He saw a bigger creature — the biggest so far, though it only went up to Peeks’s chest — stepping out of the shadow in front of Peeks. Peeks saw it, turned and fired, and half of the creature’s body, from waist to shoulder blade, disappeared in a shower of buckshot, and the creature was flung back by the force of the blast.
Then it slowly got back up, even with one side of its body completely gone.
That’s impossible.
Will squeezed the trigger once, twice as a figure made a run for him, coming out of the corner to his right. Will caught it full in the chest with both shots. It flopped to the floor, looking more surprised than hurt.
Then it was instantly back up on its feet.
That’s fucking impossible.
Will moved on instinct, flicking the M4A1’s fire selector to fully automatic and began firing into the room, the rifle’s thirty-round magazine emptying at a dizzying 700 rounds per minute.
Around him, everyone was firing now, and the staccato flash of gunfire lit up the room in spurts of half-second intervals, and each time he swore that creatures were coming out of the walls, the ceiling, and even the floor underneath his boots.
But that was impossible.
Wasn’t it?
CHAPTER 2
KATE
She heard sirens blaring along Interstate 45, the long stretch of highway that cut through the heart of Houston and was visible outside her tenth floor office windows. There was nothing major happening out there in the real world that she knew about. At least, there was nothing on TV or the Internet. Houston was not exactly Los Angeles; something as minor as a car chase with some idiot who refused to stop for a simple traffic ticket usually ended up on the news.
She glanced at the clock on her wall. 5:14 p.m.
Rush hour would be thinning out about now, and if she waited another thirty minutes, she would have clear sailing from the office to home. If there was lingering traffic — and there usually was — she could always take the tollway. Ironically, that would add an extra five minutes to her normal drive because the tollway was out of the way, but it was better than sitting in traffic. Houston was a notoriously car-heavy city, and not everyone had mastered the art of driving. She had seen tiny drops of rain turn a steadily moving highway into a parking lot.
Kate sat back down at her desk and stared at the stack of DVDs next to the equally large pile of folders. Audition tapes, commercials that needed approval, and the pleasures of paperwork. All of it would have driven her crazy if she hadn’t asked for it by opening her own business.
Be careful what you wish for, Kate.
She grabbed the brown bag that today’s lunch had come in and tossed it into the trash bin nearby. A nice arcing hook shot landed the crumpled bag on a stack of used newspapers and discarded folders. That struck her as odd. Usually the janitors were already up here by around five o’clock to start their rounds. The Amegy Bank building shut down completely by then, with most of the pedestrian foot traffic non-existent after three o’clock when the bank closed its lobby. The rest of the floors, like Kate’s, became a ghost town as soon as the clock hit five.
There were no signs of the janitors now, though. No Mel or Francis. Or was it Mac and Francis? Something with an “M.”
A flicker of failing sunlight outside the window caught her attention, and Kate wasted a pointless second or two staring out at the evening shade, towering over the heavy traffic on the 45. She would have been shocked by how fast it was darkening outside if she hadn’t spent most of her life here. Late November in Houston meant sunset before 5:30 p.m. and sunrise before 7:00 a.m. It was one of those times of the year where it got dark before you wanted it to and bright before you needed it to.
Kate shook off the randomness of the moment, got up, walked to the window, and closed the blinds. Out of sight, out of mind.
Pathetic. It’s Friday and you’re still at the office after five. This might actually be a new low.
She grabbed the first DVD case off the top of the pile. The plastic container felt cheap, and the DVD inside had the production name scribbled in permanent marker. She sighed.
Amateur hour.
She pushed the disk into her laptop, picked up her earbuds, slipped them on, and waited for the DVD to load. It took too long to load, which usually meant they formatted the disk wrong. That was annoying. How did they expect her to hire them when they couldn’t even send their audition tapes in the right format?
While she waited, Kate glanced up and out of her inner office window and saw Donald across the floor, packing paperwork into the faded hand-stitched leather satchel that he always carried. No one stayed longer than they had to on a Friday, and the fact that she and Donald were the only two people still on the floor felt oddly reassuring. Soon it would just be her (Pathetic, Kate, really pathetic), but for now…
He must have sensed her watching, because he looked up. Before she could turn away, he waved. Caught, Kate waved back as casually as she could.
Ugh. I’m back in high school all over again.
Donald was twenty-two, blond, and impossibly handsome. Just thinking about where he had been only a few months ago, lining up in the University of Houston’s Hofheinz Pavilion building to pick up his bachelor’s degree, made her feel ancient. It had never occurred to her that thirty-one was old until Donald smiled at her one day when they were alone in her office.
She looked away momentarily, feigned being busy by flicking her fingers over the laptop’s keys. By the time she glanced back out the window, Donald had stepped into the elevator and the doors were closing on his perfectly chiseled face.
The DVD finally started to play; loud, bombastic music blasting through her earbuds. That wasn’t a good sign, either.
Kate turned down the volume slightly, then with one eye on the laptop, picked up the first folder and opened it, scanning through the paperwork before signing her name at the bottom.
Don’t complain, you asked for this.
She sighed.
Two hours. She’d spend two hours on this and go home…
She ended up staying much longer and didn’t look up from the laptop, rubbing at her eyes, until it was almost eight.
By 8:17 p.m., she had ripped the earbuds free, signed the last forms on the pile, then gathered up her things and deposited the folders on her secretary’s desk outside. Kate soaked up the silence as she walked across to the elevator.
The ride down was uneventful. Kate passed the time going over ad jobs that had come into the office in the last week, slotting them in terms of importance, pay rate, and future investment. The Sears job automatically went to the front of the line. Department stores were hard to come by, and ones with almost 100 years in the bank even rarer. She would have to put Donald on that one. Evelyn generally did a decent job, but Kate didn’t need decent, she needed greatness. Donald could be great with the right tutelage. Hers.
Should have caught him before he left, Kate.
Kate pushed aside the lost moment as the elevator stopped, pinged, and the doors opened onto the third floor of the garage structure next to the Amegy building. She was immediately greeted by ugly gray concrete on every side, thick solid walls that isolated the structure from the rest of the Downtown noise.
Not that there were a lot of noises at the moment. Which was curious. Friday night in Downtown, Houston was usually a sea of activity, with the businesses shutting down and the clubs starting up.