Darkness Falls (16 page)

And then Kyle saw the pattern. She was leading the cops to fire at her near the lights.

“Don’t hit the lights! It’s making you shoot the lights!”

He forced himself to refer to her as an “it,” even though it sounded wrong to his mind. He wouldn’t give her the credit, at least not out loud.

As more lights went out—and the buzzing got louder—Kyle saw that Batten’s body had landed relatively close to Kyle’s cage.

And Batten had a set of keys.

Kneeling down on the floor, Kyle reached through the bars, trying desperately to get at Batten’s key chain.

He tried to ignore the death screams of the cops mixed in with gunfire as she took each of them in turn.

However, at the report of what sounded like a twelve-gauge shotgun, Kyle looked up. He saw Captain Henry with the weapon in question.

“Get away from my boy.”

Kyle went back to grabbing for the keys. He shoved his shoulder as far as it could go into the space between the bars. Just another inch . . .

“Pop, no!”

That was Matt. Sounded as if the good captain had got himself nabbed.

Success! His fingers closed around the key chain. He pulled it off Batten’s belt and stood upright.

It took about eight days for him to unlock the door and another seven years for him to grab a couple of Maglites.

He turned them on and shone them on Matt and the creature.

For a second, Kyle could clearly see her face.

To his shock, under all the dirt and grime and maggots and decay, there was the face of a beautiful woman.

Then she ran away, shrieking, from the brightness of the Maglites, going through the door without bothering to open it first, instead tearing it right off its hinges.

Kyle and Matt stared at each other for a moment. The cop looked as if he was about to go into shock. Kyle couldn’t entirely blame him—he’d just watched several of his fellow officers, including his father, get slaughtered by something that his intellect was probably insisting couldn’t possibly exist.

Looking over at Matt’s desk, Kyle saw his flashlights, his flak jacket, and his meds.

He grabbed the flashlights and the jacket.

He left the meds behind.

Caitlin was frustrated. Ever since the lights had gone out and the hospital’s emergency lights had gone on, Michael had set up camp under the bed. He had wedged a flashlight into the boxspring, creating a pool of light under the bed, from which he would not move.

“Come on, Caitlin,” he insisted. “It’s safe.”

“Michael, this is ridiculous.” A word that applied to her entire life lately. “Come out of there!”

“No, you get under here.”

She got down on all fours and reached under the bed, trying to grab him.

“Goddammit, I can’t
do
this anymore!”

“Caitlin, no!”

Before Caitlin could say anything else, she heard a buzzing noise.

As she moved to go look, Michael grabbed her by the arm, pulling her further into his little pool of light.

“Don’t.”

Against her better judgment, she listened to him.

She heard the sound again.

“Who’s there?” she asked, not really expecting an answer.

Sure enough, she didn’t get one.

“This isn’t funny,” she said in the warning tone she’d used on her students, on the off chance that this was some kid’s idea of a joke.

Then the bed squeaked.

Someone was on top of the bed.

Caitlin had a good view of the floor and had seen no feet enter the room. So how the hell—

Then the bed started, well, bouncing. It was being lifted up and slammed back onto the floor. It was as if a hunter was beating a bush to flush its quarry out.

“As long as we stay in the light, she can’t get us,” Michael whispered.

The banging stopped.

Silence.

Then the bed was ripped away.

Caitlin caught only a glimpse of it out of the corner of her eye but couldn’t make anything out.

“Run!” Michael cried, and Caitlin didn’t need to be told twice. She grabbed the flashlight, got to her feet, and, holding Michael’s hand tightly, ran from the hospital room into the dim light of the corridor.

She ran all the way down until she hit a dead end.

Dammit!

There was no way in hell she was going to turn around. She couldn’t even bear to look behind her just at the moment.

Instead, she ran for the nearest door, on her right, which led to a storage room.

She locked the door from the inside.

Shining the flashlight around the room, she saw assorted hospital supplies. She also found a light switch. She tried to turn the light on, but nothing happened. The power was still out, but this room apparently didn’t merit emergency lights.

Caitlin tried very hard not to think about what, precisely, had just happened in Michael’s hospital room.

