Maybe he was the last one left. Control was gone, the whole complex was infested, but the Virgin and the Fool might yet be alive.
“I can stop all this,” he whispered. The chance was minimal but it was still there. And he had nothing left to do.
To his right, a ladder led through a hole in the floor. It would take him down into the deep corridors, into places he had been watching on the screens as they crawled with monsters and impossibilities. But he had no alternative. He had to find the Fool and kill him, before he himself was killed.
He lifted the pendant from within his shirt and kissed it. Perhaps they would view this as their greatest entertainment, and he would be lauded. But he shook his head as such foolishness. Nothing about him mattered. Whatever the outcome, things had changed beyond redemption. Even if he did manage to reverse the situation, there would be a whole new set of rules and demands after this.
He began his descent, sliding down four long, staggered ladders before landing in a tunnel. To his left it disappeared into the gloom, and somewhere down there he saw shadows flexing and heard things feeding. So he took off his shoes and turned right, padding softly to a corner and sweeping quickly around, thinking what he would do when he saw—
The Virgin. He ran right into her, and she set a fire in his stomach. He looked down at her hands. They were wrapped around the hilt of Judah’s blade.
“I…” she said. “I’m sorry…
Behind her, the Fool stood aghast. They were both covered in blood, their own and others, and the boy was badly wounded. Sitterson couldn’t help feeling some measure of respect for their bravery
But this had never been about bravery.
“Please… kill him…” he said to the girl, nodding at Marty as he felt his knees giving way. “Please!” The pain possessed him, stealing his sight and smell and leaving him only with hearing as the darkness came for him. He fell, the blade still protruding from his stomach.
Could have been worse, he thought. The kids’ panicked breathing faded away, even though he was sure they still stood over him.
Yeah… I could have died a whole lot worse.
TWELVE
He grabbed the pendant around his neck before he died.
Dana bent to the dead man and turned his hand so she could see it. A weird, five-pronged thing, it stirred something in her that she couldn’t quite understand.
“Come on!” Marty said.
Dana looked down at the knife still in the guy’s stomach. She’d done that. However accidental, it was her hands on the knife when it had gone in. She closed her eyes but felt no shame.
I should, she thought. I should feel—
“Hey! We have to find a way out before everything else finds a way in.” Marty touched her arm but she couldn’t take her eyes from the dead man’s face. He looked almost relieved.
Dead puppeteer, she thought.
“Dana!”
She looked up at him and nodded, and they started again along the tunnel. They passed a ladder that led up, but there were sounds coming from there that they had no wish to put a name to. Further along the tunnel lay the remains of a dead woman. Parts of her had been eaten and then apparently regurgitated, and in the six globs of chewed material small shapes squirmed, busy gathering bloody flesh to their infantile mouths.
The route curved down and to the left, sometimes with rough steps carved into the floor. Other times they had to hold each other to prevent themselves from slipping on the slick, smooth rock. They were far from the metal-lined corridors now, but there was still a string of bare bulbs dangling from the rough stone ceiling.
We’re going deeper, that’s all, Dana thought, and she felt the weight of the world around her. There was no sense that they were escaping the complex they had entered, only that it was changing. They no longer heard the sounds of monsters running and people dying, but in some ways what replaced that was worse.
The air around them was a held breath.
The ground shook again, a single violent shrug. Dana slipped and fell on her side, bringing Marty down with her. He landed on his back and cried out, and she noticed just how much he was still bleeding. He looked pale.
“None of us deserved this,” she said, and Marty only shrugged.
“Only the good die young.”
“Are you good Marty?”
“Yeah,” he said, frowning slightly, then nodding firmer. “Yeah, I think so. And so are you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know you well enough.” His face softened, and she could almost have loved him then. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s see what we can find.”
They went deeper, and at the end of the rocky tunnel was a heavy wooden door.
We don’t want to go through there, Dana thought, but Marty started trying to turn the handle. It moved a little both ways, but he groaned as his wounds pained him.
“Here,” he said, handing her the gun. She took it. It was warm from his grip. She hated guns and had never held one before, but she remembered the mutant he’d shot, and knew that they’d be dead without it.
“Let me,” she said, but Marty grunted with effort.
“Nah. Got it.” The handle slipped and something in the door rumbled and clicked, and Marty tugged it open.
A breath of air washed out over them, warm and damp and stinking of something she could not identify. Something living, she thought, but that wasn’t quite right. It had the scent of potential; of something not quite living, whether that meant newly dead or yet to be born. She shook her head. Weird thoughts.
And Marty took her hand and led her inside.
They passed through another tunnel and descended a dozen deep steps, emerging into a stone chamber thirty feet across and seemingly without a ceiling. Darkness hung heavy above them, and the chamber was lit by five large flaming torches fixed equidistant around the walls.
Dana gasped.
“This is somewhere we should never see,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Marty said. “I feel the same. But check the freaky stonework.” Below each torch was a large stone slab, free-standing, maybe twelve feet square and inlaid with intricate carvings. The etchings of four slabs glittered with reflected light, and Dana identified at least part of the scent that troubled her: blood. They paused in the center of the chamber and she turned a full circle, and as she saw each carved stone a sickening dread settled deeper over her.
“Oh, and…” Marty said, nodding down. “Look familiar?”
It did. Inlaid into the floor in different colored stone was a representation of the five-armed pendant. The guy she’d stabbed had made an effort to grab that before he died, and she’d seen the tension on his face as he willed himself to remain alive long enough to hold it in his hand. It had eased him into death, that pendant, and now they were standing at the place on the floor where the five arms merged.
Each arm pointed at one carved slab, and each slab was lit by a burning torch. But Dana knew that this chamber was more than just a place for display
It was much more important than that.
“Oh, suddenly I feel a bit seasick,” Marty said, glancing over his shoulder. “Look, back where we came in.”
At the bottom of the stone staircase they’d crossed a small bridge that spanned a space maybe four feet across, and that space circled the rest of the chamber. Even behind the upright slabs there seemed to be no connection between the floor and the walls.