Chapter 23
Ada hurried down the hall, with Claire and Sherry right behind her. Claire held her shotgun sideways, keeping her eyes on Ada, as if expecting the mysterious woman to spin around at any moment and try to kill her. Claire was not normally a distrustful person, but she didn’t think Ada would hesitate to abandon them or betray them in an instant if the situation presented itself.
When the blood-curdling scream came down the hall, all three of them skidded to a halt and looked around in a panic. Ada gritted her teeth and held her pistol, bracing herself as if expecting something to jump out at her.
“It’s not possible!” she snapped. “There’s no way!”
“What is it?” Claire demanded.
“I don’t know. Some kind of monster. But there’s no way it can be here! I watched it fall to the bottom of that huge sewer pit!”
“Well, maybe it climbed back out!”
“Claire!” Sherry cried out nervously. “What are we going to do?”
Claire faced Ada and gestured with her gun. “So what way did Leon go?”
“That way!” Ada spat, swinging her arm to point down the hall. “Why don’t you go after him yourself?”
“Cause I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
There was another terrifying shriek nearby and suddenly the wall directly beside them smashed outward, chunks of plaster and drywall crumbling to the floor. The hallway shook with the impact, and the entire section of wall bulged out as something on the other side tried to break its way through.
“Jesus!” Claire cried. She glanced away for a moment, and Ada immediately bolted down the hall, leaving them behind.
Claire grabbed Sherry’s arm. “Come on!”
They raced down the drab hallway, but Ada ran ahead of them. Sherry wasn’t able to run as fast, and Claire had to slow down to help her catch up. Behind them, the wall exploded in a blast of dust and rubble and Claire glimpsed something coming through the aperture, bashing away a chunk of wall with a huge misshapen limb. She urged Sherry on faster, and they ran to the end of the hall and darted to the right.
The hallway split off to the left again, and to a large half-built room on the right. Far ahead of them, Ada was running full speed, putting more distance between them. Claire cursed her for leaving them behind, and tried to catch up.
Sherry screamed and ran faster, and Claire glanced back to see that the monstrous figure behind them was catching up as well. It was a man, or used to be, but it looked like something from a sci-fi horror movie. Like a creature that was covered in radioactive waste and mutated into some kind of disfigured nightmare.
There was no way out, Claire realized. There was nowhere to hide and no way to escape. Every step Claire took, the creature gained on them. Ada deliberately ran off in the hopes that the creature would kill them and give her time to get away.
“To hell with that!” Claire shouted to herself.
She grabbed Sherry and they dove into the next room. Almost immediately after they jumped inside, the creature reached them and smashed into the doorway, its bulk unable to fit through. It roared and smashed its massive fist into the wall, breaking it apart.
The room was incomplete, like the rest of the area, with sheets of drywall leaning against the wall, and several ladders set up so the workers could install lights and ceiling panels. Claire and Sherry ran through the room, dodging the ladders and hanging electric cords, and hurried to the open doorway on the other side.
Behind them, the creature howled, the sound hitting them like a blast of wind. It smashed apart the sides of the doorway and squeezed its body through. Immediately, it swung its arm at a nearby ladder, smashing it as if it was made of tin foil. It flipped over, bent in half, and the creature barreled its way through the room, catching the numerous electric cords. It yanked down the light fixtures, ripping the wires out in its fury, and sparks blasted from the live wires.
Claire and Sherry ran out into the next hallway and heard a single gunshot ring out ahead of them. Claire was never so happy in her life to hear someone shooting, and they quickened their pace in desperation. They heard the monster behind them, smashing its way through the next doorway.
At the end of the hallway, two people suddenly appeared. The first was Ada, her hands empty, looking angry and defeated. She staggered out and was followed by the second person, who almost made Claire’s heart jump for joy.
It was Leon. He had a gun in one hand, aiming it squarely at Ada. He saw Claire and Sherry and waved at them urgently.
“Come on!” he shouted. “We have to get out of here!”
“Leon!” Sherry cried happily.
There was another explosion of debris and dust, and the creature burst into the hallway, charging after them like a stampeding bull.
“This way!” Leon shouted, and together they all ran down the next hallway, with Ada in front, followed by Leon and Claire. Leon grabbed Sherry and scooped her up effortlessly into his arms, her weight barely slowing him down. Sherry closed her eyes frightfully and wrapped her arms around his neck, holding on for dear life.
