19. THE CREW ENCOUNTER SOME ADDITIONAL COMPLICATIONS

John

A nearby window exploded and a man came swinging in on a rope. John recognized the blond beard on sight. He was pretty sure that they’d left the front door of Fort Beanie Wienie unlocked, but Ted owned line and a grappling hook and by god, he was going to use them. He’d also brought reinforcements: a second window birthed a burly man in camouflage who had rappelled down from the opposite side.

“GET THE FUCK DOWN! ALL OF YOU!” suggested Ted.

John, Dave, and Amy all got the fuck down, hands over their heads. On the laptop, John could faintly hear Marconi say, “I suppose that concludes the call.”

That night in the parking lot of the Flytrap, Ted had given Dave twenty-four hours to resolve the whole disappearing kids deal and John had to admit that not only had the deadline long passed, but that the situation was now actually quite a bit worse.

The two men unslung assault rifles and took up positions opposite their prone captives.

Ted screamed, “WHERE ARE THEY?”

Dave said, “Where are the what?”

“The kids! You’ve either got ’em here, or somewhere else.”

“Okay, as implausible as it was to accuse us of simultaneously kidnapping the two kids before, this is just weird. We snatched ten children and made them vanish into thin air? What, did we show up with a panel truck and just load the little bastards in there while nobody was watching? In a building inhabited by heavily armed biker types?”

“No. See, I think you’ve got capabilities. And I think you use those capabilities for shit like this.”

John said, “We found Maggie. Why would we take kids just to release them again?”

“Exactly so you can do that. In a couple days, you were gonna go to some locked room you’ve got ’em in, let them out in front of a bunch of TV cameras, and get called heroes. Probably think you’ll be drowning in pussy.”

Amy said, “I think you’re a good person, but there is just … so much going on here that you don’t understand.”

“Well, by all means, miss, educate me.”

“You don’t want to hear it.”

“Try me.”

Dave said, “Have you noticed anything weird about Maggie?”

“Don’t turn this shit back on her. You want to guess what alarm system the motel was using? You want to guess what happened the moment the kids were taken?”

John was about to say that was ridiculous, but stopped himself. That was weird. Both John and Dave looked at Amy, and she didn’t look back.

Dave said, “We’re being framed by whatever is behind this! That’s just part of it!”

Amy said, “If you want to search this place for the kids, go right ahead. We’ll wait right here on the floor. Okay?”

Dave said, “Just watch out, there’s artwork out there that will reveal the modern world to be an edifice of lies.”

Still, John was pretty sure that Dave had the same thought he did, which was, But what if they do find the kids here?

Before he could even finish the thought, there was a loud metallic BANG from below them, on the first floor.

Everyone froze, listening.

BANG.

Ted and his partner raced for the stairwell. John scrambled to his feet and ran after them. Behind him, Dave and Amy had a hushed argument he couldn’t quite hear.

At the bottom, John was met gun-first by Ted’s comrade, who’d been stationed there specifically to make sure the three of them didn’t try to take out Ted from behind. The guy shouted something about how John wasn’t to take another step if he didn’t want to see his intestines go bouncing down the stairs like a Slinky.

From where John was standing, he could just see Ted edge toward a rolling metal door, on which was spray-painted an Uncle Sam next to a word balloon that said, I AM FULL OF LIES!

There was a BANG and the door shook.

Ted said, “HELLO? Can you hear me?”

If he got an answer from the other side of the door, John couldn’t hear it.

The door shook again.

“We’re here to help you! Back away!”

The latch on the floor was held closed by a wad of rusty brown chain and a heavy padlock—it looked like no one had touched it in a decade. Ted switched to his shotgun, blew the chain apart, then reached down and yanked up the door. His companion turned to train his gun on the opening, glancing back at John to make sure he wasn’t going to try to take advantage.

If John could have frozen time in that moment and taken the rest of the day to think about it, he still wasn’t sure he’d ever have successfully guessed what was on the other side of that door. Was it the supposedly missing kids? Mikey? Diogee? Nymph? Some other kind of imitation victim that would turn Ted against them, like his wife? A doppelganger of Ted himself? A stray cat that just got trapped inside the room somehow? Dennis Rodman?

The door rolled up to reveal a dark room. Some old cans of paint, a few dusty blue barrels of floor wax …

John had seen just the hint of a pale shape when Ted’s friend said, “Oh, SHIT!” and started firing.

Out from the shadows popped a pair of white leathery wings stuck to a sinewy grasshopper body. The creature the locals had dubbed BATMANTIS???

The monster launched itself forward and swiped a claw at Ted. He jumped back and found he was now holding half of a shotgun—the rest was clattering to the floor, the creature having effortlessly snipped metal and plastic cleanly in two.

Gunfire and shouts. Both men were backpedaling quickly, but with purpose—creating distance, getting out of their enemy’s attack range. The BATMANTIS??? absorbed a dozen rifle rounds and then leaped forward again, swiping with a crooked limb and sending Ted’s partner crashing into a wall. It then quickly skittered away, clumsily, like its legs kept getting caught on one another.

Instead of running for the main exit, which was about twenty feet away, the thing crashed directly into the wall, mashing itself into it, like it didn’t understand how walls worked. As Ted continued to shoot it in the back, the BATMANTIS??? kept pressing itself into the wall, misshapen feet scraping the floor …

And then it was gone. Right in front of them, the thing had dissolved through the wall like a handful of pudding slapped through a screen door. There was a muffled shriek from the other side, like the beast had injured itself in the process.