A shadow fell on the frosted glass of the storage room.

Then the figure knocked on the door.

Caitlin jumped, but the knock was followed by Murphy’s voice.

“The backup generators are going to be out in ten minutes. We need everyone back in their rooms imm—”

“Call the police!” Caitlin screamed. “Somebody’s trying to kill us!”

But Murphy’s shadow simply receded, without acknowledgment.

Then she heard another noise.

Then another.

She shone her flashlight with one hand, holding Michael’s hand in a tight grip with the other.

Another noise.

Caitlin backed into something that crashed to the floor and made a huge clattering sound, and she saw something out of the corner of her eye, and it looked like that thing again, and she flashed her light, but it kept getting closer, and she
ran!

There was a second door to the storage room. She and Michael barreled through it.

Behind her, she could hear the shrieks of the—whatever it was.

She would not turn to look.

Michael did, however, and let out a blood-curdling scream.

The elevator bank was at the end of the hall. There was no way they’d make it. And yet, following some idiotic primal instinct, or maybe because she’d seen too many horror movies, she dove for the elevator, taking Michael with her, both of them sliding on the linoleum toward the doors—

—which then obligingly slid open to reveal Kyle Walsh, of all people, holding a flare.

“Hit the button!”
Kyle cried.

Michael kicked up at the Door Close button.

Just as the doors closed, Caitlin heard the impact of something against the doors.

“Goddammit,” Kyle muttered as the flare went out.

Michael got up and wrapped his arms around Kyle’s waist. On the one hand, Caitlin wondered if it was entirely appropriate. On the other hand, she was tempted to do the same.

What the hell was Kyle doing here, anyhow?

She noticed that there was a bag full of stuff on the floor and two lamps in the shoulder straps of his flak jacket, which were both also turned on. It made Kyle look like a Mack truck standing upright on its rear wheels.

“I knew,” Michael said. “I knew you’d come back.”

“You came back,” Caitlin added, then realized that was somewhat redundant.

“What are friends for?” Kyle asked with a tired smile.

Then something heavy landed on the elevator, shaking it and also bringing it to a halt.

Caitlin looked up, then shot a look at Kyle.

“What does it want?”

Both Kyle and Michael fixed her with a “duh” gaze.

“Oh. Right. So how do we keep it from getting what it wants?”

Before Kyle could answer, the whatever-it-was started pounding on the top of the elevator. The car started rocking back and forth, and Caitlin was quite sure that it was on the verge of plummeting to the basement.

Then the elevator light blew out in a shower of sparks. Only Kyle’s shoulder lamps provided any kind of illumination.

“Get on the floor!” Kyle said.

Without hesitation, Caitlin hit the deck, as did Michael. Kyle then leaned down, covering both of them, his shoulder lamps shining on the floor, leaving the ceiling in darkness.

For a brief second, Caitlin heard and felt nothing.

Then she heard the distinctive wrenching sound of tearing metal. Caitlin was afraid to look up, because she knew what she was going to see.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw some peculiar tendril-like things whipping at Kyle, who tried to brush them aside. Michael, for his part, was punching the Door Open button, to no avail.

Then her eye caught the duffel bag, illuminated by Kyle’s shoulder lamp.

Figuring there had to be
something
useful in there, she started rummaging through it and found a road flare.

Perfect.

Caitlin still couldn’t see the monster—or demon, or killer bunny, or whatever the
hell
this nightmare was—but she could see its tendrils more clearly now, flailing about like a decaying octopus.

She ignited the flare and held it up like a light saber, waving it around at the tendrils, which were kind enough to retreat into the hole in the ceiling.

Then another slamming noise.

Caitlin’s stomach lurched into her throat as the elevator started to head downward much faster than it was probably designed to.

Then it crashed to the ground, and Caitlin’s stomach fell down into her knees.

Amazingly, the door opened. They ran out—

—and nearly crashed into Dr. Murphy and Alexandra, the nurse who had directed Caitlin to the lost-and-found for Alfred the cat. Caitlin, insanely, found herself wondering if the poor cat’s owner had been found. And, if not, what would happen to Alfred with that
thing
running around.

