Penelope waved him over. He slipped out of the elevator and strode quickly into the room she"d unlocked. In the door was a long narrow chicken-wire window, over which a sign read CIRCUIT BREAKERS. Penelope hurriedly closed the door and turned on a single desk lamp. In another corner a silver key hung from a chain. Penelope turned the key in her punch clock, which logged the time of her round on a tape inside.
Gary looked around. There was the desk, a radio, a little refrigerator, mops and buckets. Several posters adorned the walls: the Redskinettes doing splits, last year"s Playmate of the Year, and Jennifer Lopez embellished by computer-generated nudity. Penelope turned Gary away. "You don"t need to be looking at that."
"Uh...oh..."
"The janitor uses this for his break room but he"s off-duty at five p.m."
A single dented file cabinet sat in the other corner, next to multiple fuse panels and power switches. Gary went immediately to the cabinet and began to root through the drawers.
Penelope just shook her head. She remained flushed and sweaty from his teasing upstairs, and frustrated. But her confusion was distracting her desires, which she was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with now. "Gary, come on, let"s go back upstairs," she urged, coming up behind him, sliding her hands about his waist. Then her hands slipped lower. He"s definitely interested, she thought, feeling the evidence. "I showed you downstairs, now let"s go."
"In a minute," he grumbled, rummaging through more files.
She could easily see Mr. b.u.mpy sticking out of his back pocket, and the shape of the ben-wa b.a.l.l.s in the other pocket. Her l.u.s.t was making her dizzy. In truth, she didn"t really care that much about him, only what he could do for her with his toys. It made her feel selfish and greedy, but she didn"t particularly care about that either. He started all of this, so he would d.a.m.n well finish.
"Look at this," he said. He"d pulled out a sheet of paper, which she looked at but didn"t really see. She was still kneading his crotch with her hand, trying to divert him.
"What is it?"
"It"s a property tax a.s.sessment waiver. They don"t have to pay any property tax for the land this place sits on."
Penelope didn"t care, coming to the simplest conclusion. "Of course they don"t. The state doesn"t make itself pay land tax. State of Maryland owns this land."
"No, they sure as s.h.i.t don"t," he said, indicating the sheet of paper. "This right here says that the Halman Map Library sits on one and a half acres of land that are owned by the Catholic Diocese of Washington, D.C."
The Catholic- "Huh?" Penelope said. Then she inspected the paper more thoroughly and saw that it was true.
"Things just keep gettin" fishier and fishier," Gary said. He closed the file cabinet and turned to the door. Now he was looking out the chicken-wire window down the hall. He could see the chain-link gate. "What"s behind that?" he asked.
"The storage area, and the other guard room, where the Ahrens guards work-I told you," she whined more frustration. "I"m not authorized to go past the gate, and even if I was, I couldn"t because I don"t have a key to the padlock on it."
"I"m checkin" it out-"
"Gary, are you dense? It"s locked."
"Quit yackin" and open your eyes."
Penelope frowned, squinting through the little window. She didn"t frown long. The padlock on the gate was unlocked.
"That"s some top-notch bunch"a guards they got down here, huh?"
"They must"ve forgotten to relock the gate when their shift started."
"Come on-"
"Gary, no! They could come out any minute!"
"Yeah, and if they do all you gotta say is "Hey, fellas, I"m just showin" my boyfriend around, oh, and by the way, you left your gate unlocked but don"t worry, I won"t tell the boss." That"s what you say if any of "em come out." Gary could not be dissuaded; he was opening the door and walking out. Penelope fumed but at this point all she could do was go along with it.
He quietly opened the gate. They both stepped through. At the furthest end of the hall stood a door that read MAP ROOM. Next to it was a door that read GUARD ROOM. Beside Gary and Penelope stood another windowed door that read BOILER ROOM. She and Gary slipped into it.
"Boiler room, huh?" he said now as the next weirdness of the night presented itself. Penelope looked around in dismay. There were no boilers in evidence.
But there was a gun locker.
Four black rifles stood in the steel rack, secured by a chain threaded through their trigger guards. On the floor, also chained and locked, were ten olive-drab metal boxes, which each read in stenciled letters: 200 CARTRIDGES, MSC LOT 1-M62-4, 5.56MM.
More sarcasm from Gary: "Yeah, I"d say that Ahrens is definitely an armed guard company. Four top of the line automatic a.s.sault rifles and two thousand rounds of ammo. You know, to guard against all the folks who wanna bust in here to steal maps."