They ran to the end of the hall to a set of white doors. Ada slammed her fist into a button panel on the wall, and the doors slid open. To Claire’s amazement, it was an elevator.
They all piled inside and Ada hit the button for the first floor. There was a ding and the doors closed with terrifying slowness, as the creature chasing them made its way down the hall, shrieking in fury.
The doors closed and the elevator began to rise, just as the creature slammed its huge body into the doors, shaking the entire elevator. Sherry screamed and Leon set her down, as the elevator trembled with the force of the impact. Ada backed into a corner and just stared at the others, probably thinking of some way to get them killed. Claire knelt down and gripped her shotgun like a lifeline. No one spoke as the elevator lurched again and began to rise.
Suddenly the entire elevator rattled to a halt and trembled, the ear-piercing squeal of grinding metal coming from above them. There was a grumble and the elevator trembled again, and Claire felt the floor tip sideways. Leon held one arm against the wall to keep his balance, keeping his gaze at the floor.
Below them, there was a smash of ripping metal and then the elevator jumped under their feet. Leon fell to the floor and Sherry screamed again, covering her face with her hands. The floor of the elevator buckled upward with a booming smash, and they heard the monster below them screaming once more, smashing its huge fist into the floor under their feet.
“What now?” Ada shouted. “Got any more great ideas?”
“Yeah, I got one pretty good idea,” Leon snapped.
As the elevator tilted sideways, almost knocking him to his feet again, he took the shotgun from Claire and for a moment, Ada tensed up. Leon just glared at her and aimed the shotgun up at the ceiling. They covered their ears or else the blast would deafen them. The ceiling panels blew apart like confetti and Leon used the barrel of the gun to swing open the concealed maintenance hatch.
“Come on,” he said to Claire, holding out his hand. With his help, she was hoisted up through the hatch, and climbed out onto the top of the elevator. Her hands and clothes became smudged with thick grease and dirt.
She reached down and Leon handed Sherry to her. The elevator rattled again, and Claire grabbed the edge of the hatch to keep her balance. If she fell off the top of the elevator, she was as good as dead.
Leon jumped up and hauled himself up onto the roof as well. “Over there,” he said. “There’s an emergency ladder that goes up the entire shaft. We can take it to the surface.”
Claire and Sherry walked carefully off the tilted elevator to the inside ledge of the shaft, and began to make their way up the ladder. Leon looked down into the elevator at Ada, who stared at him from her corner.
“You wouldn’t leave me in here, would you?” Ada shouted up to him.
“I’m tempted to,” Leo
n admitted, but reluctantly held out his hand for Ada to grab. She hurried forward and grabbed his arm, and he helped her climb up as well. Just as she climbed out, the floor of the elevator split open with a screech, almost knocking both of them off, and Leon could see the monster below through the hole in the metal.
Ada jumped over to the ladder and went up after Claire and Sherry. Leon followed her but stopped at the ledge, turning to face the elevator. He held the shotgun to his shoulder and took aim.
With a boom, he shot at the thick cable that went up the center of the elevator shaft. The cable sprang back with the force of the blast, and several of the cable strands blew apart. The elevator shook unsteadily and there was a loud creaking noise. The monster below them screamed again. Leon ignored it and racked another shell in, taking aim once more.
The cable shook once more when he shot it, but this time there was a high-pitched grinding noise and the cable stretched dangerously. The elevator shook like a ball on the end of a string, and with an ear-splitting pop, the cable snapped. The top half shot upward like a stretched rubber band, and the elevator itself hung in the air for just a moment before plummeting downward with a screech of metal and a spray of sparks from the edges.
It didn’t have very far to fall before it hit the bottom of the shaft, perhaps only twenty or thirty feet, but it might as well have been a hundred. The elevator shot straight down and smashed into the ground with a tremendous crash of tearing metal, shooting a wave of dust and debris upward. The monster’s scream, a mixture of hatred, fury, and insanity, was cut off with the huge crash, and silence finally settled on the inside of the elevator shaft.
After looking down at the wreckage for a few moments, Leon shouldered the shotgun and went to the ladder to climb up after Claire and the others.