Nightfall (19 page)

Tru backed away from the window. At first Mason thought it was because of what he'd seen, but then he noticed where Tru had moved: into Ange and Penny's line of sight. The kid was turning into a man, looking to protect those who needed it. Mason tucked away that sense of pride.

“That's how they're surviving,” he said quietly.

Knowing they'd been people once dug at his brain. He hadn't given it more than a token thought in years—too busy fighting them to consider the possibilities.
Make the wrong move in the Dark Age and you could end up like that. Any of us could.
Sobering thought.

The scientist merely stared at the grim scene, nonplussed and studying. Mason could almost respect the man when he fired up his brain. Almost. But then Welsh frowned. “Wait, what about the backups? They should've fired up right away—no interruption of power.”

“What backups?” Mason asked.

“Two more generators. They're smaller, in an anteroom that abuts the underground spring. The original builders used them as their main power source, but when this place was renovated, they were relegated to backups. They don't produce as much juice. Something about the pressure in the pipes.”

Mason stared at the bloody snow, muscles seizing beneath his skin. “The hot spring, can it be accessed from outside?”

“It connects to a water source,” Welsh said. “Natural underground tunnels. But I've never been down to the spring myself.”

“The anteroom—what's it made out of?”

“Wood. Like I said, it was the original structure.”

“And the door connecting to the basement?”

Beside him, Tru inhaled sharply.

Welsh paled. “Um . . . metal? I think.”

“Tru, stay with those two. Jenna, the flashlight. Let's go.”

Vaguely, Mason heard Ange asking what was going on, but Welsh was right at their heels.

“We know they're digging,” Mason said, as much to himself as to the others.

“Digging? We didn't see any—”

“Trust us,” Jenna snapped. They burst onto the ground floor and tore across the lab. “We saw it. We just didn't know why.”

“Then, could they be looking for a way in?” Welsh asked.

Mason shouldered through the basement door and flipped the safety off his nine-millimeter. “Everybody's upstairs, right?”

“Yeah.” Jenna aimed the flashlight. The beam wiggled. “Anything moves, shoot it.”

A chill ran down Mason's spine. “If they found a way into the hot spring, I wouldn't put it past them to take out those generators.”

“Seriously?” Welsh sounded astonished.

Mason crept down the stairs and tracked his eyes from side to side. “Normal dogs chew things. They mark territory. And these monsters know a lot more than you think. I can't be sure what they remember from before the change, but I know they learn. Now where's this anteroom?”

“End of the hall, past the main generator, and then around the corner to the right.”

They passed the generator in silence. Water still sprinkled on the concrete like a recreational fountain in summer. But no kids here. No laughter or sunshine or heat. Just a tension in Mason's gut that constricted into a tighter and tighter knot.

They arrived at the anteroom door, which meant Mason could breathe again. “Good. It's metal.”

Welsh leaned against the wall, his face shiny with sweat despite the dank cold in the tunnel. “That's something, right?”

“Shut up,” Mason snapped. “Listen.”

They didn't need that head voodoo anymore. The sound of faint and rhythmic scratching—like old-timey musicians scraping spoons along a washboard—vibrated through the metal door. Mason touched it. He pushed. The metal gave beneath his fingers.

He stepped away and raised his rifle. “It's not reinforced. Barely better than sheet metal for an outhouse. Jenna, get back.”

She complied without protest, readying her weapon.

“What're our options?” Welsh asked.

Mason bristled. “Do you have to talk?”

“Just think about it. Say they're on the other side. You can't shoot them. That'd be like ...” He cleared his throat. “That'd be like when I shot you.”

“Dumb? Jumpy?”

“Yeah. And even if you get the vanguard, the others have an open door.”

“He's right.” Jenna tucked the hair behind her ear, her profile in shadow. “How would they get in? No one's dug through yet.”

