Blood Lust: A Supernatural Horror (55 page)

“What time is it
?” Capaldi asked.

In response to his question, her stomach rumbled.
“
Lunch time
.”
She checked her watch. “
Almost noon
.
We’ve been
down
here
almost three
hours.
I need to eat.
”

“There
are
chips in the van.”

“Hmph! It’s closer to the Bay Street Station. There’s a
hot dog vendor just outside.”

Capaldi hefted his camera. “You’re buying.”

* * * *

After pigging out on two hot dogs and a soda,
Ella
washed up as best she could in the women’s lavatory. Rested, satiated and
free of the filthy subway tunnel, the last thing she wanted to do was to go back in after Hardin, but he was the heart of
her
story. She felt certain that when they found him, they would find the Midnight Monster.
She looked at Capaldi on the bench beside her, leaning against the wall and dozing
, one hand resting protectively on his precious
camcorder
.

“We have to go back.”

Capaldi peeked at her through one half-opened eye.
“You sure?”

“Of course I’m not sure!” she snapped. “Talk me out of it
, Steve
. It’s a
stupid
idea.”

“But you want to go back anyway.”

She sighed.
How could she explain it to him?
“I have to. It’s the story I want. I’m tired of this town. I want something more.”

Capaldi’s face broke into a grin.
“You deserve your chance. I’ll come with you. If it’s not on film, it
’s
not a
story.
”

She felt bad about dragging Capaldi with her, but she needed him. It wou
l
dn’t be the first time they had faced danger together, but
even during a police shoot out or a raging apartment fire, she hadn’t h
adn’t felt as frightened or as vulnerable
as she did now
. She had seen the creature in action and
she
knew what it was capable of.

“Let’s go.”

It took all her courage to re-enter the subway tunnel. She had deliberately walked slowly
from the station, secretly hoping it would all be over before they got there. Standing in front of the closed steel door
, she tried not to dwell on what lay beyond it. Capaldi removed the steel bar and swung the door open. To her, the door creaked just like
a door from a horror movie.

“Do we shut it behind us?” he asked.

The idea of shutting herself
in seemed ludicrous, but Hardin must have had his reasons.

“I suppose we had better.”

Capaldi led the way
down the dark tunnel
using the lights of the video camera.
She almost screamed when a cobweb brushed across her face. She slapped it away angrily.
The air in the tunnel was hot and
musty. It grew hotter
when the
y
entered the old subway line.

“Look at that,” Capaldi called out as he panned the camera to a mound of dirt and debris. “Looks like a cave in.”

She had a sinking feeling. “Could Hardin be under it?”

“Nah,” Capaldi answered to her relief. “I see footprints leading down the tunnel.”

The air was thick with dust. She pulled out a red scarf and wrapped it
around her head and across her nose and mouth like a Muslim
hijab
,
leaving
only her eyes exposed
.
She eyed the section of collapsed ceiling with distrust.
Two of her secret horrors were drowning or smothering to death.

“Let’s follow them,” she suggested.

After walking a mile down the tunnel, she spotted a faint light ahead.

“Turn off your lights,” she told Capaldi. “I see someone at the edge of the light. Quietly,” she warned.

As they crept closer, her heart began to thunder in her chest so loudly she was afraid the person near the light would hear it.
It pounded harder when she realized there were two figures, a woman and something much bigger.

“The creature
and Dr. Alvarez
,” she hissed quietly. “
What’s she doing down here?”

“Why hasn’t the thing killed her?” Capaldi questioned. “
It looks like she’s having a conversation with it.”

Ella
wondered the same thing. “
L
et’s get close enough for the mic
to pick her up.”

Tiptoeing in loose gravel proved more difficult than she had thought, but they
found a hiding place behind a vertical support beam close enough to overhear.

“Be sure you’re getting all this,” she warned
Capaldi. Then she listened.
Joria
was speaking in Portuguese, but it was close enough to her native Spanish that she underst
ood most the words.

“The doors are sealed by a metal cross bar. I can’t open them,”
Joria
was saying to the creature.
To
Ella’s
astonishment
, the creature responded.

“I have wounded both of them. They will die soon. I must be free of this place. You must help me.” The creature unfurled its wings
, visibly agitated,
and danced from one leg to the other.
Suddenly, the creature shrieked loudly.
Ella clamped her hands over her ears at the piercing sound.
“Smoke! They try to burn me!”
It leaped into the air and flew down the tunnel.

