All of this happened in the blink of an eye. Or, rather, I wished I could blink.
Even before the cry ended I saw Lloyd moving the hand with the gun towards the creature. Iris’s scream ceased abruptly and she went limp, crumbling down with her arm stuck under mine. By fainting, Iris saved my life. As I, in complete stupor, ducked towards her, Lloyd shouted and began shooting and a black, cold shape flew over the top of my head, taking Lloyd with it as though he was made of papier-mâché. They crashed into the opposite wall, making another hole and disappearing in the backyard, from where more shots rang out. I heard Dr. Young inhale loudly, say something I didn’t make out and discharge his weapon. The guttural sound that answered him was beyond description.
Doc was falling over my bent body. Two halves of his shotgun clattered against the wood floor on either side of me. He scrambled immediately to his feet and, grabbing Iris under her arms shouted in my ear, “Out! Out now! Her legs!”
I obeyed dumbly, and we pulled Iris through the first hole the creature had made into the moist outside world. As we began to crawl over the wet lawn, I caught doc’s gaze looking into the house behind me and knew that the first “dog,” done with Lloyd, was returning. Doc’s eyes fell on mine then, resigned, and his lips moved silently, forming the words, “Don’t look back.”
They closed and it was the end. I tried to prepare, to invoke some dignity, to reconcile, but all I could think was, “Mama! Mama! Oh no, no, no!”
Suddenly another dark shape, this one unmistakably human, materialized in front of me in the street. The man drew a gun and, holding it with both hands, started shooting into the house over my head. Another wail was unleashed seemingly inches from my ears, and I grabbed my head with both hands, dropping Iris, struggling and, again, unable to scream. The creature jumped over me, and the man was flying over two rows of parked cars. He slammed into the brick wall of a house across the street, fell inside the low fence and was quiet. Without slowing down to celebrate, nor bothering to confirm the man’s demise, the creature, limbs, or tentacles, rising around it like petals of a giant black flower, turned and floated towards me.
But it never made it. Something, a ball, or a sheet of blue and white flame, fell on it from above, driving it to the ground and searing the darkness in half. A surprised guttural sound similar to one I’d heard less than a minute earlier in the house was cut off, as the creature’s body, if one could call it that, exploded.
At that point my tired brain finally decided to shut down for maintenance. With a deep sigh, I collapsed on top of Iris. The last thing I remembered was the heat of her belly against my icy ear.
Chapter Fourteen
Brome woke up with a start and the feeling of cold fingers on his throat. Through the slits between his eyelids he saw a shape above him. He tried to twist and grab the choking hand with his left, sending his right at the same time inside the coat for the gun. Immediately, a flash of pain in his back blinded him and he groaned, realizing that fighting was out of the question. Daddy was going to die without catching the bad guy, a thought came.
“Whoa. Easy, Brome. Take it easy now,” a concerned voice spoke somewhere not too far. Louder, it added, “Hey, where’s that gurney?”
Brome heard movement and opened his eyes wider. Above, in the blur of tears, there was a crown of a brown-leafed tree, and above that purple, dripping sky. A face, wide and with high and sharp cheekbones, hovered between the sky and him.
“Got limb movement. Your back is not broken,” the face said comfortingly and grinned. “What happened to you, anyway? Parachute didn’t open?”
That could have been it, for all Brome knew right then.
“One, Two, Three!” He was lifted onto a gurney. It began to roll soundlessly, probably across a lawn. Raising his head, Brome attempted to get his bearings. A street, crammed with FBI trucks. Men in dark FBI jackets moving about. On porches and sidewalks, several civilians in pastel pajamas sticking out of hastily put on coats and jackets. A house across the street with a gaping hole instead of one corner. Holy shit! a thought, and more of the desperate struggle to move, as memory began to return.
“Easy, man. Easy.” A strong hand pushed him back down, holding the shoulder in place carefully but firmly. “I said the back is not broken, but ribs probably are. You have to lie still.”
Holy shit!
“Hey, how about giving us a little more time next time?” Brighton’s voice, and then Brighton himself, looming over. “What’s his status? Go on, take him to the ambulance and wait for me there.”
“A bump on his head, I’m guessing a cracked rib or several, bruises. He might be bleeding internally. You should get him to the hospital ASAP.”
The gurney rolled on. Soon Brome was deposited in the back of the ambulance truck, which looked more like a lab from the in side. A man in a white robe came up to him with a tube-vacuum-like contraption.
“Can you lie still?” the smart-ass in the lab coat inquired and pushed some buttons. He began to move the PI, as though it was a treasure hunter’s cheap metal detector, in small circles above Brome’s body.
Lulled by its humming, Brome closed his eyes and tried to recall the events. He’d skipped the office and drove directly to the address of the doctor’s residence. He parked about a block away so as not to make too much noise and was going to wait for backup, but then he heard gunfire. He remembered running towards the house. There were people squatting on the front lawn: a white-haired man, a guy in a pilot jacket, likely Whales himself, and a girl. And then… in the hole… he saw something standing just inside the house… something… black and… shifting and inhuman. Holy shit. What in God’s name was that thing? He recalled a feeling of complete and utter panic washing over him. Then he was shooting. Shooting straight at it. The whole clip. It was impossible to miss. It had to be dead, whatever it was, but he could not remember what happened next. Actually, he could. Next there were cold fingers on his throat and pain stabbing him in the back like a hot knife.
He must have blacked out for a moment, because suddenly he was aware of the truck’s movement. He opened his eyes, squinting in the light. Brighton was directly above him.
“Where’s Whales?” Brome asked.
“You saw Whales?”
“The girl and the old man, also.”
“They must have fled after you got knocked out. I had the cops set up a four-block perimeter, but they were probably too late. Do you remember anything else?”
“Don’t remember getting knocked out.”
“Look, what we know is that you were in a fire fight, and you got slammed with something. Probably a car.”
“A car?”
“Seems most likely, looking at you. Either one of Whales’s bunch or just someone random, passing by and losing control because of all the shooting. The neighbors said they heard a car driving away soon after the shooting ended. Anyway, the good news is you’ll be OK. Doc here says you have three broken ribs, but nothing life-threatening. And you got the bad guy.”
“What? I thought you said Whales got away.”
“I’m talking about Freud.”
“You got Freud? Where is he? What does he say?”
“He’s in the other truck. And he doesn’t say much since you put three bullets in his chest. With that gun still in his hand, though, we don’t need a written confession.”
“All right, agents. You can chit chat later,” the lab coat said. “Time to sleep.”