back to Glaeken, couldn't even set off for his return trip to Ploiesti until dawn.
More time wasted. And another night without seeing Carol. He wanted to be with her. Every moment was precious. How many did they have left?
Using the rearview mirror, he carefully backed the vehicle through the gates of the keep, then sat behind the wheel and swallowed the pressure that built in his chest as he stared out at the night. He felt like crying.
"We're back?" Nick said, smiling. "Oh, I'm so glad we're back."
WNEW-FM
FREDDY: Jo's catching a few much-needed Zs, but I'm still here with you, and I'm afraid it's time to get back inside. It's 4:48. Ten minutes to sundown. Get your butts to safety right now.
MANHATTAN
Carol watched the light fade from the sky over the darkened city and thought of how lucky they were to have generators for the building. She thought of Bill. He'd been an integral part of each thought since he'd left yesterday morning, but especially now, with dark coming.
"Where is he?" she said to Glaeken.
He was passing behind her, carrying an empty tray from Magda's room. He paused beside her.
"Still in Rumania, I should think."
She glanced at her watch. Almost five here. That meant it was almost midnight over there. Almost Wednesday.
"But he should have been back by now."
"Could have been back, perhaps, but as for should…" He shook his head. "I don't think so." He reached out and laid a scarred hand gently on her shoulder. "Don't worry yet. Not until tomorrow. If he's not back by this time tomorrow, then worry. You'll have company then—I'll be worrying with you."
He left her and headed toward the kitchen.
Carol continued to stare at the darkening city, wondering about Hank now. The thought of him was a sharp blade sliding between her ribs. He'd deserted her. How could he do that? And yet, strangely, she felt no malice toward him. But where had he disappeared to?
THE NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE
By nightfall Hank was utterly exhausted, but he would allow himself no sleep.
How could he? With darkness the drain pipe had come alive. First the sibilant stirrings, echoing softly around him, ballooning to a cacophony of hard-pointed mandibles clicking a hungry counterpoint to countless chitonous feet scraping against the concrete; then the sinuous shapes, faint and vague in the light of the rising moon slanting through the grate, undulating toward him from left and right, sloshing through the water below, crawling along the ceiling of the pipe directly above him, the thinnest of them as thick as his upper arm, the largest as big around as his thigh, ignoring him as they slid by, weaving over, under, and around each other with a hideous languid grace that seemed to defy gravity, blackening the pale gray of the concrete with Gordian masses of twisting bodies, blotting out the moon as they nosed against the closed grate.
He heard a metallic scrape, a screech, then a clank as the grate fell back onto the pavement above. A sudden change came over the millipedes. Their languor evaporated, replaced by a hungry urgency as they thrashed and clawed at each other in a mad frenzy to join the night-hunt on the surface.
Moments later, the last of them had squeezed through. Once again there was moonlight and Hank was alone.
No…not alone. Something was coming. Something big. He knew without looking what it was. And a few minutes later he saw her huge pincered head rise and hover above him, swaying.
Not again! Oh, no, Lord, not again!
He'd worked since dawn on regaining control of his limbs, and for most of the day it had seemed a hopeless task. No matter how he concentrated, how he strained, his body simply would not respond. But he'd kept at it, and as the light had started to fail, he'd begun to achieve some results. He'd noticed muscle twitches in his arms and legs, in his abdominal muscles. Either the toxin was wearing off or he was overcoming it. It didn't matter which. He was regaining control—that was what mattered.