“What the hell is that?” Alexandra cried.

Turning, Caitlin saw the creature start to come out of the elevator door, then recoil when it was hit with the emergency lights on this floor. It screeched and retreated back up the elevator shaft.

Two seconds later, the elevator went plunging downward. Two seconds after that, she heard a hideous crunching noise that no doubt sounded the death knell of the elevator.

“The bag.”

Caitlin turned to Kyle. “What?”

“The bag of flashlights. Anybody grab them?”

Having been more concerned with getting the hell out of the elevator while using the now-burned-out flare to hold the creature off, Caitlin had not done so. Neither had Michael.

“Shit.” He turned to Murphy, who looked shell-shocked, understandably, all things considered. “We need to get to the lobby. How long do we have the emergency lights?”

Murphy, though, was staring at the elevator bank, his mouth hanging open, his eyes glazed.

Kyle grabbed him by the shoulders. “How long?”

Alexandra spoke. “A-another couple minutes. Maybe.”

Nodding, Kyle said, “That’s all we need to get out of here.”

Caitlin leaned back against an office door—

—which opened, causing Caitlin to fall backward and prompting her to scream.

However, it was just the other nurse, who also screamed, not expecting someone to fall into her as she came out.

“What is wrong with you people?” Alexandra asked.

The other nurse looked straight at Kyle. “What’s he doing here? I’m calling the police.”

Kyle laughed bitterly. “The police are dead.”

Caitlin blinked. “All of them?”

“Pretty much. Where are the stairs?”

Horrified, Caitlin was about to castigate Kyle for being so insensitive, but she stopped herself. Right now, they needed to focus on keeping themselves alive—and, she suspected, Kyle had gotten
very
skilled at compartmentalizing his feelings over the years.

No one seemed interested in answering Kyle’s question. Murphy was still in shock, and the other nurse just fixed Kyle with a venomous look, probably still bitter about his first visit when he hadn’t signed in.

“When this hospital goes dark, we’re all dead,” he pointed out.

Alexandra finally said, “Straight ahead and left, through the old wing.” She hesitated. “I—I should evacuate the other patients.”

“It’s not after them, it’s after us.”

Caitlin wasn’t sure why Kyle was so sure of this, but he and Michael both seemed to
know
this thing.

“As long as they stay in their rooms, they’ll be fine,” Kyle added.

Finally, Caitlin asked the question that had been preying on her mind for the last ten minutes or so: “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” the other nurse said, even though the question wasn’t directed at her. “I haven’t seen it.”

Kyle, however, couldn’t be bothered to answer, instead following Alexandra’s directions. The others did likewise, even Murphy.

They turned the corner to find a mostly dark corridor. The only light was from dim emergency lights that only illuminated a foot-wide path of light near the wall.

Shrugging, Kyle proceeded to walk carefully down that path, never straying from it, looking like a drunk driver taking a walk-the-line sobriety test.

Shaking her head, Caitlin muttered, “This just gets better and better.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Murphy asked, finally getting his voice—and his attitude—back.

Then the emergency lights in the nurses’ station behind them went out. Caitlin thought she saw a shadow pass near it but optimistically chalked it up to her imagination.

Never mind the fact that tonight, reality had far outstripped anything her imagination had ever been able to come up with . . .

“This isn’t happening,” Murphy said, sounding disgusted. “I’m going back to my office.”

“Fine,” Caitlin said. “Get us some flashlights.”

Murphy shot her an annoyed look, turned around, and stopped. He looked at the darkened nurses’ station.

Then he turned back around. “Let’s just hurry up.”

Kyle turned around as he worked his way down along the sliver of light. “Come on.”

“Go, Michael,” Caitlin said, pushing her brother toward Kyle. She wanted him out of here as fast as possible. Michael started following Kyle, breaking into a run, moving as fast as his small feet would take him.

“Michael, stay as close as you can to the wall!” Kyle yelled.

Nodding, Michael ran with his head down, keeping an eye on where his feet fell and keeping his body as close to the wall as he could get it.