Case File 13 #2 (21 page)

After they had walked about ten minutes, the pipe began to angle up, getting steeper and steeper, until they had to press their hands against the sides to keep from slipping backward. Just as Nick was thinking he couldn't go any farther, the pipe leveled out.

“You okay back there?” he called.

“Either I'm getting used to the stink or I burned out my sense of smell,” Carter said.

“Technically, the olfactory system is—” Angelo began.

Angie cut him off. “Over there,” she said, pointing. It took Nick a moment to see the dim light she had spotted. “It looks like some kind of grate. Keep your voices down. I think we're close.”

Trying not to fall on the slime-coated pipe, they crept up to the grate. There was just enough space between the bars to see what looked like a sort of storage room. It appeared to be empty.

“Help me lift this,” Angie said, straining at the bars with both hands.

Nick grabbed the bars and pushed. With a grinding sound, the grate lifted up and they were able to shove it aside.

Covered with grit and muck, each of the kids climbed out of the pipe. Tiffany plopped down on an empty wooden crate and stared sadly at her feet. “I'm never going to get this out of my shoes.”

Nick wasn't sure Jake would be able to make it out of the pipe. His shoulders were so broad, he had to slide one arm up at a time. And even then, it took all of them pulling to get him through the tight opening.

Once they were all up, a deep rumbling vibrated the walls and floor. “It sounds like machinery,” Angelo said.

Angie crept to the door and eased it open. “There's a hall outside. The sound seems to be coming from that direction.”

“Any more hands?” Nick asked.

Angie shook her head. “I don't see anything at all.”

She opened the door the rest of the way, and one by one they entered the hall. “Dippel never showed us this area,” Nick whispered as they tiptoed along the stone floor.

“It's got to be the hidden basement,” Dana said.

They stopped where the hall split into a T, checking to make sure there was no one in sight. Angelo frowned. “It's weird there are no guards here.”

“Maybe they're all outside,” Angie suggested. “Dippel probably never thought anyone would make it this far.”

Dana pointed to the left. “The sound's coming from that way.”

“What's the weird light?” Carter said. An odd purple pulsing illuminated the far end of the walls.

Angie started walking. “Only one way to find out.”

Nick hesitated before following. His gut told him it couldn't be this easy.

“Coming?” Carter asked.

Nick nodded and hurried after Angie. As they moved farther down the hall, they could see that it ended in a right-hand turn. The closer they got to the corner, the louder the sound grew. It had a consistent pulsing to it,
rurrr-rurrr-rurrr
, that appeared to match the flickering of the purple light.

“I think we're close,” Dana said. Pausing a few feet from the corner, she handed out the bats they'd recovered from the pipe, and the fishing poles. There were only enough weapons for five of them.

“You guys take them,” Angelo said, taking his PROG from his backpack. “That machinery has an electrical sound to it. I may need my hands free.”

Angie licked her lips. “Everyone ready?”

Nick looked back at Jake. The giant was cowering several feet back, his hands and legs shaking.

“He doesn't like this place,” Carter said.

Nick rubbed his hands across his arms. The air down here was damp and cold. But it was more than that. There was a feeling of evil here. Of something so old and wrong that it had been absorbed by the very stone of the walls.

“Let's go,” Angie whispered. Holding a fishing pole, she slipped around the corner.

Nick was right behind her, bat in hand. Neither of them took more than a single step before freezing at the sight before them.

Twenty feet away, the hall opened into a huge, circular room. At its center, a silver two-tiered pedestal rose high into the air. At the top of the pedestal, Dippel sat behind the controls of what looked like some bizarre mishmash of a giant ray gun from a science-fiction movie and a high-tech electrical control panel.

On the base, about two feet off the ground, a purple orb of electricity hissed and shot out sparks. Across from the ball was something so repulsive, Nick's mind refused to accept what he was seeing.

A quivering blob ten feet across appeared to be made of dozens of bodies combined like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It was neither man nor animal, but some twisted mutation of both. Nick could see horns and fur mixed in with feet and hands. Eyes, some big, others small, blinked among random ears, mouths, and noses. He thought several of the faces were either laughing or screaming, but they were so twisted he couldn't be sure.

Sticking out from the blob were crazy pieces of electronics. Circuit boards, transformers, switches, normal electrical outlets like you'd plug a toaster into. Cords and cables connected to the electronics and disappeared into the blob's flesh.

Surrounding the pedestal were twenty or thirty of Dippel's football players. They were protected in the orb, marching in a series of precise—almost military—movements.

In and amongst them, random body parts crawled, marched, and hopped. Severed legs stepped side by side. Arms slapped the ground, dragged themselves forward across the floor, reached out, and slapped again. Individual fingers crawled like worms, slipping and sliding forward.

Dippel stared down at the purple ball. It took a moment for Nick to understand why. Trapped inside the purple fire—arms and legs spread—was a person. It was Cody Gills. His eyes were open and his mouth was stretched wide in a soundless scream.

Silently, Nick, Angie, and the others backed around the corner.

“What
is
that thing?” Nick asked, when he could finally catch his breath.

Dana opened her mouth but no words came out.

“This is . . .” Nick held out his hands, unable to come up with the right words to describe such an abomination.

