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Her apparent solicitude should steady my nerves a little, but it does not The perception of so ahead does not relent, in fact intensifies After hearing the story of young Maxwell’slovely Ardys Harmony transformed into a homicidal puppet with a cleaver, I have no reason to dread this unknown menace more than I fear the Presence, the puppetmaster, but my intuition continues to insist

The proh My left shoulder brushes whatdoor, and s loudly off steel Through the sole of one of my shoes, I feel a metal channel inset in the midpoint of the foot-wide threshold

"The beach is so far ae can risk it now," Jolie says, letting go of ic Marker

The flash is welcoain behind the bea cowled and hostile, figures of dih they are the tortured denizens of so membrane

The narrow ray reveals that we have left the pipe behind and have entered a rectangular cha The floor seerout lines but by thin spines of polished steel All other surfaces are stainless steel

With the beaes of different sizes, which lie together in a corner "I had to pry open the doors, and it wasn’t easy, I about thought I’d blow out a carotid artery They were pneumatic once, I think, but there’s no power to the than the blinding gloom that preceded it Even in craine a generous space, but here the ceiling is hardly more than seven feet above the floor, and the sheen of the cold steel is sinister

"What is this place?" I ask

"Maybe the pipe behind us was just a storht the Corner But someone connected this systeood, if you ask ht, where the smooth steel is interrupted by double rows of inch-diaure is this was first of all some kind of escape route If people used it, they were decontaminated in these rooms--you know, maybe because of bacteria and viruses Maybe I don’t know Feels right But if you weren’t people, if you were anything else and you got this far, they trapped you here and instead of pu as into the roo?"

Before the girl can respond, a ru arises, not unlike the subterranean roar of certain earthquakes It seerows louder, I look uneasily at the ceiling

"Probably an eighteen-wheeler," Jolie says "We’re under the Coast Highway here, beyond the Corner"

She leads the way to the end of the room, where four steps ascend to a second threshold Here she has pried open another set of steel doors Beyond lies a chaht over the architrave before stepping into that rooh these two air locks to escape to the coast They weren’t taking any chances"

I follow her "They who?"

"I’ve got some ideas," she replies, but offers no more as she leads me across the chamber to another four steps that ascend to a third pried-open door

Another big truck passes overhead, followed by lighter traffic, but the vibrations no longer disturb er premonition that ahead waits an unequaled abohly unwholesos in a deeper level of Hell than any Dante ever iined

Past that third door, Jolie says, "From here on, there’s power," and she presses a wall switch

War both sides of a corridor that is as long as a football field, about twelve feet wide, h Every surface is pale yellow, shiny, and seems to be seamlessly plasticized

The air is warent chemical smell that isn’t unpleasant

"When I first pried open that third set of doors," she says, "it was a lot warer I first thought the air , but it doesn’t irritate row a second head, it hasn’t happened yet"

Co, but lad that I have the pistol

The girl says, "The next doors are powered-up and locked Can’t be pried open All these barriers So old beyond it or the secret recipe for McDonald’s special sauce This hallway is as far as we can go"

About halfway to those distant doors, a figure lies on the hallway floor At first it ht be mistaken for a man, but then not

As we approach the sprawled forirl says, "Whatever’s beyond those last doors, if they are the last ones, there must not be anyone left over there If anyone was over there, they wouldn’t just leave the thing here so long They’d take it away"

I can’t tell for certain how tall the creature ht, because it appears to have reater heat that she uess, I would say it stood over seven feet and weighed short of three hundred pounds But it is radically dehydrated, skin shrunken over its lanky body, over its long hands, and over the once-fearsoray linen suit worn hard and until threadbare and never once pressed

What I can deterer than its arorillas and other anthropoids, with a spinal curve like that of Ho fully erect But there the si four-knuckled fingers, five per hand, and two three-knuckled thuers, six per foot, with one thumblike toe in each half dozen

"I call hiirl says

"Why?"

"Well, I had to call hiht"

I don’t know her yet, but I think I’ to like her

"Orc because he s"

Its skull, to which the flesh of the face has been shriveled and shrink-wrapped by the heat, is nearly the size and shape of a watermelon The eyes have collapsed back into the desiccated brain, but judging by the sockets, they e lemons, set not horizontally like hue and a est a proboscis like that of an anteater, though three hooked lengths of hornlike structures, each two inches long, bristle fro an anteater can boast The lips have shrunk from the teeth, which are reminiscent of a wolf’s oral weaponry The mouth cracks uncommonly wide to allow the fullest use of that wickedly sharp and still-glea array of cutlery