Chapter 18
The elevator that had seemed so fast earlier now felt like riding a lethargic turtle. “Come on. Come on. Come on.” With my wife possibly in danger, the elevator could have been going fifty and I’d still be ticked. The unmarked super-basement floors zipped by and the digital counter began showing numbers again. I readied Abomination and pulled the charging handle back a bit to confirm that I had a round chambered.
Management spoke over the intercom. “Mr. Pitt. Something peculiar is happening. My secondary lines into the building are failing. They are being severed. It is as if—”
The lights went out.
“Management?” Nothing.
The elevator stopped moving. “Shit.” The background hum of machinery died. The elevator creaked and whined as it settled. It was pitch black in the car. Turning on the eyeball-melting flashlight mounted on Abomination in this tiny space would’ve blinded me, which was why I kept a little crook-neck LED flashlight jammed through some of the MOLLE straps on my armor. I flicked it on. There was nothing to see, but the light helped me stay calm.
It was stupid, but I tried the buttons anyway and got nothing. I was trapped in a stupid elevator while my wife was at the top, probably in danger. I kicked a furious dent into the wall and shouted something incoherent.
Other than the creaking of the elevator and my breathing, the car was quiet. My flashlight gave me a little bit of light. I realized that the temperature was dropping. Not again.
“Have you found her?”
The sound made me jump. The Asian kid that I’d originally taken for a rival Hunter had appeared out of nowhere and was standing in the opposite corner of the elevator car. “Don’t do that!”
He just looked at me funny. “For some reason, you’re the only one I can talk to easily.”
“Just another perk of being me,” I muttered.
“Everybody else, I have to shout and then bad things happen.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure. He’s getting stronger. He’s touching us to the other place, where the demons dream…It’s not a very good place at all. He was born here, you know…” That sounded just lovely. He changed the subject. “You promised to help. Have you found her yet?”
With the kid, science experiment, entity, whatever the hell he was right there, it kept getting colder. As if fueling his presence required sucking all of the energy out of the space. Within seconds the temperature was similar to being shoved into a walk-in freezer. I began to shiver uncontrollably. “I need to know who she is.”
“The names are gone. They took them from me. All I can see is her face.” He was desperate, but growing angry. “They took them, they erased what they could, and smashed everything else. My head…It’s filled with splinters.”
The more agitated he got, the more the temperature seemed to drop. My face was going numb. “I want to help you, but I need more information. I need something to work with.”
“You’re out of time!” he shouted. Face red, veins standing out in his neck, he lashed out with one fist, only to have it pass cleanly through the elevator wall as if it wasn’t even there. He jerked his hand back in surprise. Seemingly stunned, he stared at his hand in disbelief. “How—What is this place?”
“Las Vegas, Nevada. Planet Earth.”
“Are you real?” he asked me. “Are you alive?”
My teeth were chattering. “I am.” You, I’m not so sure about.
He shook his head as if to clear it. “No more tricks. You’re probably with them. You bastards clouded my mind with your drugs and machines. I’m sick of walking around in a fog. You stole my life. You tricked me, and I’m not putting up with it anymore.”
“I’m not with them.” I wasn’t even sure who them was, probably the scientists that had started this mess. “Calm down. I want to help.”
“That’s what they said last time. I took their tests. I did everything they asked me to, and all I got was tortured for it, and they just sit there in their lab coats writing notes on a clipboard while I begged for mercy. You listen and you listen good, buddy. You’re going to give her back to me, and we’re getting out of here. You do it, or I’ll stop holding him back. I swear. Find her or you’ll all pay.”
Supernatural entity or not, I didn’t put up with anybody’s drama. “Listen to me. I don’t know the people that hurt you. I want to help. Give me something to work with. I need a name, a place, something. And I can’t do jack until we beat the Nachtmar and get out of here. You need to help me so that I can help you. That was your body buried in that containment unit, wasn’t it?”
“Body? I’m right here. I don’t get what you’re saying.”
This was infuriating. I was arguing with a delusional dead guy, while Julie was in danger. “You said they stuck you with hundreds of needles and filled you with drugs to keep the nightmare asleep. I found the room with all the needles. You’ve been—” I caught myself before I said dead. That probably wouldn’t go over well. “—asleep for a long time. This woman I’m supposed to find, I don’t even know if she’s still around.”
“Why wouldn’t she be? How long have I been sleeping?”
“You’ve been buried for over sixty years.” The kid just stared at me as I rattled off today’s date. “I’m sorry.”
Conflicting expressions clouded his features, shock, disbelief, grief, all in short order, but then he settled on angry denial. “I’m done being lied to. Find her or else I’ll let him have his way.” He took a step back through the wall and disappeared from view.
I swear, the dead never listen to reason.
The elevator and the air were still. The temperature slowly crept back above freezing. There was some creaking of cables above. I hit the emergency call button, but it was still dead. I waited a few seconds, hoping the emergency power would kick on, but it didn’t. I really didn’t have time for this. The last thing I’d seen on the digital display had been L2, only one floor off of where we’d set up shop. If I was lucky I’d stopped near the door and somebody might hear me. So I slammed Abomination’s butt stock against the door and shouted for help.
Several tries of that nonsense and I was getting really pissed off, so I slung my shotgun around my back and drew my kukri. The curved, nineteen inch, Himalayan Chitilangi was thick enough to make a decent crowbar. I jammed the tip into the junction of the doors and started prying. It took me a few seconds to get it leveraged apart. No matter how hard I shoved, I could only get it open a few inches before it got stuck. There had to be some sort of safety latch I couldn’t get to.
Through the crack, I could see there was nothing but a blank shaft in front of me. I’d stopped between floors. Now I was really angry. “Oh, come on!” I angled my little light up through the crack and could see what I thought was the doors of the next floor just over the roof. “Nothing can ever be simple.”
I smashed the plastic roof sheeting out of the way. There was an access panel in the top of the car. It might have been locked, but I swung the kukri so hard that when the hatch broke open I didn’t notice. We heavyset guys aren’t known for our vertical leap, but I used the handrail as a step, and after a couple of tries caught the lip of the roof, and, grunting and swearing, pulled myself through.
“Stupid dead guys. Never easy…Bitch bitch bitch. Find her. Whatever. Get me a friggin’ address, asshole.”
The elevator shaft stretched impenetrable black above. My little light only made a dent in it. The cables were greasy and rang with a strange pitch as I bumped them and they bumped each other. The doors for the lobby began at about the height of my waist. I wedged in my kukri and started pushing them apart.
The metal was icy to the touch. Clang. Jerking my head up, I stared into the darkness. Something had moved up there. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. The rhythmic pings of the elevator cables changed and they began to jiggle violently. Clang. Clang. Drops of cold water fell out of the black to splatter me and my surroundings like a sluggish rain.
I could either bring Abomination around and turn on the big light to see what was descending, or I could get these doors open and get out of here right the hell now. There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver or defend myself, so prying took top priority. I poked my knife through the crack and threw my weight against the kukri’s hilt. The doors began to slide. The shaft doors didn’t seem nearly as hard to move.