This was weird. Now Penelope"s raging l.u.s.t was sufficiently diverted. She"d seen the other guards with sidearms a few times, but what could explain the need for automatic weapons down here? In a map library?
"Like I was sayin" before, same as when I was in the Army," Gary went on. "Fake door signs, fake civvie security guards. They want people to think this is a map library so no one"ll bother breaking in. It"s cover, it"s a front. There ain"t no maps down here. It"s gotta be something military."
"So they"re really Army MPs posing as civilian security guards?" Penelope asked.
"Not Army, not with weapons like that," he said, pointing to the gun rack. "Those are SA-80s. If these guards were U.S. Army they"d have M-16s. Only people I know of who use SA-80s as general issue are the Brits and the Swiss Guards, and-" Gary stalled, his eyes widening. On the black polycarbonate stock of one of the rifles, he noticed tiny letters: PROPERTY OF 2/37th COMPANY VICTOR, SWISS GUARDS.
"These guys are Swiss guards, and that"s about the most f.u.c.ked-up thing I ever heard."
"Gary, who are the Swiss Guards?" Penelope nearly shouted over the mounting confusion.
"It"s a special military detachment of the Vatican."
"And we just found out that the library sits on land owned by-"
"The Catholic church," Gary finished.
Yeah, Penelope finally agreed. But what really was going on down here? What was really being kept in this place?
Penelope would never discern an answer, but that was scarcely the point. The room began to vibrate, then the cement walls began to crack. Suddenly the floor was shaking so violently, Penelope could barely stand. Ceiling tiles fell on them as Gary shouted, "Earthquake! Get out!"
They stumbled frantically back out into the main hall, then were retching when they found it full of the most evil-smelling smoke. The smoke seemed green in the overheard emergency lights, and though she wasn"t sure, Penelope thought she saw figures in the smoke. Squat figures, like things huddled down. Then she heard shouts, small-arms fire, and a long steady noise that could only be described as cackling.
"The elevator won"t work!" Gary shouted, holding her hand. "Where"s the stairs?"
Penelope turned, yanked him toward the direction she believed the stairs to be in, then- SWACK!.
She"d run right into a wall, face-first, then fell back flat on her back. Gary groped through smoke to help her up. All Penelope knew was that the wall she"d run into ... hadn"t been there earlier. It seemed to angle out of the main corridor, leaning forward, and after she regained her senses, she looked at it, ran her hand against it. It seemed composed of chunky cement, only the cement was discolored and- "What is-" she began.
"What the f.u.c.k is this?" Gary shouted, the foul smoke gusting from his mouth. He"d noticed it too. "This wall wasn"t here five minutes ago!"
"It must be some kind of fire wall," Penelope could only guess.
Gary winced. "This ain"t no fire wall. It"s cement, and it"s got ..." He stalled again, touching the rough surface. By now, Penelope could see it too. Mixed into the "cement" were chunks of bones-joints, ribs, fingertips, all human. Lots of teeth too, some glittery with gold and silver fillings. She looked farther down the wall, then, and screamed.
"Holy s.h.i.t!" Gary yelled.
A man"s head and shoulders hung out of the strange wall, as if he"d been fused into it. He convulsed, still alive, his face twisted in agony. He seemed to be muttering something in Latin or Italian. Then he screamed himself and began to vomit up blood. There was nothing they could do to help him. The last thing Penelope noticed, though, was the shirt he wore, a blue tunic with epaulets, and an embroidered patch that read AHRENS SECURITY.
More cackling issued from the thickening smoke, along with more gunshots. She could see brief white muzzle-flashes in the distance, and some of the squat shapes she"d seen seemed to fall down after the shots. She caught glimpses of larger figures too, but could they possibly be human? Humans, with bloodred eyes the size of tennis b.a.l.l.s. Humans with fangs like broken gla.s.s? With horns sprouting from their heads?
Two of the Ahrens guards ran out of the boiler room, each wielding a locked and loaded rifle. More things seemed to be encroaching down the hall, and when the guards determinedly opened fire, the things seemed to mewl. Misshapen heads flew to pieces, clawed hands flew up, plumes of blood sprayed this way and that, only the blood wasn"t red. Some was black. Some was pea-green. The sound of the machine-gun fire deafened Penelope to the point that she couldn"t even hear her own screams. She shrieked harder and grabbed on to Gary when something the size of an eagle whizzed by just over her head. The smoke churned in the creature"s wake; when it flew over one of the Ahrens guards, the thing"s claws lowered, and took off the guard"s head. Penelope only had a split-second to look more closely. It was no eagle-not that an eagle could even find its way down here. It was something more like an immense bat.