“They won't be able to, not all the way,” Welsh said. “There's a good layer of granite shale between us and the surface. But there's no telling where the tunnel comes out. Maybe miles away. Some might take a backdoor route in, but that's the only option.”

“Not all of them—not yet. So we have time.” Mason put his gun away. “What've we got to reinforce this door?”

Jenna flicked the flashlight to the generator. “First, the seal. I want our damn lights back on.”

He shook his head. “Protection's more important. Nobody ever died of the dark.”

That unearthly group howl sliced the air again, grating against Mason's nerves as a primitive warning—a caveman's awareness of being hunted. Jenna flinched and shivered by his side. But she didn't reach for him that time, not even with her thoughts.

Chris's lean, scholarly face was unnaturally pale in the ring of light Jenna shone on him. The glasses hid his eyes, leaving his thoughts unreadable. He was still considering the problem of shoring up the door. “I don't know. Let me think.”

“Thirty seconds.”

Mason's blunt impatience rekindled her anger. Why didn't she learn? Every time she thought she had a handle on how his mind worked—and that they were making progress—he slapped her down.

Chris snapped his fingers and pointed back the way they'd come.

He and Mason carried the empty storage cabinet into the subbasement. At first Jenna couldn't visualize what they meant to do. Blocking the doorway didn't seem like it would work—the monsters would just tip the thing over with brute strength—but the men opened the doors and began to affix them to the walls. Noisy work. But the beasts already knew they were inside, meaty and magically delicious.

Pointedly, she held the light for Chris and ignored Mason. Maybe it was petty. But if he wanted nothing from her, he'd get an assload of it.

Chris drilled more bolts into the concrete, securing the portal. Another layer of metal would take the monsters longer to push through, if at all. And they couldn't very well chew through it. “That's as good as it gets,” he said.

Jenna touched his arm. “Lights next, please. Do you want help finding the part?”

“Sure. It should be upstairs in the maintenance closet. I could use another pair of eyes and a steady hand on the light.”

Mason made a sound as they left, but she didn't turn. She left him in the dark, listening to the monsters.

Upstairs she noticed the cold. The heat had been off for a while, a hint of things to come if they didn't fix it fast. Jenna exhaled, testing, and her breath puffed out in visible fog. She touched the butt end of the Maglite, the metal downright chilly.

“We have to get the power back on or we're going to freeze.” Her words were an experiment, just as her exhalation had been.

Chris hesitated, as if taking her measure in turn. “Yeah,” he said at last. “The clock is ticking. We have a few flammable items that might extend the deadline, but without power, there's not much in the way of ventilation.”

“Eventually we'd suffocate.”

“If we didn't die in our sleep, we'd smoke ourselves out. Then those things would have us for brunch.”

Jenna squared her shoulders. “Then let's go get that seal.”

The sooner they did, the sooner things could get back to normal. Such as it was. Boring meals, tension, wondering if each day would be your last. Typical Armageddon stuff.

They made their way down the hall. Chris opened the closet door and Jenna swung the light to make sure nothing lurked in the shadows. Couldn't be too careful. She went in first, and then Chris found a battery-powered lamp. He switched it on and nodded at the bluewhite shine.

“Not much juice left,” he said. “But enough to help look.”

Jenna dug through jumbled stacks of boxes, hoping she'd know what she was looking for if she found it.
Why the hell did anyone save this stuff?
Old holiday decorations. Lightbulbs for ancient fixtures. A busted tire pump.

Chris mumbled to himself, then tossed a box aside in obvious frustration.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I wouldn't organize a closet like this, but I wasn't in charge of maintenance. I mean, who could find anything in here?”

“Glad it wasn't just me.”

“So.” He cleared his throat. “How'd you two meet? You seem like an odd couple.”

Jenna glanced at him, surprised by the personal question. In the four weeks since their arrival, she'd learned that Harvard, as Tru called him, didn't do personal. If he couldn't study it, classify it, or dissect it, he wasn't interested.

