Biohazard

12

It was a great resounding roaring/howling sound.

It rose up and up until it took on the shrill baying of an air raid siren and I could feel it thrumming through my bones and scraping right up my spine. The windows practically rattled. It was hollow and primeval in tone. We had all heard things at night before, but never anything like this. It stirred some instinctual terror in us. At least it did in me.

Janie was gripping my arm so hard her nails actually broke the skin.

When it had echoed away finally into the night, Carl swallowed and said, “What in the hell was that?”

But there were no answers. I was picturing some mammoth horror rising from the ooze of a Mesozoic swamp and howling at the misty moon high above.

Nobody said anything for a moment or two.

We were all waiting for someone else to break the silence, but no one did. And the reason for that was very simple: we were waiting. Just waiting. Waiting for something else to happen, for that howling to rip open the night again. Only this time it would be a little bit closer.

I opened my mouth to say something ridiculous and reassuring, but I never got that far. For there was a thud. A sudden, immense thud that shook the whole building. It came again. And then again. Plaster fell from the walls, dust trickled from the ceiling. Downstairs somewhere, something crashed, something else made a high-pitched splintering sound. There was lots of noise suddenly down there: things falling and banging and then only silence.

Everyone waited quietly after that.

But whatever it was, it never came back.

But, then, neither did Gremlin.

“Should we go look for him?” Janie said after a long time. “I mean, all of us?”

I shook my head. “No. It’s too dangerous out there. We’ll have a look in the morning.”

“He’ll probably be dead by then.”

“He’s probably already dead, darling,” Texas Slim said.

There was no more to be said on the subject. I set up watches for the night and that was it. The others got what sleep they could, trying not to think about what had been rooting around downstairs.

My dreams were far from pleasant. They started out with nightmares about being stalked through a wrecked city by some kind of horrible beast I could not see and ended with a real doozy about Youngstown. I dreamed the city split wide open like a rotting pumpkin and millions of hungry graveyard rats began pouring out.