Ted flew toward the main exit. John followed. The moment they were outside, the BATMANTIS??? jumped into the sky, flapped its wings, and was airborne. Ted fired into the sky with his assault rifle. Not in a blind rage or confused panic—he was taking careful, aimed shots, intending to bring down his prey. Once more, Ted fell right into professional soldier mode—he could take time to be amazed by what he saw later, after the job was done.

John was pretty sure the shots were landing and fully expected the creature to splash down onto the pavement, dead. But, the BATMANTIS??? just recoiled with the impacts and kept flying, vanishing behind the next building.

Ted sprinted after it. John followed, cold rain battering his cheeks.

They rounded the building and caught a pale glimpse of the beast. Ted unloaded on it, shooting until the magazine went dry. No effect. Then they were running again, Ted’s boots slapping and splashing, the man frantically scanning the clouds as they pissed on his upturned face.

The creature was gone. Ted cursed the sky.

John, thinking quickly, stomped over and jabbed a finger at him.

“Hey. Listen. We tried to tell you. I get that you pride yourself on being hardheaded, but you see it now? You wanna know what’s taking this town’s kids, well now you know.”

Ted said, “Why didn’t you tell me that thing was in there? You hopin’ it would rip my head off?”

“Because we didn’t know. It was waiting in there to ambush us, probably because it knew we were getting close. How the fuck would we get that thing in there?”

This was of course bullshit, but chasing the BATMANTIS??? seemed like a perfect task to keep Ted out of the way. Still, the questions being asked were the right ones—why in the hell was the thing holed up in the Beanie Wienie warehouse? John assumed either he or Dave had in fact lured the thing in there over the course of their lost weekend. But how? And more importantly, why? Did it have something to do with the silicone butts?

“Look,” John said, “here’s the truth. We’ve been stalking this thing for months. Learning how to track it. That’s why it tricked your little girl into thinking it was Dave there that night—it’s using its tricks, trying to throw you off the scent.”

“Wait, then who was Nymph?”

“They’re one and the same. That’s just another face it wears—a different type of predator, a human one. He transforms, like a werewolf. He’s a were-Batmantis. A Batmantis-man. What matters is that underneath it all, it’s just an animal. It can bleed and it can die. Find out where that bastard nests, you’ll find the kids. Let’s just hope you find ’em in better condition than they’ve been finding the dogs.”

“The dogs?”

“It eats small animals. I say you sit down and map all the houses or farms where people have lost dogs and cats and chickens. Then you draw a big circle around all them houses and draw an X in the middle of that circle. That’s where you’ll find your monster and, god willing, that’s where you’ll find the kids. If you got a good relationship with the cops, you might be able to get them to help out. Unfortunately, that’s not our situation right now. The cops want nothing to do with us and we’ve got an agency on our back on top of that. In fact, if you see black trucks prowling around somewhere, driven by spooky assholes in black robes? I bet you’ll find they’re hunting for the same thing.”

Ted said, “If I find out this is bullshit—”

“The monster that just flew out here was not made of papier-mâché and pipe cleaners. I’m telling you now, Ted, that thing is going to try to scramble your brain. That’s what it does. Don’t let it. I don’t give a shit if you believe me or not. But if you can’t trust your own two eyes, what can you trust?”

John was proud that he was able to keep a straight face through that last part.

Me

Amy and I watched John trudge back toward us, soaked to the bone. Ted’s partner had already vacated the premises, jogging off through the rain, clutching wounded ribs.

John nodded sideways and said, “They parked down the street. Hopefully they’ll head off to spend the next month trying to find that thing’s nest. God only knows what it was doing there. Unless one of you know?”

I said, “Did you see it phase through the wall? It can do that, but it still managed to get trapped in a supply room? I think it’s just an idiot.”

Amy said, “It started making noise when Ted pointed a gun at us. Maybe it was trying to protect us.”

“I would love to spend just one day in your world. I know that came out like sarcasm, but it’s not—I seriously would.”

John said, “All right, we need a game plan.”

I said, “Well, we have to figure this all out before Ted turns his attention back on us. And before the Maggie thing hatches. And before Tasker figures out how NON can murder us all without consequence. And before the manhunt for those missing kids draws the entire town to the mine. And before the biker gang blames us for all this. And before the Batmantis comes back and eats us.” I raked back wet hair from my forehead and sighed. “Anybody hungry? Didn’t they say Waffle House wasn’t closing no matter what?”

John said, “We need to go to the mine, right? I mean that’s the root of the problem.”

I said, “So, let’s say we go there and find ten ‘kids’ standing around. Then what? And don’t say kill them because Amy is going to start screaming.”

“Whatever we do, it’s better than letting the bikers find them. We’re seeing through their disguises, thanks to the Sauce, but who knows how long that will last? I say we go down there and, I don’t know. We’ve got all that sulfur. Maybe you throw it on them and it breaks the spell or something? Plus we have all those butts.”

“Would you drop the thing with the butts? You know why you bought those? So that you could bring them up every five minutes.”

Amy said, “What butts?”

We piled into the Jeep. I was in the passenger seat and had the sudden urge to pull down the sun visor, even though the morning sun hadn’t showed up for work in a month and was clearly trying to get fired.

A note fell into my lap.

John’s handwriting.

Amy asked, “What does it say?”

“It says, ‘Don’t let the Batmantis out.’”