The second guard smacked another mag into his rifle and resumed firing. Hot bra.s.s flew out of the bolt in a steady stream. Gary pulled Penelope aside but not before she saw who or what the guard was firing at: a tall perfectly still figure in a white cloak and drooping hood. This would be one of the higher echelon Warlocks from the College of Spells and Discantations, not that Penelope could ever be aware of that. The bullets that spewed toward the white figure seemed to slow down and dissolve in mid-air. Two other similar figures-but these cloaked in black-were burning the first guard"s severed head over an ornate agate bowl full of red-hot coals. They watched intently, examining the shapes of the smoke that eddied from the dead guard"s eye sockets and open mouth. These two figures were Hierarchs in Lucifer"s Synod of Smoke-Diviners.
Gary was nearly paralyzed now by all he"d seen. "We-we-we ... gotta get out"a here," was all he could stammer.
Some trick of reason alighted in Penelope. "This way! The door to the exit stairs is this way."
As she led him away, strange things seemed to crunch beneath Penelope"s shoes... and she didn"t want to know what they were. The smoke cleared a bit further down the hall; she thought she saw a rat scurry by, only this rat was the size of a house cat, and its pink feet looked too much like the hands of a human infant. The thing squealed when Gary kicked it out of the way.
"The door!" she yelled. "I don"t see the door!"
"We"ll find it." Gary was determined. He was feeling along the wall, then shouted, "Over here! I found it!"
Penelope looked over at him, and gasped. He had his hand on the wrought-iron latch of a heavy wooden door set into an arched doorframe made from bloodstained granite bricks. The keystone on the transom was an oblong skull with horns branching from the forehead long and sharp as a bull"s.
"Come on!" Gary yelled, waving her over.
Penelope shuddered. "Gary, that"s not. The door. To the stairs."
But he didn"t hear her; he"d already opened the door, was preparing to go in.
He didn"t go in. Instead, something came out.
A Tentaculus was a more recent hybridization from the Academy of Teratology, a lower-grade segmented demon also known as a Mephistius Annelida. It stood upright on two thin legs, sported two equally thin arms and an elongated abdomen, all the color and enslimed texture of an earthworm, only it stood six feet tall. Instead of a head on its shoulders, though, it bore an additional three-foot trunk. The end of the trunk was a mouth rimmed by hooklike teeth, and it was this mouth that immediately attached itself to Gary"s mouth. Unable to scream, he shuddered in place as the trunk expeditiously sucked all of his internal organs out, then transferred them into its own gut. Penelope watched in revulsion; the thing"s own abdomen suddenly swelled with its new, fresh meal. Gary collapsed, significantly lighter than he had been moments before. The Tentaculus burped, then the door slammed shut.
Penelope ran, screams wheeling behind her. She didn"t really know where she might be running; it was simply that running seemed the only logical reaction. Even through the stinking smoke, she could see that the bas.e.m.e.nt had changed, and she suspected that the entire building had, as if parts of it had merged with something else, something evil. Behind her, the machine-gun fire ceased, replaced by more screams. Penelope instinctively took a final glance behind her, saw that the remaining guard was being mauled by misshapen Trolls. She didn"t hang around to watch his death in detail, but she did notice something else. The imposing white-cloaked figure was advancing down the hall while another taller figure appeared behind him: a man, the most handsome man she"d ever seen in her life. Lean, muscular but graceful, this man seemed to drift forward, a mist of light-a halo-encircling his head. More light flowed from his piercing eyes. He was fully naked, and for the briefest moment he glanced at Penelope through the smoke and smiled-the most stunning smile she could ever imagine.
"h.e.l.lo, Penelope," he said to her, but his voice was more like light than sound.
Penelope stared, riveted.
"My name is Zeihl."
Penelope couldn"t take her eyes off the magnificent man.
"Tonight you will see something that has never before occurred in history," the light-voice shone on. "Tonight you will witness the death of an Immortal. To my master, I sacrifice myself for his glory. Consider yourself privileged ..."
More of the smoke cleared, revealing large, heavily sh.e.l.led insects scurrying about on the floor but they were like no insects she"d ever seen on earth. The library"s main storage room had been ruptured open, revealing something within that looked like a bank vault. The huge, multi-bolted steel door had been melted down by an expertly incantated Heat Spell. A high-tech vault like that in a place like this? Penelope knew now beyond all doubt that Gary had been correct. This whole place was a front. They didn"t need a vault like that to store maps in. So what were they really storing here?
