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And it was getting closer Much closer

Ron Peake reached the ladder, started up, dropped his flashlight, didn’t bother to return for it

Peake was too slow, and Billy shouted at him: "Move your ass!"

The scream of the unknown beast had become an eerie ululation that filled the subterranean storm drains as completely as floodwater Billy couldn’t even hear hi

Peake was halfway up the ladder

There was alh room for Billy to slip in under him and start up He put one hand on the ladder

Peake’s foot slipped He dropped down a rung

Billy cursed and snatched his hand out of the way

The banshee keening grew louder

Closer, closer

Peake’s fallen flashlight was pointing off toward the Skyline drain, but Billy didn’t look back that way He stared only up toward the sunlight If he glanced behind and saw soth would flee hiet hiain His feet stayed on the rungs this ti vibrations that Billy could feel through the soles of his boots The vibrations were like heavy, lu-quick footsteps

Don’t look, don’t look!

Billy grabbed the sides of the ladder and clawed his way up as rapidly as Peake’s progress would allow One rung Two Three

Above, Peake passed through the manhole and into the street

With Peake out of the way, a fall of autuht splashed down over Billy Velazquez, and there was so a church -maybe because it represented hope

He was halfway up the ladder

Going totoand howling, Jesus, like being in the center of a cyclone! Another rung

And another one

The decontamination suit felt heavier than it had ever felt before A ton A suit of ar hi out of the horizontal drain that ran beneath the street He looked up longingly at the light and the faces peering down at hi to h thea hand It was Copperfield hi stopped

He clio of the ladder with one hand, and reached for the general-

–but sorasp Copperfield’s hand

"No!"

Sorabbed him, wrenched his feet off the ladder, and yanked hi for his ainst the wall of the pipe and then against a rung of the ladder, scratching his elbows and knees, trying desperately to catch hold of a rung but failing, finally collapsing into the powerful e him backwards toward the Skyline conduit

He twisted, kicked, struck out with his fists, to no effect He was held tightly and dragged deeper into the drains

In the backsplash of light co beaht, Billy saw a bit of the thing had hi out of the shadows, then vanishing into darkness again He saw just enough to make his bowels and bladder loosen It was lizardlike But not a lizard Insectlike But not an insect It whaled and mewled and snarled It snapped and tore at his suit as it pulled hi It had cavernous jaws and teeth Jesus, Mary, and Joseph-the teeth! A double row of razor-edge spikes It had claws, and it was huge, and its eyes were srave He had scales of skin, and two horns, thrusting fro out and up, as sharply pointed as daggers A snout redder than a nose, a snout that oozed snot A forked tongue that flickered in and out and in and out across all dier on a wasp or ed Billy Velazquez into the Skyline conduit He clawed at the concrete, desperately seeking so away the fingers and palround air on his hands, and he realized he ht now be contaged hihtly Then tore at his suit It cracked his hellass faceplate It was after him as if he were a delicious morsel of nut meat in a hard shell

His hold on sanity was tenuous at best, but he struggled to keep his wits about him, tried to understand At first, it see h a time warp into the storh-pitched, lunatic giggle coave voice to it The beast tore awayhard, a cold and disgustingly slick thing that seee when it touched hi, suddenly re of a de Yes, exactly like it The horns The dark, forked tongue The red eyes A deht: No, no; that’s crazy, too! And all the while that those thoughts raced through his mind, the ravenous creature stripped him and pulled his helmet almost completely apart In the unrelieved darkness, he sensed its snout pressing through the halves of the broken hel against his ue but repellent-odor, like nothing he had ever shs, and then he felt a strange and brutally painful fire eating into him; acid fire He writhed, twisted, bucked, strained-all to no avail Billy heard himself cry out in terror and pain and confusion: "It’s the Devil, it’s the Devil!" He realized he had been shouting and screas aled off the ladder Now, unable to speak as the flas to ash and churned into his throat, he prayed in a silent singsong chant, warding off fear and death and the terrible feeling of smallness and worthlessness that had come over him: Mary, Mother of God, Mary, hear my plea… hear my plea, Mary, pray for me… pray, pray for me, Mary, Mother of God, Mary, intercede for me and-

His question had been answered

He knehat had happened to Sergeant Harker

Galen Copperfield was an outdoorsreat deal about the wildlife of North A was the trap-door spider It was a clever engineer who created a deep, tubular nest in the ground with a hinged lid at the top The lid blended so perfectly with the soil in which it was set that whatever wandered across it, unaware of the danger beloere instantly dropped into the opening, dragged down, and devoured It was horrifying and fascinating One instant, the prey was dying, and the next instant it was gone, as if it had never been

Corporal Velazquez was gone as sudden as if he had stepped upon the lid of a spider’s lair

Gone