City of Iron by Williamson Chet

Author:Williamson, Chet [Williamson, Chet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2011-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

It was like something out of a nightmare, like crawling rough the guts of a creature of wood and nails. The stench was awful, and she saw all too clearly why. Piles of feces dotted the filthy floor, dark mounds in the dust that their passage stirred up. The dust swirled into her nose like a physical manifestation of the foul odor, and she tried hard not to gag.

Their lights jerked about constantly, so that there was never a chance to actually focus her vision on anything. Sight was a montage of splintered laths and cracked plaster, lit for split seconds by brilliant flashes of white.

They sidled, like crabs, sideways through the passageway, for there was no room to turn and walk. "Get your gun out," Laika said, extricating her own weapon.

"All right," Joseph replied, and paused just long enough to take out his pistol.

"Where the hell are we going?"

His voice came back in a series of grunts. He seemed to be having more trouble navigating the narrow space than the slimmer Laika. "About twenty more yards. It turns left up here. According to our measurements, there's about an eight-by-ten area unaccounted for. . . ."

The turn was ahead, as Joseph had promised. Laika flashed her light down the opposite passage and was chilled to see that it stretched away into darkness. It was like shining her flashlight into the night sky. She looked away from it and followed Joseph.

"Douse your light," she heard him whisper. She held her fingers over the lens, separating them just enough to let a needle of light shine through, and Joseph did the same. Ahead, she saw another light, dim and yellow, in which the dust particles performed their danse macabre.

Joseph shuffled ahead a few more steps and then turned another corner and vanished into the dim light. Laika sidestepped as quickly as she could, fumbling along, feeling as though she were moving through the thick broth of dream.

When her head cleared the corner, she saw the room and who and what were in it. The sight froze her for a moment, and then one of the creatures moved and the scream that had assaulted them before filled the room with its pain and fury.

She fumbled to bring up her gun, but before she could there was a sudden flash and a roar of gunfire that was deafening in the small room. The woman, if that was what the thing truly was, fell back, and something dull and gray-white dropped from her arms.

It was a baby. It landed on the filthy floor with a terrible liquid sound, and the woman who had held it struck the far wall and slid down it into a sitting position. Her eyes and mouth hung open, and Laika heard a bubbling sound in her throat. She coughed a mass of blood and phlegm that clung like a huge leech to her chin, dripping down upon the bloody wound in her chest, and did not move again.

The baby lay where it had fallen.

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