Angie turned to Angelo, who was still gripping his electronic box. “Can that thing of yours free Cody?”

Angelo chewed his lower lip. “Maybe. If I could get to that purple ball. There's no way to know for sure.”

“How could we get past the football players?” Tiffany asked. “They're huge.”

“How many can we take out with your weapons?” Angie asked Dana.

Dana shook her head. “No more than fifteen. And that's if we had time to cast and reel in all of the poles until they are out of charges. Which we don't. Besides, do you see those formations he's got them in? We saw how much luck the Rams had getting past that line at the football game. We'd be lucky if we could take out a third of them before they overran us.”

Nick clenched his fists. They were so close. If only they could get more help. He looked at Tiffany. “Your cell phone. You can call for help.”

Tiffany shook her head and took her phone out of her purse to show him. “No bars. But I haven't had any service since we entered the maintenance tunnel. Either Dippel's blocking transmission or we're too far underground.”

Angie darted her eyes around the hallway, searching for a solution. “We have to come up with a distraction.”

“Great,” Nick said. “And where are we going to find that?”

Carter looked up from his pillowcase with a strange grin on his face, put his finger to his chest, and said, “You can call me Mr. Distraction.”

Fifteen minutes later, Carter was balanced on Jake's shoulders. His pillowcase—now loaded down with the rest of Dana's smoke grenades—hung from his left hand.

“Are you sure about this?” Nick asked.

The giant was shaking so badly he looked like an overgrown scarecrow caught in a tornado.

Carter squeezed Jake's shoulder. “You can do it, right, buddy?”

Jake wrung his hands together, sighed, and nodded. “Rightsies, bud-dy.”

“Take your positions,” Angie said.

Nick stepped behind and to the left of Jake while Angie stood across from him on the right, each of them holding a fishing pole. Dana stood behind and to the left of Nick, holding a bat while Tiffany stood off to her right with a pole. Together they formed an inverted V with Jake and Carter at the tip of the formation.

Inside the wedge, Angelo gripped his PROG in one hand and a bat in the other.

“Remember,” Angie said, “the bat is for self-defense only. Your number-one job is to blow the electronics.”

“Okay,” Angelo said, his voice dry and gravelly.

Up on the pedestal, Dippel moved the laser gun. It now pointed at Cody. The purple ball had sprouted a funnel on one side, and a stream of some kind of energy was flowing between the funnel and the blob creature.

“Looks like he's about to start the transfer,” Angelo said.

“We're not going to give him the chance,” Angie said. She looked up at Carter. “Time for the diversion.”

Carter reached into his pillowcase and pulled out the bottle of aftershave. He twisted off the lid, took a sniff, and wrinkled his nose. “If this doesn't scare them off, nothing will.”

Jake put a hand to the scarf covering his nose.

“Hey, over there!” Carter shouted. Dippel looked up from his equipment—pink eyes flashing. “Get a whiff of this.” Carter reached back like a quarterback throwing a Hail Mary and heaved the bottle high into the air. It landed on the ground a few feet from the base of the pedestal and smashed open, splashing the pungent blue aftershave everywhere. All of the creatures in the vicinity that had noses clapped their hands to their faces and backed away, trying to escape the stench.

“Get them!” Dippel shouted, electricity shooting from his hands and the bolts on the sides of his jaw. “Thirty-four cross wing right.”

At their master's words, the football players began to fall into offensive formation. But Carter was already pulling smoke grenades from his pillowcase, yanking the tabs, and throwing them as fast as he could.

“Charge!” Angie yelled, firing her fishing pole as billows of purple-and-yellow smoke filled the room.

Two hulking linebackers came charging out of the smoke. Nick aimed at the first one and fired. The hooks caught on one of the runners' legs, and Nick triggered a bolt of electricity that sent it skidding to the ground.

The second one managed to hit Dana with a forearm, spinning her around. “Take this!” she screamed, zapping him with her bat. His eyes snapped wide open and he spun halfway around before collapsing.

It was hard to tell what was happening after that. Monsters ran past with their hands over their noses, fleeing the stench of Carter's dad's aftershave. Nick retrieved his hooks and fired again at an arm that reached for him. Tiffany zapped a blocker that must have been seven feet tall and nearly as wide.

Eight severed hands came scrambling toward them, but Carter's feathers must have tickled their palms, because they quickly backed away. “There are more where those came from,” he yelled, throwing another handful from his down pillow.

Two snarling linemen tried to tackle Jake and Carter. “Block!” Carter yelled, and Jake threw a forearm that sent them reeling. “Feel the pain!” Carter yelled. He seemed to be having the time of his life.

The smoke swirled and the silver pedestal came into view. Angelo ducked a block, jumped a flock of crawling fingers, and leaped onto the base.

“On your right!” Tiffany shouted as a player who must have been the quarterback picked up a beaker and flung it at Angelo. Angelo ducked just in time and the beaker shattered against a wall.

Angelo spun and lunged at the purple ball. Streams of electricity zapped the platform all around him. Miraculously, he managed to reach the orb without being hit. He switched on the PROG, grabbed the alligator clips—one in each hand—and rammed them into the purple fire.