Penelope would never know. Fear and partial insanity compelled her to run. She disappeared into another gust of smoke which stank worse than the putrefactive gas of a ma.s.s grave. But perhaps luck was on her side now: she collided with a door, and when she looked up b.l.o.o.d.y-nosed, she noticed the sign that would save her life. EXIT STAIRS. Thank G.o.d! She yanked open the door and shot up the steps.
Then screamed.
A green-faced demon-boy sat on the first landing; he grinned down at her through decayed fangs, quivering as he inserted a long hypodermic needle into a nostril. He was a Zap addict, h.e.l.l"s version of a junkie. Once he"d worked the needle up into his brain, he depressed the plunger, sighed, and collapsed in bliss. Zap was the drug of choice in the Mephistopolis, an occult heroin made from infernal herbs boiled in Grand Duke urine, after which it was cooked down to paste at the Distillation Vats.
Her gut clenching, Penelope stepped over the boy, was about to dash up the rest of the steps, but screamed at the top of her lungs when she saw what was coming down the stairwell. The Fecaman was aptly named; it was a man-shaped creature composed of bewitched demonic waste. Two lidless eyes were set in the mush-brown face; two s.h.i.t hands groped forward. Clumsy as it appeared, it grabbed her with surprising spryness, embracing her at once and pulling its face of excrement to hers. "Kiss-kiss," it gurgled at her, "Kiss-kiss..." She didn"t have time to throw up before the thing"s hole for a mouth opened over hers. Convulsing, she seamed her lips but that didn"t matter. The tongue-a tumid t.u.r.d-worked its way into her mouth, wriggling. Penelope gagged, almost mindless in her revulsion. The basest instinct caused her to clack her teeth shut, severing the fecal tongue, whereupon she spat it out and bellowed another scream. The Fecaman screamed along with her, bug-eyed, and she skirted around the abomination, and flew the rest of the way up the steps.
Upstairs, she fell into the lobby. There was much less smoke up here, and she could see more evidence of the impossible change that had occurred, the lobby"s familiar appearance mutated into something else. Strange walls seemed blended with the lobby"s normal walls. Segments of the polished tile floor had been overrun by something that almost looked like a street gutter, only the gutter was befouled with body parts and nameless waste. She even noticed a storm drain in this otherworldly gutter; sulphurous flames licked out between the grates, and ... did she see a face down there, agonized and peering out? Heart racing, she turned toward the front gla.s.s doors, but they were all blown out. She dashed through them, out into the night, expecting to see the library"s parking lot, and the long gra.s.sy hill which extended down from it, but that"s not quite what she saw. She saw the parking lot, all right, and her little GMC Metro parked in her usual spot, but the parking lot was upheaved, as if some seismic plate had thrust up through the asphalt. Other things had thrust up, too-impossible things: huge brick and iron buildings, oddly windowed skysc.r.a.pers that spired so high she couldn"t see their end. Living gargoyles traversed the overhead ledges, looking down. A city street surrounded the library, but it was a street from another world. She even saw a street sign leaning over at one corner. The sign read DAHMER BLVD.
Her feet carried her mindlessly down the street. She saw her manic reflection in the various shop windows as she ran. MEATS one window read. SPECIALS TODAY: GHOUL, TROLL. The word HUMAN was also there but it had an X through it. Fried demon heads hung upside-down from hooks in the window. Inside, a man with one half of his face sliced off calmly cranked a sausage grinder, his butcher"s ap.r.o.n soiled by off-colored blood. The next window read RAPE CLINIC, which Penelope a.s.sumed was some sort of crisis center; the a.s.sumption only lasted for a moment after she looked in and spied demons in nice suits standing in line as a chained She-Imp was raped en ma.s.se on the floor by an array of slavering, hunch-backed creatures. More signs could be seen along the smoking block, the windows lit with the strangest lights: HEX-CLONES, LICENSED ALOMANCER SERVICES, BLOOD ALCHEMIST. The last window on the corner read SKIN-CUTTERS but Penelope didn"t look in.
She still didn"t know where she was running to but she ran just the same. Her mind didn"t ever bother trying to calculate what had squashed this evil place into the same s.p.a.ce that the map library occupied. Yet the question kept occurring to her: Where does it end? When she turned the next corner, her answer awaited.
