“Damnit, woman,” Keith said, “it wasn't a rat that called for Davey and Penny from inside that duct!”
Faye was already pale. When Keith reminded her of the voice in the ventilation system, she went pure white.
They all paused at the doors, and Rebecca said, “Keith, is there someone you can stay with?”
“Sure,” Keith said. “One of my business partners, Anson Dorset, lives on this same block. On the other side of the street. Up near the avenue. We can spend the night there, with Anson and Francine.”
Jack pushed the door open. The wind tried to slam it shut again, almost succeeded, and snow exploded into the lobby. Fighting the wind, turning his face away from the stinging crystals, Jack held the door open for the others and motioned them ahead of him. Rebecca went first, then Penny and Davey, then Faye and Keith.
The doorman was the only one left. He was scratching his white-haired head and frowning at Jack. “Hey, wait. What about me?”
“What about you? You're not in any danger,” Jack said, starting through the door, in the wake of the others.
“But what about all that gunfire upstairs?”
Turning to the man again, Jack said, “Don't worry about it. You saw our ID when we came in here, right? We're cops.”
“Yeah, but who got shot?”
“Nobody,” Jack said.
“Then who were you shooting at? “
“Nobody.”
Jack went out into the storm, letting the door blow shut behind him.
The doorman stood in the lobby, face pressed to the glass door, peering out at them, as if he were a fat and unpopular schoolboy who was being excluded from a game.
IX
The wind was a hammer.
The spicules of snow were nails.
The storm was busily engaged on its carpentry work, building drifts in the street.
By the time Jack reached the bottom of the steps in front of the apartment building, Keith and Faye were already angling across the street, heading up toward the avenue, toward the building where their friends lived. Step by step, they were gradually disappearing beyond the phosphorescent curtains of wind-blown snow.
Rebecca and the kids were standing at the car.
Raising his voice above the huffing and moaning of the wind, Jack said, “Come on, come on. Get in. Let's get out of here.”
Then he realized something was wrong.
Rebecca had one hand on the door handle, but she wasn't opening the door. She was staring into the car, transfixed.
Jack moved up beside her and looked through the window and saw what she saw. Two of the creatures. Both on the back seat. They were wrapped in shadows, and it was impossible to see exactly what they looked like, but their glowing silver eyes left no doubt that they were kin to the murderous things that had come out of the heating ducts. If Rebecca had opened the door without looking inside, if she hadn't noticed that the beasts were waiting in there, she might have been attacked and overwhelmed. Her throat could have been torn open, her eyes gouged out, her life taken before Jack was even aware of the danger, before he had a chance to go to her assistance.
“Back off,” he said.
The four of them moved away from the car, huddled together on the sidewalk, wary of the night around them.
They were the only people on the wintry street, now. Faye and Keith were out of sight. There were no plows, no cars, no pedestrians. Even the doorman was no longer watching them.
It's strange, Jack thought, to feel this isolated and this alone in the heart of Manhattan.
“What now?” Rebecca asked urgently, her eyes fixed on the car, one hand on Davey, one hand inside her coat where she was probably gripping her revolver.
“We keep moving,” Jack said, dissatisfied with his answer, but too surprised and too scared to think of anything better.
Don't panic.
“Where?” Rebecca asked.
“Toward the avenue,” he said.
Calm. Easy. Panic will finish us.
“The way Keith went?” Rebecca asked.
“No. The other avenue. Third Avenue. It's closer.”
“I hope there's people out there,” she said.
“Maybe even a patrol car.”
And Penny said, “I think we're a whole lot safer around people, out in the open.”
“I think so, too, sweetheart,” Jack said. “So let's go now. And stay close together.”
Penny took hold of Davey's hand.
The attack came suddenly. The thing rushed out from beneath their car. Squealing. Hissing. Eyes beaming silvery light. Dark against the snow. Swift and sinuous. Too damned swift. Lizardlike. Jack saw that much in the storm-diluted glow of the streetlamps, reached for his revolver, remembered that bullets couldn't kill these things, also realized that they were in too close quarters to risk using a gun anyway, and by then the thing was among them, snarling and spitting — all of this in but a single second, one tick of time, perhaps even less. Davey shouted. And tried to get out of the thing's way. He couldn't avoid it. The beast pounced on the boy's boot. Davey kicked. It clung to him. Jack lifted-pushed Penny out of the way. Put her against the wall of the apartment building. She crouched there. Gasping. Meanwhile, the lizard had started climbing Davey's legs. The boy flailed at it. Stumbled. Staggered backwards. Shrieking for help. Slipped. Fell. All of this in only one more second, maybe two—tick, tick—and Jack felt as if he were in a fever dream, with time distorted as it could be only in a dream. He went after the boy, but he seemed to be moving through air as thick as syrup. The lizard was on the front of Davey's chest now, its tail whipping back and forth, its clawed feet digging at the heavy coat, trying to tear the coat to shreds so that it could then rip open the boy's belly, and its mouth was wide, its muzzle almost at the boy's face—no! — and Rebecca got there ahead of Jack. Tick. She tore the disgusting thing off Davey's chest. It wailed. It bit her hand. She cried out in pain. Threw the lizard down. Penny was screaming: “Davey, Davey, Davey!” Tick. Davey had regained his feet. The lizard went after him again. This time, Jack got hold of the thing. In his bare hands. On the way up to the Jamisons' apartment, he'd removed his gloves in order to be able to use his gun more easily. Now, shuddering at the feel of the thing, he ripped it off the boy. Heard the coat shredding in its claws. Held it at arm's length. Tick. The creature felt repulsively cold and oily in Jack's hands, although for some reason he had expected it to be hot, maybe because of the fire inside its skull, the silvery blaze that now flickered at him through the gaping sockets where the demons eyes should have been. The beast squirmed. Tick. It tried to wrench free of him, and it was strong, but he was stronger. Tick. It kicked the air with its wickedly clawed feet. Tick. Tick. Tick, tick, tick…
Rebecca said, “Why isn't it trying to bite you?”
“I don't know,” he said breathlessly.
“What's different about you?”
“I don't know.”
But he remembered the conversation he'd had with Nick Iervolino in the patrol car, earlier today, on the way downtown from Carver Hampton's shop in Harlem. And he wondered…
The lizard-thing had a second mouth, this one in its stomach, complete with sharp little teeth. The aperture gaped at Jack, opened and closed, but this second mouth was no more eager to bite him than was the mouth in the lizard's head.
“Davey, are you all right?” Jack asked.
“Kill it, Daddy,” the boy said. He sounded terrified but unharmed. “Please kill it. Please.”