“We're
not
a couple. He stuffed me in the trunk of my own car and drove me out to the woods.” She sighed. “Good times.”

Chris offered a wry laugh. “I actually miss my dissertation days when my adviser was all over my ass to document, document, document. But when I was out in the field studying the big cats, I got caught up in watching them. I'd track them for days, not writing down a thing.” He rubbed beneath his Lennon glasses and smiled. “Weird what we miss, isn't it?”

Feeling a certain affinity with him, she ventured further into personal territory. “So what's the story with you and Ange?”

“Nothing. She just likes animals and—”

“You think she's purty.”

He almost sounded like Mason when he muttered, “Just find the damn seal.”

Mild annoyance carried her through two more crates. The lamp guttered; soon they'd be down to her Maglite. Jenna worked faster.

She almost shrieked with excitement when her fingers closed over hard rubber. “Here!”

In his haste Chris tripped over a box, and she caught him by the shoulders. It might have been a moment with anyone else, but he was too focused on what she held. He examined it under the flickering camping lantern, then swore—a word that sounded wrong coming from him.

“It's too small. We need a six-inch seal. Where'd you find it?” She pointed to a box and watched as he raked through it in frantic motions. Eventually he straightened. “Jenna ... I'm sorry.”

“What're you saying?”

“We're fucked.” Mason slid through the doorway. How long had he been standing there? “That's what you mean, right? The power's not coming back on.”

“Not unless you can pull a six-inch seal out of your ass.” Chris's expression held a surprising amount of anger. Maybe even disdain.

“I wouldn't mind seeing that,” Jenna said.

She knew how Mason would feel if she took Chris's side, even if he gave no outward sign. Maybe he looked a little too long at the scientist before letting his gaze slide to her, but otherwise he was iron.

His voice held no anger. Hell, no emotion at all. “It's time we went upstairs. We have some decisions to make.”

Upstairs, Tru stood guard. He looked too young to hold his rifle with such expertise, but if Jenna said anything, he'd take it as an affront to his manhood. More machismo. No wonder her eyes went to Ange, where she huddled with Penny beneath a blanket. Jenna felt better equipped to understand her own gender, even if her maternal instincts were practically nil.

Any other child would be crying, but Penny looked at the world with altered eyes. Poor Ange. A kid lacking in any regard might not survive.

Mason pulled up a chair and sat. “Here's the situation. One of the generators is down, and it's not coming back up unless we get our hands on a spare part.”

“Which means no power, no heat,” Tru said.

“But you can repair it, right, Chris?” Angela looked to him as if he were the Professor from
Gilligan's Island
and could make a radio out of snow, spit, and sticks.

The poor guy seemed to hate disappointing her. “If we had a spare seal.”

“Which we don't,” Tru guessed. “Well, I'm not sitting in the dark until I freeze to death.”

“Hey, I'm not keen on becoming a corpsicle either,” Jenna said.

Chris held up his hands. “Hold up, both of you.”

Ange's blue gaze bounced from face to face. “What can we do?”

“They'll get in.” Mason's matter-of-fact tone silenced everyone, far more chilling than if he'd been loud. “They're persistent. Frankly, I don't know how they've survived this long after the snow. Maybe they've had plenty to eat until now.”

People, Jenna thought.
Plenty of other people
. She pinched her eyes shut, but she couldn't help but remember the smorgasbord the dogs had stashed in that pit. If their stores had dwindled, they would seek fresh meat. The warmth of a shelter might be nothing more than a bonus.

“But if we don't act,” Mason said, “we'll freeze to death. Or they'll get in. Those are the facts.”

Chris folded his arms, surprisingly calm. “What are you thinking?”

“A supply run.” Mason fixed his gaze on Jenna. “Two of us head for the nearest town, about forty miles northwest of here. Two or three days, round-trip, depending on weather, monsters, and terrain. We pick up the spare parts and anything else we can use—as much as we can carry. The rest of you stay put and keep the demon dogs out.”