Another smoking city street stretched forward but only for half a block. Then it ended very abruptly. Past its limits she could see the quiet moonlit hill that descended away from the library. She was about to run out but- "Help me," a voice beseeched her. "Please ..."
f.u.c.k that, Penelope decided. The only person she was going to help right now was herself-by getting out of this h.e.l.lish place. But there was something about the voice. It was a woman"s, and it- She looked into the narrow alley from which the plea had issued. A heavy-metal poster flapped on the brick wall: THE BURNING BABIES, ONE SHOW ONLY! LIVE AT THE BLOOD-SUCKERS BALLROOM. Across from it, someone had scrawled in chalk: G.o.d, PLEASE TAKE ME BACK, then someone else had written: DON"T HOLD YOUR BREATH!
The alley, like everything else, stank. Even in her horror, Penelope felt compelled to stop.
Was there something familiar about the voice?
"Help me," the voice repeated. "I was raped and beaten by a Grand Duke."
Penelope took one step into the alley. Yes, the voice was familiar. A naked woman sat huddled in the corner, reaching out.
"Who are you?" Penelope asked, voice quavering. "Are you one of the other guards?"
A giggle-a familiar giggle-and then the woman lurched up and grabbed Penelope, and all at once she realized just how familiar the voice really was.
It was her own voice that had been speaking to her.
And Penelope was now being attacked ... by herself.
The naked woman that looked exactly like Penelope grinned. Well, she didn"t look exactly like Penelope, because Penelope didn"t have fangs, nor were the whites of Penelope"s eyes bright crimson with white irises. Penelope didn"t have four joints per finger, either, and she didn"t have talons in place of fingernails. There was one other thing Penelope didn"t have that this evil replica did: a p.e.n.i.s.
Penelope screamed as she was dragged down. Perfect facsimiles of her own b.r.e.a.s.t.s swayed before her dread-distorted face, and her imposter"s p.e.n.i.s-more demonic than human in that it was gray as birch bark, with the same texture, and had an inverted glans, more like a plunger-head than a dome-throbbed against her stomach as she was molested. "I"m gonna stick it in hard, sweetie," the clone a.s.sured her in her own voice. "Say h.e.l.lo to my Mr. b.u.mpy."
The clone"s hips shimmied between Penelope"s legs. Penelope just kicked and screamed some more-useless reactions. Then hook-nailed hands began to pull at her pants ...
SLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL-UCK!.
Penelope had closed her eyes against the horror but opened them again when her attacker seemed to fall limp. Another Tentaculus was leaning over the scene on its long, wormlike legs, having forced the end of its trunk into the clone"s mouth. Penelope was able to crawl away as the creature"s digestive process began to suck, the extended trunk pulsating. It made Penelope think of a vacuum-cleaner hose, only this vacuum wasn"t sucking up dust, it was sucking out her macabre replica"s internal organs, or so Penelope would"ve thought until the creature stalled, then retracted its trunk. The sound it made-clearly a sound of objection-pierced her ears like the whine of a dentist"s drill. What Penelope couldn"t have understood was that the Hex-Clone of herself didn"t possess internal organs, just rotten reanimated goulash and vexed blood-not the meal that the Tentaculus expected. The creature jerked back, raised its trunk as an elephant would, and quickly expelled everything it had just ingested, spewing it all out in a shower of grue.
Penelope resumed her terror-tear down the alley. The sight of the moon-her moon, not a moon from another world-beckoned her. Finally she was there, and nearly collapsed when she took in her first breath of clean night air. She could hear crickets chirping, could see the plush, green gra.s.s sloping down the hill that the map library had been built on. All there was left to do now was keep running, just keep running away and get as far away from this place, or this nightmare, as possible.
"Adieu, Penelope," a voice reverberated in her ears, that voice she"d heard from the man in the bas.e.m.e.nt-the voice that was more like light. "Relish your life while you have it, because you"ve just borne witness to the home of your hereafter..."
Penelope stopped and turned. She couldn"t help it.
She looked back into the alley.
It was the man, the magnificent man named Zeihl, standing at the front steps of the Halman Map Library amid all of the evil buildings that seemed to have grown around it. Zeihl"s halo coruscated, and so did his quiet smile. Then came the sound: Ssssssssssssssss-ONK!
It popped in the air. Penelope felt her ears pop too, like an airplane descending, and next came a flash of throbbing green light. The flash seemed to grow into a stagnant, shuddering blob a few yards from the library"s front doors. The blob grew, painting everything on the infernal street an cerie luminescent green.
What-what IS that? Penelope wondered.