Monster Planet(47)

The place was a miracle, in that it was still running. Yet discovering that hardly seemed worth all the suspense Marisol had created. What next? When Sarah finished staring into the blackness below the great fan she had no idea what to do. Was she supposed to climb down into the shaft, or ascend one of the tower's ladders towards the catwalks high above? She turned to look back at the doorway and found a mummy standing directly in front of her.

She screamed, of course, but cut it short. This one was far older than Ptolemy, yellow with antiquity and largely unadorned. His tattered wrappings hung on him like the flag of a forgotten nation. Obviously he was there to guide her. He started moving as soon as she quieted down, heading away from her at a brisk pace. She kept an eye on his dark energy'much easier to follow him that way in the dimness. It was like a perfect sphere of darkness, buzzing and complete. He didn't hunger the way ghouls did but he lacked the busy mind of a lich. Funny. She had never bothered to study Ptolemy's energy like that. She wondered what she would find if she did.

They climbed up a long enclosed ladder with cold metal rungs until they reached a platform maybe twelve feet above the doorway. Catwalks ran away from them in three directions. They took the middle way and walked through the center of the shaft toward an identical platform at the far side of the tower. The wind rising through the shaft thrummed the narrow catwalk like a guitar string. Sarah clutched to the handrail but the mummy traversed the perilous way like a tight-rope walker'with no hesitation at all.

A bizarre and horrifying tableau waited for them at the far platform. A ghoul crouched there, feasting on a corpse, while something else, a tiny skeletal thing like a dog or... no, not like a dog at all, she couldn't really say what it was at first but then...

It was a skull, a human skull, with no lower jawbone. Very human eyes looked out from its sockets. Six jointed crab-like legs jutted out from underneath and carried it along as it scuttled backward away from her. She screamed again'it was that kind of place, a chamber of horrors'and the skull crab backed up even farther.

Then she looked down at the feasting ghoul. It was time to go, time to get out. Had she been sent here as a sacrifice? Did Marisol and her constituents do this with all their visitors, did they feed them to the island's resident monsters? Sure, it made sense. Send the occasional snack up to the tower and the ghouls would leave the Islanders in peace. Sarah turned to flee, only to find mummies blocking the catwalks. They didn't advance on her, just stood there waiting for her to make a move.

She had her pistol, her little Makarov, and she had the soapstone scarab. She could... she could fight her way free, at least take down a few of her captors if... if she...

'Sarah,' the ghoul said behind her. She whirled around and was in for a mild shock. It wasn't a ghoul, it was a lich. Its energy told her that much. And the corpse it had been eating'well, her special senses told her that it hadn't been alive for quite a while. Her actual eyes told her as much as well. The unliving corpse, the meal, had the dried up look of someone who had died years previous. The ghoul, no, the lich had been eating a slack, not a living person.

'Sarah,' it said again. There were so many things hidden in the word, so many different kind of emotions and questions. She gave the lich a good once-over.

Blue eyes. Flannel shirt. She was pretty sure she knew what that shirt would smell like, if she got close enough to bury her face in it.

She stepped closer. He had his arms open wide and she pushed herself into his embrace. Shoved her face right into his shirt.

'Daddy,' she said, and she was eight years old again, and crying.





Monster Planet





Chapter Six


The knock came again. She stared at the door. 'Just come in already. It's not like I can keep you out.'

There was no response. A few minutes later the knock came once more.

Ayaan staggered to the door and pushed it open. There was no one there. Just darkness and cool, slightly salty air. A cavernous space lay out there, maybe an empty warehouse, perhaps an abandoned auditorium. She stepped outside, her bruised feet dragging over grimy concrete. A little light came from above her through a hole in the ceiling. It made a sort of natural spotlight on the floor. She could see dust motes spiraling in the shaft of sunlight. It almost, but not quite, illuminated an AK-47 assault rifle suspended from the ceiling by a length of string. Ayaan shuffled toward the weapon. She touched the cherry wood stock. It was not her own AK, she would have recognized the pattern of the stain on the wood, the scratches on the metal that had become as familiar to her over the years as the spots and blemishes on her own skin. Still. It was a Kalashnikov and she knew it would be a reliable, effective weapon. She yanked it down, snapping its cord, and examined the chamber then broke out the magazine. A full clip of ammunition. With fingers that felt unusually clumsy she slipped one of the bullets out of the magazine and examined it, almost dropping it when she held it up to her eye. She half expected the bullets to be blanks or somehow adulterated but they weren't. Just the standard 7.62 x 39 mm cartridge. She slapped the magazine back into place, moved the selector lever to single fire and released the cocking lever with a clang.