With the creature gone, Ella
decided to confront
Joria
.
Ignoring Steve’s restraining hand, s
he stepped out of the shadows and into the light cast by the single bulb.
Joria
whirled
around at her footsteps.

“What are you doing here?”
Joria
demanded angrily.

“The
question is,
what
you are
doing here,”
Ella
retorted. She motioned to Capaldi
.
Joria
’s
face turned to a mask of rage when she saw the video camera he was holding.

“Give me that film,” she demanded.

Ella
laughed. “Fat chance, bitch.
That thing has killed over dozen people, not counting the drug smugglers, and you’ve been helping it. Where’s Detective
H
ardin
?”

Joria smiled. “Do you mean Tack? I think he’s setting fire to the tunnel. My friend has gone to stop him.”

For the life of her
,
Ella
couldn’t understand how a scientist, anyone for that matter, could choose a murdering creature over their own kind.
“Why?” 

“You’re a woman, a reporter. Soon, when your looks fade, they will cast you aside for someone younger. I have found the Fountain of Youth, the
Chupacabra.
How old do I look?”

The question surprised
Ella
. “I don’t know. Mid thirties?”

Joria laughed. “I am fifty-six. I will retain my looks and vigor lost after you have shriveled and died.
That
is my reason.”

She’s mad
,
Ella
thought.
That makes her dangerous
.
“We’ll stop you. You’re coming with us.”

As Joria backed away, Capaldi
stepped up and
grabbed her arm. “Not so fast, Doctor.”

Ella
could now smell the smoke. “We have to help Hardin and then get out of here.”

Capaldi handed her the camera. “
H
ere, you take this. I’ve got my hands full with Miss Brazil here.”

Suddenly,
as
Ella
reached for the camera, Joria elbowed Capaldi in the ribs.
He
doubled over from the pain,
groaning.
S
he wrenched free, picked up a
large rock and brought it down on his head.
Ella
stared in
disbelief and
horror as the rock smashed into Capaldi’s skull.
He crumpled to the ground.
As he fell, Joria stood
above him
, blood splattered, holding the bloody rock
. She glared at
Ella defiantly; then
brought the rock down on
Capaldi
’s head
again.
Ella
knew he was dead.
She had seen death before.
His open eyes stared blindly at her.

Ella
knew she had to flee for her life, but the
camcorder
would slow her down. She ripped out the memory card and dropped the camera,
briefly considering how Capaldi would have reacted to that
act of
blasphemy to his precious Sony
.

In high school,
Ella
had been on the varsity track team, placing second in the state finals.
Though she still jogged, she had
not
run
full out for years.
She tried to remember what her coach had told her about breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, but the musty air and the scarf made it difficult. Still,
her body remembered. S
he
easily
outdistanced
Joria, running blindly through the darkness, praying she didn’t trip over anything.
She didn’t know which she feared more, the creature somewhere ahead of her or the madwoman behind her.
She forced back her tears for Capaldi.
He had followed her into danger just as he always had, but this time she had gotten him killed.
There would be time for mourning later, she hoped.

31

The ventilator tunnel
was unbearably hot with the fans
out of commission
and the
fetid
air was as thick
with dust,
mold and the foul stench of decades of disuse
. I tried a deep breath and regretted it immediately as the
retched
air etched my throat
like
bitter
acid
.
I
had a
cough
ing fit as I
placed
my handkerchief around my face.
Simmons had already donned his.
We sounded
like two deep
-
sea divers as we
huffed and puffed
along the
shaft
, but at least we could breathe.

We had left
the others on the surface half an hour earlier
, hoping
McNeil’s friend, Walmsley
made it to the hospital in time
.
He had been unconscious
and uncommunicative
by the time the ambulance had left
carrying him
and McNeil
.
My own fever had receded somewhat after the antibiotic
booster
shot.
The fever
was still there, lurking at the edge of my consciousness, ready to re-impose itself on my body
when the antibiotics wore off
, but b
y then, either I would be dead or my task
completed
.

McNeil
had been
as recalcitrant as ever, refusing to rest
or lie down in the ambulance. He
had
insisted
upon
and
had
received a shot of whiskey from one of his men, claiming it had saved his life after his first heart attack.
He
had offered
Simmons
the second .357 but
Simmons
settled
instead
for the extra ammo.
As the ambulance driver was closing the doors, he yelled to the crane operator to be careful lowering us into the shaft.
Watching the sky disappear for a second time as we descended into the airshaft in the bucket was disheartening, like dropping into the heart of hell.